Living Monstrance

One of the joys - yes, joys - for me is to do the yard work around my parents’ house. I’m no landscaping expert, but there’s a good feeling to doing gardening, trimming, mowing, and digging in the warmer months. Maybe it’s being outdoors in nature, maybe it’s the satisfaction of building or [...]

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The Lord blessed me with a wonderful girlfriend. She loved me, and we shared much together.
One night, she went out with a friend downtown Boston. Well, after a few drinks, as the night got late, some things happened and her friend took off and left her. Alone. Drunk. Without a [...]

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The group photo from the consecration at St. Clement Eucharistic Shrine on August 14, the memorial of St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Vigil of the Assumption.

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After I left the Franciscan community in January, I was down. Things just didn’t work out, and I was back at my parents’ house. There was ringing in my head again the song of failure. See, I wanted to be living in the “action”, with the Lord in the tabernacle, in the [...]

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Before I left for Maryland last August to begin with the Franciscans, I had a large image of the Divine Mercy that I wanted to give away.  I had it framed and given to my local parish.  When I came back in February, I looked around the church and didn’t notice it so I asked the [...]

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I taught CCD to sixth-graders for a year.  It is a great privilege to be in a classroom teaching young ones about God, and it is a place where God does great things.
Now, let’s face it: Catholic education in America, and in Boston, is not what you would call top notch.  When you teach CCD, [...]

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The Franciscan community I lived with for a while did not have any money or means of transportation.  So, for long distances, we used different ways of getting around.  One of them was hitchhiking.
That might sound risky at first, but when you are serving the Lord, He provides.  We saw only great goodness and generosity [...]

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I am living at my parents’ house right now.  The neighborhood is pretty good, a lot of families.  I guess you would call it middle-class, or working class.  But there is something that stands out - sort of.  The next-door neighbor has an early 80’s Buick Regal that has been planted in the same spot [...]

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I taught high school mathematics and chemistry for a brief time.  Now, before the school year began, there was an orientation that lasted a few days for new students.  So, this was my real beginning with the students.  “Nice,” I thought.  “We’ll ramp up slowly.”
At that first day, a mother of one of the new [...]

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Recently, my mother told me a story about my brother and me when we were little kids.  He was about 4 and I was about 2, and it was Advent.  She had just put together an artificial Christmas tree.  Remember those things?  Shiny and silver and gaudy?  You assemble it branch by branch.  It’s actually painstaking [...]

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