At some point in creating and arranging, He looked at everything He had, and He realized that there was a gap. There was a space for one more thing, and that thing was you.

Maybe in the garden there were some weaker plants that needed protection from the wind, so our Lord needed one more plant to help be a shield. Maybe there were some plants that couldn’t have too much sun, so He needed one more that could help take the brunt. Maybe He realized that over time the soil would be depleted, so He added one more that could enrich it.

God planted you exactly where you are, exactly when you are, because He wanted your help.

And now, there are people around you, people whose lives you touch, who depend on you. They depend on you to correspond with God’s grace. That means different things for each of us, but at the end of the day, it’s that: there are people who are depending on you to correspond to God’s grace.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, You are all good and the creator of all good things. Grant us the grace to turn to You, to serve You, to love You and those around us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

He asked for her willingness to be a part of His plan. He asked for her yes to taking on the life of Christ within her.

And believe it or not, today He’s asking you the same thing. He’s asking you if you will be a part of His plan. He’s asking you for your permission for Him to act in your life. He’s asking you to take the life of Christ within you and to bring that forth into the world.

Just like Mary, we could say no. The unfortunate reality is that many days we do say no. Sometimes it’s explicit. Other times it’s through indifference. Not deciding is, in fact, a decision. Not answering our Lord is, in fact, an answer.

So today, when the Lord seeks, when the Lord knocks, when the Lord asks, what will we say? What will we do?

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we turn to the example of Your Most Blessed Mother Mary. We ask through her intercession for the grace to say yes. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

When we only look through this lens we miss something. We miss that the faith is a way of life, or to use modern language, it’s a lifestyle. This isn’t actually anything groundbreaking. Plenty of saints and spiritual writers talk about it. Even our Lord says that “He is the way, the truth, and the life”.

Two of those, the way and the life, don’t really imply a set of teachings. I think the truth covers that.

We need the dogma, we need the doctrine, we need the teaching, but let us not neglect that our first tool in the mission of evangelization might well be just how we live our lives.

Let us pray. Lord, we believe that You are the way, the truth, and the life. Give us the grace to follow Your way, to embody Your truth, to live Your life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

And my goal is to not spill a drop. The secret to success is focusing on the cup, and letting everything else fall into the peripheries. Of course, a stray LEGO piece or doll house chair might throw me off. But it doesn’t work to do it the other way – to focus on what’s in front of me and let my coffee be in the periphery.

There’s an apt metaphor here for the grace we receive in prayer. Each morning, we have the opportunity to fill our cup with God’s graces, insights, little lights that He sends our way. And then our task is to live our day without spilling the cup.

With our eyes focused on God, we can let everything else fall to the peripheries. And when we do this, far from ignoring the things in front of us, we actually see them in their proper place.

The reality is that most of us live in the world. There are times where we metaphorically have to set the cup down to complete a task. That’s okay. Simply pick it up again.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, every day you offer us Your graces. Teach us to cherish them, to hold on to them, to return to them. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

I’ve always been drawn to the written word. I love how squiggly shapes and lines on paper (or a screen) can make you laugh, cry, or feel inspired to change your life. In 2015, I was more on fire than ever before, and I started Catholic Cannonball for a couple of reasons.

I was a year and half out of college. I went to a Catholic university with multiple Masses every day, priests and seminarians sharing the dining hall, and a culture of Catholicism everywhere you went.

When I graduated and was thrust into the “real world,” daily Mass wasn’t a short walk away. Churches weren’t filled with twentysomethings I knew from class or played baseball with. And last time I checked, Dupont Circle does not feature a statue of the Blessed Virgin.

I found it difficult. And I had friends who I knew were drowning. After the safe harbor of Catholic college, the stormy seas of the real world sent them reeling.

Around this same time, I dropped out of grad school, was unemployed and married for two months. And only one month earlier, my wife had been diagnosed with cancer. (That’s a story for another day.)

It had been a year, to say the least.

Fortunately, I had my faith and I held on to that for dear life. Many people go through storms like that, and they don’t have any solid ground to stand on.

On the one hand, Catholic Cannonball didn’t go anywhere. I published maybe six times, and had just as many readers (most share my DNA).

