Episode Details

“If you’re going to follow the Lord, then follow the Lord. Don’t put any stipulations on Him.”

Fr. Tom Sparacino: Give Up Fear and Follow Him All the Way

Fr. Tom Sparacino starts with a scream. He was napping on the top deck, minding his own “little plot of land,” when a friend from Canada shrieked — another passenger had snuck up and scared her again. Her husband, Fr. Tom reports, was “absolutely no help.” It’s funny, and then it isn’t: how often do we give in to a simple fear? He confesses he’s been staring out the cabin window at the dark water, half convinced a sea monster was about to surface.

That’s not what we were made for. What we do at the altar, he says, and what this whole mission has been about, is to be fearless — fearless in proclaiming the Good News, fearless in the Spirit. Not giving in to fear, but giving up fear, and asking the Lord for the gift of awe instead.

Then the hard part. Fr. Tom hears it all the time from young men discerning the priesthood: “Father, I want to be a priest — but before I do, here are the things I want to do first.” Go ahead, he tells them. I’ll be right here when you come to your senses. Every priest he knows has tried it, and the Lord “usually knocks us on our backside.”

He tells the story of a teenager who wanted a car. His parents set three conditions: no complaining about school, Mass and youth group and Scripture every week, and a haircut. The boy kept the first two beautifully — honor roll, rosary, even long talks with the priest. But the haircut? He’d learned his rhetoric well. “Every statue of Jesus has long hair,” he argued, “so it’s good enough for me.” Wonderful, said his father. And you’ll notice Jesus walked everywhere, too.

We do the same thing to God. Lord, we want this healing. We want, we want, we want. The Pharisees in today’s Gospel were busy washing cups and pots, while Jesus was looking at their hearts. The rules of the game were never complicated: love God, love your neighbor, be merciful.

What it looks like to love God without conditions

On the memorial of St. Scholastica, Fr. Tom — trained by the Benedictine monks at St. Vincent in Latrobe — remembers the sister who loved God so much that He answered her prayer with a storm, while her brother Benedict worried about keeping the rule. The Church prays that, following her example, we may “serve you with a pure love and happily receive what comes from loving you.” We can only do that, he says, if we stop putting our rules on God and just listen: read Scripture, let it penetrate the heart, stay in relationship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with Mary our Mother and with St. Joseph — and give Him full and complete control.

“When we do, honey child, we can walk on water. And not only walk — we can run across the water.”

“Let’s not allow fear to grasp us, but let’s be fearless in the love that we have for Jesus. A