LECTIO — I Read the Word
“Who is my mother?
Who are my brothers?”
And stretching out his hand toward his disciples he said,
“Here are my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father
is my brother, and sister, and mother.”
“Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord…
Dilexi te §33
Give, and it will be given to you…
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn.”
Today Jesus redefines belonging:
Not by blood, not by closeness, not by comfort—
but by doing the Father’s will.
Generosity toward the poor becomes the doorway
into the family of God.
MEDITATIO — I Let the Word Read Me
The word that echoes in me today: FAMILY.
The family Jesus names is not sentimental, not selective, not safe.
It is the family that forms
when people choose truth, mercy, and the will of the Father
over convenience, silence, or self-protection.
Today I find myself standing in the “family” of my diocese—
a family I have lived in for two-thirds of its century.
And as I watched last night’s sunset blaze across the Texas sky,
I couldn’t help but think of the sunset of my own life.
My morning.
“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.“
My childhood of innocence ended
when I became a victim of clergy abuse.
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
My afternoon.
I spoke out—
first to Bishop Matthiesen,
who went to his grave with no regrets
about bringing abusive priests here…
then to Bishop Yanta,
who listened, believed, and told me to keep speaking…
and finally to Bishop Zurek,
who said he “had no facts” to comment on the Philadelphia report—
even while Amarillo’s news stations
were reporting on our own diocesan connection to that horror.
And when I continued pressing for truth,
he wrote a letter saying that I was
“not among the faithful and loyal disciples whom the Lord Jesus desires.”
Now evening comes.
Some tell me to stop making waves—
to be quiet, to let the past fade.
And when Bishop Zurek restored the Saturday morning Mass,
a part of me wanted to ride off into the sunset
and say, “Maybe this is enough.”
But another voice—the same one that Jesus used as He entered the temple area and proceeded to drive out
those who were selling things…
“If your diocese turns 100 years old
without naming its wounds,
the celebration becomes a sunset
that refuses to tell the truth about its own light.”
And so I pray:
That the next century of the Diocese of Amarillo
begins not with silence but with honesty.
And that a new shepherd—
perhaps Bishop Strickland himself,
a man whose own wounds mirror my own—
might one day sit in the Cathedra at St. Mary’s Cathedral
and lead us from victims into survivors,
from survivors into healers,
into the true family of God.
ORATIO — I Respond in Prayer
Lord Jesus,
You stretched out Your hand
and named the ones who do the Father’s will
as Your true family.
Let me remain part of that family—
not by silence,
but by truth;
not by bitterness,
but by mercy;
not by fear,
but by courage forged through Your grace.
Heal the scars in my diocese.
Heal the wounds in our clergy.
Heal the divisions in our bishops.
And guide whoever will lead Amarillo next—
perhaps even Bishop Strickland—
to shepherd us with
truth, compassion, courage,
and a heart like Yours.
CONTEMPLATIO — I Rest With God
I sit with the sunset.
I sit with the long shadows of a century.
I sit with my own heart—
wounded, honest, still beating with hope.
And I hear Jesus whisper:
“Here is My mother.
Here are My brothers.
Here—
in those who do the Father’s will—
is My family.”
ACTIO — I Live the Word
“A healthy relationship with creation is one dimension of overall personal conversion.”
— Laudato Si’ §218
Today I will perform one quiet act of restoration—
picking up debris, tending a plant,
caring for an animal, writing a note of reconciliation—
as a sign of my commitment
to restore the human and spiritual ecosystem of my diocese,
one act of truth and mercy at a time.
