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 poor are at the heart of the Church because “our faith in Christ, who became poor, and was always close to the poor and the outcast, is the basis of our concern for the integral development of society’s most neglected members.” [123]
Question to myself (Hope – Centennial Pillar for February):
If hope is our Centennial pillar for February, and if our faith rests on Christ who became poor and drew near to the outcast, then do I allow my indifference, comfort, or subtle superiority to defile that hope by keeping the poor from our “serious mistake” at a distance—when they are meant to be at the very heart of the Church and, therefore, at the very heart of me?
2. Meditatio – Meditation
I confess that I go to great lengths not to allow things from outside of me to defile me. Sick people. Politically different people. The poor man on the corner. The loud, the inconvenient, the awkward.
I can feel sullied merely by proximity.
Yet Christ insists that none of these enter the sanctuary where corruption truly begins. The sanctuary is the heart—and mine is no cathedral of spotless marble.
Last night, Kim—confined to her recliner after surgery—called out for help just as I was retreating toward my well-earned rest. I answered. I adjusted pillows. I fetched what was needed. But my spirit dragged its feet. My impatience leaked through my kindness. My charity wore the mask of duty.
And this morning, pride attempts a further defilement by whispering, You were tired. You did enough. You need not apologize.
It is astonishing how quickly I can tolerate the interior pollution of resentment while being fastidious about external contamination.
Christ says it is not the street person who defiles me. It is the selfish thought that refuses love.
If defilement were merely a matter of dust, the saints would be sterile people. But sanctity is not sterility; it is combustion.
In 1858, in a damp cave called Massabielle, the Immaculate Virgin appeared to a poor, ill-educated fourteen-year-old girl—Bernadette Soubirous. If holiness feared contamination, Heaven would never have stooped to a muddy grotto.
Through that poor child, Our Lady called sinners—not the spotless—to repentance. She summoned them not to antiseptic perfection but to interior purification. The spring that burst forth at Lourdes was not first for the skin but for the soul.
And here is the paradox worthy of Chesterton: the only human being never defiled is the one who most willingly touches the defiled.
Mary did not become unclean by standing among sinners; she remained immaculate because nothing corrupt issued from within her.
I fear contamination from outside because I know how much impurity resides inside.
Perhaps that is why the refiner’s fire is mercy itself. God purifies not by isolation, but by love that burns away pride. The real grotto is the human heart. The real miracle is contrition.
4. Oratio — Prayer
Lord Jesus, cleanse not my hands first, but my heart.
Forgive the impatience that stains my service. Forgive the pride that defends my failure to love well.
Mother of Lourdes, teach me the humility of the grotto. Let repentance spring up within me as water rose from that rock.
Purify me from within that nothing which comes from me may defile the love I owe.
Amen.
5. Actio — Action (Laudato Si’ & Synodality)
It is not easy to promote this kind of healthy humility or happy sobriety when we consider ourselves autonomous, when we exclude God from our lives or replace him with our own ego, and think that our subjective feelings can define what is right and what is wrong.
Today I will examine not only how I treat the planet or the poor in theory, but how I treat the person nearest to me.
Synodality begins at the recliner.
I will apologize to Kim—not because I was monstrous, but because I was less than loving. And I will remember that ecological conversion and marital conversion share the same root: interior purification.
6. Song Pairing 🎵
🎶 “Desperado” – Linda Ronstadt🎵
“You better let somebody love you before it’s too late.” The desperado is not the outlaw on horseback—it is the heart barricaded by pride. The song pleads for surrender. So does the Gospel. Impatience is merely pride in spurs.
I’ve been happily—and rather unexpectedly—surprised by how much Episode 3 of The Introverted Apostle is helping me make sense of my own faith journey. John Reeves (yes, the same John I’ve exchanged the sign of peace with more than once at St. Mary’s Cathedral) adds another layer to understanding introversion—not as a flaw to overcome, but as something God actually works through. Even the idea of “putting on a mask” socially can, in the right spirit, be an act of charity rather than phoniness. That one hit home. It’s thoughtful, human, and quietly freeing. Worth your time.
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.
Email to Bishop Zurek
Dear Bishop Zurek,
Peace in Christ.
As our Diocese continues its Centennial celebration, I have been praying daily with the Scriptures and reflecting deeply on the four pillars: Faith, Hope, Communion, and Mission. In that spirit of prayer, I am writing once more not in protest, but in hope — hope for true synodality, which the Church continues to call us toward: listening, walking together, and discerning in the light of the Holy Spirit.
In recent prayer with the Gospel where the apostles are sent out and told to “shake the dust from their feet” where they are not received, I was struck not by the gesture of rejection, but by its meaning: testimony. Testimony that something unfinished remains. Testimony that repentance and healing are still invitations, not accusations.
For me, the Tribute to Bishop Matthiesen remains such a testimony. You yourself once referred to that period of our diocesan history as involving a “serious mistake.” Yet the tribute stands publicly, while conversation about the wound it represents feels absent. This creates, at least in my conscience, a tension between remembrance and healing, between honoring history and honestly confronting it.
I am not asking for condemnation of the past, nor for erasing history. I am asking for synodality — a visible, pastoral process of listening and discernment regarding what this tribute means today, especially for those who carry pain connected to that era. Pope Leo has reminded the Church that one of the deepest scandals is when doors are closed and people are not listened to. My hope is simply that, as your son in the Church, my voice might be received in that spirit of listening.
Our Centennial banners proclaim Faith, Hope, Communion, and Mission. I believe engaging this issue synodally would embody all four: • Faith, by trusting truth has nothing to fear • Hope, by believing healing is possible • Communion, by listening even when it is difficult • Mission, by witnessing that the Church confronts wounds with light, not silence
I remain in communion with you as my bishop and pray for you daily. I also continue to seek purification of my own heart, that my words be guided not by frustration but by charity and truth.
If you would ever be willing to allow a listening conversation — formal or informal — I would receive that as a great grace.
Respectfully in Christ,
Darrell Glenn
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.
