Transforming the world by being a people “in love”

We love because he first loved us.” (1 Jn 4:16-19)
One of the things that I struggle with the most is evangelization. I have friends and family members who either do not believe in God or are baptized Catholics who have left the Church. I do not want to force my beliefs on them, [...]

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Beyond Courtesy–The Call to Radicality

It is interesting that since I’ve started this blog I have become increasingly aware of my actions, words and even attitudes towards others. Every time I get impatient in traffic and want to honk or want to be rude to the airport security officer, I think about this blog and how I’m always writing [...]

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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 didn’t do too [...]

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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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This Week’s Reflection: On Complacency and Distractions

A soul makes room for God by wiping away all the smudges and smears of creatures, by uniting its will perfectly to God’s; for to love is to labor to divest and deprive oneself for God of all that is not God. When this is done the soul will be illumined by and transformed in [...]

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On Redemptive Suffering and Solidarity

Last summer, I burned the top of my foot with boiling water. It was a second degree burn that I will never forget, because it taught me the meaning of pain, loneliness, and solidarity with members of the mystical Body of Christ.
The day of the incident, Michael happened to be in town so he was [...]

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You notice them, but do you really see them?

(This post was originally written by my boyfriend, Michael Joseph, at our former blog)
You’ve noticed him, but do you really see him? That is, do you see a person? The homeless, the hungry and the forsaken are all around us. Jesus promised us that, but he did not choose it to be so: “The poor [...]

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Tensions in Our Relationships

This past weekend, Michael and I were discussing this past Sunday’s Gospel on Jesus coming to cause division. Then we talked about tensions we sometime experience in our relationships–when our personalities clash with those of others–and he brought to my attention to the following by St. Josemaría Escrivá:
You clash with the character of one person [...]

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This Week’s Reflection: On Humility and Solidarity

St. Francis de Sales in his Introduction to the Devout Life tells us about the importance of humility over all other virtues:
To receive God’s grace into our hearts they must be emptied of of our own vainglory… [A]ll the saints, and particularly the King of Saints and his Mother, have always honored and cherished [humility] [...]

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The Importance of Small Tasks

My dad used to tell me: “no matter what your job in the real world ends up being or how frustrating it turns out to be… you do every task that is assigned to you the best you can, no matter how small, no matter how insignificant it is.”  He used to tell me that, because he knew [...]

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Creating our own desert with the Desert Fathers

Antony said, “He who sits alone and is quiet has escaped from three wars: hearing, speaking, seeing: but there is one thing against which he must continually fight: that is, his own heart.”
The Desert Fathers are usually considered fanatics by some: they were just literalists who read too much into the Gospel. But perhaps we may [...]

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This Week’s Reflection: On Living Intentionally

“[H]ave death at all times before your eyes.”Rule of St. Benedict
This week’s meditation is on living intentionally.
When we realize the greatness of God and our life as a gift given to us by Him, we start viewing things in life in a different light. We attach less and less value to the temporal and more [...]

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Why “Civilization of Love”?

How do we build a “civilization of love”? How do we defeat the culture of death? How do we confront hatred, neglect, and individualism as Christians?
As utopian as it may sound, we build a “civilization of love” by loving one another constantly and intensely as St. Peter says:
“Since you have purified yourselves by obedience to [...]

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