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It is no exaggeration to say that it comes down to one thing: your morning routine. As a house is built upon a solid foundation, the days of your life are erected upon your daily morning routine. Conversely, if your house has a foundation wall that is bowing or buckling, it will eventually settle and perhaps collapse. As a car rides on four tires, your days will ride on your mornings. Again, if just one of your car’s four tires is flat, your vehicle will not drive. Therefore, if you do not have a solid, consistent, life-giving morning routine, like that car, your life will go nowhere. Your mornings determine your days, and your days determine your months, and your months determine your years, and your years determine your legacy. Conversely, your grand vision of your life depends on the smallest of factors—how you begin your day, everyday.

Great men aren’t born, they are made great through the crucible of life. It is a mystery left only to God’s providence that you would be reading this article in a particular place, and particular time, much of which has little to do with your choosing. You and I were born into a place, a people, and a time with all its particular benefits and challenges. We don’t choose when or where we come into the world, but each of us will be judged by how well we live in it. We are judged by how well we develop our gifts and talents in service to God and one another. This, of course, is hard work. It requires both self-knowledge and self-possession, the two pillars of maturity upon which the foundation of our holiness is built.

God does not want men to be merely nice. He wants us to be strong lions, but not the wild sources of chaos lions can become, or the weak beaten down caged versions. He wants us to be the strong powerful instruments of his will in the world, using all the potential for courage and virtue we have to fight and defeat the enemy and protect and defend the family.

After discovering that sin is empty and unfulfilling, turning away from it and living the Christian moral life seems like a pretty straightforward idea: don’t do the things that Jesus says are sins. Check. However, after a bit of time and effort, we find that there’s more to it than we first thought.

So many men today walk around as if they have it all figured out and they don’t have a problem in the world. The “strong” silent type if you will. I know this for a fact. I used to do the same thing. So much of my life was spent walking like a one man army, convincing myself that I didn’t need anybody or anything.

We are living in a time when men are besieged from all fronts.  Men have a suicide rate three times higher than women which many attribute, at least in part, to men equating asking for help with portraying vulnerability in a society where vulnerability is equated with weakness and not being a real man.  As […]

A glance at the news headlines gives the very real impression that the world is in flames. Who can deny that we are in a tremendous state of turmoil, reeling from one crisis only to enter another one? I’ve refrained from commenting on the unfolding events we are seeing because the world does not need […]

The Camino de Santiago changed my life entirely and the experience continues to bear fruit. There are a myriad of events speak to me, but three faces rise up from the depths of my heart, from shadow to light. These seem to hold the essence of my sojourn: the Child, the Old Man, and the […]