But God uses all we give Him. Maybe my early writing had an impact on one of those six readers. And while Catholic Cannonball didn’t live on, it was the seed, the first step in the journey that led here. It led to me writing this, to you reading it, and to everything in between.

So while part of me looks back and cringes a bit, I also look back on it fondly.

Our efforts often don’t work one-to-one. One conversation doesn’t always convert a soul. Or to put it better: A might lead to B, but B is not the end. Z is. A leads to B, then B leads to C, and so on. It takes a lifetime to reach Z. And maybe our Lord calls us home before we get there. All according to His will.

My point is that every action, every moment, and every day is an opportunity to move us, or someone else, just a little closer to God.

Now you might be wondering why in the world I’m sharing all of this.

Great question. The answer goes back to that blog name, Catholic Cannonball, and why I chose it.

I went to a Jesuit high school. Whatever you think of the Jesuits, I had a great experience there. It was formative for many reasons. It laid the foundation, or built on the foundation my parents started, for the Catholic man I would become.

The Jesuits have several legends that get retold like old family stories.

One of those is the story of St. Ignatius of Loyola. As a young man, he was vain, prideful, and ambitious for glory on the battlefield. A literal cannonball shattered his leg and put him in bed for months. But it was metaphorical cannonballs that shattered his pride. Those cannonballs were the written word, specifically books about the life of Christ and the lives of the saints.

The written word has that kind of power. A good book can change your life. Simple words of wisdom can change your day, even in the smallest way.

That’s what inspired me to start Catholic Cannonball and write reflections on life and faith.

Catholic Cannonball is long gone, but that desire and fire are still there: to send mini (or big) cannonballs through the written word that might just make a big impact in your life.

So here’s my plan. Every Friday at 3 pm (the Hour of Mercy), I’m going to send an email like this.

My intention is to give you something to think about and a way to go deeper. I hope it leaves an impact on your day, and maybe your life, however small. Even if it only gives you a few moments to remember our Lord, or draws you out of the day-to-day to glance toward heavenly things.

As for what you can expect, my hope is stories. Sometimes they’ll be stories I’ve never shared in all my years of writing. In a world where AI generates, well, everything, personal stories are the one thing that can’t be fabricated, or at least shouldn’t be. And they can be the biggest cannonballs we send into someone’s world.

So here’s my question for you: What cannonballs have nudged you closer to God?

Maybe it was a book. A conversation. A homily you still remember years later. Maybe it was a hard season that knocked you flat, like it did for Ignatius.

Take a few minutes with that today. And if you feel so moved, hit reply and tell me. I read every one.

As someone who at times has struggled with scrupulosity, I find St. Augustine’s analogy of the sense of smell to be a helpful one.

Your sense of smell might be underactive or overactive.

For the scrupulous person, it might be more overactive. Sure, you perceive the stench of your sin, but you start to imagine that stench in other places, that might not actually be sin.

On the flip side, and what Augustine’s really getting at, is when someone’s sense of smell is underactive, meaning that they don’t sense sin, they don’t recognize sin for sin. They walk around in the wastewater treatment plant and say, “I don’t smell a thing.”

Now how do we develop a healthy sense of smell, making sure it’s not overactive or underactive? There are probably several different ways that can help but I think the one that is indispensable is the sacrament of Confession. It is in the confessional that we can turn to Christ through the person of the priest and ask Him to heal us, to set our senses right. We turn to Him to help us recognize our sin for what it is, and wipe it out.

Let us pray. Lord Jesus, You offer us Your grace in the sacrament of Confession. Help us to turn to You, whether it’s been one week, or 50 years. In Your name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

More and more, I realize how important the virtue of perseverance is for the spiritual life. I’ve been working through a book on virtue, which I will write more about in the future, but one of the ideas in which the author frames virtue, is that virtues don’t exist in an absolutely pure state.

In other words, a lived virtue is always a blend. For example, patience often comes with insight, or wisdom, or strength. These things have to work together because it really doesn’t make sense if they didn’t. Patience, by definition, implies a strength to endure.

Perseverance is a common ingredient into these blended virtues because it adds the component of time.

Virtue is a decision in this moment, but also moment to moment, across our lifetime.

