• Mass on an Empty Stomach
    Mass on an Empty Stomach
    September 7, 2020
    by Fr. Luke
    The older I become, the more penance I crave. I never expected this evolution in my spiritual maturation...
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  • Banjo River
    Banjo River
    August 31, 2020
    by Fr. Matthias
    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...
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  • Harvest Crew
    Harvest Crew
    August 24, 2020
    by Fr. Luke
    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. 
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  • Playing Before the Face of the Father
    Playing Before the Face of the Father
    August 17, 2020
    by Fr. Matthias
    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...
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  • In My Prayers
    In My Prayers
    August 10, 2020
    by Fr. Luke
    “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...
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  • A Love that Carves Canyons
    A Love that Carves Canyons
    August 3, 2020
    by Fr. Matthias
    I sit in a bedroom of my grandparent’s old house, a shelf over my head containing hundreds of thimbles collected by my grandmother who had no use for them, her fingers tougher than any ceramic after sewing the blue jeans, feed sack dresses, and cloth diapers of seven children...
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  • What Knees are For
    What Knees are For
    July 28, 2020
    by Fr. Luke
    Sometimes people kneel to pray. Sometimes people kneel to play: a girl on a sidewalk with a piece of chalk; a boy on a creek bank skipping a stone. Sometimes people kneel to work...
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  • No Greater Love
    No Greater Love
    July 20, 2020
    by Fr. Matthias
    The truck rumbles to a stop, gravel crunching underneath the tires. The doors on the old pickup slam shut, causing blackbirds to flee into the morning light. We ease our way down to the river, waves lapping the city park sidewalk. Debris crunches beneath our feet: sticks, moss, cicada shells. On the side of a rusted walking bridge, chalked in white: John 15:13.
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  • Mass on the Mountaintop
    Mass on the Mountaintop
    July 6, 2020
    by Fr. Luke
    I have never been to Rome, but I’ve been to the Rockies. No offence, Michelangelo, but no Renaissance glory can compare to the beauty of Creation. I suppose this is why I love the story of the Lord’s Transfiguration atop Mt. Tabor.
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  • Poem: Playground
    Poem: Playground
    June 29, 2020
    by Fr. Matthias
    Metal slides shimmering in sunshine/Slope down to the soft sand below...
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  • A Horse Named Buddy
    A Horse Named Buddy
    June 22, 2020
    by Fr. Luke
    I have a horse named Buddy. He is gentle and eager to please. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a lot of self-confidence. He lets other horses push him around and, sometimes, they beat him up pretty bad...
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  • Blood Brothers
    Blood Brothers
    June 15, 2020
    by Fr. Matthias
    My ten-year-old fingers shove a nail into the feet a Christ I have drawn upon some discarded wood laid across the workbench in my dad’s shop...
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  • Marriage from the Outside
    Marriage from the Outside
    June 8, 2020
    by Fr. Luke
    As a priest, when I prepare engaged couples for marriage, my mind returns to my sister’s wedding over sixty years ago....
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  • Infantry
    Infantry
    June 1, 2020
    by Fr. Matthias
    We crawl through charred landscape, trees like burnt toothpicks against a twenty-foot cliff. “To the next ravine!” My buddy’s voice raked in my ear. “Hurry!” His voice downshifts to a husky whisper. “Remember, grunt, we’re in enemy territory!” I scramble behind him...
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  • Blood Outpoured
    Blood Outpoured
    May 25, 2020
    by Fr. Luke
    Street lamps circled the city blocks like lights on a Christmas tree. The snow, silent and soft, swirled amid steeples and tenements. It was around 3 AM...
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  • "Abba"
    "Abba"
    May 19, 2020
    by Fr. Matthias
    I didn’t expect the fatherhood of the priesthood to be so analogous to natural fatherhood. For instance, I feed my children while making faces to help them eat the Bread of Life from my consecrated hand…
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  • Adam in the Outback
    Adam in the Outback
    May 12, 2020
    by Fr. Luke
    In Genesis, Eve was created in the garden. But Adam was created in the wild, before the garden took shape. Formed from dust in the outback, his soul—and hence the soul of every man—would bear the imprint for that primitive place where God molded mud into muscle... 
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