Regnum Christi

I’ve come to believe the most dangerous place on earth for Pope Francis isn’t on earth at all but more like 30,000 feet above the earth in a jet.

No, I’m not afraid the jet will crash or be hijacked.  But the Pope is on a plane with a herd of people who ponder every word, every expression, every sigh or clearing of the throat, every look of fatigue or dismay.

Yes, he has no snakes on his plane, but he does have journalists. And even journalists with a pro-Catholic tendency need to get a story.

Stories are built on conflict and controversy.  And it doesn’t take much to make a controversy, as Pope Francis learned last week when he performed a wedding in the jet high over Chile. Continue reading →

Visiting my sponsored child at the Catholic handicap orphanage who had cerebral palsy. He has now returned to Heaven with Our Lord.

While I was working in Beijing, China, I would often arrange for my company’s social responsibility programs to assist at the Catholic orphanage for handicapped children in the rural part of China.  Many of my local Chinese colleagues never had a chance to experience this type of charity work, let alone any interactions with Catholic organizations.  Many of the participants were touched by the witnesses of the Catholic sisters and volunteers who were selflessly serving at the very poor orphanage, truly living out our Christian way of loving the least of our brothers (Mt 25:40).

Recently, after 10 years, one of these local Chinese colleagues left China and migrated overseas.  She shared with me joyfully that she has started studying the Bible and told me about the discovery of her new found faith!  Praise the Lord!

Just as St Francis of Assisi said, “preach the gospel at all times, use words if necessary”.  Sometimes and under diverse circumstances, we are called not only to preach the gospel but also to evangelize by living out our Christian identities in order to sow the seed of faith by example.  In His time and in His will, this tiny seed of faith that was planted will flourish and blossom.

Photo: Visiting my sponsored child at the Catholic handicap orphanage who had cerebral palsy.  He has now returned to Heaven with Our Lord.

Captain Renault: I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! – From the classic scene in Casablanca, made in 1942

Twenty years ago – January 17, 1998, news broke on Drudge that then-president Bill Clinton had “relations” with a young intern in the White House.

That was the moment when I thought our nation had lost discretion and decorum.  It wasn’t only that I was disappointed (hardly shocked) that the leader of the free world might engage in illicit sex.  No, it was the explicit nature of how the media described the “affair.” And following that came the hypocritical outcries from politicians and press suggesting they had no idea such things ever happened.

Last year we witnessed the Weinstein scandal in Hollywood.  Goodness…a movie director asking pretty girls for favors in exchange for stardom.  Everyone in the movie industry was shocked – the same people who are churning out movies and television shows filled with violence, profanity, nudity and explicit sex. Continue reading →

While chatting with the kids from Sunday school, I asked them, “What do you want to be when you grow up”?  Some of the most popular answers were doctors, firemen, policemen etc., and why?  Because they can save people, save a life, and save the world!

In our human nature, we all have in our hearts “a law written by God” (Rom 2:15).  We all have this moral conscience to love the good and avoid evil (Veritatis Splendor 54), to love one another (Jn 13:34) and that we should not kill anyone (Ex 20:13) but instead, to save lives for “human life is sacred” (CCC 2258). Continue reading →

Seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, all the time, and his hand in every happening; This is what it means to be contemplative in the heart of the world.   Seeing and adoring the presence of Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of bread, and in the distressing disguise of the poor. 

-St. Teresa of Calcutta

My friend was homeless on the streets of Atlanta decades ago.  Looking at me as we stood on the corner of Courtland Ave. & Gilmer St. with Love & Serve Atlanta, he tried to make me understand a reality that is so far from my experience, he knows I won’t get it. “Hurt Park is not a happy place, Kerrie. There’s not a lot of hope here. That’s why we come.”  This was years ago.  I keep coming back with my family, especially on Christmas Eve. Continue reading →

The Book of Joshua is an epilogue to the Pentateuch where Joshua finally led Israel into the Promised Land after being in the wilderness for 40 years.  Under the command of Joshua, Israel experienced a brief period of spiritual faithfulness and military success, where there were far fewer instances of covenant breaking in comparison to Moses’ time.  This book showed a leadership contrast between Moses and Joshua, hence, the necessity of having Joshua to accomplish what Moses could not.   Continue reading →

Resolutions are near and dear to the Catholic heart for a few reasons that run in our baptismal DNA.

We love to have the firm purpose to amend our lives, as we promise every time we go to confession.

We love conversions, including our own ongoing conversions of life.

We aspire to give our will to the Will of God- a life surrendering resolution.

We also love the seasons of our faith, having times that we all focus together on a specific aspect of Christ’s life and mystery.

Yes, New Year’s resolutions are very Catholic.

At the same time, our faith asks us to rely on grace and not try to be the protagonists of our own salvation. We need to make sure our resolutions rely on God and our co-operation with him, not on our own plan for self-improvement based in pride or vanity, or on a determination to ‘earn our salvation’ (which of course, we cannot do, by the way).

Here are 5 thoughts to bring to prayer if you are looking for ways to have totally Catholic new year’s resolutions. Continue reading →

The moment had been creeping up on me for more than a quarter-century, but I didn’t see it coming.

Not the time. Not the place. Not the circumstances.

I sat in my kitchen, just a couple days past Christmas 2017. Four other people bustled about the kitchen rolling dough into pasta, mixing cheese and spices, putting together dozens and dozens of ravioli made from scratch. The task required patience and attention to detail and the love of good cooking I recall from my grandma’s kitchen and the kitchen of my wife’s grandmother. Continue reading →

Deuteronomy covers the time Moses and the sons of Israel were waiting outside of the Promised Land, where he recounted the happenings, introduced a new set of laws and gave the blessings and curses before he died at 120 years. Moses never made it to the Promised Land because of his broken faith with the Lord in the wilderness, and his failure to revere the Lord as Holy in the midst of the sons of Israel (Deu 32:51). But he did bring out one of the very key messages of the book that was the great commandment in the law (Mat 22:36): “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deu 6:4-5).  Moses mentioned this key message again in Chapter 30 that: “the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live” (Deu 30:6).

In order to love the Lord with all our heart, soul and might, we must firstly circumcise our hearts and be “no longer stubborn” (Deu 10:16).  “Real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal” (Rom 2:29).  This recalls our baptism in the name of Jesus Christ, which brings upon us the gift of the Holy Spirit (Act 2:38) that “cut to the heart” (Acts 2:37).  Through the Sacrament of Baptism, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit fills our hearts with God’s love (Rom 5:5), which makes it truly possible for us to obey the law of God because this love is the fulfillment of all the law (Rom 13:10).  Therefore, Baptism in the name of Jesus Christ in the New Testament is the “circumcision of our hearts” that was predicted by Moses in Deuteronomy 30:6.