Wednesday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time

LECTIO — I Read the Word

Jesus tells a parable about a nobleman who entrusts his servants with gold coins while he goes away to receive kingship. Two servants take what is entrusted and multiply it. One servant hides his coin in fear. When the master returns, the faithful servants receive greater responsibility; the fearful servant loses even what he had.

Jesus ends with the blunt warning:

And He continues His journey toward Jerusalem.

The Word of God is clear and direct—simple, eloquent, uncompromising.
The Church must not weaken but courageously accept its demands.

Dilexi te §31

MEDITATIO — I Let the Word Read Me

Theme: What we do with what God entrusts — wounds, gifts, responsibility, and truth.

Today I am struck by the servant who hid his coin.
Not because he was lazy — but because he was afraid.
Afraid of misusing the gift.
Afraid of the master.
Afraid of getting it wrong.

And in that fear, he did not grow.

That fear is familiar.

My Contemplation: the Fallen Nest

Today as I walked the yard, I noticed a bird’s nest blown out of a tree —
a nest built last spring,
a shelter for fledglings through the summer,
now lying exposed on the ground.

It reminded me of my own story with the Church.
For many years, the Church was a nest for me — safety, formation, belonging.
But in the mid-70s, that nest was blown apart when I became a victim of clergy abuse.
I was a fledgling forced from shelter before my wings had fully formed.

If Boston is the fault line of the child sexual-abuse scandal that has convulsed the Roman Catholic Church, then few places have felt the aftershocks more deeply than the Diocese of Amarillo. 

New York Times

I spent decades trying simply to become a survivor.

Then in 2018, when Bishop Zurek said he “could not comment” on the Philadelphia report…

…even while local news in Amarillo was reporting that a priest named in that report
had raped children right here —
I felt that nest collapse a second time.

When I began a crusade to move us toward survivorhood instead of silent victimhood,
the response I received was a letter stating I was not among the
“faithful and loyal disciples the Lord Jesus desires.”
It felt like being pushed from the shelter again
just for demanding the truth the Gospel itself requires.

And I think of Bishop Strickland too—
how his initial courageous response to clergy abuse
seems to have carried him into circles that weaponized his zeal
toward division instead of purification.
He, too, was blown from the tree—
and found himself seeking shelter among voices who wanted fire, not healing.

Like that fallen nest, we have both known what it is
to lose the place that was supposed to protect us.

And yet…

the very nest on the ground becomes soil for the next season—
a moment of resurrection beginning again.

ORATIO — I Respond in Prayer

Lord Jesus,
You entrust each of us with something precious:
faith, wounds, gifts, the people we love,
and even our stories of suffering.

Give me the courage of the faithful servants—
not to hide these stories in fear,
but to invest them in Your Kingdom
so that they may become healing for others.

And I pray for Bishop Strickland:
that he, too, may take what has been entrusted to him—
his zeal, his wounds, his longing for purification—
and return to the shelter of Your Church’s unity,
so he may one day help lead us into healing,
perhaps even from the Cathedra of Amarillo.

Where fear has gifts “stored away in a handkerchief“,
let Your grace multiply them.
Where wounds have become hiding places,
let Your light draw them out.

CONTEMPLATIO — I Rest in the Mystery

I sit with the image of the fallen nest.

It is no longer what it was.
It will never be what it was.

But it is not meaningless.

God uses even fallen structures
to enrich the soil
for the season that is coming.

I must believe that even this painful chapter can become something that nourishes the Church’s roots.
I must believe that healing is possible—not only for me, but for Bishop Zurek, for Bishop Strickland, and for every soul wounded in the long shadow of clerical abuse.

So too with the Church.
So too with me.
So too — I hope — with Bishop Strickland.

ACTIO — I Live the Word

The destruction of the human environment is extremely serious, not only because God has entrusted the world to us men and women, but because human life is itself a gift which must be defended from various forms of debasement.

— Laudato Si’ §5

Today I will take one step toward rebuilding the “nest” of the Church—
not by hiding my story
and not by burning the whole tree down,
but by offering one act of truth, mercy, or advocacy
that creates shelter for someone else.

I will invest the coin entrusted to me
so that Christ may multiply it.