One time, as I was walking through a casino in Las Vegas, I heard a lot of cheering and commotion coming from a roulette table. Curiosity got the best of me, and I wandered over to see what was going on. I got there just in time to see the roulette operator slide three large […]
At our house we have a standing requirement that all the kids’ cell phones stay in the kitchen when they go to bed. Boy, how the kids hate this rule! They make every excuse in the book as to why they need their cell phones in their bedroom at night. My favorite one is: “I […]
Hope is often looked upon as a kind of luck. The “grease”, if you will, that helps you slide through difficult situations. We tell ourselves: “I hope I don’t run out of gas.”, or, “I hope I win the lottery.”, or, “I hope I am not alone the rest of my life.” Unfortunately, this is not […]
As a kid, I can remember watching the old Frankenstein movie, starring Boris Karloff. The part where Frankenstein came to life and sat up with screams of “It’s alive!” from the mad scientist always scared my socks off. Not only was Frankenstein scary looking, his actually coming to life seemed very implausible. It was always […]
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 […]
When presented with significant problems, many of us tend to consider only what we can do on our own to solve the problem. That is a very narrow perspective that has a very limiting result. This is what happened with the apostles. Jesus told them to “give them something to eat” and they freaked out. […]
During a recent all-day workshop, I had repeated often my view that if one had to go through a divorce, it was a blessing to be Catholic. My point was that our Catholic faith offers so much hope and healing, particularly through the Sacraments, that to have to go through a divorce without them makes the […]
Yes, it pains me to admit, I am old enough to remember when the first Star Wars movie came out–plenty old enough. (I was a junior in high school.) One of the most memorable scenes in the movie was when young Luke Skywalker was being trained to use a powerful weapon, the lightsaber. He kept […]
“You’re getting warmer!” my sister yelled from the other side of the yard — my heart beating faster in gleeful anticipation. My siblings and I were engrossed in one of our favorite childhood games. We would hide something, and then the one who was “it” would have to find the object with the help of […]
When I was a kid, my parents would allow me to ride my bike two miles to a nearby river where I liked to fish. One day, I decided to take a shortcut that a friend had told me about. The further I went down my new path, the more anxious I became. The river […]