Catholic men:
WHAT IF I told you that you could receive St. Joseph’s special protection each day of your life?
AND WHAT IF I also told you that you could receive special grace of purity from Jesus?
AND FURTHERMORE receive the gift of final perserverance in grace and St. Joseph’s particular assistance at the hour of your death?

And finally that you could have all of this at the cost of a few dollars from your wallet and a few minutes worth of daily prayer?

If you are thinking, “Where do I sign up?!”, then I have a deal for you in the Cord of St. Joseph.

It is a white cord made of cotton or some other fiber that you tie knots in and wear around your waist underneath your clothes. No one but you knows you have it on, and yet God, who sees in secret, pours out grace upon those who wear it and faithfully ask for St. Joseph’s prayers! You can get it from here.

You should get your Cord blessed by a priest, which I finally did after many months while I was in Thailand! The priest was confused and thought the Cord was some kind of religious brother’s garb, but I explained to him briefly what it was and then he blessed it. I didn’t ask him to follow the official prayer that they suggest, but I think God blessed it just great anyway.

I have definitely received grace from wearing it as I believe St. Joseph has prayed for me and our Lord has lovingly helped me. If you would like to learn more about St. Joseph, I suggest picking up one of my two favorite books about him.

The G persuaded me to train for a marathon with him, and today was our first day to run. We did a little over 3 miles around our neighborhood, and we both felt good afterwards.

He ran his first (and currently only) marathon last February, but he didn’t achieve the time he wanted to run it in, which if you know Gerardo, means he will try again until he accomplishes his goal. I personally like the idea of finishing a marathon, but I’m not too keen on all the hard training in the months leading up to the race.

Nonetheless, I said a prayer and asked God to help me train for a marathon, and if he wants me to run it, I will. It’s a good excuse for me to buy an iPod Shuffle, too!

Simple Minds’ music is now available on the iTunes music store! Just download iTunes from apple’s site and then search for Simple Minds. It looks like they have most if not all of their albums, including their live version in Paris (the city of light?).

For the longest time they only had one CD on there, perhaps even part of one CD, but they must have straightened things out and released them. I would recommend “Alive and Kicking” as your first download, and from there, try out their best of CD. For my favorites, check out the top 10 best Simple Minds songs.

Men of God (read: Christian men), I have an idea for you.

If, Heaven forbid it, you fall to temptation against purity, do not be discouraged. Rather, realize that you are a knight in a war, fighting with sword and shield, and that you have just lost one battle in this war.

Falling to this sin is the equivalent of being unhorsed and then falling ignominiously to the filthy ground, losing your sword and shield in the process.

Turn immediately and ask for forgiveness from God, and as soon as you can go to Confession. Don’t be discouraged by your fall, nor fearful that you will fall again in weakness, but rather, as for God’s help again to get up.

Then the Lord will pick you up from the ground, clean off the filth that covers you, and return your sword and shield to you, giving you the strength again to rejoin the war. It is foolish pride to refuse his help, for he is the only one who can help you, and you cannot fight without your weapons.

Realize as you go to battle again, that spiritually, the greatest battles being fought, the ones for your very soul, are those against Satan and his demons for holy purity. Our culture lies to us and tells us that real men watch football all day, are rude to their wives, ignore their children, and turn their eye lustfully at every immodest woman walking by on the street or selling beer on a TV commercial.

Don’t believe the lies.

Real men fight tenaciously for purity when they feel tempted to lust. Real men respect and honor their wives and have eyes for them alone. Real men love their children and teach them to love God and their brothers and sisters. Real men work hard to provide for their families and devote their lives to them.

Satan doesn’t want you to realize how important the battle for purity is and how, in a very powerful way, struggling to be pure makes you more and more a man after God’s own heart. He wants you to think that other pursuits are more important, and that lustful sins aren’t that bad. But you must learn better. In God’s eyes, the virtue of purity and our battle for it is extremely precious.

