The Kingdom grows while the farmer sleeps. The smallest seed becomes a tree. Crowds hear parables. Disciples receive explanations in private.
“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.”
Each day, I read a paragraph from the encyclical Dilexi te and weave a quotation from it into that day’s Lectio Divina.
Memorial in the Grotto of St. Mary’s Cathedral. The inscription says: “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.”
“Only the closeness that makes us friends enables us to appreciate deeply the values of the poor today, their legitimate desires, and their own manner of living the faith… Day by day, the poor become agents of evangelization and of comprehensive human promotion: they educate their children in the faith, engage in ongoing solidarity among relatives and neighbors, constantly seek God, and give life to the Church’s pilgrimage.”
For this January pillar of faith, am I letting my faith stay something comfortable and private, or am I close enough to the poor from our “serious mistake” to call them friends — close enough that their way of living the faith actually evangelizes me and reshapes how I believe, pray, and act?
2. Meditatio – Meditation
I once thought the Kingdom of God operated like a town meeting — loud, agenda-driven, motions on the floor, resolutions passed if only one spoke long enough. I imagined Synodality would look like a microphone and a bishop finally saying, “Ah! Darrell has made a point!”
Instead, I find God gardening in the dark.
“Bishop Matthiesen — a shepherd whose legacy in our diocese still asks hard questions of us today. May truth, healing, and justice be the final word.” Photo used by permission of Douglas Kirkland/Corbis via Getty Images
So it is with me.
I scattered these reflections publicly — words about the Tribute, about wounds, about what I believed the Diocese ought to face. I watched the soil. I waited for green shoots of response. I strained my eyes like a man staring at dirt, trying to hurry spring.
But the parable is rude to activists.
Above: The Tribute to Bishop Matthiesen Below: A Fallen Centennial Banner
The seed grows, Christ says, “he knows not how.” Which is a polite way of telling me that the Kingdom is not impressed by my project management.
The strange thing is this: while nothing seemed to be sprouting out there, something undeniable was sprouting in here. The “public” work has looked like failure. The private work has looked like grace.
Paradoxically I have to laugh and say the joke is obvious: The God who saves the world by dying in public first lived thirty years in private.
Nazareth is longer than Calvary.
And perhaps this Lectio Divina is my Nazareth — unseen, unimpressive, spiritually agricultural. I came trying to move a bishop. Instead, God is moving me. The Synod I demanded externally is quietly happening internally: my arguments becoming prayer, my urgency becoming patience, my outrage being tilled into sorrow and love.
The Diocese may not be listening to me. But God is speaking to me — in private.
And if the Kingdom truly grows like a seed, then perhaps the loudest revolutions in the Church begin where no one is clapping.
3. Contemplatio (Chestertonian Synthesis)
A tribute, built for Bishop Matthiesen, while John Salazar—a convicted pedophile priest whom Matthiesen kept in ministry against the counsel of cardinal archbishops, giving Salazar a “second chance.” That second chance resulted in the sexual assault of youth in our own diocese. And just before he was defrocked and sent to prison, he raised this monument in Bishop Matthiesen’s honor. Its presence remains a painful reminder of “serious mistakes” that harmed the very flock Bishop Matthiesen was meant to protect.
It is a comic truth that the universe runs on secrets. Roots are hidden. Hearts beat under ribs. The mustard seed conducts its business underground like a holy conspiracy.
The world says what is private is small. God says what is private is where eternity is built.
I wanted visibility. God gave me depth. I wanted response. God gave me relationship. I wanted Synodality in the Diocese. God began Synodality in my soul.
And perhaps that is the only place any real reform has ever started.
4. Oratio — Prayer
Lord of the hidden seed, forgive me for thinking Your Kingdom depends on my success.
Teach me to trust what grows in silence. Let my private prayer matter more than public victory. Let my unseen faithfulness shelter others like branches of a mustard tree.
If this work is for no one else, let it still be for You.
5. Actio — Action (Laudato Si’ & Synodality)
“…the Church does indeed defend the legitimate right to private property, but she also teaches no less clearly that there is always a social mortgage on all private property, in order that goods may serve the general purpose that God gave them”.
Today I will practice private synodality: listening before speaking, praying before posting, letting interior conversion shape exterior words. I will believe that tending my own soul is not withdrawal from the Church, but service to her roots.
