Nobodies & Protagonists

Readings: Zephaniah 2:3.3:12-23; Psalm 146:6-10; 1 Corinthians 1:26-31; Matthew 5:1-12a

When preaching or commenting on the Beatitudes, I think there are three approaches available. First, a comprehensive approach through which you seek to say/write something about all nine of the Beatitudes. Second, the thirty thousand foot overview that is an attempt to draw a singular message from the nine distinct teachings of the Lord. Finally, one can zero in on one or two of these teachings.

Today, I am going with a combination of the second and third. I find even the thought of going point-by-point through all the Beatitudes exhausting. Before beginning, I heard two things today that I like a lot: "meekness is not weakness" and something like poverty of spirit means recognizing that you're not self-sufficient.

As to the second approach, contrary to Christianity in the contemporary U.S., being a Christian means having the courage to be a nobody. This does not mean refusing to be a protagonist. A Christian slogan from years ago presented just this false dilemma: Protagonists or Nobodies.

Let's stick with the dialectical tension inherent to the Catholic et/et (i.e., both/and) and go with being Protagonists and Nobodies. Isn't that Saint Paul's message in our reading from his First Letter to the Corinthians: you're all nobodies chosen by God to make God's glory known? Maybe we can be protagonists by being nobodies because, as we are seeing in real time, it takes solidarity and community to protagonize, as it were.

Be meek and merciful. Also, be a peacemaker, a protagonist. Our first reading from Zephaniah (there's a book that doesn't pop up often in the Sunday lectionary!) makes the point I am trying to make beautifully: "Seek the LORD, all you humble of the land, who have observed his law; Seek justice, seek humility" (Zeph 2:3).

As for the third option, let's focus on being peacemakers. It strikes me as a necessary preliminary to point out that peace isn't merely the absence of conflict. After all, you can have a truce, a ceasefire, and stilll not have peace. True peace requires justice. So, if you want peace, work for justice.

Daniel Berrigan, S.J.

In our present moment, we are seeing many peacemakers, people who, like me, are nobodies, banding together in the face of injustice to bring about peace. These nobodies have shown more courage and determination than our large institutions, including universities, which seem to only care about funding.

Inherent in justice is mercy and inherent in mercy is justice. Peace, therefore, once the conflict is over and justice has been realized, or a more just situation results, requires the hard work of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Peacemakers are God's children. While peace begins with me, the peace of Christ flows outwards, the love of Christ impels. Let's not kid ourselves, Christ is always on the side of the poor, the downtrodden, and the oppressed and might will never make right.

In his 2015 speech to a Joint Session of the United States Congress, Pope Francis invoked the figures of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton. In our present moment, I would add to that list the Jesuit, Daniel Berrigan. These people bore powerful witness, showing us what living the Beatitudes looks like IRL. It's radical, which is why Jesus warned about suffering for living in this perculiar way. Berrigan, Francis' fellow Jesuit, was probably too radical for that setting.

It is people like King, Day, Merton, Berrigan, and whole cloud of witnesses who rebut the devastating critique made quite a few years go by author Kurt Vonnegut:

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

Break the existential plane

Life continues at an acclerated pace. Friday came and went with no opportunity to compose anything. It's funny, because one of the things I felt really good about last year was my consistency with the Friday traditio.

Not to be too hard on myself, that consistency has continued pretty much through the first month of this year. Hey, life is more than blogging. I am cool with this simply being a really late traditio to bring January to a close.

After my long discernment, which unfolded pretty much over the whole of last year, I am trying to wind things down on one hand and not start winding things up on the other until after I take a few weeks' break in between. Needless to say, this has been futile. Because things aren't winding down, I've started to realize how incredibly difficult the past three and a half years have been on me. What sane person would accept the levels of responsibility I have been shouldering?

When I have time, I've just been feeling exhausted. Lately, this is partly due to a stomach bug I've been battling. It's not bad enough to bring me to a halt but it's physically draining.

Perhaps the worst result of these past years is that it has made me very impatient and intensified my need to be in control. I am blessed that I have been able to recognize these tendencies and to make them a matter of prayer. True to form, I am most impatient and unyielding with myself. Msgr Giussani's exhortation to learn to gaze upon myself with the same tenderness with which Christ gazes upon me has very much guided me over the past few weeks.

Nobody talks much about the personal and emotional dimension of retiring from a career you've spent decades building. It's disorienting. This, too, has been a cause for deep reflection. In what or in whom do I find my identity. For a Christian, of course, the correct answer is in Christ. Finding my identity in Him is the center from which I am supposed to live. How am I doing in this regard? This question has given me a lot to reflect upon and converse with Him about. I look forward to Lent this year.

