This Week’s Meditation: On Necessities and Superfluities

This examen is straight from Fr. Dubay’s book Happy Are You Poor. He says that we all have different needs so we “cannot know whether a need is real or illusory” for certain people, but these set of questions are at least a good start. Some may think this is a bit too rigorous… but [...]

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Wealth and the Heavy Fur Coat

No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Lk 16:13) …echoes from last Sunday’s Gospel. What a beautiful selection of readings we had this past Sunday. The message of the Prophet Amos is [...]

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Rough Week…

Sorry I have not been able to post lately, but this week has been and will be hard between work and school. I will be posting more as I get a chance! ;)

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A Word of Thanks

Thank you so much to Marie and Ginny for nominating this blog for an award! Very humbling. Thanks again!!!

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The Little Way – In Traffic

Did you allow someone to go ahead of you today even though you were in a rush? Did you get impatient when the person driving a few cars ahead of you didn’t go right after the light turned green? Did you say a few bad words after someone cut you off on the highway? I [...]

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This Week’s Reflection: On Seeking and Falling in Love

This week, I thought I would let St. Josemaría Escrivá speak for himself. One of the things that has attracted me the most to St. Josemaría has been his practical advice and spiritual practices. I especially liked this reflection on the “stages” to identify ourselves with Christ. The four stages are: 1) Seeking Christ, 2) [...]

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Rain and the Christian Paradox

I used to like it when it rained. Curling up on a comfortable chair and drinking hot tea or hot chocolate by the window while it rained outside. Perhaps even reading a good book. It used to be so enjoyable when it rained. But then I remembered a song that my dad would always play [...]

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Penance on Fridays – Meeting our Lord at the Garden

My Lord, the eternal God for whom there is no time, you bore at the garden the sins and sufferings from the past, present and future of all humanity to take them later to the cross, where your love and justice would be reconciled. My King and my God, My dear and only love, I [...]

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The Mother of all Vocations

Pope John Paul II pointed out in his 1994 Letter to Families that families are meant to contribute “to the transformation of the earth and the renewal of the world, of creation and of all humanity.” When talking about how to go about building the “civilization of love,” it becomes imperative to discuss the family [...]

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American workers being overworked

Through work, according to John Paul II’s Laborem Exercens, man realizes or fulfills his humanity. In other words, work must serve man rather than the other way around. Man is the subject of work rather than the object of work. Sadly, we are seeing the latter. A quick glance at the the statistics noted below, [...]

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Can a Christian suffer depression?

Marie over at Views from the Pews has a very insightful post on this topic.  My answer to the post’s question is yes.  I remember going through very tough times recently and suffering a somewhat severe depression.  Although I try not to look back too much to them, I think those times were perhaps necessary [...]

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This Week’s Reflection: On the Trinity and Relationships

If you see charity, you see the Trinity” St. Augustine, De Trinitate I don’t know if I’m the only one who has struggled with the dogma of the Trinity, not because I doubt that it is true, but rather because it is hard for me to envision or to understand. As my former pastor would [...]

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Music leads to God

Pope Benedict XVI said yesterday that [Music] has the power to lead us back … to the Creator of all harmony, creating a resonance within us which is like being in tune with the beauty and truth of God, with the reality which no human knowledge or philosophy can ever express.” This post seems appropriate [...]

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Universality of God’s Creation

Hannah Arendt in her Essays in Understanding went a step further when talking about how many Germans felt ashamed of being German following the atrocities committed during the Nazi regime when she said: “I have often felt tempted to answer that I felt ashamed of being human.” She says this because of the Judeo-Christian understanding [...]

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The Greatness of the Little Way

Michael and I went to a Starbucks late last night to celebrate our second “dating” anniversary. The closest Starbucks was one that Michael and I call the “high-maintenance” Starbucks, because of the people that usually go there (of course, we’re not judgmental, right?), but we still went. Michael sprained his ankle last weekend so he [...]

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Gaudium et spes on respect for human dignity

Wishing to come down to topics that are practical and of some urgency, the Council lays stress on respect for the human person: everyone should look upon his neighbor (without any exception) as another self, bearing in mind above all his life and the means necessary for living it in a dignified way lest he [...]

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Hurricane Felix and the Miskito Indians

Let us pray for all those who are being affected by the landfall of category 5 Hurricane Felix, especially for the thousands of Miskito Indians stranded along the coast of Nicaragua and Honduras. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch, which followed a similar path as Felix, killed nearly 11,000 people and left 8,000 people missing in Honduras and Nicaragua.

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Contemplation vs. Progress

(Here is a post I wrote while I was in Washington State. Here in Houston we don’t get many chances to contemplate nature ;) I should clarify that as lay people, I think, we are called to be contemplatives in action, rather than passive contemplatives and that is what I refer to in this post) [...]

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