Thorns, burdens, and a back ache
I was talking with a friend recently whom I pray for regularly. He too is involved in ministry and impacts a lot of people. Yet he is scourged by a physical burden that he has had for some time. Whenever he has asked me to pray for him I always pray for this physical pain to leave him so that he would not be distracted. In a recent conversation I realized that perhaps it was not God’s desire for this burden to leave him. Perhaps …

As you may remember, last summer I was asked to go to Germany to minister at the European Catholic Youth Conference which was a conference for Catholic youth who live on U.S. military bases around Europe. It was an incredible weekend and opened my heart to military youth ministry.
These teens have been living all over the world for many years. Many of them not living in the same place for more than 2 years at a time. Many of them have one or more parent away on deployment. They need …

When things don’t go my way I often find myself saying to God – why does this have to happen to me? Or some other despairing remark of the same sort. We often wonder why, not because we truly want to know why God has allowed something or what lesson might be learned from the present circumstance, but more out as a complaint.
It is like when a child is denied a request by a parent and they ask, “Why?”  Parents are of course frustrated when they respond with a very …

“Rend your hearts, not your garments,
and return to the LORD, your God.
For gracious and merciful is he…” Joel 2:13
The number one question Catholic’s ask each other during the week of Ash Wednesday is most likely, “So what are you going to give up?” This of course is an unofficial statistic but I bet some research would back me up.
Often it seems that the problem with “what we give up” is that it is merely a matter of course. Something we do because we are supposed to – it’s tradition. To …

Here we stand at the opening of a door. (Rev. 3:20) It is Ash Wednesday, the day we begin our journey in the desert, that is if we choose to enter the door. All too often we stand at the door and merely look inside. Perhaps we step in for a moment and then step back again on the other side.
Christ beckons you and I to enter in, to join him in the desert, to allow him to transform us. We must take this journey if we are to fully …

1. Lent Reading List
Catholic evangelist/speaker, Thomas Smith, twitter handle @gen215 posted a request for suggestions from Catholic Tweeters to give their Lent Reading suggestions this week and made a great little video giving those suggestions along with some of his own. I actually really liked the list and copied it to keep as suggestions for throughout the year. Reading a book during Lent is a great spiritual practice and a great way to make Lent the spiritual time it is meant to be. You can check the video out here …

Announcing iGrace – daily messages for Lenten encouragement and inspiration:
Just in time for LENT – I’m excited to start a new service of LivingGracefully.net – It is a daily inspirational text message delivered right to your phone. The messages will be 160 characters long and contain a quick insight or prayer to help you continue focusing on Christ this Lent.
I am constantly praying for those of you who read this blog and praying for what words God would desire me to share with you. I’m excited to offer these prayers in the …

“We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures, we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his Son.” Venerable Pope John Paul II
We live in a world that measures our worth by success and failures. We live in a world of many false pretenses. We can never measure up to the expectations of these pretenses. We have these pretenses for what is success, what is happiness, what is a “good life”. They will forever fail to satisfy …

Recently I was overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness. All the difficulties of our life seemed to weigh heavily on me. Financial concerns, professional concerns, thoughts about my failures, etc. All morning I tried to do things to ignore it, but the more I did, the more overwhelmed I became. I try not to complain and not to focus on the negative. I didn’t want to talk about it with my wife because I didn’t want to bring her down. But she knew something was wrong and was growing frustrated …

Let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help. – Hebrews 4:16
Our first intention are for those affected by the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti.

We of course pray for those who lost their lives, “Saints of God receive their souls, receive their souls and present them to God.”
We also pray for those who are trapped or injured. We pray that as search efforts continue that anyone else who is still alive in the rubble will be found. We pray for the injured …