Love Speaks: The Podcast

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Here’s something I’ve realized: there comes a point where nobody asks you about your vocation story anymore.When you’re in seminary, you have to have this polished elevator pitch ready to go at any moment — every retreat, every high school visit, every kitchen table conversation. Tell us your story. And you do. But somewhere along the way, after you’ve been ordained a while, people just stop asking. Maybe they assume they already know. Maybe they think it’s rude. Maybe they’re worried you’ll actually tell them.But I think it’s important that people know where their priests have come from. Pope Francis, in one of his funnier lines, once said that priests do not sprout up out of the floor of the cathedral like mushrooms. We come from a place, a family, a life. And I think that matters. So here’s mine.I was seven years old, growing up in Oswego, Illinois — a small town back then, maybe 2,500 people. No Catholic school, so I went to public school all twelve years, which is why I’m so gritty and tough. (I had to be. The mean streets of Oswego.) I was halfway through second grade, getting ready for my First Communion, and at that point still fairly convinced I’d be the first American pope. I’ve since made my peace with that.My mom woke my brother and me up that Monday morning and said: Come on, look out the window. Do you see that smoke?Sure enough, rising high over the houses and trees across town — billowing black smoke. It was our church. St. Anne’s in Oswego was on fire.The fire started in a supply closet behind the cry room at the back of church. (Which is, for what it’s worth, a contributing reason why I remain philosophically opposed to cry rooms.) Whether it was an electrical malfunction or a cleaning rag too close to a heater, no one ever knew for certain. What they did know was that the fire spread through a heating duct that ran straight down the center of the building, and the entire church was made of wood — walls, ceiling, everything — with no windows. It was, as the Chicago Tribune reported that day, essentially a bonfire waiting to be lit.The roof was so thick and the building so impossible to ventilate that the only alarm was raised by a runner out on an early morning workout, pounding on the rectory door at six a.m. The pastor, Father Dan Stempora, almost didn’t answer. He thought it was a joke — until he stepped outside and saw the smoke billowing out of the top of the building.The church was a total loss.Even as second graders in a public school, there was a lot of talk about the fire that day. By the next morning, our class had decided we would hold a bake sale to raise money to rebuild. We raised about $250. If you visit St. Anne’s today and look at the donor wall — the little bronze plaque thing in the lobby — you’ll find it: The Second Graders of East View Elementary School.My mom picked us up early from school that afternoon and took us to the site. This would never be allowed today, but somehow they let people inside what remained of the building. We had all just been there the Sunday before, singing, the church beautiful and still dressed for Christmas. Now there were puddles on the floor, broken glass everywhere, charred timber, melted chandeliers dangling from the ceiling, organ pipes fused together.But the thing I remember most — the thing I keep coming back to, even now — wasn’t the ruins. It was Father Dan.He was supposed to retire that year. He’d been at St. Anne’s for twelve years, and the fire had rather derailed his plans. But when we arrived that afternoon, there he was in the middle of the crowd, stocking cap on, gloves on, greeting people. Hugging them. Consoling them. Letting them console him.He showed up. He stayed.He assured us it would be rebuilt. And over the next three years, we watched a beautiful new church take shape — what we have since taken to calling, with more than a touch of pride, the Cathedral of Kendall County.That image has never left me. A priest standing in the cold with his people, in the wreckage of something beloved, pointing toward what would be. I’ve come to think that’s about 90% of the job. Ninety percent of priesthood is just showing up. Ninety percent of life is just showing up. Ninety percent of prayer is just showing up. Literally all we have to do is be there, and the work of the gospel can begin.It was the work of the gospel to transform our parish hall into a temporary church. And in that little temporary church is where I made my First Communion. Where others in our parish were confirmed and baptized. And where, eighteen years later, I would have my reception as a newly ordained priest.Father Dan himself vested me at my ordination in 2018. He remains one of my closest mentors to this day.Of course, it’s not exactly cool in public school to announce that you want to be a priest. The other kids want to be astronauts, firefighters, doctors. And then there’s me. If you’ve seen Despicable Me — when Gru is depicted as a child — that was basically me, except shorter, announcing my intention to be celibate forever. People were confused.I also had a Presbyterian girlfriend in high school who did not understand the concept of the priesthood or why anyone would voluntarily choose it. Fair enough.So I arrived at high school having mostly buried the idea. I decided I either wanted to be an English teacher or a high school band director — I play trombone and was the drum major of the marching band, and anything involving a large stick and a hat with a feather in it has always appealed to me. I followed my brother to North Central College in Naperville for one year.While I was there, I kept going to Mass — partly because my mom would drive down on Sunday nights to take me, and then buy me Starbucks afterward, which is a highly effective evangelical strategy that I recommend. At Sts. Peter and Paul in Naperville, I got to know younger priests in a way I hadn’t before. And something shifted. Priesthood was presented to me not just as a spiritually rewarding vocation, but as an ordinary way of life — priests who were tired, who were hungry, who played video games or walked their dogs. Not a locked-away existence of rectory kumbaya, but real human life, with this one extraordinary difference: as a priest, you are conformed so closely to Christ that through you, Christ himself lives out his mysteries again in the world.That takes some getting used to. But it was enough.I left North Central after one year and transferred to St. John Vianney Seminary at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota — the first Catholic school I had ever attended. I was ordained in 2018 with six other men. Of the seven of us, only one had gone to a Catholic high school. Make of that what you will.After seminary came my first assignment at the Cathedral of St. Raymond in Joliet, where we also served Sacred Heart Parish on the east side of the city — a self-described Black Catholic parish that completely recalibrated my understanding of the Church and of Catholic social teaching. I had preached about Dorothy Day and social justice in the abstract. Sacred Heart made it concrete, personal, and urgent. I left a different priest than I arrived.From Joliet, I went back to Naperville — to Sts. Peter and Paul, this time as a priest. My room in the rectory faced the building at North Central where I had once decided, mid-semester, to abandon English literature forever and go to seminary. A neat little full circle. I also served as chaplain and theology teacher at Chesterton Academy in Lisle during those years.And then I came here, to Visitation, where it’s been two wonderful, stretching, formative years.Which brings me to the news.In August, I’ll be heading to Washington, D.C., to study canon law at The Catholic University of America.Canon law is something most Catholics only hear about when they really need to hear about it — usually not under the happiest of circumstances. But it’s actually one of the most fascinating corners of Church life. Think of it as the Church’s internal legal and organizational structure: the rules that govern 1.5 billion members across every continent. It’s the best history book of the Church, because almost all of it is jurisprudence — meaning something happened, and now there’s a rule.Canon law asks questions like: Who actually owns this church building? What’s the relationship between a pastor and his bishop — who has authority over what? How does the Church regulate ordination? Why must the Eucharistic bread contain at least a trace of gluten? Why must Mass wine meet specific requirements? (The Franzia boxed wine question has a canonical answer, and also a common sense one.)There’s a wonderful story — I say wonderful; the parties involved may disagree — in which a group of California nuns attempted to sell their convent to Katy Perry. It became a major news event. The canon lawyers swooped in and pointed out that the nuns didn’t actually own the property. The archdiocese did. The deal collapsed. This is the kind of thing canon lawyers do. They also handle marriage cases, disciplinary proceedings, and serve as legal advisors to bishops.Three of us are going together to study. I’m genuinely excited.One of the first things Father John said when I told him was that he’d like me to keep my room here at Visitation. I cannot tell you what that means to me — practically speaking, I don’t have to pack up my books, which is enormous — but more than that, it means that on breaks from school over the next two years, I’ll be back with you. Think of it this way: I’m your older brother, going off to college. I’ll be home for Thanksgiving. It’ll be great.A new priest will be joining Visitation — more information about him in next week’s bulletin — and you are going to love him.I also want to mention: Deacon Sam will be ordained to the priesthood on June 6th of this year, and while he’ll be leaving Visitation, he’ll be just up the street at Immaculate Conception in Elmhurst. Still very much in the neighborhood.I wanted to tell you parts of my story, and you’ll have noticed that isn’t particularly dramatic. No jail time, no rock bottom, no lightning strike on the road to Damascus. Just a seven-year-old kid watching a priest in a stocking cap stand with his people in the ruins of their church and somehow make it feel like a beginning rather than an end.That image became a method. Or maybe it revealed one that was already there in the gospels: Jesus comes to a group of people, and over years — not in a single sermon, not in a viral moment, but over years — he teaches them, lives among them, lets them know him as someone extraordinary and yet utterly ordinary. Brilliant enough to outwit the Pharisees. Humble enough to wash feet. Powerful enough to calm storms. Compassionate enough to stop for a grieving widow, for a hungry crowd, for one lost sheep.They had never seen authority married with compassion before. They’d never seen genius and integrity allied with humility. He was, in the truest sense, too good to be true — and yet there he was.Priests are not good at this all the time. Early in my first assignment, a woman called me a “feudal lord”. (I have tried to grow since then).But this is the job description. These are the marching orders. And they begin, every single time, with showing up.Please pray for more priests. Pray especially for vocations from Elmhurst, which is full of young people, and which has not ordained a priest since 1988. That’s not because God hasn’t been calling. It’s because the world is loud, and parents get scared, and the attractions of an ordinary life are real and understandable.But if God has made you for something, if he has written a particular way life into the very fibers of your heart, you will not be fully yourself until you live it. Not because he’ll punish you if you don’t. But because your life will simply never be as full, as whole, as naturally joyful as it will be if you follow the thing he made you for.I’ll close with a poem by Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, a nineteenth-century Dominican priest:To live in the midst of the world without wishing its pleasures; to be a member of each family, yet belonging to none; to share all suffering, to penetrate all secrets, to heal all wounds; to go from men to God and offer him their prayers, to return from God to men, to bring pardon and hope; to have a heart of fire for charity and a heart of bronze for chastity; to teach and to pardon, to console and bless always —My God, what a life! And it is yours, O priest of Jesus Christ. Get full access to Pilgrim's Prologue at pilgrimsprologue.substack.com/subscribe

