LECTIO — I Listen to the Word
Jesus draws near Jerusalem… and weeps.
A city unable to see its moment of grace.
A people who did not “recognize the time of visitation.”
The early Church confronted its own blindness — widows neglected, foreigners overlooked — yet holiness emerged not through defensiveness, but through honest reordering, through humility, through choosing concrete charity over abstract excuses.
Dilexi te §32
MEDITATIO — I Allow the Word to Read My Life
This evening as the sun dropped behind the rim of the Panhandle,
I watched my rams, pigs, and LGDs line up along the fence line.
Every day, right at dusk — and never any other time —
they instinctively know:
“Now is the time.”
They recognize a moment.
They respond to it.
They do not pretend it is something else.
And the Lord confronts me with this question:
Do we recognize the time of our visitation?
Do we know when God is calling us to truth, healing, and justice?
“In memory of the death of innocence of the victims of clergy sexual abuse. When innocence dies…a life stops. It is essential that we never forget.“
Because in our Diocese of Amarillo,
we once refused to recognize catastrophic truths
even when they stood right in front of us.
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 remember 2018 —
when Bishop Zurek said he could not comment
on the Philadelphia clergy-abuse report
because he did not “have the facts,”
even as our local news simultaneously ran stories
about a priest brought here from Philadelphia
who raped children in our own diocese
and was later buried with honor in Llano Cemetery
among the very priests and bishops
who built the Church we love.
It was as if the leaves had already fallen —
dry, dead, clinging to the fence —
and yet we insisted the tree was still in full bloom.
When I urged us to move from victims to survivors,
when I spoke plainly about what happened,
a letter was written declaring
that I was not among
“the faithful and loyal disciples the Lord Jesus desires.”
Yet all I was doing was what the leaves do every autumn:
letting truth fall so new life can come.
And now, on the threshold of our diocesan centennial,
I cannot help but ask:
Is this the moment of visitation
that Amarillo must finally recognize?
Is the Spirit asking us to tell the truth at last —
not to reopen wounds,
but to allow the Church’s nest
to be rebuilt with integrity?
And in this same moment,
I cannot help but hold Bishop Strickland in prayer.
His fire is real, his sincerity deep,
but like Jerusalem, he may not yet see
what makes for peace.
Yet perhaps — if he too recognizes his moment —
his story could join ours in healing,
and maybe even lead him one day
to the Cathedra at St. Mary’s
as a bishop who has learned to weep with Christ
and not merely to burn with zeal.
ORATIO — I Pray
Lord,
open my eyes
to recognize the time of visitation —
in my Church, in my diocese, in my own heart.
Give me the courage of the early Christians
who faced real conflict
yet chose charity over denial,
truth over comfort,
and unity over fear.
Teach me to wait on You
the way my animals wait at dusk —
with attentiveness, readiness, trust.
May the Diocese of Amarillo move from silence to truth,
from victims to survivors,
from survivors to healers.
And may every bishop — including Bishop Zurek and Bishop Strickland —
see clearly the moment You place before them
and choose peace.
CONTEMPLATIO — I Rest
I sit with His tears over Jerusalem.
I sit with the fence line at dusk.
I sit with the leaves plastered against the wire.
I sit with the hope that resurrection is already unfolding
even where decay still clings.
even where decay still clings.
I sit until His peace becomes mine.
ACTIO — I Live the Word
“There is a nobility in the duty to care for creation
— Laudato Si’ §211
through little daily actions.”
Today I will commit one small, concrete act of justice —
a phone call, a letter, a truth spoken gently,
a wound tended,
a person encouraged toward healing —
so that my diocese, my Church, and my heart
may recognize the peace
that Christ weeps to give us.
