By: Damien Murtagh You may have seen the Verizon Super Bowl commercials that focused on the first responders who saved the lives of many an NFL player and coach as well as countless more daily across the country. One features a coach who stands in front of a group of first responders to share the account of the day he almost died were it not for t...

When I arrive at Mass with my wife and 7-month-old son, there’s something that keeps circling my thoughts when I look at the pews surrounding us. It’s not the age of the wood, the wear and tear of the Sunday Missals nor the noise of the A/C unit that is barely functioning. No, there is something much less visible. Millennials. I have friends,...

These infamous words of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark epitomize how a pilgrimage is truly a microcosmic slice of life’s spiritual journey, a distilled process of the joys and sufferings in the everyday encounters with fellow travelers through the stories portrayed in the flashback scenes of the movie of our lives, symbolizing how each ...

My father was the best man I ever knew. As a man, he was everything I ever wanted to be.  He was an outdoorsman par excellence, he loved his wife (my mother), and he always made me feel loved and spoke to me as one person to another, imparting his wisdom with kind firmness. Dad was also a very troubled man and struggled with depression for year...

The Most Reverend Thomas Olmstead, Bishop of Phoenix, Arizona, made clear in Into the Breach, his prescient 2015 apostolic exhortation to men, that we are facing a very real battle in our world today. “[M]y sons and brothers in Christ: Men, do not hesitate to engage in the battle that is raging around you,” he writes. The letter is a roadmap of...

Msgr. Romano Guardini said of the birth of Christ that “the glorification of that joyous happening will never be muted on this earth” (The Rosary of Our Lady, 89).  Even while Christmas has become highly commercialized, highly secularized and highly sentimentalized, Msgr. Guardini’s words nonetheless remain true.  There will always be humbl...

Men who take on the Exodus 90 challenge are urged to make study a central part of their lives starting at “day 91.”  This is very fitting—because Exodus 90, if done rightly, is humbling.  Through the experience of discomfort in ascetical practices, struggling to be fervent in prayer, and the challenges associated with fraternity, men who do...