It's Hot in the Desert

I feel like I'm in the desert when it comes to my faith. I've felt that way for months. I read a blog post today that was like a kick in the butt. I really needed to hear what Pete said. I need to get on my knees and ask God how I can become a better version of myself. I really need to pray that the Holy Spirit commands me to do His will. Check out Pete's blog post here....Command Me, Lord.

Break Time!

The past several weeks of my life have been pretty crazy. Not only do I work a part-time job in addition to my full time job as a youth minister, but my ministry job has been seemingly non-stop for the past month or so. Between Confirmation, graduation Mass, meetings (more than usual!), coordinating the Matthew Kelly speaking event at my parish (see www.dynamiccatholic.com or www.matthewkelly.org for more about Matthew), I have barely had time to breathe, much less do anything else. And then Memorial Day weekend came. A time to slow down, relax, and spend time with family. Yet, this weekend was anything but slow.

Friday night was the start of it all. It was the night Matthew came to speak. This is something I have been anticipating and preparing for for months. I've been wanting to get him to come ever since I read his book, Rediscovering Catholicism. If you haven't read this book, you need to!  Matthew's message is one that needs to be heard in parishes across the U.S. It was an amazing event. It was spiritually refreshing and good to hear his message. Unfortunately, I did not take the time to allow it to sink in. This weekend was the peak of busyness in my busy month. It was spent either working in the yard or working my part-time job.

In the midst of the craziness of my life, I've forgotten several things. First of all, I've forgotten to pray...or rather I've chosen to not take the time to pray. I thought about prayer often, but rarely did I stop to spend time in prayer with my Lord. I didn't pick up my Bible. I didn't read any other spiritual book. I consumed myself with distractions, telling myself I'll get to prayer later. As a result of neglecting to maintain my relationship with God, I have forgotten to maintain and nurture my relationship with my wife and children. The result of all of this has not been pretty. I've lost sight of my passion and purpose in life.

 Summer break is here. I'm done with my weekly youth group meetings until September. I'm still meeting with the teens this summer, but I'm taking a much needed 3 week break. And when I do start meeting with them over the summer, it is going to be much less intense than during the school year. I need to take this short break to regroup and refocus. Matthew said on Friday night that our lives change when our habits change. I need to change my habits. I need to make a habit of nurturing my relationship with God. I need to spend time with Him every day. I need to make a habit of nurturing my relationship with my spouse and my children. I need to slow down the pace of my life and focus on what is really important: My God and my family.

What about you? Do you need to slow down? Do you need to refocus? Do you need to change your habits? Do you need to change your life? Take time out today to think about these questions. Think about where your focus is. Is that focus going to lead you to heaven, or is it just keeping you busy in the moment? I know that my focus has been keeping me busy, but has not been leading me to heaven. Make the changes in your habits that are necessary to change your life. Find good habits to replace the bad ones. Start by making prayer a habit. Start today. I am.

A Guide to Christian Meditation: A Book Review

My first impression of this book when I received it in the mail and opened the package containing it was: "Wow! This book is small!" At 75 pages, and the size of my hand, it really is a small book. A Guide to Christian Meditation, I discovered, is actually derived from a much larger book, The Better Part - A Christ Centered Resource for Personal Prayer, both written by John Bartunek, LC.

Fr. Bartunek is a Legion of Christ priest. This didn't scare me away, despite the issues surrounding their order. I have met a few Legionaries and all of them are wonderful, holy men. Despite it's size, this book packs a powerful punch. It is chock full of wonderful advice on how to focus and enter into a deep meditative prayer with God. It uses a four step approach to meditation: Concentrate, Consider, Converse, and Commit. If you are looking for a good book on Christian meditation, I highly recommend this one. Take your time with it. Just because you can read this book in an hour, it doesn't mean you should. Spend a few days with it and really focus on what Fr. Bartunek is trying to say.

If I had to say anything negative about this book, its that it seems to be written specifically as a primer for the members of Regnum Christi (RC), the lay apostolate of the Legion of Christ. I only know this because I spent some time with RC a few years back. There are a few references to things that are specific to RC, their spirituality, and their apostolates. If this book is meant to be written to a wider audience than just members of RC, then these references should not be present. With that being said, the references to RC and their ministry does not distract from the overall message of the book.

