During my first year of priesthood, I would keep the livestream of St. Francis' tomb pulled-up on my desktop. (you can find it on the webpage of the Basilica in Assisi). The live video of his real grave all the way in Assisi would be full screen whenever I left the office: pixelated vigil candles flickering in the dark. Waiting...

The jag in the road once had a name: Claremont. A few houses, a gas station, a wood-frame church. Thirty miles west, a once-upon-time Northfield boasted a high school, storefronts and a cotton gin. Today, straight-line winds yell cheers across the rotted floor of the Northfield gym. At Claremont, bull snakes coil like rubber hoses in the service bay of the old Texaco...

I enter the elevator, push a button, a bell dings and the doors split open. I step out into the smell of hand sanitizer and plastic. The nurse sitting at the desk looks at me. I walk over. "I am the priest here to visit the patient in Room 488"...

Winter came on fast this year, flattening electric poles and toppling cell phone towers. I was on retreat in a remote cabin with no heat or electricity...

The way the cottonwoods sang in the summer breeze, the sound of the dead grass crunching beneath bare feet, the color of the sand as it blew off into the distance. Mr. Allen, now blind, recalls it all with astounding detail...

A recent issue of the Diocesan Historical Society featured an article about a remarkable priest name Fr. Ladislau Wolko. To my surprise, we once served in the same small town, at a parish called Sacred Heart. Fr. Wolko came from Poland and was ordained shortly after WWII. Prior to his ordination, Fr. Wolko endured five years of torture in a Nazi concentration camp...

A white dress spreads open in a twirl, absorbing the blue lights of the DJ table that strobe across the room. My cousin, Macy, spins beneath the hand of her new husband. Behind them, a row of little girls line the dance floor, slack-jawed at the sight...

Emulating men with backs that bend has been an indispensable part of my journey. As a priest, however, it is easy to hide behind a public persona of self-denial. The challenge, as always, lies within one’s private life. This is why I pray at night...

On my day off, I escape to my uncle’s farm and climb into the cab of a tractor. I turn the key and bump the throttle a notch above idle. Beneath the driver’s platform, hydraulics and pistons rumble...

It was a Friday night rehearsal. The wedding coordinator lined up the bridal party: “Slick, you and Amanda follow Josh and Jean...

The clip begins at the scene of an accident: flashing lights, a traffic jam, smoke rising into the air from an overturned car. In the highway-turned-parking lot, the driver’s door of a silver pickup swings open, as heat waves rise from asphalt and automobiles...

The view out the window never varies: wheat fields and football fields; warehouses and apartment houses; truck terminals and transmission lines. Who wants to live in a place like this? Well, I do!

Ms. Davies’ wrinkled face scans the room. “I been livin’ in this contry for over 65 yeers.” She leans in and puts the backside of her hand flat against the smiling corner of her mouth. “But I’m still the Queen’s gurl!”

Moses crouched low, loosened a strap and removed the sandal. The sand, warmed by sacred fire, seared his sole like embers fallen from an altar...

The foreheads of four men leak beads of sweat as they sway shoulder to shoulder, like a buoy tipping back and forth at the gentle wake of a motorboat. A statue of the Virgin Mary, hands folded at her breast and face resolute yet gentle, towers above them...

The older I become, the more penance I crave. I never expected this evolution in my spiritual maturation...

I had never seen a field of wildflowers quite like it. The ground had responded to the spring rains with a fertility that flashed flames of fire: reds, oranges, and yellows dancing in the wind like the tongues above the apostles on Pentecost...

I’m in my truck when I get a call from my great-nephew, Gus. He tells me he landed a job with a harvest crew. His voice sounds scuffed, like a work boot kicking a tire. 

My four-year-old niece is in my arms, her wispy blonde hair floating above her head like spider webs adrift the fall wind. We are jumping on a discarded box-spring mattress near a pond on the backside of a spillway dam. A giggle bursts from her lungs. “Again!!” This time, we are astronauts on the surface of the moon...

“You are in my prayers.” I say this all the time. Most the time I mean it and most of the time I hold myself to it. Truth be told, it’s hard to hold back the intentions logged in my memory...