6. Song Pairing 🎵
🎶 “Private Eyes” (Hall & Oates)
“🎶 Private eyes… they’re watching you… 🎶 Not the eyes of critics, not the eyes of the crowd — but the loving, searching eyes of God who sees the seed growing in secret. This Lectio reminds me that the Kingdom doesn’t need a spotlight to grow. What happens in the quiet, in the hidden, in prayer — that’s where the real harvest begins. 🌱👀✨”
7. Movie Pairing 🎬
🎬Movie: Field of Dreams (1989)
You build the field in faith, not for the crowd. The harvest comes on its own timetable.
I’m sharing The Introverted Apostle, Episode 2, because it gently explodes the myth that the Church is powered only by the loudest voices in the room. I love how it frames how we are Church—together. As I move through the day wearing different shades of introversion (reserved, anxious, thinking, social), this episode helped me see each not as a defect to overcome, but as a gift to be offered—in concert with the gifts of extroverts. The Body of Christ needs both the quiet heart and the bold tongue. Give it a listen. I suspect you’ll recognize yourself somewhere in it—and find where you belong in the Body of Christ.
Here is one of those modern miracles that does not involve thunder, but does involve truth. In the latest CAPN: The WTC – The Podcast, you’ll hear the very personal story that set Karlynn Hochstein on the unlikely (and very Catholic) road to becoming our Diocese of Amarillo’s Director of Family Life. It is the sort of story that reminds us that vocations are rarely born in comfort, but almost always in conviction. And it also explains why I’ll be at St. Mary’s Cathedral next Saturday at 10:00 a.m. for the Respect Life Mass—because when faith becomes flesh in real lives, the only reasonable response is to show up. Give it a listen. Truth, like grace, works best when it’s personal.
Subject: A Request to Be Heard in the Spirit of Synodality During Our Centennial
Your Excellency Bishop Zurek,
I write to you with respect and with a sincere desire to remain in communion with the Church during this Centennial year of the Diocese of Amarillo.
As we approach the Centennial celebrations and the Respect Life Mass, I find myself holding an interior conflict that I cannot ignore in conscience. In prayer, particularly through Lectio Divina on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, I was struck by the single word spoken by Christ to John the Baptist: “Allow it.” Those words have stayed with me.
They raise a question in my heart: what does the Church allow herself to hear, and whom does she allow herself to accompany?
I desire to celebrate our Centennial and to stand in solidarity with the Church’s witness to the dignity of life. At the same time, I struggle to do so without any space for synodality regarding the Diocese of Amarillo’s Tribute to Bishop Matthiesen, especially in light of what has been acknowledged as a “serious mistake” during that period of our history. The continued silence around this tribute weighs heavily on me, not as an accusation, but as a pastoral wound.
Recently, Pope Leo reminded the Church that “abuse itself causes a deep wound, which may last a lifetime; but often the greater scandal is that the door was closed and victims were not welcomed or accompanied with the closeness of authentic pastors.” He shared the testimony of a victim who said that the most painful part was that no bishop wanted to listen. The Holy Father emphasized that listening is profoundly important and asked the Church to deepen dialogue and implement synodality.
It is in this spirit that I write. I am not asking for condemnation, nor am I asking for erasure of history. I am asking whether there can be listening—whether synodality can be allowed—so that the Centennial truly reflects the four pillars we have named: faith, hope, communion, and mission.
I want to be present at the Respect Life Mass and to celebrate our Centennial in good conscience. But I also want to know that the Church I love is willing to listen to those for whom this tribute remains a source of pain, confusion, and exclusion.
Your Excellency, I remain obedient to your pastoral authority, but I also remain compelled by conscience and prayer to ask that this conversation be allowed to take place. I believe that such listening would not diminish our celebration, but purify it.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. Please know of my prayers for you and for our Diocese during this significant year.
Respectfully in Christ,
Darrell
My Story
Photo used by permission of Douglas Kirkland/Corbis via Getty Images
Memorial in the Grotto of St. Mary’s Cathedral. The inscription says: “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.“
I was one of “the few” Bishop Zurek spoke of in this letter. He first posted it in August of 2019, and in response to my, “calling out all the more“, he kept reposting it atop the diocesan news page until December 11, 2019. There it remains to this day.
Fr. Ed Graff, brought here from Philadelphia by Bishop Matthiesen, was arrested in 2002 for sexually assaulting a minor and died later that year in jail. Despite the harm linked to his ministry, he was buried in an honored section of Llano Cemetery among our pioneering clergy — a decision that continues to wound survivors and raise hard questions for our diocese.
Bishop Matthiesen, who rode the white horse of public activism even as he brought abusive priests into our diocese such as John Salazar—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 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.