Happy Easter!! The Lord is risen, just as he said. Get full access to Pilgrim's Prologue at pilgrimsprologue.substack.com/subscribe

Deacon Sam Bergmann is a transitional deacon for the Diocese of Joliet, and will be ordained to the priesthood in June 2026. He currently serves at Visitation Church in Elmhurst, IL. Get full access to Pilgrim's Prologue at pilgrimsprologue.substack.com/subscribe

Fr. Jim Olofson, STL is a priest of the Diocese of Joliet, and currently serves as the Vice Rector of St. John Vianney College Seminary in St. Paul, MN. Get full access to Pilgrim's Prologue at pilgrimsprologue.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to Pilgrim's Prologue at pilgrimsprologue.substack.com/subscribe

Embrimaomi: like a horse, snorting, indignant and ready for battle. Get full access to Pilgrim's Prologue at pilgrimsprologue.substack.com/subscribe

The Transfiguration from Matthew 17 Get full access to Pilgrim's Prologue at pilgrimsprologue.substack.com/subscribe

How many of you genuinely enjoy the process of buying a car?If there are any car salespeople reading this, forgive me—but you know the game. You don’t walk in, point to a car, accept the first offer, and drive away smiling. No, you sit down. You listen. You nod. You hesitate. You stand up to leave.“Well, wait a minute…”The deal sweetens. You start toward the door again.“Wait, wait—what if we add this?”Behind the performance is not some grand villain twirling a mustache. It’s just a person trying to make a living. There’s a certain quiet desperation in the whole thing.Oddly enough, that image is closer to the Catholic imagination of the devil than the dramatic, trident-bearing monster we often picture.Culturally, many of us have inherited a somewhat Protestant imagination about Satan. Think of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Milton’s Satan is charismatic, articulate, almost heroic in his defiance. So compelling, in fact, that in some places the book has been controversial because the devil begins to look admirable.But that is not the Catholic vision. For that, we turn to Dante.In The Divine Comedy, Dante descends through the nine circles of hell, guided by the poet Virgil. Each level corresponds to distorted love—what we call the deadly sins. In the circle of lust, souls are blown endlessly about by violent winds, never at rest, driven from one desire to another without ever being satisfied.But when Dante finally reaches the very pit of hell, he does not find fire.He finds ice.Satan is not enthroned in flames. He is frozen waist-deep in a lake of ice. He flaps his wings desperately, trying to escape, but the flapping only makes the air colder. The ice thickens with every attempt at self-liberation.He is not magnificent. He is pitiful. Dante describes him as grotesque, sobbing, trapped in darkness and cold. The deeper reality of hell is not fiery spectacle but total privation: the absence of warmth, the absence of light, the absence of love.For the medieval mind shaped by Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, cold is not a “thing.” It is merely the absence of heat. Darkness is not a “thing”. It is merely the absence of light.Hell is not a kingdom of alternative glory. It is what remains when light and love are removed.The word Satan itself means “accuser.” In a courtroom, the accuser stands opposite the advocate. And the Church calls the Holy Spirit our Advocate—our defender.Yet how often do we listen to the accuser?How often do we internalize the voice that whispers: You are your worst moment. You are your failure. You are disqualified.The second reading we heard reminds us: the gift is not like the transgression. The fall is real, but