Welcome to Virginia Beach, home of America's friendliest people and worst drivers.  (Well, that's my assessment, but it's a great place to be, all things considered.)  This is a military area known as the "Redneck Riviera."  The entire metropolitan area is a waterland of fresh and salty rivers containing about ten 100,000-person-cities collectively known as Tidewater or Hampton Roads. It's  home to the Atlantic Fleet of the Navy, countless other military bases and real-life heroes they make movies about (literally.)  But not every soldier comes back home to Hampton Roads... So, where do all the dead soldiers and normal civilians go?  100% of them ultimately go to heaven or hell.  Do they all go to heaven?  No.  "Small is the gate and [...]

When I lived in a hermitage in Arizona called Merciful Heart Hermitage I was befuddled about why my hermit buddy named it Merciful Heart and then spoke so much of the Heart of the Father. "We only know of the Sacred Heart, not of the heart of the Father," I silently thought. But one day, in this very hermitage, I was reading the Gospel of St. John, and I noticed that the chest of Jesus (upon which the Apostle John listened to the heartbeat of love at the last supper) was the same Greek word (κόλπον ) as found much, much earlier in John 1:18: No man hath seen God at [...]

The Church Fathers compared the Jews´ time in the desert to a Christian's pilgrimage on earth. This is to ultimately lead them to the Promised Land. For us, earth is training ground to be able to enter the eternal Promised Land, but the Old Testament shows that the giants to be defeated are too great for natural powers to conquer. It takes supernatural power to enter the land of milk and honey...not because milk and honey are hard to obtain, but because of the enemies that block us. This is why sanctifying grace is so important to enter into heaven. Grace is not the "Price of admission," wrote Frank Sheed, [...]