Mike Landry: Catholic speaker, writer, & music minister in Alberta, Canada HomepageMike Landry: Catholic speaker, writer, & music minister in Alberta, Canada

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In the end, we get what we loved the most

The following is a column I wrote for Grandin Media, reflecting on the Herod’s actions around the feast of Epiphany.

A few weeks ago, we celebrated the feast of the Epiphany.

The Gospel proclaimed for Epiphany came from Matthew 2, and we often (rightly) spend a great deal of time contemplating the beautiful mystery of these three Magi, their journey, and the gifts they shared with our Lord.

On their journey, these three wise men encountered King Herod. While meeting with the Magi, he asked them to report back to him on the Messiah’s location – telling them that he, too, wished to come and pay Him homage.

Herod had no intention of worshipping the newborn king, but instead wanted to do whatever was necessary to stop the Messiah before he ever got started, as it would somehow infringe on Herod’s regime. When the Magi didn’t return to him, he ordered the massacre of the Holy Innocents in an attempt to not only protect his power but also to exercise his own authority over the will of God.

You’d think that Herod would have known better.

(Click the link below to read the rest of the article…)

In the end, we get what we loved the most

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Superhero Movies (Grandin Media)

I’ve recently begun writing a 2x/month column for Grandin Media.  After watching Avengers: Infinity War, I wrote the following for them reflecting on three reasons people of faith can love (and learn from) all the superhero movies that are being released these days:

Last weekend, the first blockbuster movie of the summer was be released: Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War. (In case you’re wondering, yes, I did have a ticket to see it at 8 p.m. on opening night.) For Marvel Studios, Infinity War is the nineteenth movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), which was launched in 2008 with the release of Iron Man. The eighteen preceding movies have grossed nearly $15 billion dollars, and Infinity War has now become biggest domestic movie opening weekend in movie history, which previously belonged to Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($248 million).

To say that superhero movies are big business these days is probably an understatement. These numbers represent a ridiculous amount of money, no question, but it also raises another question: why are we so willing to go and see them? From a faith perspective, I can see three reasons: (click here to go to Grandin Media to read more…)

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Is God Really out there?

It’s one of the questions I get asked most often in class, so I’ve put together my three best answers to one of the basic questions of our faith… is God really out there?

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A Good One

I’ve been married to my beautiful wife, Jennifer, for nearly twelve years now.  Looking back, there are a number of moments in our relationship that terrified me: working up the courage to talk to her, actually asking her on a date, holding her hand for the first time, proposing marriage… and the day I had to explain to her how I spent WAY too much money on playoff tickets in 2006.  But these were nothing compared to the fear I felt when, for the first time, I met her dad. [Read more…] about A Good One

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Lord, teach us to pray….

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Photo Credit: Essam Saad on Flickr (Creative Commons License)

“Lord, teach us to pray…” -John 11:1

Since I don’t remember going through it myself, it has been a fascinating exercise observing my children as they learn how to speak.  Each of them begins with no clue whatsoever where to start – so they do the only thing they know how to do: they cry.  Eventually those cries become sounds that represent something – usually, their best imitation of the sound they think represents their needs.  The sounds become words, and once the words become sentences: look out, because many of us don’t stop communicating once we get started!

As I write this, my fourth child is making a great effort to copy the sounds he hears the rest of us saying in a desperate effort to make his wishes known to us.  Sometimes these sounds make no sense at all – so he repeats them, louder and louder in hopes that we will figure it out… and when he gets through to us, the joy he feels is palpable.  Eventually, he’ll find his words – and his voice – and he’ll be able to talk and listen as well as anyone else (and I look forward to that day – I still have no idea what he means 95% of the time.)

Learning to pray is not that much unlike learning to talk.  At first, it may feel like trying to communicate with God is beyond our capacity.  So we cry out to Him – usually in a moment of need.  But if crying for what we want is all that we do, we may find that the ‘relationship’ part of being close to God is lacking – so we seek for words.  Our first words in prayer are usually those copied from others – the Lord’s prayer, Hail Mary, or even the lyrics of a particularly moving hymn or song.  These borrowed words are always with us – and are often helpful for getting the conversation started.  However, to grow in prayer means that we need to regularly move beyond the words of others and find our own voice – conversing with God using our own words (and listening to His reply.)

For many of us, however, the idea of conversing with God is a long ways off, and you might be unsure on where to start.  I’m going to spend some time breaking open the words of several traditional Catholic prayers – to help get you started and to help you find more meaning in some of our rote prayers.  One of the resources I’m going to use for this series is a book by one of my favorite Catholic authors, Amy Welborn, “The Words we Pray.”  If you want to read it yourself, you’ll find that Amy goes much deeper into these prayers than I can on a blog – and several prayers I likely won’t get to.

So as you seek to deepen your own life of prayer – to find your own words (and learn to listen to His) – I pray that this series will be a blessing to you.  (And don’t forget to pray for me!)

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