The Friar Podcasts - preaching prayer and spiritual reflections

Today we begin ordinary time. And I think it's always important to remind ourselves that the name ordinary time does not mean ordinary in the sense that we use it. If something is ordinary, it's well, it's common, it's not terribly special, it's not dramatic, it's just ordinary.

It really comes from the Latin ordo, which is really about order. It's about numbers. You may remember when you had math, however many years ago, that there were ordinal numbers. And that's really all the ordinary time signifies is that it is a sequence of gospels. So we have the first Sunday and the second Sunday and so forth throughout the year.

The reality is that it is anything but ordinary. If we think of the purpose of the church year, it really is to sanctify time. The purpose of the liturgy is to sanctify space. So everything is about holiness in what we do. But I think like many things, we have to be intentional about what it means as we enter a new year.

We're going to hear gospels that undoubtedly we've heard many times before. But can we hear them in a new way? We're going to have many of the same things that we've done in previous years, but can we see them in a new way? There are going to be instances in our life where we do the same old things, but can we find God in them?

For that really is the purpose of the Christian life, to seek God. And to recognize that God says to us, see, I am doing something new. Now something new does not always mean something that we will really love and look forward to, because maybe the something new is a challenge that we're being asked to take on.

Maybe the something new that God wants us to do is to learn how to deal with life when it doesn't go our way. Maybe the something new is learning how to deal with the loss of a loved one, or someone who is sick with some kind of terminal illness, maybe even us. Whatever it is, we're called to seek God. That's what Jesus proclaims in the gospel.

He starts off the way he'll spend much of his time on earth teaching. He tells people about God, and there's something quite qualitatively different about what he says and how he speaks. People notice it right away. He speaks with authority, not like the scribes, not people who are just reciting from rote what they may have learned without really allowing it to touch their hearts and to come into their hearts.

That is really what we're called to do too. As we seek out the presence of the Lord in this new year to find those ways in which we can allow what God wants us to know and who God wants us to be to go right to the depths of our hearts so that we will recognize a teaching with authority, a new teaching, something that is amazing, the Lord Jesus himself.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

During the time when Jesus is on earth, the Father only speaks twice. Once in the baptism of Jesus that we hear about today, and the other at the transfiguration. And both times God says the same thing. "This is my beloved Son, listen to Him."

And what we celebrate today is not only the baptism of the Lord, which is certainly a tremendous event, but our own baptism as well. It was the baptism of Jesus that made the waters of baptism holy. John baptized too, but it was a different kind of baptism. It was in fact the baptism that came when someone by their own will power said, I'm going to turn my life around.

When Jesus was baptized, He made holy the waters of baptism. And when baptism occurred after that by Jesus and ultimately through the Church, it was God who did the work. It wasn't simply someone's desire, but rather the Spirit of God who made a fundamental change in who someone was.

It's for this reason that the Church in fact teaches you can only be baptized once. We're not a church that baptizes more than once. And we have a very high acceptance of baptism. As long as water is used and the right formula is used, we accept it as a valid baptism, even if it didn't occur in a Catholic Church.

Why? Because this fundamentally changes who we are. But we do need to do one thing, and that is to be aware that when we were baptized, we were made into beloved sons and daughters of God. That our identity is different, and it means that we are challenged to live in a different way. It means that we are called by God to do something wonderful and dramatic in our own lives.

Pope Francis challenged people yesterday about whether or not they remembered the day they were baptized, the date. Because most of us wouldn't remember that. I do happen to know the date of my baptism.

But then he gave a little bit of homework. He said, if you don't know it, look it up and celebrate it. Because in many ways, this was the day that made all the difference in life. It is that important. It opened the door to the life of grace. All the other sacraments occur after one is baptized. It's the gateway to the sacraments.

Most importantly, our baptism opens the door to us for eternal life. And that's pretty dramatic indeed. And that's pretty wonderful indeed. And so, let us take the words of the Father seriously, and because we have been baptized, listen to his son Jesus.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

There are some saints in the Church that really emphasize that the pathway to holiness is something ordinary. Saint Therese of Lesieux talked about her little way. Brother Lawrence, who wrote The Practice of the Presence of God, similarly talked about how the real part of our lives is to find God in the ordinary things that we do.

And when we consider this story of the Magi, foreigners who are coming because they've seen something they interpret to be a great sign, were reminded of the importance of attention, of watchfulness. They saw something in the sky, and for them it became something that signified an event that was great, not an unusual understanding of the world in the time of the Gospels.

