The Life of Virtue

For the past two years, I have suffered a particular type of severe physical ailment on nearly a daily basis.   This suffering has been debilitating and frustrating because I have never dealt with such pain, suffering, or limitation ever before in my life.   On many days over the past two years, I have found myself asking the Lord why He is allowing this to happen; asking Him how this is for His greatest glory.   I want to see that everything He gives to me, and everything I do, is for my good and His glory, but I just haven’t been able to see it all that well. God has funny ways of answering my questions, which are usually more like complaints.   He gives me a little wink and a proverbial elbow-nudge in the side to remind me that He does know what’s going on and that He’s still in charge. Today is the feast day of St. Ignatius of Loyola.   I was reading one of Ignatius’s letters to a friend, and I came across another one of God’s divine winks. ...

As I was praying earlier this week, God led me to reflect on the difference between great expectations and great faithfulness.  More specifically, God led me to pray about the discrepancies between my expectations and His, between my faithfulness and His. I set high expectations for myself and, in general, I am faithful to the commitments that I make.  Yet, I have been reminded many times, in many ways, by many people, that I should not measure my expectations by my own thoughts and feelings.  I should let God's expectations be the measure of the commitments I make and the actions I take. God is always faithful to helping His people meet His expectations.  He knows that we are weak and frail, and that we expect a lot from ourselves.  During these last weeks of Lent (and beyond), it is good for us to spend time pondering what God expects of us, and reminding ourselves that He is far more faithful than we are.  Let's transform our expectations and our ...

I sit down to write, with a cup of coffee at my side, for the first time in over a year.  I have missed it terribly, but the hiatus has been necessitated by the winding road that is the life of a husband, father of four kids, and parish minister.  There has been much during the past twelve months that has challenged me personally and professionally.  At times, my faith in God has waned to minuscule levels.  Still, I realize that the recent year has been God's not-so-subtle way of teaching me to trust in His Divine Providence. At the beginning of September 2014, I was informed that the job I held at the time would not be available for much longer.  Within the month, I was offered a new and similar position at another parish.  Wife and I were joyful and encouraged about the prospects of moving to North Carolina.  In the midst of that joy and encouragement, however, we had to struggle with the emotional trauma of removing children from a school they lov...

C.S. Lewis, a great bard of the English language, once quipped, "If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity."  On a similar theme, in a tweet shortly before he resigned as Supreme Pontiff, Pope Emeritus Benedict wrote, "The world promises you comfort, but you were not made for comfort.  You were made for greatness."  In two pithy statements, these men captured one of Christianity's defining characteristics: it assaults a person's comfort zones.  Paradoxically, it is this assault on comfort that brings a person to the fullness of what God intends for him or her to be. A nice representation of the benefits of expanding one's comfort zone. If a person is comfortable while living Christianity, then she isn't living Christianity in a manner commensurate with the intentions of its Founder.  That's precisely because Christ always challenges us by pushing our boundaries.  He always attem...