Category Archives: Me

“The Catholicpunk Manifesto” paperback may soon be available!

UPDATE!

Screenshot 2023 09 28 at 3 02 43 PMMy new book, inspired by St. Maximilian Kolbe and my way of working out Total Consecration to Mary, is now available in paperback through Amazon! Some of you were waiting for this! (Thank you in advance!)

AMAZON LINK TO PURCHASE THE PAPERBACK!! 

For info on where you can purchase the ebook version (available NOW!) visit: The Catholicpunk Manifesto

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

The Catholicpunk Manifesto: now available almost everywhere!

The other day I announced a new book I wrote. Well, distribution of The Catholicpunk Manifesto has increased! You can now obtain an ebook copy for yourself through Amazon Kindle and through (as of now) a half-dozen or so other digital publishing sites via Books2Read: click here for the list of these additional options.

0000 GOODCOVER

There will be a paperback version, but I have to work out some issues with Amazon and Draft2Digital. The paperback edition should be available (hopefully) within a week or two? NOTE: Draft2Digital is a company that offers self-publishing opportunities to a growng number of people who seek to diversify away from (or in addition to) Amazon. I love Amazon, most of my sales for The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics and The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts come from them. But, it is prudent not to have all your beer bottles on one cooler, as they say, and Draft2Digital offers distribution to a wide array of epub sites. For those ‘in the know,’ I had used Smashwords previously as my Amazon alternative; Draft2Digital acquired Smashwords in 2021 and is slowly merging accounts. Within a few months, by Smashwords account will be merged into my Draft2Digital one, and my Smashwords storefront will have a new look.

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Through Nothing to the Infinite: How an Atheist Lead me to God

An atheist leads me towards belief in God during a tumultuous time in my life through his use of vivid storytelling within a deeply imaginative universe.

It begs the question of, “How can a non-believer help someone to believe?” 

Saints and spiritual writers often say that God can bring good out of evil. Evil is not just found in such actions as abortion, genocide, or slavery, but when any personal will opposes the Divine, however minor the act is. Atheism is that kind, ranging from mere unthinking disbelief to the more militant. God wills us to know and love him; atheists reject that will. I am not sure where in that range J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of the 1990s sci-fi TV show, “Babylon 5,” falls. He had a Catholic background but strayed from belief somewhere along the way. One episode of his “Babylon 5” drilled me to the floor with its consideration of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Passing Through Gethsemane” (S3E4) made me look at Christ’s Agony in the Garden from a perspective that treated it not as some pious event memorialized in the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, but a reality to enter into so as to ponder how your actions might manifest themselves.

Straczynski is an atheist, yet he treated religious belief with a respect at variance with today’s atheists. He regarded religion as being part of the human condition serving as an excellent vehicle to explore it.

In “Passing Through Gethsemane,” a guest character, Brother Edward, (played by Brad Dourif,) is a monk dwelling on Babylon 5 with other members of his order. He has a past, which I won’t reveal for fear of spoiling the show. (Although the episode aired in 1995, streaming services enable new fans to discover the series regularly. If you already know Babylon 5, then you know about this episode.) In it, he is asked by Ambassador Delenn (played by Mira Furlan,) “What is the defining moment of your belief….the emotional core…?” Edward replies with the background on Gethsemane, and specifically that Jesus knew what was going to happen to him. In a moment of weakness, he prayed for the cup to pass from him, so he would be spared the pain of what was to come, including death. But of course, he wouldn’t be spared and he’d be arrested. Edward continues with an emphasis that Jesus didn’t have to be there when the soldiers arrived to arrest him, that he could have left and postponed the inevitable for a few hours or even days. But Jesus knew what would happen and stayed anyway. Brother Edward concludes that he honestly doesn’t know if he would have had the courage to stay.

When I first saw that episode, that latter part blew my mind. “Seriously,” I thought, “does anyone actually look at a Biblical event and personally connect it to their life? As in, what they might do if they were there and then build their faith life from that? Everyone thinks that if they were back in Jesus’ days they’d of course follow him unhesitatingly and would never be in the crowd screaming ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ But, to seriously meditate upon a specific event, dwell on it, and make it the ‘defining moment’ and the ‘emotional core’ of their faith life?”

