A few years ago, my wife Stephanie and I took a group of our parish teens on a summer mission trip to Cincinnati, Ohio. We were blessed to spend the week working with an organization called Little Brothers: Friends of the Elderly. This is a group that works with elderly people who have lost ties with family, have no family at all, and face the reality of simply being alone. Read More
Christ | Deacon Allen Tatara Catholic Speaker - Part 2
On the Inside; On the Outside
On Wednesday, I whipped up a batch of homemade Sweet Corn and Crab Soup for dinner. There’s nothing like a good pot of soup on a cold, winter evening. So I went grocery shopping last weekend to make sure that I had all of the needed ingredients to prepare the feast. I’m always amazed at the number of ingredients needed to make a pot of homemade soup. And it can be anything from meat, fish, various vegetables, and usually several spices. Then you have to do all of the necessary chopping and mixing. So the question to ask: is it soup yet? Well, not quite. You need to have the soup simmer for a period of time. Once these steps have been completed, you can finally partake in your creation (and hopefully it turned out well). Read More
Last week, I was with a group of teens from our parish on a mission trip in Detroit, Michigan. There we lived in community and helped the people of Detroit with various acts of service and charity. What a fulfilling way to put our faith into action and truly experience Christ in those we served. What a blessing it was for our teens to have such an awesome experience.
But during that one full week of hard labor – of long days and short nights, I have to admit that I was really tired. My body ached, my muscles were sore, and my head throbbed from the heat and exertion. And suddenly I recalled an old proverb that I came across long ago: One can go a long way after one is tired. And that became my mantra for the week. Read More
I don’t know how it is where you call home, but here in the greater Chicagoland area, it is COLD!!! Seriously, it is extremely cold with wind chills dancing below zero. And on top of that, it is snowing. Yes, it’s wintertime here in Illinois. But let me make something perfectly clear: I am not complaining. Compared to what is happening on the East Coast, we here in the Midwest have nothing to complain about. But there’s simply no denying the fact: it’s cold outside!
But what about the temperature on the inside? Are we cold-as-ice or feverishly-warm? Read More
I read an article in the newspaper the other day that listed the most annoying words of 2013. These came from an annual study done by a Michigan university that suggests words to banish due to overuse, over-reliance and overall fatigue. These are the some of the words: selfie, twerking, hashtag, Twittersphere, t-bone, Obamacare, intellectually/morally bankrupt, and anything on “steroids.” Also, people were tired of the suffixes “-pocalypse” and “-ageddon” use to make words such as “snow-pocalypse” or “ice-ageddon.” Read More
This reflection comes from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis:
A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself. In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble – because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ himself carried out. Read More
As I was sifting through our pile of mail, I picked up our copy of U.S. Catholic. I casually flipped open the magazine, and my eyes zoned onto this quote:
