The Real March Madness - get off the sidelines!

Lent's almost over. Today is Holy Thursday, and Easter is just days away. But it's not too late!

This video might strike us as kind of fake or cheesy. But it's the TRUTH. Do I realize what is going to happen in the next three days? I've got a major part to play whether I realize it or not! This drama will unfold. Christ will die on the cross for me. I've nailed him to the cross. Do we know how much he loves me?!

True Love: nice quotes vs. real action

Love for souls sounds theoretical, vague, and ambiguous. But we’re talking about authentic Christian love, charity. We don’t just love on a human level, but we love others as spiritual and eternal persons, images of God himself. “God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him” (Gn 1:27). 

The example that the Holy Father gives at the beginning of the Year of Faith is that of the Samaritan woman at the well. She asks Christ for water, but he goes far beyond her physical needs and loves her more deeply. “If you only knew what God is offering and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me something to drink,’ you would have been the one to ask, and he would have given you living water” (Jn 4:10). He recognizes her real thirst and tries to quench it.

Life, love, death, God, joy - making sense of it all!

How did we meet Christ? We ask this walking through the narrow passageways of the catacombs. Martyrs found their final rest here. Hundreds and thousands of Christians secretly celebrated Mass for fear of being discovered. Why do such things? Christ died hundreds of years before. It’s just a bit of bread and a sip of wine.

No, there’s something more. For the Christians, martyrs, and saints of the first century, Jesus Christ was Someone. He meant going beyond the pomp and circumstance of their daily Roman lives. He could offer them more than the cosmopolitan, capital of the world ever could, despite her delicacies, luxuries, and opportunity to satisfy every sensual pleasure. Christ offered his body and blood for food, the comfort of Christian charity, and the promise of the satisfaction of all desire in eternal life.

But have I experienced this? 

When life gets tough: Travis Mills starts walking again.

I've been meaning to post about this story for a while. When I watched this video, I couldn't wait any longer.

Priorities - Who to love?

Life's busy! We have to do what's most important. Sorry, I haven't blogged recently. I figure that finishing my studies and getting ordained a priest is the priority for now. I hope you will agree - I'm counting on the prayers.

Now that I finished THE paper for my bachelor's in theology on St. Augustine's view of the human will, I hope to have a little more time.For now, I read this yesterday in the breviary. It's worth reading once, twice, three times!

What is love? Two easy steps (Lenten Virtues Part 1)

The last serious post was almost a month ago, Lent, grace, virtue, and so on. I haven't come down with a strange Asian flu. I haven't been abducted my a strange sect, and my social media accounts have not been hacked. I have, however, been very bad about blogging. Better late than never, I guess.

I promised to talk about virtues. Well here's the first: LOVE!

Yes, it's a virtue, not a catchword or a feeling. We sometimes equate love with happiness, emotion, even sex. Sometimes, it seems like we're on the outside looking in - we long to love and be loved. It just never seems to work. These are not love although they can be related.

Annie Asmussen: adventure, love, joy, and peace - where to find it.

Life's been busy, and blogging hasn't. I figure that there are priorities and life, and living them is more important than writing about them. Exams have been very interesting, and I have one more on Baptism. Preparation for ordination continues to be intense, and life always brings surprises.

One of these surprises has been the story of Annie Asmussen. A young woman giving her life full-time  to God and others. I got the chance to ask her a couple of questions, and here are the answers. You can find out more on her blog: Way of Love.

"So I am a missionary to love the empty, unhappy, and falsely happy. I've seen the most hardened hearts find peace, freedom and joy in Jesus."

Dating fast: filling our heart - sex, food, or true love?

Pleasures almost seem to have become human rights!

We not only have the "right" to food but any kind of free sexual expression. Topping the charts right next to abolishing hunger are the attempts mainstream abortion, contraception, and homosexual marriage. Somehow, it's all the same level.

What does fasting and Lent have to do with this? Reminding us that MAN is more than an animal. We don't just feed ourselves and reproduce. We were made to love, and love involves sacrifice. In Lent we are reminded of Christ's ultimate loving sacrifice on the cross, and we're called to imitate him in some small way!

Author Katherine Becker has a really neat take on things in the Dating Fast.

"The Dating Fast challenges each of us to exercise the courage needed to trust in God and trust in Him to lead us to the fulfillment of our hearts' desires."  

    —Fr. Luke A. Spannagel

The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God; it cannot be withstood.

Edmund Campion was a man on fire! He couldn't be stopped. As a Jesuit and a missionary, he was a man convinced of who called him, who he was, and the task at hand. Nothing was going to get in his way! 

"And touching our Society, be it known to you that we have made a league—all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practice of England—cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God; it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted: So it must be restored."

This reminds me of the Gospel Quote:

Can anything cut us off from the love of Christ -- can hardships or distress, or persecution, or lack of food and clothing, or threats or violence;  as scripture says: For your sake we are being massacred all day long, treated as sheep to be slaughtered?

Rm 8:35-37

What about us? What's our mission? Are we convinced?

As a side note, please comment if you have any suggestions on the logo.