When I Feel Tired, Their Faith Slaps Me Awake

 

Giving Credit Where It’s Due

When Dave told me that he wanted to give him this award, my first thought was that the real recipient should be Dave Palmer.

In order for me to be able to do all the things that I wanted to do on Guadalupe Radio, Davee had to say yes. When people say yes, great things can happen.”

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That simple word, yes, set everything in motion. And so before anything else, I want to thank Dave and Guadalupe Radio for the honor.

The People Who Passed on the Faith

Looking out at the panel of presenters, I found myself thinking back to his younger years and the voices that helped my rediscover his faith.

He remembered watching Father Mitch Pacwa on EWTN as a young man. He spent what he described as “a ton of money” buying books and tapes from Catholic Answers with Dr. Carl Keating. I bought hundreds of dollars worth of books from Ignatius Press with Father Joseph Fessio. These were the people I called transmitters of the faith, and they laid the groundwork long before social media made it possible to share the Gospel with the entire world at once, and for free.

“There are so many people that have helped to communicate the faith over the years. It’s such a blessing to see how social media has allowed the faith to blossom and to be shared with so many people around the world at the same time. 

A Family That Gave Testimony

My mother was in the room that night, along with his sister and brother-in-law. My brother-in-law had asked him beforehand whether I was nervous.

Not really, I said. The mission is the boss. The mission comes first. The mission never ends.

Thank you to my family not just for being present but for the lifelong testimony you give me, a testimony that eventually led me to enter the seminary. Your sacrifices shaped everything that came after.

The People Who Work Alongside Him

Thank you to the Mary Immaculate community and the people who work with me. I know it’s not easy. I’m always asking what comes next. There’s no more than two minutes of applause before the questions start again.

“What can we do better? What can we do more?” We never look backward, always pressing forward.

Why Catholic Radio Still Matters

Someone might wonder whether Catholic radio is still relevant in 2026. 

Go to the nursing homes. Find the people who are old and tired and lying in their beds. They are listening to Catholic radio. It brings them calm. It brings them trust in God. It brings them warmth, faith, and hope.

Catholic radio is extremely important.

What It Actually Means to Trust in God

The theme Dave had introduced earlier is trust in God. I want to put flesh on those words by pointing to the people in Scripture who actually lived it out.

Who are they? The four friends of the paralytic man who carried their companion up to a rooftop, broke through it, and lowered him down in front of Jesus. That was trust in action. They didn’t quit. They found another way.

And the Syrophoenician woman who came to Jesus asking him to heal her daughter. Jesus pushed back, and she pushed back harder, not out of defiance but out of certainty that her cause was worthy and that God was with her. She got exactly what she asked for.

Think of the blind man crying out along the road, not caring what anyone thought, just calling out to Jesus with everything he had. “That’s trust in God,” Father Alphonse said. “If you are God and if you love me, if what you say is true, then you’re going to help me.”

And then there was the Roman centurion, a man who had every reason to feel the awkwardness of approaching a Jewish rabbi for help. He set that aside completely. “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the word and my servant shall be healed.” That, Father Alphonse said, is the full picture of what trusting in God looks like. Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened.

Read the Gospels and just look for those examples. You’ll see what it means to trust in God. It means getting out of your comfort zone. It means pushing yourself where no one else has gone

The Rocket and the Critics

A Starship rocket was recently been scrubbed at the one-minute mark. The comments online were predictable. People called it a failure, mocking the effort, writing off the whole endeavor.

Ridiculous. That rocket is going to take off one day. It’s going to orbit the moon. It’s going to reach Mars. We’re going to have colony on the moon. The critics don’t even try. They have no idea what they’re talking about.

God created us to discover who we are and what we’re here for and to discover the world that we live in. It’s going to happen.

The People in the Pews Who Inspire a Priest

All of you inspire me.

When I see people coming to Mass every Sunday, walking slowly, limping, arriving in wheelchairs, and still showing up, it inspires me. If I feel tired and I see you, I slap myself and I say, stop feeling sorry for yourself and get the job done.

The mission is the boss. The mission comes first. The mission never ends.

Thank you everyone.

Feeling Hopeless? God Never Gives Up on You (Priest's Powerful Take on the Parable of the Sower)

 

God Throws the Seed Everywhere

We all know the Parable of the Sower. We’ve heard it hundreds of times. It’s about God’s word and how we receive it. If we have an open heart, an open mind, an open soul, we allow God’s word and God’s graces to come into our life.

But today the focus is on the seed itself.

Think about this for a moment. What farmer would throw seeds in awful areas? What farmer would ever waste seed by throwing it into thorns, dry land, cracked land, land that can’t grow anything? No one would do that. No one except God.

God is extravagantly generous. He throws the seed everywhere.

Right now, some of you are listening with open hearts and open minds. And some of you, honestly, are somewhere else entirely. There’s no one standing at the door asking whether you’re going to pay attention today. Nobody’s going to turn you away if you won’t. The seed gets thrown anyway. God is generous. God’s word penetrates.

What Isaiah Tells Us About Rain

The first reading from the prophet Isaiah puts it beautifully. The rain and the snow come down and do not return. Rain falls on cement, on grass, on dirt, on rock. It doesn’t stop to consider what the ground thinks. It slaps the ground. It trickles. It nicks the surface. And eventually, it penetrates.

That image matters because so many of us hold back when it comes to sharing our faith. We talk ourselves out of it. “Don’t bring up religion with this person.” “Don’t even go there.” And in doing that, we deny someone the opportunity to hear a message of love.

