Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXIX per Annum C

20 October 2019

 This weekend I am going to continue reflections on the state of things in the Church and in the world, motivated by the recent abuse report from our Archdiocese.  The sinful and criminal scourge of sexual abuse together with the moral rot within so much of our leadership that has contributed to failures in handling abuse is a subject that I think we simply must talk about and it cannot be swept under the rug.  I think it is also owed to you to hear words on this from a priest.  Given the realities of disorder and immorality in our society and within the Church I do NOT, sadly, anticipate that this will be the last time we have to reflect upon this topic.  But I do hope that a new level of transparency is happening now, which can only bode well for the witness the Church can give to our world such that other institutions and groups might be driven to more transparently address abuse where we know it also takes place in the secular world.  In God’s Providence, His Sacred Word in the scripture selections this weekend seems quite appropriate for the pulse I sense in our community.  In particular, I find great consolation in the Old Testament (first reading) image of fraternal support and intercessory prayer: Moses having help holding up the staff to gain victory for God’s people.  And I find consolation in considering the new staff of God, that is the Cross of Jesus, by which on the hill of Calvary his arms are outstretched to gain us the ultimate victory of salvation.  And then the perfect Gospel for us today.  Maybe I shouldn’t assume to attribute this to you as a group, but I know this Gospel speaks to me: Jesus gives his disciples a parable “about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary.”

Thank you, Lord!  That’s just the message I needed to hear right now because weariness I think describes my general sentiment.  Maybe that resonates with you too.  All week I have been reflecting upon weariness and trying to notice how weariness is just sort of hanging in the air.  The original Greek in this passage that we translate in English as “weary” has a rich variety of meaning.  It refers to what can happen when we are in a bad situation, when we are immersed in suffering or in evil.  The literal root of the word refers to the tendency to faint or to turn coward when being “in evil.”  The connotation of the word in this use carries the sense of being disappointed, or losing heart, or growing weary when we suffer evil.  Now, to be clear, I am not at all suggesting that there isn’t joy in daily living or that there aren’t so many good things that take place over the course of a day.  However, when I stop to think and to reflect upon the state of affairs in our world, both the secular world outside and the state of affairs inside the Church, I think I notice a sense of being fatigued, of being dissatisfied, and being impatient.  Maybe I’m not the only one.

Looking at the broader secular world things seem more and more unhinged from truth and reality.  And more to the point, the velocity with which we have become unhinged seems to have increased exponentially.  I suggest that our political discourse in the United States can serve as the magnifying glass to see the dissolution in our secular world.  Looking into that magnifying glass I think we see a fanatical blood lust for abortion on demand, that seems like its own evil, distinct from the fact of the evil of abortion itself.  I think we also see a rapid rise in the tyranny of the transgender movement which, frankly, just looks like complete chaos.  Switching gears now to look to the Church, I don’t think we can just assume that life within the Church is our little safe haven because disorder and chaos mark the Church too, at least in her human membership.  More and more I hear from so many Catholics who are disturbed by the confusing decisions, documents, and actions that come even from the Vatican.  There is a Synod of bishops going on currently in Rome and it, like the couple of previous synods in the last few years, seems determined to sew confusion even in already settled matters of doctrine and in long-standing disciplines.  We look to our bishops, but so many seem to be lacking real apostolic courage to proclaim authentic Catholic faith when it might cost them popularity among people or among fellow bishops, or even higher ups in Rome.  How much do they need to hear today’s second reading from St. Paul: “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, … proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient.”  Added to all this is the great sadness of the abuse scandal and the complete loss of trust it carries with it.  I’m not going to burden us with any more observations than these few examples.  Again, maybe it is just me, but I know I need to hear the divine command to not grow weary, to not become a coward, to not despair.  Rather, we pray always and await God to secure the rights of His chosen ones and to do justice speedily.

