Written by Andy Sonnier
Executive Director, Christ In You - CMC

The New Frontier

When we hear the word frontier, we may picture untamed land, distant settlements, and courageous men stepping into the unknown. Today, however, the new frontier is not found on a map. It is found in our homes, workplaces, parishes, neighborhoods, and within the hearts of men.

Men Are Searching for Something More

Many men today are spiritually restless. They are surrounded by information but lack wisdom, connected through technology but often isolated from genuine friendship. Some struggle to understand their purpose as husbands, fathers, sons, workers, and disciples. Others carry wounds, addictions, anger, loneliness, or regret in silence. Our culture often tells men either to dominate others or to become passive and harmless. Neither reflects the Catholic understanding of manhood.

Jesus Reveals a Better Way

Jesus Christ reveals a better way. He shows us that true strength is found in self-giving love. He was courageous without being cruel, compassionate without being weak, and obedient to the Father without losing His authority. Christ came “not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

RECOMMENDED READING

FEATURE

A Massive Missionary Opportunity

This spiritual landscape presents serious challenges, but it also offers tremendous missionary opportunities. Men are hungry for brotherhood, meaning, discipline, and a cause worthy of sacrifice. The Church can meet this hunger by inviting men into a real relationship with Christ and into communities where they can pray honestly, serve faithfully, and hold one another accountable.

Every Catholic Man Has a Mission Field

The Catechism teaches that all Christians are called to participate in the Church’s missionary work because the Church is missionary by her very nature (CCC 849-850). Missionary outreach is not limited to priests, religious, or those who travel overseas. Every Catholic man has a mission field. It may be his marriage, his children, his coworkers, the men at the gym, or the neighbor who has stopped believing that God cares.

Courage. Creativity. Conviction.

Stepping into this frontier requires courage, creativity, and conviction. Courage means speaking the truth with love when silence is easier. Creativity means finding new ways to reach men who may never attend a parish event. Conviction means living the faith consistently, especially when no one is watching.

Be Courageous. Be Strong.

Saint Paul challenged the early Christians: “Be watchful, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:13-14).

Our Nation Needs Holy Men

Our nation does not merely need more successful men. It needs holy men—men who pray, repent, protect, serve, forgive, and lead others toward Christ. The frontier is before us. The question is whether Catholic men will have the courage to enter it.

SPECIAL SPONSOR

FROM HEROIC MEN

Take the pledge | Learn more

Brandon's Website

Brandon Powell has a simple test for masculinity: What are you willing to give up when the people you love, or the truth you believe, require something costly from you?

For Powell, a father of six and former Protestant pastor, that question stopped being theoretical years ago.

He spent 17 years preaching in an evangelical denomination, part of a family tradition that stretched across four generations. His father had served as a pastor. His social world, career and future all grew inside that tradition.

Then Powell became convinced that the Catholic Church was true.

“I had to leave behind a lot for that,” Powell said. “Left behind my career, left behind my social net, left behind a lot of friends and left it all behind to become Catholic.”

He resigned as a pastor in September 2018. He and his wife entered the Catholic Church in 2019.

That experience now sits near the center of how Powell thinks about manhood. Masculinity, in his telling, is less about projecting strength than accepting responsibility when responsibility carries a price.

“We constantly have this spiritual battle within us between complacency and courage,” Powell said.

A Father Starts Asking a Harder Question

The conversation began with a story Powell heard through his work in parish digital media in the Diocese of Dallas.

A woman he knows fled a communist country as a teenager with her sister. The two girls crossed seven countries in search of safety, leaving behind their family, home and everything familiar.

Powell kept returning to the risk.

“As a father, I have six kids,” he said. “The older you get, the more you start wondering and worrying about the unknown at times.”

For a younger man, courage can look like adventure. For a father, courage carries names, faces, bills, children, a spouse and consequences.

Powell found himself asking whether he could uproot his own family if circumstances demanded it.

“Would I have what it takes to move my family, to take my family from one country to another place to be in a better situation?”

The question reaches beyond migration or war. Most men will never lead their families across a border under threat. Yet Powell sees the same conflict on a smaller scale whenever comfort competes with duty.

“The love you should have for your family and the love you should have for God should be greater than the love that we have for comfort,” he said.

That may be one of the harder definitions of masculine courage because it leaves little room for theater. A man can look formidable while remaining deeply attached to ease. He can talk about sacrifice while arranging his life around avoiding it.

Powell’s own conversion forced the issue.

“What Am I Going to Do About This?”

As a Protestant pastor, Powell cared deeply about giving people answers that could survive real suffering.

He became increasingly troubled by disagreements over Scripture and authority, especially when those disagreements carried consequences for marriages, spiritual lives and moral decisions.

“So as a pastor, you’re trying to provide answers for people,” Powell said.

The deeper he studied, the more he believed early Christianity differed from the form of Christianity he had inherited.

Eventually, study became decision.

“You do have to kind of condense it down to a question of like what I’m going to do about this,” Powell said. “When you face that realization that what you are preaching, what you are saying, what you are leading people in doesn’t really reflect what God laid down, I mean, you have to do something with it.”

The choice, as he saw it, was to harden himself against what he had found or leap.

“In that case, that leap cost me a lot,” he said. “But, you know, I still jumped.”

The host pressed him on the point.

“What was it that was in you?” Dominic asked. “You find a problem, like you get your teeth around, you can’t let go of that thing, right?”

Powell traced part of that instinct to his father, who encouraged him to ask theological questions. He traced another part to college, where he studied political science and philosophy under professors who regularly challenged Christianity.

One professor, Powell recalled, openly described himself as a militant atheist and told students his job was to destroy their faith.

The environment forced Powell to decide what he believed and why.

“If you only have easy answers, you either give up or you dig deeper,” he said.

Masculinity Without Harshness

Powell’s models of manhood include martyrs and historical figures, though two of his strongest examples come from men he knows personally.

He named Jamie Apt and Dennis Grendel, older friends whose generosity and humility changed the way he understands masculine strength.

“Masculinity can be strong but at the same time gentle and generous,” Powell said.

That distinction matters.

Much of modern conversation about masculinity can become trapped between caricatures. One side treats masculine strength as dangerous. Another can answer by making aggression itself a virtue.

Powell offers another model: strength governed by love, sacrifice and self-command.

Historically, he points to figures such as Thomas Becket, the English archbishop who entered a lethal conflict with royal power.

Powell admires the willingness to draw a moral boundary and accept the cost.

“Here’s the line,” Powell said, describing the principle. “And if you push me back past this line, then you also kill me because this is the line.”

He also points to Blessed Stanley Rother, the Oklahoma priest and missionary who returned to Guatemala after leaving amid escalating violence. Rother was murdered in 1981.

Powell sees something powerful in men who go back.

They could remain safe. They return because another duty has become more important than safety.

Heroism at Work, at Home and in Small Irritations

Most masculine sacrifice, Powell said, arrives with far less cinematic lighting.

It arrives through coworkers. Or children. Or neighbors.

Or the person whose problem lands in your lap at the least convenient moment imaginable.

“Can I respond with generosity and with gentleness,” Powell asked, “or do I respond with agitation and annoyance?”

He sees inconvenience as one of the most available forms of sacrifice.

A coworker needs help. An elderly neighbor needs the lawn mowed. A family member needs patience. A child interrupts the plan.

The act may be small, but the spiritual question remains serious: Will a man place another person before himself?

Powell’s masculinity is therefore demanding in an unglamorous way. It asks a man to become dependable when nobody applauds, merciful when retaliation feels satisfying and reverent toward responsibilities that have become familiar.

Even fatherhood can become familiar enough to be handled casually. So can marriage. So can prayer.

Powell’s recurring question is whether a man recognizes the weight of what he has been given.

Prayer Without Performance

That question eventually leads Powell to prayer.

He grew up in a pastor’s home, yet he said nobody sat him down and taught him a personal method of prayer beyond mealtime prayer.

As a Catholic father, he wants to give his children something more deliberate.

He uses structured prayers, including prayers from the St. Gregory Prayer Book, and teaches his children a simple framework of adoration, confession, thanksgiving and requests.

Yet his strongest advice for men is even simpler.

God cares more about honesty than elegance.

“God cares way more about our honesty than he does about our elegance,” Powell said.

For Powell, masculine prayer has little use for posing.

A man angry with his wife can say so. A man disappointed with God can say so. A man who feels weak, resentful, afraid or overwhelmed can bring that reality into prayer rather than trying to sound polished.

“You can’t be honest with God until you’re honest with yourself,” Powell said.

Then comes the harder part: listening.

Powell described pouring everything out before God and then leaving space for an answer.

“I’ve had my turn,” he said. “Here’s your turn.”

The Measure of the Man

Powell’s story moves from teenage refugees to conversion, from Thomas Becket to coworkers, from martyrs to bedtime prayer with children.

The theme beneath all of it is responsibility.

A man receives people, truths, duties and gifts. Then he decides what they are worth.

Will he defend them?

Will he sacrifice for them?

Will he choose mercy over revenge, generosity over irritation, courage over complacency?

Powell has already made one enormous leap. He also knows yesterday’s courage provides no guarantee for today. We keep going, one day at at time.

Men of Christ did not begin with a massive budget, a professional staff or an elaborate national strategy.

It began with a handful of Catholic men sitting around a dinner table.

“They were talking about how to grow in faith and to build virtue as men inside of their families and inside of their friend groups and their neighborhoods,” said Pat Masterson, one of the ministry’s current leaders.

That conversation eventually sparked the idea of bringing a larger group of men together for a Catholic men’s conference.

The first year, roughly 700 men showed up.

“Our very first presider at Mass at the very first Men of Christ conference was Cardinal Timothy Dolan,” Masterson said. “At the time he was based here in Milwaukee and was a great advocate and supporter of us as we started.”

Twenty years later, Men of Christ has become far more than a one-day conference.

In 2026, the ministry celebrated its 20th conference, drawing more than 3,000 men to downtown Milwaukee.

But Masterson and fellow leader AJ Garcia say the size of the conference is not the real story.

The real story is friendship.

‘Five of Us Are Going to Go for This’

Garcia said the early history of Men of Christ contains a lesson for Catholic men who see a need in their parish but do not know where to begin.

“You see a group of friends that are ready and willing to go for it,” Garcia said. “I love hearing the stories of the origins of this conference and many like it. We’re like, ‘Hey, five of us are going to go for this. We’ll invite our networks. We’ll see what happens.’”

The response to the first conference exceeded expectations.

Garcia recalled hearing how organizers were “scrambling, running out to Subway to buy more sandwiches because so many guys showed up.”

For him, that story illustrates something deeper.

“It really is just about the camaraderie, the community of a handful of guys and then the prayer and sacrifice behind it,” he said. “Seeing the need and just going for it.”

That same approach continues to shape the ministry today.

Men of Christ provides videos, promotional materials, bulletin inserts, flyers, posters and other resources that parishes can use to host their own gatherings or stream the Milwaukee conference remotely.

But Garcia said the tools are secondary.

“Whether you use our resources or not, just get something started.”

Men Are Hungry to Be Together

Garcia has been involved with Men of Christ for about five years and attended conferences before joining the leadership team.

He watched the ministry adapt during the COVID era, transitioning from gatherings of more than 2,500 men to virtual events and distributed host sites.

In 2026, more than 3,000 men returned for the 20th conference.

Through those changes, Garcia said one reality became increasingly clear.

“I’ve just seen this hunger and desire for men to be together,” he said.

The conference gives Catholic men an easy opportunity to invite a friend, brother, son or family member who may have fallen away from the faith.

“There’s not a lot of risk, not a lot on the line,” Garcia said. “Men of Christ just provides a great conference experience for them.”

Sometimes those invitations lead to profound moments of conversion.

Garcia said some of his favorite stories come from men returning to the sacrament of reconciliation after decades away.

“I think two years ago, someone said 50 years. I mean, at least 40,” he said.

Confession lines are among the most striking sights at the conference.

“It’s pretty much always flowing and at different points backed up,” Garcia said.

More than 30 priests may be available to hear confessions.

“One of the biggest gifts and most inspiring moments of the conference every year is seeing those guys in that long line and knowing somewhere in there this is the first time they’ve returned to this in a long time.”

One Invitation Changed Pat Masterson’s Life

Masterson’s connection to Catholic men’s ministry began before he joined Men of Christ.

About 2011, a young associate pastor, Father John Burns, and one of Masterson’s best friends, Bob Simi, started a men’s group at his parish.

At the time, Masterson said he was “a very lukewarm Catholic.”

“I was not really praying, not really studying my faith, and I think I was just kind of going through the motions,” he said.

Then came an invitation.

“It was literally like over a beer at a bar after playing pickup basketball,” Masterson said.

His friend became a mentor, and the men’s group helped draw him deeper into his faith.

Masterson has since heard variations of that same story repeatedly.

“The game changer in people is when someone else cares enough to invite them,” he said.

That invitation requires vulnerability.

A man may have to tell a friend, “‘Look, I’m going to be a little bit vulnerable here and share: My Catholic faith is really important. My love of Christ is really important.’”

“I think that makes all the difference,” Masterson said.

He has watched men make dramatic changes after re-engaging with the Church.

He recalled one married man who gave up recreational drug use and pornography. He and his wife began practicing natural family planning and went on to have a large family.

Before that, Masterson said, the man had been “very, very far away from the faith.”

“He re-embraced his Catholic faith through the invitation and coming back to the sacrament of confession.”

An ‘Apostolate of Friendship’

Garcia has a phrase for what Men of Christ is trying to create.

“An apostolate of friendship.”

The ministry’s commitment to prayer and the sacraments comes first, he said, but closely connected to that is a commitment to other men.

“It is to one another,” Garcia said. “It’s to friendship, to encouraging one another.”

That might begin with an invitation to a conference and eventually become an invitation into a parish men’s group.

“Just knowing that other men need support, offering that to others, and all the while also benefiting from that as you’re making those invitations,” he said.

Masterson said those relationships have become deeply personal.

“The group of our Men of Christ leaders, our regional leaders, they’re my best friends,” he said.

During recent family struggles, members of the team prayed for Masterson daily.

“I’m not sure you can put a price on it,” he said.

There is a difference, he added, between someone saying, “I’m thinking about you,” and knowing other Catholic men are offering Mass, adoration and the rosary for you.

“They’re not just friends here on earth, but they also care for your soul.”

More Than 200 Parishes Represented

The reach of Men of Christ has grown considerably.

At the 2026 conference, about 3,100 men attended in person.

Masterson said 143 parishes from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee were represented, along with another 87 parishes from outside the archdiocese.

The ministry has even drawn international interest.

Two priests from Bermuda flew to Milwaukee for the conference after their bishop contacted Men of Christ.

The priests heard confessions, spent time with ministry leaders and asked questions about building a men’s group at their cathedral parish.

Their bishop had effectively told them, Masterson recalled, “You’re going to Men of Christ this year.”

Garcia admitted the first email seemed unusual.

“A bishop emails us and is like, ‘Is this real? Is this legit?’” he said.

Once the ministry confirmed the request, the answer was simple.

“Send them up. We’ll take care of them.”

Supported by the Archdiocese

Men of Christ has also benefited from long-standing relationships with the leadership of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

Garcia pointed to Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop Jerome Listecki and current Archbishop Jeffrey Grob as part of the ministry’s history.

Archbishop Listecki, in particular, regularly met with Men of Christ leaders.

Those meetings were not only opportunities for the ministry to share success stories.

They were also a chance to receive direction.

As Men of Christ considered expanding nationally, Garcia said Archbishop Listecki offered a simple instruction:

“Take care of the people here. Take care of the people in this Archdiocese.”

The ministry took that seriously.

“We’re always trying not just to get more men for the sake of filling seats at the conference,” Garcia said, “but more men who are engaged in living out this apostolate of friendship and a life of prayer in their parishes.”

The Conference Is Only Part of the Mission

Men of Christ describes December through March as “conference season.”

But the ministry continues throughout the year.

Ahead of the conference, Men of Christ hosts three Saturday leadership meetings, typically in December, January and February.

The gatherings may be held at a parish, the cathedral or the seminary.

About 100 to 150 men attend.

They begin with Mass.

The men pray for the conference, receive formation, hear speakers and work through practical planning.

“They are the parish captains,” Masterson said. “They are the leaders at their parish.”

Some run small groups. Others oversee broader ministries to men.

Over time, those leadership meetings helped generate additional events, including retreats, rosary walks, pilgrimages and an event called Aiming for Christ, which combines trap shooting, Mass and a chili cook-off.

Other gatherings may be as simple as a baseball game, a cookout or several men sitting on a back porch sharing bourbon.

The goal is the same.

“Making sure that the isolation, that idea of separation, we break that cycle,” Masterson said.

How Men of Christ Pays for It

The conference and broader ministry are supported largely through private donations.

“We’ve been blessed in a lot of ways,” Masterson said.

Benefactors who have either seen or personally experienced the impact of the ministry help fund the work.

The conference charges what Masterson described as an affordable ticket price that largely covers food.

“The budget for the conference is significantly bigger than the ticket admission that we bring in,” he said.

Men of Christ also makes its remote conference available free to parishes and groups wishing to stream it on the day of the event.

Several years of recorded talks are also available online at no cost.

For smaller parish events, Garcia recommended looking close to home.

During the years when more parishes hosted streamed conferences, local businesses frequently stepped in to help.

“Would you donate the coffee? Would you donate sandwiches?” Garcia recalled leaders asking.

No matter the size of the gathering, he said, men should not be afraid to ask for help.

Start With Two Men — Then Find Four or Five

For parishes interested in hosting a satellite conference, Men of Christ has created a playbook based on years of experience.

But Masterson said one principle matters more than almost anything else.

Do not try to do it alone.

“Doing it alone is really hard,” he said.

Add one other man, he said, “and the success rate’s going to go up by 100%.”

Build a core group of four or five committed men and “your results are going to be a 1,000% different than trying to go it alone.”

The same applies when working with a pastor.

Instead of bringing the pastor another major responsibility, Masterson recommends forming the team first.

Tell the priest, in effect: We have a core group. We will run it. We want to bring 20 men together. We will attend Mass and handle the logistics. Join us if you can.

“You just have to do it,” Masterson said. “You have to pray about it and then you have to just try.”

There will be rejection.

“Put aside the fear,” he said. “Yes, you’ll get some no’s along the way.”

From Satellite Sites to Full Affiliates

Some groups simply stream the Milwaukee conference.

Others eventually grow into something larger.

Men of Christ Joliet, for example, began as a satellite-style relationship but eventually became an affiliate.

Its leaders established their own nonprofit serving the Diocese of Joliet.

In recent years, the group has drawn more than 400 men to its gatherings and has moved from streaming Milwaukee’s speakers to hosting its own live national Catholic speakers.

Men of Christ can support either model.

The important thing, Garcia said, is recognizing a need and acting on it.

“A guy seeing a need, asking for it, a little bit of planning and bringing men together.”

The Future Is Not About Bigger Numbers

After years of national outreach, Men of Christ has recently placed renewed emphasis on Milwaukee.

Masterson described the vision in three parts: build strong fathers, help form holy families and create “the most vibrant parish possible.”

That kind of parish is built through invitation.

“You have somebody new join the parish, invite them,” Masterson said. “Go talk to them. Make them feel welcome. Ask how you can help them.”

He called that “a very small version of evangelization.”

The ministry would like to reach every parish in the archdiocese.

But Masterson said that does not mean the goal is simply increasing conference attendance.