grace is greater. Through the disobedience of one, sin entered the world. Through the obedience of One, life is restored. And not only eternal life someday, somewhere…but abundant life even now.Which brings us back to the garden.The story of Adam and Eve is so familiar that we sometimes miss its subtleties. Eve is called “the mother of all the living.” Adam is given the task to “shamar”, to guard and till the garden. To keep watch.And yet, when the serpent speaks, Adam is “with her.” Standing there. Silent. Watching.Both depart from their vocation. Both step outside trust. And the fracture begins.But what happens immediately after the fall is one of the most revealing moments in all of Scripture.“They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.”What an extraordinary image.God is not storming through the garden with fury. He is not wielding a machete, hacking through branches in rage. He is walking—calmly, gently—“in the cool of the day.”He calls out, “Where are you?”Not because He lacks information. But because He invites relationship.Adam responds, “I was afraid.”Afraid of what? God had given no cause for fear. Not in His generosity. Not in His provision. Not in His love.And yet fear enters when trust collapses.Justice must follow the fall. There are consequences. The ground will be harder to till. Childbirth will be painful. Life will be more arduous. Mercy does not eliminate justice—but it transforms how justice is lived.And before sending them out, God does something extraordinary.He clothes them.Leaves would never survive the wilderness. So He makes garments of skin and fur. He equips them for the exile. He blocks the path back to the tree—not out of cruelty, but to prevent them from grasping immortality in a fallen state.Even in judgment, there is protection. Even in exile, there is accompaniment.This is the Catholic imagination of the spiritual battle.The devil is not glamorous. He is not powerful in the way we imagine power. He has no authority over you unless you give it to him. He offers the illusion of freedom but delivers isolation. He promises autonomy but produces cold.God, by contrast, walks toward you in the cool of the day.He does not delight in your shame. He does not savor your fear. He calls your name.Dante describes heaven as the opposite of hell in every possible way: light instead of darkness, warmth instead of cold, music instead of silence, the joyful presence of those who walked in faith before us.Hell is constriction.Heaven is expansion.Hell is absence.Heaven is fullness.Lent, like all of life, places us in moments of wilderness. Temptations come. Accusations echo. We stumble. But the goal is not despair. The goal is clarity.To see the accuser for what he is: desperate, diminished, frozen.And to see God for who He has always been: walking toward us, calling gently, clothing us in mercy, and leading us toward life.The choice is not between two equally compelling kingdoms.It is between ice and light.Between isolation and communion.Between accusation and advocacy.And the One who calls you does so calmly…in the cool of the day.Pilgrim's Prologue is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Pilgrim's Prologue at pilgrimsprologue.substack.com/subscribe

Homily for the 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, guest preaching at St. Raphael's in Naperville where I am preaching their parish mission this week. Get full access to Pilgrim's Prologue at pilgrimsprologue.substack.com/subscribe

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Blessings for a beautiful Solemnity today and for a peaceful, joyful 2026! Get full access to Pilgrim's Prologue at pilgrimsprologue.substack.com/subscribe

