An agreeable son of Ignatius with no strong opinions whatsoever. Scholastic (Jesuit for Seminarian: Just Chris, not Father). Opinions are mine at best. AMDG.
Last Christmas was the worst of my life because I thought it'd be Mom's last and I was hundreds of miles away quarantined with COVID.
Turns out God was just setting up the best Christmas gift imaginable: today.
Y'all. It is a miracle. My Dad's lung cancer disappeared. Literally. The doctor has no idea how, but I do. It is due to your prayers.
Thank you so much. Dad is cancer free! Hallelujah!
Grief is so weird.
I’ve been okay for days, and then I fall apart as I pack my very last thing in preparation for the move to California on Monday.
Dad told me so many times that he wanted to come see me in Baltimore. He never got a chance to.
Rest in peace.
She was an absolute nobody. Born in a tiny town from the rural mountains between Spain and France--a little place that had changed hands more times than anybody could count but which is so unimportant that it didn't really matter. She spoke an old folk language--a marker of...
Sweet Jesus, y'all. I just found out that my father has serious cancer that necessitates removal of his kidney and that may have metastisized.
It is almost too much to bear: him and mom both possibly terminally ill.
Please pray for him. He's my best friend. And for Mom.
I'm so tired of Catholics using gay people as the most pernicious of all sinners and expending so much energy demonizing them in every way possible while insisting that this is 'love'.
I'm tired, I'm worn out, I'm exhausted, and folks want to wonder why they flee in droves.
Christ is born for us, glorify him! Merry Christmas y'all from behind the incense curtain and Asheville North carolina, where more lace is more grace 🤣🤣🤣💜
Please pray for the repose of the soul of my honorary God daughter, Mia, shown here holding my Godson Walter (on the left)
She was murdered yesterday. She was 17 years old.
Addiction is a very serious disease, y'all. If you are struggling with it and waiting for a sign to...
My parents met at work. My mom was a teacher, and my father worked for the town housing authority, whose office was in the same building as mom's school. Dad fell in love with mom the instant he laid eyes on her. Mom, for her part, hated dad-he'd stick his head into her class
Please pray for me that whatever has suddenly come upon me and taken me out is neither the flu nor COVID. I am really hoping to spend my Mom's last Christmas at home with her, my Dad, and my brother. Thank you.
Today my brother, who has only come to mass once before-for my vows-spontaneously joined me and mom for church. My aunt also joined us (she’s the one who talks about converting a lot). Today also happened to be the 25th anniversary of the 1st mass I ever attended. What blessings!
It was fitting that the man that encouraged me in my every endeavor should die on the feast of the son of encouragement.
Thank you all for your prayers. I made it home and my Dad waited for me so I could have the comfort of being here.
Please say a prayer for him+us.
This is Fr. Francisco Vera. He was killed for the crime of saying mass during the Cristero War.
People have died for attending and celebrating the gift that so many of us take for granted. Make a small sacrifice to go to daily mass if you can... You will be glad that you did!
Just a decade after it became legal for folks of differing races to wed in North Carolina. This was possible because of the brave love of Mildred and Richard Loving, whose supreme court case was decided on this date in 1967.
Happy Loving Day Mom and Dad, and all y'all!
I'm sorry but if what the pope said to this obviously very sad and very hurting little boy makes you mad, you need to get off the Internet and go touch grass.
In our culture, there is an overwhelming sentiment that folks who have bad opinions cannot be changed. They must be castigated, condemned, and cut-off from public life. They are irrational, irreconcilable, and irreformable. It is good to call out racism, misogyny, +hate, but, 1/9
Jesus died for gay people.
His heart burns with love for gay people.
He shed his blood for gay people.
He is insulted when gay people are insulted.
He is rejected when gay people are rejected.
Heaven is full of holy gay people.
Why not worry about your own sins‽
This disappointment did in fact come that day. I didn't get to apply to theology because I was struggling with an unaccepted alcoholism.
That day, though, was my first day of sobriety. September 14 marked two years. I just got my coin this evening.
The best bad news of my life.
What a beautiful reminder to me this morning as I awake unable to fall back asleep. As I feel bad for myself as I dread a slight disappointment which will probably come today… as I start to feel sorry for poor poor me. Let me never forget: I carry splinters. (15/17)
Y’all, my Great-Grandfather was on his second day as the newly appointed deputy sheriff when he was shot and killed by escaped convicts whom he caught robbing a gas station. The law at that time required that they be put to death, and the verdict was unanimous...
