One morning I walked into Mass very distracted and anxious. I had many things on my mind: projects due at work, challenges with the kids, financial pressures, dealing with the ex, etc. On top of that, I wasn’t feeling well. It was hard to focus on the Mass. Frankly, I was just going through the motions. […]
Living the truth of our faith can be very difficult. We are all guilty of trying to modify a teaching of our faith to make it easier to live. It could be the Church’s teaching on sexual morality, or marriage, or receiving the Sacraments. Unfortunately, when we do this, it stunts our growth toward holiness and […]
With the season of Lent upon us, I find myself looking to Jesus as He suffered such a violent death for love of us. He has so much to teach us, especially about truth. Let’s consider the eleventh station; Jesus is nailed to the Cross. We may find it difficult to relate to Him and […]
I was standing in the kitchen when all of a sudden the house was flooded with the sound of contemporary music, rudely interrupting my peaceful morning. I knew who the culprit was: my five-year-old son, as this was his usual morning routine. I called out to him to “please turn that down” and went back […]
There is the darkness of divorce, and then there is Jesus. He is just the opposite. He is the light. He is the dawn. He is the new day. His light drives away the darkness of fear, sin, and doubt, filling you with hope and the promise of better days. You no longer have to […]
“This generation is always looking for a quick fix.” spilled out of my mouth as I was sharing some parenting challenge with a friend. I was smug in my surety that I was different–that I was older and wiser. But the truth is, I’m really not. In fact, I think most people, no matter their […]
“I love you, Daddy-O,” my 19-year-old daughter said to me as she hugged me goodbye. She then climbed into her car to drive the five hundred miles to the Naval Air Base that would be her home for the next six months. She had been home on leave for about ten days, and we had […]
“Why are you taking pictures of a church that doesn’t care about its people?!” were the words that rudely broke the silence as I was trying to inconspicuously take a few pictures of a magnificent old church near where I was visiting. I turned around to see a disheveled older man who clearly hadn’t had […]
Did you ever find it odd that so many of the Gospel stories have Jesus interacting with the outcasts of society? It seems that for most of his public life, Jesus went out of his way to interact with the lepers, tax collectors, prostitutes and social misfits of his day. These outcasts were his people […]
Going through my divorce was so painful. The life that I had built, the dreams I had, were now crumbling around my feet. The pain was overwhelming. I developed different ways to cope with this pain. Some of them were good, and some not. To find peace, I dove back into my long abandoned hobbies. That […]