Minute Meditations

Jesus, often I still judge others too quickly despite what I have learned in my life experience. I can still be unwilling to consider the needs and motivations of others. I excuse myself too easily.
The Challenge of the Cross

Through fasting, almsgiving, and prayer, the forty days of Lent provide us with special opportunities to express solidarity with those who struggle to meet their basic human needs.
Homegrown Faith

As we enter into the season of Lent this year, let us offer up our sacrifices, but—using nature as our guide—let us also train ourselves to look closely for signs of new, spiritual life even in the most hopeless corners of our world.
Homegrown Faith

Compassion needs space because love needs a place of unimpeded encounter between grace and nature. In a world crowded by information, we need to find space for the soul to grow.
Compassion

We are always trying to please God, but it is God who is always trying to please us. God is always surprising us with gifts of grace when we least expect them.
Compassion

There is no treasure in life like a clear conscience. If you want the joy of a clear conscience, go to confession.
Rediscover Lent

Repent is a powerful word. And it means the same as it did to the people walking around the dusty pathways in their sandals, trying to inch closer to Jesus as he passed through their town or village. Repent means “to turn back to God.”
Rediscover Lent

Our spiritual heritage is rich in wisdom and practice. If we can embrace this heritage and adapt it to the modern context, we will begin again to thrive as the spiritual people God intended us to be—both individually and as a Church.
Rediscover Lent

Anytime we have been cheated or betrayed, anytime a friend, spouse, brother or sister has let us down, anytime we have been judged harshly or spoken to unkindly, we have the opportunity to love our enemies.
The Sacred Heart for Lent

This Lent, let us remember that Jesus sought out the company of sinners, not to engage in their ways but to extend the gift of mercy. When we do the same, we console his Heart.
The Sacred Heart for Lent

Humility is a funny virtue because we love it in others but have a hard time practicing it ourselves. We like to be appreciated. We like to be right.
The Sacred Heart for Lent

The world’s deepest problems—and ours as well—cannot be resolved with more money, more houses, more food, more “things.” Only God truly satisfies the human heart. Only his word fills us and leaves us fully content and satiated.
The Sacred Heart for Lent

Fortitude gives our lives purpose in and of itself. Fortitude is the belief that God did not create us in vain. He gave us a purpose, even if we don’t always see it clearly.
A Guy's Guide to the Good Life

Fortitude is believing and acting on our beliefs when it is hard to do so. Principles, truth, courage—they are easy virtues in easy times. It’s at the shank of the evening, when belief is hard, that fortitude becomes a virtue to live by.
A Guy's Guide to the Good Life

During our own journeys throughout life, our Lord allows us to rub elbows with those who may not have faith, so that we can be an example of faith, hope, and love to them through our words and actions.
Embracing Motherhood

We must consistently give with love and forgiveness if we want to know real peace in our hearts and see God at work in our homes.
Embracing Motherhood

Whether our domestic church is a huge, beautifully decorated house, a modest apartment, or even a hut in a developing country, a mother’s love there at its heart will help her spouse and children to survive and grow in the blessedness of their family.
Embracing Motherhood

Dear Lord, help me to be open to the needs of my family in every way. Let me see clearly that my role is in getting them all to heaven through my example and love.
Embracing Motherhood

Welcoming the stranger does not stop at our parish doors. But it does start there. And if we cannot welcome the Catholic whom we have seen, how can we welcome the stranger whom we have not seen?
The Work of Mercy

To give drink to the thirsty is now, as it was then, a supreme work of mercy in that it involves giving the living water of the Spirit to those who cry out for him.
The Work of Mercy

Feeding the hungry means more than feeding the belly. Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
The Work of Mercy

We are bound by the sacraments, but God is not bound. Jesus does not sit on his hands refusing to work in our lives till we ask him to be our personal Savior any more than he is helpless to act unless we are baptized. Our very ability to seek him is already fruit of his grace.
The Work of Mercy

There are heroes out there every day, living in the grace of fortitude. We used to call it white martyrdom, and their names were legion in the twentieth century. They were the quiet heroes who refused to abandon the faith when the knock came at the door late at night.
A Guy's Guide to the Good Life

Prudent men are those willing to live and die by truth. They are stand-up guys when the rest of the world is sitting down.
A Guy's Guide to the Good Life

The virtuous life isn’t just the good life; it’s the best life, the life you were made for.
A Guy's Guide to the Good Life