“Unknown Caller” appeared on my phone. I knew it was either spam or Fr. McCarthy. Father wants to make sure people call the parish office, so he keeps his cell number private. Since it was the morning of Christmas Eve, I took a chance and answered. Father’s business-like voice launched into a request: “Would you […]
I didn’t sign up to screw up my kids. Fatherhood was going to be GREAT – adventures, hugs, and giving better than I got. 27 years, 10 kids, 6 months of couple’s counseling and 1 year of Catholic psychotherapy later, it’s the break of dawn before my eldest daughter’s college graduation and I’m a mess. […]
Catholic Sprouts invited me to host their podcast this week and share five of my favorite saint stories. I immediately agreed, and to be honest, the only difficulty was whittling it down to just five.
4:50 am. I lie awake, tired and questioning. Is this headache enough for me to just go back to sleep? 5 drowsy minutes slip by. Lord, is it Your will that I get up anyway? Silence. Though I do get the ever-so-slight feeling that I should just get up and go, I question if it’s […]
A couple weeks ago we did one of the See for Yourself guides on “Dads Love.” The theme of the guide is that fathers are made in the likeness and image of God, that God pursues our hearts, and that we as fathers share in His fatherhood by pursuing the heart of God, the heart […]
The year after college I worked at a hospital on a psych and drug rehab unit for 13- to 18-year-olds. I had seen Amanda when I left the night before. That morning, things were in disarray.
A while back I was talking to my son who had just graduated from college. He had paid his own way through school, rented his own apartment, purchased his own car and I was congratulating him when he looked at me and said “yeah I did it. I did it myself.”
24 years ago we were at a water park in southern Florida. My son John-Andrew was 3 at the time, and he was a cute, pudgy little thing. He couldn’t swim, and so the two of us would would go into the different pool areas together and I would swim with him. We would dunk […]
I’m blessed to have 10 children between the ages of 6 and 27. I didn’t start out wanting to have a large family. I came from a family of four, my wife came from a family of eight, and when we talked about how many kids we wanted to have I remember saying I wanted […]
Everything changes with the birth of your first child. Amazingly, God has given you a share in His own Fatherhood. You begin to sense the responsibility, the eternal consequence of your role in the life of your child. You feel your own inadequacy. It can be overwhelming.