I’ve never been good at initiating hugs. I’m pro-hugging, and very much so, it’s just that I’ve always felt awkward with being the first to spread his arms and move in for the hug. “Zubair,” Louis Coker, OFS, would say before spreading his arms and moving in on me, “my brother.” He had a knack […]

“How did you go from Islam to Catholicism?” I’ve been asked that several times since my confirmation in 2012. I don’t mind answering this question at all. The problem has typically been that I’ve been asked this in such a setting in which I’ve only had only a few minutes to give an answer. The […]

Among Catholics who love our Lord Jesus, there is a great deal of interior suffering and perplexity of late. The reason is no mystery. The forces of evil have been unleashed on the world, and the the spirit of wickedness, the spirit of anti-Christ, grows ever stronger, like the thick, black clouds of a threatening […]

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 […]

“The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.” – G.K. Chesterton Many of you know that I am a convert to the Catholic church. Why, you may wonder, would anyone, especially in the 21st century, join such an […]

A common trope in popular films is a character who loses his memory and has to rediscover the truth about who he is. These films can be big budget action thrillers, dramas about aging, or cheesy chick flicks. But regardless of the genre, these films are compelling because they reflect the fact that losing one’s […]

At the northern tip of Via Giulia in Rome, you’ll find the church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini. The large dome that crowns this church is one of many that accent the Roman skyline. San Giovanni dei Fiorentini If it’s hot, airy churches like San Giovanni provide the weary pilgrim with a spiritual and physical […]

One of the most paradoxical aspects of the spiritual life is the tension between human effort and Divine generosity. That is, the question of whether we are saved by what we do or by what God does. Confusion arises because we are quite clearly told in scripture that we must do certain things. We must forgive or […]