“We’ve gone back to basics,” he said.

The question is how to reach the man on the fringe — the parishioner who comes occasionally, the man who has drifted away or the father who has never been personally invited deeper.

TAP: Touch a Person

Men of Christ has turned that personal invitation into a simple principle called TAP: Touch a Person.

Masterson said it is often the hardest part of the ministry.

“The resistance is there,” he said. “It is easy to say someone else will make that invitation.”

Some Men of Christ leaders personally invite hundreds of men.

“They will literally pick up the phone and go down their phone list in their iPhone and one by one invite: phone call, text, phone call, text.”

The math is not always encouraging at first.

“We say to get 20 guys to the conference, you have to invite 100,” Masterson said.

And some of those men may require repeated invitations.

“They need to be tapped three, four, five times, maybe 10. Maybe over the years.”

Sometimes nothing appears to happen.

But the invitation may still matter.

“Maybe you’re planting a seed for something that might come to a bloom 10 years from now.”

‘Evangelize, Catechize and Unify’

Garcia said Men of Christ ultimately wants to keep its mission simple.

“Evangelize, catechize and unify.”

The goal is one man.

“Encourage that one man to come back to the faith and then that ripple effect it will have on, God willing, his family and then the parish community.”

TAP is bigger than an invitation to a conference.

“It’s an invitation to an intentional conversation about what Jesus is doing in your life,” Garcia said, “or just the encouragement you need to take that next step closer to him.”

Again, he returned to the same idea that has fueled the ministry for two decades.

“The apostolate of friendship.”

The Next Mission: High School Boys

One significant new initiative is taking shape ahead of the next conference.

Men of Christ is placing a new emphasis on high school-age young men.

“Our goal is for a man to bring his sons or to bring his grandsons, his brothers, his uncle,” Masterson said.

The ministry tested the idea at Catholic Memorial High School in Milwaukee.

Leaders worked with the school’s faith formation staff and teachers to invite young men to the conference and provide discounted tickets.

Afterward, Masterson returned to the school to give a talk on virtue.

Then he made the boys another offer.

“I invited all of those young men to come back to next year’s conference for free, and we would find a sponsor to pay for all of those young men.”

That could mean roughly 250 boys from one school.

Now Men of Christ hopes to make a concerted effort at about 12 Catholic high schools in the archdiocese.

The plan is to identify fathers and school leaders, partner with presidents, principals and faith formation directors and bring busloads of young men to the conference.

The ministry has already seen similar momentum with college students.

About 50 students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison attended the 2026 conference through the St. Paul Catholic Center.

Those college men went on stage and prayed the rosary together.

“Think about those grade school boys or high school boys looking at 50 college boys up there praying the rosary together,” Masterson said. “It was great.”

The message to the next generation is straightforward.

“We want to make sure they know that they are invited,” Masterson said, “and that there are great, strong male leaders who care about their faith and care about God and care about them.”

One Spark Can Become a Fire

Near the end of the conversation, host Tom Honercheck pointed to Luke 12:49: “I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled.”

For Honercheck, the verse captures what happens when one Catholic man invites another.

“You have no idea — we have no idea — when we talk to another man, invite another man, and he comes to a conference, or these high school kids, or these college kids, the spark that ignites that blaze of faith and the difference it makes.”

Men of Christ began with a handful of men willing to act on that spark.

Twenty years later, thousands of men gather each year, hundreds of parishes participate and men who have been away from confession for decades are finding their way back.

Still, the strategy has hardly changed.

Pray.

Build friendships.

Pick up the phone.

Invite the next man.

Written by Adam Carlisle
Secretary for Evangelization and Communication
Diocese of Metuchen, New Jersey

Something Was Missing

Good afternoon gentlemen,

A while back, I started noticing something in our parish. We had strong families, committed parishioners, and good men- but many of us were trying to live our faith alone. We came to Mass, we fulfilled our responsibilities, but there wasn’t much fraternity. There wasn’t a place
where men could be honest about struggles, grow in virtue together, and challenge each other to holiness.

We Didn’t Need to Reinvent the Wheel

Last year I was part of the planning committee for this conference. Peter introduced us to Dean Patterson and Heroic Men. What struck me immediately was that it didn’t water down our faith. It spoke directly to men about leadership, sacrifice, prayer, virtue and spiritual battle. They presented authentic Catholic teaching in a way that was clear, practical and challenging. But more than the content, it gave us structure.

Instead of asking,” What should we study?”:” Or who is qualified to lead?: We realized we didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. We simply needed to invite a few men, press play, and begin the conversation. Heroic Men provides faithful information rooted in Scripture, the Catechism, and the lives of the Saints. It gave us confidence that what we were sharing was solid and authentically Catholic.

We Started Small

We started small, just a handful of men meeting regularly. We committed to show up. We prayed together. We had real conversations- about what it means to really be a man, about marriage, fatherhood, purity, discipline and what it means to carry the cross in daily life.

RECOMMENDED READING

FEATURE

Then Something Began to Change

And something began to change,

Walls came down. Brotherhood formed. Men who had never spoken openly about their faith began leading their families more intentionally. Confessions became more frequent. Prayer became more consistent. We began holding one another accountable- not in judgement, but in encouragement.

Men Are Hungry for Depth

What I learned is this: men are hungry for depth. They want to be challenged. They want a mission. But often they just need an invitation and a path forward.

Heroic Men provided that path. It gave us a common vision of authentic Catholic masculinity not domination, not passivity, but sacrificial love modeled after Christ.

When Men Step Up, Everything Changes

Today, what started as a simple step of faith has grown into a brotherhood within our parish, and I’m convinced that when men step up spiritually, families grow stronger, parishes become more vibrant, and the whole Church benefits.

This Is Your Invitation

If you’ve ever felt like there should be more- more depth, more brotherhood, more purpose- this is your invitation. You don’t have to have it all figured out. Just be willing to show up.

That’s how ours began. And God has done the rest.

SPECIAL SPONSOR

FROM HEROIC MEN

Take the pledge | Learn more

A Prisoner Who Found His Purpose

Chuck Jansen remembers meeting a man in prison who did not seem to belong there — at least not in the way Jansen expected.

The man, Orman, had been incarcerated for about 35 years. Yet when Jansen met him through Brothers in Blue Reentry, where Jansen’s Forgiveness 101 course had been adopted, he encountered someone strikingly joyful.

“The minute I met him, I could tell he was different,” Jansen said. “There was something about him, and he was so happy and he was so joyful.”

Jansen asked him how long he had been in prison.

“About 35 years,” Orman replied.

“You’re happier than half my golf friends,” Jansen told him. “What’s your secret?”

Orman’s answer stayed with him.

“God, use me for good.”

Over time, Jansen learned that Orman believed his years in prison could still serve a purpose. Many of the men entering the prison knew little about Jesus or how to live differently, he said. Orman believed he could help them.

“You have done an amazing job of finding purpose in a rather difficult situation,” Jansen remembered telling him.

But that sense of purpose came after profound trauma.

Orman told Jansen that when he was 12 years old, he encountered the body of a Black man hanging from a tree beneath a racist sign.

“I didn’t know it then, but I was traumatized,” Orman told him. “Do you understand now why I hated white people for many, many years?”

Yet decades later, Orman said he had learned to overcome that trauma.

“I now see that God is working through me,” he said, “and I’m just here to help other men find Jesus Christ.”

Jansen was stunned.

“You humble me,” he told him. “It’s astounding.”

For Jansen, Orman became an example of what forgiveness could look like when it was no longer an abstract religious idea.

“He’s like a hero to me,” Jansen said.

“God Speaks to Us in Our Joy, but He Shouts to Us in Our Pain”

Jansen later taught Forgiveness 101 inside a cramped prison cell.

The space measured roughly 10 feet by 11 feet. Ten men crowded inside.

Orman joined them, watching Jansen teach so he could eventually help lead the program himself.

Jansen divided the men into pairs and gave them four quotations. Their assignment was simple: discuss which quotation resonated most.

Three minutes later, the room was loud with conversation.

One prisoner raised his hand.

“Can I go first?”

He stood without being asked. His face was covered in tattoos.

“God speaks to us in our joy, but he shouts to us in our pain,” the man said.

Then he began telling his story.

“Eight years ago, I hit bottom.”

As the prisoner spoke, Jansen looked across the cell at Orman.

“This is what we have to do,” he thought. “We have to get them teaching the class.”

For Jansen, the moment reinforced a conviction that has shaped his ministry: the answer is often already present in the room.

His task is not simply to lecture people about forgiveness. It is to help wounded people recognize what God may already be doing in their lives.

The Problem Behind “Yeah, But”

Jansen believes unforgiveness remains widespread, even among practicing Christians.

During one Bible study visit, he asked six women who had been meeting weekly for four years to answer a question.

How many people were in their lives whom they had not forgiven?

Two said none.

Two said between one and four.

Two said four or more.

“Why do we allow a lack of forgiveness to be prevalent in our lives?” Jansen asked.

For men in particular, he believes one major obstacle is justice.

He illustrates the tension with a drawing: “forgiveness” written in cursive, separated from the word “justice.”

When people are invited to forgive, Jansen said, the response frequently begins the same way.

“Yeah, but.”

“You haven’t talked to your dad for six years,” he said as an example. “I invite you to make peace with your dad.”

The response comes quickly.

“Yeah, but you know what he said to me? You know what he said to me on my birthday six years ago?”

Jansen said justice itself is necessary.

“Justice is important. Justice is crucial,” he said. “If you don’t have justice in a society, how’s it going to get along?”

The problem comes when a demand for justice becomes the reason a person refuses forgiveness.

“It’s not right. They don’t deserve to be forgiven. It’s not fair,” Jansen said. “We’re grabbing hold of justice.”

Forgiveness, he said, requires something different.

“To forgive is a choice. It’s a heroic choice,” Jansen said. “And it’s a decision that leads to a habit that leads to a virtue.”

People who learn to forgive, he said, often become noticeably more peaceful.

Those who refuse can remain trapped in resentment and anger.

Hurt People Hurt People

Jansen did not originally set out to build a forgiveness ministry.

The work began after Father Tom, his spiritual adviser of 15 years and a priest he has known for three decades, challenged him with an assignment.

“We have a parish of 3,000 people,” the priest told him, “and half of the people have somebody not talking to somebody else in their family.”

He told Jansen to study forgiveness for a year.

Jansen was not enthusiastic.

“Father, the rectory is in need of painting and there’s a lot of dry rot,” he replied. “I’ll paint the rectory. I’ll be done in three weeks. Please don’t make me study forgiveness.”

But he did.

A year later, Jansen returned with three conclusions.

First, he said, people who forgive tend to be happier, more content and closer to Christ.

Second, he could not find an existing program that walked people through the common elements he repeatedly saw in successful forgiveness.

His third conclusion became foundational.

“It all has to do with pain and suffering,” Jansen said. “Hurt people hurt people.”

Before a person can move toward forgiveness, he said, the wound itself has to be confronted.

His framework is simple: acknowledge, own and process.

“It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when,” Jansen said of suffering. “Everybody experiences suffering and pain.”

The danger comes when a person refuses to deal with it.

“You have to acknowledge, own and process the hurt, or the hurt owns you,” he said.

He has seen that pattern repeatedly in prison.

Jansen recalled speaking with a man incarcerated for child sexual abuse who eventually revealed that he himself had been sexually abused as a child.

“He didn’t process it, so he acted out his emotions,” Jansen said.

That does not excuse what the man later did. But it reinforced Jansen’s conviction that untreated wounds can shape future behavior.

“A lot of us men have to ask, what wounds do we have, especially with our dads?” he said.

Some men may need counseling. Others may begin with a trusted friend, spouse or mentor.

But secrecy, Jansen said, allows a wound to maintain its power.

“If you have a secret that you haven’t told anybody, that secret is controlling you.”

From Management to Surrender

Jansen spent the first seven years of his ministry trying to create what he called the perfect forgiveness class.

His background had trained him to manage.

He had spent 12 years teaching high school religion and coaching varsity soccer. He later ran a real estate office for three decades.

His instinct was to study harder, prepare more and control the outcome.

“I’ve got to come up with the perfect class,” he remembered thinking.

Eventually, he said, the Holy Spirit began breaking that instinct.

“The Holy Spirit slowly but surely — I say hit me in the head with a 2-by-4,” Jansen said. “Sometimes I don’t listen carefully.”

He began praying a short prayer.

“Empty me of me. Fill me with you. God, use me.”

The lesson that followed was uncomfortable.

“Shut up, Chuck. Just take notes.”

Jansen stopped trying to manufacture a flawless method and started paying attention to what wounded people were teaching him.

“If you steal from one, it’s called plagiarism,” he joked. “If you steal from 12, it’s called research.”

Over hundreds of encounters, he began seeing the same process.

First, acknowledge, own and process the pain.

Second, make the decision to forgive.

Third, surrender what remains to God.

Jansen summarizes that final step with another image.

“Where I put a period, God put a comma.”

A drunk driver killed my daughter. Period.

My father was an alcoholic and beat me. Period.

A business partner cheated me. Period.

Jansen said those wounds are real. But people can become so attached to their conclusions that they leave no room for God to continue the story.

“God is inviting us to have a comma,” he said.

That requires surrender.

“Get out of management and get into sales,” Jansen said. “Dear God, how can you use me for good?”

Why Men Struggle to Let Go

Jansen believes surrender can be especially difficult for men because men often want to fix problems.

“Don’t you think men want to fix things?” he asked. “A lot of times when we talk to our wives, they just want to be understood. But men, we want to fix things all the time.”

Forgiveness confronts that instinct because the past cannot always be repaired.

Some injustices cannot be undone.

Some relationships cannot be restored to what they were.

Some wounds remain painful even after a court case is finished or an offender is punished.

That is where surrender begins.

“‘Vengeance is mine,’ says the Lord,” Jansen said. “The Lord’s going to take care of it.”

He often reminds Catholics that forgiveness is embedded in one of Christianity’s most familiar prayers.

“The Our Father is not a multiple choice,” Jansen said.

Christians pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

But Jansen said people often live as though the prayer means something closer to: Forgive us as we forgive most people — everyone except the one person who hurt us most.

“I Want What Allison Has”

For years, Jansen’s study of forgiveness was largely analytical.

Then he met the family of Mike Darby.

Darby, a well-known Kansas City business owner, was walking his dogs early one morning in 2017 when he was shot and killed.

A few months later, Jansen was teaching a one-night forgiveness class.

He stood at the back of the room welcoming people when Darby’s daughter, Allison, arrived with her mother.

“My God, I’ve out-punted my coverage,” Jansen remembered thinking.

Then he prayed.

“Empty me of me. Fill me with you. I don’t know what you’re going to say tonight, Jesus, but please work your magic through me.”

Something from the class connected with Allison.

They became friends.

Over the next four years, Jansen accompanied her through the painful process of forgiveness.

“You have to hold the hand of the wounded as you lead them to the freedom of forgiveness,” he said.

The phrase eventually became guidance he gave to other forgiveness facilitators.

“If you don’t hold their hand, people will not move off of that first step,” Jansen said. “How do I deal with my suffering and my pain? Somebody shot my dad. My poor kids won’t experience grandpa.”

Then came a moment Jansen still remembers.

He and his wife were sitting in church praying before Mass when a woman turned toward him.

“You don’t know me, but I’m Allison’s mother,” she said.

She thanked him for helping her daughter.

Then she said something else.

“I want what Allison has.”

Mercy for the Person You Do Not Want to Forgive

Working in prison forced Jansen to confront the limits of his own mercy.

When he first became a mentor, someone asked whether there was anyone he would struggle to work with.

Jansen prayed about it.

“I’m going to have a rough time working with somebody who had sex with a child,” he answered. “That’s a tough sin.”

The woman overseeing the program replied, “Chuck, you’re not the Lone Ranger.”

Jansen quickly discovered that even prisoners often isolate people convicted of abusing children.

But Christianity’s teaching on mercy forced him to examine his own judgment.

“Mercy teaches us that all sins are forgiven,” he said. “If you come to Christ and you’re sorry for your sins and you’re repentant, you can be forgiven.”

He does not pretend the questions are easy.

“I don’t have all the answers,” Jansen said. “This is a tough journey.”

His role, he concluded, is not to erase justice or pretend evil is harmless.

It is to encounter the person in front of him without appointing himself that person’s final judge.

“My job is to understand them, hold their hand and introduce them to Christ,” he said.

Justice Cannot Heal Every Wound

Near the end of the conversation, Jansen recalled another encounter.

He had spoken at an all-day men’s retreat when one participant approached him afterward.

The previous day, the man said, he had spent four and a half hours in court.

His granddaughter had been sexually abused.

The perpetrator had finally been caught, prosecuted and sentenced to 17 years in prison.

The man returned home that night expecting something to feel different.

“The pain is still there,” he told Jansen.

He had spent years seeking justice, only to discover that justice had not healed the wound.

“I tried to get satisfaction through justice,” the man said. “You can’t. The pain won’t go away. It’s only through forgiveness that it’ll go away.”

He was not yet able to forgive the man who abused his granddaughter.

But Jansen’s presentation had given him something.

“At least I have a map now, Chuck, of where to go,” he said.

He planned to begin praying and moving in that direction.

For Jansen, that is what the ministry is meant to provide — not instant emotional resolution, but a path.

“Empty Me of Me. Fill Me With You.”

Jansen said one of the men who deeply shaped him is John O’Leary, whose childhood story of surviving burns over his entire body became the subject of the film “Soul on Fire.”

Jansen met O’Leary years ago through a real estate convention, before O’Leary became widely known as a speaker.

“John O’Leary lives Jesus Christ,” Jansen said. “He’s closer to Christ than most people ever realize.”

O’Leary also helped give Jansen the prayer that has become central to his ministry.

“Use me for good.”

Jansen has now spent years repeating it.

The prayer reflects the broader transformation he sees in his own life: away from controlling outcomes and toward trusting the Holy Spirit.

“Don’t be married to an outcome,” Jansen said. “Don’t think that Dominic is all the world or Chuck is all the world, that I’m going to do this. I’m going to just kind of be the vehicle in which the Holy Spirit uses to bring something about.”

That does not mean doing nothing.

“When you pray, move your feet,” he said.

Jansen continues taking forgiveness programs into prisons, churches and retirement communities. His Forgiveness Institute now includes facilitators around the country, along with online courses and resources through yebut.org.

But he insists the ministry does not ultimately belong to him.

When people praise its growth, his response is simple.

“Isn’t God wonderful?”

Getting Out of Our Own Prisons

Jansen believes some people live behind prison walls without ever entering a correctional facility.

They remain imprisoned by resentment.

“Half the people in America have no trouble forgiving and they’re free,” he said. “The people who hang on to resentment and anger and justice and ‘it’s not right,’ they’re living in their own prison.”

The freedom he describes does not require denying evil, abandoning justice or pretending wounds no longer hurt.

It begins with acknowledging the wound.

Owning it.

Processing it.

Choosing forgiveness.

And surrendering what cannot be controlled.

Jansen said he hopes men will begin by asking God to create peace within them.

“Help me forgive everybody in my life,” he said. “Let me be an instrument of peace where I’ll hold the hand of the wounded.”

And then return to the prayer he has learned to repeat when control, anger or judgment begins taking over again.

“Empty me of me. Fill me with you. Use me for good.”

For Paul George, the challenge facing Catholic men is not simply that too many have stopped going to church or stepped away from spiritual leadership.

It is that many men have forgotten that holiness and masculinity belong together.