Perhaps a digression into what my ‘emotional core’ was like at the time. I was ‘raised Catholic’ but left the Faith nearly ten years earlier. My prayers about some complicated desperate situations weren’t answered. I also coincidentally fell prey to some atheistic and libertarian science fiction novels that convinced me organized religion was a sham and a means of exercising mass control over the populace. So I left, and life immediately got better. So much for religion. (But I never became an atheist. I did flirt with libertarianism, though.) Flash forward to how I was when “Passing Through Gethsemane” aired and you’ll read a different story. Life had gotten progressively worse. I had relocated from across the country to escape some more complicated desperate situations (these had the habit of following me) and my ‘emotional core’ meant that drinking was defining my moments. Capt. Morgan and Jose Cuervo were my saviors; here I am being mind-struck by some monk wondering if he would have had the courage to stay in Gethsemane and await the soldiers to take him to his execution. Me, who defined courage by how skillfully I can smuggle bottles into the house.

You’re probably thinking that this TV episode changed my life right then and I found a priest, went to confession, and resumed participating in the life of the Church. No. Reversion was still a few years off. But seeds were planted that started growing, eventually bearing fruit later on.

The crux of this is that faith powers a spiritual life. What I learned from that episode, ironically written by an atheist, is that for faith to have meaning it has to grip you by the scruff of your neck, shake you up and down, and demand that it be lived and taken seriously. The kind of faith that inspires people to willingly sacrifice their lives, not the faux faith that attends Mass whenever they feel like it, or sets it aside when it proves inconvenient to their political or business choices. The latter kind is mental pablum designed to make you excuse your sins and feel good about yourself.

That was in marked contrast to the faith that I had. In the years before I left the Church, my Catholicism was broad but not deep. It couldn’t have done what Brother Edward did; intimately apply some event to my own life to create an emotional core that defined it. 

A faith that defines your emotional core such as what drove Brother Edward to contemplate his place in Gethsemane fosters the willingness to firmly plant your feet and say, “This is what I am about, regardless of the passing fancies of society or what the neighbor’s think. This is me, my self-defined ‘I AM.’” It confronts the crucial significance of belief and its consequences. This is the willingness to face down death; literal death or just those things which challenge you or can kill your soul. But perhaps more importantly, that drawing from this power and courage means you have the willingness to be a transformative force in the society around you in a manner best suited to your unique talents. 

That may have been what Brother Edward was wondering. Not only the literal, “If I was in Gethsemane, would I have…,” but in drawing from that would he have had the courage to face everything challenging him, both personal and external.

These are challenges everyone faces, and an atheist started me on the way.

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

No Temples in Heaven

There are no temples in Heaven, not now, nor after the Second Coming and Resurrection of the Dead. This serious beginning belies a fanciful development.

Revelation 21:22 – “And I saw no temple in it. For the Lord God Almighty is its temple, and the Lamb.”

(Via Catholic Public Domain Version of the Sacred Bible.)

Why do I bring this up? Why, because today is St. Patrick’s Day. Although his feast day has no real connection in and of itself to the afterlife (apart from being the day of his death and entry into Heaven) it sparked a certain nostalgia for me because as it is St. Patrick’s Day, I am wearing a hoodie sweatshirt emblazoned with “St. Patrick’s School” across the front. That school was my elementary and junior high (middle school in some places) when I was a kidlet in Oneida, New York, USA . My Mom bought the hoodie for me at a Knight’s of Columbus Breakfast back home, about 20 years ago.

In my nostalgia, I thought about the long number of years that parish has been around (mid-19th Century) and of all the people who have been members. Those dead, those currently living, and perhaps those yet to be born.

Now I start to get fanciful.

