All Daily Reflections

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My husband talks pretty frequently about how authentic love must necessarily involve sacrifice. “If it doesn’t, it’s nothing more than self-serving emotions, which is why you see so many people abandon those they claim to love. Once it stops feeling good, people jump ship because they don’t want to sacrifice.” It’s no different with Christ. If we cannot sacrifice one single thing for Christ, our claims of love are empty and meaningless. If we can’t sacrifice one hour on Sunday… If we can’t sacrifice giving up bad entertainment that we like… If we can’t sacrifice rooting out our favorite sin… If we can’t sacrifice our time to do God’s Will… then we like the idea of being a Christian and that’s about all. True love for Christ should make us radically change our lives. It should make us desire holiness, Catholic Pilgrims, and that takes sacrifice. So, live the faith boldly and travel well this Monday. *Church is Our Lady of Sorrows in Santa Barbara, CA

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I was reading about the early Church martyrs the other day and each time I do, I am utterly inspired by their faith. While they didn't go purposefully seeking martyrdom, they, also, didn't hide their "lamp" under a bushel basket. As I sat thinking of those that lived out the faith so courageously, I thought about the current state of Christianity in the West. For decades now, Christians have been told to hide their faith and keep it in private. "We don't want to see it, so keep it to yourself." What saddens me is that we complied. We shuffled off to our hidey-holes and tried to sanitize our public lives to make sure nobody was offended or could catch a whiff of Christianity on us. Then, I realized that the goal became to look just like the secular crowd--blend in. Champion what the secular culture wants, twist the words in the Bible to make the Bible conform to what non-believers would have it say. Stop calling out sin because that's mean and judgy. In fact, the goal became to do everything the secular culture encouraged. Until, there came a day, when you couldn't tell a Christian from a non-Christian. That was me once. Sure, I called myself a Christian, but I couldn't be bothered with church and the Bible. I didn't want to clean up my language, my habits, my entertainment, or anything. Heaven forbid, I appear too Christian. Had the early Christians been like me, Christianity would have faded out like the Beatles on "Hey Jude." It would have been just a nice thought once upon an ancient time. All that they bled and died for, I was too embarrassed and cowardly to show and live. They fought to give me the faith and I sadly took it from their hands and slid it into the back closet where things go to collect dust and be forgotten. We either live the Faith boldly, Catholic Pilgrims, or not at all. We either shine our light or we become just a dim, dull shell of a Christian, unimpressive and uninspiring. So, live the Faith boldly and travel well this Thursday.

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We are T-minus three days out from Season Five dropping on my podcast "Journeying with the Saints." On Saturday, the introduction episode will come out and you can hear why I picked St. Frances Cabrini for this season and I'll give some background information on her. I'll also give you a run down on how the season is going to operate. It's a little different this time. I've been doing this podcast for five seasons now which is incredible to me. My brother prompted me to start a podcast back in 2019 and I wasn't really sure if I wanted to. After all, there are like 900 million podcasts out there and who was I to add another? I half-heartedly tried a Catholic Pilgrim podcast, but I just couldn't get the gears rolling. Then, lying on my bed one day in Turkey, the idea came into my head to read St. Faustina's Diary for a 365-day podcast. As crazy and ambitious as that idea sounded, I knew I had to do it. I wanted to bring the Saints' writings to people and that was the motivation and inspiration I needed. So, with my cheap microphone propped up on an ironing board, I started my first season. It was received better than I could have ever hoped. Five seasons in and I'm continually amazed at how the Saints guide me. Once I land on a particular saint, I definitely notice how they are working in my life. Season Five hasn't even started and I've already been blessed by so many people and opportunities. I've spoken with people at different shrines dedicated to St. Frances and the collaboration has been amazing. I've been excited for every season, but this one has been laced with connections that I couldn't have imagined. Later in the year, I've got some trips--pilgrimages--that I can't wait to share with you. So, I hope you are ready. You can find my podcast pretty much anywhere you listen to podcasts and please subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Share with a friend if you can. It's going to be a great season, Catholic Pilgrims! St. Frances Cabrini, pray for us!