George, a husband, father, author and speaker from Lafayette, Louisiana, joined Tom Hornichek and Dean Patterson on Men Answering the Heroic Call to discuss the ideas behind his book, Holy Grit, and the search many men are making for purpose.

“The genesis of the book is a heart and a desire to help men connect their own desire to know God and yet their own authenticity to be masculine and to be fully human in their masculinity,” George said.

Too often, he said, faith is treated as something separate from manhood.

“We’re not a man over here and then we live a faith over here,” George said.

Instead, Holy Grit argues that God created men both for holiness and for difficult things.

“God created us to be men of faith, to be holy, yet not exempt of our masculinity,” George said. “We have grit. We’re built to have virtue and to do hard things.”

For George, a man begins discovering his purpose when those two realities meet.

“Our greatest purpose in our life is when we merge those two things together — our faith and our grit together.”

Why Men Retreat

George pointed to several reasons men can become disconnected from the faith, including broken families, absent examples of faithful fatherhood and a lack of mentorship.

“A lot of men, young boys, come from broken homes, maybe not a father who lived their faith and kind of showed them how to live that faith,” George said. “And so they’ve kind of been sent out into the world just isolated, alone, trying to figure it out.”

Men need more than instruction, he said. They need other men close enough to watch.

“The way Jesus taught was not just from the pulpit,” George said. “He rubbed elbows with his disciples. He walked with them. He taught them by the way he lived and acted and lived out his faith and virtue.”

That model matters because men often learn through participation and example.

“Men learn hands-on,” George said. “They learn by doing. They learn by being with other men.”

Without strong examples, men will still look for something to imitate.

“If I’m around a bunch of men who don’t live their faith and live sinful lives, I’m more apt as a man to kind of learn that behavior,” George said.

The deeper problem, he said, is not that men lack a desire for meaning.

“Man’s desire to find purpose is at the core of his heart,” George said. “They don’t always find it in the right places.”

The Fear of Going All In

One of the themes of Holy Grit is the danger of allowing the bare minimum to become the standard for Christian life.

George believes fear often keeps men standing at the edge of a deeper relationship with Christ.

“There is a certain fear in men of like, what would happen to my life if I just totally went all in with Jesus and my faith?” George said. “What would I have to let go of and leave behind?”

The irony, he said, is that men often become most alive when confronting fear.

“I think men come most alive in conquering and overcoming fear,” George said.

But in faith, that same man may hesitate.

“When it comes to faith, it’s sort of like, if I go all in, what does that look like?” he said. “So men kind of stand on the edge oftentimes and just do the bare minimum.”

That hesitation can have consequences inside the home.

“When a man doesn’t take his rightful place as a spiritual leader, what ends up happening is usually the wife or the girlfriend takes the place spiritually, kind of takes the lead,” George said.

The man then begins retreating further.

“Men, I’ll use this word, feel inadequate,” George said. “And when a man feels inadequate, he kind of retreats back and pulls back instead of taking the lead.”

Saints Were Real Men

George did not grow up immersed in Catholic devotional life.

He was baptized Catholic, but his parents divorced when he was young and his family stopped attending church. He said he knew little about the saints, Mary or the rosary.

That changed through his own conversion.

As he studied the saints, George became convinced that their humanity makes them especially important models for men.

“The thing that I think is most interesting is that they were human,” George said. “They’re not divine. They’re just like you and I.”

The saints struggled, suffered and grew.

“They grew up. They had original sin. They had a life of suffering, pain, joy, conversion,” George said.

In Holy Grit, George intentionally tells the stories of male saints in a way designed to make their lives recognizable.

“What was their story like growing up? What was their conversion like? What did their life look like once they really kind of gave their life to Christ?” George said.

He also deliberately included married saints.

“I tried to find married saints as well just to make it more relatable to men,” he said.

The point is not to make saints less heroic, but to remind men that sanctity was lived by actual human beings.

“They’re not mythical characters,” George said. “They’re real people.”

Men Will Search Until They Find the Answer

George believes every man carries a desire for peace, joy and purpose.

“I’ve never met a guy, young guy or old guy, who says, ‘I just want to be a horrible human being. I just want to do horrible things,’” George said.

“There’s a deep desire for purpose.”

The question becomes where a man searches for it.

“We are seekers and hunters and gatherers, and we will seek to discover what it is inside of us that is aching,” George said.

That search can lead through careers, sports, hobbies, relationships and countless other pursuits.

“We will do that with work and sports and hobbies and women and whatever things that can just satisfy this deep longing in our heart,” George said. “And the search is endless. It will keep going until we find the answer to it.”

For George, the turning point is an encounter with Christ.

“When men finally do find the Lord, they encounter Christ, just like you did, I did, it opens up this, ‘I finally found the answer. I finally found what I was looking for,’” he said.

But conversion is not the conclusion.

“It begins a journey and a path of discovery that is really the greatest adventure of all time.”

Virtue Without Christ Is Not Enough

George said he is encouraged by what he sees happening among Catholic men.

Through conferences, retreats, parishes and men’s groups, he sees men beginning to understand their vocation and responsibility.

“Men are really just stepping up and having real encounters,” George said.

But he cautioned against reducing the solution to self-improvement.

“If we’re just living a life of virtue without Christ, we eventually end up on this road of self-sufficiency,” George said. “I can do all things on my own instead of all things through Christ who gives me strength.”

George said his own life has repeatedly shown him the limits of self-reliance.

“When I try to do things on my own, I end up failing pretty bad,” he said.

The result can be exhaustion in marriage, fatherhood and work.

“When we don’t rest in Jesus and we’re constantly going, we end up relying on ourselves a little too much.”

The Enemy Wants Men Alone

George strongly believes that sustained brotherhood must follow moments of spiritual inspiration.

“We are who we hang out with,” he said. “That has a real effect on us.”

He has seen that principle play out across generations.

Recently, he joined a men’s group in Michigan using Holy Grit, spoke by video with a college-age group studying the book and received an invitation from a small group of high school boys.

“To me, that is amazing,” George said. “Cross-generational, just seeing men desiring to be together and journey together and know that they need each other is extremely important.”

There is also a spiritual battle behind that need, he said.

“The enemy seeks to isolate us,” George said. “That’s one of his greatest tactics.”

Isolation takes many forms.

“Isolation can be, yeah, I’m living in sin. Isolation could just be I’m detached from good relationships. Isolation can be I’m lonely. Isolation could be I’m just living mediocre, apathetic. I’m not fully engaging.”

A man does not have to completely leave the faith to become vulnerable.

“As long as we’re sort of just a little bit away from the flock, that’s where the enemy wants us,” George said.

The image of the Good Shepherd, he said, offers the answer.

“It’s not only to save that one, but it’s to bring it back into the flock where it’s safe — where it’s together with the others.”

Christ Does Not Erase Suffering

Coming to Christ did not remove the pain from George’s life.

His parents’ divorce and other wounds remained part of his story.

“What I didn’t realize is some of the suffering, maybe pain, trauma, wounds that I’ve experienced in my life were undealt with,” George said.

Christ begins bringing those wounds into the light.

“Jesus says, ‘I’m the light of the world.’ I’ve come to bring light into the darkness,” George said. “Shine the light on places in our hearts that need healing, restoration.”

One misconception, he said, is that faith will make suffering disappear.

“The myth is if I come into my faith or relationship with Christ, all my troubles and sufferings will go away,” George said. “But the reality is all our sufferings begin to make sense because of the cross.”

The suffering remains, but now it has somewhere to go.

“I have a place to bring my sufferings, my pain,” George said.

That is one reason the crucifix remains so important to Catholic life.

“Although Jesus rose from the dead, we’re reminded of the crucifixion because our sufferings don’t go away,” he said.

Christ does not pretend that his followers will never hurt.

“All of us can relate to pain and suffering in our life, and we have healing through Jesus. We have purpose in that.”

Nothing Is Lost in Christ

George recalled a lesson from his spiritual director, Father Bob Usilio, that became central to his understanding of suffering and regret.

“With God, nothing is lost. It’s all for gain,” George said. “God uses everything for our good.”

George used to replay his own life through a series of “what ifs.”

“If my parents wouldn’t have gotten divorced and I wouldn’t have experienced this broken family, I would be much better off,” George recalled thinking.

Then came the other regrets — choices, mistakes and relationships he wished had unfolded differently.

His spiritual director continued pointing him away from regret.

“The Lord takes all that and uses it for your good,” George recalled him saying.

George said men must understand that their past does not place them outside the reach of redemption.

“No matter where they are in their life right now, nothing that they’ve done up to this point can keep God from redeeming them and using their whole story for his purpose.”

St. Joseph and the Discipline of Waiting

Holiness, George said, also requires patience — something he readily admits does not come naturally to him.

“I’m not a very patient person,” he said. “I love things very immediately.”

That is one reason St. Joseph has become such an important example.

George focused on Joseph not simply as a saint, but as a husband and father who repeatedly obeyed God without receiving the entire plan in advance.

“God speaks to him in his dreams and through angels, and Joseph is obedient,” George said. “That’s a virtue. Do what God asks you to do.”

When Joseph was told to take Mary and Jesus into Egypt, he was not given a detailed timeline.

“Joseph just gets up and goes and does the next thing that God asks him to do,” George said.

For men who want certainty about careers, finances, marriages and the future, Joseph offers another model.

“There’s times and seasons of waiting, of patience, of just doing what God asked me to do today and trusting that when the Lord wants me to do something else, he will open the door and he’ll let me know,” George said.

Even seasons that feel unproductive may be formative.

“If I’m in a season of waiting, I’m in a season of suffering, if I’m in a season of, man, I need a job change, I need a breakthrough financially, I need a breakthrough in my marriage — sometimes that season of waiting is exactly the season that God wants to teach us something, prepare us for the next step.”

Mentorship Is Simpler Than Men Think

Men often complicate the idea of mentorship, George said.

They imagine that being a mentor requires a formal program, special expertise or the perfect words.

“I think in reality, put yourself out there to rub elbows with other men and we learn from each other,” George said.

Some of the most important lessons he has received from other men came through observation.

“I’ve learned a lot through just watching godly men — just how they act, just how they live, how they communicate,” he said. “I didn’t really ask them questions. I just was around them.”

Years ago, George and his wife, Gretchen, regularly opened their home to college students and young adults for Bible studies.

Years later, George met one of those young men again while traveling to Virginia.

The man thanked him.

George assumed he was referring to the Bible studies.

He was not.

“The thing that I appreciate the most and I learned the most is just being around you and your family,” George recalled the man saying.

The young man told George he had watched how the family lived and interacted.

“It was the first time I ever saw a family, and it gave me a deep desire to be a husband and a father,” George recalled him saying.

George joked that none of his teaching had apparently registered.

“He’s like, ‘No, I really didn’t pay attention. I didn’t pay attention to the Bible studies. I was just observing how y’all lived life.’”

For George, the story captures something fundamental about evangelization.

“What does it mean to live a life for Christ?” he said. “That’s sort of the missing thing.”

The answer may be less complicated than Catholics sometimes make it.

“Let’s just live life together with Christ,” George said. “And in that, we really learn the art of living, what it means to fully live.”

The Evangelizing Power of an Open Door

That kind of mentorship naturally leads to hospitality.

George pointed to the life of Christ as a model.

“If you look at even the Holy Family, the manger was open to the public,” he said.

The same pattern continued throughout Jesus’ ministry.

At the wedding feast at Cana, Jesus was simply present among people.

“That sense of just authentic love of the human person is what Christ does,” George said. “And that’s what opens up a person to receive the Gospel oftentimes.”

Hospitality does not require turning every gathering into a sermon.

Sometimes it begins by opening a house, sharing dinner, lighting a fire or sitting with neighbors.

The relationship creates space for something deeper.

Wives Can Encourage Without Shaming

George also addressed the difficult situation of a wife who desires a stronger spiritual life for her husband.

There is a role for women in encouraging men toward faith and brotherhood, he said, but the approach matters.

“When a wife is wanting her husband to really come around to the faith, a lot of times in her own hurt or frustration, she can really be accusatory or shaming her husband,” George said.

Statements such as “You’re not a spiritual leader” may contain a real concern, but George said they can produce the opposite result.

“What that does is it rejects the man and the man pushes further and further away,” he said.

Instead, he encourages wives to pray and encourage.

“Just be someone who is an encourager for them,” George said.

Encourage him to attend church. Encourage him to try a retreat. Encourage him to join a men’s group.

“Don’t shame them or accuse them or reject them,” George said. “When you leave the door open, I think eventually it just really opens the man’s heart.”

A Husband’s First Mission Field

For married men, George said the first responsibility after loving God is not career, ministry or even children.

It is their wife.

“Your first priority and vocation is to your wife — to love her,” George said.

He encouraged men to lean intentionally into that relationship.

“The more that you can lean into that and love your wife unconditionally, the more that her heart softens,” George said.

He described a wife’s desire as being seen, loved and known.

“When that begins to happen by the love of her husband, she begins to receive her husband in a way that she’s never received him before and then therefore encourages him to be fully who he is.”

Men can easily get the priorities backward.

“I’m going to love my kids, my work. I’m going to provide,” George said.

But children eventually leave home.

“One day your kids are all going to be gone out of the house and you two are going to be staring at each other,” he said.

That reality makes the marriage itself essential.

“At the end of our life I think what we’ll be remembered for the most is how we love the people in our home,” George said. “How we sacrificed and loved those people first.”

Career achievements eventually fade.

“We’re so replaceable,” George said.

Then he made the distinction.

“Where we’re not replaceable is in the family.”

There Is No Retirement From Purpose

George believes that message is especially urgent for older men.

Retirement can create a dangerous vacuum when a man’s identity has been built primarily around his work.

“One of the saddest things that I come across are men who are close to retirement age or in retirement who have no purpose,” George said.

His message to them is simple.

“You have purpose until your last breath.”

Decades of experience are not meant to disappear when a career ends.

“How is the Lord asking you to use your life, all your wisdom of your whole life, to give back to the world until you have nothing left?” George asked.

That could mean serving a parish, mentoring younger men, joining a men’s group or finding another way to give.

“There’s so much to be done in the world,” he said.

A Christian man, George said, does not expire when his professional usefulness ends.

His vocation continues.

Take the Leap

Near the end of the conversation, George returned to the basic message behind Holy Grit.

Men do not need to have everything figured out before moving closer to Christ.

They need to move.

“Just take the leap into your faith,” George said. “God’s got great plans for you.”

The path will require patience.

It will include suffering.

It will demand relationships, sacrifice and courage.

It may force a man to confront the places where he feels inadequate and the failures he would rather forget.

But for George, that is precisely where holy grit begins.

God does not ask men to abandon the strength, courage, competitiveness or desire for purpose he placed within them.

He asks them to surrender those things to Christ and allow them to be transformed.

Holiness and grit were never meant to be enemies.

They were meant to become one life.

Faith on the Open Road

Where does one begin when reflecting on a week and a half of riding (so far), prayer, brotherhood, and the breathtaking beauty of God’s creation?

An Unexpected Beginning

Our journey began with an unexpected delay. Bishop Scott was awakened at 4:00 a.m. with news that the Canadian Armed Forces had issued a document directing chaplains and military personnel to take a secular humanist approach in public-event reflections, excluding references to God. The bishop spent the morning working with his counterparts across Canada to discern an appropriate response, and we eventually departed about three hours later than planned.

That delay, however, became part of God’s providence. Later that day, we stopped at the cabin of one of our board members. There, together with his family, we celebrated Mass and shared the Eucharist. They then welcomed us to lunch. It was a beautiful gift—and a powerful reminder that the road is made richer by the people God places along it.

The Mass Gave Meaning to Every Mile

As we continued along the road less travelled, winding through beautiful landscapes, we celebrated daily Mass. Day after day, the responses became more unified. Even with my singing, our voices began to sound like a genuine offering of worship to our holy God. The Mass gave shape and meaning to every mile.

We spent two nights at a vineyard, where we were reunited with a man I had met at the Kelowna men’s conference. He had hoped that his son would be with him at the conference, but illness had prevented him from attending. It was a blessing to spend time with them again and to celebrate Mass at their vineyard.

A Rooster Crowed During Mass

There, the words of the liturgy seemed to come alive with the words fruit of the earth and work of human hands was present right before us. As Mass was being celebrated, a rooster crowed in the distance. I could not help but think of Peter—and of the many times I have denied or failed Jesus. Yet Christ continues to come to me, offering Himself even though I am unworthy to have Him enter under my roof.

Through Smoke, Mountains, and 99 Miles of Curves

Our ride continued through some of the most spectacular scenery imaginable. We passed through winding roads and wine country, making our way toward Hope, British Columbia, where First Blood, the original Rambo film, was shot. Although we were able to avoid the fires, smoke surrounded us for much of the journey.

We then travelled through the Cascade Mountains of Washington, along some of the most beautiful roads a rider could experience, before arriving at Palouse Falls. A recent fire had passed through the area, leaving behind a landscape that looked almost post-apocalyptic. The following day, we rode the Lolo Pass, with more than 99 miles of curves and some of the most extraordinary scenery on the road.

You Never Know What’s Around the Next Bend

All those curves and corners brought a deeper reflection on life. We never know what is waiting around the next bend. The road can change quickly, and the future is often hidden from view. Yet riding with brothers who have your back gives new meaning to the promise: no man left behind.

If one rider has a problem, the entire group has a problem. He is not left alone. The same must be true in the journey of faith. Every man needs brothers who will stand with him, support him, pray for him, and help him keep moving forward.

RECOMMENDED READING

FEATURE

The Gift of Genuine Brotherhood

The trip included slow traffic, construction, delays, gravel roads, and unexpected challenges. But every delay was easier because we were travelling with men who cared for one another and watched over one another. That is the gift of genuine brotherhood.

Carrying Your Prayers Across the Mountains

One of the great highlights of this journey has been carrying your prayer intentions with us. We have also gathered new intentions along the way by speaking with waitresses, fellow travellers, and the people we meet, praying for all those affected by fires; evacuees and those facing loss of home and means to make a living. When given the opportunity, people are eager to share what they would like us to bring before God.

Each day, we offer these intentions at Mass. It is a powerful experience to know that your prayers are being carried across the highways and mountain passes and placed before the Lord at the altar. We have also been praying rosaries and the St Joseph, Terror of Demons - DECEM Novena, asking his protection and intercession for all these intentions.

Keep Your Eyes on Jesus

Recently, two Scripture passages have accompanied our journey. One reminds us that faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains. The other recounts Peter stepping out of the boat to walk toward Jesus—and then beginning to sink when he took his eyes off the Lord.

These readings speak directly to the road of life. We do not know what lies around the next corner. We cannot control every delay, danger, or unexpected turn. But we can choose where we place our trust.

Have faith that the Lord loves you, protects you, and watches over you. And have faith in the strength that comes from travelling with brothers who are committed to walking—and riding—the journey with you.

The Heroic Men Pledge

That is why we invite every man to take the Heroic Men pledge:

Every day, I will pray to draw closer to God and lift up three men by name.

Every week, I will connect with one man.

Every month, I will invite one man to join me in this pledge.

This is how brotherhood grows. This is how men are strengthened. This is how no man is left behind.

Trust Him Around Every Corner

As we continue down life’s winding road, may we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, trust Him around every corner, and remain faithful to the brothers He has placed beside us.

Prayer Request on Motorcycle Ride

From July 30 to August 18, a segment of our team will traverse thousands of miles on motorcycles through Western Canada and the western United States. We would be grateful to carry your prayer intentions with us.