I often think about what Heaven (the post-Resurrection version) might be like. Whatever form the “New Earth and a New Heaven,” might actually take, I like to think of Heaven as a place where all the Saved, regardless of the times they had lived in, can meet and come together in whatever manner and capacity that we would have. I think that is interesting, that we will no longer be separated by space and time. No longer restricted to the time we were born in, we might be able to see Earth as it was long ago, or far ahead. How else would everyone be able to fit? 😉 People can move in time as well as space, and with the eternal nature of time, cause and effect may be meaningless.

We can meet those who didn’t live during our time on Earth, centuries ago and centuries hence. Since time is different in Eternity, we can see Earth in various periods. Earth could be like it is now, albeit good and pure and everlasting. For example, one might travel to the space corresponding to Germany, in the time corresponding to the early 1940s, but the horror will not be there. A pure and paradisiacal 1940s Germany, stripped of the Nazi evil, would be that corner of the “New Heaven and the New Earth.” “All things are made new.”

Many of the Scriptural images of Heaven depict it as a feast. A wedding feast or other some sumptuous banquet. This next part may be even more fanciful, but the sentimental and nostalgic side of me thinks that while many things may be “made new again” in Heaven, what will become of the churches that once were? Churches, temples, and such have always been a part of human communities. Obviously there is no need for temples in Heaven, as we will be in the presence of God and can worship Him directly. Heaven itself is the temple. Here’s the potentially fanciful thing: I think that churches, and other places of worship, will be the “banquet halls,” where many of the feasts take place. Imagine that: you’re in Heaven, and dining at a feast. The “dining hall” you’re in corresponds to where your childhood parish was, or the parish you shared in adulthood with your spouse and children, only since it no longer serves as a temple of worship, it now serves as that place where all who were ever members of it can dine together. Across the generations and even centuries of time, all can continually meet and dine together in one continuous banquet. Come and go as you please, there will always a table, never any waiting.

Thoughts of Heaven comfort me.

The book, A Travel Guide to Heaven, by Anthony DeStefano, influences my thoughts. It comforted me greatly in the trying times after Mom’s death.

NOTE: This is a “retropost,” a post from an old blog I wrote on “The Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven (& Purgatory) and Hell” that I shuttered a few years ago. Individual posts are being transferred to either In Exile or Sober Catholic, whichever seems appropriate. Some are backdated, others postdated, in case you’re confused as to why you never saw a particular post if you’re a diligent reader. The process should be completed by early 2022.

 

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Blood from the Ceiling, Richard Nixon, and Giant Buzz Saw Monsters

OK, so I was in this dream where my wife Rose and I were in my old house back home in Oneida, NY. She was in the bathroom when she noticed blood dripping from the ceiling. She called for me and after moving aside the ceiling tiles (this differs from the real ceiling) we saw a hand drenched in blood. Rose screamed about the dead body (we only saw a hand, didn’t really feel like looking into the matter any closer) and asked me to call 911.

I did, but got elevator muzak for several minutes before being transferred to the next available representative, which turned out to be silence. I hung up and tried again, but each time getting the same thing. So I used the phone book to get a direct number to the Oneida Police Department, but couldn’t find the number. So I called the direct line to a nearby police dept in Rome, NY.

Someone showed up, agreed that there is in fact a dead body in the bathroom ceiling, and promised to contact the Oneida PD to deal with it. After he left out the back door, I heard a loud thumping or booming noise coming from the cellar. I opened the cellar door and there was this big man dressed in an Energizer Bunny costume, banging away on the drum. This annoyed me so I kicked him hard in the drum which sent him falling backward down the cellar stairs, crashing into the cement wall at the bottom. His drum broke wide open, covering him in flour.

I then woke up since Rose noticed something wrong with me and was gently shaking me.

I went back to sleep and had another dream where Rose and I drove from my old house to Sangertown Square Mall, near Utica, NY. It has seen better days, all the big box retailers had gone and only small Mom-and-Pop stores were left.

Nevertheless, there was an employment agency and we decided to get a job. We both got temp jobs looking after an office Richard M. Nixon had there. He only used it when he was in Utica. I asked, “Isn’t he dead?” “Oh, no!” I was assured by the small grey girl behind the receptionist’s desk.

