When it Hurts: How to Share the Catholic Faith with Non-Catholics

This is for the broken hearted, those men and women who have risked sharing the faith only to be psychoanalyzed, slighted, even shamed. God knows sometimes you just need a box of Kleenex and a few hours before the Blessed Sacrament. Or a cup of coffee with your parish priest. Or a big bear hug…

Jesus: The Joy That You Seek

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness…” – St. John Paul II It is the feast of the Passover. Jerusalem is packed with thousands upon thousands of pilgrims from all over Israel, and in fact, all over the world. They come to celebrate God’s deliverance of his people from oppression and…

Longing, The Holy Spirit and St. Bonaventure

The Church celebrates the Feast of St. Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor on July 15 with a beautiful selection in the Office of Readings from his book The Journey of the Mind to God; a treatise about the ascent of the soul to the Lord. St. Bonaventure describes this ascent, this longing for the Lord as…

Tolkien Speaks: The Secret to a Happy Marriage

J.R.R. Tolkien was a romantic. When he met his future wife, Edith, at the age of 16, he was instantly smitten with her and immediately began an informal courtship, taking her to local tea houses on a regular basis. When the priest who acted as Tolkien’s guardian found out about his romance, however, he forbade…

The Mountains Are Calling: A Week in the Wilderness with Wilderness Outreach

“The mountains are calling, and I must go.” This quote from John Muir captured my thoughts as I prepared for a week-long expedition with Wilderness Outreach to the Domeland Wilderness of California. I was seeking to delve deeper into the soul of masculine spirituality through worship and work in the desert; the wilderness would not disappoint me. Our…

St. Therese on Prayer

An excerpt from “The Story of a Soul” an autobiography of St. Therese the Little Flower. With me prayer is an uplifting of the heart; a glance towards heaven; a cry of gratitude and love, uttered equally in sorrow and in joy. In a word, it is something noble, supernatural, which expands my soul and…

Vacations and Virtue: 7 Resolutions For Managing Summer Overhoad

Ahhh….summer vacation – long relaxing days at the pool, followed by barbecues, late nights and no schedules.  Sounds like a dream – right?Not to me. Summer time, with its lack of a regular routine, is driving me nuts. While I enjoyed the first few days of summer vacation,  I am now panicked about undone laundry, unhealthy…

Peace on Earth, 2015 – Archbishop Charles Chaput

Peace on earth, 2015 Archbishop Charles J. Chaput “Thomas More is more important at this moment than at any moment since his death, even perhaps the great moment of his dying; but he is not quite so important as he will be in about a hundred years’ time. He may come to be counted the…

St. Romuald, Baby Birds, and Divine Grace

This past week, we discovered a nest in our backyard containing three baby birds. They must have hatched very recently because they are at the stage where they are still quite ugly—no feathers, huge heads, and gaping mouths. Our two boys are absolutely delighted, and they express their excitement by running around the yards shouting,…

Good Response to Pilot Radio Maria Ireland

GOOD RESPONSE TO PILOT RADIO MARIA IRELAND By Susan Gately – 20 June, 2015 Dublin, June 20 (CatholicIreland.net) — “Initially we will reach out to those devoted to the Church, but once we are established we hope to bring lukewarm Catholics back to faith.” Ireland’s newest Catholic radio station began its pilot broadcasts just over…