Please send us your requests, and we will lift them in daily Mass with Bishop Scott McCaig and Fr. Mariusz, praying rosaries as we ride along the open road.

Share my prayer request

SPECIAL SPONSOR

FROM HEROIC MEN

Take the pledge | Learn more

Visit MyForge.org

Men once lined up for the chance to cross Antarctica under conditions that promised danger, miserable pay and an uncertain return.

Today, many men struggle to get out of bed without reaching for a phone.

Sam Halligan believes the contrast reveals something important about the modern man. Men still hunger for adventure, responsibility and sacrifice. Yet few hear a compelling invitation to spend their lives on something difficult and meaningful.

“People have to decide: What am I going to give my life to? What am I giving my time to?” Halligan said.

Halligan, who works with Forge in Des Moines, Iowa, joined Dominic of Heroic Men for a conversation about masculine leadership, spiritual struggle and the stories that call men into action.

He began with an explorer trapped at the bottom of the world.

Shackleton and the burden of leadership

Halligan has been reading “Endurance,” the account of British explorer Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition.

Shackleton assembled a crew of roughly 25 men for a dangerous journey during the early 20th century. According to a famous recruitment story, his newspaper advertisement warned applicants about low wages, bitter cold and a doubtful return. Men still crowded around the block for the opportunity.

The expedition soon became a fight for survival. Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, became trapped in pack ice. The crew spent months stranded hundreds of miles from inhabited land.

Halligan sees Shackleton’s ordeal as a lesson in masculine leadership.

“To be a leader can be very, very difficult,” he said. A leader must “paint a vision” and hold it through “highs and lows and hills and valleys.”

When Shackleton realized the ship could no longer save them, he ordered his men to abandon nearly everything. Each extra possession would become a burden during the journey ahead.

Shackleton led by example. He discarded valuable personal items and kept only a few essentials. His men followed.

“How much of that is the call to us as Christian men?” Halligan asked. “We’ve got to cut the dead weight out of our life.”

The lesson reaches beyond physical possessions. Habits, distractions and private compromises can consume the strength a man needs for his actual responsibilities.

“There are things in our life that are going to weigh us down,” Halligan said. “Those things have to go.”

Men need a story large enough to enter

Heroic Men defines heroism as stepping beyond personal needs to serve someone else.

That service can take a practical form: daily prayer, weekly contact with a brother and a monthly invitation for another man to enter the same commitment. These small actions turn heroism from a distant ideal into a repeatable way of living.

Dominic asked Halligan what behaviors could help ordinary men recover greater boldness at home, at work and in their parishes.

Halligan began with sacrifice.

“A man who is living fully alive, there has got to be a deep commitment to sacrifice,” he said.

Halligan first encountered that choice during his senior year at Benedictine College. He could spread his remaining courses across three semesters, or take 23 credits in the fall and 21 in the spring to graduate on time.

He chose the heavier course load.

“I want to do a hard thing right now,” he remembered thinking. “I want to engage in suffering and I want to engage in sacrifice because I believe that this is actually integral to my heart as a man.”

That choice became a reference point during later trials: marriage, fatherhood and growing professional responsibilities.

“Because of that moment, there is a ripple that occurred throughout my life,” he said. “I’m willing to choose the hard thing, choose the sacrificial thing.”

Sacrifice, Halligan said, is more than a temporary exercise during Lent or a burst of enthusiasm in January. It is “a physical, mental, emotional, spiritual act of self-gift to another person.”

It requires a man to give beyond his baseline.

Are churches asking enough of men?

Halligan believes the wider culture often treats masculine strength as a problem. He also believes many churches fail to give men a demanding alternative.

“We don’t ask enough of men,” he said.

Men frequently attend Mass, hear announcements requesting volunteers and leave without understanding the larger mission of their lives.

“Most men in the pews of a church sometimes look more like a corpse,” Halligan said. “They look like they don’t want to be there.”

The deeper problem may be boredom.

“Men are bored,” he said. “This is why people watch like two hours of TV a day, or people’s screen time is literally like seven hours a day on their phones.”

A fish fry, committee assignment or parish fundraiser can accomplish real good. Yet these activities rarely tell a man why his strength, initiative and courage matter.

Dominic argued that men need a better story. They need to understand their parish and community as a mission field filled with families to protect, friendships to rebuild and problems to solve.

Halligan agreed.

“We have to understand life through the lens of mission, like the lens of adventure,” he said.

A man who reaches one struggling brother may also affect that man’s wife, children, relatives and friends.

“One man’s life touches so many others,” Halligan said, recalling the central lesson of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” “The gravity of your life has an eternal impact.”

Leaving the life he helped build

Halligan’s own sense of mission faced a severe test during the past year.

He and his wife had spent about a decade away from their families in Iowa. They had three children, with a fourth expected, and Halligan felt an increasing desire to raise them closer to their grandparents.

Yet leaving Ohio meant walking away from Damascus, a Catholic ministry he had helped build over 10 years. He had strong friendships, a stable leadership role and a community centered on prayer and the sacraments.

“On the surface, it was like, why would you leave this?” he said.

Halligan wrestled with the decision for months. He experienced guilt, doubt and periods he described as almost depressive. During a fundraising trip to Des Moines, someone introduced him to John Bishop, the founder of Forge.

That meeting eventually opened a path home. Halligan and his family moved to Des Moines in February, where he began serving men through Forge.

The outcome gave him a new view of the pain that preceded it.

“Our suffering is never unto nothing,” he said. “When we suffer, when there’s moments of hardship or moments of trials, these things come into our life for a purpose.”

Asked what he would change about that season, Halligan said he would resist wishing it away.

“When you’re in suffering, one of the most common human experiences is the avoidance of pain,” he said. “I would really love to not wish the particular spiritual moment away.”

No man wrestles with God and walks the same

Halligan compared spiritual struggle to Jacob wrestling with the angel. Jacob refused to release him without receiving a blessing. He received one, along with a wounded hip that changed his walk.

“No one can wrestle with God so intimately and walk the same way again,” Halligan said. “We have to look different. We have to walk different. We have to talk different. Our perspective on life has to be different.”

That struggle gives men an alternative to boredom and apathy. Their trials may represent a decisive chapter rather than a meaningless interruption.

Halligan pointed to the biblical life of David: shepherd, warrior, musician, fugitive and king. Each season ended, and another began.

“Where am I at in this story?” Halligan asked. “How do I have a great story to tell through the gift of my life?”

A man may feel defeated while living through the most important confrontation of his life.

Dominic reduced the warning to one unsettling question:

“Are you sleeping through the climax of your life and you don’t know it?”

Halligan believes the answer begins within a man’s immediate circle: himself, his wife, his children, his friends and the brothers entrusted to his care.

“I want to be a brother to you,” he said. “I want to come alongside you.”

The heroic mission may begin far from Antarctica. It may begin with a prayer, a phone call or an invitation.

But it still asks a man to leave something behind, enter the fight and spend his life for someone else.

Become a Donor - Get this Magazine

Letter from the Editor
Dominic de Souza

Ever heard of a firebreak? Wilderness specialists will strategically strip trees, grass, and plants down to rubble and earth, to stop wildfires from spreading.

The men are turning their lives into a firebreak, and it’s the incredible to see. Many are born into relentless heartbreak where addiction and loss catches like a wildfire, passing from father to son in an unbroken line of pain.

But many of these men are breaking out. They join a men’s group, find friends, start the hard work of turning their actual life into a firebreak, so that they have a real chance. So the future has a chance.

Read this issue free in the app

That’s why this issue of THE HEROIC MAN doesn’t pull any punches.

From a recap of our recent ‘Future of Catholic Men’ convocation, to conversations with former NFL players and special speakers, we’re trying to understand how all men seek heroism.

The men at the recent convocation come from all across our nation. They believe that men must get off the sidelines in their own lives, and get to work.

The only thing we good men cannot do... is nothing.

What kind of brotherhood will we build for our own sake, a shieldwall we can call on any time when we can barely stand?

How will we strengthen our wives and newborns, our grandchildren and their dreams, our parish and our Church? It’s up to us to build a brotherhood our families can count on.

We’re on a seven year countdown to the anniversary of the Resurrection of Christ. What an incredible time to be alive. If life has cut you off at the knees, now is the time to start again. Who will we be? What will we do? Who will we inspire? How will we help?

As a ministry, Heroic Men is stepping up to marshall a million men. A million men who pledge to pray together, strengthen brothers together, and invite new men together into brotherhood.

It starts with you and me. It starts now. Help us figure it out, and lets build it together.

Order your copy

Long before John Edwards became an author, podcast host and Catholic ministry leader, he was a lonely young man searching for a place to belong.

Born and raised in Memphis, Edwards grew up Baptist and spent much of his childhood at church. It was where his friends were, where he found community and where he felt at home.

“I was there every day the church was open,” Edwards said during an appearance on Men Answering the Heroic Call. “That’s where my friends were, and that’s where I found community.”

That need for community would become one of the defining themes of his life and later his book, Power Made Perfect.

“We were made for community from the very beginning—with God, with the Holy Trinity and with each other,” he said. “A lot of men, like you’re going to hear me share here, search for that somewhere else. And that comes across as power.”

Edwards attended an Episcopal school, where he said his open Christian faith often left him feeling different from his classmates.

“I talked about Jesus a lot, which you think would be pretty OK in a Christian school,” he said. “But I was really looked at as a nerd and a dork.”

Church remained his refuge until he turned 18.

As his friends left Memphis to attend universities across the South, Edwards stayed behind and enrolled at the University of Memphis. His church offered programs for children and older adults, he said, but little for young men entering adulthood.

“There was basically diapers to 18 and then a void until my parents’ or grandparents’ ages,” Edwards said. “There was nothing for young adults.”

He began pulling away from church.

Soon, he found himself walking across a crowded college campus surrounded by thousands of people but knowing almost no one.

“It was the loneliest I ever felt in my life,” he said.

The Wound Behind the Search

Edwards was also carrying what he now describes as deep father wounds.

His father worked for Genuine Parts Co., known as NAPA Auto Parts, for 45 years. Edwards described him as a hardworking man who had grown up as the youngest of six children on a farm, in a home where affection was rarely expressed.

“There weren’t a lot of ‘I love you’ and ‘I’m proud of you’ in his household,” Edwards said. “So he couldn’t give what he didn’t have.”

What Edwards wanted most was his father’s approval.

“Those were the things I yearned for—my father’s approval and my father’s love,” he said.

Instead, the message he received was that a man should work hard, never complain and handle life alone.

“It was sort of that whole: A man doesn’t need it. Put your head down, work hard, never complain, make your own way, be a one-man army,” Edwards said.

He now believes that wound fed a question he says follows many men throughout their lives: “Am I enough?”

“Am I a good enough father, husband, brother, son, employee, son of God—whatever it is?” he said. “If those questions aren’t answered by the people in our life, especially our earthly father, then we can struggle.”

For Edwards, the hunger for affirmation eventually led him toward a fraternity.

A friend from church who was already involved in fraternity life encouraged him to join. Edwards saw a chance to find the community he had lost.

The day he entered the fraternity, he said, was the last day he attended church for years.

“I wanted community again,” he said. “I wanted to belong. I wanted to be liked.”

One Decision Begins a 17-Year Spiral

Edwards began studying the fraternity members who appeared popular and admired.

“I thought, ‘Well, I want to be in that group. I’ll do what they did,’” he said.

That meant drinking, promiscuity and eventually drugs.

He began taking pills from medicine cabinets, including Adderall, Xanax and Valium. Then came marijuana, LSD and ecstasy.

One Sunday afternoon, while drinking and watching football at a fraternity house, Edwards walked into a back bedroom and found several men leaning over lines of cocaine.

He immediately turned away.

One of the men followed him and said they had hidden the cocaine because they did not know him well enough to trust him. But now that Edwards had seen it, the man suggested it could help sober him up enough to drive home.

Edwards knew he should leave.

“I knew that I should walk away,” he said. “I knew that I should shut that door and not turn back around.”

But he was lonely.

“I wanted real friends,” Edwards said. “I didn’t want to be alone. As an extrovert, that was the most painful thing to me in my life—to be without relationship.”

He went back into the room and took a line.

“I immediately regretted it,” he said.

He sat on a couch for about 45 minutes, his heart and mind racing, feeling paranoid and wishing he had never touched the drug.

On the way home, he made vows that he would never do it again.

“Very quickly, those vows fell one by one,” Edwards said. “My need for community and communion and friendship, and to be liked and wanted and affirmed, won out.”

The decision began a downward spiral that would last 17 years.

Shame Drives Him Farther From God

Edwards said he did not leave church simply because drugs became more appealing.

He also left because he was ashamed.

“I knew that I was living differently than what my life had always been about,” he said.

Because Edwards had experienced his earthly father as someone who expected perfection and punished failure, he projected that same image onto God.

“I transposed my view of my earthly father onto God the Father,” he said. “I thought, whether I vocalized it or not, ‘He can’t forgive me. My mistakes are too big. There’s no way that he can ever love me.’”

Edwards began to hide.

“Just like Adam and Eve, when they bite of the apple and sin and shame and death come into the world, what do they do?” he said. “They cover up. They sew fig leaves and they hide from God. That’s certainly what I did and what many men do.”

That isolation, he said, is precisely where temptation becomes most dangerous.

“A man’s easier to pick off when he’s by himself,” Edwards said. “If the devil can fill a man full of shame and disgust and unholy self-reliance, then we find ourselves away from God, which is exactly where the devil wants us.”

A Chameleon Behind the Mask

Even as his addiction intensified, Edwards continued working.

He had begun loading trucks and stocking parts at NAPA when he was 16. After dropping out of college, he realized he needed to keep earning money, both to support himself and to fund his habits.

Edwards described himself as “a chameleon among men,” able to adapt to almost any social environment.

“I was a really good sales guy,” he said. “No matter what type of person or background, I could always make friends very easily and fit in.”

As his drug use increased, he trained himself to function on three or four hours of sleep.

Going to work became like flipping a switch.

“Now’s the time to put everything else aside, go to work, handle my business,” he recalled telling himself. “I can’t let people find out.”

He built walls around his life and showed people only what he wanted them to see.

“I just was really good at showing people what I wanted them to see,” Edwards said. “I knew I had to keep the money coming in because if I didn’t, I couldn’t keep up my habits and the lifestyle that I had.”

Professionally, he thrived. He became the No. 1 sales representative in the country for a Fortune 250 company.

He had money, status and admiration.

“I had everything the world tells a man he should have,” he said. “Adoration, admiration, money, power, fame, fortune—all that kind of stuff.”

But it was not enough.

Marriage Could Not Change Him

During those years, Edwards often treated prayer as a transaction.

“I used Jesus like a genie in the bottle,” he said. “Whenever I got in a bad situation or wanted something, I would take that bottle off the shelf, blow the dust off it, rub it and say, ‘Jesus, this is what I want.’”

He was lonely and addicted to pornography, alcohol and drugs. He believed a girlfriend might finally give him a reason to change.

Then he reconnected with Angela, a woman he had known in school.

They began dating, and she told him plainly: “The man I’m going to marry is going to be Catholic.”

Edwards agreed to become Catholic, but he said his initial motivation was not spiritual conversion.

“I thought I was the man for the job,” he said. “I signed right up but never took it seriously. I just wanted to marry her.”

He assumed marriage itself would make him mature.

“I kind of always thought that life would just automatically make me mature,” he said. “Now I have a real excuse to stop this kind of life and put this behind me.”

It did not.

“I was doing cocaine till 7 in the morning the night before I got married,” Edwards said.

When Angela became pregnant with their son, Jacob, Edwards again believed fatherhood would force him to stop.

“I always wanted to be a father,” he said. “I’m going to be a better father and a more present father than my dad was to me growing up. And I’m going to have to change now.”

He did not.

The same hope returned when his identical twin daughters, Caitlyn and Allison, were born.

Again, he did not change.

Edwards concealed the severity of his addiction by using only enough cocaine around Angela to prevent withdrawal symptoms, while avoiding the amount that would cause obvious physical signs.

“I kept that secret from her,” he said.

Grief, Anger and a Distorted Image of God

After the birth of Edwards’ son, his mother became seriously ill and died.

Her death sent him into what he described as a tailspin.

His mother had given him much of the affection and affirmation he felt he had not received from his father. Watching her suffer was devastating.

“She was my double portion because I lacked what I was looking for in my father,” Edwards said.

He became angry with God.

“This woman has worshiped you. She served you. She loved you. She put everybody else first in her life,” he recalled thinking. “But you’re going to take her life, and here I am—this lying, scumbag, drug-addict loser that nobody really knows the truth about—and you’re going to let me live while she dies.”

He told God that if this was who God was, he would never worship him again.

Edwards’ addiction deepened as he buried his grief in alcohol and drugs.

He also began to identify himself completely with his failures.

He compared his experience to Simon Peter’s reaction to Christ in the Gospel account of the miraculous catch of fish.

“Simon comes out of the boat and says, ‘Get away from me, Lord. I am a sinful man,’” Edwards said. “He doesn’t say, ‘Get away from me, Lord. I’m Simon, and I’m a sinful man.’ This had become my identity.”

That, Edwards said, is one of the enemy’s most destructive lies.

“He wants to convince us that we are nothing more than our greatest sin, that we are nothing more than our worst day,” he said. “The book of our life has already been written, and there’s nothing we can do about it. God can’t forgive us, and he won’t love someone like us.”

Holy Thursday: Nowhere Left to Run

By 2016, Edwards had been given repeated chances to change.

Then, on Holy Thursday, he was arrested while picking up drugs.

He was placed in a jail cell with nowhere left to go.

“I was on the verge of losing everything in my life—my wife, my kids, my family, my reputation, my power, my prestige, my money,” Edwards said. “Everything was going to go away. Everybody was going to know.”

For years, he had carefully constructed masks and facades.

In the cell, they collapsed.

“At least now I don’t have to lie anymore,” Edwards remembered thinking. “At least now everybody will know who I really am.”

He asked himself how his life had reached that point.

The answer came clearly.

“John, it was the day you walked away from me.”

Edwards said he did not see an apparition or a physical figure standing in the cell, but he felt the unmistakable presence of Christ.

“I realized how much I’d relied on myself, how much of a false notion control was,” he said.

For the first time in years, he prayed honestly.

He begged for forgiveness and for another chance to become the husband and father his family deserved.

“In the moment, it wasn’t so much about me,” he said. “It was about what my wife and kids deserved that they never had.”

He asked God to return him to his family. If that was not God’s will, he prayed that God would give them someone better.

Minutes earlier, Edwards had been looking for a way to end his life inside the cell.

“Thanks be to God and praise be to Jesus Christ, I couldn’t find anything,” he said.

Then he stopped fighting.

“I give up,” Edwards prayed. “I don’t want to be in control anymore.”

He followed it with what he now calls the two most powerful words he has ever spoken:

“I surrender.”

“In turns out, I did die that day,” Edwards said. “The Lord led me into a different life. He led me out of that jail cell and into a life that I couldn’t imagine possible.”

Vulnerability as the Beginning of Power

Edwards’ book, Power Made Perfect, takes its title from the Christian understanding that strength is found not in control, image or self-reliance, but in allowing God to enter human weakness.

The book includes reflection questions designed to push readers beyond Edwards’ testimony and into their own stories.

One asks: What are you hiding from others in your life that you need to surrender to God?

Edwards believes that question resonates because many men are exhausted from hiding.

