There’s a classic pickup line that, I presume, was actually used by someone, somewhere. Although, I’ve only heard it in comical, cynical, or cliché scenes in movies. That line is, “What is a nice woman like you doing in a place like this?” The question is loaded. (Imagining the scene in a bar makes me think other things might be loaded....

St. John Cassian is a saint worth knowing.  Of the ilk of the Desert Fighters (usually known as the Desert Fathers), he knows the daily and manly fighting it takes to overcome our enemies, which are not the myriad of challenges all around us now, but the enemies in our disordered passions and false loves.  For such foes we need the paradoxical mi...

In the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (known to many as “the Byzantine Liturgy,” and is one of the most ancient rites in the world) there are litanies that ask for God’s help in a variety of our affairs as men.  The response the people sing together after each petition is “Lord have mercy.”  Here’s some of those prayers: For f...

I’m a very sick man. In fact, I knock daily on death’s door. You see, I inherited it from my parents, and it has been in the family tree ever since. My parents were told they would receive greater knowledge of good and evil and be like God if they ate fruit from a certain tree. But in fact, they only became self-absorbed and shameful human bein...

Forgiveness is absolutely central to our faith.  Most of us know this and simply take it as a given.  But we must remember that forgiveness is not commonplace.  Many who have been wronged bear a heavy burden of bitterness, and those who have wronged them bear a crippling sense of shame.  At root, this is a spiritual problem, and it’s a proble...

Catholics receive the Eucharist regularly, but we do not focus our attention on preparing to receive Christ worthily and fruitfully in the sacrament. The danger is complacency and allowing obstacles to creep in that block the graces of the Eucharist from taking root in us. In the early Church, Christians received the Eucharist frequently, as we ...

At a meeting for spiritual direction with a Priest (Fr. Paul) who is a family friend, I opened up about a particularly distressing reality in my spiritual life—shared here for the sake of edification.  What I tried to communicate in spiritual direction was this: while I don’t necessary struggle frequently with sins involving grave matter, my i...

Milo Yiannopoulos is a self-proclaimed, and at this point empirically accomplished, provocateur. He managed to burn down UC Berkley without speaking one word. His recent CPAC invitation has prompted outrage after a "selectively edited" video surfaced in which he comments on relationships between post-pubescent boys and older men.  Milo is Briti...

At creation God looked at man and said he was good.  And He is not done seeing us.  His beholding holds us in being.  Were it possible for Him to look away from us we would not become nothing, but return to nothing.  We came outward, out of nothingness, thanks to the emanating goodness of God.  We were created with an orientation away from not...

After making the critical decision to follow Christ, it becomes clear to many men that the Christian life is a lot like sports: there’s a lot more that goes into perfecting one’s game than appears at first.  When a toddler is holding a football, his one task is just to get it into the hands of his dad standing a few feet away; however that hap...