1. LECTIO — What the Word Says
A shoot sprouting from a stump.
A wolf reclining with a lamb.
A child poking at serpents without fear.
Justice flowering, peace filling the earth like the sea fills itself.
Isaiah gives us images so impossible that they must be true, for only divine truth dares to contradict the world so thoroughly.
St. Paul urges endurance—a word that sounds small until one realizes it means holding fast when everything else lets go.
And John the Baptist, that wild saint of paradox, thunders across the desert:
“Repent! Make straight the Lord’s way! The ax lies at the root!”
And then—most unsettling of all—he points not to our sins, but to our presumptions:
Do not say, “We have Abraham as our father.”
Do not cling to pedigree, piety, or nostalgia.
For the One who comes baptizes not merely with water,
but with the Holy Spirit and fire.
“…the Church understands that caring for the sick, in whom she readily recognizes the crucified Lord, is an important part of her mission.”
Dilexi te, §49
II. MEDITATIO — What the Word Says to Me
Ah, fire.
It is the very element with which God writes His contradictions upon the world.
It illuminates, yet destroys; it warms, yet burns.
So too the Kingdom: it gathers wheat into barns, yet burns chaff with unquenchable flame.
This morning I held in my hands that sack of grain my uncle gave me—
a sack so thick with chaff it jammed his planter.
To him it was useless.
To my livestock, it is supper.
To my pasture, it is possibility.
To me, it has become a parable.
For my own diocese, now entering its Centennial Celebration, resembles that bag of wheat.
There is wheat. There is chaff. And none of us can pretend otherwise.
Our banners proclaim: Faith. Hope. Communion. Mission.
Beautiful words, golden words—like wheat heads fluttering in the sun.
And yet behind those banners stands the contradiction I cannot unsee:
the preserved tribute of the convicted pedophile priest John Salazar
built to honor Bishop Matthiesen’s “serious mistake”—
a mistake that bore tragic fruit in the bodies and souls of children.
It sits within our diocesan memory like a knot in the rope of communion.
It is chaff—dangerous chaff—waiting either to be burned away or to choke the machinery of grace.
The paradox of the Catholic Church has always been this:
She is at once a garden of wheat and a barn full of chaff.
She is a home for saints and a hiding place for sinners.
She swings wildly between glory and disgrace—
and yet, somehow, truth marches on.
I, too, am a contradiction.
I long to celebrate this Centennial with joy,
yet I cannot ignore the injustice we refuse to acknowledge.
I want to shout the praises of the Church,
yet my tongue catches on the grit of unspoken truth.
Still the Gospel rings out with mischievous and majestic simplicity:
Prepare the way.
Make straight the path.
Tell the truth.
Bear good fruit.
And perhaps—Chesterton whispers through my pen—
it is precisely in these contradictions that God plays,
as children play with wheat and chaff,
letting the wind reveal what is light
and gathering what is heavy with substance.
III. ORATIO — What I Say 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 of flaming truth,
Lord of paradox and mercy,
You who make calves dance with lions—
make my heart courageous enough
to live inside Your contradictions.
Show me how to celebrate this Centennial
without pretending chaff is wheat.
Grant me the joy of Isaiah,
the endurance of Paul,
and the holy bluntness of John the Baptist.
“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.“
If I must cry out, let me cry out.
If I must wait, let me wait.
If I must repent, let me repent.
And if the Church must walk through fire
to become the field You desire—
then let me walk with her
as grain You keep
and chaff You burn.
IV. CONTEMPLATIO — Resting in the Mystery
Here is the Advent paradox:
The God of infinite power enters the world
as a child small enough to drown in chaff.
The stump blooms.
Justice flowers.
A kingdom rises from what looked like ruin.
So too with my diocese.
So too with my life.
So too with every place
where contradiction reigns.
God is not intimidated by our knots,
our unrepented histories,
our unwillingness to tell the truth.
He comes anyway.
He comes to sort, to sift, to save.
And somehow, mysteriously,
even this painful contradiction—
the wheat of our faith
and the chaff of our sin—
is the field into which He chooses to arrive.
V. ACTIO — What I Will Do (Inspired by Laudato si’)
“We require a new and universal solidarity.”
Laudato Si’ §14
Today I will practice synodality—
not as a slogan, but as a way of walking.
I will speak truth where silence harms.
I will listen where anger blinds.
I will call my Church to justice not as an enemy,
but as a brother who longs for her healing.
And like John the Baptist,
I will clear even one small stone
from the crooked path—
so that Christ may find us ready
when He comes with wheat,
with fire,
and with joy.
Email to Bishop Zurek
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.