That’s what I think of when I read St. Teresa’s words. Even if we’re moving slow in our life of virtue and we’re growing slowly — just keep going, keep trying, and we will always arrive, perhaps just a little later than we expected.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, You know our strengths and You know our weaknesses. Grant us the virtue of perseverance so that we may always keep moving forward, toward You. In Jesus’s name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

I love the wisdom distilled here. It reminds me of the old advice or guidance on airplanes to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others.

I think in the church today, or at least in my small sample size of the church today, there are so many people with good intentions who want to help, who want to serve, but they don’t know where.

I would challenge us with this: the place to start is with our union with God. Build our lives on that foundation, and then every good that we can do, every bit of service that we do, springs from that. It is not only the impetus that we share, but the thing that we share.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, You know our deepest desires. Enkindle in us the fire to pursue You and share that union with the world around us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

You can’t really control if you win or lose. But you can control these three things.

The beautiful opportunity of sports is that they can teach us life lessons, and here is no different.

In our home, in our careers… are we putting the work into our relationships? Are we striving to get better at what we do? To be better spouses, parents, employees, managers? Do we stay positive even when storms hit?

And of course the parallel extends into our faith. Do we show up every day for our Lord? Do we pray? Do we pursue virtue?

It is the frame of faith that gives us this full picture: there are things within our control and things outside of our control. At the end of the day, we can’t control the outcome. To jump to a new metaphor, we can’t control the harvest. But like the farmer, we can put in the work, we can cultivate the soil, water the seeds, and wait.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, You ask us to collaborate with You in building up Your kingdom. Help us to play our part and put our trust in You. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

I’ve been reflecting on this idea lately, and I think it’s one of the more challenging ones in the spiritual life. And what I mean is that this idea is not difficult to wrap our minds around, it’s difficult to do.

We can think of it this way: God’s will is the one that’s not changing. It is an island that is fixed in the ocean, and our task is to get to shore.

We might start barely in sight of the island, and we start moving closer to it. But we can’t see that we’re heading into rough surf and a rocky coastline. In that moment, we think we are following God’s will, but we don’t have the full picture.

And other times, we’re moving parallel to the coast, seemingly not getting any closer to the shore, but again what we don’t see is that our Lord has to move us away from the danger, to safer waters before we can come in.

The reason why this kind of prayer, transforming our desire into His desire, is so hard is because we’re navigating this give and take. Giving everything we have, but taking what the Lord sends us.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, You know our deepest desires. You know how we can get in our own way. Help us to let go and let You lead. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

Every time I read this, I chuckle. Because it describes us so perfectly. We question what God is doing in our lives, like we know better, like we have the full picture. When, in reality, in this present moment, there are things happening that we do not comprehend. There are things at work that we don’t even notice sometimes. Ways that our Lord is asking us to follow Him, to serve Him, to love others. And in our blindness, we are the ones who think we know better.

I think a prayer for us in these moments can be: “Lord, I don’t know what You’re doing, but I trust You.”

Let us pray. Lord, we don’t always know what You are doing. We can’t always see Your plan. Increase our faith and our trust. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

There are many reasons the Church has different religious orders. One is that there are different ways of living out the faith, even across vocations.

In the broadest strokes:

+ Benedictines: living a life of work and prayer
+ Dominicans: preaching and proclaiming the Word
+ Franciscans: embracing poverty and simplicity to follow Christ
+ Carmelites: pursuing the Lord through a deep, contemplative life of prayer

And many more.

As laypeople, our spiritual lives can fit into one of these traditions too, even if we never join a religious order.

For me, what (or rather who) drew me in was St. Teresa of Avila. Her teaching on mental prayer just made sense to me. I had never seen prayer approached that way before. She gives practical, concrete guidance for entering into prayer.

But she also knew from experience that while a plan is good, sometimes in prayer (and in life) you throw out the plan and follow where God leads.

Prayer isn’t just a formula. It isn’t unstructured chaos either. In a way, it’s both. A method we return to every day, and a willingness to be led by the Spirit.

St. Teresa shows us both sides of that coin: a practice to start with each day, and then being swept up in the love of the Lord.

