Take Up Your Cross, Parents

Being a parent is wonderful. It has made my life richer and better. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, though; let’s be honest. It’s also a challenge — but it is a challenge we should be willing to take up. It…

Remain here, and watch with me

Last month, I reflected on the first Sorrowful Mystery in light of my first morning praying outside of the local abortion clinic, as part of 40 Days for Life.  I was reading and praying Rosary Army’s Scriptural Rosary and found…

Abortion and the Way of Crowds

Not long ago, I spent my first morning standing outside of the local abortion clinic, praying as part of 40 Days for Life.  It’s hard to describe that first experience, to find words that sound neither prideful nor despairing. The…

5 Lies We Once Believed

1..Cocaine is good for you.  It was marketed to people with toothaches. About one hundred years ago, if you had a toothache, you could buy cocaine from your local druggist.  You could buy cocaine over-the-counter. 2.  Beer is a pick-me-up….

Pulling the Weeds of Sin

St. Maximilian Kolbe wrote: The more light of God’s grace within a soul, the better we will see the weeds and imperfections at every step. The Sacred Scriptures say that a just man falls seven times daily. So as long…

Vulnerability

We’re all sinners. We hurt each other. We hurt each other even when we purport to love each other. In fact, it is easiest to hurt when we also love. I’ve had relatives disparage my cooking. I could care less….

You Can’t Win

You can’t win. You can’t. But that’s nothing new. Jesus and John faced the same problem: “But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates, ‘We piped…

At the Service of Truth

I recently had the pleasure of attending Sean McAfee’s class on the Social Media Magisterium. Among the readings was Pope Paul VI’s 1972 Message for the World Social Communications Day.  The theme that year was “The Media of Social Communications…

Chiseling at God’s Workmanship

We are God’s workmanship.  But.. when will we be done? When will we each become who we’re supposed to be? “On learning that weather erodes granite one inch every 100,000 years, sculptor Gutzon Borglum added an extra three inches to…

How Different the Saints

On the last page of Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis writes: “Until you have given up your whole self to Him, you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be most among the most natural men and not…

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2019/11/09 By

Growth Beneath the Snow

“The plants were hidden under the snow. And the farmer…remarked with satisfaction: ‘Now they’re growing on the inside.’ I thought of…your forced inactivity…Tell me, are you also growing on the inside?” St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way, #294 The plants cannot…

2019/01/11 By

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…

2018/12/14 By

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,…

2018/11/09 By

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…

2018/10/12 By

There is No Third Way

Tertium non datur. That’s the law of the excluded middle. It is used in philosophy, especially logic, but there is a lot of other “middle” that we can exclude besides philosophy. In my last post, There is a Third Way,…

2018/06/08 By

There is a Third Way

A while back, I had an exchange with a disheartened young man. He said that he keeps encountering 5 types: “(o)ld, rambling and cynical men; bored, cliquey housewives; clueless and hard-headed men; disinterested and troubled women; and unhelpful, indifferent men…

2018/04/13 By

On Pride and Christian Privilege

In the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape educates a lesser demon on using a new Christian’s pride: “He must be made to feel (he’d better not put it in to words) ‘how different we Christians are’; and by ‘we Christians’…

2018/03/09 By

Seasons of Change

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 human heart…” We hate monotony, sameness. Some of us constantly ask “what’s…

2018/02/09 By

Proof and Belief

In my last two posts, we’ve thought about the words “absolute” and “relative”, as well as “objective” and “subjective”. Another word that gets thrown around lightly is “proof”. “Set forth your case, says the Lord; bring your proofs, says the…

2017/10/13 By

Absolute Truth and Relativism

Last time, we thought about objective and subjective statements. Let’s look at a similar (and sometimes confused) pair of words: absolute and relative. Why do we care about these words? In 1884, Pope Leo XIII wrote against the relativistic philosophy…