Pater Tom, a.k.a. Father M. Louis, O.S.C.O.

Today is the birthday of Pater Tom. Discovering one's true identity in God is at the center of Merton's spiritual theology. I have too long absented myself from Pater Tom's writings. One of my favorite books remains his Confessions of a Guilty Bystander. Rather than a long discourse on Merton's theology, I will just provide the summary, taken from his chapter on self-identity found in his book New Seeds of Contemplation: "The secret of our identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God." Of course, Jesus Christ is God's love and mercy incarnate.

Since the start of 2026, my preaching has been very much about the uniqueness, necessity, beauty, truth, and goodness of Jesus Christ. I feel impelled to preach the fundamental Gospel message: Be repenting and be believing, to use the literal translation of Mark 1:15. He is, indeed, the vine and we are the branches. Without the vine, the branches wither and die.

Last night, I attended a high school performance of Frozen in which my youngest son performed. It was amazing and the young women and men did a fantastic job. Never having seen the movie, I was struck by the parallels to C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia (as far as never watching Frozen, I didn't read the Chronicles of Narnia until I was in my forties!). Bending back to the previous paragraph, in Frozen, Aslan never shows up. Thinking this led me to realize how existential we've become. It gave the story a kind of Becketian feel for me.

Since the Gallagher brothers have made up and hit the road last year, I going with an Oasis song that has been on my playlist for several now- "Live Forever"- for our Friday traditio. Face it, despite our increasing refusal to recognize the transcendent dimension of being human, we all want to live forever:

That's a wrap for January 2026.

Memorial of Saint Timothy and Titus, Bishops

Readings: Titus 1:1-5; Psalm 96:1-3.7-8.10; Mark 3:22-30

. . . Timothy, Timothy, Titus, and Philemon/
To the Hebrews/
The Epistle of James/
Peter, Peter, John, John, John, Jude, Revelation/
These are the books of the New Testament

So goes the song I learned at age six or seven to memorize the New Testament for Sunday School class.

Today the Church collectively remembers Timothy and Titus. Both men were in the second generation of Church leadership. Both men were companions of the apostle Paul. It was Paul, who, by his apostolic authority (an authority received from Jesus Christ), installed Titus as bishop in Crete and placed Timothy at the head of the Church in Ephesus.

Whether the first reading selected is from 2 Timothy or from Titus (we went with Titus because we don’t often read from this book either in the Sunday or weekday lectionary- though it is the- usually ignored- “epistle” reading for Christmas Mass During the Night), Paul starts by identifying himself as an “Apostle of Jesus Christ” or “an Apostle of Christ Jesus.”¹

Timothy & Titus are not apostles. Rather, they were the immediate successors of an apostle. As Successors of the Apostles, bishops today exercise this same authority, which is the authority of Christ. Apostolic succession is indispensable to what it means to confess the Church as “apostolic.” Based on a close an accurate reading of our uniquely Christian scriptures- the New Testament- the Catholic Church understands itself to have a divine constitution. Her constitution is hierarchical.

Far from being a pejorative term, the word "hierarchy" in Christian theology, points to the Church’s divine constitution. Taken from Greek, hierarchy refers to a sacred ordering. Sacramentally, there is no higher office in the Church than that of bishop.

Pope Leo is the Pope by virtue of his being the Bishop of Rome, which makes him the Successor of Saint Peter. Note that the Bishop of Rome is not an archbishop. Like a Cardinal, an archbishop, who has some jurisdiction over a metropolitan area- the Diocese of Salt Lake City, along with the Diocese of Reno, is part of the Archdiocese of Las Vegas- is not part of the Church’s divine constitution but represents a legitimate development.

Saint Paul Consigns his letters, Mosaic, Cathedral of Monreale, Palermo, Sicily

Saint Paul starts his Letter to Titus not by asserting his apostleship, which was frequently challenged, given the highly unique circumstances of his call, but by calling himself “a slave of God.”² A diakonos is a servant, a minister. In Greek, a slave is doulos. Paul calls himself a doulos of God, not only a servant. This is the essence of apostolic ministry.

If you’ve ever spent appreciable time with a bishop, you know that he is not his own. His life, his duties, his responsibilities, the pastoral nature of his call are all-consuming. It is no exaggeration to point out that a bishop frequently puts in 14–15-hour days six and sometimes seven times per week. In his apostolic ministry, Saint Paul set this pace early on.

In terms of our Gospel, it is episcopal ministry that prevents the Lord’s house from being plundered. Again, this pattern is set early on in the Church. While it certainly develops over time, it is substantially complete before the end of the first century. We see this in Paul’s exhortation to Titus, after being set over the Church in Crete. He exhorts Titus to appoint presbyters, that is, priests in each town throughout what we would now call his diocese. Only a bishop can ordain.