Whether or not you’re in the Carmelite camp, there’s a lot to learn from her.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we ask through the intercession of St. Teresa of Avila for a deeper prayer life. For a greater desire to draw ever closer to You. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

In my own life, one side has always been sleeping in, lying in bed, soaking. And the other is starting my day, having a solid amount of time in prayer before chaos happens.

Eventually (through no real doing on my own), I realized that getting up early is hard. Sure there are some days where you wake up early feeling refreshed, but that’s not the norm. At least not for me.

So what it boils down to is that you want the thing bad enough, that you’re willing to accept that it’s not easy, but worth doing.

Some things are hard. But it’s your desire for the benefit, for the fruit, for the outcome that has to be great enough that it outweighs the difficulty, the struggle.

Then you’ve reached the tipping point.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, You draw our hearts to You. You challenge us, You call us to deeper waters. Give us the strength and grace to accept that challenge. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

Either good or bad.

Struggling to accept goodness from the Father might sound like a surprising idea.

At least in my own life, there are times where it’s actually more difficult to accept the good. Sometimes, I feel like the child going to the doctor’s office worried about getting a shot. And then toward the end of the appointment, you hear those blessed words: “You’re all done for today. Want a lollipop?”

A lollipop? What’s the catch? Maybe this is because next time, he’s going to give me ten shots!

I know it’s a childish example (that I’m not sure children actually think like that). Because children can be much better at simply accepting goodness. They are all too quick to take a lollipop, hopefully with a please and thank you.

It’s in our own fallenness that we learn to distrust the Father. Even though we receive the fish, we still think there must be a snake hiding somewhere.

Why does the Lord give us gifts? There are infinite reasons, but at the end of the day, the only reason we need to know is that He loves us. Let that be enough, and accept it.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we know You are a good and loving Father. Forgive us our distrust, forgive us when we doubt. Help us to believe that You want what is best. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

I’ve always thought this was funny because if you’ve ever been on a jet ski, it’s hard not to smile. But it’s a fallacy, and it barely scratches the surface of what true happiness is or what true joy is.

Several spiritual writers express the idea that joy is one of the Christian’s greatest treasures and it’s Aquinas who says, “Joy is the first fruit of love.” Or in other words, love is a prerequisite for joy, which is why the jet ski example breaks down. There’s no love in things.

It’s what the world gets wrong in chasing material goods, looking for happiness. True joy can’t be bought, but it does have a price. The price is love.

For me, I felt indescribable joy on my wedding day or holding my children for the first time. Those moments were joyful because they cost me something. It cost me years of laying down my life, of striving to be better, to grow in virtue, to be the man that my wife and children deserve, that God made me to be. Those moments then aren’t a fleeting feeling or a flash of light but a fire that’s been burning.

I’m sure there is a parallel to the priesthood or religious life. And the beautiful thing is that as that fire burns, as our love grows, as we mature and get better at loving, so too our joy grows.

To the point that the fire can’t help but bring light and warmth to those around us. And for those who live in cold darkness, there is no greater treasure than a warm fire.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, You are the giver of all gifts. Grant us the grace we need to love as You love, and let that love and joy radiate the world around us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

In Archbishop Chaput’s Things Worth Dying For, he brings up this idea, which he references Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis. And when I first read about this idea, I started scribbling “wrong” in the margins.

Only the day before had I written myself a resolution in my journal to literally invite Jesus into all aspects of my life. How could that be wrong?

As I read on, the full picture became a bit more clear: the Christian life is not about me bringing Jesus into my life or my endeavors. It’s about Jesus inviting me to renounce my endeavors to join His life.

I love that image, but something still wasn’t sitting right.

In the Catholic Church, when a question looks like either/or, the answer can usually be found by switching that to both/and. That’s the lens that I’ve been using to reflect on this: How are both of these things true?

What I’ve settled on is that the Christian life is not only about bringing Jesus into my life, or, in other words, it doesn’t stop there.

The analogy that comes to mind is an analogy that Christ Himself uses: on this earth, in this life, we are thirsty. We are looking for water and Christ can bring us that water, that nourishment, that refreshment. That is us bringing Christ into our lives.