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Christianity is not a matter of telling other people what to do.Christianity is a matter of telling people what God has done for them in Christ.Everything else—every command, every moral teaching, every “ought”—flows from that.Christ came, lived our life, died our death, rose again as the first fruits of our own resurrection, ascended into heaven in His full humanity, and brought that humanity to the right hand of the Father. He sent His Holy Spirit upon us so that we might be filled with His life and go out to preach and teach as He commanded.The implications of that truth are the source of the Church’s entire moral vision.Because I believe that my life has been conquered, redeemed, and set apart, I behave differently than when I thought I was “just” a child of the world. I want my life to be thoroughly conformed to the person of Christ, because I believe He is alive. What we say at funerals is true: it is not at the moment of bodily death that a Christian truly dies, but at baptism—when we die and rise with Christ as a new creation. From that moment on, no torment can touch us in the same way if we choose to remain conformed to Him.So again:Christianity is not about telling other people what to do;it is about telling other people what God has done for them in Christ.Many of us grew up—explicitly or implicitly—with the idea that Christianity was mostly about behavior. The unspoken (or very spoken) mantra was:Behave → Believe → BelongIf you behave the way we want you to behave, that’s what we really want.If you happen to believe what we believe, even better.And if you can manage both, then you can belong.But look at Jesus. Look at the way He encounters people.Take the woman at the well. He doesn’t interrogate her first. He doesn’t hand her a checklist. He simply sits with her. He enters into communion with her. And from that communion, her life is changed—not the other way around.The Gospel pattern is:Belong → Believe → BehaveWhy would I want to live differently if I have no idea what this community believes or why it matters? And why would I care what this community believes if I don’t experience myself as seen, welcomed, or valued in the first place?Belonging comes first: You are wanted here. You matter here. You are not an outsider.Then comes belief: What is it that this God—and this people—actually proclaim?Finally comes behavior: In light of who God is and who I now know myself to be, how could I live?Again, Christianity is not primarily about telling people what to do, but about proclaiming what God has done—and is doing—for them in Christ.During Lent, we spend a lot of time talking about the three pillars: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. But Advent often remains vague. We hear, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” and we nod. Then we get home and think, Okay… but how?So we do what we know how to do: we bake pies, buy yams, decorate the fireplace, light a candle. And those things are fine—good, even—but 15 minutes later, we’re not necessarily any more spiritually awake than we were before.So I’d like to propose three Advent pillars—three ways of living that flow from what God has done for us in Christ. Think of John the Baptist’s image: the tree that has been cut down looks dead, but there is a new shoot sprouting from that stump. That stump is your heart, your life, your world.Where there was death, a new life can grow. Not in the same old way—but from the very place where sin, doubt, despair, or difficulty once reigned. That is what the living Lord can do.Here are three Advent pillars:* Docility to the Holy Spirit* Endurance fed by hope* Courageous honesty1. Docility to the Holy SpiritIn Isaiah, the Messiah is described as filled with the Spirit of the Lord—wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, and fear of the Lord. But before any of those gifts take root, there is a foundational posture: docility.We often equate “docile” with weak, passive, or easily pushed around. But docility, in the Christian sense, is not weakness. It is availability.To be docile to the Holy Spirit is to live in such a way that God can actually get to you. Many of us are not truly available to God. We have our own plans, our own timelines, our own picture of how life “should” go. When something interferes—plans change, someone drives too slowly, someone disagrees with us—we become impatient, anxious, or angry.Often, it’s because we’re not open to the possibility that God might be trying to lead us into a world larger than the one we have planned.Everything about Jesus’ life as Messiah flows from His availability to the Father.Two practical suggestions for docility:* A Morning Surrender PrayerStart your day with a simple act of surrender.Write on your mirror, your dashboard, or your phone lock screen:* Jesus, King of love, I am confident in you.* Lord, let me see as you see, judge as you judge, love as you love.Repeat it throughout the day. These little acts of surrender slowly anchor you and make you more available.* One Daily Act of ObedienceI don’t mean “clean your room because your mom said so” (though you should probably do that too).I’m talking about obedience to the small nudges of the Holy Spirit.* Someone suddenly comes to mind: send them a text—“I’m thinking of you; how are you?”