The Friar Podcasts - preaching prayer and spiritual reflections

What an incredible group of friends. I don't know if it was a long way they had to carry this paralyzed man or somewhat short distance, but I can only imagine the scene as they got up on top of this building. Now, the tiles, just so that you kind of understand the scene here, would have been likely made of clay. So when they're lowering Jesus down, they're paralytic down, they're a...

If you belong to a gym, you see the traditional pattern of who is present. If it's shortly after the first of the year, the gym is crowded. Everybody is there because this is going to be the year that they finally get into shape. Of course, we can probably predict what's going to happen. It's very full in the first week of January, not quite as full by the third week of January. And by...

I have every advent, except for this one, because I haven't really gotten the energy to dig through my boxes of books to find it, read a book by Caryll Houselander called The Reed of God . It's one of my favorites, and part of the reason it's one of my favorites is what she kind of writes in the introduction, where she recalls that when she was a little girl, she was told, never do any...

It's interesting when you listen to two groups of people that have radically different views about the Bible. On the one hand, there are Christian fundamentalists who take the Bible literally. Their basic argument is that if God gets it wrong, let's say in the story of Genesis, then how do we know God didn't get it wrong in everything else? Therefore, everything must be literally true...

It's interesting when you listen to two groups of people that have radically different views about the Bible. On the one hand, there are Christian fundamentalists who take the Bible literally. Their basic argument is that if God gets it wrong, let's say in the story of Genesis, then how do we know God didn't get it wrong in everything else? Therefore, everything must be literally true...

We're going to hear a lot from the prophet Isaiah over this season of Advent. In many ways, he's the Advent Saint. Why is that? Well, I think we have to look at the mission of Isaiah. We have to look at what it meant for him to be a prophet and what he encountered during his time. He was a prophet at a difficult time for Israel. Things were not going well. The faith was not robust. And peo...

The word watch has at least, I think, three meanings. One can be watch as I do something. I can show you how to do something, and you can learn how to do it by watching me. Sometimes the word watch can be to point out something dramatic and wonderful, and it's awe-inspiring. This week, although I have to say that I was not ready to go out and take a look at them, particularly in a heavily ligh...

Andrew was the first to be called by Jesus. Imagine if Andrew had said, well there, good, I'm done. I don't have any more responsibilities in the faith. I've been called by Jesus and I've accepted his call. But we know he didn't do that. He shared his faith. He went to his brother. He said, we have found the Messiah. This, ironically, is always close to the end of the year. Som...

These readings build on what we heard yesterday from the book of the prophet Daniel. We missed a little bit of a part here because Nebuchadnezzar is deeply troubled by the fact that he has had this dream and none of the people from his own kingdom can tell him what it means. But Daniel can. And really it's a prediction that describes pretty accurately what will become of the world around Danie...

I don't like group projects. When I was in school, I never really liked it when we had to work with others. And there's a reason. There's a very obvious reason, and I've had to address it as a teacher, which I'll tell you about in a minute. But I didn't like group projects because I didn't trust the other people in the group to do what they said they were going to do. I...

Today we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. The image of a king is not really one we think much about in this country, unless something dramatic happens in Britain, I would say. We may not like royalty much as it pertains to our own country, but when Queen Elizabeth died and King Charles became the new monarch in Britain, it's no secret that many Americans tuned in to watch, some even as...

We can be shielded in the United States from the fact that people are different in different parts of the world. We can see everything kind of through the lens of American and forget that others don't share our view of the world, of our faith, of who knows what else. I think of it when I find myself in need of being able to purchase some new article of clothing. Go out and try to find an artic...

In the Catholic Church, every day is Thanksgiving. What do I mean? I mean that as the Second Vatican Council said in the document Lumen Gentium , the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life. And we have the opportunity, and I know many of you take advantage of it, we have the opportunity so that each day can be a great act of thanksgiving, not because of what we do, but because we...

What's the big deal about a little bit of pork? Why was this such an important thing for Eleazar? It doesn't seem on the surface to be terribly significant. We think about it and we say, well, you know, weighing the two, breaking the law of God in terms of eating pork and saving his life, we might be tempted to say, well, you know, under these circumstances, what was he supposed to do? But...

What do you want me to do for you? Have we ever imagined ourselves thinking of Jesus asking us that question? What do you want me to do for you? Where is it in our lives that we need the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ? Or where is it in our lives that we need maybe a clearer idea of what Jesus wants us to do or how Jesus wants us to live? What do you want me to do for you? It's an interesti...

There are questions that I suspect anyone who's been a teacher, particularly I think of children, don't want to hear. My all-time least favorite question is this. It's when a kid has been absent from class, even if it's just for a day, and they come back and say, did we do anything yesterday? I always have to bite my tongue. I don't want to be sarcastic, but I kind of want to s...

We're getting close to the end of the church year. And what that means is that our readings take a decided turn. This is not about the kind, loving Jesus who wants to invite us all, or as sometimes I like to say, the teddy bear Jesus. This isn't the Jesus that's doing things or saying things to make us feel better. This is the Jesus to remind us that as some students want to know, yes,...

The Second Vatican Council tells us in Lumen Gentium that the best way we stand in God's presence, or as it says, the source and the summit is in the Eucharist. Every single time we come to Mass, Jesus is present. Now Jesus is present in a number of ways at Mass. He's present in you, the body of Christ. He's present in the ministers. He's present when we pray and sing. All those th...

You are not your own. At the heart of Dominican theology is this notion of grace. One of the first heresies in the church that was condemned was Pelagianism. Pelagius believed that we could outweigh our sins by performing good actions. Or the popular image I think a lot of people have that at the judgment, that God will have this big scale and our good deeds will be on one side and our bad deeds w...

It's no wonder when we listen to the apostles at the end of everything that Jesus has said that they're saying to him, increase our faith. This is hard stuff. This is not easy, what he's talking about here. And it's not easy on a whole bunch of levels. It's not easy on the one hand because, I don't know about you, but I don't like confronting someone else. Let alone con...

I was very good friends with a Sister of Providence, and I think of her every time this gospel is read because she hated it. And she hated it because she thought it wasn't the parable of the wise and the foolish virgins, it was the parable of the selfish and the foolish virgins. Why wouldn't they share? Isn't that in fact what we're told to do? It seems rather selfish not to share....

Paul found himself in a rather difficult set of circumstances in terms of preaching about Jesus. It was a confusing world because there were so many entities that he had to kind of navigate his way through. He was part of one of them, the very, very serious Jews who separated themselves from society for the sake of being faithful, totally faithful, to the covenant. That was who he was before his c...

Today, we celebrate the dedication of a church in Rome, St. John Lateran. Now a few things right at the beginning. St. John Lateran is not a person. The church in Rome was the Lateran Palace that ultimately was really the first cathedral of Rome. It is dedicated to St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, and it has come to have been known as St. John Lateran. It is one of the four major...

Jesus is always inviting. He's always drawing people, hoping that we will respond by wanting a deeper relationship with Him. Hoping that the invitation we have to get to know Jesus better will be one that can change our life. And Jesus uses a lot of stories to help us to understand, well, what is this invitation? What does it mean? And how do we accept it? Because it's not as easy as it se...

I would suspect that if we were asked to describe what a Pharisee was, we would not be terribly accurate. Because more than likely, we've gotten a little bit of an notion here or a little bit of an idea there, but we really probably don't know a whole heck of a lot about the Pharisees. Like so many things in life, Pharisees were complex people. What it meant to be a Pharisee was complex. W...