Nazareth does not doubt Jesus’ power. They doubt His source.
They know His résumé too well. They know His mother. They know His trade. They know His address.
And so they cannot bear the scandal that the Infinite has come wearing the familiar.
Their offense is not moral outrage. It is wounded pride disguised as discernment.
They are not shocked that He is bad. They are scandalized that He might be God.
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.”
The dominant culture at the beginning of this millennium would have us abandon the poor to their fate and consider them unworthy of attention, much less our respect.
Question to myself (Hope – Centennial Pillar for February):
If hope calls me to see Christ already at work among the poor of our “serious mistake”, why do I so easily take offense at voices that refuse to abandon them to their fate—and does that offense reveal a failure of hope in me, rather than a threat to it?
2. Meditatio – Meditation
I always imagined offense as something noble — a trumpet blast, a moral stand, a heroic refusal to tolerate evil. But today I notice something unsettling: offense often begins not in courage but in comfort.
Nazareth was not defending truth. Nazareth was defending normal.
And how easily I join them.
This week I am told I ought to take offense. I am handed a script: who to be upset with, what to boycott, what to fear, what to reject before it has even happened. It feels righteous. It feels like loyalty. It even feels like faith.
But then comes the dangerous question: Am I offended because Christ is being rejected — or because my world is being disturbed?
Nazareth took offense at Jesus because He did not fit their expectations of holiness. He spoke with authority, but He did not speak from the right social shelf. He worked miracles, but not from the right background. He had wisdom, but from the wrong hometown.
They did not say, “This is false.” They said, “This is not how God behaves.”
And I do the same.
I can take offense at a singer, a politician, a pope, a priest, a neighbor — but rarely do I pause long enough to ask:
What if my offense is not a defense of faith, but a defense of my tribe?
The line that unsettles me most is not about Nazareth. It is this:
Imagine astonishing God — not by sin, not by rebellion, but by smallness of belief.
Nazareth’s offense did not hurt Jesus’ feelings. It limited what He could do there.
And that frightens me.
Because when I clutch my offense, when I decide beforehand who is dangerous, who is wrong, who is outside the circle — I may not be protecting the faith.
I may be building a Nazareth where miracles cannot land.
3. Contemplatio (Chestertonian Synthesis)
The paradox is that faith is not proven by how fiercely I reject what disturbs me, but by how calmly I let Christ disturb me.
Offense feels like strength. Faith looks like vulnerability.
Offense says, “I know what God should be like.” Faith says, “I did not expect Him to look like this.”
Nazareth had theology. Nazareth lacked trust.
And so the carpenter could not build there.
4. Oratio — Prayer
Lord Jesus, save me from the kind of offense that closes my ears before You speak.
When I feel righteous anger, sift it. When I feel scandalized, purify it. When I feel certain, humble it.
Do not let my loyalty to ideas make me disloyal to Your Spirit. Do not let my defense of religion become resistance to You.
If You come from an unexpected voice, an uncomfortable truth, a person I did not choose —
“Despite the international agreements which prohibit chemical, bacteriological and biological warfare, the fact is that laboratory research continues to develop new offensive weapons capable of altering the balance of nature”.
Today I will practice listening before reacting — especially to voices I instinctively resist. Synodality begins not with agreement, but with refusing to let offense be my first response.
6. Song Pairing 🎵
🎶 “El Apagón”(Bad Bunny) 🎵
The Gospel warns how quickly familiarity turns into offense. Sometimes the voices that unsettle us are not enemies but mirrors, showing where our faith has grown comfortable instead of courageous.
7. Movie Pairing 🎬
🎬Movie: Cinema Paradiso (1988)
A small town that thinks it knows everything about the world… until stories widen its heart. Like Nazareth, we can grow so used to our setting that we mistake narrowness for wisdom — and miss the miracle in front of us.
I’m sharing the newest episode of CAPN: The West Texas Catholic—and it turns out the future has gears, wires, and a Catholic high school uniform. The robotics team at Holy Cross Catholic Academy is building machines, yes—but more importantly, they’re building minds that know technology is a tool, not a master. Chesterton would remind us that the devil does not invent things—he only misuses them. Fire can warm a home or burn it down; the answer is not to outlaw fire but to teach children how to tend it. The same goes for robotics and AI. To call every circuit “satanic” is to forget that human creativity itself reflects the Creator. These students aren’t bowing to machines—they’re learning to rule them rightly, to harness what is good, true, and useful in service of something higher. And that, my friends, sounds suspiciously like evangelization in the modern world. Give the episode a listen. Then decide: fear the tool… or form the soul that uses it.
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.
Email to Bishop Zurek
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.
