It is a Saturday morning. I wake while it is still dark and blindly shuffle into my clothes. My children sleep. The world is still as I step into the chill morning air to attend the early morning Low Mass at the Abbey of Our Lady of Clear Creek.  I arrive at the monastery while […]

One day, through the Rosary and the Scapular, Our Lady will save the world. St. Dominic On a pleasant afternoon in the spring of 2008, I was praying in my room in New York. It had been less than a full year since I was baptized as a Christian. It would be another four years […]

On a cloudy January day in 2007 a young man was walking along the Hudson River in New York. “Is this what life is?” he kept asking himself. The city he had moved to, that magical place where he thought he might “find himself,” could be so draining. The young man was single. Most of […]

This article is a chapter I contributed to the book, Spirit and Life. What is marriage? The answer is clearly articulated by the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of […]

Of all the faculties of human nature, one of the most powerful is that of attention. What we choose to attend to to a great degree shapes our experience of the world for good or ill. Our intellectual faculties are limited, and we simply cannot pay attention to all the visual or auditory stimuli we […]

Recently, a Pew Research survey cataloged the almost complete collapse of the faith in the United States. The facts are devastating. Only 26% of Catholics under forty in the U.S. believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the holy Eucharist. If the Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith, the fountain from […]

St. Charbel Makhlouf is a little known Maronite saint and priest-monk of the 19th century. While he lived most of his life in the relative silence and seclusion of monastic life, he quickly gained a widespread reputation for sanctity, and miracles were attributed to his prayers. He remained incorrupt after his death, and thousands flocked […]

St. Maxmilian Kolbe is my favorite saint. He lived a truly eucharistic life of missionary zeal, radiant holiness, and sacrificial love. Yet, his life of holiness was no accident; he did not wake up one morning a saint. Rather, his holiness was the result of constant spiritual effort that cultivated an intimate relationship with our […]