 So what do we do?  What can we do here?  First of all, our turbulent times outside and inside the Church are a painful but important lesson that our firm and lasting foundation given to us by Jesus is Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture.  Our only answer and solution to the problems in society and in the Church is to be more deeply immersed in authentic Catholic Tradition.  That Tradition is the full deposit of God’s Word to us and contains the spoken, oral teaching and discipline of the Apostles and that privileged portion of oral teaching written down in the Sacred Scriptures.  To be immersed in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition gives us an anchor and a firm foundation that does not move even though the winds of chaos batter us.  Secondly, taking the lesson from today’s Gospel, we must be persistent in prayer and not give in to weariness.  You and I want our prayers answered right away, correct?  I have some sobering news for us.  Notice that final line of today’s Gospel?  Jesus said, “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”  I hate to have to tell you this but that seems to frame Jesus’ teaching in this Gospel in the terms of the end times, meaning that Jesus is saying the justice and the vindication that will speedily come from God is in reference to the final judgment.  In other words, he does not mean that we should expect our prayers to bring a speedy resolution of earthly injustice.  And not, sadly, on our timeline.  So, we must be determined to pray and to be persistent and to not become weary of the events of our times.  I promised you some guidance in our prayer response in light of our local abuse report.  (1) I suggest that we invoke the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph in our prayers, with a specific focus of having before our eyes authentic feminine and masculine examples of discipleship.  The daily Rosary is clearly a great prayer to adopt.  (2) I suggest that we make time to be committed to be before the Lord in our Adoration Chapel and to make every effort to incorporate adoration into our spiritual life.  To be there simply before the Lord who is present.  To raise to him all the concerns that rise up in our hearts.  And to have ourselves prepared to receive from his open Heart the gift of merciful love that flows so abundantly from that Divine Heart.  (3) I suggest that you consider how you might make attendance at daily Mass possible.  To be more regularly, frequently, nourished by the Sacred Scriptures proclaimed at Mass and to receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the Lord more regularly strengthens us in battle.  And, finally, (4) something we will do together is that on the first three Wednesdays of November we will move the daily Mass into the main church and we will offer those Masses in particular for reparation for the sin of abuse and for the healing of victims.  As you responded so enthusiastically to this last year, I hope you will make the effort to join together on those first three Wednesdays of November for the evening daily Mass held here in the main church.

  In the first reading, God’s people were victorious against a fierce enemy while Moses held his arms aloft with the staff of God.  Moses was not alone.  He had the help of others to raise the staff.  That gives us an early example of intercessory prayer and the value of coming together in mutual support and prayer.  My friends, the new staff of God is the Cross of Jesus, where his arms are spread out for our salvation.  The psalm today tells us we lift our eyes toward the mountain whence shall come our help.  Lifting our eyes to the mountain and to the Cross is precisely what we do sacramentally at the Holy Mass.  In the raised sanctuary, like the Hill of Calvary, we set our eyes upon the ultimate victory of God, both the crucifixion by which the debt of sin is paid, and upon the resurrected flesh of Jesus Christ given to us in Holy Communion to aid our weariness!  If exhaustion, loss of trust, and loss of hope wage war upon you then hear the Gospel remind you how much more the just Judge will respond to our persistent prayers.

In the face of so many challenges both in secular culture and in the Church, and in places far away and also near, what you and I can do is to live the orthodox Catholic faith in the only place that matters for us: Here and now… in the family, the domestic Church; in the witness of our lives out in our small segment of the world, at work, at school, in our neighborhood, in gatherings of friends; and in this parish.  This is our sphere of influence.  This is where we are called to pray always and to help one another when we grow weary.  This is the place where the lives of the saints – YOU –  these saints are made!  That “book,” we might call it, of local holiness is the answer to present crisis and it needs to be written upon the pages of our very lives.  Gods gives us the grace – the “ink,” so to speak – to write that story.  God the Father’s answer to this fallen world is Jesus Christ.  But we must never forget that by faith and baptism we have been made members of the Body of Christ.  And so, it is up to you and to me to respond to God’s gifts and to be disciplined and zealous in our cooperation with His grace so that we become more and more the living image of Christ in our broken world.

Audio: Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In his homily for this Sunday, Fr. Stephen Hamilton once again reflects upon the state of the Church in light of the recent clergy abuse report released by the archdiocese.

