The Friar Podcasts - preaching prayer and spiritual reflections

It seems that God has a tendency to speak when people are asleep. God speaks to Samuel when he's asleep. Joseph, twice, hears the voice of God in his dreams. But what's really important is when God speaks, do we know that it is God who is speaking? As we begin this church year with a focus ahead in terms of our own life, we have to ask ourselves, do we really recognize the voice of God? Be...

In last weekend’s homily I highlighted the need for us to learn how to pray. I suggested subscribing to the “Bible in a Year” podcast. If you listen to podcasts, you can subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Typing “Bible in a Year” in the search bar will enable you to subscribe to the podcast. As I said, I highly encourage it. (I saw many nods when I gave the homily so I know I am not alone...

King Saul had one fundamental flaw. He cared too much what others people thought. We see that over and over and over again in his life. He cared too much what other people thought. And that flaw really ultimately cost him just about everything. We see it in today's reading. I suspect that Saul decided, well, you know what, if they take the best and they sacrifice it to God and they like me for...

When we encounter a problem, the hardest part of it as a person of faith can be trusting in God. We really want to kind of come up with the solution ourselves, decide this is the right thing to do, do it, and then hope that everything works out well because of our decision. If there is a challenge, I think, in the faith, in the Western world, it is that we think that everything really depends on u...

There are the best of times and the worst of times. And today's readings really give us that picture. The first reading, it's a disaster. This is really a bad, bad place for Israel to be. But for the leper in the Gospel, it is a good place. It is the best of times. In the first reading, there is this horrible, terrible thing that has befallen Israel. And in the Gospel, there was this horri...

Today we begin ordinary time. And I think it's always important to remind ourselves that the name ordinary time does not mean ordinary in the sense that we use it. If something is ordinary, it's well, it's common, it's not terribly special, it's not dramatic, it's just ordinary. It really comes from the Latin ordo , which is really about order. It's about numbers. You m...

During the time when Jesus is on earth, the Father only speaks twice. Once in the baptism of Jesus that we hear about today, and the other at the transfiguration. And both times God says the same thing. "This is my beloved Son, listen to Him." And what we celebrate today is not only the baptism of the Lord, which is certainly a tremendous event, but our own baptism as well. It was the ba...

There are some saints in the Church that really emphasize that the pathway to holiness is something ordinary. Saint Therese of Lesieux talked about her little way. Brother Lawrence, who wrote The Practice of the Presence of God , similarly talked about how the real part of our lives is to find God in the ordinary things that we do. And when we consider this story of the Magi, foreigners who are co...

These readings are reinforcing something that I have talked about a lot. The faith is not something to be kept to yourself. It's obvious that Andrew and Peter had talked to Philip because they're in the same area and Philip becomes a believer. And Philip encounters Nathaniel and says, look, we found this guy, the Messiah, we have found him. And lo and behold, ultimately Nathaniel finds him...

Today we celebrate Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, who was really just an amazing, amazing woman. She really had the experience of many different vocations, so to speak. She was born a member of the Episcopal Church. She was in a married a man who was very much involved with shipping, and so she lived a life of means. While she was in Italy, she encountered the Blessed Sacrament, and that kindled in he...

Today we celebrate Saint Basil and Saint Gregory, the Cappadocian Fathers, as they are known. They were bishops, they were monks, and they were close friends. And they wrote about the wisdom of God in many respects, how to live the spiritual life, both for the monastery and for the outside world. The wisdom of God. What exactly do we mean when we say the wisdom of God? Well, if we look at the Old...

One simple yes. One simple yes, and everything that God had intended from the beginning of time, was made manifest. The great fiat of Mary. But this was not a yes that didn't come without lots of preparation. God, from the beginning of time, knew that this was to be the plan of salvation. And throughout the course of history, God helps us to understand a little more fully and a little more com...

