“Bad Moon Rising”-Friday of the First Week of Advent LECTIO DIVINA

Lectio — What the Word Says

As Jesus passed by, two blind men stumbled after Him with the marvelous audacity of beggars and saints, crying out,…

And because Our Lord never merely passes by—He enters, He indwells, He interrupts—He asked the simplest and most impossible question:

“Do you believe that I can do this?”

“Yes, Lord,” they gasped. And at that moment, heaven leaned forward, earth held its breath, and Christ touched their eyes.

“Let it be done for you according to your faith.”

And their eyes were opened.

Jesus warned them not to speak of it.
Which, in the grand tradition of humanity, meant they ran straight out and told everyone.

“…live radically his call to conversion, which necessarily includes the service of charity.” 

Dilexi te, §47

Saint Augustine reminds me—rather like an old friend who insists on telling the truth at inconvenient times—that charity itself is the school of radical conversion. If we wish to see, we must give; if we wish to follow, we must serve; if we wish to be healed, we must learn to love as God loves.

MEDITATIO — What the Word Means for Me

🎵 Song Pairing: “Bad Moon Rising” (Creedence Clearwater Revival)

There is something laughably glorious about two blind men understanding reality better than the sighted world. They followed what they could not see. They believed before evidence arrived. They asked not timidly, but with a clarity that shakes the doors of heaven.

And Christ—who delights in impossible requests—responded not to their qualifications but to their hunger.

I ask myself:
Do I believe He can do this?
Not theoretically, as one analyzes a theological treatise, but with the childlike stubbornness of the blind men who stumbled after the Light.

ORATIO — My Prayer

“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

Lord, grant me such absurd and holy faith—
faith that limps after You, bumps into the furniture of the world, and still refuses to quit.
Touch my eyes, and touch the eyes of this diocese,
especially where we have grown far too comfortable
with shadows that masquerade as sanctuary.

CONTEMPLATIO — Seeing With Chesterton’s Spectacles

Last night the full moon rose like a heavenly lantern hung slightly askew, reminding me not of angels but of that old song Bad Moon Rising. A silly thought, perhaps—unless one has lived long enough to know that silly thoughts often contain severe truths.

For today marks the Centennial Kickoff Mass of the Diocese of Amarillo, a moment meant to be bright, triumphant, full of liturgical embroidery and ecclesial enthusiasm. And indeed, banners flap nobly outside St. Mary’s Cathedral.

But beneath the moon and the banners stands that grotesque tribute,
built by the convicted sexual-abusing priest John Salazar
in honor of Bishop Matthiesen,
the bishop who—with catastrophic innocence or catastrophic pride—brought him here over the warnings of wiser shepherds,
and later professed “no regrets.”

Salazar built this monument just before being defrocked and imprisoned.
It sits there still, theologically tone-deaf, pastorally cruel—
a stone lie masquerading as legacy.

For years now, I have pleaded with Bishop Zurek:
“Remove it. Remove it as an act of truth, an act of justice, an act of mercy.”
And for years, silence has been the only reply.

So I find myself like one of those blind men—
crying out, stumbling forward, bruising my shins on the furniture of ecclesiastical bureaucracy—
shouting:

“Lord, have pity on us!
Make us see!”

Because what good is a Centennial
if the moon rises over unconfessed wounds?
If we celebrate one hundred years
without correcting the monument that disfigures the house built for God’s little ones?

If the shepherd refuses to see,
then perhaps, like those blind men,
I must be loud enough to annoy him into healing.

ACTIO — Living the Word (with Synodality + Laudato Si)

🎬 Movie: How the Grinch Stole Christmas – Clint Howard Movie (2000)

👉 Action:

Today I will practice synodal courage, which is the “walking-together of the whole People of God.”

I will take one concrete step toward the healing of the diocese—
a conversation, a letter, a truth gently but firmly named—
trusting Laudato si’s reminder:

“Love, overflowing with small gestures of mutual care, is also civic and political.”

Laudato Si’ §231

My small gesture today is this:
I will not pretend blindness where Christ offers sight.

My Story

• 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.