Fr. Check on EWTN

 

Here is an interview with Fr. Check, the Director of the COURAGE Apolstolate, Fr. Check on EWTN. He talks about our "Sports Camp" around the 39min mark.  He was on my team for Baseball, Football, and Basketball.

Divine Appointment "in the Gayberhood"

I had a really interesting (challenging, but rewarding) experience last night with my guys' bible study group.
(this is the group I mentioned before where we shot the propane tank with the AK 47 on our last retreat: see video here: http://youtu.be/QeTz8efOoEc).

Most of the guys are evangelical protestant. I'm probably the only Catholic in the group, but we've gotten along pretty well. Last night, my friend Jason was leading and he started talking about this concept called "Divine Appointments." It's a bit of Charismatic thing I guess, but mostly it required more boldness than anything else.

He started by asking us to pray for a while and listen for God to speak and to reveal one person to each of us that we needed to pray for or talk to that night.

Then he told us first to ask God to reveal to us a place / location and to write down the first thing that came to mind. At first I saw this cafe in my head, but I kept telling myself "no" because it's in the gay part of town and I KNEW God wouldn't want me going there.

Then Jason said:

"The 1st voice you hear is God's voice. The 2nd voice is you trying to talk yourself out of what you heard from God and the 3rd voice is Satan trying to convince you that you were right and that couldn't have been from God." 

So, I went ahead and reluctantly wrote down "Cafe Brazil in Oaklawn."

Then we were supposed to write down anything that came to mind about a person. I thought of someone wearing a "white sweater, blue jeans and white tennis shoes" - so I wrote that down. Then I thought "No person in Oaklawn would be caught dead wearing THAT!...hello, fashion police?!"  ;)

Anyway, I wanted to scratch it all out, but I left it alone

When everyone was finished and we ended up splitting into small groups and getting into cars to go find the persons we had described and pray with or evangelize them. I was really nervous and freaked out - leading two of my non-SSA friends (who didn't yet know about MY SSA) right into Dallas's GAYberhood. I hadn't been there myself in over a year and it's always a place where people are Lewd, Crude, and Socially Unacceptable (24 hours a day!)

We got there and I started saying "Let's go to a DIFFERENT Cafe Brazil" I'm sure it can't be this one!" but my friends said "NO! We're going here first. It's what YOU wrote down." 

We walked up and there was a guy standing right in the doorway wearing a white sweatshirt, blue jeans, and white tennis shoes.I could tell he was SSA and I froze up.

Jason asked "Is that him? Is that your guy?"

What is Love?

Below is an email I sent to a friend. The analysis of Romeo and Juliet was first brought to my attention in a book by Mario Bergner called Setting Love in Order, a book that I would highly recommend. It is a short, quick read, but really powerful.

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I think it is pretty enlightening when we measure our own thoughts, motives, and actions against God's description of Love in 1 Cor 13. It is rare that we live up to this, but I've noticed when I was in the lifestyle that I was constantly doing things that were the exactly the opposite and yet calling it "love."

"⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes. Love never ends."  1 Corinthians 13:4-8

The last sentence drives home an important point. There is a song I used to listen to in high school that went “It must have been Love, but it's over now...” Unfortunately it really epitomizes the pathetic and erroneous view I used to have that Love was an emotion or feeling that can come and go or can be conditional. I just googled the lyrics to that song. It goes:

“It must have been love, but it's over now
It must have been good, but I lost it somehow
It must have been love, but it's over now
From the moment we touched till the time had run out”