When I was a little boy, I lived in an apartment building with my parents in what was affectionately known as the Green Block. And it was called the Green Block because essentially this apartment building was a big green block. It had green asphalt siding and it was square. There was nothing really artistically wonderful about it at all. And one of the features of each of these apartments is that...

Today we get the story of Simeon. If we had Mass tomorrow morning, it would be the Mass, or the reading would be about Anna the prophetess. They were both in the temple when Jesus came to be presented by his parents following the Jewish law. The firstborn was a special role, and we see that some of the times it worked out very well, other times not so much. Jacob and Esau come to mind where the bl...

It's a common phrase to say that we celebrate at Christmas the birth of our Savior. But if we have a Savior, then in fact there is something from which we need to be saved. Otherwise, there is no need of a Savior. I've never been listed as a Savior for saving someone from drowning because I've never done it. I've never had need. And if you're relying on me to save you from drow...

So, we first encounter Stephen in the Acts of the Apostles, really, as we hear today, as one who was chosen to wait on tables. If you remember, there was this controversy brewing because there were some ethnic divides among widows, and the Greek widows felt they were being neglected. And they probably were, because the church thinks about the problem and really begins the diaconate. But it's i...

We tossed the word miracle around a lot. When I was a junior in high school, the fact that the United States Olympic hockey team beat the Soviet Union hockey team was referred to by Al Michaels as a miracle. As a long time Red Sox fan, the fact that in 2004 they won the last eight games of the regular season to end an 86 year drought from winning the World Series, we thought of that as a miracle....

It's interesting when we read the Scripture because there are some things we might read that seem just a little odd. Take, for example, this story of Hannah and Samuel. Hannah has been barren. She hasn't had a child. Particularly culturally, that was a sign of great shame. It was a sign that somewhere God was not blessing Hannah and her husband because they didn't have any children. Th...

I've said it over and over again, but it is just over and over again true that the New Testament is something that helps us better when we can see how it was foreshadowed in the Old Testament. And today's gospel is one tremendously rich example of that. John the Baptist leaps in the presence of Jesus, the unborn child in Mary's womb. Now, how does this have anything to do with the Old...

Do we expect to encounter God? Do we expect to have an experience of Jesus? Do we expect that the Spirit will become real in our own experience, in our own life? I suspect that, at least for many of us, it is not a regular occurrence that we are going to have some kind of miraculous encounter with the divine. Even Zechariah, who we hear had been observing all the commandments and ordinances of the...

So one of the things that I try to do with some success and some failure is to exercise on a regular basis. I know it's good for me, I know I feel better physically, I sleep better, and quite honestly my mental health is better. So there's all kinds of good benefits from it. And so I was a little surprised when I started on the elliptical machine that we have in our basement how hard it wa...

And so there's a very definite shift in the readings that starts on December 17th. We are now moving away from the readings which emphasize the coming of Jesus at the end of time and our need to be conscious and aware of being ready always for that, to the historical coming of Jesus in time. Our focus now is on the Incarnation. Our focus now is specifically on remembering Christmas, why it mat...

What a powerful phrase at the end of today's gospel. Wisdom is vindicated by her works . You know, throughout the Old Testament, there is a trend or a type, a genre of literature that we do refer to as the wisdom books. Now, it's not wisdom in just collecting a lot of facts. It's much deeper than that. We can conclude something pretty quickly if it's only a matter of fact. My forme...

There was a period of time where there was a great concern about the self-esteem of children. But they weren't feeling very good about themselves. And so the solution was to boost their self-esteem, to make them feel better about themselves. The problem wasn't so much that the issue was identified, it was the solution. Which was simply to tell children they were wonderful without any real...

I have to say that this is my favorite apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Guadalupe. There's so many pieces to it that are just so wonderful and beautiful and real to life. In the second reading for the Office of Readings today, we encounter, we kind of get a little picture of, okay, well what happened? What were the details? And what I like about it is that so many people in this account...