How important is it? It’s so important that God DISALLOWED Satan to tempt St. Joseph against purity. He allowed him to tempt the Head of the Holy Family to pride, selfishness, vanity, greed, wrath, impiety, and every other evil, but not impurity. For our Blessed Mother, not even the hint of a shadow of impurity would touch her most chaste husband, and neither would it touch her Son.

Therefore, take up your sword and shield from God, receive his mercy and his strength, and get back into the battle, realizing the importance of it, that the Enemy might not catch you at unawares. And may St. Joseph go before you into the fray, as your vanguard.

“…I can feel, the thunderstorms inside. I wake every morning and the cold winds cover me. All I’ve got’s just a ghost of what could be!” (See the Lights)

I had to go in to work for a full day today, which is unusual, but a critical bug was found in my code on Friday, and we are trying to get a big release out the door soon (as in, we already announced it to the public!). By the grace of God, in direct answer to several prayers with St. Joseph, my coworker and I figured out the problem–a bug that had been in my code for three and a half years!

Tonight I felt tired, so I popped in “It’s a Wonderful Life” and have been watching it. I love that movie! For the first part of the movie, George Baily (Jimmy Stewart) is trying to get out of Bedford Falls and travel the world, but he is always stymied. Mary (Donna Reed) has had a crush on him for years, but he is blind to her interest, and always tells her how much he wants to travel and get out of their little town.

Finally, in a classic scene, Mary has returned from college, George happens to stop by, but he is put out because he sees his dreams of travelling once again evaporating. So he is rude to her, even though she rolled out the red carpet for him, playing his favorite song and displaying some craft she made for him, and she gets hurt by him and tells him to scram.

BUT–of course– the scene turns around entirely when they both get next to each other talking on the phone with an old friend of theirs, and finally George realizes that Mary is in love with him, and he with her. Right at this point, he grabs hold of her and shakes her, telling her that “I wanna do what I WANT TO DO”, and yet he has given up these selfish desires, finally, and embraced the desire for a life of love with her in marriage.

It’s really cool, and I couldn’t help but think how my future wife will be so enamored of me (read: God in me), that she will do a hundred little things to show me she loves me. The only difference will be that, God willing, I won’t be as thick-headed as George Baily in realizing that she is the girl God created for me.

Blessed Mother, pray for my future wife, your holy and beautiful daughter.

The G and I sang some praise and worship together tonight, for the first time in a long while. I first learned this music and way to sing to God in college when I converted from atheism to Evangelical Protestantism. Then when I became Catholic, I kept singing lots of the same songs, and also learned some new ones from St. Mary’s in College Station.

One of my favorite songs is “Come to the Water”. The lyrics are beautiful, and the G and I sing it together fairly harmoniously. The last stanza is my favorite:

And let all the poor, let them come to the water.
Bring the ones who are laden, bring them all to the Lord.
Bring the children, without might
Easy the load and light, come to the Lord.

When I first turned away from despair and evil and asked Jesus for help, I read the passage in St. Matthew’s gospel where Jesus invites those who are weary and burdened to come to him and ease their load. I read that passage over and over and memorized it, and Jesus, bit by bit, took my burdens off of me.

Have a blessed weekend in God’s love!

Lyrics to Come to the Water:
more…

CatholicExchange.com has a great article today by a father about fatherhood.

I found the whole thing very interesting and informative, including this quote:

Conscious that a child’s eyes and ears are upon us, we can influence the course of a life. Whether it is being faithful in prayer and Mass attendance, participating in pro-life activities, choosing a career path for meaning over money, or treating a spouse with love, we model the message for our youngsters. Our child’s conception of God as a loving father, and his sense of relation to those around him, will be influenced by his experience with us. Will it be the embrace of a loving father or the cold shoulder of a distant and disapproving authority? Our actions matter more than words. Well it is said that that we preach the Gospel everywhere and sometimes have to use words. It is the wise father who senses the eyes and ears of the world in the little one holding his hand, and conducts himself accordingly. Wiser still is the man of integrity who, away from his children, so lives his life that he would not be embarrassed were his child with him at that moment.