I think it's a challenge for you and me on this day that we celebrate the Epiphany, the manifestation of Jesus, the showing forth where he becomes clear for who he is and what he's about. The gifts that the Magi bring are not simply things they found lying around the house. They're very symbolic gifts, indicative of our own baptism. Gold, the gift of a king. Frankincense, the gift of a prophet. Myrrh, which really is more like embalming fluid, the gift of a priest.

And when you and I were baptized, we were anointed priest, prophet, and king. And so there is something about the fact that this little baby is going to deliver the pathway to salvation to all people. That this gift of new life is going to be available to everyone. And it came about because of the attention of the Magi.

What about our own lives? There to me is something to be said about the gift of being able to find God in the ordinary and in the things that we consider maybe not terribly important. For example, if you're married, can you find God in the ordinary events of your married life?

My mother, for example, one of the things I know about my mother was that I was one of those rare kids that never had to wash the dishes. She didn't want to have a dishwasher, and she wanted to wash the dishes herself because it was a time she used for prayer. We certainly weren't hanging around to figure out whether we might be asked to wash dishes, and that's exactly what she wanted. It was an easy, repetitive task that enabled her to open her mind to God.

Can we find God in the way in which we interact with our children? Can we see the high gift of raising our children, whether they are little children or whether they are grown children? Can we see the many ways in which we interact as invitations to find and recognize the presence of God?

If you're someone who is in school, we probably all have those classes we don't like. Can it be that we find what God is trying to teach us in the class that we don't see any value in? What about the ways we interact with someone when we're out shopping?

I remember—I have to say I haven't been as good at this lately—but I used to try when I was out shopping and I was at the cash register to use the name of the person who was checking me out. In some ways, to say something as simple as, thank you, Joseph.

Now, there are some dangers with that. There was one time I did that, and the person didn't react at all, and I was now kind of taken aback. So I said it again, and I said it a third time. And then finally, the young man said, oh, oh, I'm sorry, I just borrowed this. I forgot my name tag. My name is Adam, not Bill.

But can we use that as an opportunity to witness to the ways in which Jesus has helped us? To show the ways in which this is an encounter where we can recognize the person of Jesus in a very ordinary event? Can we recognize that the events of our lives are not accidental? They're events of the providence of God.

They're events that, as we've seen over this Christmas time, all of these things did not happen out of the thin air or out of the blue. These were events that were planned by God from all eternity. We get it in today's gospel. . .

These readings are reinforcing something that I have talked about a lot. The faith is not something to be kept to yourself. It's obvious that Andrew and Peter had talked to Philip because they're in the same area and Philip becomes a believer.

And Philip encounters Nathaniel and says, look, we found this guy, the Messiah, we have found him. And lo and behold, ultimately Nathaniel finds him. Now, it would have been an interesting thing that Jesus comes from Nazareth and not Bethlehem because that's where the Messiah was going to come from. That's why the birth of Jesus needed to occur in Bethlehem because that was the city of David. That was David's home and it was the place in which the Messiah was to return.

But Nazareth, on the other hand, is a completely different place. Think Las Vegas. Okay, Nazareth was not a, first of all, it wasn't a Jewish city. It was located in a place where all kinds of people would come and go in terms of their travels. And much like a place where there are people who don't stay there a long time but tend to travel through it a lot, we could say in the ancient world what happens in Nazareth stays in Nazareth.

It was not necessarily a place of good moral living. And so it's not surprising that Nathaniel says, well, what good could come from Nazareth? It didn't have that reputation of being a place where someone would come who, in fact, was the Messiah. It's a reminder to us that sometimes in our own life we develop, I should say, just kind of prejudices or biases against people simply from where they live or from other external factors that make no difference whatsoever.

Today we celebrate St. John Newman, who, or Neumann really, probably more accurately, was a bishop. The bishop of Philadelphia found himself kind of unworthy for the task but went about it anyway. But if you're in western New York and Pennsylvania, there are many, many Catholic schools that were started by Bishop Neumann.

And it's a reminder to us that he too saw his arrival into this country, he saw an important part of that arrival to share the faith, to create the culture. In many ways we could ask the question today about many aspects of American life.