Reading 1 EX 17:8-13
Responsorial Psalm PS 121:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8
Reading 2 2 TM 3:14-4:2
Alleluia HEB 4:12
Gospel LK 18:1-8

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Fr. Stephen Hamilton

Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXVIII per Annum C

13 October 2019

 Once we get past Labor Day one presumes most people have settled back into a regular routine with a new academic year under way at schools and a new formation year in full swing at the parish.  Parish programming running full-steam means the parish budget sees a dramatic uptick in expenses.  And this is also a time of year when we have the joy of seeing and greeting new faces who have recently joined the parish.  For all of these reasons it is a fairly common practice in parishes in the early fall to address stewardship, a time to reflect upon and to renew our call to sacrificial giving and our use of time, talent, and treasure.  Stewardship is one of the foundational practices of a disciple who believes in Jesus and who believes what the words mean to say that Jesus is the master of my life.  I previously told you that I would be specifically addressing parish finances and last month I had set this weekend for that talk.  But the recent release of the investigative report of abuse allegations in our archdiocese causes me to conclude that it would be more prudent for me to delay that talk for a few more weeks as we each wrestle with our reactions and pray about our response to that report.  Since it is helpful for current and new parishioners who do not know about or use our electronic giving program, Faith Direct, we are still doing a normal fall promotion of Faith Direct.  Faith Direct materials can be found in the narthex and an invitation will be coming to you by email.  But my more detailed treatment of parish finances and our common responsibility for sacrificial giving will wait until at least next month.  Together with that delay, and as I organized last year, I want you to know that I am taking time to pray and to consider parish opportunities for prayer and penance as our spiritual response to our local report.         

 I think the Gospel selection today teaches us a basic principle for life that applies equally to our spiritual life with God.  That lesson is a two-fold awareness: First, the awareness of ourselves and our afflictions.  And, secondly, the awareness of what God is doing in us.  One of the challenges of modern life marked by its frenetic pace, noise, and interruptions is that we can be easily swept along in daily living with little discipline to spend time in reflection and prayer.  The result is that we can tend to be rather numb and unaware of what stirs within us, the good and the bad.  My friends, we aren’t meant to be machines.  We are a unity of body and soul, mind and heart, reason and faith.  Emphasize the one to the exclusion of the other and you aren’t living a fully human life.  How easily and frequently we bury our faces in the backlit screen of a phone or other device, I think, serves as the sign for how easily we can be swept up in distractions that make us less aware of all that stirs in us.  Distraction is one thing; but the result is my main concern as a pastor.  The result is loss of self-awareness and awareness about God’s work with us and in us.  The Gospel shows us how important this basic principle of awareness is.

I can recall events of life when I have wondered why did I react to a given situation in the way I did?  And I have been surprised upon deeper reflection to realize that my reaction was less about the facts of the given situation and more about something else under the surface.  I can recall times of life when, much to my surprise, I came to realize that something like fear or shame or sadness was the deeper reality that explained my surface reactions.  Maybe you would agree that it is generally better overall health and functioning to be aware of what stirs inside you.  But I suggest there is a still more important reason for awareness than just overall health.  And that reason is because awareness impacts our relationship with God, our admitting the truth of what we each bring to the relationship with God.  And it impacts our ability to notice what God is doing in us.

 I’ll give a couple of examples from my own experience.  It took me years to finally notice and admit anger with God about some experiences of life.  I wondered why my prayer seemed dry or why God seemed distant.  I was tempted to believe He wasn’t there for me, wasn’t there in my attempts to pray.  Imagine my surprise when I realized that God was waiting for me where the anger was.  In other words, it was really I who was not authentically there in prayer.  God was at the place where I really was, where I needed to be… but I had to be aware and admit and go to the anger to find Him.  Another example from just a few years ago was when the priests of the archdiocese were gathered to learn about how we would each run the recent archdiocesan capital campaign in our parishes.  In that gathering, I asked some rather pointed questions, with just enough edginess, that unwittingly I became branded as “the opposition.”  But you know what I realized upon further self-reflection?  My reaction was really fear, more than it was any opposition to the campaign strategy or to the things the campaign would support.  I was afraid to have to directly ask someone for money.  I was afraid of rejection.  I was afraid of having to rely on someone else and to appear needy.  And going still deeper I had to admit it made me insecure, and I don’t like that.  And that is where this awareness took a particularly important spiritual turn.  I had to ask myself, so where do I place my security?  And I had to notice that I wasn’t placing my security in God.  You see, if I know and trust that God is my security then I can both have or not have money or resources and all will be well.  If I have God as my security then I can both give money and resources to others, or receive money and resources from others and its okay.  If I know and trust that God is my security then I can ask someone else for a pledge gift and whether they say yes or no, my security doesn’t change because it is in God and not in a person’s response to the request.  Learning the value of awareness has been for me not only a good life lesson for natural health; it has been a powerful lesson about spiritual health because awareness permits me to be honest, sincere, real, and authentic in my relationship with God.  That in turn helps me take note of what God is doing in me and to then be able to make a response to Him.

