PathToHoliness

I just wanted to say a Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers. Most especially to our Lady!

The priest at the Mass I attended today gave a tremendous blessing to all mothers there.

He lamented the ones who have been placed in nursing homes with no one to visit them, especially on their day. In his native country they keep their elders in their homes and feel honored to be able to take care of the person who brought them into the world and took care of them.

After a nice peaceful retreat last week it has sure been a busy week and Holy Week promises to be more of the same. I’ll be blogging the BIO 2006 Convention in Chicago starting tomorrow night. This is going to be interesting.

Why do convention planner have to include Sunday activities? I try to avoid it as much as possible. In fact, most of my day on Sunday will be driving to Chicago but there are activities going on there. I just won’t participate in them until the official opening reception in the evening. I know that a lot of companies and organizations I participate in really do try to avoid Sunday. We need that day to spend some time with God!

Hopefully on my drive I can review my notes from the retreat and my resolutions. I’ve been trying to keep them. That’s always the hard part.

I just got back from my annual retreat led by Opus Dei from their Wespine Center in St. Louis.

We were at the Cedar Creek Conference Center. What a beautiful weekend.

I took a few photos which you can see in my Flickr photo album here: Cedar Creek Photos

Here in Jefferson City, MO we’re blessed to have a wonderful group of cloistered Carmelite nuns. They have a recently remodeled public chapel with daily Mass.

It’s a beautiful day in mid-MO. I know the nuns like to garden so I’m betting they’re outside getting started on a new growing season.

They will answer the phone and have a visitors entrance where they can speak with you through a screen. They pray constantly and take prayer requests. If you need prayers you can’t ask for anyone better to help you out.

Tonight was Knights of Columbus meeting night. We had 10 guys become members. That’s a pretty big group for us. We’re nearing 300 members in Council 12992. One of the things I do for the council is host and maintain our website and as you might guess. It’s a blog. You can find it at: http://kofc12992.blogspot.com.

There’s a new biography out about the founder, Father Michael J. McGivney. It’s titled “Parish Priest” and may be ordered from Amazon.

It’s fast and abstain day, the beginning of Lent. I was very happy to get a phone call from one of my college daughters who was checking in to double check on this. Good going babe.

I’m waiting on a flight in Dallas, heading to Anaheim and decided to have a slice of cheese pizza. As I was perusing the food offerings it just struck me again how blessed we are in this country with such an abundance of food. In fact, an over-abundance even. We hear and read so much about people with health and weight problems and I think a lot of it can be attributed to a food supply that’s so accessible. We’re almost never more than about 5 minutes from food somewhere, of some kind. The temptations supplied by the packaging and convenience of it all are extremely difficult to handle.

That just makes doing a true fast today and abstaining from meat that much more beneficial I think. So I encourage you. I’m trying and it’s not going to be easy since I have a corporate dinner tonight that I’m sure is not sensitive to the Catholics who will be attending.

Is it just me or do you feel persecuted by the media? I’m speaking in general here of course about what I refer to as the mainstream media (msm). ESPN, CBS, etc. You may wonder what I mean by mentioning ESPN. I will watch it for a game I want to see but it’s unbelievable what a bunch of junk is on there a lot of other times. I work out at the YMCA and it’s usually on a couple of the tv screens. Lately it seems like it’s just one story after another about some poor multi-million dollar athlete who’s in trouble. I don’t see any outrage from the reporters though. Most of them seem to only care about how they play and not about their conduct. They make excuses for them and want us to pity them for the troubled childhoods they’re escaping from.

At today’s Mass Father talked about the persecution of early Christians and how that came from many sources including even family. Well, after having to see stuff like on ESPN or all the other junk that’s being pushed through the media and on the internet I’d have to add what I can only call “the persecution by the media.”

What do you think?

Here’s an interesting place that I’ve been told was founded by some Opus Dei Cooperators. It’s the Institute for Media and Entertainment in New York.

The Institute for Media and Entertainment (IME) is dedicated to research and instruction that advance the lifelong career development of media and entertainment executives. The Institute emphasizes personal ethics as a core resource for professionals and their organizations.

