Father Matthew Wiering Podcast

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Nation's founding, we reflect on how Gospel values -- together with the freedom to live them out -- can make Christians the best citizens.

In today's challenging Gospel Jesus tells us that we have to love Him about our parents, children, and anybody and anything else in our life. Do we? On it's face this might seem like an unjust demand, but if we consider who God is -- a Communion of Love -- then we understand that by loving God first all of our other loves will fall into their proper place.

In today's second reading from St. Paul's Letter to the Romans, the Apostle reminds us that death was not a part of God's plan for the human person from the beginning. Rather, it was a consequence of sin. Thus as original sin is passed down to each human being, so is the necessity of bodily death. But Paul reminds us that there is no tragedy here, since in Jesus, God has sent a New Adam to undo wh...

The Gospels make it clear that as soon as Jesus's miraculous powers became known he was constantly surrounded by people. Some of these people were opportunists who were simply hoping to witness a miracle themselves. But many of the people following Jesus were aware of a deep need they or a loved one had for healing. They were needy people! Today's Gospel shows us what was Jesus's response to those...

On this Trinity Sunday we marvel at the totally gratuitous self-revelation of God. In Jesus He reveals the secret of His inmost being: That in the One Godhead there are three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To put this in other way, we could quote the First Letter of John and St. Augustine: "God is Love" (1 Jn 4:8) -- the Father who loves, the Son who is beloved, and the Holy Spirit, who is...

Today is the feast of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity whom St. Augustine described as the Love that binds together the Father and the Son. Since the Holy Spirit is given to us in an objective way through the Sacraments, are we attentive to the Holy Spirit's guidance in our lives? When He is speaking to us, do we respond?

On this Ascension Sunday, we hear two Scripture readings that seem to be contradictory. In our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, the Apostles witness Jesus's leaving earth to dwell in the heavenly realms. And in our Gospel from Matthew, Jesus says, "Behold I am with you always until the end of the age." So, presuming both realities are true at the same time, how can Jesus be with the Fa...

In today's first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we learn that Peter and John go down to Samaria because of Philip's evangelical success. But when they arrive, they learn that, even though the new Christians there have been baptized, they have not received the Holy Spirit. So what do they do? They pray and lay hands on the new Christians, and the Holy Spirit falls upon them. Here we see the...

Today's Gospel passage from the 14th chapter of John's Gospel is one of the most popular funeral readings. From one perspective, it seems that he is talking about heaven. Yet upon closer examination, Jesus is using images having to do with the Temple and with Jewish marriage traditions. He is speaking of bringing his disciples into union with him not just at some point in the future after we die b...

On this "Good Shepherd Sunday" we hear Jesus explain to us the difference between good shepherds and bad shepherds, which Jesus calls "thieves and robbers". We have this difference too in the priesthood! The good shepherd/priest goes through the gate, which is Christ, and is completely oriented towards him. His priesthood is based on Christ. But the bad shepherd is in it for himself, not for Chris...

In this amazingly rich passage, Jesus walks with two disciples from Jerusalem to Emmaus. The disciples are discouraged and forlorn about what has happened to Jesus, and the accounts that he has been raised have only further confused them. Jesus (whom they do not at first recognize) engages them in dialogue, and then he interprets the Old Testament Scriptures to them in such a way that their hearts...

On this Octave Day of Easter we reflect on where we have been since Holy Week. The Church walked with Christ as he suffered so dreadfully from the Garden of Gethsemane to the mount of Calvary to the tomb. Every form of human wickedness and dysfunction and disorder descended upon Jesus, crushing and ultimately killing him. What is his first word to those friends who abandoned and betrayed him in hi...

Every year when we hear the Gospel accounts of the discovery of the empty tomb, I marvel at how different the details are from Gospel writer to Gospel writer, yet they all agree on one thing: It was women who were the first witnesses of the empty tomb and the first to encounter the Risen Christ. This shouldn't surprise us, since it was women who accompanied Jesus throughout the Passion and Crucifi...

As we commemorate the Lord's Supper, we celebrate the two Sacraments that Christ instituted and pass on to the disciples at that meal, by which He remains present in the world: The Holy Eucharist and the Priesthood.

How will you live the holiest week of the year?

Today as we celebrate the Sacrament of Confirmation for our young people, the Gospel of Jesus getting "up close and personal" with the man born blind in order to heal him is fulfilled in the Sacrament we celebrate today. Each of the Sacraments involve this aspect of getting "up close and personal" -- Jesus in the person of the priest comes to us in our vulnerability, he comes in close proximity to...

In today's Gospel Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. The woman's need to visit the well every day is a symbol of her fundamental thirst for love (which is also evidenced in her having had five previous husbands and a current live-in boyfriend -- she is looking for love in all the wrong places)! But, after encountering Jesus, she goes back to town and leaves her water jug at the we...

Our first reading today presents us with Abram, who will later be renamed "Abraham". God calls him to uproot his family and servants and flocks and go to a a different place -- to where God does not say but simply says that He will show him. Isn't this a frequent theme in the Scriptures? To the apostles, too, Jesus says, "Follow me," but doesn't say "to where" yet promises to lead them where He wa...

In this Sunday's "Greatest Hits" of Scripture readings presented to us, we hear the story of how man and woman fell pray to the Devil's temptation and were exiled to the desert wilderness. In today's Gospel, where does Jesus go immediately before beginning his public ministry? He goes precisely into the desert wilderness, in search of the exiled Adam and Eve, but first he must contend with the Dev...

In today's Gospel Jesus takes some broad commandments that many people probably don't find too difficult to follow and deepens them, making them much more challenging. From now on, it's not enough just that we don't "kill anybody". We must love our neighbor in body and soul. It's not enough that we don't sleep around. We must have purity of heart. The good news is that if Jesus commands it, this m...