Nothing much happened until some old guy came in and told us about the armoire next to the windows; it contained special communications gear. I said “We shouldn’t touch that,” but he said, “No one would care.” So we pulled open the doors which revealed video equipment that would be more at home in a 1950s sci-fi movie. We turned one on which showed an alert broadcast about some hideous Buzz Saw Monster flying around and slashing everyone. We all decided to remain in Nixon’s office, as that seemed safer. Afterward, the TV stopped working except to play a Battlestar Galactica marathon (the original show, of course) so I went out to get a newspaper. The only one I could find was the Oneida Daily Dispatch, the Utica Observer-Dispatch wasn’t available. The Dispatch headlines seemed more concerned about the lockdown proposed by the governor to keep people safe from the Buzz Saw Monster and the effect it would have on its paper carriers.

That was all.

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

The Phrase “Good-bye”…

…does not exist in any language spoken in Heaven.

NOTE: This is a “retropost,” a post from an old blog I wrote on “The Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven (& Purgatory) and Hell” that I shuttered a few years ago. I posted this one, here, today, as this is the 16th anniversary of my Mon’s death.

Individual posts are being transferred to either In Exile or Sober Catholic, whichever seems appropriate. Some are backdated, others postdated, some edited, in case you’re confused as to why you never saw a particular post if you’re a diligent reader. The process should be completed by early 2022.

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord

Sometimes I occasionally wax longingly to “go Home,” that is, to be in Heaven with the Lord, the Saints and my loved ones who have gone on before me. I usually write the disclaimer that my desire isn’t suicidal nor any type of morbidity. It is just the natural longing of one for their true Home. For this Earth is but our exile.

Death is just a passage leading us to our Home.

The following Psalm describes for me this longing:

Psalm 83 (84):

{83:1} Unto the end. For the wine and oil presses. A Psalm to the sons of Korah.

{83:2} How beloved are your tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!

{83:3} My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh have exulted in the living God.

{83:4} For even the sparrow has found a home for himself, and the turtle-dove a nest for herself, where she may lay her young: your altars, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God.

{83:5} Blessed are those who dwell in your house, O Lord. They will praise you from age to age.

{83:6} Blessed is the man whose help is from you. In his heart, he is disposed to ascend


{83:7} from the valley of tears, from the place which he has determined.

{83:8} For even the lawgiver will provide a blessing; they will go from virtue to virtue. The God of gods will be seen in Zion.

{83:9} O Lord, God of hosts, hear my prayer. Pay attention, O God of Jacob.

{83:10} O God, gaze upon our protector, and look upon the face of your Christ.

{83:11} For one day in your courts is better than thousands elsewhere. I have chosen to be lowly in the house of my God, rather than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners.

{83:12} For God loves mercy and truth. The Lord will give grace and glory.

{83:13} He will not withhold good things from those who walk in innocence. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man who hopes in you.

Source: Sacred Bible: Catholic Public Domain Version

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Thirty-three years

Thirty-three years ago today, on March 19, 1988, my sister died. She had fought a battle with cancer and lost. Nowadays she probably might have been a survivor, but with the treatment available in the 1980s, no.

I was living in Washington, DC at the time, and when I heard the news I got numb.It was my first real experience with someone dying. There had been family members who had died before her, but they had all been people more distant from me, no one in my litany of siblings, now lacking a name.

I left my apartment and wandered around downtown DC. The streets were deserted, at 2 or 3 AM people were long gone. A city, deserted.

I visit her grave every few years; my wife and I only live maybe 90 minutes or so from it. It has been several years since we were last there. I have no idea when the next will be

Nothing much else to say, I just had to make note of it, here.

She is missed.

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Many Dwelling Places

One of my favorite Gospel passages is John 14:2-3.

“In my Father’s house, there are many dwelling places. If there were not, I would have told you. For I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will return again, and then I will take you to myself, so that where I am, you also may be.”

via Catholic Public Domain Version of the Sacred Bible.

