Start here.
I have written here since 2010 on evangelization, parish life, Scripture, apologetics, and the moral life. These six are the best place to begin.
Go Home and Live as Missionary Disciples
If your faith feels humdrum, you may not have entered the mission yet. A talk to men on what that asks of you.
Formed By Distraction
Eliot described minds pulled from one distraction to the next. We now carry that in our pockets. What is it forming in us?
What Is a Catholic?
A plain answer: who belongs to the Church Christ founded on the Apostles, and what holds that Church together.
Why You Need Your Men’s Group
Before asking whether men’s groups work, ask what problem they are meant to solve.
Why Protestants Are Becoming Catholic at My Parish
What draws evangelicals and mainline Protestants into the Catholic Church, as they told me in class.
How God Speaks in Human Words
The first of four articles on how the Bible is at once a human book and the Word of God.
Retreat Insights - Theme and Tone
So I figured that I have directed, wrote, and/or contributed to at least 50 retreats in the last six years. Some of those retreats were my own babies from top to bottom, and some were those where I was just plugged in to the speaking role of someone else's baby. To say that I love retreats is an understatement. Retreats are beautiful opportunities to tell the world to shut up so that God's voice can resound in your heart.
I like to tell the teens or young adults that a retreat is a unique time to withdraw from the world in order to hear more clearly three voices: God's voice, your own voice, and the devil's. Too often we confuse the three (usually I think I'm God).
Here are a collection of insights that I came up with for retreat making that I think are pretty important. And most of these are for high school students, which is the majority of retreats that I do. I will post on a variety of topics to keep the blog posts a little bit shorter for your consuming pleasure.
a stumbling block for the Revised Roman Missal
I was at a gathering of ministry leaders the other day and I found out why some people had such a huge resistance to the new Roman Missal English translation. The sad thing is, it is all based on a huge misunderstanding, which means there is an opportunity for solid catechesis.
First thing's first, the people who were angriest were the oldest. They represented the mid-60's and older crowd. Not a single young adult or middle-aged person was upset about this third revision. As I noticed this, I began asking some questions to them as to why they were angry.
That's when I discovered the huge misunderstanding.
Life Night on the ‘Word Made Flesh’
The Incarnation is the most important doctrine of the Church, second only to the Trinity. It is absolutely crucial to understand the full meaning of the Word made flesh to live out our faith. The doctrine of the Incarnation was best summed up in the phrase by St. Cyril of Alexandria: the hypostatic union.
Fancy, huh?
mission and confidence
The message of Christianity is one of self-distrust. You cannot do it on your own. We hate hearing this because we feel like it denies or limits our power. "I have the power" we say to ourselves, "I'm confident I can do this, build this, become this." Jesus doesn't think so.
Confidence is a compound word meaning With Faith, to have faith in one's own ability to accomplish, to succeed. The gospel tells us to stop having confidence in ourselves. We cannot accomplish. We cannot succeed. Apart from Christ, "you can do nothing."
I said this is a part of the gospel message, which means that it is supposed to be "Good News". How is this good news? Are not the greatest and most powerful among us men and women who had confidence in themselves, who excelled in their abilities?