The Friar Podcasts - preaching prayer and spiritual reflections

Given at Christian Brothers College High School , Town and Country, Missouri. Do you know that you are called to holiness? Do you know that you have a host of saints praying on your behalf? Jesus loves you more than you can comprehend. Jesus helps you with grace to answer the call. Open your heart to him. Jesus will do the rest. Readings for Today

Given at Saints Joachim and Ann Parish , Saint Charles, Missouri. Today is Halloween, a fun time to pretend. We can pretend we are someone or something else. But, it is also the case that we can pretend in our faith. That is not at all innocent. Today's readings remind us that if our worship is to be authentic, then it needs to lead to our conversion. Readings for Today

Given at St. Dominic Priory, Saint Louis, Missouri. Note: The readings used in the chapel today come from the Dedication of a Church and are not the readings of the day . A beautiful church or chapel is helpful to encountering the sacred. But it is not a guarantee. The beautiful exterior of the church building achieves its purpose when it leads to interior conversion. Every Mass is an action of th...

Given at Christian Brothers College High School , Town and Country, Missouri. Choices. They are made all of the time. Employers choose which people will be their employees. We choose where we go on vacation. And today Jesus chooses apostles. But just as all of our choices do not always work out, we know that among the 12 apostles chosen there was Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus. Jesus loves you...

Given at Christian Brothers College High School , Town and Country, Missouri. Hope. It is a theological virtue. Ever wonder why? Take a look at the world today. There is violence. Oppression. The poor go without. There is crime. People suffer. It can be hard to hope in a world such as ours. And that is why it is a virtue. Because as a virtue, we must repeatedly be people of hope. Our hope is a sta...

Given at Christian Brothers College High School , Town and Country, Missouri. I imagine the most terrifying moment in the life of new parents is when they first take their son or daughter home from the hospital. Now what? Being a parent is a wonderful, yet I suspect sometimes overwhelming experience. In the very high vocation that is motherhood, I suspect that the desire to see is most important....

Given at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish , University City, Missouri. Early in my life as a priest my focus in prayer was on action. What could I do? What plan could I develop? What program would so excite the parish that we would have to have so many Masses on the weekend it would be hard to imagine saying them all? When I was first a priest if Jesus had asked me "What do you want me to do for you?" t...

Given at Christian Brothers College High School , Town and Country, Missouri. We cannot commit to following God and to not following God. Yet, sin is addictive. Despite our best efforts to accept God's grace, we turn our backs on God. The wonderful truth, however, is that God never stops loving us. No matter how broken, how much our lives might feel like a mess, God always loves us. So, choose to...

Given at Christian Brothers College High School , Town and Country, Missouri. For me the hardest temptation to resist is to believe in the spiritual life everything is up to me. I want to be in control. I want to make the decisions. If I think hard enough, plan long enough, use enough intelligence, than it will all work out. I say I trust in God, but in reality I do not. It is because I do not tru...

Given at Christian Brothers College High School , Town and Country, Missouri. One of the most challenging aspects of Christian life is the problem of evil. In fact, Saint Thomas Aquinas called it one of the most difficult topics concerning God. Why is there evil in the world with an all loving God? While certainly it is clear that some evil comes from humans, there are other evils that seem unfair...

Given at Christian Brothers College High School , Town and Country, Missouri. Believing in Jesus requires a great deal of humility. Why? Because nothing we do causes us to earn salvation. The gift of salvation is just that -- a gift freely given by Jesus that we accept or not. No act of a good work makes it possible to earn our salvation. To be sure, the good works we do can demonstrate that our f...

Given at Christian Brothers College High School , Town and Country, Missouri. The Pharisees knew the letter of the Law. When they complain about the law not being followed, they are often correct about the letter of the Law. What they did not always grasp was the spirit of the Law. The external actions required by the Law were to be signs of the interior conversion of the heart. Our relationship w...