Reality: Fathers image God to their children.

If God calls me to become a father, I will have this awesome privilege and responsibility! The magnitude of this truth cannot be overestimated, and I hope completely in our Father’s help to become like him for my children.

I was looking at mortgages for buying houses, and I considered that if I bought a house with a 30-year mortgage, I would be 57 years old by the time I paid off that house, assuming I didn’t make any extra principal payments. That is about how old my parents are.

This got me to thinking about just how short our lives are: Buying one house will take up a majority of the rest of my life! Maybe this is God’s way of telling me that I should be working for and making payments toward the home He is building for me in Heaven (cf. John 14). After all, I’m going to be spending lots of time at that house, you know, inviting (other) saints over for coffee, catching up with St. Joseph on his latest adventures, and things like that.

I’ve often imagined that if I am blessed to be in Heaven one day (and I really hope I am), my little home would be about a 3×3 foot square, just big enough for a chair that I would sit on, since I was not very holy here on earth, BUT I would still be exceedingly happy to go to my tiny home and sit in my chair, resting before I went out to the common areas of Heaven and played soccer with St. Don Bosco and his Italian saints.

I digress. The point is, this life is so short that we can barely pay for the house that we live in during our lifetimes. How much more should we be living this life for Heavenly treasure.

I’ve played soccer since I was 5 years old, and my dad coached almost every single team I played on. I love it, and even more so now as a Catholic because I properly give all the thanks for my talent to God.

A few years back I injured my knee and had to have surgery on it to remove some torn cartilage. Then about four months ago I hurt my knee again and thought I retore the same cartilage. I was bummed because I assumed I would have to have surgery again, which wasn’t fun the first time and would probably be worse this time.

I prayed that God’s will would be done with it and accepted whatever he let happen. The weeks and months went by, and I took it easy, not running or playing any sports, and after a while I no longer noticed my knee pain! So today I went back to soccer practice with my company’s team, and though felt a few twinges of pain, nothing major happened, and it felt pretty good, thanks be to God.

Hopefully I will be able to play in games again soon. I don’t know if God miraculously healed me or not, but he did heal me, so it’s a cool thing either way!

If you are a single Catholic man, I recommend praying this prayer everyday to St. Joseph:

“Oh St. Joseph, model of justice and therefore of husbands, I beseech thee to direct me in my choice of a future wife. Grant me especially wisdom and deliberation in this choice. Make both my friendship and courtship especially chaste, unselfish, prudent, thrifty, and cheerful. Be my companion in single as well as in wedded life.”

A few years ago when I dated a very wonderful Catholic girl, she gave me this St. Joseph prayer card called the Boy Sweetheart’s Daily Prayer, and this prayer is on the front, along with the picture of St. Joseph that is on the top right corner of this blog’s website.

I sometimes add in my own phrases and words to the prayer, like saying, “…model of justice, purity, courage, manliness, and therefore of husbands…” and also “..grant me especially wisdom and deliberation in this choice, and ensure I choose the girl that God has created just for me…”.

On the back are given six rules for a successful friendship and courtship, which mirror in several ways the Girl Sweetheart’s Daily Prayer. They are all very insightful, and I have benefitted from meditating on them:

1. Receive our Lord in Holy Communion every Sunday for strength to be and act like a Christlike man.
2. Pray to the Blessed Mother everyday for grace to respect and protect her daughters.
3. Imitate Christ the Gentleman, who was so unselfish at home and abroad.
4. Be rich in masculine interests, and grow in the art of conversation and of being interesting.
5. Learn to make decisions for yourself. Learn to save and to be a pleasant companion.
6. Strive for an esteem of the Sacrament of Marriage and of your God-gven calling as husband and father in building a Catholic marriage and a Catholic home.

