If you played football in school, you might remember a little drill call “the gauntlet.” The team lines up in two rows facing each other, trying to smack the ball out of the hands of whoever runs between them. Awaiting at the opposite end is the “tackler.” As I was the smallest kid on the…
“No, you can’t eat that candy cane. Hop in the van. It’s time for Christmas!” My wife and I load our three excited young children in the van and drive out for a brisk sparkle tour before Midnight Mass. It is 20 degrees below zero, a definite improvement from last year. We are excited that…
It never ceases to amaze me just how dark the world becomes in the month of December, as we approach the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice. I wake up in darkness, thinking it’s the middle of the night, when it’s already almost breakfast time. I look around at a dismal sky at…
She looked up at me. Messy pigtails, marvelously intelligent brown eyes, a precocious wisp of a petite three-year-old: my boyfriend’s niece. Surrounded as I was by games and chatter, everyone thronging together for a day of fun on a Catholic family of sixteen’s farm, I stood still and looked down at her. “Will you take…
Some of my fondest childhood memories are of sitting in the back of my father’s car, listening to the music he loves. He would pick me up from daycare in the late afternoon, and I would close my eyes and fall into whatever song was playing – “Dear Prudence” by the Beatles, maybe, or “Through…
Satan plays a long game. We know from the Gospel of Luke that Satan intended to sift like wheat Peter and the apostles. Writing recently in National Review, Fr. Benedict Kiely has called the Church’s present trial the “summer of shame.” Before our eyes, the successors of the apostles are being sifted as well. Many…
Looking back to the Middle Ages may not always be a popular thing to do in the Church today, as some aspects of our past have become contentious over the centuries. Few aspects of the history of the Church are more maligned than the Crusades. The knee-jerk reaction nowadays is to use these periods in…
The spiritual world has perplexed people from the beginning. The Protestant communities I grew up in were completely lacking in spiritual depth and understanding. They had a knowledge problem: they “knew” without understanding. Angelology and demonology were never spoken of. Saints were never spoken of. Miracles were actively attacked if acknowledged at all. Most miracles…
During His sublime discourse to the apostles on the eve of His Passion, Our Lord explained the nature of our relationship to Him in the spiritual life as follows: I am the true vine; and My Father is the husbandman. Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit, He will take away: and every one…
God often takes things from us for His own good reasons. Our task is to seek the purpose. Much like everyone else, I have suffered many losses throughout my life. Some major, like the death of my father and my brother. Some minor, like a girl I was very much in love with, who decided…
Ever notice that we rush through our days with so much to do, so much we think we should be doing, so much we think we’re missing out on…but how often do we give the proper time and attention to the moment we’re in? This truly is one of my biggest faults, and I suspect…
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