(Saturday Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary — Last Day of the Liturgical Year)
WORD — Lectio
Among the Eastern Fathers, perhaps the most ardent preacher on social justice was Saint John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople from the late 300s to the early 400s. In his homilies, he exhorted the faithful to recognize Christ in the needy: “Do you wish to honor the body of Christ? Do not allow it to be despised in its members, that is, in the poor, who have no clothes to cover themselves.
Dilexi te §41
Saint John Chrysostom warns us that reverence for Christ must begin with the poor.
We cannot gild the altar while ignoring Christ’s body in the cold at our door.
We cannot honor Christ with gold chalices
while withholding bread from the hungry.
True worship — real Eucharist — is inseparable from justice, truth, and mercy.
If we do not encounter Jesus in those who suffer,
we will not recognize Him even at the altar.
MEDITATION — Meditatio
🎵 Song Pairing: “Anyway” — Martina McBride
Theme: Anguish, Vigilance, and the Cry for Meaning at the Edge of a New Year
Jesus warns against becoming drowsy — spiritually numb, exhausted by life, resigned to the shadows.
And this year, on the final day of the liturgical year, His words land in my chest with unusual weight.
My anguish in a motel room in Seymour
This morning I woke in a motel in Seymour, Texas with what the prophet Daniel once called
“my spirit anguished within its covering of flesh.”
I asked God directly:
Yesterday I drove to Graham to watch the Texas A&M Aggies with my daughter-in-law and three grandchildren — the family Daniel left behind when pancreatic cancer took him from us in May. Daniel was an Aggie former student like me. He was, as the saying goes, “Once an Aggie, always an Aggie.” He remained connected to the university and carried by pallbearers wearing maroon.
Up until last night, the Aggies were undefeated.
For us, it had become a small sign — a whisper —
that God has Daniel with Him.
Then they lost.
And I wondered: Does the sign change? Or only my heart?
The canceled Mass and the abandoned morning
And as if that were not enough:
For the second day in a row, there were no Masses in the entire Diocese of Amarillo.
Even the Saturday morning Mass in honor of Our Lady —
the very one whose return had filled me with such joy just weeks ago —
was canceled today.
Two days without the Eucharist as the liturgical year closes.
Two days without priestly shepherding.
Two days that feel, unmistakably, like a warning.
The unresolved wound: the John Salazar tribute
And still unaddressed stands the wound I have cried out about:
the tribute built by John Salazar — a convicted pedophile priest —
in honor of Bishop Matthiesen,
who ignored the counsel of Cardinals
and gave Salazar a “second chance,”
which Salazar used to assault youth in our diocese
before raising that tribute shortly before being defrocked and sent to prison.
“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
August 24, 2002
If we make the “serious mistake” of letting that monument stand untouched
during a Centennial that claims to honor our past,
then perhaps our numbness — our drowsiness —
already reveals that we missed the time of our visitation.
PRAYER — Oratio
Standing before the Son of Man
Lord Jesus,
I am tired, and I am asking what all these tangled lights mean.
The canceled Masses,
the unresolved tribute that dishonors survivors,
the loss of a game-the ache of missing Daniel,
the quiet motel morning on the last day of the year…
All of it feels like a whisper:
Stay awake.
Do not become numb.
Do not let the heart grow drowsy.
Stand before Me.
Keep speaking truth.
Keep loving My poor and My wounded.
Give me the strength You promise —
the strength to endure,
to speak,
to pray,
to act.
Let me not lose heart on the very cusp of Advent.
CONTEMPLATION — Contemplatio
Lights, loss, and the long road home
After this prayer, I will drive home through small Texas towns,
stop at a Catholic church along the way
to make a spiritual Communion since my diocese offers none today,
and once home, I will untangle the Advent lights.
I will replace the dark bulbs.
I will trim boughs from my evergreens to make an Advent wreath.
I will prepare for the new liturgical year
the way a shepherd prepares for dawn —
tending what I can,
trusting God with what I cannot.
Daniel’s absence,
the diocese’s silence,
the tribute still standing,
the canceled Masses —
none of these will have the last word.
Because Your word will not pass away,
even if everything else does.
ACTION — Actio
🎬 It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
“Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue.”
Laudato Si’ §217
Act: Protect what God has entrusted — including His wounded ones.
Today, as I enter Advent’s threshold,
I will do one concrete act to protect what God has entrusted:
- Write again to Bishop Zurek urging the removal of the Salazar–Matthiesen tribute…as a necessary act of truth for our Centennial, not as an attack but as an act of protection —for survivors, for the young, for the Church’s own soul.
This is what vigilance looks like today.
This is how I refuse spiritual drowsiness.
This is how I stand before the Son of Man.
Email to Bishop Zurek (Final Draft)
Subject: A Request for Vigilance and Hope on This Last Day of the Liturgical Year
Your Excellency,
It was good to see you home at the Cathedral for Thanksgiving Mass. As we reach the end of the liturgical year and prepare for the Centennial, I write with a simple concern that continues to weigh heavily on my conscience.
In prayer, especially through the Gospel’s call to stay vigilant and strengthen what remains, I keep returning to the tribute erected by John Salazar in honor of Bishop Matthiesen. Because it was built by a priest who used his “second chance” to harm children in our diocese, its continued presence risks sending a message that wounds survivors and obscures our call to truth.
As we prepare to celebrate 100 years of the Diocese of Amarillo, I humbly ask that we consider removing this tribute as an act of healing and justice—so that our Centennial begins in truth, not silence.
Thank you for hearing my heart. Be assured of my prayers for you and for our diocese.
In Christ,
Darrell Glenn
My Story
“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.“
- Bishop Matthiesen, who rode the white horse of public activism even as he brought abusive priests into our diocese—wounds that still mark us today. I spoke with him often, pleading with him to reconsider his “no regrets” about bringing those priests here…
- Bishop Yanta, who sought to enforce the Dallas Charter even when Bishop Matthiesen resisted him, and who bore the personal and pastoral cost of doing so. I met with Bishop Yanta about Bishop Matthiessen’s “no regrets” stance. He listened. He believed me. He acted where he could. And when he retired, he urged me—quietly but firmly—to keep speaking out.
- Bishop Zurek, who told the Diocese of Amarillo he had “no facts” about the Philadelphia report even as Amarillo’s connection to that tragedy was headline news. When I continued to speak out, as Bishop Yanta had once urged me to do, he later wrote that I was not among the faithful and loyal disciples whom the Lord Jesus desires.
- And now Bishop Strickland, whose own fall from leadership echoes the pattern — a man whose zeal burned like a torch but often without the oil of communion, misused by others, yet still a wounded shepherd who, like me, carries pawprints of injury and longing.