You can find these prayer cards in many Catholic book and gift stores. They rock! I have given many to my friends, both male and female, and only once did I freak a girl out with it. But I learned from that not to give them out until you know someone a bit.

One day, I hope to give one to my future wife! Speed the day, my Lord.

Thank you, Lord:
for my friends,
for my family,
for being so interested in my salvation,
for loving me,
for my country, the United States, and every good thing you have fostered in it,
for true freedom,
for life,
for the Hope of Heaven.

For your brilliance, beauty, power, and tender care of me and every single person in your world, thank you!

I got the last few pictures I took in Thailand developed. Some are from Koh Phangan (the very small island) and the rest are of Koh Samui (the bigger island with the Catholic chuches).

Here is one of my sister and on a beach close by the one we stayed at. This beach is the one my sister’s friend Martin and I swam to and during which we were miraculously protected from jellyfish:

more…

Today I went over to my friend James’ house to put together my Warhammer 40k Sisters of Battle miniatures.

My friends and I hung out, ate chips, glued pieces onto our miniature armies, chatted, while their children ran around playing and causing a general ruckus. I am glad I got to go and spend time with them, and my more experienced Warhammer friends let me borrow their tools to file, trim, and glue the little pieces of each figure together.

more…

The G gave me St. Therese’s autobiography during our last semester in college shortly after he and I met at Whataburger, and I told him that God was convincing me to become Catholic.

I read her story and my first thought, fresh from Evangelical Protestantism, was: “Why didn’t I ever hear about this amazingly holy girl at Central Baptist? Why don’t my friends know about her?”

Like most Evangelicals, I read the Bible and Max Lucado on a regular basis but hardly anything in between. I had been missing out on 1900 years of saintly wisdom, and the Little Flower was the tip of the iceberg.

I was so taken by her that I continued to learn more about her, and–gasp!–even asked her to pray for me at some point. I entered the Church the next Easter and chose her for my confirmation saint. Father Mike Sis at St. Mary’s in College Station, home of the beloved Aggies, traced the sign of the cross on my forehead with the chrism oil and confirmed me in her name.

During my first Catholic years, I bought several more books about her and read them eagerly. I still didn’t understand everything that she said. I comprehended it intellectually, for God has blessed me with intelligence, but the essence of her Little Way eluded me. I didn’t quite understand how it was that she loved God and was so highly revered by the Church.

During my mom and I’s trip to Thailand, I re-read her autobiography for the third time, and God revealed her amazing sanctity to me more deeply than ever before. Almost her entire life’s story could be put in quotes and meditated on, but this passage in particular struck me:

You know very well, Mother, that I had no intention of turning her away from you, only of making it clear that true love feeds on sacrifice and becomes more pure and strong the more our natural satisfaction is denied.
(Story of a Soul, Chapter 10, “The Way of Love”)

True love feeds on sacrifice. This succint statement startles our modern ears, for love is different than you think.

If you are a father or mother, you know more than I do how true this is. I hope to more deeply understand it by putting it into practice with my own wife and children one day, God willing. For now, I must accept the small sacrifices God offers me to show others I love them, like by going to Thailand with my mom to visit my sister. It was a sacrifice in several ways for me, and yet the sole purpose of the trip was to love my family: to show my sister we loved her by traveling across the world, spending thousands of dollars, and enduring physical hardship just to see her again, and to love my mom by supporting her and keeping her safe during the trip.

St. Therese’s Way is called “little”, and it is just that, for everyone, even the most hardened sinner, can with God’s grace accept her way and turn to Christ, flying into his merciful arms. But like all true ways to God, the Little Way embraces the Cross of Christ as the only way to Heaven. Love is different than we think, so may our minds be enlightened with the way of true love.

Little Therese, pray for us today and everyday of our lives! I can’t wait to spend forever in Heaven with you.