One of the blessings of teaching religion to high schoolers is that I get to witness to how God has transformed my life. This comes up in various ways through a myriad of lessons in all the grades I teach. Over the years, one particular topic, one special piece of advice, has resurfaced in various contexts: discerning one’s vocation. Everyone mus...

One of my favorite quotes from G.K. Chesterton – or from anyone for that matter – accurately distills the distinguishing characteristic of essentially every critique of the Christian paradigm and unapologetically defends that very paradigm in the space of less than twenty words. In fact, my description of the quote is already longer than the qu...

It seems that in the mind of many Christian men today, the ideas of humility and heroism are mutually exclusive. Meekness and humility are praised highly, as indeed they should be, but magnanimity and the virtues of soldiers are more or less swept under the rug. This is a great tragedy of our time. For, as Longfellow puts it in A Psalm of Life, ...

Jospeh Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) is attributed with saying the following: “The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness!” I have two problems with that quote. The first problem is that it does not actually define greatness. Is it wealth, power, popularity? Well, since he was a Pope maybe...

A brilliant and valiant teacher named John Senior is continuing to be discovered by those startled by today’s shadowy darkness, especially through a newly published biography. Interestingly, Senior could be described as an apostle of shadows, not because shadows are not real but because they point to the fact that things are real. How else could ...

If you clicked on this article because you thought you had stumbled onto a list of “silver bullet” ideas for easily evangelizing your friends, co-workers, and family members, I am sorry to say you are going to be disappointed. When it comes to living and sharing our Catholic faith, there is no “easy” way to do it. The martyrs who died for t...

My conversion to the Catholic faith came about largely through the witness of one of my (public) high school teachers. He is a man of God who understands profoundly that the knowledge of Truth is the end goal of all education. There were many things my teacher said that stood out to me and remain in my memory to this day. Few of them stand out as m...

Fr. Timothy Combs, O.P. As Americans, we believe the State must maintain a certain neutrality regarding denominational creeds, and rightly so. The absence of an official state church—in keeping with the Constitution’s establishment clause—is a hallmark of civic life in the U.S. However wise this may be (when rightly understood), this princ...

It is a bit ironic that the “bathroom wars” began in Charlotte, NC, my home state.[1] While we war over whether or not a man is a man, or just seems that way, North Carolina’s motto remains engraved in stones around the state: Esse quam videri, which is Latin for “to be, rather than to seem”. Like I said – ironic. Of course, I th...

The concept a man has of God guides his whole life.  If he considers God a far-off being with no concern for mankind, he will return the favor and have no concern for God.  If Jesus is a softie who advocates a spineless resignation that he calls “love,” a man will never stand up to defend the truth of the faith.  If he perceives God to be a ...