* You feel a strange urge to go to the store now instead of later—and you “coincidentally” run into someone who needed to see you.* You feel a quiet pull to step away from your phone and sit in silence for five minutes.These seem small, even silly. What does God care about zebra cakes and whether I get the last box or not? Yet He loves to meet us in small things. Living attentively to these promptings builds up spiritual sensitivity. Over time, it becomes less difficult to hear His voice and notice His presence.2. Endurance: A Hope That Refuses to DieIn the second reading today, St. Paul speaks of “endurance” and “encouragement.” Advent is not about vague wishing: “LEt’S pRePaRe tHe WaY” in a way that never actually touches our real life. It is about staying the course with confidence because God’s promises are trustworthy.Think of endurance not as perfectionism—I must be strong, flawless, successful—but as a hope that refuses to die.And that hope is paired with encouragement. The word itself points us inward: cor (heart) and -agere (to make, to render). To encourage is to send someone into their own heart, to help them find the strength that is already there.If you are baptized, the virtues are already in you like a pilot light: prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, faith, hope, and love. Sometimes that flame is a blazing fire; sometimes it’s barely a flicker. But it’s there.Endurance means trusting that, with God’s grace, that pilot light will not be extinguished—no matter what the day holds, from serious family crises down to minor tragedies like watching someone else take the last box of zebra cakes.Two practical suggestions for endurance:* Choose an Advent Line to Live WithPick a verse and let it accompany you all week:* “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”* “He will be called Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.”* Or the classic Advent cry: “Come, Lord Jesus.”Write it down. Put it on your dashboard, your mirror, your phone background. Whisper it under your breath. Shout it in the car. Let it become the rhythm of your hope.* A Micro-Fast from PessimismFor one week, choose your favorite form of negativity—complaining, doom-scrolling, catastrophizing, cynicism, that “everything is terrible” tone—and fast from it.Your therapist might call this cognitive restructuring.When I was in college seminary, the rector once told me: “Every time you’re about to make a sarcastic comment, challenge yourself to remain completely silent.” I was so quiet that people started asking if I was okay. It was eye-opening. I hadn’t realized how much of what I was putting into the world—yes, clever and funny—was not actually helpful.Christian hope and endurance are like a muscle. They grow when we exercise them, and atrophy when we give in to the habits that weaken them.3. Courageous HonestyJohn the Baptist does not mince words:“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”Repentance begins with honesty—the courage to see ourselves clearly and according to the truth.Truth is simply what corresponds to reality. It doesn’t automatically mean “good” or “bad.” It means: this is what is. To live in truth is not to shame ourselves or spiral into self-loathing; it is to stand where God stands. He is found in the truth, even when it’s messy.As Advent deepens, ask yourself:* What is weighing me down?* What am I clinging to that makes me less free, less available for Christ?* What is one thing I’m holding onto that makes me less available to Him?Write it down. Put it where you’ll see it. Share it with someone who sees you regularly and can hold you accountable—and ask them to do the same. We cannot do this alone.And then: go to confession.Not because God is keeping score, but because He wants you free.Don’t settle for the quick “tidy up” confession if it’s been years. And certainly don’t say, “I don’t have anything to confess.” If you’ve ever said that to a priest, he was probably thinking, Then why are you in here? The sacrament is not for the sinless; it’s for the saved-who-are-still-being-healed.The first thing you could confess is the thing you least want to say. Not because God wants to humiliate you, but because once you say it, it’s over. It’s out. It’s done.And I can almost guarantee this:If you’ve ever confessed some deeply embarrassing, heavy sin, you have not heard from the other side of the screen, “Oh MY! Wow. Hold on, let me write this down. Let me turn on the recorder…”You’ve never heard that. You won’t hear that. You will not be judged in that way.Show up with sincerity, clarity, and courage. Reveal yourself to the Lord, not so that you can be shamed, but so that He can reveal Himself to you and show you that already, within that place you thought was dead forever, a small green shoot is beginning to grow.The Heart of It AllDocility to the Holy Spirit.Endurance formed by hope.Courageous honesty.These are not self-help techniques or moral improvement projects. They are simply the ways a heart begins to live once it has heard—and believed—what God has done for it in Christ.Christianity is not a matter of telling other people what to do,but of telling other people what God has done—and is doing—for them in Christ.That is where the moral life begins. That is where Advent begins. And that is where real freedom begins too.Pilgrim's Prologue is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Pilgrim's Prologue at pilgrimsprologue.substack.com/subscribe