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A few years after I entered the Catholic Church, I decided to pick up St. Thomas’ Summa. I thought, “How hard could this be to read?” lol. I made it about two pages in and gently set it to the side. At that time, I was not primed for reading something like that. Since that time, I’ve worked really hard to educate myself and learn how to think deeply, not just emotionally. More than anything, St. Thomas has taught me how to have integrity in my thinking and how to seek truth. I’ll share what I’ve learned from him. 1. You must always read the primary source. In this day and age, quotes are taken out of context and used to press an agenda. Go to the source. 2. Reactionary thinking is often flawed. If people are trying to get you ginned up and emotional, chances are, you will miss the truth. 3. Sit with things for a while…in silence. 4. Just because you want something to be true, doesn’t mean it is. 5. Ask questions. 6. Always look at both sides of an argument. If something does not make logical sense, you can toss it and do not have to entertain it anymore. 7. If seeking the truth is not coupled with prayer and humility, you will struggle to find it. There have been many times in my life since learning from St. Thomas Aquinas where I’ve asked, “How would St. Thomas handle this situation?” He’s been a good guide, Catholic Pilgrims. Live the Faith boldly and travel well this Tuesday. St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

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"Man can counterfeit everything in himself except a clean conscience." When we were stationed at Tyndall AFB, one of my husband's favorite things to do was to rent a boat for visitors. Whenever we would cruise around the bay, I'd be fine. However, if you got me out onto the open ocean, it was within minutes that I would feel nauseous. One day, my husband and I went out with my sister and her then boyfriend. My sister and I immediately started feeling sick and my husband said, "Stand up, look at the horizon, and smile." If you can imagine it, there we were standing stick straight, holding onto the boat, staring off into the distance with stupid fake smiles on our face. But, the fake smiles worked, we started to feel better. I get motion sickness pretty easily and whenever I'm feeling bad, my husband tells me to smile or force a laugh. It's ridiculous, but it works. I can fake it until I make it when it comes to motion sickness. Yesterday, in my OCIA class, I was telling the catechumens about my first confession. Being raised Protestant, I didn't have Confession at my disposal and I thought it was stupid anyway. I could just "talk to Jesus in my head and ask Him to forgive my sins." I never did this, but that was my argument. Plus, Jesus covered all my sins already, so what was the point really in confessing anything. AND to add to that, I wasn't *that* bad, so I didn't really have that much to confess, or so I thought. I faked a lot of happiness and goodness in my life and a lot of people were convinced. I could not convince myself, though. You cannot fake a clean conscience on the inside. Eventually, it will eat you up. You cannot fake it until you make it with regards to a clean conscience. I could trick my brain with fake smiles so that I wouldn't feel motion sickness. But, I could not trick my soul with fake smiles so that I wouldn't "feel" my unclean conscience. There was something I needed to do to clean my conscience and that was to go to Confession. "Conscience brings to man rewards of happiness or of pain: rewards of vivid life or--of death." --Dirk Coster A clean conscience rewards of happiness, Catholic Pilgrims. Have a blessed Monday.

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This is a Nazareth kitty. I'm from a small town just outside the Kansas City area. My mom used to work for the city and, consequently, everyone knew who I was. I was very familiar to a lot of people and, to many, I still am. It's always a bit hard to go back to your hometown once you've started out on your journey. People in town just see you as who you once were or how they once knew you. This is comforting on the one hand because you'll always feel you belong. However, it is hard for them to see you as a person that has grown and changed. For them, you will always just be the person before you left town. That's what they are familiar with. Today, in our Gospel reading from Luke, we hear, "He came to Nazareth, where He had grown up." We know from other verses that people in Nazareth didn't take to Jesus coming back and being different than when He was young and lived among them. He was just Jesus, the carpenter's son. That was who was familiar to them. In their minds, He needed to just stay in that lane--just the "ordinary" Nazareth guy. Because Jesus was familiar to them, they had a hard time accepting His authority, His mission. Sometimes, I fear that we are like the townspeople of Nazareth. Jesus becomes just a pal, someone we know, someone we can hang with, you know...the familiar guy. When He becomes familiar in that way, we start to not see Him as the authority in our lives, and as Our King, Our Lord, and Our Savior. For some, familiarity breeds contempt. It did with many of the townspeople in Nazareth. It does with many of us today. We are familiar with Jesus, but we don't really want Him to have too much influence. We don't want to listen to Him too closely. If He tries to guide our lives in a direction we don't want to go, we tell Him how it's gonna be. If we hear anything from the Gospel that doesn't fit our worldview, we get mad and upset. It's not enough to just be familiar with Jesus. We need to know Him, seek Him, revere Him, and be in awe of Him. We can never say, "Oh, Jesus, yeah, I know that guy." Instead, Catholic Pilgrims, let us say with the Apostle Thomas, "Jesus, my Lord and my God." Have a blessed Sunday.

