A few Sundays ago, a friend of mine was speaking with my housemate Brian and told him that he was not feeling well. Brian offered to take him to urgent care. I was frustrated with this because I feel it is important to help people, in some situations, by forcing them to help themselves. This is the way of my earthly father. Teach them to be self-sufficient by leaving them to do for themselves. While this can be an effective way to help people grow, it can also be detrimental

Yesterday, a client and I were discussing the coming plague of cicadas. She said she doesn’t understand what the point of their lives is, since they live for such a short time. Our conversation got me thinking about how we often misunderstand the value and purpose of things we do not immediately grasp. I started to explain my theory, beginning with “we assume because their life above ground is short that they serve no purpose.” She cut me off with some scientific mumbo jumbo,

City of God 2:27 “... The whole city learned in public both by the words and gestures of the actors. They saw that the gods delighted in the commission of these things, and therefore believed that they wished them not only to be exhibited to them, but to be imitated by themselves...” We all learn through example, unless we have been given, by almighty God, the ability to see past example. When we see virtue and discipline, we tend to imitate them. This is not necessarily beca

Today is Good Friday. The day Jesus, who had already sacrificed by lowering Himself to take on human flesh, made an even greater...

Back more than a year ago, when the initial stay-at-home order ended, DC Mayor Bowser made a comment in relation to worship service and Mass that was not the beginning of, but revived a feeling in me that a line had been crossed in our view of our own bodies, minds, and spirits, and those of our fellow man. She said something along the lines of, “We will allow worship again.” This ruffled my feathers. Feathers that were already ruffled by a few other statements and incidents.

One of the plants in my bedroom needs to be transplanted. It no longer bounces back to life after I water and feed it. I do not enjoy transplanting, so I avoid it, and the plant continues to live in a droopy state. Getting the plant out of the pot in one chunk without tearing it apart is difficult. Soil ends up everywhere. After transplanting, the plant often goes into a bit of shock and droops even more than before. So is life. We often avoid change because it is messy, espe

My housemate and I discussed his rough day at work yesterday before our night prayer. Afterwards, he was obviously agitated. When I asked why, he said it was partially due to my “communication style,” which “lacks in empathy.” Empathy means understanding and sharing another's feelings. Empathetic means showing this understanding and sharing. So, according to these definitions, I do have empathy: I understand and sometimes share others' feelings. Where I struggle is in how I s

As we walked into Mass this morning, my housemate Brian moved anxiously to make sure he got hand sanitizer before entering the church. I snickered. He said, “What?” angrily, and I said, “Nothing.” My sense of humor is a gift from God, but as with all other gifts, it must be exercised appropriately and with discretion. I often laugh at things that make me uncomfortable, and I admittedly find it funny to make others uncomfortable with my sense of humor sometimes. This means som

I have a problem with buying books and with holding on to them rather than sharing the goodness in them with others. I imagine our Lord saying to me: 'These books you cling to are nothing. Emptiness. The emptiness I want for you is everything. Fullness. Poverty is My gift for you and My Church.' How disappointed He is to see her members reject it. 'I've spoken so clearly yet I am ignored. By those in positions of power and also by the sheep. Poverty is not an option, it is n

Last night, as I drove home, the sun and clouds in the sky were beautiful. I was following my drivevangelization routine, driving in a way conducive to Catholicism's call to be obedient to the laws of men, so only going 65mph. As I admired the beautiful sky, a car flew past me, and I thought, what a shame they will miss out on the beauty because they are rushing about like Lazarus’ sister Martha. I was reminded of my own personal call to slow down from when I was not working

Intimacy is what the Lord wants for us. Intimacy that can only be had through the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Holy Eucharist. In our weariness in the war for truth, we deny the many “few” who seek Him the true intimacy required to spend eternity with Him. This is the price of our leaders' weariness, and so of our own resulting weariness. We retreat from the battlefield of truth and so allow error to enter onto the path that leads to eternal life with Christ. The path use

Weariness is dangerous. It opens the door to, and sometimes leads us through it, into decisions and behaviors that are contrary to what is best for us and for others. Victory or compromise are common outcomes of war, but the end of a war, due to weariness, can leave the war's rationale unresolved and lead to insecurity and instability. The opening to the book “The Pope Benedict Reader” from Word on Fire states, “ Weary of the somewhat tired scholasticism that dominated Church

Shall I call you my brother if you are not? Shall I call you a friend if we’ve never met? Of course not. But we in the Catholic Church call people our brothers and sisters who are not. Is this charitable or loving? Not in my book. So I will not call people who reject the Body of Christ, His holy Catholic Church, my brother and sister. This lie keeps them stuck in the lie they live. By telling them they are parts of the Body of Christ when they have rejected, directly or indir

During Mass today, several young men and one older woman were dressed very immodestly. When my housemate and I left, I said I was going to write a letter to our pastor and ask him to please remind people not to wear clothes that look like they have become part of their bodies. The guy's clothes were so tight that you could see things you should not be able to see on a clothed person. There was a woman at Mass who had on a sleeveless shirt that was cut down low between her bre

I have a friend in their 40s who still has part of their living expenses paid by their parents. I have another friend who is driven from place to place by friends, not because they are unable to drive, but because of fear. I have no doubt that my friends' parents and “the driver” think they are being helpful to their respective needy child and friend, but are they really? What does it mean to help someone? Well, the first definition that came up on Google is part of the probl

I remember when BlackBerrys were the new toy that everybody wanted. Cl ients would come in, showing them off to me, impressed by the technology and the ability to always communicate and carry all the information you need in a small handheld device. Many people thought it would free them up, but instead it became a shackle. Another tool used by some of those who employ us to steal away our lives. To steal away our free time. Many accept this is a necessary evil. I do not. I re

So, last night I finished reading my brother, AJ Benjamin's, book, When the Son Frees You . I guess it would be more accurate to say I stopped reading his book. The book was challenging for me in many ways, not because of any intellectual or spiritual challenge, but because I didn't want to hear some of what he had to say. Similar to the negative reaction I had to the conclusion of Paul Darrow's story at the end of the movie Desire of the Everlasting Hills(DEH) . In the movie

I recently began exercising again in an effort to get back into the pants I could fit into pre-pandemic. The instructor in one of the exercise videos I watched made a comment that is very relevant for those of us trying to live more disciplined lives. He said that we need to pay attention to our form in each exercise because if we start off with bad form, we will grow into it, but if we use good form, we will grow into it. This is a truth that I have lived by for many years w

When I first started telling people I was going to move in with my housemate Brian, the comment I frequently got was that I should “try it out”. I knew each time I heard this statement that this is at the same time a spirit of appropriate caution and the spirit of worldly compatibility. My response to this suggestion was always “No, I need to go into this with the attitude that this is a forever change in the way I live, or I will not be committed. If I know I have an out, I

I was speaking to my sister-in-law on the phone a few weeks ago. She told me how my father had started calling more regularly, and when he did, he would call to speak to her, my niece, or my nephew instead of just calling to talk to my brother. She said how much this meant to them. It made me a little sad, but I pushed that feeling aside because I knew it was because I don’t do the same. I do not doubt that if I were to say to my niece or nephew, "I would’ve called more often