Mom is losing weight extremely rapidly and her team is very concerned that her disease is progressing.
July is the month of the Most Precious Blood. Please say a prayer that her blood is healed by Him who shed his blood for all.
Why are so many Catholics on this bird app so obsessed with sexuality these days. How blessed are we to belong to a faith with so many different sorts of folks‽
Why not give thanks to God for the variety in love rather than try and tell everybody they're going to hell‽ Idk...
Please pray for our family. Dad is getting rushed back to the hospital and it’s not looking good. The stress of trying to deal with it from so far away is overwhelming. Thank you.
[If you are wondering what inspired these posts, St. Bernadette died on this day 136 years ago. Today is her memorial in France and other places which have added her to their calendar! So happy feast of St. Bernadette (in these USA we celebrate her alongside Aquero in February)]
Stop whatever you’re doing when you see this and say a Hail Mary for peace between Iran and Israel.
May Our Lady, the queen of peace, bring an end to violence and bloodshed to our troubled world. Amen.
Got some wonderful news just now of which I am quite unworthy. I’ll be in California for the next three years…
Say a prayer for me and join me in thanking God. Two years later than I expected but right on time :).
Notre Dame is $80,211 per year with room and board. It was exorbitant'r'n' hell when I graduated in 2010 at 45g... The value of the product cannot have doubled in a decade. Yes, student loans are bad, but schools are worse for this foolishness. Catholic schools at that! Smh.
Y’all please please pray for my favorite aunt. She is Baptist, and was just diagnosed with very serious cancer. I haven’t been able to stop crying since I found out. She just texted me, “I have to be alright, because I have to be here for when you are ordained a priest.” 😢😭😭😭
Mom is losing weight extremely rapidly and her team is very concerned that her disease is progressing.
July is the month of the Most Precious Blood. Please say a prayer that her blood is healed by Him who shed his blood for all.
We are (very) poor and my folks don't think that they will be around in a few years to see me gain the Fr. title that so many of y'all give me already.
They wanted to get me a chalice and paten but they can't afford anything that would be decent (and SJs don't usually do this)
Welp. Happy Thanksgiving to this man too. Y'all, I have blocked, unfollowed, and muted more Catholics today that for my entire existence on the demon bird. Some of y'all forget: 1. That the anger of man worketh not the righteousness of God, 2. The first principle and supposition.
Y'all, I want to be a priest so badly.
It has been suuuuch a long road: the years ahead seem like an æternity.
How hard it is sometimes to believe that right now, wherever we are... we are exactly where we are called to be.
Praying for patience and peace and for all y'all.🤍
A fortnight of grief
I miss my father so much I can’t breathe.
Even this is a blessing, albeit a painful one.
Thank you, God, for 36 years, 3 months, 1 day, 16 hours and 46 minutes of love unlike any I have known or will ever know.
When I was a child and a brand new convert, I volunteered to spend one hour a week with Jesus in our parish’s (now extinct) adoration chapel. I’d spend sixty minutes from 5 to 6pm with the blessed sacrament, and my mom eventually started to join me. At 7 on the dot, the doors
Most days I don't want to go to mass at all. I drag myself to it. The music, if any, is usually bad. The preaching, if any, is usually worse. I usually, on an emotional level, get close to nothing by going.
Thanks be to God that grace doesn't depend on my feelings, or my likes...
@BenZeisloft
I am a drunk: I can’t handle drinking. What starts at moderation always ends at disaster. This is my own problem which I know and which I own. It isn’t the world’s responsibility to bring back prohibition. It is my job to moderate my own behavior to avoid sin. C’mon, man.
Catholic first!
Before nationality
Before race
Before language
Before color
Before gender
Before sex
Before politics
Before party
Before orientation
Before sexuality
Before churchmanship
Before liturgical style
Above, beyond, and over all these things: we are Catholic first.
My mom expresses the sentiment the best. Pray for me as I rush home to Asheville and pray for my Dad: that he finds mercy and comfort in the Heart of Christ. He is tormented in his agony by the thought that he has been a bad father/person, when he is the best man that I know.
I went to the Jewish Community Center after school as a kid, and long before I knew what Catholicism was, I wanted to become a Rabbi when I grew up.
Now as an adult I go almost every week to Shabbat Services to pray with my brothers and sisters in Abraham. I have always been...