 I suggest awareness is a valuable lesson for us from the Gospel today.  It is really quite simple but profound.  It’s a lesson that is easy to miss in the scene with the lepers.  But listen again.  “As [Jesus] was entering a village, ten lepers met him,… saying ‘Jesus, Master!  Have pity on us!’  And when he saw them, he said, ‘Go show yourselves to the priests.’  As they were going they were cleansed.  And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God… and fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.”  Only one of them realized.  It’s the lesson of awareness.  And it had a direct impact on the healed leper’s relationship with God because that awareness led him back to Jesus in a posture of worship (he fell at his feet) and in gratitude.  Leprosy is a clear affliction, a disease.  But the truth is we each have and carry afflictions, both physical and spiritual, some obvious and public, like leprosy would be; others, more subtle or hidden.  Perhaps it is those hidden spiritual diseases that are even more dangerous than something like an obvious physical disease.  I say, “more dangerous,” because we can remain unaware of hidden disease, or we can simply hide it, leaving it unconfessed and unaddressed.  Is our awareness of our afflictions and awareness of what God is doing in us a critical lesson with spiritual implications?  I think so.  I think the Gospel shows us just how much is riding on awareness.  The passage doesn’t tell us everything that happened with the other nine healed lepers.  We know they were physically healed.  But what about deeper healing in their relationship with God?  What about the deeper matter of their salvation?  Can we know anything about that?  I think we can.  For only one of the ten – the one who was aware and realized – heard these words: “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”        

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXVII per Annum C

6 October 2019

In today’s Gospel selection, the apostles have some private time with the Lord on the extended journey to Jerusalem and in the context of the many difficult and challenging parables we have been hearing from this section of St. Luke for many weeks now.  The apostles say to Jesus something that I bet could easily be the prayer each of us makes to Jesus: “Increase our faith.”

God is so very good and so very good in the mysterious ways He operates, even when His ways are inconvenient to our way of thinking and far from ideal in our desire to control our lives and our own surroundings.  Time and again I have to say, God is so good to us and to what we truly need to grow in this life and to arrive at Heaven!  I try to give a lot of attention to my preaching by prayer, study, and preparation.  I usually need at least all week to do this.  But late this week on Thursday the long-awaited independent report of clergy abuse and the critique of the handling of abuse in our archdiocese from 1960 to the present was finally released.  I feel compelled to speak to you about it this weekend.  But I have had only a few hours and not all week to prepare for this.  The report is a devastating topic about real victims whose lives and whose faith are severely harmed.  The report is about local people.  The report includes some people I respect and trust.  The report has me shocked and furious.  Given all this and given only a few hours to switch gears to talk about this before you, what kind of crazy man am I to say “God is so good to us?”  Because as I began reflecting on our local report and noticing my own internal reactions my eyes fell again, but in a new way, on those words to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”  God is good to us because in His mysterious Providence things have happened such that we have this devastating report together with the messages of this weekend’s Scripture selections from His word to us!

Lord, increase our faith, we beg you!  Listen to how perfect these words are for us at this time.  Back up a few verses and see how this passage begins, the setting of these words.  Jesus said to them, “Temptations and sin are sure to come; but woe to him by whom they come!  It would be better for him if a millstone were hung round his neck and he were cast into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin” (Lk. 17:1-2).  Jesus goes on to tell the apostles to rebuke sinners and to forgive them if they repent.  To all this the apostles beg, “Increase our faith!”

