Toledo Deacon

St. John of the Cross said, “God’s first language is silence.” Remember, that the Word of God, Jesus, was with his Father and the Holy Spirit in silence before God ever said the words, “Let there be light.”

The week of love is upon us. As you know, this week we have St. Valentine's Day as well as World Marriage Day. If ever there was a perfect time for a message of love, this week is it. So for this week of love, what does the Church give its preachers to work with? ... Two readings about leprosy ... Apparently, nothing says "I love you" quite like leprosy. The truth is, in today’s Gospel reading about the man with leprosy, we can discover a great message of love: Jesus fully knows us and fully loves us. This is the deepest desire of our hearts, to be fully known and fully loved. Like Jesus, I have a sweet spot in my heart for the man with leprosy. He’s someone I can identify with. You see, in my family when we gather for prayers at bedtime, all the kids cuddle with my wife, Julie, on her side of the bed, since she is the cuddly one, and I am left all by my lonesome on my side of the bed. Sometimes they jokingly say it looks like I am on leper island, because I am completely removed from where all

Has there ever been a time in your life where you felt like you just weren’t good enough? Maybe it was when you weren’t picked for a team at school or were bullied or it could have been when you were really into a special girl or a guy, but they just weren’t that into you. Maybe it was when you weren’t accepted into your top choice college or when you didn’t get that dream job. Whatever the situation was, chances are each of us has had a time in our lives when we felt like we just weren’t good enough. That time in our lives could be now or it could have been a long time ago and we’re still left with a residual feeling that we just aren’t good enough. If we understand the background of what the first four disciples went through leading up to Jesus calling them in today’s Gospel, we would understand that before they encountered Jesus, they probably felt like they just weren’t good enough. You see, as Jewish boys during the time when Jesus walked the earth, Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John would have go

Here it is the darkest week of the year outside, but light and joy are all around us inside. In today’s Gospel, John the Baptist testified about Jesus being the light and words of joy were scattered throughout the other readings. To represent this joy, we see the rose-colored candle on the Advent wreath lit. It may also bring some of you joy to see the priest and deacon wearing what some might describe as pink dresses. Sorry, Fr. Jeremy, I mean rose-colored vestments; real men wear rose, right? All this focus on light and joy may seem puzzling with Thursday being the darkest day of the year when the earth is tilted furthest away from the sun. But our light and joy don’t come from the earth’s tilt toward the sun of the sky. Our light and joy come from tilting our lives toward the Son of God.The path to true joy begins with making room in the inn of our hearts to fully welcome Jesus. God made each of us with room in our hearts perfectly sized to be the dwelling place for Jesus. The problem is we tend

Do we care more about looking good or do we care more about doing good? The two groups in today’s Gospel, cared more about looking good in front of their peers than doing good for God who was right in front of them. These two groups aimed to ask Jesus a controversial question that would make Jesus look bad so they could look good. Before they ask the question of Jesus, they first try buttering Him up with compliments. One compliment they give Jesus is that He doesn’t care about looking good in front of the people. Once they’ve buttered Jesus up with flattery, they ask Him the controversial question. To pay the tax or not to pay the tax, that was the controversial question the Pharisees and the Herodians asked Jesus. Both of these groups viewed Jesus as troublesome and they thought that if they could get Jesus to publicly answer this controversial question, it would be Jesus’ downfall at the hands of whichever group Jesus sided against with His answer. By answering the question, they thought Jesus wo

Matthew 18:21-35The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.Then Peter approaching asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times. That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt. At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’ Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan. When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ Falling to his knees, his fellow servant