The lesson to us is a clear one: God often chooses the least expected. So. Keep an open mind. The one who looks to you to be an idiot could very well be the wisest in the kingdom of God. So. Stop judging. The one you condemn very well might be the next St. Bernadette.
If you want to go hard core this Lent, try the most savage option: The ‘don’t tell anybody about your Lenten penances, and don’t make them a hardship or inconvenience for anybody else in any way, and remember the entire point of the season’ challenge. :).
On October 17 1996, Richie Fernando, a Jesuit regent who begged and convinced his provincial to send him to work with disabled refugees in a school in Cambodia, went to work and taught his class as he had been doing every day for his 3 months of regency.
One of his students...
Y'all. I love church, and I love liturgy, but I'm so tired of the Liturgy wars. My friend Vanessa, who experiences homelessness, is worrying about freezing to death. We on here worrying about which valid, holy, mass will feed us so that we can go feed her. It's so tiring.
The most exhausting and cringe thing on Earth is when people do something for a person in need while videotaping it and then post it to social media.
What happened to not letting your left hand know what your right is doing?
Every sermon I hear on this optional memorial strengthens my resolve never to choose this option.
In death as in life, men make the tragic life and murder of a little girl about their own issues around sex.
She did NOT “choose heaven over pleasure”. She was murdered by a creep.
Y’all. I’m here waiting on my lil Amtrak train trying to ignore the drunk dude puking his life out nearby. I looked in my luggage, and I found this lil’ note that my mom snuck in:
After I had become Catholic but before she had even considered joining, my Mom went to the adoration chapel of our church. She would always go with me on Wednesday nights to my hour (because I was a tween and couldn't drive) but sometimes unbeknownst to me she would go solo...
Thank y'all so much for your prayers. Unfortunately, I'll be spending Christmas in isolation this year. I won't be alone, though, Jesus is with me both spiritually+really: I have a tabernacle in my room (which I'm not 100% sure is Kosher, but for which I am grateful beyond words)
I woke up sobbing in the middle of the night. Why, I asked God, Is MY mom the 1 out of a million people who gets CMML. But I was reminded that I was given a much rarer blessing: out of the 107b people who have ever lived, I am one of the two blessed to be her son. Thank you Lord.
Y'all, I never ask for prayers for myself. But. If y'all could take 10 seconds when you read this and intercede for me, it would mean the world to me. Thank you x 10^23
Remembering the young priest who insisted I call him 'Father *last name*' after he got ordained even though we grew up together and I am a Jesuit.🙄
Not a cute look, y'all. For the record, if I'm ever ordained I will always be Chris, and costumage will not make me forget it.😂🤣
I love Catholicism because when you don't have words for your prayer, you can just light a candle to burn before God and plead the case for you.
I love Catholicism because when you want to say thank you, you can bring flowers to church in gratitude to decorate the altar.
On this day, 22 years ago, at about this time, 12 year old me wandered in and sat at this very pew to come to mass for the first time. For a Quaker child, the costumes, the bells, the props, the call and response; the standing, sitting, squatting. It was all an incomprehensible
I'm missing my sweet friend Priscilla today. I met her my first week of going to Catholic church when I was eleven. She always encouraged me to become a priest, doted on me, and treated me like the son she never had. I loved her so much. She died this last September. Pray for her
Y'all, I can't even relate how much God blessed me today. My best Jesuit friend, Jake, and I drove up to Syracuse today to celebrate the first vows of our second year novices. On the way, I was lazy and was trying to make it to mass without filling up for gas. Dumb...
Controversial view for Catholic Twitter:
Actually, Vatican II was the best thing to happen to the Church in a millennium (at least) and among its best fruits was the reform of the liturgy.
Participating in the Liturgy as the church imagines it, aka reformed, is good. Send tweet.
"But your children are much more likely to be abused at school, or at boy scouts, or..."
Let me just stop you there. Sure, this may be true. But, school doesn't claim to be the one true Church of Jesus Christ. Scouts don't impose moral norms 'from God' on all aspects of my life.
I am honored to know
@JamesMartinSJ
. He is such a kind, unassuming & genuinely good human being. Reading his books, in addition to Walter Ciszek's, was a major inspiration for my vocation.
It is a blessing to call this man a brother and a friend. Haters, kindly touch grass🤷🏿♂️🤣✌🏿
A tale of two liturgies (a true story):
When I became Catholic way back more than two decades ago (holy God we Praise Thy Name, I'm old, but I digress...) there were two 'substantial' churches within city limits. My parents' home straddled the parish boundary between them...
