Most Christians can rattle off the answer to the question, “what is the greatest commandment?” That is to love God and love neighbor.

Or specifically, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mk 12: 29-31).

I was blessed to teach 7th & 8th grade for three years and high school for ten. While I taught many different religious classes, the course I always taught was Catholic morality (which was also my favorite).

Obviously one of the major components of a morality class is to teach the concept, importance, and practice of chastity…to teenagers.

But there is a mistake people make in teaching chastity that many times we make in evangelization.

If 100 people were asked right now, “Would you like to see more political ads and social media posts,” how many would say yes? I think the number would be none, zero, zilch, nil, nada!

I think all of us are ready for this election cycle to be over and yet we still have a week and a half.

After speaking at conferences or parishes we love the interaction at our resource table. To hear peoples’ stories, testimonies, heartbreak over loved ones leaving the Church and their own passion to evangelize, provides us with such inspiration and urgency to continue this mission of Casting Nets Ministries.

One of the questions that comes up over and over is, ‘what book would you suggest for me (or my book club, or parish) to read about evangelization?’

Being a parent, you come to learn that there is a wide chasm between what our children need and what they want. Or as my mother would often respond to my request, “You need that like you need another hole in the head.”

Not only is there a chasm between what children want and need but there can also be a gap between what they fear and what is real. Remember being a child and seeing a monster in the dark only to have the lights turned on to find out it is just a jacket hanging on a chair.

There is a place in the Holy Land that has no Church and no information sign. Very few pilgrims visit this place even though it is within walking distance of several popular sites along the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

It is a singular cave on the north side of the Sea of Galilee. In fact, it is the only natural cave on the north side. Located below the Church of the Beatitudes, in-between the Church of the Primacy of Peter and Capernaum, this isolated cave offers an amazing view of Galilee.

One of the highlights of visiting Galilee, the northern region of the Holy Land, is a stop in Capernaum. Capernaum was headquarters for the “Jesus for Messiah Campaign”. It was the home of St. Peter, the “Town of Jesus” and sight of many dramatic stories of the Gospel including the Bread of Life Discourse in the synagogue.

The other day I was reading the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel. To be honest the prophets of the Old Testament can be tough to understand.

The prophets many times did weird things, spoke with cryptic language (at least to us), and seemed to only say things that upset everyone.

However, this passage was not so much a warning to the people of Israel or Judah but to the prophet himself: