Oblate Formation 
Posts concerning Oblate and Novice formation. These include articles which are also applicable to most Christians, whether Oblate or not. Additional articles on instruction of various parts of the Rule can be found under that category.
Eight Habits of Healthy Couples
My newest book, When Divorce Is Not An Option: How to Heal Your Marriage and Nurture Lasting Love looks at the eight habits that healthy couples cultivate in their relationship and describes, step-by-step how couples who are struggling can develop those habits in their relationship. There’s a lot of confusion about what separates happy couples from unhappy… Read More ›
Evangelization: Person to Person
127. Today, as the Church seeks to experience a profound missionary renewal, there is a kind of preaching which falls to each of us as a daily responsibility. It has to do with bringing the Gospel to the people we meet, whether they be our neighbours or complete strangers. This is the informal preaching which… Read More ›
Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors to Christ.
Peter came to Rome! What else but obedience to the inspiration received from the Lord could have guided him and brought him to this city, the heart of the Empire? Perhaps the fisherman of Galilee did not want to come here. Perhaps he would have preferred to stay there, on the shores of Lake of… Read More ›
Seeking Satisfaction: Gluttony
There is a grotesque scene in the Monty Python film The Meaning of Life in which a hugely corpulent character named Mr Creosote eats a gigantic meal, vomits repeatedly and then, after eating a tiny after dinner mint, explodes. The comedy is completely outrageous, but you can’t miss the explicitly revolting depiction of gluttony. Being heavy is… Read More ›
Worshipping Mammon: Greed
We think of greed as a fat cat banker who pays himself a million dollar bonus after already receiving a salary of three million for working a seventy hour week doing shady almost legal deals for people. Or we think greed is shown by a person who is a tightwad: pinching every penny and cutting every… Read More ›
Distorted Desires: The Seven Deadly Sins
The seventeenth century poet Thomas Traherne is known for his joyful and positive spirit. He affirms that human souls are driven by desire, and that we desire what is good. The problem is, that desire is either distorted or directed wrongly by sin. Very often when we think about the seven deadly sins we view them… Read More ›
Praying with Icons: from the Eastern Orthodox tradition
One of the odd things that has happened to prayer in much of Western Christianity — in some churches with the Reformation, in others more recently — has been the drastic erosion of the physical dimension of spiritual life. Prayer has become mainly an activity of the head. Many of us have become like birds… Read More ›
Get Off The Treadmill Of Stress: God Is Everywhere
Do you sometimes feel like you’re hanging from a thread, that at any moment disaster could strike, that there are a million hazards out there and sooner or later one of them will get you? Are you afraid that genetic factors or exposure to carcinogens or the wrong diet is going to lead — inevitably… Read More ›
St. Padre Pio’s 5 Point Rule of Life
When we think of great mystics and wonder-working saints, we often think of those who lived centuries ago. Yet, St. Pio of Pietrelcina was both a mystic and a performer of many miracles—and he died in 1968, only 46 years ago. In many ways, this saint was and is a contradiction to our scientific, rational… Read More ›
Prayer corners aid ascent to Christ
Catholic News Agency (CNA): When Anand Bheemarasetti purchased a home in the Highlands neighborhood, he knew it came equipped with the rooms he needed—living room, dining room, bathroom, bedroom.Yet he decided the Lord of his life needed a room also.“I think God, being the most important person in our lives, should actually have space, too,”… Read More ›