“Men want freedom,” he said. “We’ve been told to put your head down, work hard, never complain, never have feelings, never have emotions. Do it yourself.”

Older generations may be tempted to imitate John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, he said, while younger men may imagine themselves as John Wick—needing nobody and nothing.

“Men buy into that, and they find themselves isolated and alone,” Edwards said. “They hide things because you’re not a man if you can’t handle it.”

When men cannot handle what life throws at them, he said, they often refuse to admit it.

“We shove it down, and then we try to numb the pain,” he said. “This is why we have such a problem of self-medication today.”

Men devote enormous energy to stopping others from discovering who they really are.

“You’re trying to block people from getting in and seeing the real you because you’re afraid that they’d be disappointed,” Edwards said. “They wouldn’t love you. They wouldn’t like you.”

But brokenness, he argues, does not separate men from one another.

“Our brokenness is not a barrier,” he said. “It’s a bridge. It’s what unites us.”

“God So Loved Everybody Else but Me”

Edwards said even committed and well-formed Christian men carry wounds, sins and fears they are reluctant to reveal.

“I don’t care if you dress like G.K. Chesterton and can quote C.S. Lewis with the best of them,” he said. “We all have something.”

Many men read John 3:16 as though God’s love applies universally but not personally.

“Instead of reading it the way it’s written, we read, ‘For God so loved everybody else but me that he gave his only begotten Son,’” Edwards said.

The result is exhaustion.

“You get sick and tired of being sick and tired—hiding things and believing you’re the only one that struggles,” he said.

That is why brotherhood groups and honest reflection are essential, Edwards said. They help men recognize the places where they have been avoiding God.

He compared the pattern to Lent.

When someone asks what a man plans to give up, the first thing that enters his mind is often the very thing God wants him to confront.

“You know drinking is a problem in your life,” Edwards said. “You know pornography is a problem. You know you’re angry and yelling at your wife and kids, and you need to figure out why.”

But instead of facing it, he said, men often choose a smaller sacrifice.

“We whistle past the graveyard and act like we don’t see it,” he said. “We go, ‘I’m going to give up chocolate.’”

The Father Who Welcomes His Sons Home

Edwards said men frequently hide because they expect God to react with disgust.

But God already knew every person’s failures before calling that person into existence, he said.

To illustrate the point, Edwards told the story of his son bringing home the family car with a scratch along its side.

His son claimed not to know how it happened.

Edwards was disappointed, but he did not reject him.

“Did I kick him out of the house?” Edwards asked. “Did I say, ‘I’m disgusted with you. I hate you. Pack your bags and fend for yourself. I never want to see you again’?”

Instead, the two sat down and talked.

“I told him I loved him, that cars could be fixed and replaced, and I was glad he wasn’t hurt,” Edwards said. “And I welcomed him back into the home.”

That is the image of fatherhood Edwards now wants men to recognize in God.

“We’ve got to clear this notion and these lies of the enemy out of our mind that God is nothing but a cosmic police officer waiting for all of us to die so he can punish us and send us to hell,” he said.

Fighting the Battles of the Heart

Edwards resisted writing his book for nearly a decade because he did not want the story to focus only on him.

“I wanted it to be about Jesus,” he said. “My story could be an example, but we see that it’s all of our story.”

The reflection questions in the book ask readers to examine their own masks, wounds and hiding places.

“Where am I not being honest with God?” Edwards said. “Where am I hiding and putting on fig leaves? And where does God want to enter in to heal me, restore me and help me become the man he’s called me to be?”

Healing, he said, is not a single moment but an ongoing process.

“We are all an onion,” Edwards said. “Healing and restoration is a process of peeling an onion. We’re going to have layer after layer after layer until we stand before Jesus and he says, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’”

True masculinity, Edwards argues, begins when a man stops pretending.

“I’m not going to run. I’m not going to hide. I’m not going to pretend,” he said. “I’m going to be man enough to let God come into my heart and start there.”

Men often want to fight external battles, he said, while avoiding the ones within.

“I’m not just going to go out there and whack stuff with a broadsword and fight battles until I’ve fought the battles of my own heart,” Edwards said.

When a man finally allows God into those hidden places, Edwards said, he will not encounter the heavy hand he fears.

“You’re going to find a divine physician,” he said. “You’re going to find a loving Father and a loving brother and Lord in Christ who wants to bring you into who you were created to be.”

For Edwards, that transformation began not in a place of influence, success or control, but alone in a jail cell on Holy Thursday.

It began when everything he had built fell apart.

It began when he finally surrendered.

Written by Dylan Johnson, Tehachapi’s COR Men, Ministry to Men

The Enemy is the Enemy

I was recently listening to historian Darryl Cooper’s Martyr Made podcast, Episode 24, Enemy, Prologue: Enemies of All Mankind, when he made an observation that stopped me in my tracks. He suggested that in our modern secular world, Adolf Hitler has, in many ways, become the symbolic embodiment of evil, replacing the devil in our cultural imagination. Whether or not one agrees with every aspect of his analysis, it forced me to wrestle with a deeper question:

Have we forgotten who our real enemy is?

As Catholic men, we should know the answer.

Saint Paul reminds us that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood…against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

This is not poetic language. It is a sober description of reality.

The Battle We Often Miss

Yet many of us live as though our enemies are merely external: political opponents, cultural trends, difficult coworkers, or even members of our own families. We spend our energy reacting to visible conflicts while neglecting the invisible battle that underlies them all.

If we misunderstand the nature of the enemy, we will inevitably misunderstand the nature of leadership.

A man who believes his primary task is to defeat other people will become combative, defensive, and ultimately isolated. But a man who understands that the true enemy is sin, and the one who tempts us toward it, will approach leadership very differently. He will recognize that his first responsibility is not to conquer others, but to master himself.

RECOMMENDED READING

FEATURE

Leadership Begins with Discipleship

This is where the formation of men must begin.

We cannot raise leaders if we are not first raising disciples. And we cannot raise disciples if we are not teaching men how to fight the right battle.

The Church has always been clear about this. The spiritual life is not passive. It is a struggle. It requires vigilance, discipline, and grace. It requires men who are willing to stand firm in the truth, even when it is uncomfortable or costly.

But too often, we avoid this language. We speak about growth, success, and influence, but we hesitate to speak about sin, temptation, and the devil. In doing so, we unintentionally disarm the very men we are trying to form.

A man who does not believe he is in a battle will not prepare for one, and a man who is unprepared will not lead well when the battle inevitably comes.

So What Does the Right Battle Look Like?

So what does it look like to form men who understand that the enemy is the enemy?

It begins by teaching men to take responsibility for their own souls. Leadership starts with interior discipline: prayer, examination of conscience, frequent Confession, and a commitment to remain in a state of grace. A man who cannot govern himself cannot hope to guide others.

It continues by rooting men in the truth. The lies of the enemy are subtle and persistent. Without Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, men are easily carried away by the shifting narratives of the world.

It requires courage, not the courage to hate our enemies, but the courage to love them while resisting the evil that seeks to enslave every human heart.

The Victory Has Already Been Won

Finally, it points every man to Jesus Christ.

Christ is not merely our example. He is the victorious King who has conquered sin and death. Every authentic Christian leader first learns to follow Him.

If we want to raise men who lead with courage, humility, and faith, in our homes, our parishes, and our communities, we must first raise men who know who their enemy is.

Because until a man understands the battle he is in, he will never become the leader God is calling him to be.

By: Dylan Johnson

Tehachapi’s COR Men, Ministry to Men
Grand Knight, Council #7821|
Saint Malachy Catholic Church
Tehachapi, California

Prayer Request on Motorcycle Ride

From July 30 to August 18, a segment of our team will traverse thousands of miles on motorcycles through Western Canada and the western United States. We would be grateful to carry your prayer intentions with us.

Please send us your requests, and we will lift them in daily Mass with Bishop Scott McCaig and Fr. Mariusz, praying rosaries as we ride along the open road.

Share my prayer request

SPECIAL SPONSOR

FROM HEROIC MEN

Take the pledge | Learn more

John Edwards never expected to become an author, podcast host or Catholic ministry leader.

For much of his early life, he assumed he would sell auto parts until retirement, following a path similar to his father, who worked for Genuine Parts Company, known as NAPA Auto Parts, for 45 years.

“I never thought that would happen,” Edwards said of writing his book, Power Made Perfect. “I actually thought I would sell auto parts my entire life and retire from that.”

Born and raised in Memphis, Edwards grew up Baptist. His parents had been middle school sweethearts in Mississippi before moving to the city for work. His father had been a star basketball player. His mother had been a prom queen.

Church became the center of Edwards’ childhood.

“I was there every day the church was open,” he said. “That’s where my friends were, and that’s where I found community.”

That search for community would later become one of the central themes of his life and ministry.

“We were made for community from the very beginning—with God, with the Holy Trinity and with each other,” Edwards said. “Through the fall, we lost that communion. We lost that relationship with God. A lot of men search for that somewhere else, and that comes across as power.”

Edwards attended an Episcopal school but struggled socially. He spoke openly about Jesus and did not participate in many of the activities that made other boys popular.

“I was really looked at as a nerd and a dork,” he said. “I wasn’t doing the skateboarding and smoking cigarettes and all the other stuff that a lot of guys were doing.”

At church, however, he felt at home.

That changed when he turned 18.

The Community Disappeared

As Edwards’ friends left Memphis to attend universities across the South, he remained home and enrolled at the University of Memphis.

His Baptist church had programs for children and families, but little for young adults.

“There was basically diapers to 18 and then a void until my parents’ or grandparents’ ages,” he said. “There was nothing for young adults.”

Edwards began attending only Sunday services. Eventually, he stopped going altogether.

At the university, he found himself surrounded by thousands of people but knowing almost no one.

“It was the loneliest I ever felt in my life,” he said. “I was going to work and school and work and school.”

Edwards was also carrying wounds he did not yet understand.

He wanted affirmation from his father, but his father had grown up as the youngest of six children on a farm where affection was rarely expressed.

“There weren’t a lot of ‘I love you’ and ‘I’m proud of you’ in his household,” Edwards said. “He couldn’t give what he didn’t have.”

His father’s message was straightforward: Work hard, do not complain and make your own way.

“It was sort of that whole, ‘A man doesn’t need it. Put your head down, work hard, never complain, make your own way, be a one-man army,’” Edwards said.

Edwards now describes inadequacy as one of the deepest wounds experienced by men.

“There’s a question that every man asks himself constantly in his life: ‘Am I enough?’” he said. “Am I a good enough father, husband, brother, son, employee or son of God?”

Without an answer to that question, Edwards continued searching for acceptance.

Fraternity Life Offered a New Family

A friend encouraged Edwards to join a fraternity. The friend was older, attended Edwards’ Baptist church and had previously helped him feel accepted at school.

Edwards believed the fraternity might give him the community he had lost.

The day he joined was also the last day he attended church for years.

“I wanted community again,” Edwards said. “I wanted to belong. I wanted to be liked.”

He studied the most admired men in the fraternity and began copying their behavior.

“That was promiscuity. That was drinking and binge drinking and doing drugs,” he said.

The drug use escalated from prescription pills to marijuana, LSD and ecstasy.

Then, one Sunday afternoon, Edwards encountered cocaine.

He had spent the day drinking and watching football at a fraternity house. When he stood to leave, he realized he was too intoxicated to drive. While searching for someone to take him home, he heard voices coming from a back bedroom.

Inside, several men were leaning over lines of cocaine.

Edwards closed the door and began walking away.

One of the men followed him.

“He said, ‘We hid this from you because we couldn’t trust you. We didn’t know you well enough yet, but you’ve seen it now,’” Edwards recalled.

The man told Edwards that cocaine would sober him up, comparing it to drinking several cups of coffee.

Edwards knew he should leave.

“I knew that I should shut that door and not turn back around,” he said. “But again, guys, I was lonely. I was isolated. I wanted real friends. I didn’t want to be alone.”

He returned to the room and took a line.

“I immediately regretted it,” Edwards said.

He sat on a couch for about 45 minutes as his heart and mind raced. On the way home, he promised himself he would never do it again.

Those promises quickly collapsed.

“My need for community and communion and friendship—to be liked, wanted and affirmed—won out,” he said.

The decision began a downward spiral that continued for 17 years.

Shame Drove Him Farther From God

When asked why he did not continue attending church while living another life, Edwards pointed to both a lack of community and a growing sense of shame.

“I knew that I was living differently than what my life had always been about,” he said.

Edwards believed mistakes led to punishment rather than reconciliation. He projected that understanding of his earthly father onto God.

“I thought, whether I vocalized it or not, ‘He can’t forgive me. My mistakes are too big. There’s no way he can ever love me,’” Edwards said.

Like Adam and Eve hiding after the fall, Edwards covered himself and withdrew.

“That’s certainly what I did and what many men do in their life,” he said. “It leads us to isolation and loneliness, which is exactly what the devil wants. A man is easier to pick off when he’s by himself.”

The Successful Salesman Behind the Mask

Despite his addiction, Edwards continued working.

He described himself as “a chameleon among men,” able to connect with customers and adapt to different environments.

“I was a really good sales guy,” he said. “No matter what type of person or background, I could always make friends very easily.”

At first, he limited his drug use enough to protect his job. As his addiction deepened, he learned to operate on three or four hours of sleep.

“When I went to work, it was just like flipping a switch,” Edwards said. “‘Now’s the time to put everything else aside, go to work and handle my business. I can’t let people find out.’”

He built walls, kept people at a distance and showed them only what he wanted them to see.

Edwards eventually dropped out of college but continued advancing professionally.

“I knew I had to keep the money coming in because, if I didn’t, I couldn’t keep up my habits and the lifestyle that I had,” he said.

He became the top salesman in the country for a Fortune 250 company and earned the money, praise and status the world told him a man should want.

It still was not enough.

“I had adoration, admiration, money, power, fame, fortune—all that kind of stuff,” Edwards said. “But I knew I was missing something.”

Marriage Did Not Change Him

During those years, Edwards said he treated Jesus “like a genie in the bottle.”

Whenever he wanted something or faced a crisis, he prayed. He asked God to help him stop using pornography and to give him a girlfriend.

“I would start to take that bottle off the shelf, blow the dust off it, rub it and say, ‘Jesus, this is what I want,’” Edwards said.

He eventually reconnected with Angela, a woman he had known in school.

The two began dating, and Angela told Edwards that the man she married would be Catholic.

“I thought I was the man for the job,” Edwards said. “I signed right up but never took it seriously. I just wanted to marry her.”

Edwards assumed marriage would force him to mature.

“I kind of always thought life would just automatically make me mature,” he said.

It did not.

“I was doing cocaine until 7 in the morning the night before I got married,” Edwards said.

When Angela became pregnant with their son, Jacob, Edwards again assumed fatherhood would change him.

“I always wanted to be a father,” he said. “I was going to be a better father and a more present father than my dad was to me growing up.”

He continued using drugs.

When the couple later welcomed identical twin daughters, Caitlyn and Allison, Edwards again believed he would stop.

He did not.

To conceal his addiction, Edwards used enough cocaine around Angela to avoid withdrawal symptoms but not enough for her to notice the most visible effects.

“I kept that secret from her,” he said.

Grief Became Another Hiding Place

After Jacob was born, Edwards’ mother became seriously ill and died.

Her death sent him into what he described as a tailspin.

Angela saw the drinking and anger but did not see the drugs. Edwards believes his grief unintentionally became another way to conceal the addiction.

His mother had provided much of the love and affirmation he felt he lacked from his father.

“My mother was my double portion,” Edwards said.

Her suffering intensified his anger toward God.

“This woman has worshiped you. She served you. She loved you. She put everybody else first,” Edwards remembered thinking. “But you’re going to take her life, and here I am, this lying, scumbag drug addict loser that nobody really knows the truth about, and you’re going to let me live while she dies?”

Edwards decided that if this was who God was, he would never worship him again.

His shame had become more than something he experienced. It had become how he understood himself.

“Nothing More Than Our Greatest Sin”

Edwards compared his response to the moment in the Gospel when Simon Peter witnesses the miraculous catch of fish and tells Jesus to depart because he is a sinful man.

“He doesn’t say, ‘Get away from me, Lord. I’m Simon, and I’m a sinful man,’” Edwards said. “This had become his identity.”

Edwards said the same thing happens when people allow shame to define them.

“This is what the devil wants to do to all of us,” he said. “He wants to convince us that we are nothing more than our greatest sin, that we are nothing more than our worst day, that the book of our life has already been written and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Edwards continued burying his pain in drugs and alcohol.

God, he said, gave him repeated opportunities to change.

Then came Holy Thursday 2016.

The Arrest That Ended the Running

Edwards was picking up drugs when he was arrested.

He soon found himself confined to a jail cell with nowhere else to go.

He was facing the possible loss of his wife, children, reputation, career, money and status.

“All this is going to go away,” Edwards remembered thinking. “Everybody’s going to know.”

In the cell, the identity he had carefully constructed collapsed.

“I admitted defeat honestly for the first time in my life,” Edwards said. “I couldn’t handle this. There was no such thing as control. It was a false notion.”

Then came an unexpected sense of relief.

“I remember saying to myself, ‘At least now I don’t have to lie anymore. At least now everybody will know who I really am,’” he said.

The masks fell away.

Edwards asked himself how he had reached that point.

He felt God answer.

“He said, ‘John, it was the day you walked away from me,’” Edwards recalled.

Edwards began to pray.

He begged for forgiveness and asked for another opportunity to become the husband and father his family deserved.

“It wasn’t so much about me,” he said. “It was about what my wife and kids deserved that they never had.”

Edwards told God that, if another chance was not part of his will, he should give his family someone better.

Minutes earlier, Edwards had been looking for a way to end his life.

“Thanks be to God and praise be to Jesus Christ, I couldn’t find anything,” he said.

Then he gave up his attempt to control the outcome.

“The two most powerful words I’ve ever said are, ‘I surrender,’” Edwards said.

Something did die in that jail cell, he said, but it was not his physical life.

“The Lord led me into a different life,” Edwards said. “He led me out of that jail cell and into a life that I couldn’t imagine possible—the life he’s given me in ministry today.”

Vulnerability Became the Beginning of Power

That experience became the foundation of Power Made Perfect.

The book includes reflection questions designed to move readers beyond observing Edwards’ story and into confronting their own.

One asks: What are you hiding from others in your life that you need to surrender to God?

Edwards believes the question resonates because men are exhausted from hiding.

“Men want freedom,” he said.

Many men, Edwards said, have been taught to work hard, avoid emotions and solve every problem alone.

“If you’re an older man, be a John Wayne or a Clint Eastwood,” he said. “If you’re a younger man, be a John Wick and not need anybody or anything.”

That image of masculinity leaves many men isolated.

“They hide things because you’re not a man if you can’t handle it,” Edwards said. “Well, a lot of people can’t handle the things life throws at them.”

Instead of becoming vulnerable, men bury their pain and attempt to numb it.

“This is why we have such a problem with self-medication today,” he said. “It’s going to come out in one way or another.”

“Our Brokenness Is Not a Barrier”

Edwards compared the effort to conceal weakness to diverting all of a ship’s defensive power toward one direction.

“You put all power to the front because you’re trying to block people from getting in and seeing the real you,” he said. “You’re afraid they’d be disappointed. They wouldn’t love you. They wouldn’t like you.”

No level of spiritual knowledge or outward respectability eliminates human brokenness, he said.

“I don’t care if you dress like G.K. Chesterton and can quote C.S. Lewis with the best of them,” Edwards said. “We all have something.”

