The key to a happy death is not a long and fulfilled life—it’s a life of gratitude for the time given. Here’s why: We often forget that this life isn’t owed to us. Every breath we take is a gift from God, who is holding us in existence at this very moment. Once we start to think that this life is owed to us, that in some way we deserve it, we will become ungrateful for the time that is given, even if we’ve lived a long and happy life. Today, Father Mike explains how to fill your life with gratit...
Apr 15, 2021•8 min
The Wednesday of Holy Week is known to many as “Spy Wednesday”, but it’s also known as the “Day of Aloneness.” The backstory behind this moniker can have a profound impact on the way we live our lives. There are two people in the Holy Week narrative that experience profound loneliness: Jesus and Judas. There’s an honorable form of aloneness that we feel when we’re doing something we ought to be doing (walking a road that no one else can), but there’s also a sadder form of loneliness that exists ...
Apr 08, 2021•10 min
During Holy Week, as we contemplate the last hours of Jesus’ life, we get an intimate look at how Jesus prays to his Father. Starting with our Lord’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, we hear Jesus talking to God the Father about the upcoming moments of his life. He continues to pray through his Passion all the way until his last breath—a model that we as sons and daughters of God can follow as well. But what does Jesus show us about what it means to truly pray “Abba, Father”? Ascension is pro...
Apr 01, 2021•7 min
When was the last time you said “yes” to God? In improv, there’s a practice where participants are encouraged to never respond with “no, but” and to instead offer a “yes, and...” This allows for not only growth in the scene but in the actors as well. Similarly, God is always offering us different “scenes” to get us to sainthood. How are we responding? Turning our “no, but” into a “yes, and” opens our life to Christ’s will, and is the quickest path to sanctification. Today, Fr. Mike explains how ...
Mar 25, 2021•9 min
“Blame keeps us stuck...Taking responsibility gives us the opportunity to move forward.” In our difficult, fallen world, we are bound to face struggle. Sometimes our natural response to that struggle is to blame other things or people for why it’s happening—even to blame ourselves. While this makes us feel temporarily better because we are justifying our hardship, it also negates the truth of why we experience struggle—and the graces that can come from it. Today, Fr. Mike explains why it’s alway...
Mar 18, 2021•11 min
Every Christmas we celebrate the fact that Jesus took on our humanity and became one of us. But have we ever asked the question why? Why the Incarnation? You’re definitely not the first to ask this question, and it’s a valid question. Why would God, an all infinite, perfect, and perfectly whole being come to earth to live as a human, and even die a horrible death on the cross? There is nothing he lacks, nothing he doesn’t know, and nothing he needs from us. So, why did he become man? Fr. Mike ai...
Mar 11, 2021•9 min
God is an infinite, perfect, communion of persons, responsible for the intentional creation of everything around us - which begs the question, if God is perfect, why does he need us to worship him? Well, he actually doesn’t. God doesn’t need us to worship him because there is nothing he lacks. Which leads to another question: why do we worship God if he doesn’t need us to? Fr. Mike answers this today, drawing from the earliest books of the Bible. Ascension is proud to partner with authentically ...
Mar 04, 2021•10 min
We often receive the behavior we are willing to tolerate, but what does that mean for our daily interactions? Communication is the clearest way to let someone know how you are feeling. When meeting with someone who you feel is being rude, we may try to give outward signs of our discomfort, but we can’t guarantee they’ll understand unless we tell them directly. And obviously, this isn’t easy. There aren’t many people who love confrontation, and even some that do anything they can to avoid it. We’...
Feb 25, 2021•10 min
What if we were to make all our decisions solely based on how we felt in the moment? You may be familiar with the four types of love: eros (love of desire), storge (love of affection), philia (love of friendship), and agape (self-giving love). While each of these forms of love are good in their own way, they have to be accounted for correctly. Eros is the most temporary of all the loves. Feelings and desires are fleeting. So when we try and make decisions that are based on these desires we have,...
Feb 18, 2021•9 min
What’s the difference between a victim and a martyr? A victim is always described as dying “of” or “from” something. But when you describe a martyr, you talk about what they died for. While a victim is hurt by something, a martyr is suffers for something or someone. While a victim is having something happen to them, a martyr is choosing what happens to them by their will. “...I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” (John 10:17-1...