I have often comforted myself by fantasizing what my dwelling place might be like, assuming I make it to Heaven. Some translations read “mansion” instead of “dwelling place”; I think the latter is more accessible and leaves things more open to one’s imagination. I don’t care what my abode in Heaven might be, a rundown shack would be fine. 😉

Home. Our true home, which we will always possess and never lose. Safety and security are not even worries. Our place, for all eternity where we can host and entertain loved ones and countless others.

Sometimes I wonder if the place is a combination home and, for lack of a better term, museum. If we make it to Heaven, will our homes there be also a sort of “museum” of our life on Earth? That the rooms may represent different distinct eras of our lives, filled with things from that era, as a sort of reliquary of “souvenirs” or “mementos” of our Earthly exile?

Not that it would be important, but it’s an interesting curiosity of mine, and probably means that I’m still too attached to things. 😉 But it would be fascinating to see such dwelling places from people of different centuries.

Just some odd thoughts that come to me when I think of Heaven…

NOTE: This is a “retropost,” a post from an old blog I wrote on “The Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven (& Purgatory) and Hell” that I shuttered a few years ago. Individual posts are being transferred to either In Exile or Sober Catholic, whichever seemed appropriate. Some are backdated, others postdated, in case you’re confused as to why you never saw a particular post if you’re a diligent reader. The process should be completed during by the end of 2020, and all posts finally “will to have been published” (tense of future past 😉 ) by the Easter 2021.

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Novena of Novenas for Justice, Peace and Creation IV: to Our Lady Undoer of Knots and Matthew Talbot

Today begins the Fourth of the Nine Novena of Novenas for Justice, Peace and Creation. This, the Fourth of the Nine, is dedicated to Our Lady Undoer of Knots and Matthew Talbot. It runs from July 17 to July 25, 2020.

I will not post this every day as the prayers and intentions are the same for each day. I’ll just leave it here for nine days; if I need to blog in the interim, I will just blog a reminder afterwards. For the background, please read this post (especially if you need to learn about who Bob Waldrop, the creator of this Novena, was, and why I am introducing it to you.) Or go here: A Novena of Novenas for Justice, Peace, & Creation.

Don’t worry if you jump in at some point later in the 81 days. To paraphrase Bob “just pick up whenever you happen to join in.”

AFTER THIS SENTENCE, THE WRITING IS ALL THAT OF BOB WALDROP, not me, Paulcoholic.

…

“Getting Started:

Begin each novena prayer with a time of quiet prayer. You may find it helpful to pray some repetitions of the Jesus Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner), a decade of the Rosary, the Chaplet of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, or a time of spiritual reading or lectio divina that will prepare your mind and your heart for the prayer to come. This could be a time for a daily examen, where you consider your actions of the day and how they relate to God’s call in your life.”

General Intention: For all those pushed to the edges of human societies.

Fourth Work of Justice and Peace: Protect the poor and powerless — listen, learn, educate, organize, empower participation, and respect life from the moment of conception to the time of natural death.

Act of Caring for Creation: Commit! Accept personal responsibility to live your life so that your love for God manifests as you care for people, care for Creation, and have a care for the future

God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.
+  Let us pray together in peace, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, help the helpless, strengthen the fearful, comfort the sorrowful, bring justice to the poor, peace to all nations, and solidarity among all peoples.

Give us strength to stand against the demonic powers which prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Open our eyes to see the beauty, joy, redemption, and goodness which comes through obedience to your Son our Lord. Teach us to be a refuge of hope for all who are oppressed by injustice and violence.

Holy Mary, Undoer of Knots, full of God’s presence during the days of your life, you accepted with full humility the Father’s will, and the Devil was never capable to tie you around with his confusion. Once with your son you interceded for our difficulties, and, full of kindness and patience you gave us example of how to untie the knots of our life. And by remaining forever Our Mother, you put in order, and make clearer the ties that link us to the Lord.

