Renew The Church! – website and Blog

This video, of an interview with me by Marcus Grodi on EWTN’s “The Journey Home,” was recently put up on You Tube – thank you Marcus, and The Coming Home Network International.  I think the year of the interview was 2001 – after the book was first self-published, before it was later picked up and published by Alba House/Society of St. Paul in 2003.

The video brings out some of the story of my own journey back home to Christ and His Church.   Marcus and I also talked about the Catholic understanding of spirituality that I wrote of in my first book, The Ordinary Path to Holiness.

It’s amazing to me how God works through people.  My wife and I had been working in the Diocese of Norwich, training and forming Lay Ministers for the diocese.  In the spirituality component of their formation program, I used my book, then just recently printed, The Ordinary Path to Holiness.  One of the Lay Ministry candidates took it upon himself – after he had finished the program, and after I had left that position with the Diocese – to send his copy of the book to Doug Keck of the Bookmark program at EWTN – thinking that maybe Doug would like to present and discuss it on his show.  I later learned all this from Marcus, that he had gone in to Doug Keck’s office at EWTN to discuss some matter and saw the book on Doug’s desk.  Marcus picked it up and browsed through it – I think he said Doug was on the phone at the time – and Marcus liked it so much he took the copy with him to read it himself.

I knew nothing of any of this until I was called to the office of the retreat center where I was next working, to receive a phone call from Marcus Grodi at EWTN!  He and Doug Keck were inviting me to do two shows in one trip to EWTN studios, to tape a “Bookmark” show with Doug Keck, and appear on a live show of The Journey Home with Marcus.  All this because one of the Lay Ministry candidates took it upon himself to send his copy of my book to “Bookmark” to see if they might like it.  God has His ways!

God intervened in other ways as well, next to see to it that the book fell into the hands of Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR, who frequently offered talks and day retreats at this same retreat center.  Fr. Benedict liked the book, observed that the book was self-published, and began making some calls to publishers that he knew.  With his offer to Alba House to write an introduction to the book, they asked me for a manuscript to read and quickly agreed to publish it.

I’m recounting all this here to share with you the way that the road to publication was paved – all this reinforces for me the conviction that God wanted this book to become available to the Church.  He was with me in the writing of it; He guided it to the printing press; He continues to lead people to take it up and listen.  God wants His Church, I am convinced, to recover wisdom in these days – in the midst of a world falling deeper and deeper into darkness, to spiritual ignorance.  God wants us to recover the great spiritual wisdom of the saints that He has entrusted to His Church.  Many Catholics do not know or appreciate the path to our vocation!  We are all called to holiness and to the perfection of divine charity!

So – the video contains a little bit about this Path to Holiness, that is really Ordinary, and meant for us ordinary people – a path revealed in several ways, in salvation history and among our many saints, yet strangely it has been so hidden from so many, for so long!  I pray that you, the reader, will be led by our Lord to take up the book, and listen, and begin to hear your own call to holiness and the way to advance toward it.  He will be with you, every step of the way!

The Ordinary Path to Holiness is available:

from Barnes and Noble,  in digital for the Nook.

from Amazon, in paperback and in digital for the Kindle.