Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent

1. Lectio

Jeremiah stands surrounded—
not merely by enemies,
but by misunderstanding,
by hostility,
by a world that would rather silence truth than hear it.

And yet he says, with curious confidence:

“‘But the LORD is with me, like a mighty champion…'”

The Psalm echoes the same defiant hope:

In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice.

And the Gospel shows us something even stranger—

Christ Himself,
confronted,
threatened,
nearly stoned—

speaks truth,
and then
escaped.

Not because He is weak,
but because His hour had not yet come.

He passed through their midst,
untouched.

2. Meditatio

For me, the Daily Mass is how I’ve escaped.

Not the cowardly sort—
though I have sometimes suspected it might be—

but the necessary sort.

The world has a way of pressing in,
of crowding the soul
with noise,
with grief,
with questions that do not wait for answers.

And there was a time
when that pressure became almost unbearable.

When my son Daniel—
a young husband, a father of three—
was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

A sentence, really.
One that would be carried out
far too quickly.

I remember the priest stopping me before Mass,
asking gently if there was anything he could do.

And I answered, perhaps more bluntly than expected:

“Just keep feeding me the Eucharist.”

At the time, it seemed obvious.

What else could be done?

And yet, I later learned
that my answer had unsettled him.

He wondered if I saw him merely
as a dispenser—
a kind of sacred machine
from which I received what I wanted
at my convenience.

Perhaps he was right.

But he was also wrong.

For I had not escaped from reality—
I had escaped into it.

The Mass did not remove my suffering.
It anchored it.

It did not erase the grief.
It gave it somewhere to stand.

And now, less than a year later,
with a different priest
and more opportunities for daily Mass,
I still go.

I’ve escaped.

Or rather—
entered.

3. Contemplatio (Chestertonian Synthesis)

Chesterton might say that the modern man prides himself on facing reality,
while quietly inventing a thousand ways to avoid it.

We call distraction “rest.”
We call indulgence “relief.”
We call escape “freedom.”

But most of our escapes
lead us further away from truth.

Christ’s escape is of a different kind.

He does not flee into illusion—
He moves with purpose.

He escaped not because He feared death,
but because He knew it was time.

And so the Christian paradox emerges:

The only true escape from the world
is not to run from it,
but to enter more deeply into God.

The Eucharist, then, is not a retreat from life—
it is the only place
where life is properly understood.

And so I must ask:

Have I escaped from the world—
or escaped into Christ?

For one leads to forgetfulness.
The other leads to truth.

4. Oratio

5. Actio — In Light of Laudato Si’ and Synodality

 Isolated individuals can lose their ability and freedom to escape the utilitarian mindset, and end up prey to an unethical consumerism bereft of social or ecological awareness.

Laudato si’ §219

We are not meant to escape the world’s suffering,
but to encounter it together—with compassion, responsibility, and hope.

Today, I will:

• Resist the urge to withdraw into isolation.
• Accompany someone in their suffering, even if I cannot fix it.
• Recognize that communion is not an escape from others, but a movement toward them.

For the Church is not an escape route—
it is a meeting place.

6. Song Pairing 🎵

🎶 “Kokomo” – The Beach Boys🎵

7. Movie Pairing 🎬

🎬Movie: “The Great Escape” (1963)

My Story

• 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 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.
• Bishop Daniel Cardinal DiNardo…

While we recognize your thoughtful suggestion for a renewed dialogue on Bishop Matthiesen, the present circumstances do not present an opportunity for it. I think it would foster division not dialogue. We remain confident in God’s providence and hopeful for what the future may bring.

from a letter dated March 5, 2026