“All Dressed Up”-Saturday of the First Week of Advent LECTIO DIVINA

I. Lectio — I Receive the Word

This morning I read the Gospel as one who has stared too long at the foolishness of men and the mercy of God, and has discovered—again—that the Divine Comedy is not written in iambic pentameter but in the very stumbling feet of fishermen.

I cannot help but smile, for nothing is more astonishing than the Almighty being moved. There is something both comic and catastrophic about it.
When we are moved, we wobble; when God is moved, a whole world begins again.

And then comes the summons:

“The harvest is abundant; the laborers are few.”

Ah, yes. Few indeed. Fewer still when the shepherds forget the sheep.

“…in summary, it can be said that patristic theology was practical, aiming at a Church that was poor and for the poor, recalling that the Gospel is proclaimed correctly only when it impels us to touch the flesh of the least among us, and warning that doctrinal rigor without mercy is empty talk.” 

Dilexi te, §48

II. Meditatio — I Let the Word Interpret My Life

This morning my contemplation was of the sheep—my sheep—dressed in the first snowfall, bearing it on their backs as though wearing vestments for a barnyard pontifical Mass. And as I watched them, I could not help but think of our shepherds at last night’s Centennial Mass, clothed in vestments of ages past, splendid, embroidered, dazzling in candlelight.

Chesterton would say: “Your Excellency, it is a fine thing to dress a priest like a Christmas ornament, provided you do not forget to feed the flock afterwards.”

But then, in that splendid moment, I waited for words about the poor—especially the poorest among us: the victims of clergy abuse whose wounds mark the actual history of this Diocese more indelibly than any gold thread on any cope.

And nothing was said.

Nothing was said of the grotesque tribute still raised to Bishop Matthiesen by John Salazar—the convicted abuser whom Matthiesen enabled with his “no regrets.”
Nothing was said of the shepherds who turned away in the past.
Nothing was said of the sheep who still wait to be gathered.

It was a lovely show of vestments.
But a hungry sheep cannot eat brocade.

And this morning, on the First Saturday of Advent—when the Church traditionally gives Marian warmth to cold souls—there was no Mass. A handful of the faithful arrived at dawn, like beggars hoping for crumbs, only to find locked doors, and an empty sanctuary more silent than the snow.

If Advent is about learning to watch, then this Diocese is giving me a masterclass in watching—and waiting—for shepherds to remember their sheep.

III. Oratio — I Speak to God

“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, if You walked through this Diocese as You walked through Galilee,
You would find us troubled and abandoned,
each in our own way limping, or blind, or bruised.

Give me the charity of St. Nicholas,
that I may give without cost what I have freely received—
even the uncomfortable gifts of truth-telling and memory.

Give me, too, the humor of paradox—
that strange gift Chesterton taught me—
so I may laugh at myself
even as I weep for my Church.

And give my shepherds the courage to see:
that a Centennial wrapped in gold,
while the poor of the past remain unspoken,
is simply a pageant without a Gospel.

IV. Contemplatio — I Rest in the Mystery

Here I sit, like a large and bewildered person in a snowstorm,
watching sheep bear the winter on their backs
with more dignity and honesty
than many ecclesial celebrations I have attended.

They do not pretend.
They merely carry what falls upon them.

I wonder if that is what You ask of me too:
to carry the snow of truth
until it melts into living water
for some future spring.

V. Actio — I Live the Word

👉 Action:

Today, I will practice synodal courage: I will walk with the Church as she actually is—not the festooned spectacle she wishes to appear to be.
I will speak for those whose voices froze long ago beneath the snows of silence.
And, like St. Nicholas, I will give what I can:
a plea, a truth, a witness, a small act of fidelity
that costs me nothing less than everything.

“The ecological conversion needed requires letting the effects of our encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in our relationship with the world.”

Laudato Si’ §217

My task is small, but small things, in God’s hands, become dangerous.
Even snowflakes can start an avalanche.

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.