Introducing the Weekend Edition

A longer read every Friday at 3pm. First up: Catholic Cannonball

11 years ago, I started a blog called the Catholic Cannonball.

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.