Father Matthew Wiering Podcast

3/24/19: 3rd Sunday of Lent: Allowing Ourselves to be Consumed by God's Love

How do we receive Jesus's urgent plea for us to repent? Do we receive it with indifference or even irritation? Or will we recognize our need for a Savior and welcome Him? Sometimes we might feel like giving our lives totally to God may make us lose something of what makes life interesting or beautiful. That if we allow God to do what He wants with us we will be less ourselves. This is where the image of the burning bush from the first reading is so helpful. The bush is consumed but not destroyed. So it is with us when we allow ourselves to be consumed by the fire of God's love: What is not truly us is burnt off, and we become more perfectly ourselves.

3/17/19: 2nd Sunday of Lent: Should We Have Faith in the Church?

The Book of Hebrews says that Abraham believed because "he thought that the one who had made the promise was trustworthy" (11:11). Our "father in faith" Abraham teaches us in this was that we can trust in the promises God makes to us because of the trustworthiness of the One making the promises. One of the promises that Jesus makes to us is that he will remain with and protect the Church forever: "The gates of hell will not prevail over her" (Matthew 16:18). In spite of terrible scandals, disappointment, and confusion, can we believe in the One who makes the promises? To put our faith in the Catholic Church is not to put our faith in human beings (who are always fragile and weak) but rather in God, who has bound himself to the Church for 2000 years and will do so for another 2000.

3/10/19: 1st Sunday of Lent: The Importance of the Trials and Temptations of Life

Jesus's being led into the trial of the desert where he faced temptation shed light on our own experience of the tests of our life, especially as we realize that it was the Holy Spirit that drives Jesus there. It is God's will for Jesus that he be tested: Both as a proof of Jesus's strength and virtue but also as a preparation for his battling Satan throughout his life. So it is for us and our own tests and trials in life.

3/6/19: Ash Wednesday: The Remedy for our Worldly Attachments

In today's Gospel for Ash Wednesday, we hear Jesus talk about prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. The Church puts this Gospel before us to invite us to focus on these three things during Lent. For what purpose? Because we human beings get so easily attached to things. So the Church proposes almsgiving as the remedy for our attachment to money and material wealth; prayer (time given to God) as the remedy for our attachment to our time and schedule; fasting as the remedy for our attachment to food, drink, and sensual pleasures.

3/3/19: 8th Sunday in Ordinary Time: What Jesus can Tell us about Facebook and Oprah

Today we hear more from Jesus's challenging teaching in the Gospel of Luke, especially surrounding who will allow to guide us spiritually and what our words reveal about our hearts. Jesus gives us a good examination of conscience as we head into the Lenten season!

2/24/19: Jesus Comes to Order the Disorder

I am away this Sunday but sharing a talk I recently gave for a Catholic men's breakfast in New Ulm. In this talk we go through the stories of the creation and the fall in Genesis and examine the question of who really is at fault for the original sin of Adam and Eve. We close by seeing how Jesus comes to undo the damage done in the garden and thus to order the disorder sin causes in our lives.

2/17/19: 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time: A Blessing to be Poor?

In today's Gospel we have a very challenging teaching from Jesus in which he says, "Blessed are you who are poor..." And then a little later he says, "Woe to you who are rich..." This is precisely the opposite of how we are accustomed to thinking about poverty and wealth. We think that wealth is a sign of blessing, and we make it -- or at least being comfortable -- a priority in our life. So how do we wrap our mind around what Jesus is saying here? And how do we strive to live this challenging word?

2/10/19: 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Letting Jesus into our Boat

Today we have as our Gospel the powerful story of the call of Simon Peter. He lets Jesus into his boat and lets Jesus take him deeper. Jesus gives him a mission after Peter confesses his unworthiness. This is our story too... if we let Jesus into our boat!

2/3/19: 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Whether We Suffer or Not We Live Under God's Protection

In today's Gospel we have a very dramatic scene where Jesus's fellow townspeople listening to him at the Nazareth synagogue are initially delighted with his words and then very quickly filled with violent rage towards him. The other place where we see this sudden "flip" in feeling toward Jesus is on Palm Sunday, when the crowds initially sing hymns and lay down palms for Jesus as he enters Jerusalem and then one day later are clamoring for his death. The climax of today's Gospel sees Jesus escape unharmed from the violent crowd while three years later he would surrender himself, suffer the violence, and die. So was the Father protecting Jesus today but not during his Passion? Why not the suffering today and why the suffering in three years? These questions regarding the life of Jesus prompt questions regarding our own lives and the lives of our loved ones: Why does God shield us from suffering only to allow suffering at a different time?

1/27/19: 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time: What the Baptism of Jesus Has to Do with Us

In today's Gospel, Jesus reveals himself to be the "anointed" one, or, literally in Greek, the "Christ". Jesus's anointing was manifested at his baptism, when the Holy Spirit descended upon in the form of a dove. This is what is signified when we are anointed with Chrism at our baptism: the truth that the Holy Spirit has descended upon us, making us a "Christian": another Christ. So Christ's mission that he receives at his anointing as priest, prophet and king he shares with us when we are baptized. How do we live this mission in our daily lives?