This morning, I walked about the grounds of a beautiful house near Kilkenny, Ireland - a small river flowing through a farm, warm sunlight, dogs and cats with soft fur and good hearts, all permeated by a sweet-smelling Irish breeze. All of this passes.

I was privileged to attend Holy Mass in my favorite Irish coastal village of Doolin, often home of the famous traditional musician Blackie O'Connell, and site of the best trad Irish folk music in all the country. Holy Rosary parish in Doolin is, in many respects, what I love so much about little country churches. Though the town of Doolin is meager in population, the church was packed in the morning. The walk up the dirt road in the misty morning air was wonderful - a great opportunity to clear one's mind and pray before Mass begins.

Not every saint in the glorious history of the Church was a visible mendicant and reformer like St. Francis of Assisi, nor a warrior such as St. Joan of Arc. Some of the Church's saints, on the outside, lived seemingly mundane lives of chores and menial labor. How many persons are probably saints known only to God Himself? Regardless, the following below are some of the saints I have found to be my top 5 candidates for being patrons of the "daily grind", the unsatisfying dayjob, and everyday work.

I know a man who loves God with great intensity, and yet grieves because he does not love Him as much he would wish. His soul is ceaselessly filled with burning desire that God should be glorified in him and that he himself should be as nothing. This man does not think of what he is, even when others praise him.

Lord Jesus, be with me this day. Help me to find You in all things - in everything I do, let me glorify You. In everything I say, let it be said in kindness, humility, and patience. Through Your grace, help me to struggle against my shortcomings, my sins, and my failings. Help me to be patient instead of frustrated. Help me to bear with insults and jeers with kindness and thanksgiving for being able to suffer in some small way for the sake of Your Holy Name. May I always bless Your Name when it is misused in mockery and spite.

Beginning one's day with the Morning Offering is essential - ending one's day with praise to the Lord for His sustaining you throughout it is no less so. And given our fallen nature and the fact that, despite all of our intentions, we often slip into our accustomed failings, it is also prudent to end the day with an examination of conscience and an act of contrition. If the morning prayer is breakfast and coffee to start the day with, then evening prayer and a nightly act of contrition is akin to supper and a shower before bed.

If anyone wishes to live everyday for Christ, then I would say that the best way to begin this is by saying a Morning Offering. I find that beginning the day with prayer, offering the day before it begins to God, taking even a few minutes just to be with Jesus - this is tantamount to ensuring that one's day is lived truly to one's calling as a Christian.

Female mystics of the 13th to the 16th centuries who lived the lives of lay monastics without formal vows, the beguines have much to say to Christians of today. The beguines were essentially women who lived lives nearly like nuns of varying religious orders, but still lived in the world and did not take formal religious vows. In the beginning, from what I can tell, they were quite influenced by the Franciscan order, which to me, is never a bad place to start. Instead of any kind of formal organization as such, beguine women lived in communities together where they still owned property and the like, but lived lives of prayer and service to the poor.

There was a time when I contemplated the mystery of the finding of the child Jesus in the temple that my focus was held solely on the anxiety that the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph must have felt at having lost their child. I meditated on the panic they must have felt, and even how on earth He could have been lost in the first place - surface elements of the mystery itself. However, when praying the rosary the other day, it came to me that there is an element of this mystery that I have been missing the whole time - that of the young Jesus in the temple amongst the wise men.

A good friend once asked me, in response to my thoughts on many prayers throughout the day and not knowing when I could have the time for them all - What are you doing with your time? This question has been at the back of my mind for some time now - truly, what am I doing with my time? When I could be praying, when I could be applying myself to works of mercy, when I could be engaged in focusing more on my life in Christ, what am I doing instead? What has distracted me?

The cell itself is the heart, wherein we commune with God in silence and in adoration - where we pray "to Him in secret with all warmth of spirit and with living faith"6, where we find the strength and love to transform the world around us by our turning our hearts to Christ, and by allowing Him to dwell within us. By doing this, we can always remain undisturbed by the crashing waves of the world that beat upon us - in this way, we always have a place to rest and to be with the one who loves us beyond all love.

For myself, I have always taken comfort in the mystery of the Agony in the Garden, that Christ took upon Himself all of the terror, worry, and hopelessness of that situation, knowing full well that many would reject Him still, that for centuries onwards he would still be held up in derision and mocked and jeered at by the world. He still is today.

In honor of our new Holy Father from Argentina, Pope Francis, the following is a list of 10 South American saints every Catholic should know. I have often remarked that South America seems to be a continent that is never talked about much, and the same seems to have gone for many of its saints. Aside from one or two, many of these saints are new to me as well.

A part of me wanted the new Holy Father to come storming out of the conclave in a burst of triumphant glory, ready with hammer of heretics in hand, ready to restore the Church, ready to fix everything, to reform the reform, and all the rest. Instead, a very different figure emerged from the conclave.

It's funny how, for me, God began as a buddy figure watching over me, and then somehow morphed into a tyrannical nightmare just waiting to pop out of the sky and blow everyone to Hell. I'm not exaggerating - this was the way I grew up. Years later, I am still trying to recover from these views.