That shared brokenness should unite men rather than separate them.

“Our brokenness is not a barrier. It’s a bridge,” he said.

The problem begins when shame convinces a man that God’s mercy applies to everyone except him.

“We look at John 3:16, and instead of reading it the way it’s written, we read, ‘For God so loved everybody else but me,’” Edwards said.

Stop Giving Up Chocolate

Edwards said men often know exactly where God is asking them to change.

As Lent approaches, someone may ask what they plan to give up. Their minds immediately turn toward the real problem—a drinking habit, pornography, anger or the way they treat their families.

Then they choose something easier.

“We whistle past the graveyard and act like we don’t see it,” Edwards said. “We go, ‘I’m going to give up chocolate.’”

Men hide their deepest struggles because they believe God will be disgusted by them.

But God already knew every failure before calling each person into existence, Edwards said.

He compared the Father’s mercy to his response when his son brought home the family car with a scratch along the side.

Edwards did not throw his son out of the house.

“We sat down. We had a discussion,” he said. “I told him I loved him, that cars could be fixed and replaced, and I was glad he wasn’t hurt. I welcomed him back into the home.”

That, Edwards said, is how men must learn to understand God.

“We’ve got to clear this notion and these lies of the enemy out of our minds that God is nothing but a cosmic police officer waiting for all of us to die so he can punish us and send us to hell,” he said.

The Real Battle Begins in the Heart

Edwards delayed writing his book for nearly a decade because he did not want the story to center on him.

“I wanted it to be about Jesus,” he said. “My story could be an example, but we see that it’s all of our story.”

The book’s questions ask readers to examine where they are hiding, where they remain dishonest with God and where they need healing.

“Where am I putting on fig leaves?” Edwards said. “Where does God want to enter in to heal me, restore me and help me become the man he has called me to be?”

Healing, he said, is rarely immediate or complete.

“We are all an onion,” Edwards said. “Healing and restoration is a process of peeling an onion. We’re going to have layer after layer until we stand before Jesus and he says, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’”

Men must cooperate with grace rather than run from their wounds.

“This is where masculinity truly is masculinity,” Edwards said. “I’m not going to run. I’m not going to hide. I’m not going to pretend. I’m going to be man enough to let God come into my heart and start there.”

The heroic life does not begin with external displays of strength, he said. It begins by allowing God into the places a man is most afraid to reveal.

“I’m not just going to go out there and whack stuff with a broadsword and fight battles until I’ve fought the battles of my own heart,” Edwards said.

When a man finally stops hiding, Edwards said, he will not encounter rejection.

“You’re not going to find a heavy hand,” he said. “You’re going to find a divine physician. You’re going to find a loving father and a loving brother and Lord in Christ who wants to bring you into who you were created to be.”

Book Dillon Caswell

Get the Book

When Dominic asked Dillon Caswell to name a story of heroism that still lights him up, Caswell chose a man who can no longer move, breathe independently or speak with his natural voice.

Tim Green once built his life around physical power. He became a Syracuse University football legend, a first-round NFL draft pick and a defensive player for the Atlanta Falcons. He later worked as a lawyer, broadcaster and author.

ALS eventually took away his ability to move.

The disease also forced Green to rely on a ventilator and communicate through technology that tracks his eyes across a screen. He selects letters by holding his gaze on them, slowly constructing words one character at a time.

Yet Caswell said Green continues to write, raise money and serve the people around him.

“He has every reason to give up,” Caswell told Dominic during an episode of “Heroic Stories.” “But instead, he’s chosen to boast in his suffering.”

A MAN WHO WRITES WITH HIS EYES

Green wrote the foreword to Caswell’s book by selecting every letter with his eyes. He has also written three books through the same process, including a New York Times bestseller, Caswell said.

Through the Tackle ALS foundation, Green has helped raise more than $5 million for research.

Those accomplishments matter. Yet Caswell said Green’s love for his family reveals even more about the man.

“When his kids are around, the first thing he says to them is, ‘Love you,’” Caswell said. “He types out, ‘I love you.’ And then he gets into the conversation.”

Green’s condition gives him a long list of reasons to feel anger, resentment or despair. Caswell said his friend has chosen another response.

“My job is to glorify the Lord in every opportunity that I get,” Green told him.

That witness brought Caswell back to a passage from St. Paul that shaped his understanding of heroism: suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope.

“To me, that’s a hero,” Caswell said. “And I can’t think of any person in my life right now that’s more deserving than him to be called a hero.”

Dominic pressed him further.

“What is it about him that really clicked with you?” he asked. “Tell us more about your story and why someone like Tim is so heroic to you.”

The answer began years before Caswell met Green.

WHEN THE PLAN DISAPPEARED

Before becoming Catholic in 2022, Caswell had built a demanding professional life around sports and physical performance.

He worked toward a board specialization as a sports physical therapist. He treated patients, taught as a professor and worked with multiple athletic teams. He believed he was building the future he wanted.

Then COVID-19 halted much of his work.

“For the first time in my adult life, I was forced to pause,” Caswell said.

Without his packed schedule, he faced a question he had avoided.

“Lord, what am I supposed to do?” he prayed. “I haven’t asked you this yet. I’ve been doing what I think I should be doing, but I’ve never asked you what I should be doing.”

He attempted to read the Bible from beginning to end. Like many readers, he reached the early books of the Old Testament and stalled.

“I thought this was supposed to be happy,” he recalled.

Then he felt called to write, an idea he found almost absurd.

Caswell grew up with dyslexia. He attended specialized classes and struggled with sentence structure and punctuation. He entered health care partly because clinical language relies heavily on abbreviations.

“The Lord put on my heart, ‘I want you to write,’” he said.

His early reflections on language expanded into a book about hope, goals, personal agency and obedience. While working on the manuscript, Caswell continued dreaming about a career connected to professional football.

He prayed for an opportunity to work with an NFL player.

That night, a friend called. Tim Green needed help.

“I prayed for it, and it’s right here in front of me,” Caswell remembered thinking.

Their relationship showed Caswell what hope looks like when physical strength disappears.

“Physically, as he has declined, his spirit has actually gotten better,” Caswell said.

A FAMILY CRISIS AT 17

Caswell’s connection to Green’s story also grew from an earlier wound.

During the summer after his high school graduation, his mother underwent surgery for thyroid cancer. Complications left her unable to speak or move as she once had. Her cognitive abilities were also severely affected.

Caswell was 17.

Before the surgery, his mother had appeared almost indestructible. She worked nights as a nurse, came home to prepare her sons for school, managed their athletic schedules, cooked dinner and returned to work.

“My mom to me was this unbreakable woman,” he said.

After surgery, she could no longer prepare her own meal.

“To see someone you love go through that, what does that do to you?” Dominic asked. “How did you handle it? What were you thinking at the time?”

Caswell said the crisis forced him to grow up rapidly. His father was attending truck-driving school to change careers and support the family. Caswell began accompanying his mother to appointments, asking questions and helping her access care.

He had been recruited for college football and basketball. Those ambitions faded behind a more immediate responsibility.

“What was more important to me was being there for my mom,” he said.

The experience taught him “what it means to die to yourself to serve others.”

His family had lived paycheck to paycheck, but his parents trained their sons to search for joy during hardship. That habit helped Caswell ask a different question when suffering arrived.

“What is the hope in this?” he said. “Where is the perseverance? Where is the character development that we can turn this negative into a positive? And what’s the next move that we can do?”

A FATHER’S PROMISE, FULFILLED 32 YEARS LATER

Caswell also credited his father with building a foundation of discipline and service.

As a child, Caswell followed him into the garage. His father handed him scraps of wood, nails and small jobs that kept him occupied while teaching him how to care for tools and finish a task.

Years earlier, Caswell’s father had worked as a custodian at a Catholic church. He developed a relationship with a priest named Father Brown and promised that his future children would be baptized Catholic.

The baptisms never happened during their childhood.

Decades later, Caswell called his parents and told them he had entered the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults and planned to receive baptism at the Easter Vigil.

Afterward, the priest who baptized Caswell mentioned Father Brown during a homily. It was the same priest Caswell’s father had known.

Caswell called his father with the news.

“Thank you for making me good on my promises,” his father told him. “I promised Father Brown that my boys would be baptized into the church. And 32 years later, I’m half good on that promise.”

THE INVITATION THAT OPENED A DOOR

Caswell said his wife, Brandy, also became one of his heroes.

She had served as a Catholic missionary for seven years. While they were dating, she asked about his faith and offered a simple invitation.

“Why don’t you come do a Catholic Mass with me this weekend?” she asked.

Caswell went. He found the Mass poetic, rooted and reverent.

“I felt like I was home,” he said.

He returned alone the next weekend because he wanted to learn whether the feeling came from the Mass or from sitting beside a woman he loved.

The feeling remained.

He entered RCIA without telling Brandy at first. He wanted his decision to have a foundation strong enough to endure beyond their relationship.

His first attempt at finding the class became a tour through the parish campus. He wandered into a session about discerning whether a guardian angel or a demon was speaking.

“Wow, this is heavy for a person that’s considering entering the church,” he remembered thinking.

He eventually found the correct room. Three of its four chairs were already occupied.

“I think that’s your seat,” the instructor told him.

Caswell sat down.

HARD QUESTIONS AND AN HONEST CHURCH

Caswell’s path into Catholicism still included serious objections.

The clergy sexual abuse crisis stood at the center of them.

He believed the Catholic Church claimed to carry the truth of Jesus Christ. He needed to understand how such devastating evil could exist within it.

The answers he received from Brandy and his RCIA instructors mattered because they refused to avoid the issue.

“They faced it head on,” Caswell said. “They owned it.”

Their willingness to call the abuse evil, acknowledge human failure and face difficult questions helped him trust the community.

“I can ask the hard questions, and they’re not running away from them,” he said.

A LIFE WITHOUT A FIVE-YEAR PLAN

Near the end of the conversation, Dominic asked Caswell whom he sought to serve beyond God and his immediate family.

Caswell began with obedience.

“I’m here to serve wherever the Lord is asking me to serve,” he said.

A friend had recently asked about his five-year plan. Caswell answered that he had learned to stop building his life around one.

“I’ve learned to be obedient to what the Lord is asking of me,” he said.

That obedience brought him into sports rehabilitation, where he works with athletes who often hear long explanations of everything wrong with their bodies.

Caswell wants to return hope to that process.

“The physical training matters, the conditioning matters, the rehab matters,” he said. “But taking care of the spirit, the mind and the body” also reminds athletes that they remain resilient and created in the image of God.

His work has expanded to include members of U.S. Special Forces, Catholic speaking and a book he once felt unable to write.

He still struggles with commas and semicolons. Editors can handle those, he joked. His task is to offer the ideas placed in front of him.

A man may lose movement, speech and plans for the future. He may still love his children first. He may still write books one letter at a time. He may still enter a room with joy. He may still serve.

And he may still choose hope.

In a candid conversation on shame, grief and faith, Alison Armstrong says the courage to forgive oneself can restore men from the spiral of penance and self-condemnation.

Dominic De Souza began with a confession.

He told Alison Armstrong he had carried a story for almost a decade, a story he had barely admitted aloud. Early in his marriage, after the birth of his first child, his wife contracted a chronic illness. Family support weakened. Stress mounted. Then came a miscarriage.

“I remember at the time thinking that I didn’t react very much to it,” De Souza said. “And I just had always been a very hard worker. And so I just went back to working very, very hard.”

Years later, while walking through his neighborhood, the meaning struck him.

“This whole time, I have been so ashamed as a man that on my watch someone died because I wasn’t good enough,” he said.

It was, he said, a shame rooted less in logic than in the burden he had been carrying. He wondered whether he should have been “more creative,” “attentive,” or “proactive” enough to create safety. The grief had driven him to build skills, earn more, grow stronger, provide better.

Then, unexpectedly, he found that the old wound had changed.

“I had thawed out that grief, I think, by leveling up,” De Souza said. “It felt good to be able to put that shame down.”

Shame Without an Audience

Armstrong began by separating shame from embarrassment.

Embarrassment, she said, comes from being seen as imperfect. It requires an audience, or fear of one.

Shame is different.

“Shame requires no audience,” Armstrong said. “It requires no witness.”

The person harmed, she added, does not even have to agree harm occurred. Shame can remain entirely “between you and you.”

For Armstrong, shame is especially destructive because it reaches into the person’s sense of self. Her late husband, she said, taught her that “the worst part about shame is that it disconnects us from our spirit.”

She described shame as arising when someone believes a betrayal has occurred: betrayal of values, identity, spiritual purpose, or the good one believed he was meant to embody.

That betrayal, real or perceived, can make a person avoid an entire area of life.

“If he failed in a marriage, doesn’t ever want to get married again,” Armstrong said. “If he failed in a business, he doesn’t ever want to own a business again.”

Then she named a sentence many men carry: “I should have been there…”

Others may argue against it. They may present facts. They may explain that presence was impossible. But shame, Armstrong said, resists logic.

“They still should have been there,” she said.

The Deserving Equation

Armstrong described one of the more dangerous patterns she sees in men: a running inner account of good and bad.

She called it a “lifetime deserving equation.”

Men, she said, may keep track of the good they have done and the harm they believe they have caused. The sum becomes what they think they deserve. When the account turns negative, they may feel they deserve nothing.

But human beings still need things.

“A man thinks he doesn’t deserve something, but he needs it, so he takes it,” Armstrong said. “And then he’s ashamed of himself for having taken it.”

That creates the spiral: need, taking, shame, lower deserving, more need.

De Souza recognized the pattern in prayer. He said the line that helps him most is simple: “Jesus, you loved me first.”

Rather than praying from self-worth, he said, the prayer gives him a new starting place. Before achievement. Before proof. Before self-accusation.

“I have a fresh baseline I need to be operating out of,” De Souza said.

The conversation turned toward Catholic men, heroism and the inner pressure that can drive a man toward difficult, costly action.

De Souza wondered aloud whether some heroic acts come from a desire to balance the scales. A man might volunteer, sacrifice, serve, suffer, or endure because doing good seems to answer the weight of what he believes counts against him.

“I have no idea if most men would agree with me,” he said. “But that’s what goes through my mind.”

The Courage to Forgive Yourself

Armstrong pushed the conversation toward free will.

She said shame can override the will by trapping a person in the endless attempt to deserve what he needs. In response, she described a process she calls “noble forgiveness.”

The process is direct. A person says, “I harmed or hurt,” names the person, names the action, and refuses to add excuses.

“Without any because,” Armstrong said.

The listener responds with honor: “Thank you for owning that.”

Then comes the hard question: Do you forgive yourself?

Armstrong said many people answer no. They believe forgiveness must be earned. They believe penance must precede release.

But she argued that shame carries benefits, which makes it hard to surrender. It protects from future failure by keeping people away from the place where they failed.

The cost is absence.

“We’re MIA,” she said. “We’re missing from that part of life.”

That absence can touch children, spouses, parents, employees and friends. The person remains protected, but unavailable.

“Really, I consider forgiving oneself to be a courageous act,” Armstrong said. “It’s heroic to forgive yourself.”

She added that from a Christian view, the refusal to receive forgiveness can become its own arrogance.

“Jesus already forgave me,” she said. “Who am I to say I know better?”

Heroism as Becoming

De Souza connected the conversation to the stories people tell.

He said many people spend life trying to preserve who they think they are, even when life demands growth. Stories, he said, expose that struggle.

“Who you thought you were cannot endure what the world has thrown at you,” De Souza said.

For him, the hero’s journey reflects the pressure to become someone freer, more mature and more responsive to love. In many stories, he said, the hero resists until suffering burns away the false self.

“You have to go through hell to burn off the bits that aren’t actually you,” he said.

He pointed to action stories in which a soldier, brother or father carries guilt and then endures extreme trial to save others. The drama becomes an outer version of an inner reckoning.

At the end, the hero may finally rest.

Armstrong accepted some of the insight, then pressed deeper.

“We could call it identity, we could call it ego,” she said. “That self that we try to preserve and be true to.”

But, she said, that preserved self may fail as a compass. “I’m not sure that it’s a true north,” Armstrong said.

A Prayer for the Moment

Armstrong then told a story of her own.

Years earlier, she was asked to interview people for a League of Women Voters project on homelessness and hunger in Orange County. She had never interviewed anyone and felt overwhelmed as she walked down a grassy hill toward the filming site.

She stopped and prayed.

“Thank you God for having me be whatever I need to be to get your work done,” she said.

She said the prayer has followed her into interviews, stages, writing and difficult public moments. It is a prayer, in her telling, that loosens the grip of self-preservation. Instead of defending an identity, she receives what the moment requires.

The result, she said, can be astonishing.

“It literally will prevent miracles,” Armstrong said of clinging to the self. “It’ll prevent such beauty, such surprises.”

De Souza offered one final metaphor for ego. Ego, he said, can serve a purpose. It can be fuel.

“You put fuel in the gas tank,” he said. “You don’t pour it in the driver’s seat.”

For a conversation that began with miscarriage, hidden grief and a decade-old burden, the final image carried the theme home: shame may drive, but it should never steer. Forgiveness, received and practiced, may be the harder road.

But it is also the one that returns a person to life.

Written by Fr. Mariusz Sztuk, SDS

Sometimes God Changes the Route

Last year I shared with you the vision of our Motorcycle Pilgrimage of Hope—a journey across Canada and the United States to visit sacred shrines, pray together, and carry your intentions before the Lord. Many of you followed our pilgrimage, sent us your prayer requests, and supported us with your encouragement. For that, I remain deeply grateful.

As many of you already know, I was not able to complete the pilgrimage. No, I didn’t run out of gas. I didn’t get lost. And thankfully, I didn’t confuse the shrine with the nearest Tim Hortons.

Severe problems with my back made it impossible to continue riding. At first, I struggled to understand why God would allow the pilgrimage to end so unexpectedly. After months of planning, preparation, and excitement, turning back was one of the hardest decisions I had to make.

Looking back now, however, I see the journey differently.

The Sacrifice Wasn’t the Ride

A pilgrimage has always involved sacrifice. Christians throughout history have walked hundreds of kilometres, endured hunger, fatigue, illness, and uncertainty as they sought to draw closer to God. If I am honest, riding a motorcycle has always been a great joy for me. It is one of the places where I feel free, where I enjoy God’s beautiful creation, and where prayer comes naturally. In that sense, I began to ask myself: Where was the sacrifice?

Then the answer slowly became clear.

In my previous article I wrote that we would carry your prayer intentions with us to every shrine we visited. We promised to pray for you, your families, your struggles, and your hopes. Although I could no longer continue the pilgrimage, perhaps God was inviting me to fulfil that promise in a way I had never expected.

Instead of offering miles travelled, I was invited to offer my suffering.

It was not only the physical pain that became my offering. The sorrow of not being able to continue the pilgrimage with my friends, of watching them ride on while I had to turn back, was also a real and deeply personal sacrifice. Together, the pain, disappointment, and sense of loss became my prayer. Every difficult day became an opportunity to place your intentions before God. In His mysterious providence, what seemed like the end of the pilgrimage became another stage of it. The road simply changed—from highways and shrines to doctor’s appointments, and the quiet endurance that so many people experience every day.

RECOMMENDED READING

FEATURE

The Journey Continues

I discovered once again that God is never limited by our plans. Sometimes He leads us exactly where we intended to go. At other times, He teaches us by asking us to stop.

