LECTIO — The Word Is Given
Today’s readings burn with the word justice — fire, judgment, perseverance, and the God who comes to set all things right.
Malachi warns that “the day is coming, blazing like an oven,” yet promises that for those who fear God’s name, “the sun of justice will rise with healing rays.”
Jesus, in the Gospel, turns my eyes away from collapsing temples, falling stones, wars, persecutions, and betrayals, and points instead to perseverance:
And Dilexi te §28 pierces through: holiness is not vague piety — it is mercy lived, concretely, without “ifs or buts.”
The Lord’s appeal to show mercy to the poor culminates in the great parable of the last judgment (cf. Mt 25:31-46), which can serve as a vivid illustration of the Beatitude of the merciful. In that parable, the Lord offers us the key to our fulfillment in life; indeed, “if we seek the holiness pleasing to God’s eyes, this text offers us one clear criterion on which we will be judged.” The clear and forceful words of the Gospel must be put into practice “without any ‘ifs or buts’ that could lessen their force. Our Lord made it very clear that holiness cannot be understood or lived apart from these demands.”
Holiness is tested in how I stand with the least, even when the world shakes.
MEDITATIO — The Word Pierces Me
One word echoes through all these readings: endurance — not passive waiting, but faithfulness refined in fire.
And while I prayed, my mind returned to the great oak on our homestead — the family tree, as we call it.
In summer it is ordinary, steady green.
But now, in November, it has erupted into red, gold, copper — breathtaking, majestic, burning with beauty.
The same tree.
Always the same tree.
Yet always developing, growing, shedding what is dead, keeping what is alive.
Just like the Church.
Just like doctrine.
Just like me.
Some leaves are diseased, others fall naturally, others must be pruned. The tree is not dying — it is maturing. It is becoming more itself.
And I reflected painfully on Bishop Strickland.
His zeal, sincere as it is, seems to have turned him into a kind of self-appointed purifier of the Church—setting fires where he believes corruption lies, leaving neither root nor branch untouched. But in the blaze, he is also burning away healthy growth, rejecting true development, and stepping outside the unity meant to protect us all.
I want him to see the difference — between diseased branches and the beautiful, fiery leaves of authentic development.
I truly pray that for him — and for all of us — there will arise the sun of justice with its healing rays, and that perhaps one day Bishop Strickland may sit upon the Cathedra at St. Mary’s in Amarillo.
Because perseverance does not mean standing rigid—
it means remaining rooted while God refines us in the fire that purifies, not in the flames that consume.
ORATIO — I Let the Word Pray in Me
“Lord, make me steadfast
when the world shakes,
when the Church changes,
when people I respect cut themselves from the trunk.
Give me the heart of the oak:
deep-rooted, honest, patient in season and out of season.
Prune what in me is diseased.
Preserve what is growing in truth.
And heal what has been wounded by zeal without communion.”
CONTEMPLATIO — I Rest in the Word
I sit with Jesus’ words:
“Do not be terrified.”
“I Myself shall give you wisdom.”
“By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”
The leaves of the oak flame in silence.
The Church flames with the same mystery:
the dying that reveals beauty,
the falling that promises resurrection,
the pruning that prepares for spring.
Justice is not destruction.
Justice is healing.
ACTIO — I Live It
All it takes is one good person to restore hope!
— Laudato Si’ §70
Today I will be that person:
I will offer one concrete act of mercy — especially toward someone I struggle to understand or someone whose viewpoint wounds me.
I will resist every temptation to “cut off” others in my mind or speech.
I will practice perseverance through gentleness, not force.
Like the oak, I will let God decide what falls —
and I will remain rooted in communion, where true justice begins.