We can’t do that. We shouldn’t do that.

Abraham Lincoln and a Drop That Changed Everything

While watching a History Channel series on Abraham Lincoln over the Fourth of July, something stood out. (I love Abraham Lincoln, I hated reading before I read about Abraham Lincoln.) Lincoln’s mother died when he was very young. He grew up in a log cabin in the wilderness of Illinois. His father would leave him for months at a time with his older sister while he went to look for work and food.

Eventually his father went away and came back with a new wife. A stepmother.

We all know the reputation stepmothers carry in stories. But this woman loved Abraham Lincoln. She encouraged him. She inspired him to get an education, to learn to read, to write. She was a drop of rain that fell into the soil of his life at exactly the right moment.

And who would have thought that was fertile ground? Who would have looked at some kid from a rough, remote corner of the country and predicted he would become President of the United States and help free millions of people from slavery?

When Jesus says that the seed falling on good soil will produce a hundredfold, this is what he means. You never know the impact you will have in someone’s life. You never know what kind of soil is hiding underneath a hard surface.

The Child Who Won’t Smile

Here’s another way to think about it. When a child is upset with their parents, they shut down. They cross their arms. They look away. And what does a parent do? They come close. They make a face. They say, “Come on, where’s that smile? Where is it?”

And little by little, the child starts to crack. Then they start laughing. It happens with teenagers too. It happens with friends. It happens with wives (though husbands might have to try a little harder).

The point is that persistence and love wear down the hard ground.

If someone wants to give you a hug, let them. If someone wants to talk to you, let them talk. If someone smiles at you, smile back. If someone wants to share something with you, let them share it. If someone keeps dropping grace into your life, don’t shut them out.

Those are the people you should never ignore. Those are the people you should open your heart, your mind, and your soul to.

Let Them In

That is what God does with us every single day. That is what the people who love us do every single day. They keep showing up. They keep throwing seed. They keep letting the rain fall.

The only question is whether we are willing to absorb it.

The parable is not just about what kind of ground we are. It’s an invitation to become the kind of ground that lets things grow. To stop deciding in advance that certain people aren’t worth the effort, or that we ourselves are too hard, too tired, or too far gone to receive something good.

The seed is already falling. Let it in.

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Upcoming Retreats

Christ Renews His Parish invites you to join them for a women’s retreat on August 22nd and 23rd, and a men’s retreat on August 29th and 30th. There is a table in the narthex with all the information. It is a two-day program, and those who have participated before consistently come back grateful for the many blessings they received. If you are interested, stop by the table and ask any questions you have.

Why Love Hurts

 

Love Is Simple to Say and Hard to Accept

Good morning, everyone. Today is the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, so we have the Gloria, the Creed, and of course this beautiful statue before us.

Our reader gets up and says it plainly: “God is love.” That raises a question. Why would we not accept God’s love? Are we so foolish?

The reason is this. What nobody tells you is that love is scary. Love is risky. Love is painful. That is why.

Why Love Hurts

God is love, yes, and God’s love is everlasting. God loves us not because we are worthy but because God is love. So why does it still feel so painful?

Think about it. When you love someone, why don’t you just tell them? Because they might reject you. They might push you away. And when you love someone, another person might grow jealous, and that is painful too. When you are scorned or rejected, it does not feel good. That is why, no matter how often we want to say “God is love,” it remains hard.

The Sacred Heart Is an Offering

Look at this statue. This sacred heart statue has arms like this, as if to say “stay away.” I don’t know where we got this one. Most of them are different. They’re inviting. They say “I give you my heart.” That gesture is a call.

A Call to Trust

Today is not simply a day to accept God’s love. Of course we want to accept it. But today we are called to learn to trust it.

The power that created the universe did not come from success or strength. It came from love. And love continues to give even when we suffer, because we trust that doing what is good and right and beautiful will always be ours in the end. That will be our victory.

Perseverance and trust. That is what the Sacred Heart of Jesus calls us to today.

Amen.

Suffocating Under the Weight of Life? A Priest's Simple Tip on How to Breathe Again

 

When Life Feels Overwhelming, Look to the Martyrs

My dear brothers and sisters, there is so much to draw from in just these simple Friday morning readings.

St. Paul tells his beloved Timothy that the marks of a true apostle of Christ are perseverance, endurance, love, patience, and faith in the face of persecution. And when we feel like we are going through a really bad time, all we need to do is remind ourselves of the lives of the martyrs. That’s it. Once we do that, we can rest assured that what we are going through isn’t even close to what they went through.

We all know that feeling. We try our best and still get knocked down. No good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes. And we feel genuinely bad about what we’re experiencing.

Then we read about the martyrs.

The Example of St. Boniface

Take St. Boniface. Born in England, he traveled to Germany to convert the Germanic people. He was out there preaching, preparing people for confirmation, doing all of this good and difficult work, when a group of pagans killed him. Everything back then was already hard. And yet he pressed on, only to be cut down in the middle of it all.

That is what real suffering looked like.

A Way of Life, Not Just a Teaching

Whenever you are going through a tough time, whenever you are feeling really low, read the lives of the martyrs. You will find yourself thinking, okay, I can handle this. I can get through this.

That is exactly what St. Paul was pointing Timothy toward. “You have followed my teaching, my way of life.” And what is that way of life? Faith, patience, love, endurance, and a willingness to suffer. Not because suffering is pleasant, but because we believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

Amen.