I pondered this thought all day - Endeavor to be crucified with Christ. After morning prayer, this one sentence rang out in my mind. What ever could it mean? How are we to be crucified with Christ?

There is tremendous mystery contained within the account of the burning bush in Exodus. I have always been fascinated by this passage. On the surface, the passage is quite familiar to me from my years growing up in the Adventist church. I remember taking it all in a very surface way - there was a burning bush, God was in it somehow, and spoke to Moses from it, telling him to go and free his people from their slavery. Fair enough. But when I thought about it later on as a teen, it became no more than an account of a delusion sprinkled with mythical flourishes. Now it is different to me.

To me, the Transfiguration is something that has been played out in the saints, especially of the East. The most famous example in my view is from The Acquisition of the Holy Spirit, being a conversation held between St. Seraphim of Sarov and Nicholas Motovilov. In the dead of winter, in the middle of the deep Russian forests, Motovilov was witness to St. Seraphim's face suddenly being transfigured...

If we wish to see Holy Church built up for the glory of God with the living stones of the faithful, then let us stop looking for those stones, and instead, be the stones ourselves. St. Francis of Assisi and St. Xenia of Petersburg both, in their holy simplicity, went and rebuilt the dilapidated churches nearest them by hand - there is a great lesson to be learned here.

When I was younger, I remember struggling greatly with the concept of grace. The Adventist church attended was known for its particularly judgmental and rather paranoid conservatism - this was the same church where I heard sermons on Jesus only knocking once on the doors of our hearts, the same church where I was asked what two or three things I would take with me if and when the Pope enforced Sunday worship in some kind of new world order. I can't make stuff like this up - it was what occurred most Saturdays.

My motto when it comes to Lent is that whatever I give up, however I choose to engage in this season, it must hurt. As the Dominican mystic Johannes Tauler says, "All things must become bitter to you to the degree that you found pleasure in them"1. This, to me, is the simple turning back to God. It is the act of refining oneself, of stripping away all that is not of God, and starving the passions out of their fortified positions that have taken root in one's heart.

I distinctly remember a moment of reflection I had when we stayed in the little seaside village of Manarola in the Cinque Terre region of Italy. The village has many pathways leading down to the waters, and if one is extra adventurous, one can climb past the jutting rocks that protect the docks like teeth. I sat down right beside the waters edge, as the sun was shedding its last bits of light on the world. Everything was behind me, and all I could hear and see was the vast grey expanse of the waters, the hints of sunlight embers still flickering on the rocks.

Given that Lent is nigh upon us, it seems to me like a good idea to enjoy a quick pint before the 40 days of this penitential period begins. Hence follows another round of theologian and beer equivalencies, with an emphasis this time on the Christian East.

There is a saying - "The life of a monk is crucifixion". But to me, the life of a Christian is crucifixion. Our lives as Christians is a process of being nailed to our own cross with Christ, imitating Him as we climb our own Calvary.

A life of holiness is not something that is relegated to the cloister and the monastery - it is for everyone. This is something I learned from studying the lives of the saints, from learning about praying with the Church, and from the Scriptures themselves. We are all called to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, and to me, this involves the opportunity to live in complete conformity with Christ in our lives as Christians.

If you struggle with prayer as I do, then a prayer rule just might be for you. I think there comes a time when some kind of structuring is needed in the prayer life of the serious Christian. I am not saying this as some kind of expert - God knows I am not - but just from my own experience in having a set prayer rule in my own life.

For many I think, philosophy and theology are difficult to chew on; St. Thomas, however, manages to make even the most difficult concepts somewhat palatable. If G.K. Chesterton is the "Apostle of Common Sense", then St. Thomas is the "Doctor of Common Sense".

Last night, after attending Mass, I attended my workplace's annual staff party. I have never felt so out of place in my life. In many respects, it is one of those sets of feelings that come over the new Christian when they realize that the old life is passing away, or that they have changed or are changing.

Through my being raised a Seventh-Day Adventist, I came into contact with much of the Protestant world, both fringe and mainline. As I converted to the Catholic Church, I insatiably sought anything and everything I could get my hands on when it came to the faith. For the last couple of years, I have also studied Eastern Orthodoxy and gained much wisdom and insight from that. But the one group within Christianity that has thus far largely escaped my studies are the Oriental Orthodox.

Though it is true that the Church is a hospital for sinners, though it is true that one need not be good to become a Christian, though it is true that one is to strive to be perfect, we all fail. For myself, this is a hard thing to swallow - how can I still claim to be a Christian in any sense of the term when I still sin?

An immensely influential figure within Christian monasticism, especially in the East, Evagrius wrote works on theology, the monastic life, and other spiritual writings. In the pages of his works on prayer and the ascetical life, one is immediately presented with a world populated by the continual assaults of demons that makes the writing seem more like a work of fantastical fiction than anything.