But He doesn’t just stop there because the invitation is: if you leave this place, if you walk away from what you think you know, what you think you desire and need, your plans, and your will, He can take you to a place where you will never thirst, where you will have living water. You will be a part of His life in ways that you could never imagine, that could never have fit the box that is your life.

It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. Or better yet, it’s first/then. First, Christ comes to us, and then we go to Him.

So for each of us, pray for Jesus to come into our lives but let us also pray for the grace to respond to His invitation to join His life.

Let us pray. Lord Jesus, we make that prayer now. Come into our lives, every aspect of it. Breathe into us your grace so that we have the strength to join You. In Your name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

For me, good books have played a big part. So has Scripture — when I finally dug into it. The sacraments, of course. But before all of that, there was something else. Something more ordinary.

Friendship.

I’m a cradle Catholic, but it was in college that my faith really became my own. In my junior year, I started to actually live, or at least strive to live, the faith I professed to believe. And it was a few key relationships that made the difference. A mentor who recommended a book that was the spark for a lot of things. A friend who challenged the way I was living as a 21-year-old college student. My friendship with the young woman who would become my wife, who drew me closer to daily Mass.

Francis Fernandez puts it plainly: “Friendship is the ordinary means God uses to draw many people to Him, or for them to discover their call to follow Christ more closely.”

I think this checks out. In the Church we sometimes dress it up — evangelization, discipleship, accompaniment. And those aren’t wrong. But at the end of the day, it’s living life with people. Sharing life. Sharing faith. Sharing what the Lord has done for us.

That’s the ordinary means. And it’s available to all of us, every day.

Let us pray. Lord, thank You for the friends You’ve used to draw us closer to You. Help us to be that for someone else. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

If you’ve been following along, you’ve noticed that every reflection ends the same way: Our Lady of Victory, pray for us. Today is a good day to explain why.

In the 1500s, Christendom was under serious threat. The Ottoman Empire was pushing westward, and Western civilization as it had been known hung in the balance. The story of Don Juan of Austria, Pope St. Pius V, and what culminated in the Battle of Lepanto is one of the wilder stories in Church history.

Before the battle, the Pope urged Christians across Europe to pray the Rosary. There are accounts of soldiers kneeling on warships, Rosaries in hand, before the fighting began.

The Christians won.

In thanksgiving, Pope St. Pius V established a feast day under the title Our Lady of Victory. It was Pope Gregory XIII who later changed the name to Our Lady of the Rosary — the feast we celebrate today.

I love this story for many reasons, but it serves as a reminder that Mary has been interceding for the Church in its great battles for centuries. But she also intercedes just as readily in the smaller ones, in the skirmishes that happen within each of us — the battle to get up and pray, to practice a virtue, to love the people in front of us.

That’s why we ask for her intercession every day. The big battles and the little ones both need her.

Pray a Rosary today if you can. And give thanks to God, and to the Mother He gave us.

Let us pray. Our Lady of Victory, thank you for your intercession throughout the history of the Church and in the battles of our own hearts. Pray for us today and every day. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

As I’ve grown in wisdom — bit by bit — I’ve come to appreciate more the people around me who I think are truly wise. Older generations, I’m looking at you.

Speaking on behalf of folks my age: I don’t think we always recognize wisdom when we see it. Our culture has convinced itself that getting old is the worst thing that can happen to you. That slowing down, having wrinkles, no longer being at the top of your game — that’s failure.

But I’ve come to believe the opposite. It’s in those years that a person has the greatest potential influence. There is so much left to give from a life well lived, from wisdom that took decades to earn.

We’d do well to pay attention.

Let us pray. Lord, grant us wisdom and the humility to seek it from those who have walked further than we have. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

One of my sons has excellent hearing. My wife and I are continually amazed at what he picks up across the room, in the car, when we’re whispering. But that does not make him our best listener.

Hearing is the first part. Listening, at least in the way I mean it, is the next: the act of receiving and obeying.

Two very different things.

At Mass, we hear the Gospel read aloud. But are we listening? Are we receiving it in a way that actually changes how we live, how we behave, how we treat people, how we make decisions on Monday morning?

We’re called to be not just hearers, but listeners. Not just hearing the word of God but living by it.

Let us pray. Lord, give us ears to truly listen. Not just to hear Your word, but to receive it, and to live by it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.