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• Against Great Books by Patrick J. Deneen | Articles | First Things — Berry writes of the books that aimed to educate human beings by teaching the limits of human power and knowledge. Great books such as Paradise Lost sought to inculcate a sense of limits, a cognizance of knowledge inappropriate to humans. They sought to cultivate a capacity to accept and endure rather than the impulse to transform and escape, and they endeavored to foster an education in the accompanying virtues that are required in a world where such limits are recognized—virtues such as moderation and prudence—and in the avoidance of vices like pride and hubris. Here we could look at a dominant understanding of a long succession of great books, from antiquity through the Middle Ages—books whose authors would include the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Dante, and Aquinas, among others.
• Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? - The Atlantic — One of the ironies of iGen life is that despite spending far more time under the same roof as their parents, today’s teens can hardly be said to be closer to their mothers and fathers than their predecessors were. “I’ve seen my friends with their families—they don’t talk to them,” Athena told me. “They just say ‘Okay, okay, whatever’ while they’re on their phones. They don’t pay attention to their family.” Like her peers, Athena is an expert at tuning out her parents so she can focus on her phone. She spent much of her summer keeping up with friends, but nearly all of it was over text or Snapchat. “I’ve been on my phone more than I’ve been with actual people,” she said. “My bed has, like, an imprint of my body.”

Luke mentioned A Severe Mercy, which reminded me of several scenes from the movie Shadowlands, which is about CS Lewis, AKA Jack and the passionate poet, Joy, that he marries knowing full well that she will die very soon from a terminal illness. Woven through the center of this episode, the movie tracks his life, his falling in love with Joy, and his time dealing with her death, especially with her son Douglas that she is leaving behind with Lewis.

Apparently, at the time while we were recording this episode, Katie Garcia breathed her last. When I woke up the next morning Facebook posts came pouring in announcing her death. May perpetual light shine upon her.

From our thoughts on her story, we move into discussing our culture’s experience of death and then getting older in general, and how that relates to our career decisions and restlessness.

Finally, we end where we should, complaining about ministry and whining about how sucky everyone is compared to us, or at least compared to our delusional self-image.

Please donate to Katie funeral fund, found in the show notes, to help her amazing husband handle the experiences, which will be in the tens of thousands of dollars. Thank you for walking this road with us.

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• Home — Around 10pm tonight, my sweet Katie went home.  She asked that everyone pray a Chaplet of Divine Mercy for the repose of her soul.  At your next opportunity, I ask that you pray one, if nothing else than to honor her wishes.  If you haven't prayed the Chaplet before, go here for a step-by-step. Thank you all so much for your prayers and support.  We have been loved beyond anything I could have ever imagined.  You have been in our prayers, and please know that Katie is now praying for you in eternity.
• Katie Garcia: Funeral & Burial | Memorials & Funerals - YouCaring — The Story Funeral and Burial expenses for Katie Garcia, loving wife and mother of 4.  
• Katie Garcia: Q&A - Part 2 — Dreaming ahead...if your kids go to FUS which current household and/or dorm do you see them being in based on their present personalities? A: Who even knows what households are still around? John: Disciples of the Word Lily: Love of the Lamb (hands down - she has spunk, but such a sweet nature) Thomas: Knights of the Holy Queen  Andrew: AMDG

My Facebook Post on the Kolbe Prison Retreat Ministry

The experience of going to the prison was intense and amazing. The men in white (MIW) who were there for the three days of the retreat (Thursday-Saturday, 7am to 7pm) come from a variety of religious backgrounds- most were lapsed Catholics, some were anti-Catholic and some were agnostics or Muslims.

The retreat followed the format of an ACTS retreat as closely as possible. We had four testimonies followed by table discussions, two by the outside team and two by the MIW. They were powerful, to say the least. Each table had 5-7 MIW, plus one member of the outside team and one member of the MIW as table stewards/facilitators. The discussions were open and honest.

I was tapped as the answer man, so if men had complex questions at any of the tables, I'd get a tap on the shoulder and go and try and answer them. In the end, we had 3 or 4 Q and A sessions with the MIW peppering Deacon Bradley and me with questions. "Why do you pray to dead saints?" "Why do you believe in Purgatory?" etc.

I gave a talk on the Sacraments and another on the Mass/Eucharist. Deacon Bradley tag-teamed with me on the Sacraments.

We did things like Rosaries, Divine Mercy Chaplets, two daily Masses, and we even had an Adoration chapel set up in the prison chapel where each one of us took two holy hours, and the MIW team took holy half-hours from the beginning to the end of the retreat. We had Fr. Sebastine led a Healing Mass, which was very powerful for a lot of the men there.

The people in the Ferguson Unit are gang-affiliated, life-ers, or long-timers. Almost all are there for drug-related violent crimes. These are men who know they are sinners but also know little else about themselves. They are labeled "prisoners", "Offenders," and "Inmates", but we call them the Men in White, reminding them of their dignity. Fr. Sebastine preached against the word "Prisoner", reminding them that Saint Paul did some of his best work in prison. If you are a child of God, no prison can define you.

At the end of the retreat, they had an opportunity to express what the retreat meant to them. One man stood up and explained why he did not get his feet washed. "I was scared. My whole life I've only experience chaos, violence, and negativity. I never knew love. Here, I experienced the love that I never had before, and it scared me. I didn't know people could love like that, and I didn't know how to receive that love. I couldn't believe you would wash my feet and even kiss them. Who am I? I've never seen a man do that for another man before."

I found out while praying before my Life Teen talk last night that a Man In White slipped his name tag into my Scriptural Rosary book, with the words, "Please remember me." scrawled on the top. He's currently in the prison's RCIA program.

One of the funniest moment came at the end, where a man in white was thanking us for our work, then turned to me and said, "You have one minute to win me over on one issue that is killing me about you Catholics. We at a bus stop. The bus is coming in one minute. Before we get on explain to me this: Mary." So I plowed through as fast as I could (took me about 1:20). He looked at me, smiled, and said, "That makes sense. You won me!" Everyone jumped up and started cheering, hooting, and hollering, and then I led it into a "USA! USA!" chant. Then we all collapsed into our chairs laughing.

One man was 70 years old. He will never leave prison. At the age of 7 he married a Baptist who told him he's not allowed to be with her and be Catholic, so he left and never looked back. This Friday he went to Confession and is now fully reconciled to the Church.

One of the most bizarre parts of the weekend was how normal it was: men talking about their wives and their kids, talking about friends and faith. It seems so normal. I'm looking around at all these men sitting at tables and thought, "This could be at any retreat site." I was so nervous going into the retreat because I have no experience of prison life. But that ended after 10 or 15 minutes. It became totally normal. It was weird how normal it was.

That said, we were dealing with convicted felons and men with violence in their past. They were in there for a reason, and many of those reasons were heinous. First Rule: You never, ever ask them what they did. Let them tell you. In fact, after that initial curiosity burns off, you kind of don't want to know. They are trying to change their lives here and now. We all know they have a past, but we do not want that preventing future conversion and the sacrament of the present moment.

Finally, I received my prison nickname.

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• Kolbe Prison Ministries - Home — After months of prayer, and through the intercession of St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Therese (the little flower), a group of men from the Texas Hill Country began ministering the Word of God in prisons throughout the great state of Texas. Led by Gods call through the corporal works of mercy to visit those imprisoned, these men began minstry with the creation of the St. Maximilian Kolbe Prison Ministries.