This Wednesday we are going to being the holy season of Lent. I often equate Lent to spiritual boot camp. I love the Rocky movies. They have provided me with years of continual uplift and entertainment. These movies are almost…
Lent: Spiritual Boot Camp
Courage and Conviction
“I have loved justice and hated iniquity. Therefore, I die in exile.” These were some of the last recorded words of Pope St. Gregory VII. He was one of the great reformer popes you stood up to the corruption that…
Loving Your Enemies in the Internet Age
“Love your enemies,” is one of the most shocking and important moral precepts that Christ gave us. It is the complete inversion of all of our fallen instincts of revenge and even our natural instincts of justice. But Jesus calls…
It Really Is a Wonderful Life
Life is hard. I don’t think anyone who has had to face the trials and tragedies of adult life could argue with this point. And there are times when we feel so completely crushed by the world where every day…
Physical minimalism, spiritual excess
Almost a year ago, I wrote about Seasons of Change and how, in the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis tells us that “(t)he horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable possessions we have produced in the…
Faith in Receiving the Word
God asked faith of Abraham and Isaac. He asked it of St. John of the Cross, of Mother Theresa, and others. Sometimes their extreme examples seem just that — extreme. They seem to be on the edges of what’s possible,…
Faith in the Future
It is easy to believe when times are good. It is also easy to believe when we know what to expect. When we are in a reasonable routine and we make plans for tomorrow and those plans come to pass,…
Are you ready for Advent?
Something wonderful is about to happen to you. Jesus is knocking at the door of your heart. As you ready for his joyful coming? Jesus said to his disciples: Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants…
Cowardice to Shame to Anger: A Lesson from Screwtape
“But hatred is best combined with Fear. Cowardice, alone of all the vices, is purely painful–horrible to anticipate, horrible to feal, horrible to remember; Hatred has its pleasures. It is therefore often the compensation by which a frightened man reimburses…
Live in the Good
Is there ever a day without hiccups? I think not. It’s when we dwell on the rough spots that we forget All the good. Dwell instead on the Guy who held the door for you Lunch with a friend Conversation…