This experience reminded me that the value of a pilgrimage is measured not by the distance travelled but by the openness of the heart. Whether we are riding through majestic mountains or sitting quietly in a room unable to move without pain, God continues to remain by our side.

This year, with gratitude and renewed hope, I am preparing to continue the journey that remained unfinished.

I do so with greater humility than before. I know that every kilometre is a gift and that every day on the road depends entirely on God’s grace. My prayer is simple: if it is God’s will, may He allow me to complete this pilgrimage—not for my own satisfaction, but for His glory and for all those whose intentions we have the privilege to carry.

Join Us in Prayer

Once again, I invite you to become fellow pilgrims.

Please send us your prayer intentions. We will carry them with us to every shrine, every church, every Mass, and every moment of prayer along the way. Whether the journey is smooth or difficult, know that your intentions will remain at the heart of this pilgrimage.

Thank you for your prayers, your friendship, and your faith. Last year many of you also prayed for my recovery. I believe those prayers strengthened me more than you know.

As we prepare once again to start our engines, may we remember that every Christian life is itself a pilgrimage. Sometimes God asks us to move forward with confidence; sometimes He asks us to wait with patience. Both paths, when entrusted to Him, lead us closer to Christ.

May the Lord bless you abundantly, keep you safe, and fill your hearts with hope.

I look forward to carrying your prayers once again.

See you on the road—and, above all, in prayer.

Prayer Request on Motorcycle Ride

From July 30 to August 18, a segment of our team will traverse thousands of miles on motorcycles through Western Canada and the western United States. We would be grateful to carry your prayer intentions with us.

Please send us your requests, and we will lift them in daily Mass with Bishop Scott McCaig and Fr. Mariusz, praying rosaries as we ride along the open road.

Share my prayer request

SPECIAL SPONSOR

FROM HEROIC MEN

Take the pledge | Learn more

Alison Armstrong says men ache for worthy problems, real brotherhood and the words, “I am enough.”

In a free-flowing conversation on men, heroism and modern culture, Alison Armstrong and Dominic de Souza question if men feel trapped in a civilization they helped build, carrying heroic instincts into a world that often gives them tasks far smaller than their souls.

Alison described men as standing “on the sidelines,” left with just “another piano to dust,” while still carrying the heroic soul of man.

Armstrong said many couples clash because women ask men to “help around the house,” while men are wired for something larger than help.

Women have what Alison calls “diffuse awareness,” the feminine instinct to track what is out of place, ugly, moved or unresolved in an environment. In her telling, the dusty piano is barely about dust. It is about a primitive survival system still scanning the meadow for signs of danger.

“The dust on the piano is screaming at us,” she said, adding that women often walk through their homes registering everything that appears wrong. That’s why they ask men to dust pianos.

Then she told a story about her late husband, a musician who needed the piano open and ready because when inspiration came, he had to “slide in and start playing before that connection was lost.”

“So you know how hard that was for me?” Armstrong chuckled.

Help vs accountability

“We’re at this conflict of the difference between help and accountability,” she said. “Testosterone is the fuel of accountability. And accountability is inherently territorial.”

For Armstrong, that means men often come alive when they own a mission, a result, a domain. The problem, she said, is that modern expectations often ask men to perform feminine strengths rather than bring masculine strengths.

“The expectation of women that is ruling right now is that a man is supposed to be like a woman,” Armstrong said.

She said women often admire competence, sensitivity and awareness in the areas where women already excel, then expect men to match those traits. Men, meanwhile, may be choosing women because of their complementary strengths.

That mismatch, she said, can become painful over decades.

“He’s going to pick a woman that he admires for her strengths,” Armstrong said, “and what he’s gonna need so badly is that she admires him for his strengths which are different than hers.”

Complementary Strengths

Armstrong said both men and women search for strength, but they often recognize and value it differently.

She pointed to the character House from House M.D., calling him “a scoundrel,” yet noting the fierce appeal of his integrity.

“He could be a total jerk,” Armstrong said, “but man, that’s so attractive, that strength.”

She connected that instinct to De Souza’s reference to Robin Hood. “Robin Hood was looking for a strength that he didn’t have,” Armstrong said, “and he wasn’t ashamed of lacking it.”

Her larger point was that men often build teams around purpose. A wife, in that frame, is far more than emotional support. She is a complementary power.

“My gosh, I’ll be so much more able to fulfill my purposes, complimented by who she is,” Armstrong said, describing the masculine instinct.

Then she moved from anthropology into theology.

“The partnership between the complementary strengths of men and women is exquisite,” she said. “Exquisite doesn’t happen by evolution.”

“Tell Him He’s Done Enough”

Armstrong says men carry a deep hunger for reassurance that their labor, sacrifice and existence matter.

She recalled a book she wrote in conversational form, with a guide figure she jokingly described as speaking in the voice of Morgan Freeman. The story involved Adam, Eve and a figure from “research and development” explaining creation, design and human need.

In that imagined exchange, Armstrong said Eve is told what Adam most needs from her.

“What Adam most needs from you,” Armstrong said, “is to tell him that he’s done enough.”

De Souza connected the idea to Avengers: Endgame, describing the moment Pepper Potts kneels near the dying Tony Stark and tells him everyone is safe.

“It’s okay, you can let go now,” De Souza recalled from the scene.

Armstrong added a memory. “I asked a man about a year ago, if you could hear one thing from women, what would it be?” she said. “And he said that I am enough.”

For Armstrong, the phrase became twofold: “I am enough, I do enough.”

Men Need Greater Problems

Armstrong argues that heroic energy still exists, but culture often misdirects it into survival at home.

De Souza asked what becomes of men born with a language of heroism when culture offers them no ‘heroic arena.’ The modern world has created conditions where feminine gifts can flourish. Civilization, she said, allows women’s natural abilities to “blossom” because daily survival pressure has eased.

But the heroic masculine instinct remains.

“Everything that men are translates into the problems we have today,” Armstrong said.

She said men are “compulsive problem solvers,” quoting a man who once told her, “A problem to a man is like a squirrel to a dog. Let me at it, let me at it, let me at it.”

The tragedy, Armstrong said, is that men are often left solving problems such as surviving criticism, loading the dishwasher correctly or making it “through the door with your manhood intact.”

“You all still are the same,” she said, “and we need to give you better problems.”

Those problems, she suggested, could include hunger, poverty and human suffering. She said she has been passionate about ending hunger since childhood, when her mother told her to clean her plate because babies were dying in China.

The line may be familiar to anyone raised with guilt as a seasoning. Armstrong took it seriously.

“We’re never gonna solve the big stuff,” she said, “if we have you guys focused on trying to stay intact while under attack from the people that you need to be nurtured by the most.”

The Hero and the Man

Near the close, De Souza read back one of Armstrong’s lines: “You cannot separate hero and man. They are one and the same. The soul of a man is a hero.”

He linked the idea to brotherhood, saying men who want to be good men need each other.

“Brotherhood is something you don’t fall into,” De Souza said. “It’s something you have to actively cultivate and build up, like a shield wall.”

A man alone on a battlefield, he said, does “survive” poorly.

Armstrong’s closing answer went toward shame. She says men often hold themselves to impossible standards, then collapse under failure.

She used to hear the phrase “I’m only human” as an excuse. Over years of studying men, she came to hear it differently.

“It’s a sad admission on a man’s part,” Armstrong said, “because he holds himself to God-like standards.”

She said men often carry shame when someone is harmed by a failure they believe belongs to them.

“All men experience shame from failing,” Armstrong said. “That shame is actually the biggest indicator of an honorable man.”

In her view, shame does mean a man has honor to recover, receive and restore.

“This is one of the things that I love about Catholicism,” Armstrong said, because a man can confess, receive forgiveness and rise again.

She described the daily rhythm as ownership without excuses: “Yes, I failed at this. I own that. I won’t justify it. I own it.”

Then, she said, comes the deeper truth.

“I forgive myself,” Armstrong said, “and Jesus already forgave me for everything.”

For men left dusting pianos while hungering for battlefields, Armstrong’s challenge is neither nostalgia nor complaint. It is a call to recover the heroic instinct and aim it at worthy problems, with women who bless men’s strengths, brothers who restore one another from shame, and a faith strong enough to let fallen men stand again.

Book Jacob Now

A year after Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake, Jacob Niemeier rode through the outskirts of Port-au-Prince and saw a woman leave a blue United Nations tent carrying a five-gallon bucket.

She walked toward a canal. The water looked like chocolate milk. Trash floated across the surface. Animals defecated nearby. People washed clothing and dishes upstream. Beside it, a heap of garbage burned under the Caribbean sun.

The woman filled her bucket and carried it home.

Niemeier, then a 21-year-old environmental engineering student at Purdue University, turned to his translator with a question.

“Are they drinking this water?” he asked. “Surely they’re not drinking this water.”

The translator answered plainly: “Yeah, of course they are. What choice do they have?”

That answer became a summons.

“I knew that water was gonna get them sick and cause chronic issues, if not kill them,” Niemeier said. “I had no idea that that was a reality for these people.”

Years later, Niemeier would leave a secure consulting career, found the nonprofit Vera Aqua Vera Vita and help deliver clean water and sanitation to thousands of people. The journey began with one bucket.

A Saint Who Refused to Stand Aside

During an appearance on Heroic Stories, Niemeier traced his vision of heroism to St. Pier Giorgio Frassati, the young Italian Catholic known for serving the poor, climbing mountains and opposing the rise of fascism.

Niemeier recalled a peaceful Catholic demonstration during which police attempted to force protesters away. When an officer shoved one of Frassati’s friends, Frassati stepped forward.

“He boldly stood there very strong and took that position of hero,” Niemeier said.

Frassati came from an influential family. His father served as editor of the Italian newspaper La Stampa. Public resistance could have cost him his social standing, reputation and personal safety.

He stood his ground anyway.

Dominic, the host, recalled another account in which fascists entered Frassati’s family home and started a fight in the hallway. Frassati reportedly drove them out and chased them down the street.

“This is a man’s man,” Dominic said.

Yet the physical courage forms only one piece of Frassati’s appeal. Niemeier said the saint lived an “integrated life,” placing God first, loving his family and friends, serving the poor and enjoying creation.

As a boy, Frassati once left his family’s dinner table to greet a poor mother and child at the door. When he returned, his shoes were gone.

His father asked where they were.

“Well, I gave them to the young boy,” Frassati answered. “He had none.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because he needed them more than I did.”

Niemeier said the moment revealed a truth Frassati understood early: “Life was not about him. It was about being a gift to others.”

The Offer That Almost Kept Him in Corporate America

Niemeier carried that conviction into his own career.

After graduating from Purdue, he spent several years in consulting engineering. The work offered strong pay, stability and an open path toward leadership. His employer even allowed him to work part time for 15 months while developing Vera Aqua Vera Vita.

The arrangement gave him full-time benefits and room to test the nonprofit’s future. It also made the eventual choice more difficult.

As Niemeier prepared to leave, company leaders approached him with a final offer.

“Jacob, are you sure you want to go?” they asked. “We have big plans for you. You’ll be in an executive-level, senior-level leadership role in the next five to 10 years.”

He was engaged and preparing to marry. A dependable income carried real weight. So did the promise of promotion.

Still, Niemeier believed walking away from the nonprofit would haunt him.

“I knew that if I didn’t take that chance and trust the Lord, I would probably regret it maybe the rest of my life,” he said.

The choice was less reckless than it may appear from the outside. Niemeier had studied the problem, tested the organization and gained technical experience. He had also earned professional credibility as an engineer.

Faith supplied the courage. Preparation supplied the runway. (A leap of faith can still involve spreadsheets.)

How Can a Man Tell Whether a Calling Is Real?

Dominic pressed Niemeier on a problem familiar to many young men.

How could he tell the difference between a genuine calling and dissatisfaction, restlessness or “shiny object syndrome”?

Niemeier pointed to the fruit.

“Does it bear peace?” he asked. “Does it bear joy? Does it bear a satisfaction in spite of, and oftentimes even because of, trials and sufferings?”

Then he offered a second test.

“Is it about others, or is it about myself?”

A genuine mission, he said, turns a person outward. It asks how gifts, skills and experiences can become an offering.

Niemeier’s own mission had been forming long before Haiti. As a child, he suffered frequent nightmares. His mother would comfort him, yet the fear returned.

Eventually, she told him to pray when he woke.

“Say, ‘Jesus, come, bring me peace,’” she advised.

Niemeier began praying. The nightmares lost their power and eventually disappeared.

“That really established a solid foundation of faith for me,” he said.

The memory now carries fresh meaning as his oldest son faces nightmares of his own.

From One Encounter to Thousands Served

After returning from Haiti, Niemeier changed his Purdue schedule. He dropped an engineering elective and enrolled in an entrepreneurship course.

He began studying the global water crisis. He later traveled to Togo for a three-week water research project. Those experiences convinced him that engineering could become more than a career. It could become service.

He founded Vera Aqua Vera Vita in 2017.

The organization has since brought clean water to more than 8,500 people in Peru, wastewater solutions to about 7,000 people, care packages to more than 5,000 and educational workshops to more than 10,000.

Niemeier said the mission extends beyond physical infrastructure.

“We can’t disconnect the two,” he said, referring to clean water and “the living water of Jesus Christ.”

Families facing unsafe water spend their energy surviving. Children become sick. Parents lose time gathering water. Communities remain trapped in cycles of poverty.

“They can’t begin to think about those things and begin to dream about what their life could look like until we can meet those basic needs,” Niemeier said.

Men Have Lost Direction Because They Forgot Their Destination

Dominic raised a broader concern: Many men want to solve problems, yet they lack a story strong enough to call them forward.

“We don’t know what we’re supposed to go to work doing,” he said.

Niemeier responded with the Latin question “Quo vadis?”

Where are you going?

“I think our world in general, and especially men, have lost direction,” he said. “We’ve lost direction because we’ve forgotten our destination.”

For Christians, he said, that destination is heaven. Yet the work begins in the present through service, sacrifice and the building of God’s kingdom.

Men often remain passive because they have forgotten their own value, Niemeier said.

“We have been told that what we do and who we are doesn’t matter,” he said. “But nothing could be further from the truth.”

Every person, he argued, carries a unique mission.

“If we don’t do what God created us to do, no one will.”

That belief changes the search for purpose. A man no longer asks whether the world has a place for him. He asks what responsibility already bears his name.

A Life Given to the Poor

At the end of the conversation, Dominic asked Niemeier whom he seeks to serve through heroic effort. He removed the expected answers of God and family from consideration.

Niemeier answered with one word.

“Poor.”

He pointed to Christ’s words in Matthew 25: Whatever a person does for the least, he does for Christ.

“My life is meant to be a gift to others,” Niemeier said.

That service can take many forms: money, prayer, time, technical skill or physical labor. What matters is refusing the comforting claim that suffering belongs to somebody else.

Niemeier’s mission began when he saw a woman carry a bucket from a polluted canal.

She had no better choice.

He did.

The standard Pete Burak learned from his father was simple, memorable and demanding:

“Don’t be a nice guy. Be a good man.”

Burak, vice president of Renewal Ministries and author of “A Man on Purpose: 10 Rules of Life From a Faithful Father,” joined Tom Hornichek and Dean Patterson on “Men Answering the Heroic Call” to discuss the lessons his father passed down to him.

The phrase about goodness came from “Wild at Heart,” a book by John Eldredge that Burak and his father read together while Burak was in high school. It soon became a repeated challenge between them.

“We actually got in the habit of reminding each other: ‘Hey, don’t be a nice guy. Be a good man. Don’t be a nice guy. Be a good man,’” Burak said.

That distinction shaped the way Burak came to understand virtue, fatherhood, friendship, suffering and the purpose of a man’s life.

A nice man may avoid conflict, remain agreeable and leave little impact. A good man develops virtue and acts from it, even when doing so demands courage, sacrifice or discomfort.

“God forbid we are ever just described as a nice guy,” Burak said. “When you hear that, it almost always is accompanied with a shrug. It’s like, ‘Oh yeah, he’s a nice guy.’”

“There’s nothing powerful about a nice guy. There’s nothing dangerous about a nice guy. There’s nothing impactful. There’s nothing dynamic about a nice guy.”

Burak clarified that men are still called to kindness. But kindness alone is not the full measure of Christian manhood.

“Men are called to be good,” he said. “And to be good is to be virtuous and to be holy and to cultivate all of the virtues.”

Good Men Change the World — Quietly or Publicly

When virtue is cultivated and expressed through masculine strength, Burak said, it can produce extraordinary courage.

“It leads to the greatest inventions in all of history. It leads to the soldiers storming Normandy Beach. It leads to the great heroes of our society, both in and out of the church,” he said.

“When good men develop and cultivate virtue, live in harmony with those virtues and make decisions governed by virtue, amazing things happen in both our lives and in society.”

That does not mean every man is called to perform a dramatic act that will be remembered publicly.

Some of the most heroic men, Burak said, will never receive awards, monuments or recognition. Their heroism is found in consistently loving their wives, raising their children, serving their communities and resisting sin.

“Some of the most heroic men in society are those who are just good day in and day out — loving their family, loving their children, loving their community, serving and giving of themselves,” he said.

“Nobody is going to put up a statue of them someday, but they’re diligent. They’re aware of who they are in the Lord, and they’re going for it. They’re doing it with joy and peace, and they’re fighting the battle against sin and darkness.”

The reward for that hidden faithfulness is not necessarily earthly recognition.

“When any of us repent, follow virtue, decide to be good and live the Jesus-shaped life that is discipleship, that sets off a party in heaven,” Burak said.

“At the end of our lives, when we hear those amazing words, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master,’ that comes from goodness, not from niceness.”

The Greatest Adventure May Be Inside Your Home

Burak also challenged the assumption that adventure must involve mountains, danger or distant places.

Christians, he said, are already living inside a great adventure because they are pilgrims moving toward a destination beyond this life.

“This church teaches us that we are a pilgrim people, that we were made for union with God in heaven for all eternity,” he said. “This life, while good and beautiful and a great gift, is passing.”

“Life is short. It’s like a passing shadow — here today, gone tomorrow. It’s like a gust of wind.”

That knowledge allows Christians to commit themselves fully to the present while remembering where their lives are headed.

“The ultimate adventure of life is heaven,” Burak said. “It is the journey passing through death to life and, hopefully, into eternal life.”

That spiritual longing can also shape the way men approach ordinary responsibilities.

Climbing Mount Everest is clearly adventurous, Burak said, but so is welcoming children and building a family.

“You think Mount Everest is full of cracks and crevices and twists and turns, and you don’t know when an avalanche is going to hit you? Try having a baby,” he said. “Try having two babies. Try raising a family.”

“The avalanches of life that come there — talk about the adventure of actually molding a human being.”

Fatherhood requires a man to walk with his wife, care for his children and help form their minds, hearts and characters.

“That is an incredible responsibility,” Burak said. “Talk about adventurous. You have no idea what’s going to happen each day.”

The problem, he said, is that people often minimize ordinary life while idolizing dramatic achievements.

The same distortion can affect the way Catholics view the saints. They remember miracles, martyrdoms and extraordinary acts but overlook the years of hidden faithfulness that made those moments possible.

“Those saints lived day in, day out, faithful, boring, hidden, small lives of faithfulness that prepared them and allowed them to participate in the big moments,” Burak said.

The sweetest part of life for the saints, he suggested, was probably not the extraordinary moment. It was the daily walk with God.

Burak compared that experience to athletes who spend years pursuing a championship, only to discover that their deepest memories come from the journey.

