A homily recently posted to YouTube has caught my attention. It’s by Father Mark Goring, who incidentally belongs to the same small order (Companions of the Cross) as my local bishop. I don’t know much about Father Goring.

The titles of some of Father Goring’s videos seem kind of sensational, so I tend to avoid that in my life. But judging from this video alone, the content is clickbaity but genuine and sufficiently deep or well-rounded. For example, the title “Dungeon Time of John of the Cross” could sound like a downplaying of the fact that this was clerical abuse of a psychological kind, or it might devolve into a distortion of John’s life within narrow parameters where a survivor is only defined as a thing that was victimized and good for it. None of that is the case.

In the homily below, John of the Cross emerges as someone who was not only grave, serious, and all about saying nada nada nada y en el monte nada in his spiritual life—which sounds too pietistic and plain—but also gentle and tender with others, particularly the needy; loved creation in gratitude to God; loved the Blessed Virgin, patroness of Carmel; was great one-on-one but an average public speaker; and endured that great abuse (a word not used but implied well enough for my tastes for a homily—triggering is to be avoided in such a setting) of solitary confinement, ending up closer to God. It’s a good portrait and much fuller than we usually find online, especially outside Carmelite circles and those of a related disposition (e.g., the “Foucauld fam”).

At just six minutes, give it a watch!

Edit: After posting this, I became aware of another recent homily in which Father Goring yells at the congregation. My thoughts on the particular homily about John of the Cross stand. But I am staunchly opposed to spiritual and psychological abuse. Homiletic yelling in particular has been used against me (in my case in a racialized way and as a threat against my safety). Thus, considering Goring as a homilist overall, I’d say avoid this guy. Red flags are red flags.