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I just read an article on the Internet by a Rev. Thomas Berg entitled “Why Are Catholics Afraid to Talk About Jesus?”  In the Catholic culture of the United States, we don’t talk about our relationship with Jesus very much.  As Rev. Berg says, the common attitude of American Catholics is, “We’re Catholics: we don’t do that; that’s a Protestant thing – you know, to talk about ‘Jesus’.”

Maybe our unease in talking about Jesus is connected to the fact that so many people have left the Catholic Church and that so many who still identify as Catholics are lukewarm or less about their faith.

Here’s a question for men, one that I don’t think gets much attention: Do we know the Holy Spirit?  Have we experienced the Holy Spirit?  Okay, that’s two questions.

I never thought about the Holy Spirit until after I was 40 years old.  I became conscious of the presence of the Holy Spirit as a result of my conversion experience in 1988.

As Catholics, we say we believe in the Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Yet, my guess is that many of us think about the Father and the Son, but not so much about the Holy Spirit.  We should know all the members of the Trinity.

In the blog of September 23, 2014 entitled “Basic Issues for Catholic Men,” we stated that: “Our relationship with Jesus Christ will be enriched and empowered as our understanding and appreciation of the Eucharist continue to grow.”  So in this blog we will focus on how Catholic men can more fully and more deeply experience the Eucharist in their lives. (Also, refer to the blog of September 15, 2014, “God’s Will and the Eucharist: How To Get More Out of Holy Communion.”)

 I’m going to keep this blog really simple.  I’m not going to repeat what was written in the blog of September 15, 2014 on getting more out of Holy Communion.

 The Eucharist at each Catholic Mass is the re-presentation of the suffering and death of Jesus Christ.  If we use our imaginations, then, during the Mass it is as if we are at Calvary.  We can feel the burning sun.  We can hear the screaming.  The air is filled with dust.  People are taunting Jesus.  They’re spitting at Him.  His body is already bloody from being tortured by the soldiers.  Think what it must have been like to be physically there at Calvary.

I apologize for the delay in putting out a new blog.  In addition to my presenting a number of retreats recently, my “production studio” has been occupied by my 9-month old granddaughter, Camille.  I will resume weekly updates to my blog and podcasts.

 In our last blog, I promised to give some examples of the rich, exciting life that God has made available to Catholic men.  The goal is to encourage Catholic men for whom the life of faith lacks significant energy and vitality.

I have been involved in the Cursillo Movement in the Catholic Church since 1989.  My involvement was prompted by a Protestant friend of mine, who told me that the Protestant version of Cursillo, called “Walk to Emmaus,” was flourishing in the Tulsa area while the Cursillo Movement in the Diocese of Tulsa was dormant  “This makes no sense,” my friend said, ‘Walk to Emmaus’ is based upon the Catholic Cursillo.  Someone needs to get the Catholic Cursillo going again around here, and I think you are that someone.”

Okay, so the question is, for Catholic men, what’s not quite enough about being a nice guy, treating people the way you would like to be treated, not taking religion too seriously and being content to evangelize by setting a reasonable example of behavior for others?  This is a very common attitude among Catholic men.  I indicated in my post of September 23 how I would respond to this question, listing 7 points I intended to address.  This post will cover the first 4 points.  I refer our readers also to my most recent podcast, “What’s Up with Catholic Men?”

 We can start by trying to identify the standard which Catholic men should be setting for themselves.  The standard I have described in the paragraph above might seem adequate for a lot of guys.  So what’s missing?

Several months ago, a friend of mine was asked to promote men’s ministry in his suburban Catholic parish.  He recently sent me the following email, which summarized his observations about some of the men in his parish:

Perhaps you would be willing to comment on a couple of issues that have come up with my conversations with a few men about God. Often I find that men will offer their philosophy of life when I talk to them about God. They will seem to say that they believe that they are good men and live by the golden rule as the means by which they believe that they will go to heaven. The second issue I have also heard us that it is an unacceptable judgmental attitude to believe that people need to hear the good news, as if I am telling them that they are wrong to believe anything other than what I believe to be the truth. Lastly, some men believe that the only way to evangelize is to give a good example of the good life, not to give any word of information.

We’ve been focusing on how we discern God’s will.  Now I want to address the connection between God’s will and what happens in the Catholic Mass.  I hope this will help those who want to have a more powerful experience when they participate in the Eucharist.