Every diocesan priest and deacon, along with all religious or extern clergy who are granted faculties by the bishop, obtain their authority from the bishop’s apostolic authority. Our job is to extend the bishop’s ministry. Episcopal ministry has a threefold munera: to teach, to govern, and to sanctify.

As mentioned earlier, apostolic succession is a necessary but insufficient criterion of the Church’s apostolicity. An apostle is one who is sent. Mass, in Latin (and Latin-based languages, like Spanish) is Missa. Missa refers to both the verb of being sent and the noun of what we are sent to do: engage in mission. The mission of the Church is to evangelize. Apart from our mission, apostolic authority is just a kind of cool historical phenomenon.

Evangelization is not a program, a canned and repeatable set of words and actions that can produce reliable results at a predictable rate. To evangelize is to tell others what Jesus Christ has done for you, to let them know what a difference knowing Christ makes for your life.

---

1 See 2 Timothy 1:1 and Titus 1:1.^↩
2 Titus 1:1.^↩

Following Christ

Matthew 4:12-23

This weekend was kind of a pile-up in terms of things going on at the parish level. As it has been for decades, this weekend was dedicated to pro-life activities, including the March for Life. In addition, was the kick-off of Catholic Schools week. And, not to be out done, we also had a focus on vocations. Frankly, the convergence of these attenuated all the messages. This is just an observation by a parish deacon.

In light of our Gospel reading from the fourth chapter of Matthew, a vocation message seems to flow pretty naturally. The word "immediately" as it applies to Simon and Andrew heeding Jesus' call to follow along with the words "at once" pertaining to James and John indicate something pretty powerful going on. After all, what might make these men abandon their livelihood and even their families to follow this new arrival in Capernaum?

This account of the Lord's calling men to be His closest followers is inspiring to hear and to read. But think about the response of these four men for just a moment. Without hesitation, they left everyone and everything and joined Jesus. They did so without asking even one question, like, "Where are we going?" I can't imagine such a response was any easier in first century Capernaum-by-the-sea than in, say, modern-day Ogden, Utah.

What this shows us is the uniquness of the call of Simon, Andrew, James, and John. We often seek to apply it broadly, that is, to everyone and anyone- because we are all called to follow Jesus. But the call of these brothers is a uniquely aposotolic calling, not merely a generic call to discipleship. The manner of the call conditions the response. In turn, the manner of the call flows from what the call is.

Isaiah's prophecy found in our first reading is applied by the inspired author of Matthew to Jesus in light His moving to Capernaum from Nazareth. Zebulun and Naphtali, talk about marginal Israeli tribes! Like Jesus coming from Nazareth, this light shining forth from the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali shows the ordinary-looking nature of the in-breaking of God's kingdom in the person of Jesus Christ, who is autobasileia - the kingdom in person.

In past years, one of my stock theological sayings was that during His life and ministry it wasn't intuitively obvious to the casual observer that this itinerant from Nazareth was the Son of God, the Only Begotten of the Father in the flesh. Clearly, Simon, Andrew, James, and John saw something, experienced something, when the Lord called them as He passed by. It seems pretty evident from what follows that what they experienced in that moment was something they could not articulate.

It seems equally clear that at times these four didn't understand their calling and on several occasions even misundertood it. But Jesus' word was enough to provoke them to what could easily be seen as a not very responsible response. The radicality of their response is far too easy to gloss over and is unique to their call.

It's true, isn't it, that when you follow Christ, He doesn't lead you along a straight path? Didn't the Israelites takes forty years to reach the promised land? Did Simon, Andrew, James, and John see clearly where Jesus was going to lead them? We're back to Eugene Peterson's "long obedience in the same direction."

While the call can be intoxicating (it isn't always), it is always disruptive in some way. Why? Because, as the Lord's other call (to everyone) in today's Gospel beckons "Repent!" To repent is to change and then recognize your need to change even more. Heeding Christ's call leads you to the Cross and beyond- the path to destiny. But this journey, this pilgrimage, which requires companions (i.e., those who share bread), is what gives your life, everything in your life meaning. It is your purpose, your raison d'etre.

While there are different ways to do it, arising from baptism, there is only one vocation: Follow Christ.

Diaconate: My Adventure Continues

In addition to being the liturgical Memorial of Saint Francis de Sales, bishop and Doctor of the Church, tomorrow is also the twenty-second anniversary of my ordination as a deacon. On Saturday, 24 January 2004, the then-Bishop of Salt Lake City (later Archbishop of San Francisco), George H. Niederauer conferred upon me by his apostolic authority the sacrament of orders. Along with my marriage, the birth of my six children, it is certainly one of the the top ten days of my life.