Virgin Mary, Mother of fair love, Mother who never refuses to come to the aid of a child in need, Mother whose hands never cease to serve your beloved children because they are moved by the divine love and immense mercy that exists in your heart, cast your compassionate eyes upon me and see the snarl of knots that exist in my life. You know very well how desperate I am, my pain, and how I am bound by these knots. Mary, Mother to whom God entrusted the undoing of the knots in the lives of His children, I entrust into your hands the ribbon of my life. No one, not even the Evil One himself, can take it away from your precious care. In your hands, there is no knot that cannot be undone. Powerful Mother, by your grace and intercessory power with your Son and my liberator, Jesus, take into your hands today this knot. (Mention your petition here.)

Receive me into your hands and free me of the knots and confusion with which our enemy attacks. Through your grace, your intercession, and your example, deliver us from all evil, Our Lady, and untie the knots that prevent us from being united with God, so that we, free from sin and error, may find Him in all things, may have our hearts placed in Him, and may serve Him always in our brothers and sisters. Mary, Undoer of Knots, pray for me, Amen.

Matthew Talbot, you were born into poverty, among a marginalized people, and you went right to the edge as an alcoholic. In these times, the strong prey upon the weak, and violence, despair, alienation and oppression rule the hearts of many. We pray that your example of solidarity with the poor will inspire us to follow your path and open our hearts, minds, and homes to welcome those who are in need. Pray for all who are bound in addiction to money, power, violence, illicit sex, drugs, tobacco, or alcohol.

Lord, in your servant, Matt Talbot you have given us a wonderful example of triumph over addiction, of devotion to duty, and of lifelong reverence of the Holy Sacrament. May his life of prayer and penance give us courage to take up our crosses and follow in the footsteps of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We ask this through the same Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.”

Novena to St. John Chrysostom on behalf of the Bishops of the United States of America   

Most Glorious and Venerable St. John Chrysostom,
Grace shining forth from your lips like a beacon
has illumined the universe.
It shows to the world the treasures of poverty;
it reveals to us the heights of humility.
Teaching us by your words, O Father John Chrysostom,
intercede before the Word, Christ our God, to save our souls!

Pray for the bishops of the United States of America,
who do not teach or practice the Catholic faith in its fullness,
that God will deliver them to orthodoxy,
and reform their ways of living,
so that as exemplars of orthopraxis, they will protect all life,
from the moment of conception to the time of natural death.

Teach them true solidarity with the poor, so that they
understand the consequences of their moral abandonment
of entire nations of human beings to a collective fate of cruelty and violence
because they were in the way of the American Empire and
its gluttonous lust for oil, supremacy, and blood.

As you refused to obey the aristocratic commands of your era,
help our bishops turn away from the political demands
that cause them to preach a false gospel of moral relativism regarding war and peace.

Having received divine grace from heaven,
with your mouth you teach all people to worship the Triune God.
Instruct our bishops with the wisdom of the Gospel,
so that they repent of their material cooperation with the objective evil of unjust war, and call all people, in authentic word and deed, to live in solidarity, peace, and justice.

All-blest and venerable St. John Chrysostom,
we praise you, for you are our teacher, revealing things divine!
Pray for us that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

O God, Who by the preaching and teaching of Saint John Chrysostom
has given us an example of fortitude in the face of persecution and political corruption,
grant that we who reverence his life and ministry may also imitate
his example of fidelity to wisdom, truth, justice, and beauty,
through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Our Father . . . Hail Mary… Glory be. . .

Thoughts for the journey.

Life is complicated. We often find ourselves “tied into knots” spiritually and emotionally. We get ourselves into situations that seem impossible to resolve.

We see this in the world around us. How can the situation in the Middle East ever resolve itself in peace and justice with respect for life for all people there, Arabs, Jews, Kurds, Persians, Yezidis, and many others.  What about the Ukraine? In Asia, belligerence grows on the South China Sea.  And then there’s North Korea and Iran and Vebenzuela and Central America.