(I receive this book for free from catholiccompany.com in return for giving an honest review of it.)

Prayer and the Will of God: A Book Review

It's been a while since I've reviewed a book. I've spent a lot of time with this book, not because it was a difficult read, but because I've wanted to prayerfully consider what Van Zeller is telling his readers.


All in all, this is a fabulous book. The ultimate goal of this book is to help its readers, as the title indicates, to merge prayer with the will of God. Prayer, without surrendering to God's will, is nothing. It is not fruitful. You must be willing to surrender your will to God's in order to have effective prayer...and a joyful life.


What I enjoyed most about this book is the fact that it is realistic. What I found particularly beneficial is the chapter on distracted prayer. What Van Zeller tells his readers is that you cannot pray without distractions. I so often get frustrated with myself for being distracted while in prayer and I found it beneficial to me to find that it is natural to have distractions. The challenge is what you do with those distractions. Do you allow them to take you away from your prayer, or do you push them aside and refocus on surrendering your will to God.


Van Zeller provides practical advice throughout his book that we can take into our prayer lives and make it more fruitful. If you are seeking help with prayer in your own life, grab a copy of this book. You can get Prayer and the Will of God from The Catholic Company.


(I received this book for free in return for giving an honest review of it.)

We All Have Burning Bushes

The burning bush. How often have I said (and heard others say) "I wish God would speak to me like He did to Moses, through a burning bush. If God just spoke to me as clearly as Hid did to Moses, then I would know what He wanted me to do and my life would be easier than it is." Why doesn't God speak to us like He did to Moses?

Let me ask you another question: What makes you think God isn't speaking to you like He did to Moses? Sure, we may not see any burning bushes with voices coming out of them, but God does speak to us, oftentimes very clearly. The problem isn't that God doesn't speak to us like He spoke to Moses, the problem is that we don't listen to Him.

Let's go back to Moses and the burning bush and look at what's going on here. The passage starts out like this: "As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed. So Moses decided, 'I must go over to look at this remarkable sight, and see why the bush had not burned.'" (Exodus 3:2-3) Moses saw a bush that was on fire. This, in itself, is nothing spectacular, except that it was not being consumed. He could have dismissed it as nothing. But Moses felt a tug on his heart. He felt drawn to it.  Moses, being a man of God, recognized this tug as a call to prayer and he responded. It was only after Moses responded to the initial tug on his heart to investigate the bush that he heard God calling out to him. Moses then entered into prayer and conversed with God. He then heard God's call to free the Israelites from Egypt.

We all get these tugs on our hearts from God, whether we recognize it or not. These tugs are a call to prayer, a call to enter a relationship with God.We may not literally see burning bushes as we're walking down the street or driving down a busy highway, but there are tugs on our hearts. I recognize these tugs on my heart many times. It may be something as small as writing for my blog or stopping what I'm doing to play with my kids or it may be as big as changing my career path. The tugs are there and we need to be able to recognize them.

So, how do you recognize the tugs of God on your hearts? There is only one way to recognize them, and that is through prayer. Start praying now, even if you don't feel the tug on your heart or see the burning bush in your life. I said earlier that Moses was a man of God before he saw the burning bush. He had a prayer life and a relationship with the Lord. We need that, too. If we can pray now when we don't see our burning bushes, then with time we will be able to see them as they come up in our lives. And when we do begin to see the burning bushes in our lives, when we do begin to feel the tugs on our hearts, we need to respond as Moses did. It is then that we will hear the voice of God calling to us loud and clear.

Can You Help Me?

We are all in relationships of one sort or another. Whether that relationship is with a best friend, a spouse, a co-worker, a classmate, a teacher, or a boss, we are all in relationships.

Imagine, if you will, for a moment that I am your best friend. Now imagine that every time we talk, all I do is ask you for something. I ask you to buy me lunch. I ask to borrow a pen. I ask you to help me on a project that I'm working on. I ask to borrow your cell phone. I ask you for  money. How would you feel if every time we talked all I did was ask you for something, if all I did was ask you to help me? How long would that relationship last? My guess is that that relationship wouldn't last more than a couple of weeks.

