Confessions of a Catholic Youth Minister

If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  (Mt 16:24; Mk 8:34) I invited God into my life after college. In reality, God has always been part of my life. I grew up in a great Catholic family. My parents were awesome faithful people. They were great examples to me of people who prayed and worked. They loved God and lived it. They owned their own small business and ran it as a Catholic. They were closed on Sundays. They closed their store from noon to three on Good Friday. They served their customers and raised seven children from the proceeds. They sent all seven to twelve years of Catholic school. They were involved in the faith and civic community. I witnessed them treat everyone with respect. They were great people and highly respected in the community. You would think that they would be spared suffering. Yet, my mother suffered with brain cancer for two years before she died. My father had to experience his bride be diag...

"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” ( Jn 1:14)   "O n the eve of the new millennium, I make again to you my pressing appeal to open wide the doors to Christ who “to those who received him, gave power to become children of God” (Jn 1:12) To receive Jesus Christ means to accept from the Father the command to live, loving Him and our brothers and sisters, showing solidarity to everyone, without distinction; it means believing that in the history of humanity even though it is marked by evil and suffering, the final word belongs to life and to love, because God came to dwell among us, so we may dwell in Him." Pope John Paul II In 2000, I took 32 teens and adults to World Youth Day Rome. Until my current illness, it was the hardest thing that I ever had to do. In order to make it affordable so that as many young people could attend, we spent two years raising $30,000. We planned two major fundraisers. I wanted these fundraisers to be ...

We moved to Aurora in the fall of 1990. We had a hard time finding suitable housing that we could afford on a youth ministry salary. We ended up renting the front half of three story house that was in pretty bad shape. The landlord promised to fix it up, but of course he never did. We discovered squirrels living between the walls of the girls bedroom. Never fixed it! He promised to install a shower in the bathroom. Never did it! The house didn't have air conditioning except one window unit. The windows didn't have screens nor could we open some of them. God surprised us again. By the spring of 1991, Jan is pregnant! Guess who was miserable the summer of 1991 with little air conditioning? Guess who spent a lot of time at her parent's house? Jan!  It is a boy! Johnmark was born a couple of weeks before Christmas in 1991. He was an early Christmas present! It is a good thing that he was born by C-section. He was active in the womb. He had the cord wrapped around his neck not...