Given at St. Dominic Priory, Saint Louis, Missouri. The gospel is the constant challenge of recognizing that our external actions must be guided always by our internal conversion, and that these two aspects of our lives must work in tandem. External actions alone can cause us to avoid our need for conversion. Internal focus alone can cause us to be narcissistic. Jesus calls us to conform our heart...

Given at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish , University City, Missouri. There was a big "gasp" this past week when Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all went down for a few hours. It poses the question: What keeps you from a more fulfilling relationship with Jesus? For the young man it was possessions. But it could be our job, a hobby, Netflix, Roku or Hulu, or just avoidance. Can you go beyond knowing ab...

Given at Christian Brothers College High School , Town and Country, Missouri. Sometimes it can be hard to believe that God loves us. Maybe it is because of past sins in our lives, or even our struggles with current sins. Sometimes it is because there is so much shame and brokenness in our lives, we feel unlovable. Sometimes it is that we do not feel the love of God in our loves, we do not sense hi...

Given at Christian Brothers College High School , Town and Country, Missouri. Mass for the deceased alumni. We were made for relationship. The immediate and powerful love of parents for their children is testimony to Adam's statement "bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh." God is relational, since God is a triune community of love. We love because God first loved us. Let us seek to love more fully o...

Given at Christian Brothers College High School , Town and Country, Missouri. How often do we wish we had been alive at the time of Jesus? Yet the reality is that we have access to the words of Jesus, and more importantly to the Word himself, Jesus. Pray with the Bible, God's word, and come to better know Christ. Readings for Today

Given at Christian Brothers College High School , Town and Country, Missouri. Ever wanted to be like James and John, and call down fire upon someone you do not like? I know I have. But, at the same time, I strive to live the kind of life described in the first reading. A life so wonderful, a witness so strong that people want the belief we have. Strive today to live your relationship with Jesus in...

Given at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish , University City, Missouri. A place for everything and everything in its place. This is a motto some people live by in their lives. I do not. At least not when it comes to personal space. But this is a motto that refers to things. Too often we use this motto in relationship to people. Democrats over here, Republicans over there. Those who watch this cable news...

Given at Christian Brothers College High School, Town and Country, Missouri. When I was in Rome for a class in my doctoral studies, I noticed that in almost every shop there was a picture, somewhere in the store, of Padre Pio. What is interesting is that while people recognized his holiness, often his own community did not. We can be fooled into thinking that if we follow God our lives on this ear...

Given at the LaSalle Retreat Center , Glencoe, MO. Ezra was a prophet who arose at a bad, but the right, time. The people had gone astray and their entire lives had fallen apart. If they lived today, I doubt they would have been posting their suffering on social media. Finally coming to their senses, they are ready to make a change. They recognize that the important time is now -- they need to fol...

Given at Christian Brothers College High School, Town and Country, Missouri. God has a tendency to call people who at first glance do not seem to be likely choices. There is Moses, the poor speaker, or David, whose passions get him into trouble. Today we encounter Matthew the tax collector, who reminds us that God's grace is more powerful than any sin we can commit. Today's Reading

Given at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, University City, Missouri. There is an internal tension in most of us, an angst. We want things we cannot have. Or what we have is never enough, we want more. Many world religions have recognized this angst. For example, Buddhism refers to tanha , or roughly translated "desire" as something that explains why life is suffering. We think if we just get this job,...

There are a not insignificant number of people who believe, I think, in what is sometimes called the "prosperity gospel." That is, the belief that our faith in God will be rewarded by material goods. Yet that runs opposed to most, if not all, of the Scriptures. In his letter to Saint Timothy, Saint Paul warns against seeing faith in Jesus as a means to material wealth. What does this mean for our...

There are a not insignificant number of people who believe, I think, in what is sometimes called the "prosperity gospel." That is, the belief that our faith in God will be rewarded by material goods. Yet that runs opposed to most, if not all, of the Scriptures. In his letter to Saint Timothy, Saint Paul warns against seeing faith in Jesus as a means to material wealth. What does this mean for our...