The Catholic Church has faced many crises over the centuries.
- Persecution by unfriendly Roman emperors like Nero.
- The Crusades.
- The Inquisition.
- The Reformation
- Post-Vatican II confusion
- The sex abuse scandal.
Through these and many other challenges, the Church has persevered. The faithful have retained faith. Flawed humans have preserved the Church that Christ founded.
But now the Church faces a challenge like none before. It strikes at the very heart not only of the Church, but the culture of Rome, the character of Italy. Continue reading
Today prayer is presented to us in the liturgy. We all need time to pray. Not just to ask God for things, but to build a loving trusting relationship with Him. Prayer is a battle and we must persevere in the battle. Moses has to hold up his arms in prayer to keep the battle in favor of Israel. We have to fight, but also have to learn to lean on others to help us through the fight and to persevere. How often when we are tiered we ask ourselves, where are those who are supposed to be holding up my arms to keep going? At those moments I find that we have to take the moment to look around us and see that there are many others who feel the same. By holding up their arms, our arms are also held up in prayer. We will never tier when we are all holding one another’s arms.
Who says a fourteen-year-old can’t be a great saint?
The rosary is a very easy prayer to “do” rather than “pray.” I was sitting on the plane the day after Christmas as a sixteen-year old waiting on the runway to take off. I was on my way to visit my family on the farm for Christmas from the high school seminary. Due to a snowstorm, my flight from New Hampshire to Minnesota had be re-routed through Charlotte, taking a big bite out of my already short holiday visit. I was a bit disappointed to say the least. 
Americans are asking this day how is that we have come to this place in our history where we are choosing between people who demonstrate narcissistic behavior and are proven public liars, both of whom are banking on the voters to care more about their personal agendas than about the good of their neighbors.
“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”— George Orwell, 1984
The God Who loved us first gives us every good gift. In fact, we truly “cannot give what we do not have.”
“You pay God a compliment by asking great things of Him.” — St. Teresa of Avila
I am not a poet nor a writer. I love a good poetic outflow when I hear one, but I have to be honest: I’m not the type to grab a poetry book and go sit out on a rock and pass the afternoon in the breeze. However, there is one poet I just can’t get enough of: the Lord. He is the most passionate, over-the-top, romantic poet of time and eternity who inscribes symphonic songs of burning love on the hearts of his beloved children. I love the way he touches us personally, tenderly, intimately with a creativity, passion, uniqueness and inexpressible… expressivity, that is nothing short of the greatest poetry. Wordsworth, Poe, Frost, Shakespeare don’t hold a candle to Him. He is a Father, whose irresistible love for his little ones leads him to every smallest detail of care. He is the passionate Lover, composing overflowing songs of love from the cross for his beloved. We are loved by God, and this love is not dry, bland, Platonic. It is powerful, passionate, real, human. 
The story that Christ gives about the master who asks his servant to serve him seems to have nothing to do with the petition of the disciples increase their faith. Through this story which seems so obvious, Christ shows us that also faith is the way to understand what is obvious to Him. Faith is the key to understanding the world. When we have faith then we understand what is really happening. Faith gives us the understanding of the world around us so that we can put it in its correct order, directing us to God. Without faith we loose control of the world and everything is reverse, the master is serving the slave. When we believe, everything falls into its proper place because we see it as God does. St Paul tells us that we must nourish the gift of faith. Faith is like a seed that should be planted and needs to be nourished so that it can grow. Contact with God in prayer helps is that water and sun. Protect and nourish that seed so that it grows to produce more seeds to help others believe.