But what is the precise meaning of this request?  What kind of faith do the apostles reference?  “Faith” is typically understood or treated in two broad categories.  There is the objective content of what is believed.  We might call this the intellectual “stuff” of faith.  I suggest that is most likely typically the meaning you and I immediately have when we speak of having faith.  But there is also the subjective dimension of the word “faith,” meaning the personal adherence by the one who believes.  We might call this the trust of the believer, that deeper movement beyond what I believe that aids my having trust in the one in whom I believe.  The Greek word for “faith” in the Scripture carries both these dimensions and we should stop to consider that because I suspect that in English we often hear and use the word “faith” in mostly the first dimension of the intellectual content of what is believed.  Given this notion of trust that is also part of the concept of faith I want to reflect with you on the apostles request and make it our own: Lord, increase our faith.  Lord, increase our trust!  Like the original setting of this apostolic prayer, we are rocked and unsettled by scandal, by crime, and by sin.  We know the content of the faith tells us of the reality of sin and the reality of God’s power to heal it.  We know we ourselves must receive mercy and forgiveness for our sins.  And we too wrestle with that uncomfortable challenge to be people of mercy who forgive when a sinner repents.  Can we not easily also cry out, “Lord, increase our faith?!”

 As we each pray for an increase in a trusting faith in this difficult time I want to make some observations about the Independent Investigation that our Archdiocese commissioned into the instances of abuse and the method of handling abuse locally.

First, I want to say again and unequivocally, that focus, care, support, and prayers needs to always first be given to victims.  Nothing can undo the harm done to them.  But the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus bring for them too healing and new life, as it does for all of us in whatever wounds we carry.

This investigation was commissioned in August 2018 with the indication that its results would be published in a few months.  More than a year later, I think we can see and understand now why the report took so long… because it was so extensive and thorough... and because there were serious complications along the way.  The Archdiocese gave unprecedented access to files and every time the independent law firm came across an allegation they had to pursue it as far as it could go.  This took much more time than anticipated.

Last year at this time I said in a homily that I hoped we could just get everything out at once and stop the piecemeal release of things that prolongs this ordeal and makes it like a wound that never seems to heal.  I think our Archdiocese’s report goes a long way to that goal.  There will be more to come as earlier time periods are also investigated.  But as difficult as this is, we can have confidence that we are on the path of the unvarnished truth.  We cannot draw back from or fear the truth.  The commitment to transparency and accountability in this report is remarkable.  The Archdiocese is choosing truth over secrecy, even when the truth shows us in a poor light and reveals ongoing systemic failures in our leadership.  If you are like me you may desperately want to believe that our local report stands out among other dioceses for its scope and transparency.  Let me assure you that is true.  There is an international organization called SNAP, which stands for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.  You can imagine that there is usually some tension and high criticism of the Church from SNAP, and with good reason.  In Friday’s article on our report in the Oklahoman newspaper there was one such critical quote from a SNAP national board member.  So imagine my surprise when later in the day I came across an online religion journal [“Audits of Oklahoma dioceses identify 22 accused clerics,” Crux, 4 October 2019, by Sean Murphy, https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2019/10/04/audits-of-oklahoma-dioceses-identify-22-accused-clerics/] that ran a story about the report from both Oklahoma dioceses and in that story a man identified as the Executive Director of SNAP USA had some unheard of positive commentary to make about the Archdiocese’s unprecedented reporting.  I think you need to hear this.  I of course really wanted to believe that people like SNAP who follow all of this reporting around the world truly had complimentary things to say about what we did here.  But, I’m gun shy to say things I really don’t have firsthand knowledge of.  So, I got a sort of wild idea.  I did a Google search and I called up the Executive Director of SNAP USA, Mr. Zach Hiner.  He answered the phone and I identified myself as a priest of this archdiocese.  We had a very pleasant conversation in which I asked him to confirm for me what SNAP has to say about the OKC report.  Obviously, the matter of the report is criminal and sinful, devastating and damning, and disturbing in the revelation of systemic failures in record keeping and the loss and destruction of records.  But Mr. Hiner was incredibly positive and effusive in his praise of the report the Archdiocese freely commissioned here.  He has read countless reports from dioceses about abuse allegations.  He says they mostly offer a list of names of the accused, dates of ordination, date of removal from ministry, current whereabouts of the accused, and date of death if deceased.  He said rarely is there ever even a bit of information about the particulars of the accusation.  Mr. Hiner said if all we did here was offer a bit of additional information that would have already been noteworthy.  But that we permitted such depth of investigating, with details about the accusations including timelines, and information about the internal handlings of accusations and accused priests… this, he said, is something he has never seen in any report.  He went on to say that the fact our local leadership actually “got out of the way” – his words! – and let outside investigators see it all, even while knowing it would reflect poorly on our personnel and on our procedures, but that we did it anyway is noteworthy and incredible.  For as ugly as the report’s findings are Mr. Hiner says he sees in the actions of our local leadership in this matter real signs of the tenor of things in our local Church by which we get the problem and are committed to the transparency that will truly address abuse and seek to ensure that it does not happen again.  He thanked me for wanting to make sure I had accurate information to share with you about how SNAP views our report and he thanked me for taking the time to call and make sure I had good information.  I thanked him for giving me his time and being willing to talk to me.  Oddly enough, in God’s mysterious ways, my conversation with the Executive Director of SNAP was one of the more positive highlights of my last few days.

