Reflections of a Simple Priest

Most of us, I think, don't like to be told what to do.  Over the last few days, I was at the National Catholic Youth Conference with about 25,000 high school teens from around the country.  It was a wonderful experience, and I'm sure I'll have lots to say about it as time goes on.  Yet, like any trip with teenagers, of course, there's always a few that don't listen.  At the same time, we had a wonderful group of kids who were well behaved, listened, and enjoyed themselves.  Some of us were talking about previous trips we had run, and we all agreed, one of the great thing about taking teens on a trip is that when they're asked to do something, for the most part they listen.  Adults, on the other hand, aren't quite so used to taking orders from someone else.  Half the time they wander off, and the group leader is pulling their hair out to figure out where everyone has gone. Reflecting on that and on the fact that today we celebrate the feast o...

Growing up in the 1980s, If there was a movie that defined that era, it was probably the movie "wargames."  In the movie, a teenage boy hacked into a millitary supercomputer thinking he's playing a game, a war simulation between the US and Soviet Russia.  Without realizing he was doing it, he had unwittingly convinced the millitary supercomputer that Russia was going to launch an attack.  Ultimately, just as the computer is about to launch missiles and start World War 3, he convinces the computer to actual calculate the outcome.  When the computer realizes that no matter what it does, everything would be destroyed, no one wins in nuclear war, it decides to stand down. If there's one thing that's new and present to us in the modern world, even if we don't always think about it, it's the clear and present reality that as a human race, we've come very close, far too many times in the last century to wiping ourselves off the planet, to bringing ...

I remember a few years ago, in the age before internet memes, we had popular t-shirts with saying on them.  There was one brand, "no fear" that came up with all sorts of interesting sayings.  There's one I always remember.  "It's not the pace of life that concerns me, it's the sudden stop at the end." There's no doubt that we live in a crazy world.  Most of us stress each day about how we're doing to make ends meet, about how we will manage tomorrow.  Sometimes the whole world can seem so overwhelming that it's hard to grasp next month or next week, let alone eternity.  Yet, at the same time, there something fundamentally different when we really think of eternity.  Every year, during November, our Church asks us to confront the harsh realities of life, our mortality, the end of our lives, the end of the world, and what eternity really means. Think of the times in our lives if we've really ever be confronted face to face wi...

I'm not usually one to talk a whole lot about politics, and there's a certain reticence in the Church to take any real sides in politics.  Mostly it's because it's very difficult to endorse this or that position without giving the appearance of endorsing a whole party platform.  I think it's fair to say that the Church has some serious concerns about both party platforms.  Neither party really reflects the Church's teachings.  Both had pluses and minuses in different areas.  Of course some issues are most certainly more important than others, but that doesn't give us cause to simply ignore one area of Church teaching because another might seem more critical right now. Now that was an awful long disclaimer before I make this statement.  It's been a while since we've heard much from the occupy movement, and I certainly think we could find any number of issues with what they say, yet, there was one cry they kept making.  They kept talking about ...

I think when we hear the beatitudes, we all seem to love those words that Jesus says, we all like to say how wonderful of an idea it is, blessed are the poor, those who are weak and hurting.  Yet, do we ever stop for just a moment to think about just how absurd that idea really is.  Sometimes, when we hear Jesus's words over and over, they can become familiar and lose the sting that they would have originally had. Having just lost someone close to us, what would we say to someone who said that we were not blessed?  How about the meek person who keeps getting stepped on by everyone, how are they blessed for being meek?  Perhaps we can understand hungering and thirsting for righteousness, or the merciful, those make sense to us, or even the clean of heart or peacemakers, but what about the persecuted?  How much sense does it make that someone is blessed specifically because others are mistreating them.  Imagine then, when Jesus first told this stor...