Can anything good come from the United States? We could ask that question today. That's not to bash our country, it's not to say that our country does not do many great things, but we've got a lot of interesting problems in our country. We still haven't figured out how to feed everyone or to house everyone or to clothe everyone.

It seems that it feels anyway, I know it's not perhaps literally true that we have a mass shooting in this country every single day, it just doesn't seem to come to an end. And yet in the midst of this, in many ways we are like the church in this country at the time of St. John Neumann, namely a place that is in need of evangelization, that is deeply in need of the presence of Jesus, a recognition of what it is that Jesus wants us to do and how it is that Jesus wants us to live.

Let us pray that we might be willing to share our faith with others so that people might know the good things that come from wherever we find ourselves this day.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

Today we celebrate Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, who was really just an amazing, amazing woman. She really had the experience of many different vocations, so to speak. She was born a member of the Episcopal Church. She was in a married a man who was very much involved with shipping, and so she lived a life of means.

While she was in Italy, she encountered the Blessed Sacrament, and that kindled in her a desire to become Catholic, which she did. When her husband died, she became very much interested in education. In fact, the Catholic school system in the United States owes much of its success to her vision.

And because she needed teachers for these schools, she in fact founded a religious community. She ran through the whole gamut of religious vocations, not having been born Catholic, having become Catholic, having been married, having founded a religious community.

But there's one thing that was constant in her life, which we hear about in today's Gospel, zeal. There was a desire for zeal. There was a desire for the truth. There was a desire for faith. In everything she did, this zeal became the center and the driving force of her life.

Today in the Gospel, we hear a very similar story. John the Baptist was one, as we know, who was filled with zeal. He preached the Gospel in the desert to those who really wanted to change their life, not just a little, but in a hardcore way. To get back to the root and the value of the Jewish faith.

One such person that hears him is St. Andrew. Obviously, his life was changed by him, and he believed in John. So when John points out Jesus, Andrew is immediately convinced. This is the Messiah. Then he does what I think is the hallmark of a disciple of Jesus. He tells.

He shares this faith of his, this discovery that he has found something miraculous and wonderful, that he has found the Messiah, and he shares it with his brother. That's the hardcore thing I think that Catholics need to rediscover. We need to share our faith. We need to share with others that we have found something that has so changed our lives that we do not want to keep it to ourselves.

In fact, we don't think we could keep it to ourselves because we recognize that we have something in the very core of who we are that could benefit others, could bring fulfillment into their life, could help them to recognize that in spite of all the difficulties of life, they are never alone.

That's what Andrew does with Peter, and we know the two of them are going to go on to do that for others. Today, let us ask the intercession of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, that in what we do, we may do all we can because of the zeal that our faith provides in our hearts.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

Today we celebrate Saint Basil and Saint Gregory, the Cappadocian Fathers, as they are known. They were bishops, they were monks, and they were close friends. And they wrote about the wisdom of God in many respects, how to live the spiritual life, both for the monastery and for the outside world.

The wisdom of God. What exactly do we mean when we say the wisdom of God? Well, if we look at the Old Testament, we'll see that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. And that's what John demonstrates in today's gospel. I don't know that we necessarily think of our relationship with God in the way that John would describe it.

Seeing Jesus as the one, as John says, whose sandals strap I am not worthy to untie. I think sometimes in our modern age we have such a high image of ourselves that we think that God's only a little bit better. But the truth is that we believe in an infinite, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God, far beyond our ability to understand, far beyond our ability to figure out, far beyond our ability to really have any sense of who God is.

We get only glimpses of God because it's all our small minds can understand. I remember when studying St. Thomas Aquinas, it was used as an example of knowledge to compare us to the angels. And I remember the idea was to let us know that as human beings we're very good with sense knowledge. If it's limited, we're very good at it.

We can figure out what we see, we can draw conclusions, we can live in a world that's charged by the senses, and we're very good at figuring that world out. But when it comes to the spiritual world, this is the way it was described, to kind of reflect what St. Thomas believed about the spiritual world. Angels, bright, shining Son of God, human beings, dim 20-watt bulb.

It's a different kind of thing. It's a different kind of knowledge. And that's what the Scripture readings are challenging us to, because the only way we know anything about God is because God told us. It's His revelation that is the only way we know anything. And that's really what we revel in in this Christmas season, that God sent His Son to us, the Word, so that we might come to know a little bit better who God is.