We may not know the hour or the day—but we do know the path and the way.Advent gives us the chance to recalibrate: our thinking, our seeing, our actions, or some combination of all three. My hope is that by Christmas, we will know more deeply the One whose birth we celebrate.Of course, there’s a kind of irony here. We’re not actually waiting for Jesus to be born—He already has been. We know the story: He lived our life, died our death, rose as the first fruits of our own resurrection, ascended into heaven carrying our humanity with Him, sent His Holy Spirit to renew the earth, and established the Church to teach and guide us.So the “coming” we await now is not the quiet arrival of a child in Bethlehem but the glorious return of the King. Advent is our Catholic New Year—a built-in spiritual reset. There’s something deeply satisfying about flipping from the final week of Ordinary Time back to page one of Advent. The book even makes that little plop sound, like it knows we need a fresh start.And this year, the snow helped us. The simplicity of the decorations helped us. The purple vestments—symbols not only of penance but of hope, preparation, and calm—helped us. Maybe you even had that moment last night: stepping out into the snowstorm and feeling the sudden, overwhelming quiet. The deep breath of cold air, the strange purity of it.All my life, that moment has been one of my favorite images for Advent: stepping from the chaos of the warm, crowded inside into the darkness where it is finally quiet, finally peaceful, finally possible to see.Here is the encouragement I want to offer:We don’t know the hour or the day—but do we know the path and the way?For centuries, Christians learned the faith through images—stained-glass windows, paintings, mosaics—because many could not read. The Scriptures were passed along through story and symbol. Ironically, now almost everyone can read, and yet so few of us know the Scriptures.So here is my Advent invitation, and I’m doing it with you:Go home, take your Bible off the shelf, dust it off, and read the Book of Isaiah—start to finish.Isaiah is the great guide of Advent. Nearly every liturgy from now until Christmas gives us a reading from him. He speaks truth to Israel’s situation, but more than anything, he speaks hope, and he delivers some of the most iconic promises of this season:* “Though your sins be like scarlet, I will make them white as snow.” (Isaiah 1)* “A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse.” (Isaiah 11)* “On this mountain there will be no more death, no more wailing.” (Isaiah 25)* “I am doing something new—do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43)* “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son.” (Isaiah 7)* “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.” (Isaiah 9)Read these not as distant history, but personally. Replace “Israel” with your own name.The Lord said to me… I am doing something new for you.Do you believe that?Here are the questions I hope you’ll carry into prayer. Think of them as an Advent examination of conscience—not about sin necessarily, but about desire.We will sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” more times than we can count. But do I truly want Him to come? Do I want the Lord to enter my life? Will I notice when He does? Will I perceive His handiwork?Would I recognize Him in the poor, the meek, the mourning, the persecuted—those He calls blessed?Am I prepared for the disruption His coming will bring to my worldview, politics, ideologies, relationships, and routines?Am I open to the total recalibration required if He is to be the true King of my life?Do I understand that “Thy kingdom come” also means “my kingdom go”?And perhaps most importantly:Do I let myself be counted among those to whom He wants to show mercy? Do I allow myself to be one of the burdened, the weary, the hungry, the longing—one of those He invites to rest in Him?We often hide the very things we should bring into the Lord’s light: the old shame, regret, or the baggage we’ve convinced ourselves cannot be overcome. Yet “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light,” and that light is the life of the human race.So lift up your heads, you mighty gates. Let the King of glory enter. He is valiant. He fights for you.Open Isaiah. Read not about your sins—He will make those white as snow—but about the God who longs to be reconciled to His people. The God who says generation after generation:I am the solution to your problems.I have given you the roadmap.Will you follow Me?Lift up the gates of your heart, your home, your routines, your relationships. Let the King of glory enter. And by Christmas, I think we will be genuinely surprised at the difference it makes.Of course, God—in His sense of humor—places this season of peace and preparation right in the middle of the busiest time of the year. The parties, the family drama, the school events, the shopping—it’s all coming. None of that is going away.But we can choose how we enter into it.We may not know the hour or the day,but we do know the path and the way.(Someone start printing the t-shirts. That’s how we’ll pay off the building.)Pilgrim's Prologue is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Pilgrim's Prologue at pilgrimsprologue.substack.com/subscribe

The book mentioned is Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl Get full access to Pilgrim's Prologue at pilgrimsprologue.substack.com/subscribe

The book I mention, and really really recommend for anyone in the preaching biz, is Preaching to a Post-Everything World by Zack Eswine. Get full access to Pilgrim's Prologue at pilgrimsprologue.substack.com/subscribe

Homily from the Crypt Chapel at the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary in Lourdes, France Get full access to Pilgrim's Prologue at pilgrimsprologue.substack.com/subscribe

We continue to move through this Easter season, filled with gladness and fully aware of the magnitude of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. For weeks now, we’ve heard of the work and faithThe post Saul’s Heart (and Ours) | 5th Sunday of Easter 2024 appeared first on Love Speaks.. Get full access to Pilgrim's Prologue at pilgrimsprologue.substack.com/subscribe