The Victor's Crown

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com --- “The secret to building the city of God within us is this: we have to build on a brick by brick basis in the reality of the present moment.” — Chiara Lubich At a recent family dinner, one of my nephews proudly shared his realization that this day is only lived once. As soon as it’s over, i...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com --- “Thy face, Lord, do I seek.” It struck me recently how often we see people seeking our Lord throughout the Gospels. The wise men and the shepherds. Mary and Joseph searching for Jesus in the temple. Bartimaeus crying out from the roadside. The Greek Jews asking to see Jesus. The crowds sti...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com --- Who cares what other people think? There’s something that I think gets formed in high school and college — this sense that you can’t please everybody, that you don’t want to spend your life conforming. That instinct isn’t entirely wrong. But I think it can linger into adulthood in a way th...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com --- "It is not quantity that gives the full measure of a sacrifice, but totality." — Georges Chevrot He follows it with this: "Being generous does not consist in giving a lot, but in giving everything." Challenging words. Our minds might go immediately to finances — and that's fair. We have th...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com --- Chevrot has a phrase I really like and dislike — but I recognize its truthfulness: the "cult of selfishness." He describes it this way: “the people who fall into it would like to be good because it pains them to fall short of their ideal.” For any high achiever, striver, or perfectionist —...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com --- "Perseverance does not consist in never falling, but in always raising ourselves up again." — Georges Chevrot My dad is a man of sayings. He has a knack for words of wisdom that are succinct and memorable, some of his own, some borrowed. One he told my brother and me throughout our lives g...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com --- "Every prayer that we address to God ought, as its first aim, to teach us our vocation of the moment." — Georges Chevrot I love that phrase: vocation of the moment. Yesterday we reflected on vocation in the big-picture sense — the particular mission our Lord has placed us here to fulfill o...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com --- Continuing our reflections from Simon Peter: Lessons from the First Pope by Georges Chevrot — Chevrot opens with the nature of vocation, defining it this way: "It is the particular task that God assigns each one. In view of these special tasks, God endows them with special abilities, altho...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com --- I have a simple pleasure: finding books I've never heard of that turn out to be hidden gems — readable, insightful, accessible, and somehow flying under the radar. Simon Peter: Lessons from the First Pope by Georges Chevrot is exactly that. The next few reflections will draw from it. Let m...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com --- Any Circumstance "Lord, I accept all of these circumstances, whatever You want, whenever and however You so desire." — Tanquerey How often do we pray words like these? Probably not nearly enough. What strikes me about this prayer is that it's about circumstances . And so often in life, tha...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com ---  Living the Christian life means living a life of discipline. But it’s not discipline for its own sake. It’s not doing hard things just to do hard things. Yes, our days can feel like battles. But we don’t fight just for the sake of fighting. There is an end. There is a purpose. The discipl...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com ---   Better With You "It is better for me, Lord, to suffer tribulation as long as You are with me, than to reign without You, rejoice without You, glory in myself without You. What would heaven mean to me without You?" — St. Bernard Two things come to mind when I sit with those words. The fir...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com ---   "The secret of all progress and of every victory is, in fact, to 'know how to begin again', to learn from a failure, and to try once more." — Georges Chevrot Three of my kids are playing soccer for the first time this year, and it's been great to watch. My 10-year-old is playing with gir...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com ---   "The secret of all progress and of every victory is, in fact, to 'know how to begin again', to learn from a failure, and to try once more." — Georges Chevrot Three of my kids are playing soccer for the first time this year, and it's been great to watch. My 10-year-old is playing with gir...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com ---  At the end of September and into October, we celebrate two feasts back to back: the Feast of the Archangels and the Feast of the Guardian Angels. If you're a Pray on Paper Club member, you'll be seeing this reflected in your envelope this month. I recently came across this prayer from St....

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com --- In the Gospels recently, we heard about Jesus healing the sick, curing people, driving out demons. And again and again, we hear this phrase: He laid hands on them. I'll be honest — sometimes I can feel like Christ is playing a game with me. Like He's tapping my left shoulder and standing o...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com ---  My wife and I were talking recently about an idea I've come across before but never quite in these terms. It's called a success floor — the minimum you're going to allow yourself to do and still consider yourself on track. You see it talked about in business and health, but I think there'...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com ---  I should probably address the elephant in the room: I've missed a couple of weeks of these reflections. Between family vacations and a busy stretch of work, August got away from me. I apologize — and I'm probably going to start building in an August break going forward. But here we are. T...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com ---   Prayer Warrior As members of the Body of Christ, we all have different roles to play. There are really only a few vocations — but they are lived out so differently, and that's part of what makes our faith and our Church so beautiful. One thing we all share: we can, should, and have an ob...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com --- Talk to God About Your Kids I can't remember who told me this — so if you're reading this, thank you. Talk to God about your kids more than you talk to your kids about God. With five kids ten and under, I have no shortage of behaviors I'd like to curb or habits I'd like to help form. And b...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com --- My Father Yesterday we reflected on how the Father delights in us. Today I want to take that one step further. Depending on our upbringing — depending on what fatherhood looked like for us, good or bad — it can be easy to keep God at a certain distance. We know He is our Father. But there’...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com ---   He Delights in You I've been reading a book about the journey from boyhood into manhood. One of the ideas that has stuck with me is this: one of the most crucial things a boy needs to experience is being the delight of his father. Not just being corrected, not just being taught to behave...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com ---   Trust and Worth This week's Mass readings keep circling the same theme: wealth. The rich young man who walks away sad. The camel and the eye of the needle. The landowner paying wages. Each of these will hit us differently depending on where we are in life. I've had seasons where things w...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com ---   Little Things With five young kids, my wife and I talk about parenting a lot. The struggles different kids have, the struggles we have because of their personalities, the difficulties that just come with being a family of seven. But honestly, it's not unique to big families. It's just wh...

 Get the written version in your email inbox every morning by subscribing for free at TheVictorsCrown.com ---   Ordinary This time of year, we find ourselves in Ordinary Time — named not for being mundane, but for its ordered-ness. We count the weeks. We follow the numbers. But there's a fitting metaphor in the name anyway. What struck me over the past couple of months is how many parables and mir...