Smile

Smiling makes even that which is plain beautiful, while anger contorts even that which is beautiful into something horrible. So smile, and reveal the beauty of God's Creation.

Grief

The Enemy will try to turn your sorrows to rage, that you might be brought to sin. Wrath he can use, but grief, pure and true, is a thing of love, and he detests and abhors it, it cannot be made to serve him. Blessed are they who mourn, for consolation shall be theirs!

Justice and Mercy

For every time you've desired vengeance for your hurts, satisfaction for your grievances and for the petty slights done to you, even for legitimate justice to right a wrong, look to the Cross.  There you will find Justice, but also the Mercy which you should show to those who've hurt you.

Single

To be single is not a curse, nor a disease, nor anything that demands condolences or sympathy. Singleness is the universal vocation, the one vocation that all people have at one point in life or another, sometimes at many points, sometimes only at a few. We all know it. We all associate loneliness with it. But loneliness exists even with those who live in community, or who are part of the brotherhood of priests. And it certainly exists among those romantically linked into pairs. Loneliness is the soul's longing for its end in God, and the loneliness we feel for others is only a portion of this need, for we are to love God first, then our neighbors. Being together with another romantically is not an end, it is a beginning. For those called to it, it is the path they walk to God, to the real end of loneliness, and loneliness will be a struggle all their lives, even together in the community of the family. To be single is not to be doomed to loneliness and misery, but to have the opportunity to approach that end individually, to enter into God, and if He so wills it, to be brought through and by Him to the other He means for you.

Dance

There is a certain Joy in movement which music often demands of us, and this I think is the origin of dance. This is our special privilege, that we may dance, and in dancing learn all things that are good, be they love or worship or respect. Dance is how we learn to communicate with our bodies, it is how we learn to touch the other sex with respect and not lust (though it can certainly be abused), and alone among Creation to our knowledge can we dance for our God. Even the angels have not the ability to dance for the Lord as David did. Be happy, O my soul, for you have a body, and you may dance!

Mass

You know, it is not one's preference for language, orientation, or music in the Mass which reveals a Saint, but rather simply one's preference for the Mass itself.

Fatherhood

The fullness of fatherhood is found in the priesthood, not the laity. Why? Because every mother feeds her baby Eucharistically, by that I mean with her own body and blood, first in the womb, and then by her milk if she so chooses (and I confess I hope she does). Compared with such unity, such provision, what do fathers have with their children? Fathers make many great and magnificent sacrifices of their time, energy, and lives (hoping and praying to be one, I would never deny it). But they cannot so feed their families with their very life blood. The sublime dignity of the priesthood is such that it allows men to know the fullness of such provision, granted to men by the Providence of God Himself. In this way they enter into Christ and so feed their flocks with His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, which for that moment have become theirs, as Christ is the Father's. By the working of the Holy Spirit, they are united with the Father Himself, through the Sacrament of the Altar.