Bishop George Niederauer presenting me with the Evangeliary during ordination, 24 January 2004

Monday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Samuel 15:16-23; Psalm 50:8-9.16-17.21.23; Mark 2:18-22

In His life and ministry, Jesus truly inaugurated something new. But this new thing is not completely untethered from what came before. It is an expansion, not a contraction.

What the Lord expands was God’s covenant. He expands it to include everyone who believes in Him as Savior and Lord. In a sense, God’s chosen people are those who choose God by choosing Christ.

As Christians, we certainly understand fasting to be one of the core spiritual disciplines taught to us by the Lord Himself. In context, why would His disciples fast while He, the Bridegroom, was among them? Christ’s presence is always a cause for rejoicing, even when it's experienced under horrible circumstances.

If obedience is better the sacrifice, then sacrificial obedience is better still. Liturgical rituals often become rote, something that is done more by sheer force of habit than a loving response to God’s grace.

It’s easy to be obedient when it doesn’t cost you anything or when it gains you something. When I was in high school, I figured out early on that if I came home from school on Friday and completed all my chores, seeking to make a really good job of it, when I asked my dad for $20 and to take the car, he was much more amenable to my request.

Too often, people see their relationship with God as transactional in just this way. But God is not transactional. Sure, bad choices usually result in bad consequences, but this is hardly God’s judgment. What about when, like Job, you do everything right and life still seems to conspire against you?

One scripture verse I have found personally informative, consoling, and useful over many years is from the book of the minor prophet Habakkuk:

For though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit appears on the vine, Though the yield of the olive fails and the terraces produce no nourishment, Though the flocks disappear from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior (Habakkuk 3:17-18)

This completely relates to what is new in Christ. It is the difference between being a Christian and being a pagan. It is not a Christian mindset to worship a temperamental god who punishes you when he is angry and rewards you when you are good. A god from whom you can get what you want if you say the magic words, perform the prescribed ritual, make the right offering.

Such a god is not a personal God, one who wants to be in a close relationship with you. Yes, God wants you to obey Him. But He wants you to do so not for fear of punishment but for love of Him. In our Psalm today, God asks: Do you think that I am like you? It’s a rhetorical question, or at least it should be. The one who “offers praise as a sacrifice,” says God, “glorifies me” (Psalm 50:21).

God is referring to the one who offers praise as a sacrifice always and everywhere, regardless of fortune or circumstance. This is what means to be obedient to God at its most fundamental. This is what it means to be upright and see the salvation of God.

What is the salvation of God? Well, it isn’t a what but a who: Jesus Christ. The reward for following Christ is Christ. He is the end for whom we strive and not a mere means to any other end.

Today our country observes a day in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is a day we recognize the importance of human rights. The very concept of human rights arises from the deeply Christian understanding that each person is an image-bearer of God.

Those who struggled long and hard for racial equality and succeeded did so non-violently. Non-violence requires much more courage than violence. Most of those who undertook this struggle were able to do so because of their deep faith in Christ. They were able to trust Him as they took the slings and arrows that came with their fight for justice. As the late John Lewis, a protégé of both Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy urged those who engage in action for justice:

Release all bitterness. Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won

God loves your enemy and so should you. Easier said than done!

In his Letter to the Ephesians, written as he made his way to Rome to be martyred, Saint Ignatius of Antioch insisted:

These are the beginning and the end of life: faith the beginning, love the end. When these two are found together, there is God, and everything else concerning right living follows from them

For those who are are now Candidates for full communion, let the joy of the Lord be your strength (Nehemiah 8:10). Learn God’s love poured out for you in the life, death, and resurrection of His Only Begotten Son. Open yourselves to the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life. This will allow Christ to bring about something new in and through you.

John Robert Lewis on MLK Day

Sadly, this year Martin Luther King/Human Rights Day needs much more emphasis than any time in the recent past. Hence, I turn to one of my political heroes, John Lewis. In a 2018 interview with Vann R. Newkirk, II for the The Atlantic's issue on Dr. King commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination, Lewis humorously noted that Dr. King, from their first meeting, always called him "The boy from Troy." In this interview, Lewis spoke opening of Dr. King's influence on him.

Lewis, of course, went on to work for and closely w/ RFK (another of my political heroes) and then have his own distinguished political career. Referring to where his lifelong mission began, he remembered that "... in 1955, at 15 years old, I heard of Dr. King, and I heard of Rosa Parks. They inspired me to get in trouble." This what John Robert Lewis, elder statesman, would call "good trouble," which is not trouble for trouble's sake. Rather, it's standing up for what is right, good, and just in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. This what Fr Gutierrez dubbed has having hope.

In the photo, a young John Lewis is on the end of the row on the right