“What they look back on is, ‘I loved the days in the locker room with my teammates. I loved the weight-room sessions that built up to those epic moments,’” he said.

“The adventure of life mostly is how you see it, how you frame it and the willingness to embrace, sink our teeth into and go all in on the day-to-day.”

Three Words That Can Heal a Family

One of the most important practices Burak’s parents gave their children was a clear language of forgiveness.

His family did not stop with a casual apology. They were taught to say what they had done, express sorrow and then ask a direct question:

“Will you forgive me?”

That question, Burak said, is far more vulnerable than simply saying, “I’m sorry.”

“The reality is we’re all going to do things to each other that wound each other,” he said. “We’re going to hurt each other, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally.”

“In a family in particular, there will be times of strife. There will be times of disagreement. Sinful behavior will enter into the equation. It’s not if. It’s when.”

His parents understood the importance of extending and receiving forgiveness rather than remaining at the surface level.

“It’s actually not that hard to say, ‘I’m sorry,’” Burak said. “It’s a lot harder to actually be vulnerable and say, ‘Will you forgive me?’”

Burak and his brother were expected to complete the exchange. One would ask for forgiveness, and the other would answer, “Yes, I forgive you.”

The process often ended with a side hug, sometimes accompanied by a brotherly nudge in the ribs.

Forgiveness, Burak emphasized, is not merely an emotion.

“Forgiveness is not a feeling, just like love is not exclusively a feeling,” he said. “It’s a decision.”

He also distinguished forgiveness from reconciliation. A person can choose to forgive even when complete reconciliation is not possible, particularly in situations involving serious harm or abuse.

“Jesus extends forgiveness from the cross: ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do,’” Burak said. “The Pharisees weren’t asking for forgiveness. He was just extending it.”

Forgiveness is not optional for Christians, he added.

“It’s a disposition of the heart, and it’s a command from God,” Burak said. “Jesus tells us to forgive.”

The practice prevents resentment from taking root inside a family.

“A lot of times what happens in a family is there’s real harm that’s done, and then you don’t address it,” he said. “You just let it sit, and it festers and festers and festers.”

Years later, the unresolved wound may erupt with far greater force.

“Forgiveness cuts through that,” Burak said. “It establishes a new pathway of love. It establishes a new connection, and it waters down the ability for resentment and festering wounds.”

Men Need Friends Who Desire Their Good

A man cannot become who God created him to be in isolation, Burak said.

Men are made for relationship with God, their wives and children, but they also need friendships with other men.

“We need people who are running with us, who can speak into our lives in different ways, who can provide different perspectives, who we can enjoy, who we can work with and who we can serve with,” he said.

Burak pointed to Aristotle’s understanding of true friendship: not merely enjoying another person or benefiting from an exchange, but sincerely desiring the other person’s good.

“To have other men who say, ‘I want you to flourish, and you want me to flourish’ — every guy needs some guys like that,” he said.

Those friendships may be formed through a structured small group or through informal relationships with men who have permission to ask difficult questions.

“I have a bunch of men in my life who have access to me, and I have access to them,” Burak said. “There’s no BS between the two of us.”

“When we talk, we share, and we ask each other hard questions when we need to. But we also enjoy each other’s company.”

Those friendships influence more than the men themselves. Children need to see other adults living the faith with conviction and joy.

“They need adults other than you who are demonstrating, living and modeling the faith,” Burak said. “It’s so important that young people see their parents live it, but they also need to see their parents’ friends live it.”

They need respected adults who confirm that a life of faith is “true and good and normal and right and joyful.”

For husbands and fathers, however, brotherhood can easily fall to the bottom of the priority list.

“It’s never going to feel convenient, and it’s never going to feel efficient,” Burak said. “It’s going to feel like, ‘Oh my gosh, I need one more thing like I need another hole in the head.’”

Still, the time invested in brotherhood consistently produces benefits.

“It always pays dividends, but it never feels like it will,” he said. “It shouldn’t be a ‘have to.’ It should be, ‘This is part of my routine. This is who I am. Therefore, it’s not so much up for debate. I need brothers, period.’”

Brotherhood Is Built Shoulder to Shoulder

Church leaders may struggle to draw men into community because they begin with the wrong invitation, Burak said.

Men generally do not bond face to face. They bond shoulder to shoulder.

“It’s a tough sell for guys to say, ‘Hey, come sit in a basement and talk to each other about faith. Let’s sit in a circle and connect,’” he said.

Men may be more willing to build a deck, complete a service project, play a sport or work toward a shared objective.

“The best bonding I’ve had with some of the guys in my life was when we were on a sports team together,” Burak said. “Why are we bonding on a sports team? Because we have a common mission.”

Successful teams do not begin by staring at one another until they feel connected. They begin by training, sweating and pursuing something together.

“The reason you show up to that practice eventually is for your brothers,” Burak said. “But originally, it’s because I want to win. I want to be great. I want to be part of this team that has a bigger purpose than myself.”

Church ministries, he said, often lead with connection instead of presenting men with a compelling vision and a mission worth accomplishing.

“When we accomplish something together, a lot of times the byproduct of that is connection,” Burak said.

His father developed some of his strongest friendships while golfing on Saturday mornings. After spending hours together over several months, the men were ready to take the next step.

“It was like, ‘Hey guys, do you want to go do a Bible study on Tuesday morning?’” Burak said. “Now the guys are like, ‘Yeah,’ because we’ve already become friends.”

Eventually, when one of those men became sick, the others rallied around him and his family.

“That’s a lot of times how men’s ministries really thrive,” Burak said. “It’s more focused on an outcome and accomplishing something, and then letting connection flow from it.”

A Pizza, a Movie and an Open Door

Hornichek offered a practical example from his own experience.

He finished a room above his garage and began inviting men over for pizza, beer and a movie. Some of the men would never attend a traditional men’s group, but they were willing to come for an informal evening.

After the movie, the men talked.

“They think, ‘Pizza and beer and a movie? I’ll do that,’” Hornichek said. “But then afterward, we start talking. We start to become friends, know each other, and there’s fellowship.”

It often takes several of those gatherings before a man is ready to attend something more explicitly focused on faith.

Hornichek said the same principle can apply to evangelization in a neighborhood. Christians can begin by opening their homes, sharing meals and trusting the Holy Spirit to guide the relationships.

“The Gospel comes with a house key,” he said. “Coming together, having people over and having a meal.”

“Do I want to do it sometimes? No. But we’ve got to do it.”

Burak agreed that men often connect through a shared focus outside themselves.

He recalled sitting beside strangers at football games and feeling a bond form through a few high-fives after touchdowns.

“I don’t know anything about him, but we were both cheering,” Burak said. “We were both focused on something outside of ourselves, and there’s a connection that’s born there.”

He pointed to the soldiers portrayed in “Band of Brothers.” They did not begin as lifelong friends prepared to die for one another. Their connection was forged through training, hardship and a mission.

“They learn to suffer together,” Burak said. “Next thing you know, they’re all in, and they would literally lay down their lives for each other.”

“At the beginning of their relationship, if you had said, ‘You’re going to lay down your life for this guy over there,’ they’d be like, ‘I don’t think I will.’ By the end, it’s not even a question.”

The Christian Witness of Suffering Well

The conversation then turned to one of the hardest rules for any man to accept: suffering is unavoidable.

“It’s not a question of if you’ll suffer,” Burak said. “It’s really a question of when.”

The key, he said, is knowing that Jesus has an opinion and a plan for every suffering.

Sometimes God may resolve suffering immediately through a miracle.

“The Lord still moves in miraculous ways,” Burak said. “He can heal suffering, and we should ask for that right now, today.”

Christians can pray honestly: “Lord, do you want to heal this? Because if you do, please do.”

At other times, healing may come through medicine, the passage of time or another ordinary means.

“And then sometimes his opinion and plan for suffering is to resolve it in heaven,” Burak said.

For those who are in Christ, he added, all suffering will ultimately be resolved.

When suffering is united to Jesus, God can use it to purify a person, draw him closer, keep him humble and teach him dependence.

That does not mean suffering will feel joyful while it is happening.

“Very rarely do we experience suffering as a joyful thing in the moment,” Burak said. “It’s very often an action of the will to keep saying, ‘Lord, this is hard. I don’t like this. This is painful, but I’m going to keep giving it to you.’”

Sometimes, after God’s plan becomes clearer, a person can look back and recognize his presence.

“This was still hard, but I see your hand in it,” Burak said.

At other times, God’s consolation is found simply in realizing that he has entered the suffering alongside the person.

“You’re in the pit with me,” Burak said. “You’re in the valley of darkness with me.”

That kind of witness is especially powerful in a culture determined to avoid pain.

“The world is so afraid of suffering,” Burak said. “The world is so oriented to eliminating all opportunity for suffering.”

“When a Christian can unite our suffering, suffer well, suffer joyfully and suffer peacefully, that’s often when our light is brightest and our salt most salty.”

Go to War for Silence

Burak closed with a warning for men living in a noisy world filled with media, commentary and constant demands for attention.

Even good Catholic content cannot replace direct contact with God.

“There’s no substitute for reading the word of God and sitting in silent prayer,” he said.

Both practices can be difficult, especially silence for active men. That is precisely why men must fight to protect them.

“You need to, every single day, go to war for being able to be still and know that he is God,” Burak said.

He encouraged men to read Scripture itself, not only listen to someone else explain it.

“Read his actual word,” he said. “Not just a commentary on it. Not just ‘The Bible in a Year’ with Father Mike, which is great. Not just other great podcasts.”

Men need to allow the Holy Spirit to address them directly through Scripture and then become quiet enough to listen.

“Let the Holy Spirit talk to you in his word, reading it directly,” Burak said, “and then be still and silent and let him speak to your heart.”

The rules Burak received from his father are not strategies for becoming impressive. They are practices for becoming faithful.

Cultivate virtue. Embrace the adventure hidden inside ordinary life. Ask, “Will you forgive me?” Find brothers who desire your good. Work beside them toward a worthy mission. Offer suffering to Christ. Protect silence.

And above all, do not settle for being harmless, agreeable or merely nice.

Be a good man.

Peace Be With You

It’s a commandment.

As sons of God, Jesus commands us to go and make disciples. To do this, we need to be faith-filled men who manifest His peace in every encounter with others.

In his beautiful Prayer for Peace, St. Francis of Assisi encourages us to receive the gift of peace and accept the challenge to give it away (see the prayer below). To be the men and disciples Jesus calls us to be, He invites us to receive His peace—and protect it.

Jesus Didn’t Just Wish You Peace. He Commanded You to Carry It.

In Matthew 10:7–13, Jesus instructs His apostles to seek out the lost sheep of Israel. When they find someone worthy, they are to say, “Peace to this house.” If that peace is not received, they are to let their peace return to them and move on. It is almost as if peace is a gift entrusted to us—something we can offer freely but not force upon anyone.

Jesus has much to say about peace, and He commands us to have it. He gives His peace to His disciples and to all who honor Him and abide in Him. The world is noisy. Living as a Christian is stressful. Without peace, we struggle to hear God’s promptings, make wise decisions, and flourish as disciples. Men, do we truly draw upon His promise of peace? Could you use more peace?

Why Did Jesus Repeat “Peace Be With You”?

In the Seventh Station of the Resurrection (John 20:19–21), the apostles are anything but peaceful. They are hiding behind locked doors out of fear, just days after the Crucifixion. Verse 19 tells us:

“Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’”

Then, in verse 21, Jesus repeats Himself:

“Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, so I send you.”

It is important to note that in the Old Testament, shalom (peace) was much more than a greeting. It meant far more than simply “do not be afraid.” Shalom referred to wholeness, well-being, prosperity, contentment, healthy relationships, and right relationship with God. It was the peace that comes from complete trust in Him.

Jesus knew He was sending His disciples out as sheep among wolves. So it is today.

Your Mission Hasn’t Changed

Men, we are called to abide in Christ just as the disciples did. We are sent to lead our families, serve in brotherhood, reach out to others, and be witnesses in our communities. We will experience resistance just as those before us did, and our peace will be tested.

But take courage.

The same Jesus who walked through locked doors still breaks into our lives today. Wherever He enters, He brings peace—peace, peace, peace.

As I studied the Stations of the Resurrection, I found myself stopping to pray about why Jesus intentionally repeats this message of peace. Why does He emphasize it so often?

For the apostles, they were the first wave of evangelizers. The spread of the Kingdom depended upon their faithfulness and effectiveness. Without Christ’s peace, they could never have endured persecution, opposition, spiritual warfare, and the deeply entrenched beliefs they encountered while proclaiming the Gospel.

That sounds a lot like our mission today.

RECOMMENDED READING

FEATURE

Shalom Is Still What Jesus Desires for You

Shalom is still what Jesus desires for us.

We face countless challenges that pull us away from peace and into anxiety. Do you commute to work? It is rarely peaceful. Work demands more of our time and energy than ever before, and many workplaces are devoid of any awareness of God. All of this strains the balance between work, family, and our spiritual lives.

If you coach your kids’ teams, serve at church, lead in your community, or invest in other people, you probably find that more and more is asked of your time. Your peace will need protecting.

Guard it.

God’s plan has always been for His people to live in peace. The prophet Zechariah proclaimed:

“He shall command peace to the nations.” (Zechariah 9:10)

Jesus also invites us:

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

As we build God’s Kingdom, we are certain to get roughed up along the way. Maintaining a peace-filled disposition is essential. Since it is always the Holy Spirit working through us, a heart anchored in peace allows God to use us more fully.

Where Have You Experienced God’s Peace?

Can you look back and recognize moments when you experienced God’s peace?

There are many ways He gives it. I have often written that we are made for brotherhood, and last month I experienced that truth in a powerful way.

I joined nearly 80 men’s ministry leaders at the Heroic Men Convocation in Dallas. Despite the hassles of travel, a college dorm mattress, the Texas heat, and a packed schedule, God’s presence and peace were unmistakable throughout the weekend. Time seemed to fly by, and the fruits of those few days continue to emerge.

As Psalm 133:1 reminds us:

“How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.”

There is something deeply anointed about gathering with faithful brothers in Christ.

A Few Questions to Pray With

What undermines your peace?

Can you name it and surrender it to the Lord?

Can you build or join a trusted group of faithful men who will walk with you, pray with you, and encourage you as disciples?

Peace be with you.

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi (Prayer for Peace)

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Prayer Request on Motorcycle Ride

From July 30 to August 18, a segment of our team will traverse thousands of miles on motorcycles through Western Canada and the western United States. We would be grateful to carry your prayer intentions with us.

Please send us your requests, and we will lift them in daily Mass with Bishop Scott McCaig and Fr. Mariusz, praying rosaries as we ride along the open road.

Share my prayer request

SPECIAL SPONSOR

FROM HEROIC MEN

Take the pledge | Learn more

One Mission. Many Ministries.

For more than two decades, Deacon Pedro has helped tell the stories of the Catholic Church through Salt + Light Media.

As Director of Programming and Production, he has spent years producing documentaries, interviews, live broadcasts, and programming from around the world. Along the way, one truth has become increasingly clear:

The Church is full of incredible ministries—but too few people know they exist.

“There are so many Catholic organizations that are doing really good work,” he said. “In fact, I think that most of them are doing really good work. But we don’t know about them.”

Rather than competition, he believes Catholic organizations need greater collaboration.

“Our job, if anything, is to let everybody else know the work that Heroic Men and other organizations are doing. But we can’t do that if we don’t know about it.”

The Great Commission Is Still the Mission

Speaking just one day after Pentecost, the conversation naturally turned toward evangelization.

“We all have the same mission,” Deacon Pedro said.

“Go make disciples of all nations. Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Teach them to observe everything that I have commanded you, and remember that I am with you always.”

For him, that passage from Matthew’s Gospel remains the Church’s permanent call to action.

Rather than creating isolated ministries working independently, he hopes Catholics continue building bridges that help people discover the many resources already available.

The Catholic “Tool Bag”

One image Deacon Pedro returns to often is what he calls the Catholic “tool bag.”

“Catholics—we have the biggest tool bag. Everything that’s going to help you get to heaven is in that Catholic tool bag.”

The challenge isn’t a lack of resources.

The challenge is helping people discover them.

“Most people only know what’s in the front pocket.”

Because of his work, he regularly encounters movements, apostolates, religious communities, and ministries that many Catholics have never heard of.

That knowledge allows him to connect people with ministries suited to where they are spiritually.

“I like to see my work as being a bridge builder.”

Catholic Men Need Something Built for Them

One area where Deacon Pedro believes the Church still has room to grow is ministry specifically for men.

“Other than the Knights of Columbus, people ask, ‘What else is there?’”

He noted that many men faithfully attend Mass—even without their spouses—but often struggle to find opportunities for fraternity, formation, and mission afterward.

“What is there specifically for men?”

He encouraged parishes to think intentionally about different groups of men:

• Young professionals

• Young fathers

• Single men

• Widowers

• Seniors

Rather than expecting one program to fit everyone, each parish can respond to the actual needs already present.

Every Man Is Somewhere on the Journey

The discussion shifted toward evangelization and recognizing that every man arrives at Church from a different place.

Some are simply curious.

Some are cultural Catholics.

Others are already committed missionary disciples.

The task is helping each man take the next step.

Programs like Alpha can be valuable entry points, Deacon Pedro said, but they cannot be the destination.

“If there’s nothing for them to join after they leave Alpha, then those opportunities have to be available.”

You Don’t Need a Theology Degree

One of Deacon Pedro’s strongest encouragements was directed toward ordinary Catholics who feel unqualified to share the Gospel.

“You don’t need to be a deacon or have a theology degree.”

When he preaches, he intentionally keeps that in mind.

“If I know it, you can know it.”

Being ordained simply means he has spent more time praying with Scripture—not that holiness or evangelization belong only to clergy.

He sees one of the permanent diaconate’s greatest strengths in this reality.

“They have jobs. They mow the lawn. They fix their cars. They have regular lives.”

Their role is not to replace the laity but to empower them.

The Danger of Endless Scrolling

When asked how media can best serve Catholic men, Deacon Pedro offered an answer many might not expect.

“My first advice for men when it comes to media is to lay off the media.”

He pointed to the story of King David.

Before David’s fall with Bathsheba, Scripture notes that he stayed home while his army went to battle.

Instead of doing the work entrusted to him, he was idle.

“He was sitting around doing nothing.”

Deacon Pedro believes that lesson remains surprisingly relevant.

“Every time I grab my phone and I’m just scrolling through social media—that is a huge danger for men.”

Idleness opens doors.

Not necessarily to dramatic sins immediately—but often one small compromise at a time.

Men Need Mission More Than Content

Rather than consuming endless media, Deacon Pedro believes men flourish when they have meaningful work to do together.

He shared the example of gathering men from his parish to help a nearby monk maintain his monastery.

Some operated chainsaws.

Others carried lumber or used hand tools.

Everyone contributed.

Then they shared a meal, conversation, and prayer.

“What a great opportunity to get a bunch of guys together.”

Service naturally becomes fraternity.

Fraternity naturally becomes discipleship.

“If I were to do anything in media,” he said, “it would be to promote those kinds of things.”

Built for Action

The conversation closed with a simple but powerful reminder.

Men were created to build.

To serve.

To go.

“We are all doers,” Deacon Pedro said.

“How did I do? Did I get it done?”

Rather than seeing that as a flaw, he believes it reflects how God created men.

Authentic masculinity isn’t found in endless consumption.

It’s found in accepting Christ’s commission:

Go.

Make disciples.

And then come back with stories of what God has done.