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Happy Friday, Catholic Pilgrims. Tis the season for executive orders and so, what would be the executive orders I would sign IMMEDIATELY if I were President? 1. All vats of hard-boiled eggs soaking in their egg juice at hotel breakfasts would be banned. No more sulfur bombs allowed. 2. Any Christmas song by a former Beatles member would be stripped from the catalog of available Christmas songs and sent to the vault where all bad music goes to die. 3. Turkey as a national Thanksgiving meat would cease. 4. Any man who wants to grow a mustache must submit documentation explaining why they want a mustache and provide their wife/girlfriend with an example photo of what he would look like with one. She will review it and decide if it is allowed. She has full veto power. 5. All college football conferences will have numbers in their names that reflect the actual number of teams in the conference. However, as the numbers seem to change each year, I strongly recommend picking a conference name with no number or geographical location. 6. Dressing rooms across the land must remove all bad lighting and all fun-house mirrors. Nobody wants to look like death-warmed over when trying to buy new clothes. We need to look alive and the mirrors should reflect actual size. Any businesses found not in compliance will be run out of town by a pitch-fork mob. 7. Any object that requires placement in a bag (tent, sleeping bad, outdoor chairs, cots, etc) must have a bag that doesn't require people to wrestle with it on the ground to get said object back in the bag. It is time to add more fabric to the bag and I will see to it that Americans everywhere are free from this plight. 8. Kansas City barbecue will be recognized as the Nation's best barbecue and I will hear no more from those on the east coast. 9. Federal agents will be sent to all homes to confiscate the box-o-cords that every man has stashed somewhere. The 1994 Compaq desktop monitor cord is not longer needed. 10. Any person found to be a Bills' fan just for this upcoming weekend will be sent to federal prison for fraud. My goal, Catholic Pilgrims, will be to make life better for all Americans!

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I became Catholic eight years into my marriage, seven years into the military life. I became Catholic just as we were leaving Tyndall AFB in Panama City, Florida. Since that time, it has been fascinating to see what each place teaches me and how I grow in my faith. After Tyndall, our next duty station happened to be where I am now, Edwards AFB. Back then, I was fresh into the Catholic Faith and I had so much to learn. I jumped into teaching CCD and really started to explore all things Catholic. Then, we moved to Virginia. We went to church on the campus of UVA and that church is led by Dominicans. Their homilies were the stuff of intellectual giants. I had never experienced understanding God and theological things at such a high level of intelligence. This is where I began to dive deep into studying the faith. From there, it was on to Nellis AFB in Las Vegas. That was a hard move. I'm not a Vegas fan, but my family had to learn to bloom where we are planted and, in time, we did. This was where I put all that knowledge from Virginia to good use by teaching Confirmation classes. In Ohio, I learned to really integrate my faith into all aspects of my life. This is, also, when I went to the Holy Land. Turkey was like an immersion in the Acts of the Apostles and my time there growing in my faith was so rich and rewarding. Washington DC brought the joy of exploring many of the Catholic roots of our country, at least on the eastern side. Montgomery, AL was where I learned to give as much of myself to volunteering at the church and Daily Mass became a love. Now, I'm back at Edwards and since I've been here before, I've been doubtful that I can learn anything new. How can I grow in a place I've already been? But, I've kinda become the unofficial altar decorator and, yesterday, my kids and I went to clean the small Blessed Sacrament Room on base. As I vacuumed, dusted, organized, decluttered all in the presence of Jesus, I felt so good making things as beautiful as I can for Him. What I learned yesterday is that even in a desert, I can bring beauty. That is a good reminder for us all. Have a blessed Thursday, Catholic Pilgrims.

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We are a week and a half out from my podcast "Journeying with the Saints" starting back up for Season Five on February 1st, 2025 I've put a lot of work into this season already. We've got new music courtesy of my dad, I've added some new touches, and I've got a new approach to this season. I really think you are going to like it. For Season Five, we will be reading "Letters From the Voyages of St. Francis Cabrini." You can find the book at Catholic Treehouse and Amazon. I highly recommend getting it so that you can follow along. This is the first missionary that I've featured here on the podcast and, I'm telling you, there is much to learn from a missionary saint. St. Frances has so much to teach us and some of the biggest lessons are in how to live out the virtues of perseverance and courage. I wanted to give you all this heads up, so you can prepare to join me. This picture is my new logo for the season. Other than that, please share with friends. If they've seen the movie "Cabrini" and like it, they are going to want to hear her actual words and if they saw the movie and didn't like it, well...they are still going to want to hear her actual words. HA! So, let's get ready to learn from the first canonized American saint, Catholic Pilgrims. St. Frances Cabrini, pray for us!