Let us ask the Lord today to fill our hearts by wisdom and with wisdom, so that we might see the world and that we might see things the way that God sees things. And let us ask the Lord in this gift of wisdom to help us to have an attitude that helps us to see our faith for what it is, the pathway to eternal life.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

One simple yes. One simple yes, and everything that God had intended from the beginning of time, was made manifest. The great fiat of Mary. But this was not a yes that didn't come without lots of preparation.

God, from the beginning of time, knew that this was to be the plan of salvation. And throughout the course of history, God helps us to understand a little more fully and a little more completely His revelation, His plan, namely Himself.

Now of course we can never exhaust the knowledge of God. He's infinite, far beyond our ability to understand. Even St. Thomas Aquinas, when he had that great experience, mystical experience of God at the end of his life, recognized that his attempts at trying to explain this were not very sufficient at all. Mere straw. Which was used by many who studied St. Thomas Aquinas to try to dismiss what he had said, saying he didn't think he was very good either.

But it really was more about just how magnificent and tremendous is our God. When Mary said yes, she set in motion, with the grace of God, and really in cooperation with God, the great plan of our salvation. But the purpose of this yes really is about our own ability to say yes to God.

The motherhood of Mary is a way to help us to see how it is that we're called to be nurturing. How it is that we're called to give birth to Jesus by the way we live our lives. I don't know what God will ask you today or throughout this next year. I don't know what God will ask me throughout this next year.

But the bottom line is that if we are to imitate the Blessed Mother in her faith, then we, like her, are called to recognize the will of God and to live it in our lives. To be sure, we can say no. We have that freedom. God gave it to us. The ultimate sign of His love, that giving us freedom gave us the ability even to reject Him if we chose to.

How is it that God will speak to us over the course of this year? Such, it seems to me, is the goal of our faith, to be people of discernment, to always be asking ourselves, where did I see God today? Where will I see God tomorrow? What is it that God is trying to get me to see and to understand and to hope for? What is it that I'm called to do to share this great gift of my faith with others?

Such is the Blessed Virgin Mary. The even better news than all of this, though, is that God never leaves us alone. We have, of course, most powerfully His grace, His help that helps us to live the way of life that He has set before us. But we have, too, the prayers of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary wants nothing more than to lead us to her Son, Jesus. It's in fact where I think some of the Protestant churches really don't understand the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

But the early church did. The early church really understood that Mary had this special and powerful and tremendous role in salvation history. And no one knows a child better than its mother. Let us ask the Lord Jesus today to help us to recognize His presence and let us ask and seek the prayers of the Blessed Virgin Mary that, like her, we may say yes to all that God asks of us.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

When I was a little boy, I lived in an apartment building with my parents in what was affectionately known as the Green Block. And it was called the Green Block because essentially this apartment building was a big green block. It had green asphalt siding and it was square. There was nothing really artistically wonderful about it at all.

And one of the features of each of these apartments is that the kitchen was what you first came into when you entered the house. I don't know why it was designed that way, but it was.

There was one day, I think I was maybe four or five, and I was outside playing. And one of the other kids who was a year younger than I, he and I were having a water gun fight, which on a summer night when it's warm was pretty wonderful.

That is, until I had a great observation and insight, why use a little tiny water gun when you spy the garden hose? And so I took the garden hose and started spraying this little boy and he ran and ran inside to his kitchen thinking that he would be safe. What he didn't realize is something that I knew, which was that standing behind a screen door in the kitchen was going to offer no protection whatsoever.

The kitchen became one big mess of water. It was soaked. I don't know how my day of doom arrived, but I do remember my father coming outside and, of course, he was angry because the neighbor's kitchen was filled with this water. And I remember him yelling, but I also remember him bringing lots of towels and having to go into the kitchen to help clean up the water.

Now, how much help a five-year-old really is in cleaning up water, I don't know. But then I had to go to my room and think about what you've done. Well, I don't know that five-year-olds think much about what they've done in that particular context. I just regretted that it had happened.

But that's not the most important point of this story. The most important point of this story is that what I remember is that the evening concluded by going out for ice cream. We had a Howard Johnson's restaurant, and there was, I don't even know how many flavors of ice cream, but that's what I remember.

What I also remember are the two lessons I learned that night. One, I could not do whatever I wanted to do. There were limits. There were rules. And I had to make amends if I broke one of those rules. So that was the first lesson, that I was subject to a certain way of living.