Millions of people have left the Catholic Church in the last 40 years or so.  They might give a lot of reasons why they left, but I think it boils down to this: they didn’t think they were leaving anything of great value.  Thankfully, millions more have remained in the Church, and yet one gets the sense that most of us who are still Catholic don’t fully appreciate the dynamics of the Mass and the power that is available to us in the Eucharist.

To hear God’s voice, there are times when we must be attentive and silent.  While it’s true that sometimes God speaks to us through another person, or through an event, there are other times when we must be very still, very quiet, very alone.

One of the most powerful spiritual experiences of my life took place during a “silent” retreat at the Spiritual Life Center in Wichita, Kansas, in February of 2000.  The retreat lasted five days and was based upon the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola.  No speaking was permitted at any time except for a half hour each day when each person on the retreat met with a spiritual director.

One of the most frequent statements Jesus made is that “The kingdom is at hand.”  What does that really mean?  Well, the whole mission of Jesus Christ was and is to make the divine life He shared with the Father and the Holy Spirit available to every human being.  When Jesus says, “The kingdom is at hand,” He is telling the whole world that this divine life is here.  It’s real.  We can have it.

The big problem is that most of us who consider ourselves people of faith don’t fully accept the offer of Jesus to share His divinity.  We might pray.  We might go to church.  We might be nice.  But can we say that we have experienced God’s divine power? Do we even think that experiencing God’s power is possible?  The power to heal?  The power to transform? The power to...

Our last blog dealt with the objective aspect of discerning God’s will, the call for all Christians to learn and obey the teachings of the Bible and the Catholic Church. Now, we will focus on the subjective aspect of God’s will. As we mentioned, what God asks for each of us will never be contrary to the teachings in the Bible or of the Catholic Church. Although we all have that in common, what God might ask of each of us beyond the objective requirements of our faith might be very unique. How does God want each of us to build up the kingdom, to serve humanity? How does He want each of us to use our unique gifts? What does God want each of us to do this year, this month, this day, this hour?

In this first blog on the subjective aspect of discernment, we will focus on two principles: 1) God is communicating to each of us all the time; 2) God leads, then we respond. I’m going to quote extensively from an article...

So when it comes to discerning God’s will, where do we start?  Well, whether it makes us uncomfortable or not, it starts with obedience.  If we’re not humble enough to be obedient, we’re not going to be able to accurately discern God’s will for us.

Discerning God’s will has 2 major components: the objective and the subjective. The objective component is the one we all have in common. It applies to all of us, and there are no exceptions. We can’t really talk about the subjective element unless the objective component is in place. God is never going to ask any of us to violate His objective standards.

The objective components of God’s will are comprised of two elements: the Bible and the moral teachings of the Catholic Church. We’ll start with the Bible...

Do you like yellow traffic lights, especially when you’re in a hurry to get somewhere?  Of course not.  But in this blog, we’re going to talk about how yellow lights can be a great blessing.

There was a year or so in my life, sometime in the mid-1990’s, when it seemed like I was hitting a yellow light at every major intersection.  It got to the point where I wondered what was going on. 

After my conversion experience in 1988, for the first time I began to appreciate the reality that God is communicating to every human being on a regular basis.  We think of prayer as talking to God, but the most important part of prayer is listening, being attentive and watchful for God’s communication to us.  So when this yellow light syndrome struck in the mid-90’s, I wondered what it was all about.

Now, I have a saying: “Every yellow light is just for you?”  What do I mean by that?

In our last blog, we talked about the challenges of faith for men.  Jesus was a man’s man.  He was not soft.  He did not strive for popularity.  He spoke the truth with love, but He spoke the truth with clarity and directness, too, for which He paid the ultimate price. 

So the question is, how do we model the manliness of Jesus in our homes, in our churches, in our communities?

There are lots of ways to respond to the call of Jesus for men.  I want to focus on three specific issues for Christian men: (1) sacrifice; (2) contemplation; and (3) courageous leadership.

Why do we need men, especially fathers?  What can men contribute to the family, to our Church, to our communities, that is important and unique?

I want to begin my response to these questions by focusing on the challenging, adventurous aspect of faith.  For several decades now, men have been encouraged to develop their softer side, to “get in touch with their emotions,” to be more collaborative rather than competitive, and so on.  There is merit to all that.  However, what might have happened at the same time in this process is that our concept of faith has also gotten softer.  We tend to think of God and of Jesus in softer, less-demanding terms.  The image of Jesus as accepting everyone’s behavior, of being inclusive and tolerant without almost any conditions, has become quite popular.