Some time ago, I posted a challenge to myself and readers called the St. Therese (of Lisieux) Challenge. The basic idea was this - I wanted to challenge myself and others to live out the Little Way in some form or another in their daily life, to apply the practical teachings of St. Therese in some form or another. My particular challenge involved one lady who shops where I work, and to exercise humility and charity towards her.

St. Anthony the Great is my patron saint, someone whom a friend took me to task on for even choosing, given that I am married and live well within the world as such… So why on earth did I choose him as my patron saint?  Because his life signifies to me the radical call of living the Christian life.  It signifies the struggle of the Christian life against all that is not of Christ.  But most importantly, it shows what happens when a man turns his heart towards God.

It occurred to me at my day job yesterday that it might in fact be sometimes easier to go and pray in secret than it is to live out the Christian calling in one's everyday life in the world. When I close the door to my study and kneel down to pray, it is just God and I and no one else. But the everyday world brings a whole host of other challenges in my mind.

I think spiritual depression, a kind of despair of the soul, is a far different thing than what we moderns think of as simply "depression" as such. Depression is often due to a multiplicity of factors, be they environmental, chemical, or whatever else. But spiritual depression is something quite different I think.

To me, there has always been more to the Church than simply the major figures in her thought. Don't get me wrong - I love St. Thomas, whom I hold to be perhaps the most brilliant theologian the Church has yet produced, and St. Augustine holds a special place in my heart. But there is so very much to read out there, so much to know. So much wisdom and spiritual nourishment is forgotten or wasted in favor of one or two major figures, as good as they are. Here, then, is the wisdom that sustained a major part of me during my journey home to the Catholic Church.

"O, you of virtue, I beg you, consider attentively who is He whom you dare to receive into yourself? It is God Himself three times holy. With whom do you wish to form the most intimate union? With Him who has created us...Holding your hands joined in the form of the cross and placed over your breast, incline a bit your head and recite the prayer..."

It is sometimes easy, in my mind, to slip into the notion that these eras of monasticism are long gone - that the modern world has consumed all the quiet space in the world, and that consequently there is no longer room for the contemplative life. Not so.Here, in my opinion, are the ten greatest monks and hermits of the 20th century (and beyond)...

Dear readers of this poor little blog, I have a challenge for you...and more so, for me. The challenge is this - pick the person you know in your everyday life that drives you nuts, that you can't stand, that maybe even can't stand you. Then, go out of your way to show them the utmost kindness in every possible manner.

There really are about as many kinds of beers as there are theologians, and I feel that enough time has passed now between posts on the topic, that we may return to the heavenly pub without fear of gluttony and sin by doing so. Here, I wish to compare the giants of spiritual thought within the Protestant tradition, both as an exercise in extending the olive branch to our separated brothers and sisters in Christ, and simply because I have not focused very much on the leading lights of Reformation theology.

We Catholics seem to love our beer, given that the previous entry has been featured on a lot of sites and has started some fairly lively discussions. But it seems, and the most honorable Fr. Z himself has recommended some along with many others, that there must needs be a second round of pints served, as I have obviously not mentioned many, many figures that deserved it. Whilst I figure out which beers would be akin to St. Augustine and St. Bonaventure, I nonetheless offer up another serving of theologians for your reading pleasure.

Yesterday, my good friend and I were joking lightheartedly about theology and beer, and it occured to me, in all this posting on theology and prayer, that it might do me and anyone else who even happens to read this blog a bit of good to post something lighter in nature. Hence, since I am a beer connossieur of sorts, I wish to offer my list of which theologians would be which beers and ales.

In the last few centuries, the three great traditions of Christendom - Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism - have been threatened by something entirely foreign to the basic creeds of Christendom, and this is Restorationism. Nowadays, it is not hard to find a local Mormon "stake", a "kingdom hall" of Jehovah's Witnesses, or even a Christadelphian church somewhere in the neighbourhood. This is entirely fine - everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and religious freedom. But it is something that I feel warrants inclusion in this series.

Where my decisions concerning Eastern Orthodoxy were difficult because of my deep love for Eastern Christianity in general, my decision and views regarding the Reformed tradition are difficult to write of here because it is the one I have never had any desire to choose due to my disagreements with it from the get-go.

Here I come to the most difficult of my series on why I chose Catholic Christianity as opposed to any of the other traditions within Christendom, and this is why I did not choose Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

Many years ago, I watched a film simply entitled "Luther", starring Joseph Fiennes as Martin Luther himself. It was a powerful film, I must say, and I instantly bonded with the depiction of Luther as a man desperately seeking to uncover the truth. At the time, I had no substantial historical knowledge of Martin Luther's life, of the Catholic Church, nor anything else - all I really had was a cursory knowledge of the subject in its entirety.

In my first steps back towards Christ, with the lingering sourness of my Seventh-Day Adventist upbringing still in my mind, I immediately began to investigate Catholicism. But, much to my alarm, it did seem all rather heavy in a sense: the richness of its piety and devotional practices was almost too much, and it seemed to be a faith that completely integrated itself into the life of the faithful. Everything was presented undiluted, and in full force, and nothing left to sort of float around in a pond of middle ground.