You really don’t associate the word ethics with much in the media world today. Here’s an excerpt from the letter from the President, Jim Palos:

The second defining feature involves the interplay between media/entertainment products and culture. The media and entertainment sectors exercise a powerful influence on society, affecting the attitudes we hold and the mores by which we live. IME challenges its students to acknowledge this responsibility before society, and to consider the kind of effect they want to have on culture. We hope to help them become agents for developing material that appeals to what is most noble in the human person, challenging all of us to be persons who live in the service of others.

I have a daughter attending Ave Maria University. It’s one school that I feel very comfortable with having my children attend and for a lot of reasons. She’s loving it. We hope to move there someday.

The town of Ave Maria, FL is being built as we speak and you can get on a list to keep updated on their progress. A new campus will be built along with a town. It looks like progress is being made so that homes can be built within the next couple years.

May you have a very blessed and merry Christmas season. One of my gifts is a video iPod. Of course I’m in the blog and podcast business so it’s a business tool right?

I got to spend a little time this evening searching iTunes and the web for good Catholic podcasts. They do exist. For example, EWTN is now podcasting some of their programming. What I love about this is that you can download and then listen to the programs whenever and wherever you want. They have a nice selection of programs.

Vatican Radio is also podcasting. You can listen to their One-O-Five Live program and subscribe.

It’s amazing how time gets away from you when you operate multiple blogs and run your own business.

Since we’re coming up on the feast day (December 12) for Our Lady of Guadalupe and today’s the feast day of St. Juan Diego it’s only appropriate that we honor her with a post and her picture.

I do find it interesting that the website for the Basilica in Guadalupe is only in spanish though. I wish it was in english!

It’s been an interesting last couple weeks. After travelling for over a week and then dealing with a bad flu bug I’m kind of behind again on some website work like this one. To top it off, today as I was going to sit down and write the server for PathToHoliness wasn’t working. But it’s back up now.

I’d call it a nice little challenge and mortification from God. It’s getting easier to thank Him for these opportunities. It takes a while to understand that when things aren’t going well we’re actually receiving more blessings than ever!

Today we had our mid-Missouri Circle meeting of Opus Dei Cooperators. I needed it. It’s nice to spend an hour in meditation on a spiritual talk and with a group of guys who are so dedicated to their faith. I pray for the Work everyday because we need to be leaven in our society.

I’ll try to post more but I just wanted to get these thoughts down now.

Wow. I can’t believe it’s been this long since I wrote. The last couple weeks have been very busy as I’ve had to develop new business opportunities and travel for most of the last 2 weeks. They’ve been days filled with activity. A lot of that activity includes writing for several other blog sites that I own and operate professionally. I don’t know why I don’t seem to have much creativity left when it comes to Path To Holiness.

For one thing I have to continue to make sure that I make it to daily Mass and say my daily devotional prayers, including finding time to meditate on my life and what God’s will is for me. That is more important than writing here. Hopefully over time this site will develop and become whatever God wants it to be.

When I last wrote I was feeling a little down and anxious about how things are going with my business. Since then several new opportunities have presented themself and we’ve made it through a tough spot. Amazing how things work out. It’s so hard to be patient.

I don’t intend for this site to be an ongoing sermon so I don’t want to get all preachy. That’s enough for now.

It’s a beautiful day here in central Missouri. The kind that makes you just thank God for the beauty of His creation!

Today is World Food Day. Not something that many people seem to pay attention to but after having been to the ceremonies and spent a week with the people at the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations I know there are a lot of people there who are truly concerned about relieving world hunger. Unfortunately some of them think the way to do that is to reduce population and they’re determined to make sure that abortion and contraception is pushed on the poor of the world. Very misguided people I’m afraid.

However, hunger is a reality, even here in America, the land of plenty. We have so much we take for granted. I wish everyone could travel to at least one other country and get some “perspective.” As we eat our abundant and wonderful food there are many, many starving. Let’s use today for what I think it really means and thank God for what we have and contemplate how we can help others who don’t.