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Someone wrote me the other day and asked me to write about how to be loving and kind to a family member that is annoying and selfish. Here are my thoughts... Right before Christmas, I was sitting in LAX waiting to get on a flight back home to Kansas. I'm a people watcher, so I never sit with my head buried in my phone. At first, I started picking apart each person. There were so many annoying things and if you would have taken a picture of me, I probably would have had a scowl on my face. Then, I looked across from me. This young guy and I locked eyes for just a second and he smiled. I smiled back. It was clear that he was most likely cognitively disabled. I then watched him look out at all the people. As I watched, I noticed how he just continued to smile at each person. Rather than being critical of each person and mentally creating a litany of annoyances about everyone, he was just watching people with an expression of joy. I thought in that moment: What if someone is doing what I'm doing and their eyes landed on me? They could deem me the annoying-scowly faced woman who is clearly silently wishing that she could fix everyone so that they wouldn't annoy her anymore. Then I would be annoying to that person. So, I decided to change my attitude and I started looking around at everyone with the eyes of the guy across from me. I noticed a mom and her teenage son laughing together. I noticed a soldier talking to a loved one on their phone. I noticed exhausted parents trying to sneak a quick lunch while their baby napped in his stroller. Suddenly, nobody annoyed me and I was filled with a deep love for all these flawed people. For just a brief moment, I saw them not as people that needed to fix themselves so that I could like them. Instead, I saw them as people that needed to be loved. We all struggle with being loving to people that get on our nerves. I know I do. Selfish people are hard to deal with. What we must remember, Catholic Pilgrims, myself included, is that it is selfish of us to want people to be just so in order for us to love them.

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Last week, during our evening Bible reading with our son, my husband read the part where Jacob wrestles with God. After this wrestling, Jacob's name is changed to Israel which means, "wrestled with God." Now, I'm not here to go over the theology of whether this was an angel or God, that's for the theologians to hash out. Either way, Jacob was wrestling with a spiritual being. So, we asked our son, "Why do you think Jacob had this wrestling match?" He thought for a long moment and then said, "I think he was maybe mad about something." "What was he mad about?" "I think he knew he had't been that good and now he wanted to go home, but he knew he couldn't go home the same way. Something like that. Maybe he was mad that things hadn't turned out all that great for him, because he wasn't always honest." My husband asked, "So, who all had Jacob wronged?" "His brother. He lied to his dad. And he wasn't totally honest with Laban either." So, I said, "When we've allowed ourselves to become less than who God created us to be, we hate facing ourselves. But, if we ever are going to be better, we must face who we've become and, in that process, we will wrestle with God. When we finally break down to see ourselves for what we truly are, there will be a battle within us. Ultimately, that battle is with God." The battle is never fun, Catholic Pilgrims, and oftentimes, we will leave with a wound, just like Jacob did in his hip. However, once we have this battle and we face ourselves and truly desire change, growth and transformation will happen. We will be better. Jacob got a new name because he was no longer the same old Jacob. The wound is there to remind us of the battle and that we don't want to go back to who we were any more. If we are too afraid to have this battle, especially if we've really been down the wrong path, we will stay stagnant the rest of our lives. Best to wrestle it out with God so that we can be changed for the better. Live the faith boldly and travel well this Monday. *Painting by Alexander Louis Leloir (1865)

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I often like to look at the Gospels through the lens of my military life. It's the life I lead, and so, it helps to see parallels. I grew up believing that I would find a Kansas man to marry and settle down with him in my home state. That was not what God had in mind. Saying "yes" to my military man started me out on a path on which I had no idea what to expect. I had no inkling as a newly-minted 2nd Lt.'s wife what I was getting ready to face. There's no one who could have really told me all the ins and outs. I just needed to trust the path. I didn't at first. I was so homesick, so lost, so lonely at our first duty station that I told my husband that he needed to do his four years and get out. But then, after some time, I came to see that this life is a mission--a mission for good. It should be viewed as a life of sacrifice and serving. I soon realized that it was wrong to dissuade my husband from the mission. What I needed to do was join along and support him and the mission in the best way I knew how. I had to be more like Mary. Her son was on the biggest mission the world has ever known. She didn't know all the ends and outs of what would happen, but she supported His mission no matter what until the very end. She still supports it by supporting us--the soldiers for Christ. My military life, as an Air Force wife, pales in comparison to what Mary and Jesus went through, but I still like to look for the parallels. Mary was the support to her Son, just as I am to be the support to my husband. In today's Gospel, she supports the mission at the wedding feast of Cana in her loving way by interceding for the needs of others. When I look to her, she gives me strength to carry on. I find when I look to her example and try to emulate it, I am given many graces. All of us, Catholic Pilgrims, are to support the mission of the Church to bring souls to Christ. Have a blessed Sunday.