This is how we often approach prayer. All we do is ask God for help. All we do is ask Him to give us something or to do something for us. Yes, God is there to answer our prayers and to help us with our struggles. But this approach to prayer misses the point. God wants more from us than just a laundry list of thing we want Him to do for us. He wants us to enter into a relationship with Him.

Think for a moment about your best friend, about the person you have the closest relationship with. What makes that person your best friend? What makes that relationship so close? I know that the relationship with my best friend, my wife, is so close because we communicate. That communication goes beyond "Can you pass the salt?" when at the dinner table. That communication is deeper than asking my wife if I have clean underwear or if there is gas in the mini-van. We share everything with each other. We voice our hurts, our joys, our triumphs, our struggles. We bare our souls to each other.

This is what our relationship with God is meant to be. This is what prayer is all about. God desires us to share our souls with Him, to voice our pain, our struggles. He wants to laugh with us in the joyful moments in our lives. He wants to cry with us in our pain. He wants to be our best friend. Next time you pray, don't ask God, "Can you help me?" Instead, share with Him as you would your best friend. And then ask Him, "What can I do for You? How can I help You?" I guarantee your prayer will be more fruitful if you do. Your laundry list of requests will be completed without even voicing them to Him.

Unanswered Prayers?

I have many unanswered prayers in my life....or at least they seem unanswered to me. I read this today about unanswered prayers. It is  from a document found on the body of an unidentified Confederate soldier during the Civil War:

I asked for strength that I might achieve; I was left weak that I might learn to humbly obey.

I asked for power that I might lead, and win the praise of men; I was given weakness that I might feel the need for God.

I asked for health that I might do great things; I was given infirmity that I might do better things.

I got nothing I asked for, but everything I hoped for. Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered. I am among all men most richly blessed.

I'm Making Some Radical Changes!

I need to make some radical changes in my life. I need to be less selfish, lazy, and unfocused. I need more discipline in all aspects of my life: spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, and physically. I feel like I've been saying this for years, however I don't think I've ever really taken myself and my need to change seriously. If I had, I would have done it, right?

So, yes, I need to make some radical changes...changes in the way I live my life, but also changes in my attitude. I need to start taking seriously my need to change. I've heard that it takes 4-6 weeks to break bad habits and create new ones. With Lent starting in less than two weeks, its time I start taking my need to change seriously and to create new, good habits to replace the old, bad habits I currently have. So here's what I'm going to do:

1. Prayer. Duh! I should be doing this anyway, but you know what...I haven't been praying as consistently as I should. I work for a church, so I am committing to get in front of the Blessed Sacrament every work day to spend some time with Our Lord. It should seem easy, right? I've tried this before, but I've been inconsistent. I haven't been taking it seriously enough. I need to believe that there is nothing more important than prayer, that prayer is to the soul what water is to the body. I can't survive without it. I'm going to schedule prayer into my day, and I am going to stick to my commitment.
2. Fasting. I wrote a blog post on the importance fasting just last week. I also committed to fast every Friday. Well, here I am barely a week into it, and I've already failed. Again, I'm not taking it seriously.I need to understand and believe that fasting is good not only for my body, but also for my soul. I need to be willing to make small sacrifices in order to purify my soul. And I need to do it with a spirit of prayer, and not out of a sense of obligation.
3. Spiritual Reading. I love to read! I always have. It's part of the reason why I obtained a bachelor's degree in literature. I need to spend time every day reading something spiritual. I need to expand my mind spiritually and intellectually and am committing to read every day during Lent. I plan on reading The Gargoyle Code by Fr. Dwight Longenecker. I'm really excited about this book and the spiritual growth I hope to gain from it. If you don't know who Fr. Longenecker is, check out his blog, Standing on My Head.
4. Discipline. I will remain focused and disciplined at work and at home. I will not allow distractions to keep me from doing the important work in my family, on the job, and in the above three goals for Lent. To help with that goal, I am going to stay away from Facebook and twitter throughout the course of Lent. I have set up my blog to automatically post new articles to those sites to keep my friends, family, and followers informed.

I know that I am committing to a lot this Lent. Some may say that I am taking on too much. Maybe I am. But radical change calls for radical action. This is all stuff I should be doing anyway, and Lent poses the perfect opportunity to get my life back on track spiritually, physically, intellectually, and emotionally.

What are you doing for Lent?

