Regnum Christi

Rome, June 1996.  I was in the middle of my “month long” spiritual exercises (retreat), and two years away from my priestly ordination.  We had 5 one hour directed meditations each day, with plenty of time for personal reflection and conversation with Christ.  After the first 6-7 days, it was getting a little hard and most of my prayer time was dry, without a lot of inspiration.  So, at one point I simply opened my heart to Christ and said, “Jesus, you called me to be your priest 11 years ago, and I said “yes.”  I am giving my life to you, and I am fully “in”, but my ordination is just two years away and I could use a little love and affirmation.” Continue reading →

“The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (Jn 3:8)

I love the image of the Holy Spirit as wind. You can´t see the actual air, but you see and feel its effects as it blows your hair and rustles the trees. You can hear it whether it´s a breeze or a hurricane; it´s the mystery of a presence that is obvious and invisible. Continue reading →

Give us JOY to balance our affliction for the years when we knew misfortune…

 Let the favor of the Lord be upon us:

Give success to the works of our hands,

Give success to the works of our hands.

–from Psalm 90

Just as the timing and tenor of each marital relationship is unique and varied, so goes the conversion to the Heart of our Savior in each believer.  Because of our tendency to sin, most of us want what we want as fast as possible: that’s what we call “timing.”  God, as Father, is perfect in His Time and knows what we need when we need it.  While we know that God the Son came in a specific moment in time to save us, we also know that the miracle of the Incarnation is enacted in every Mass; so, God is coming to us daily ever ready to work miracles in our lives.

As an adult convert to Catholicism, my general experience of living with Christ has taken many twists and turns.  There has been so very much waiting.  Often, I am a cross to myself.  How could God possibly expect “big things” from such a mess as me?  How can He put up with what often seems the two-steps-forward-four-steps-back nature of my walk of faith? Continue reading →

Please pray for Ashley. She is three years old and has cancer. On Saturday, April 2, we did street missions and a vigil of adoration to prepare Rome for Divine Mercy Sunday. As the crowds filed mechanically by the plaza of the tiny Church of St Barbara, tucked in among Roman restaurants and classy clothing stores, I found myself face to face with a woman and her five-year old girl. They were Ashley’s mom and sister. I asked them if they had any prayer intentions they wanted me to bring before the Blessed Sacrament on this eve of Divine Mercy Sunday. “Please pray for my daughter, Ashley. She’s three and a half, has cancer, and is getting baptized tomorrow.” We entered the Church and prayed and cried for Ashley before the Throne of Christ’s Mercy as Christ himself called the Eucharist when he spoke to St Faustina Kowalska. How deep is God’s Mercy! Continue reading →

The day after we got back from missions, Easter Monday, we watched the movie The Good Lie. Something in me sensed that it had a different message for me now than it would have had eight months ago.

To know why it´s called The Good Lie, you´ll have to watch it…but it´s about four siblings from a village in Sudan moving from a refugee camp to the United States. After their village is torn apart by civil war, they live in the camp for thirteen years until they receive the chance to move to Kansas City. Part of the story is their cultural transition—which is the part that had an interesting message for me in this stage of one of my own. Continue reading →

Chapter 1 left off with the Easter procession. On Good Friday we went to two very small but fervorous processions, where we walked the streets of the pueblo behind a statue of the dead body of Christ as if bringing him to the Holy Sepulcher. The procession that impacted me the most, though, was after Easter Sunday Mass at the Cathedral in Segorbe (the city outside of Valencia where we were staying during missions.) I think it impressed me so much partly because I had no idea what it was going to be like. I had heard about los pasos and seen pictures of the huge processions in other cities, but I still had no idea what to expect of my first experience of one. Continue reading →

This is going to take more than one blog.

My Holy Week mission this year was quite an experience… family missions in Valencia. It was my first one with families (and in Spain, for that matter). And… I LOVED IT!

It definitely stood out as unique next to my six years of Holy Week missions with American teenagers. Here´s a few of the cultural and not-so-cultural differences that made me smile to myself:

Tuna fish sandwiches for breakfast. Granted, on deliciously fresh bread, but literally just topped with plain tuna fish. Or honey—that was a treat. This was apparently gourmet…a typical Spanish breakfast is coffee and galletas Marias (sort of like a tea cookie.) Not exactly under the category of “big American breakfast.” Continue reading →

I started this e-mail in Haiti two nights ago, finished yesterday during my flight back home and am just able to send it now. I know everyone is home safe and sound. Thank you for a wonderful mission!….

We dropped off the missionaries a couple hours ago and came back to bed. Fr Michael, Katelyn and myself who were here as mission staff are leaving at noon. Last night I could not get enough wifi to connect my computer since it was raining quite a bit, and I had also spent what was left of my energy  in card games with the kids; we had a fantastic evening to celebrate the end of the mission trip. Continue reading →

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I fell in love with Jesus Christ when I was fifteen years old.

And when I did…it was fire.

All I could think about was wanting to go out, and set the world ablaze for this man that I had discovered to be so passionate in his love for his people. In a way, he had struck a match in my soul, that I couldn’t let out of my sight. This whole world, for Christ.

But as I sit down across the coffee table now, face-to-face with these beautiful young women, who file by one by one to open up their hearts, with lives full of questions and insecurities and uncertainties…there’s a mother-heart in me that recognizes a secret:

In the soul of a woman, often fire is expressed in mercy.

Mercy to listen to them, to understand them…to be moved by the fire to come down from the mountain, to go out into his people. And then, pierced by their weakness, just as he was…to allow that fire to rush out on the world in cooling mercy. Continue reading →

Graciousness in word and action seems to be fading away with the “greatest generation”, and it would be a pity to lose what our parents and grandparents had, for the most part, assimilated so well.  

“Let your speech be gentle, frank, sincere, straightforward, candid and faithful.” (St. Francis de Sales).  I still remember overhearing my mom during her long phone conversations in the kitchen with her friends.  Expression like these would naturally flow from her mouth, “Joanie, I was just calling to thank you so much for substituting for me the other day when I was a little under the weather, I am truly grateful for this sacrifice”, or “Mary, I thoroughly enjoyed our time together yesterday at lunch, thank you for making the time,” or “Hi Cathy, I heard that you just found out that you have cancer, and I wanted to let you know that you will be in my daily prayers and we are organizing a meal schedule for you and your family for the next few months, so please do not worry about that.  Is there anything else that I can do for you?…”  I was often reminded at our family dinner, (which by the way, I considered to be a huge blessing to have my 3 siblings and my mom and dad at the table for 90% of our dinners), to ask for things properly, “Tom, could you please pass the salt?  Jim, when you finish serving yourself, could you please pass the chicken parmigiana? Deb, may I take your plate?, etc…”  We could not talk with food in our mouth, we were constantly reminded to listen respectfully and not to interrupt, and we tried to stay on topic without bouncing all over the place in our discussions.  The dinner table was a training camp, and I hope that for all the parents reading this article, you too can form this nobility and self-control in your kids.   Continue reading →