Pope Francis has a strong devotion to Mary as the Undoer of Knots. For Pope Francis, the knots represent the sins that separate us from God, and Our Lady, in untying them, brings us closer to God.  As the Pope has said: “Mary, whose ‘yes’ opened the door for God to undo the knot of the ancient disobedience, is the Mother who patiently and lovingly brings us to God, so that he can untangle the knots of our soul by his fatherly mercy.”

Which is to say that the roots of the grave knotty crises of justice and peace lay within our own hearts. It’s tempting to wave that away as pious pap, but it’s the truth. The United States has the foreign and military policies that it does because we are the people that we are. If we were a better people, our government would have better policies. Since any one of us has little control over the government, but a lot of control over our own individual lives, the road to peace for me begins at 1524 NW 21 in Oklahoma City where I live. And also where you live.

What are the knots that bind you?

Let us recall the advice of Mary to the servants at the wedding at Cana? “Do whatever he tells you!” What does Jesus tell us to do? Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, challenge unjust structures, speak out against oppression and hypocrisy, love God and love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Pious phrases, to be sure, but if that’s all they are for us, then our faith is dead as the proverbial doornail. A living faith, begun in a life-changing encounter with the Risen Christ, nourished by Word, Community, and Eucharist, lives these phrases as daily realities. That’s the point, holiness! Orthopraxis — right action!  Prudence — understanding the way towards the greatest good in every situation. Discernment — learned and practiced over time, so that we are able to make these phrases real by the way we live our lives.

Matthew Talbot was born in a slum in Dublin, Ireland in 1856, and died in the same town in 1925. His journey led into the dark depths of alcoholism. But by the grace of God, he experienced a true and lasting religious conversion, and spent his life among the poor, practicing evangelical poverty, working at labor jobs and giving most of his money as alms to the poor and for the benefit of missions.

He helped people find sobriety. His life was an evangelical witness to the power of Jesus to transform the most alienated & to bring new life to community in the midst of despair. He reminds us of the precarious place of those we push to the edge. Often they fall off, into the abyss. They are all around us, but we don’t notice them because they are really good at hiding from us. In their experience, to be noticed is to be abused, hurt, wounded. Their defenders are few, their enemies are many.

Through the example of Our Lady of Good Counsel and Matthew Talbot, we can learn to open our eyes and hearts to see the poor who are among us, and stop doing harm to them.

How is my life — how is your life —  open to the reality that Christ is alive and he loves each and every one of us?  Jesus gave his life to save us and our societies from sin and oppression. He was with the Matthew Talbot as he wrestled with the demons of addiction and then later when he lived a life of penance, reparation, and service. Jesus comforted him in life and when he died of a heart attack on a Dublin street while walking to Mass, Jesus was there.  Christ is as real to us as he was to Matthew. Jesus lives today and is at our side every moment of every day to enlighten, strengthen, and free us.  Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, of our journeys of justice and peace.

Act of Caring for Creation:

Commit! Accept personal responsibility to live your life so that your love for God manifests as you care for people, care for Creation, and have a care for the future

We care for the planet, one decision at a time. Do you really need that plastic straw or that disposal styrofoam cup made by a noxious process that pollutes the planet and that does not decay or compost?  Could you carry a cup with you for drinks away from home? Could you carry a little lunch kit, and use that instead of plastic serving ware? Could you carry reusable bags and thus avoid those ubiquitous plastic bags?  Sure you could, but will you? It’s only a moderate discipline, it’s not anything like, you know, dying in a concentration camp or being lynched.

We are destroying the planet one bad decision at a time. We will redeem the planet one good — better — or best decision, at a time. Never think that what you do doesn’t matter, because it does. It matters to you personally, to your family, your neighbors, your community, your planet, and to your God. We start small or we don’t start at all. As you practice being kind to God’s Creation in small ways, you will find your heart and your mind and your will increasingly open to doing more. Before you know it, you could be air drying your laundry on a clothesline!

Are you a creative Catholic? "The Catholicpunk Manifesto" is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone, perhaps yourself, who might like Catholic devotionals for alcoholics? Please take a look at my books! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)