Justice Will Be Served

Have you ever gone to a parent to ask for something and they said no? Have you ever made a request of your boss and had that request rejected? What did you do? Did you give up and walk away, or did you keep asking? Chances are, if it was important, if it meant a lot to you, you kept asking. You didn't give up. You persisted until you got them to listen to you and the reasons for your request.

This is what the persistent widow did in the gospels (Luke 18:1-8). Here we have this old widow who needs some justice, so she goes to the judge. He rejects her request for justice. But her request is really important, so she keeps asking. She doesn't give up.

I know when I was a child, whenever my parents rejected a request of mine, I thought they were being unjust. I thought it was unfair that they did not give me what I wanted....that they wouldn't even listen to my argument about why I needed what I was asking for. I, unfortunately, was not a very persistent child, so I normally just dropped the request after my first attempt. Had I persisted, my parents may have at least listened to my argument, and they may have even granted my request.

We all make requests of God in our prayer. It is often my experience that God does not grant my prayer requests...at least not initially. I have, from time to time, seen God as being unjust for not granting my request, for not listening to my arguments. But I continue to be persistent in the hopes that God will eventually listen to and answer my prayers, because I know that God is a just judge.Think about it, if an unjust judge, like in the parable of the persistent widow, will eventually hear and respond to the pleas, helpless widow, how much more will God, who is just, respond to our pleas.

However, take note! The bible passage never indicates that the judge gave the decision that the widow was looking for.  All he agrees to do is to "deliver a just decision for her." The widow does not necessarily receive what she wants, but she does receive justice.

Likewise, through persistent prayer, God will eventually hear our pleas, our cries for help. And, like the judge, he won't necessarily give us what we want. But he will  give us what we need, what is best for us. God will deliver justice.

The Culture of Addiction

We are a culture of addiction. Yes, there are many people that are addicted to drugs and alcohol. But many of us are addicted to money and power. We are addicted to food and our physical appearance. We are addicted to sex and instant gratification. We are addicted. Henri Nouwen, in his book The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming states:

'Addiction' might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates contemporary society. Our addictions make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love. These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs.

We have become slaves to our passions. The voices of our world are telling us that we need to be successful, popular, beautiful, and we have given in and surrendered to these voices. We have become addicted in our pursuit of self-fulfillment and in an attempt to satisfy our deepest needs.

What, then, are our deepest needs? I think the heart of our deepest needs is the desire to love and to be loved. At the root of our addictions is the longing for love and acceptance. We are just pursing that love and acceptance in the wrong places. We are looking to the world to build our self-esteem. We are looking to the world to find love.

It is only in and through Christ that we can find love. It is only through Christ that we can build our self-esteem. It is only through Christ that we can find acceptance. Only Christ can satisfy our deepest needs. All else will leave us wanting. All else will lead us down a path to depravity.

So, how do we overcome our addictions? We must pray. We must pray that God will give us the strength and grace to overcome our addictions. And, we must fast. St. Augustine says: "Do you wish your prayer to fly toward God? Give it two wings: fasting and almsgiving." Fasting, making some small (or large) sacrifices, draws us closer to Christ. Through denying ourselves something temporal and filling it with a spirit of love and prayer, we are able to overcome our addictions and temptations. Matthew Kelly, in Rediscovering Catholicism: Journeying Toward Our Spiritual North Star states:

I am utterly convinced that if we are able to develop the inner freedom to resist the temptations that face us in the modern world, we must learn to assert the dominance of the spirit over the body, of the eternal over the temporal.

It is through fasting that we are giving graces that cannot be accomplished through prayer alone. It is through fasting that we are able to return home to God. It is through denying the temporal that we conquer our addictions and satisfy our deepest need, our need for the love of God in our lives.

Life's Lessons in the Rosary

I prayed the rosary today for the first time in a long time, too long. As I was praying there were a few thing I reflected on. First of all, I was wondering why I don't pray the rosary more often. It is a truly wonderful prayer and an awesome way to focus in prayer. I have a tendency to allow my mind to wander when I attempt to pray and the rosary helps me to focus, not only on the repetitive Hail Marys and Our Fathers, but also to focus on the movement of the Lord in my heart. God spoke to me today through the rosary.