Feb 11, 2021•7 min
Sometimes the things that we own end up owning us. Detachment prevents this from happening. You may have heard of the minimalist movement that focuses on only having the things you need, and letting go of the things you don’t. Most people practice this by decluttering their house or storage, like you would if you were cleaning out a closet. But it’s not so much having a lot of stuff that’s the problem: it’s being attached to those things, and letting them have a sense of control over your life. ...
Feb 04, 2021•8 min
Why is it easier to fuel our faith at retreats and conferences? Can we have this same fire at home? You can probably reflect on a certain moment or time period in your life that your faith seemed to flourish more than it ever has. Usually this happens when we go on retreats, mission trips, or faith conferences. But along with these moments of powerful formation comes the decline we experience when they’re over, and we go back home. Why is that? Retreats offer us an opportunity to encounter our f...
Jan 28, 2021•7 min
Are you called to be a missionary? You may be one already! Saint Francis Xavier and Saint Therese of Lisieux are co-patrons of missionaries, although they lived very different lives. While St. Francis traveled all over the world proclaiming the gospel of Christ, St. Therese was unable to travel and did what she could in her own town. Both were missionaries in their own right. Being a missionary isn’t about traveling or living a crazy and unpredictable life. It’s about spreading the word of God t...
Jan 22, 2021•8 min
If you begin to sin but don’t follow all the way through… is it still a sin? It depends. We’re offered two different scenarios. In one, the person is prevented from sinning due to external factors that make it impractical or impossible to commit the sin they had planned on. In the second scenario, we see someone preparing to sin, but then freely and rationally choosing not to. The first scenario is a sin, but the second is a virtuous act. Why? Because the second person freely decided not to comm...
Jan 14, 2021•7 min
What do you think of when you hear the phrase, “Love the sinner, hate the sin”? To some, maybe it’s something that their parents would say to them when they heard them gossiping. Maybe it’s something you were taught in school, or maybe it’s a phrase you’ve mocked or not taken seriously. But this phrase is synonymous with one of the greatest commandments Jesus gave us: to love our neighbor as ourselves. Here’s where the connection comes in: We are all sinners. We are all sinners, yet we want the ...
Jan 07, 2021•9 min
It may sound counterintuitive, but choosing the harder path may make our life easier. Here’s why: When caterpillars go into their cocoons for hibernation, they struggle against the barrier of the cocoon for months on end, trying to get out. It’s only when their wings have developed and they’re strong enough to fly that they are able to break free and escape. If a caterpillar were to somehow get set free from its cocoon before it was strong enough to escape on its own, it wouldn’t be able to fly,...
Dec 31, 2020•8 min
We might have had different plans for this year, but were they really supposed to happen? We all wonder whether we’re actually following God’s will for us, but the reality is that, unless we are directly going against the Lord in some way, we are doing his will by just living our life. Wherever this year has taken us, whatever it has us doing, is exactly where God wants us to be. This is one of the joys of being a faithful Christian: as long as we are following the laws of the Lord, we can never...
Dec 25, 2020•8 min
It’s those last five minutes of conversation with someone that makes them feel like a number or like a known and loved individual. We’ve all had conversations that makes us feel like the other person doesn’t really care to be talking to us. But we’ve also had conversations that stick with us because the person we talked to made us feel so loved that we can’t help but be uplifted by them. This is what those last five minutes are all about: making the other person feel wanted, known, and loved. Th...
Dec 17, 2020•6 min
Truly loving Mary will never lessen our faith in God, or take attention away from Christ. Here’s why: The Church has 4 dogmas regarding our Blessed Mother. They are… Jesus gave Mary to all of us as our Mother during his crucifixion Mary was immaculately conceived without original sin Mary was assumed into Heaven after the resurrection of Christ Mary was a virgin before, during, and after the birth of Christ Today’s video is focusing on the second dogma dealing with Mary’s immaculate conception. ...
Dec 10, 2020•9 min
Oftentimes in Christian media we see what Fr. Mike dubs a “Hallmark” version of following Christ. There’s struggle and hardship, but then God’s grace comes in and cures everything, making everything nearly perfect for the characters in the story. While these types of stories make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, they’re not very realistic. And while God’s grace is essential, it’s not a magic wand that makes everything bad go away. There are some stories in the Bible that at first glance appea...
