The gospel reading does not refer to a domestic scenes with children, flowers in a field or bread rising in an oven. Nor does it revel in pastures with sheep or wheat ripe for harvest. Rather, we hear an account of the Passion of Christ and, like sailors on an aircraft carrier, we can’t ignore the deafening rumble of war...
Occasionally, I am asked to join in on meetings with young men who are discerning a call to the priesthood. I admire these young fellows very much. In a society that exalts status, achievement and self-satisfaction, they dare to scan the horizon and seek the road to virtues like fortitude, resilience and self-sacrifice...
Naming an animal is a way of claiming that creature as your own. It is also a way of indicating to others, the quality and nature of your relationship with that creature. Sometimes, this can get a bit touchy, as I discovered when I took my horse to a veterinarian for blood tests a couple weeks ago...
Time and again I’ve called to hospital rooms, not to attend to a body, but to commend a soul into the hands of God and have experienced a mysterious Presence...
"Sun and moon, bless the Lord! Stars of heaven, bless the Lord! Fire and heat, bless the Lord! All you winds, bless the Lord! Cold and chill, bless the Lord!" I love praying these verses in winter time, standing by my wood pellet stove, sipping a cup of coffee as the house warms up. Yes! Fire and heat, bless the Lord!
I took down my Christmas decorations last week. My neighbors are glad that the lights on my porch won’t clash with the Valentine Day balloons on their theirs. The older I get the more contrary I become. I take pleasure in the thought of people shaking their heads when they drive by my house all a-glow on the night of Martin Luther King Day...
Farming used to be a way of life and a school of virtue for society. Pope Pius XII once said that "the moral recovery of a nation depends on the steadfast faith and social integrity of the tillers of the soil..."
I joined a team of search and rescue volunteers at Caprock Canyons State Park. I thought the job would entail rescuing hikers who ran out of water or tourists who cozied up too close to the bison herd (which, for some reason, tend to think they own the place). Little did I suspect that the Search and Rescue Team would be searching for run-away horses.
Songs about ranch hands and horses blared from the dash of my pickup when I drove to Texas twenty years ago. The Amarillo Diocese needed priests and I needed land to raise cows and break colts. God answered my prayers...
On the way to Mass at the Mission of Mt. Carmel, I am greeted by the face of Our Lady of Guadalupe peering from a large mural painted on a gas station wall. Poised at an angle above the gas pumps and a delivery truck, her blue veil and gentle smile warms the morning air. As always happens when I behold this image of Our Lady, the words she spoke to St. Juan Diego echo in my soul, “I am your mother. Am I not your mother?”
The road to El Paso pushes through an arid region of tall yucca and thin grass. South of Carlsbad, a mountain range sawtooths the horizon like the snarl of an angry dog. The vast expanse is brown and brittle, a land of cactus and serpents. I arrive at the migrant shelter after dark...
It is my road trip home after a summer in a Midwest spiritual boot camp for diocesan seminarians. For 10 weeks, I have studied, pondered, and conversed with others about the spiritual life of a diocesan priest. We focused on the spousal elements of celibacy, the joys and demands of spiritual fatherhood, and the need to be a contemplative in action. The content was rich and life-giving, but I still feel there is something missing...
When I was young, wearing shoes in summer was a luxury reserved for Sunday Mass. No shoes? No problem! Except when my father needed help sorting calves in the stables. “It’s good fertilizer,” he’d say. “It’ll make you grow." Now that I’m retired, I’ve reverted to going shoeless much of the time. Not only that, my house is part of a barn...
The young man who pulled up to my house needed a place to bunk. He wore long hair, sunglasses and a tank top. His beat-up car was crammed—dashboard to hatchback— with clothes, boots, sleeping bags, coolers and a Coleman stove...
I pound the last tent stake into the hardpan and toss the rock-turned-hammer down the hill. I pull a knife and a jar of peanut butter from my bag. Digging into the golden spread, I realize that I’m the one being carved—cut and chiseled—by the beauty that surrounds me...
From a distance, the cloth patch on my shirt—vaunting the Lone Star of Texas—looks like a badge. The two-way radio on my belt commands respect. Mounted on my steed with a Stetson pulled low over my brow, I’m tempted to introduce myself as Fr. Walker, Texas Ranger...
It was a day of packing straw in a barn. On the fifth load, one of the bales broke and sprayed slabs of straw across the mow. My great-nephew, Patrick, kicked the hunks on the backs of Holsteins in the stable below...
I am sitting on the shore of the Sea of Galilee a month after being ordained a transitional deacon. Beneath my bare feet, under the surface of the blue-green water, lie black stones an arm’s throw from the house of the Rock’s mother-in-law. The grey hills surround the lake like the sides of a baptismal font in the hazy noonday heat...