As I was praying the Sorrowful Mysteries and reflecting on the events surrounding Christ's death, there were two things that came to mind. First of all, Christ did all of this for us. He endured pain, suffering, ridicule, and even death....for us. That is a hard concept for me to understand sometimes. I understand the theology behind it, but what I fail to grasp is the impact Christ's death has on my day to day life...because oftentimes it has no impact at all. I go about my daily life without thought about what Christ endured for me, for my sins. I continue to sin, and am not at all thankful for the price He paid for me. I need to change that in my life.

That need to change leads me to the second thing that came to mind while praying the Sorrowful Mysteries--How does one change? Christ, through His example those last days of His life, shows us how to change. We need to look to Him and how He reacted to those events and to try to live our lives in the same way.

Through the agony in the garden Christ gives us an example of surrender and obedience. We must be willing to surrender our wills to the Father's. This is so hard to do! Christ pleaded with His Father to let the cup He was about to drink to pass Him. In His humanness, He did not want to die. Yet, He let it all go. He knew and understood God's will for Him and was willing to sacrifice His own desires for the desires of the Father.

The scourging of the pillar and the crowning of thorns give us an example of humility. Christ was beaten, spit upon, and ridiculed. Yet, He did not lash out in anger at those who persecuted Him. He did not try to defend himself and His pride, but He let go. Christ humbled Himself before others and allowed the Father's will to be done in His life.

In the carrying of the cross we see an example of perseverance. Christ was forced to carry the heavy piece of wood that would become His cross through the streets of Jerusalem. He was forced to do so after He was whipped and beaten. He was already a broken man, in pain, weak, and tired. Yet, He persevered. He did not give up. He did not ask for help. Simon of Cyrene came to His aid, but at the request of the soldiers, not Christ's.

Then Christ is crucified. Here we have an example of forgiveness. After all Christ has been through--being whipped, spit on, crowned with thorns, forced to carry a heavy chunk of wood, and then hammered to that wood with nails--after all of this, Christ still has love in His heart: "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." Christ forgives.

If I want to be more like Christ, if I want to understand the impact that His suffering and death has had on my life, then I need to live out His example. I need to surrender and be obedient. I need to be humble. I need to persevere through all my trials. And most importantly, I need to have enough love in my heart to forgive.

I need to pray the rosary more. I need to more fully understand life's lessons in the rosary.

I'm Awful at Praying

I'm not a good prayer....I mean...I don't pray well. I never have been good at it. I have never been consistent at it. I try my hardest, sometimes, to make an effort to pray every day, but oftentimes my prayer is not fruitful. So I give up. I've expressed this to my spiritual director and he gave me some advice on how to focus my prayer. I've read books about prayer and tried the ideas in those books. The advice I've received from my spiritual director and the books I read are helpful....for a while. Then I fall back into my "old ways" and eventually give up on praying all together.

I think there are a couple of things at work here that are preventing me from being good at prayer. The first thing is my lack of commitment to it. At the first signs of "distress" I give up. I throw in the towel. I'm not disciplined enough to work through the difficult "desert moments" in my prayer and remain consistent. I can say all the right things and make all the promises but when push comes to shove, I just lack discipline.

I think there is something else going on, something deeper, that is at the heart of my problem with prayer. It is in yet another book I'm reading on prayer, Prayer and the Will of God, by Dom Hubert van Zeller. This idea that has been presented to me in van Zeller's book is something I've never considered before, and it is this:

Prayer comes from God, is kept going by God, and finds its way back to God by its own power. All we have to do is lend ourselves to the process as generously as we can, and not put any obstacles in the way.

So, who or what is the obstacle in my prayer? Me. I'm the obstacle in my prayer. The book goes on to say that "we are not so holy or so clever that we can make prayer. Prayer is a grace." My problem is that I'm trying to make prayer happen. I'm the one who is trying to control my prayer.

I need to do as van Zeller suggests, to just lend myself to the process and get out of the way. I need to put myself in a place where God can work through me in prayer. I need to give control over to God. This is a hard thing to do, with anything in our lives. I'm slowly learning to let go. I believe that this is the next thing that God is asking me to do--to let go of my spiritual life and give control of it over to Him. In the meantime, I take solace in the fact that "all He asks is that I should try to serve Him. The moment I try, I am in fact succeeding." (van Zeller)

Praise God for His mercy and strength!