Dec 03, 2020•10 min
When was the last time you told God “thank you”? We live in an extremely hectic world, full of distractions, complaining, and longing for things we don’t have. And while it can be good to look at the things we do have and count up our blessings, how often do we then turn to God and thank him for those gifts? God is the reason we have anything in this life. Even our very existence day-to-day is a gift. There’s nothing better than thankfulness—and nothing worse than unthankfulness. We can all poin...
Nov 26, 2020•9 min
Have you ever felt like God really wanted you to do something, but you just weren’t ready for it? Maybe it’s a big life change, a relationship, or a vocation, but there’s something holding you back from saying yes to God’s call. People may be inclined to think that this is a bad thing, and might put themselves down, saying they aren’t open to God’s will in their lives. But what if this back-and-forth with God is the one thing we need to really say yes? When we wrestle with God, we’re not only en...
Nov 19, 2020•6 min
We all see the world through our own lens. The media we partake of—the news we read, the podcasts we listen to, the videos we watch—shapes that lens. But Fr. Mike says there’s one thing that should be shaping our lens more than anything else: scripture. Fr. Mike has read The Fulfillment of All Desire by Ralph Martin many times, and one point that Mr. Martin makes that has stuck with Fr. Mike is that every saint had a Biblical worldview. The lens through which they saw the world was the Bible, an...
Nov 13, 2020•9 min
Fr. Mike introduces us to the virtue that makes other virtues excellent: magnanimity. If someone asked you what the most essential virtues are, you might say humility, faith, hope, or love. But have you ever heard of the virtue of magnanimity? What this virtue does is it magnifies—or makes greater—other virtues within someone. In other words, it’s to strive for excellence. This is not to be confused with the vice of pride, which relies on the gifts of oneself without acknowledging any help that ...
Nov 05, 2020•9 min
Fr. Mike talks about how to regret things we’ve done without staying stuck in the past. Have you ever heard the saying “don’t regret the past, because it’s made you into the person you are today?” Maybe you’ve heard something similar to that, and while there’s truth to this saying, there’s also something that we as Christians should be aware of. Sometimes we make mistakes. We do things we wished we hadn’t. Sometimes, we hurt those we love in the process. We never want to live in the past—burdene...
Oct 29, 2020•8 min
Do you have any “expectations” when you think about marriage? A lot of us probably think of marriage as broadly the same thing: two people coming together in love to spend the rest of their lives together. But when we start to dive into the specifics of that idea, it’s important to recognize what expectations are of the world, and which are of God. One of these expectations could be the willingness to have kids. The Church teaches, however, that in the case of sacramental marriage, it is asked a...
Oct 22, 2020•9 min
Have you ever been shaken by a scandal in the Church? It’s hard not to have been, especially amidst scandals on a major scale or ones involving people we’ve looked up to and loved. When these things come to light, it’s common for people to start to blame the Church, and—sometimes—to leave their faith. If we feel the need to reexamine our belief in God and the Church because of something someone else did, maybe our faith should have been in God and not a person who’s broken just like us. We’re in...
Oct 15, 2020•10 min
Is it just us, or does the world seem a bit divided right now? Human beings were not only created with a unique purpose, but also created to live in community. However, there are two things that can disrupt this call: division and distraction. Why these two? Well, distractions are things that take us away from a given task or goal, taking us away from living with a purpose. Likewise, division takes away from living in community with those around us. The twentieth century brought with it innumera...
Oct 08, 2020•8 min
“What if I don’t have time to pray both The Rosary and The Divine Mercy Chaplet?” Deciding how to spend your time in prayer can be difficult, especially when you’re deciding between two powerhouse prayers like The Rosary and The Chaplet. Let’s look at each of them. The Chaplet of Divine Mercy was gifted to Saint Faustina during a vision of Jesus. In this vision, he listed 14 promises (https://www.divinemercy.org/elements-...) to those who pray the chaplet. In the chaplet, the prayers revolve aro...
Oct 01, 2020•10 min
You may have seen the movie Rudy. Its eponymous protagonist is a not-so-athletic college football player who spent years taking hits and practicing with his team, only to see a few moments on the field. Those short moments, however, left him with a tremendous feeling of accomplishment and pride, knowing that he committed to something and saw it through, even when it seemed hopeless. The question: is that always the right approach? Maybe if Rudy had dedicated that time to learning something he wa...
Sep 24, 2020•10 min