I invite you to go to the website of the Archdiocese and follow links to the report and to related information about the topic.  The Archdiocese has made some graphs that can be helpful as we each wrestle with the reality of abuse.  In the current report the files of all priests who were active in our archdiocese from 1960 until the present were investigated.  This represents about 545 priests.  Of those 545 priests, 11 were found to have substantiated allegations of abuse, which is about 2% of the priests represented in the report, with the most recent instances of substantiated abuse taking place in the 1990s, but none substantiated since that decade.  Without minimizing the real harm that 2% represents we should note that our Safe Environment protocols are working and that our environment in the Church is safer now than ever.  We can sometimes be frustrated on the parish level with all the paperwork and what seems like hassle to undertake background checks and Safe Environment training.  But given the reality of abuse and the reality of how improved things are because of our protocols we should recommit ourselves to these procedures, if for no other reason than to honor the victims from earlier decades who did not benefit from this vigilance from the Church they trusted.

 Perhaps by this point in history we are not as shocked as we once were by the notion that even a priest could be a horrifically evil sinner and a disgusting criminal who engaged in the abuse of a soul in his charge.  Maybe what is more shocking to us now is to learn of the failures of Church officials as we see their mishandling of abuse allegations revealed.  Maybe we are each different in what shocks us most depending on our personal circumstances and life experiences.  Whatever the case, and admitting my own deep disappointment and sadness at seeing on display the failures of leaders I held in esteem, we do have to be rather sober in our application of present-day understanding and standards regarding abuse to the actions of those in the past as they attempted to handle abuse.  That in no way absolves their abysmal failures because in instances of clear patterns of repeated abuse by the same cleric they should have been better in their handling of matters.  But being sober in our application of present standards to past activities can help temper our reaction since the truth of the past is more complicated than our feelings are usually ready to admit.

However our understanding of abuse and standards of handling abuse allegations may have evolved over time, especially in the last few decades, we are now without excuse in how we address this and handle it.  It is my enduring hope that the unprecedented depth of this report can permit us to go to the very core of this ugly wound in our Church and in our world.  Just as a doctor or nurse has to go right to a wound, into its ugliness and pain, to scrub it, clean it, and treat it…. the pain of treating a wound is accepted and embraced with the view of the healing that this leads to.  It is my hope that our opening of this wound in our Church is just such a beginning toward an equally unprecedented healing of this scourge.

And so, rocked and stunned, unsure, and angry we can only cry out to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”  Increase our trust!  We will be tempted to adopt the attitude found in the words of the first reading, “How long, O Lord?  I cry for help but you do not listen!  I cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not intervene.  Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?”  I can assure you that in our prayer, individually and collectively, if we are honest and sincere in surfacing the truth of our feelings and raising them to the Lord in all their raw woundedness, that we will find healing, renewed peace, and strength to be Jesus’ disciples.  The key will be also noticing that tendency of the human heart to shut down.  And so the psalm today is a good reminder as we pray for victims of abuse, as we pray for purification of our beloved Church, and as we beg of the Lord for increased faith.  The psalm said, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”  Lord, we are nothing but unprofitable, unworthy servants.  We beg you, increase our faith!  Increase our trust!