Dear Souls and Hearts Members,

In our reflection from last week, Naturalizing and Spiritualizing: Two Errors Catholics Make, we explored how devout Catholics spiritualize as a way to protect themselves. To review: What does it mean to spiritualize the natural? It means to elevate to the spiritual realm that which is properly in the natural realm, attempting to make the natural into something spiritual.

One particularly prominent form of spiritualizing is spiritual bypassing.

General...

Dear Souls and Hearts Members,

As you already know, my primary purpose is to help you discover any barriers you may have on the natural level that compromise your closeness with our Lord, your ability to love your neighbor and to love yourself in an ordered way. To that end, I discuss two primary and serious errors that we Catholics make and which encumber our lives on both the natural and the spiritual level.

These two serious errors that Catholics make are 1) to naturalize what is properly...

Dear Souls and Hearts members,

I have a treat for you. This week I’m sharing a powerful reflection written by Souls and Hearts Contributor Tom McCabe, a Catholic theologian and expert in forgiveness. Tom’s work in the field of forgiveness is a true gift to the world, and it’s an honor to participate in his creative, grounded approach to teaching and leading people to freedom. So without further ado, here is Tom McCabe:

Better Homes and Pardons -

Finding...

Dear Souls and Hearts Members,

This week, I am excited to share a reflection written by my Souls and Hearts co-founder and dear friend Dr. Gerry Crete. Offering a parts-informed approach to engaging with others constructively and positively in the culture wars, Dr. Gerry uses abortion as an example of an emotionally-charged, hot topic. His example models a way to authentically love others who hold radically different beliefs with an eye on how our own parts work will help diffuse conflict and...

Dear Souls and Hearts members,

Journeying together over the past few weeks, we have been exploring the inner psychological factors that fuel our distractions in prayer, impelling our redirection and ultimately undermining our prayer life, causing us to avoid God.

Hidden reasons of the heart

Blaise Pascal, a 17^th century French Catholic mathematician, philosopher, physicist, inventor, and lover of God wrote in his Pensées:

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We...

Dear Souls and Hearts Members,

In my last weekly reflection, titled Distraction and Prayer: Satan, Symptoms, or Something Else?, I offered you some action items geared toward helping you understand how your distractions in prayer can be a gift. The assignment was simply to jot down the specific distractions as you noticed them interrupting your prayer time, with just enough detail to remember them later.

Maybe you haven’t noticed any interruptions in your prayers, or maybe you...

Dear Souls and Hearts Member,

my deepest desire for you is that with all your being, embracing your identity as a beloved child of God and Mary, you engage with the three Persons of the Trinity and our Lady in a deep, intimate, loving relationship.

I want you to be with God and Mary, as outlined in my recent reflection Catholic Being vs. Catholic Doing. Last week we focused on The Secret Psychological Reasons We Fail to Make Time for Prayer, examining what gets in the way of our intimate and...

Dear Souls and Hearts Members,

In last week’s reflection, Catholic Being vs. Catholic Doing, I promised to dive more deeply into practical recommendations to help you let go of “doing” and enter into “being.”

N.B.: I am focusing primarily on the realm of human formation here (the natural realm); my wheelhouse as a Catholic psychologist. Of course, there are many spiritual reasons why prayer time is diminished or avoided altogether, and these are discussed...

Dear Souls and Hearts Members,

Many of you may be exhausted in the aftermath of all the “doing” in preparation for Christmas Day. The annual marathon of planning, scheduling, shopping, decorating, wrapping gifts, baking cookies, preparing food and drink, facilitating family traditions, visiting relatives and friends, traveling, dealing with the excitement and fatigue of small children, the list goes on and on. Extreme weather in many parts of the US this month increased the...

Dear Souls and Hearts Members,

In last week’s reflection, titled Seeing your Difficulties through the Eyes of Providence, we began the journey that the saints take from rejecting the PIECES (the Persons, Institutions, Events, Circumstances, Experiences, and Systems) of their lives to embracing those PIECES with a firm confidence in God’s Providence.

I use the acronym ROTATE to describe this progression, where we start with Rejection of the PIECES, then moving to a little Openness...