Invocations from the Litany of Loreto play in my mind as I drive through Indiana and across Illinois: Morning Star, Ark of the Covenant, Gate of Heaven.

When I was a boy, I’d walk into the house with pockets bulging with stones and pebbles, precious gems to a boy growing up on a Midwest farm with dirt lanes, creek banks and a gravel barnyard. My mother would make me empty my pockets outside the kitchen door. When she wasn’t looking, I’d go back and choose one or two of the stones and add them to the collection accumulating atop my bedroom dresser. Eventually, I started collecting baseball cards.

The shower swept through around 2 AM. I woke and listened to the sound of wind and water buffeting my house. If it were daylight, I would imagine a gleeful child aiming a garden hose at the windows and siding.

“Been cowboyin’ lately?” The question came from a young farmer named Josh. He and an older man were checking out a 1949 Ford pickup for sale across the street from the local farm store...

My dad used to say, “Never trust a man who drives a clean truck.” He was referring to pickups that hauled bales of hay as opposed to bags of groceries. He was never impressed by jacked-up rigs with chrome bumpers. This son of his followed his lead...

Someone once said, “Fishing requires patience. Fishing with children requires a saint.” I witnessed the truth of this saying when my youngest nephew brought his two oldest children, ages 7 and 5, to fish at my pond...

My dentist retired a couple of months ago. His replacement is a young man with dark skin, long hair and a red bandanna tied at the nape of his neck...

We never met in person, but I remember the first time I heard about you. It was back in 1981, a month after I was ordained a priest.

The gospel reading does not refer to a domestic scenes with children, flowers in a field or bread rising in an oven. Nor does it revel in pastures with sheep or wheat ripe for harvest. Rather, we hear an account of the Passion of Christ and, like sailors on an aircraft carrier, we can’t ignore the deafening rumble of war...

Occasionally, I am asked to join in on meetings with young men who are discerning a call to the priesthood. I admire these young fellows very much. In a society that exalts status, achievement and self-satisfaction, they dare to scan the horizon and seek the road to virtues like fortitude, resilience and self-sacrifice...

Naming an animal is a way of claiming that creature as your own. It is also a way of indicating to others, the quality and nature of your relationship with that creature. Sometimes, this can get a bit touchy, as I discovered when I took my horse to a veterinarian for blood tests a couple weeks ago...

Time and again I’ve called to hospital rooms, not to attend to a body, but to commend a soul into the hands of God and have experienced a mysterious Presence...

A group of inmates form a jagged line in the exercise yard. “Strip!” shouts the guard. They remove their garb. I avert my eyes...

"Sun and moon, bless the Lord! Stars of heaven, bless the Lord! Fire and heat, bless the Lord! All you winds, bless the Lord! Cold and chill, bless the Lord!" I love praying these verses in winter time, standing by my wood pellet stove, sipping a cup of coffee as the house warms up. Yes! Fire and heat, bless the Lord!

Farming used to be a way of life and a school of virtue for society.  Pope Pius XII once said that "the moral recovery of a nation depends on the steadfast faith and social integrity of the tillers of the soil..."

Songs about ranch hands and horses blared from the dash of my pickup when I drove to Texas twenty years ago. The Amarillo Diocese needed priests and I needed land to raise cows and break colts. God answered my prayers...

On the way to Mass at the Mission of Mt. Carmel, I am greeted by the face of Our Lady of Guadalupe peering from a large mural painted on a gas station wall. Poised at an angle above the gas pumps and a delivery truck, her blue veil and gentle smile warms the morning air. As always happens when I behold this image of Our Lady, the words she spoke to St. Juan Diego echo in my soul, “I am your mother. Am I not your mother?”

It has been a hectic day at the migrant shelter. The second-shift coordinator asks me to pick up a prescription at Wal-Mart for one of our guests...

The road to El Paso pushes through an arid region of tall yucca and thin grass. South of Carlsbad, a mountain range sawtooths the horizon like the snarl of an angry dog. The vast expanse is brown and brittle, a land of cactus and serpents. I arrive at the migrant shelter after dark...

When I was young, wearing shoes in summer was a luxury reserved for Sunday Mass. No shoes? No problem! Except when my father needed help sorting calves in the stables. “It’s good fertilizer,” he’d say. “It’ll make you grow." Now that I’m retired, I’ve reverted to going shoeless much of the time. Not only that, my house is part of a barn...