One of my students' fathers dropped dead right before his Basketball game yesterday. Please pray for the repose of his soul, for his wife, daughter, and especially for his son. This poor kid is only 15-16+lost his beloved Dad out of the blue. Eternal rest grant unto him, o Lord.
Please pray for a 95 year old, sweet as can be, lifelong Catholic named Lillian. She took a left turn directly in front of me as I was oncoming: both cars are a wreck, but we are fine.
She wears a big miraculous medal. I know Our Lady protected us. Please ask her intercession 💙
Y’all, my friend and brother the Rev. Mr. Trevor Rainwater is getting ordained this weekend. His family ordered him a beautiful new set of vestments (including a pink one-probably the only one in the assistancy😂). Hold this wonderful man in prayer! He will be a wonderful priest.
I wonder how many women today wake up:
-Without their children, taken too soon
-Whose children are incarcerated
-Whose children are lost to addiction
There's much sorrow in the world. women bear so much if it.
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for them.
Mother of all, pray for us.
A priest friend sharing a burden that he is carrying with me just said:
"There is no quick fix. There is only a crucifix."
That's it. That's the tweet (and the Christian life).
Every Wednesday, and she loved me&let me know it. I was not alone. She loved all of us who didn’t fit quite in. In honor of her: do that. You ain’t saving a soul by arguing on Twitter about folks sins. You will save a soul by making sure one of Gods children knows they’re loved.
I think this is beautiful. I believe in the power of prayer for healing, and anybody can pray and bless-not just clergy. Imagine being mad that the Pope allowed young people to pray over him.
Love y'all, mean it. Hope to see you in heaven. Lets live lives worthy of it so we can get there. Nothing matters if we don't, and everything becomes worth it if we do.
This week God has blessed me immensely in giving me a job teaching math at Cristo Rey Baltimore. I love it, and I just feel so fortunate to be back in the classroom.
How has God blessed you this week? I'd love to hear :). Happy (real) Epiphany/Friday y'all.
Warning morning hot take: Want to make your intercity parish thrive?
Offer daily confessions+a reverent daily mass in the evening.
It's a lot of work, but every church that I've seen that does it does well.
(There's also a lot of other things, but that's the simplest imho).
Just say rest in peace. This is a prayer that the person in question find rest in the arms of God. Rest in power is a weird secular corruption of the same. I get it for atheists/agnostics, but not for Catholics. To be at peace in God's arms is the only power that matters. 🤷🏿♂️
I will be deactivating tomorrow for Advent to prepare for the three Advents of the Lord in my life:
1. At the Incarnation
2. At my death
3. At his Second Coming
I'm praying for you all. Please pray for me! See y'all at Christmas (if the Bird App is still flying).
@fesshole
The church doesn't need you if this is the case, friend. You're using the people of God for a career, and that is... perhaps... one of the most dishonest and disingenuous things that a shepherd and servant can do. If this is true, the only honorable thing to do would be to leave.
I've been in line for confession for an hour. Only two people have gone. I'm glad for the serial killers that they are coming home, but y'all... 🙄👀😑
The church is busy though and Jesus is here. Maybe God needed to slow me down to tell me something.
"Becoming Catholic didn't make me stop sinning, but it sure took all the fun out of it."
—My Mom
I tell you, If you aren't being challenged by our faith in some aspect of your life, then you can be sure that you aren't living the faith.
Catholicism is tough but 100% worth it.
This is very low priority for your prayer list, but, if you have a moment, would you say a prayer that my box of irreplaceable things arrives? It's missing in the mail and contains every card that anybody that I love has written to me. They're the few things that I hold onto. Ty!
I was incognito in a group of folks, and somebody mentioned that their friend was 'very Catholic.' Somebody else said ew, and everybody laughed.
We wouldn't do that for Muslims. We wouldn't do that for Jews. And we ain't. Gone do that for Catholics.
I was quickly cognito. 👀.
The AP reports that families are fleeing Gaza on the one main road south toward Egypt in... donkey carts.
It reminds me another poor family which was forced by violence to flee to Egypt on a donkey.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph pray for them, pray for peace.
I am totally in awe of the faith and fortitude of this man. At an age in life where he has built his entire identity, family friendships, colleagues and cushy job in his Church, he has given it all up to become Catholic. God bless Jonathan on his journey!