Many of us have that “one thing” that we refuse to give up. We justify our sin or weakness with many excuses and feel uncomfortable when others try to poke holes in our defenses. Or maybe we want to give it up, but feel powerless to it. We all have something, or have had something like that at one point in our lives. I can think of many things in my own life. On St. Patrick’s Day, I found myself thinking a lot about the culture that we live in. I woke up that morning, remembering how people used

One morning last week, I spilled coffee on my skirt. This is a typical thing for me. I am often clumsy – so much so that someone has actually asked me to pray for them every time I spill my drinks. This particular day however, I didn’t notice the stain until after I had already left the house, so I spent the entire day in a skirt stained with coffee – front and center. Embarrassing. I noticed that as I went through the day I kept telling everyone about my coffee stain, thinking, “If I just

I was running today – huffing and puffing up and down hills, past people and their dogs, with a dry mouth, looking awkward and wishing that I still lived in Florida where I could run on flat ground. I don’t run because I’m great at it. It takes me about eleven minutes to run a mile. I mostly run because I love it. I love the feeling of having accomplished something. I love the feeling of running downhill after I just spent ages struggling uphill. I love the days when my body feels great, and

Eight years ago I encountered the living Christ in adoration for the first time.  I was kneeling in front of Him, face to face, holding on to a piece of the altar cloth in front of me, crying hysterically. I was so confused.  I had no idea what was going on.  Why was I crying? What was HE doing to me? Little did I know then that that moment was just the beginning.  That was the weekend of my first LifeTeen retreat with my parish.  I will never forget that moment but today I’m not focusing on

As a human being, I am used to striving for things, accomplishing things, and getting things done. It’s part of our lives in the world. I loved being in college and working hard. I miss writing papers. I like “To Do” lists, and feeling as if I have accomplished something at the end of the day. It sometimes feels as if good grades, a bunch of check marks on a list, or a full schedule can be like physical, tangible evidence of my self-worth. This becomes a problem for me when it comes to God’s

We are adding something new to our prayer this year as missionaries that we learned from Fr. Roland at the missionary base in Germany. We refer to it as “Living the Word”. Every morning whoever is leading morning prayer that day will read the Gospel.  They will choose a word or phrase that spoke to the them and share that with the community and encourage the community to see how they can live out that word or phrase throughout their day.  At night prayer, we will then discuss how we “Lived the

I just went home for Easter. I had one of the best breaks that I’ve had in a long time, but I felt very busy. On Saturday morning, I had a few moments to pray before the rest of my family woke up. I thought a lot in that prayer time about how the apostles must have felt after the Lord was crucified and before He had risen. I’m sure they felt confused; maybe they felt as if they had been tricked; maybe they felt defeated. I could just imagine a totally dejected spirit over them in those two days