Jews vs. Catholic Basketball Game (10 Years Ago This Weekend) This weekend is the 10th anniversary of the Jews vs. Catholics basketball game that Rabbi Yisroel Wilhelm and I started as chaplains of University of Colorado in Boulder. (You can see how young I looked in my first year of my priesthood  in 2011.) Catholic News Agency covered the story 10 years ago in Boulder: Although the idea began as a joke, and still elicits laughter from students, an April 17 “Jews versus Catholics” basketball game has a serious purpose for the priest and the rabbi who organized it as a form of outreach to their communities' non-practicing members. “These [...]

Resurrection Grace Just before my diaconate ordination about 12 years ago, I went with a seminary professor and about 50 older adults to the Holy Land.  I was just a layman and I paid for myself via donors, not the seminary.  My seminary professor wanted nothing to do with me (yes, even back then!) so I ended up wandering the streets of Jerusalem one evening.  (Earlier that week, I had hoped for really cool graces at the location where Jesus was executed, but felt little consolation.) However, that evening of wandering old Jerususalem, I came into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and inside that Church is both the location [...]

When my father was only 10 months old, on the 9th of February 1942, my grandfather wrote him a letter that I found and saved to my Evernote.  It begins: Just how to begin this, I do not know, but perhaps if I just write down the thought in my heart you shall see what I have in mind. To begin with, this idea of putting every day events into a sort of letter to you, our children, occured to me long before your Mother and I were married, for I did know that some day with Gods wish we would have you, and I your mother. Therefore I shall [...]

Changing My Habits This is what I looked like in a Roman Collar for most of my priesthood: Here's an example of the vestments I wore when I was doing Mass in English (and other languages) in 2015: After Holy Mass in the Basilica of St. James of Campostella in Santiago, Spain after finishing the Camino in 2015. Here's an example of the vestments I wore after switching to the Traditional Latin Mass: After Holy Mass at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Jacksonville, Florida. This was my last active assignment (2018) before becoming a diocesan hermit. My first religious habit as a hermit was [...]