But I suspect in his reaction, my father, who had what I would call a rollercoaster temper, he got mad in a hurry, but the good news was he was not mad in a hurry. And I suspect that maybe he thought he had overreacted a little bit. My parents, I do remember, were inside painting the hallway. And maybe he thought he should have given more attention to a five-year-old than letting him run outside. I don't know.

But the second lesson I learned was that I would be forgiven. That my house was a house where I was loved. There was never a doubt in my mind that I was loved by my mother and my father. Today we celebrate the Holy Family. And I think the pattern for our lives is quite similar.

Namely, we look at the characteristics and the qualities of the Holy Family and ask ourselves, how is it that we live out of those qualities? We know that Mary had to be a very strong woman. We get glimpses in the Gospel right from the very beginning. No room for them. They have to leave their refugees or exiles, but at any rate, they have to leave for Egypt because the safety of their child is threatened. . .

Today we get the story of Simeon. If we had Mass tomorrow morning, it would be the Mass, or the reading would be about Anna the prophetess. They were both in the temple when Jesus came to be presented by his parents following the Jewish law.

The firstborn was a special role, and we see that some of the times it worked out very well, other times not so much. Jacob and Esau come to mind where the blessing that was supposed to go to the firstborn is swindled out of the blind father. What is it about following this simple commandment? Why does it matter that Joseph and Mary presented their child to the Lord? What is the point?

I think, really most important, for them, it would have been the natural thing to do. It is what parents did if they were serious about their faith. But I think for the evangelists, for Luke, and for others who talk about this, I don't know that anybody else has this particular story about Luke, the idea is clear that the law is not something frivolous. It is something quite significant. It is an identity marker. It says to Joseph and Mary that they belong to something bigger than themselves.

Simeon has been patiently waiting. Anna went patiently waiting, fasting and praying all day long in the temple. They were waiting on the Lord. Both of them had some sense that God in His goodness was going to do something magnificent. Simeon's hope is fulfilled. And if the story had simply stopped with what we pray as a gospel canonical during night prayer, Lord, now let Your servant go in peace and so forth, if it had stopped after just that, we'd say, oh, what a cute story. But it doesn't.

Imagine if on the day of your child's baptism, the priest were to say, your child is destined for the fall and rise of many and to be a sign that will be contradicted and you yourself, a sword will pierce. And yet, isn't that sometimes true as a parent that there is that piercing sword?

Certainly not like the Blessed Mother at the foot of the cross, but there are times where I suspect most parents just kind of wonder like, what am I going to do? What about this? My son, my daughter is not doing so well. And yet Mary reflects. She treasures. She puts all these things deep in her heart and we should do the same.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

It's a common phrase to say that we celebrate at Christmas the birth of our Savior. But if we have a Savior, then in fact there is something from which we need to be saved. Otherwise, there is no need of a Savior.

I've never been listed as a Savior for saving someone from drowning because I've never done it. I've never had need. And if you're relying on me to save you from drowning, you're in trouble. We're probably both going to drown.

But what does it mean to talk about Christ our Savior? St. John in his first reading gives a very powerful testimony to what it means to be disciples of the Savior. He talks about sin. There are at least two books that have the same title, Whatever Became of Sin? We don't talk about that anymore. Or at least it appears that we don't talk about it anymore.

And I would suggest that it's unfortunate because what it's led to, I think, sometimes is a merely political approach to almost every problem we face. Imagine, for example, if we could better identify the corporate sin in which we all share.

For example, I could certainly say, and I think it's true, we have some concern that the planet's getting warmer, our climate is changing. And yet I get in my car and I drive. I might say to myself or even convince myself, well, that's the big deal. It's just one little car, in my case, a Toyota Corolla.

Or can I at least reflect in my life and say, where are those areas where I have not been attentive to the ways in which I have been wasteful with what I have given? John, in his first reading very beautifully, says we need a Savior because we sin.

And if we didn't have a Savior, we would die not just for today but forever. We need a Savior because of God's powerful love. We get one. And John says, let's not get deceived. Let's recognize that all of us have sinned.

But we are people of hope that, in fact, despite our sinfulness, we have a God who loves us. Despite the ways in which we have deliberately rejected God, God pours out grace to get us back on the right path.

Despite those times when we did not choose to see Christ in the poor, God pours out grace so that our eyes might be opened anew to serve those in need. That is the message of Christmas, that we needed a Savior, one who would give us the gift of eternal life.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.