Today in the Hope for the Journey series, Fr. Javier reflects on what observing Lent might look like this year: “Just what is God bringing you out of, this season? And what new thing might God be inviting you into?”

This week in the Hope for the Journey series: what does a 90s sitcom have to do with the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple?

This week in the Hope for the Journey series, Fr. Javier reflects on the nature of God’s love: “When it comes to telling the truth about ourselves, we would prefer to edit the footnotes and clean up the margins… We call this a kindness: at its best, it is an attempt to see ourselves and others in the best possible light. But to do so leaves something to be desired. We cannot really love that which we do not also aim to know.”

This week in the Hope for the Journey series, Fr. Javier reflects on the Feast of the Epiphany and today’s events at the U.S. Capitol.

This week in the Hope for the Journey series, Fr. Javier reflects on the habit of prayer: “the prayers of the Daily Office are not good simply because they are ancient, beautiful, or wise. They are good when we pour our lives into them—when we turn them into a home, so to speak, creating a space for communion with God as we begin to pray in earnest.”

This week in the Hope for the Journey series, Fr. Javier reflects on prayer and distraction: “Our habits—even the ones we would rather do without—can guide us deeper into what we really need. They can help us find what we are truly seeking, if we would stop for a moment and pay attention.”

This week in the Hope for the Journey series, Fr. Javier reflects on the Feast of Christ the King: “God demands our full, unrelenting, uncompromising allegiance, and that extends to the first citizens of God’s Kingdom too: the poor and the disenfranchised, the sick and the suffering, the meek, the forgotten, and those who have given into despair.”

This week in the Hope for the Journey series, Fr. Javier reflects on All Saints’ Day and what we have been up to over the past few months: “Despite setbacks, we are grateful for the ways that we remain connected to one another. As our baptismal covenant reminds us, we plan to “continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers”—supporting one another as we navigate these troubled, uncertain times.”

This week in the Hope for the Journey series, Fr. Javier shares his remarks at ONE Wake’s Founding Assembly: “The work is not over. In fact, it has just begun.”

This week in the Hope for the Journey series, Fr. Javier reflects on our relationship to the stranger: “what if you approached those deemed strange and unfamiliar with the same kind of “admiration and contemplation” that the person living in exile has to muster? What if you met the stranger with that kind of curiosity—the kind that assumes that your survival depends on learning their ways, not the other way around?”