When I was 18, I was diagnosed with cancer. For the next 7½ weeks, my father stopped working, went to church every morning to pray for me, and sat all day by my hospital bed. It took me half a lifetime to come to appreciate my dad’s sacrifice for me […]

One of the most compelling witness stories I have ever heard about the True Presence of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament was what moved the Venerable Bishop Fulton Sheen to make a daily Holy Hour (Adoration) for the rest of his life.  Bishop Sheen tells what was shared with […]

Since I started as a Prison Chaplain last December, I began a Book Club with the inmates.  We have been reading and discussing books like Les Misérables, Man’s Search for Meaning and, currently, Siddhartha. The main characters of these tales suffer immensely as they journey through life. Happiness isn’t really […]

As parents, God has entrusted us with a mission, to form souls for Heaven, being a bridge and instrument of his sanctifying grace. This is how the Catechism of Pope Saint Pius X teaches us, “Parents…have an obligation to ensure that their children and dependents learn Christian doctrine….”1 This vocational […]

For the past few years, I have been living with chronic pain. It has been a difficult journey, but through it all, I have learned an important lesson: the importance of trusting God, even when you can’t see the light. Before my health struggles began, I was fiercely focused on […]

For some time now I’ve been looking for ways to make my relationship with God less compartmentalized. Ways to ensure that God is present all throughout my day, in everything I do, and not only during specific times of the day that I carve out for prayer and reflection. Ways […]

Our daily routines are produced by habits. Our habits mold us whether we realize it or not. For this reason, as believers we should be more aware of what encompasses our daily practices. Several weeks ago, I received a message from a friend with whom I had reconnected after many […]

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. (Psalm 23:1)It is hard to find silence in our noisy world, but it’s even more difficult to find it within ourselves.  Many interior voices compete for our attention; none lead us to the place for which our weary hearts yearn, except […]

Though I have attended the Easter Vigil for years, I found this one to be particularly moving. This is because next Easter I will be ordained a Catholic priest. Throughout the drama of the Triduum, which reaches its climax at the Easter Vigil, I found myself thanking God for the […]

I have just returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where I had been on two previous occasions.  Returning is always a new and deeply comforting experience. From a tourist’s point of view, Israel is a country that has it all: the beautiful Mediterranean Sea, the Jordan River with […]