Every now and then readers of these reflections write letters in which they object to something. Years ago, this Gospel of Luke 18 prompted such an email. A man wrote to me: “I find it deeply offensive that you suggest we are still sinners once we are God’s sons and daughters.” His objection stirred in me a profound awareness of the paradox at the heart of our faith. Are we sinners or beloved children of God?

A woman in my parish has an adult son who has rejected his faith. She prays for him every day. She lights candles, says rosaries, and asks God again and again to bring him back. But nothing changes. Is God listening? Is He delaying? She told me once that she feels like the widow in Jesus’ strange parable — crying out for justice, but hearing only silence. And yet, she said, she is at peace. I asked why. She responded, “God is already answering. I just can’t see it yet.”

Dorothy Day, the great Catholic activist, doubted God’s existence. At least in her early adult years. But something changed when after giving birth to her daughter, she experienced an overwhelming gratitude. She later described how, as she held her daughter, the only appropriate response was a kind of unlimited gratitude. She had done nothing to deserve such a gift — this tiny, miraculous life — but there she was, flooded with gratitude, completely undone by the love of such a Giver.

A priest friend of mine received a call from a family whose elderly mother was dying. Within thirty minutes, he was at her bedside, offering the consolation of the sacraments, anointing her with the oil of the sick, and commending her soul to God. She passed not long after, and for months, her family spoke of their deep gratitude for his presence. When I phoned him to commend his faithful ministry, he simply said, “I was just doing my job.”

One day, my kids were playing outside in the snow, and I decided to take advantage of the quiet house to make a few important phone calls.

Fool. I forgot Murphy’s Law of Parenting, which dictates that as soon as you dial a phone number, a bomb of irritation and neediness explodes within the heart of your loudest child. Sure enough, as soon as the person on the other end of the line picked up, my son was at the back door, whimpering loudly. Horror of horrors, he had snow in his boot.

Dealing with money is unpleasant.

You might be good at dealing with money (I am not). You might even do it for a living (I do not). You might be careful to use as much of your money as you can for good purposes (I try to, but man, these skyrocketing grocery prices are killing me).

“Holiness isn’t for wimps,” Mother Angelica famously said. “And the Cross isn’t negotiable, sweetheart — it’s a requirement.”

I love Mother Angelica and I love this quote. Following God is tough, and to do it you have to make a decision to be tough, to endure tough things — and ultimately, to love the toughness of it all, because within that struggle God meets us with mercy and salvation.

One hot Arizona summer afternoon my car ran out of gas. I phoned the parish office and begged for help. My secretary came and helped me fill the gas tank. She chided me, “If you can’t manage getting your car from A to B, how can we expect you to guide the parish where it needs to go?” Point taken, Julie. I vowed to always make sure I have plenty of gas in my car.

Once I was invited to a group meeting with Pope Francis. Entering the room, I paused, eyeing the seats next to the Pope’s fancy chair. Someone saw my paralysis and invited me to sit in the seat farthest from what I wanted. Hiding my disappointment, I sat. We waited. To our surprise, an aid pointed out that those seats were still empty and invited me and another to have them. We calmly but gleefully strode across the room and sat. Pope Francis entered, and we enjoyed two hours of amazingly uplifting conversation.

I’ve been hiking Camelback Mountain in Phoenix, Arizona most of my life. It is a vigorous forty-five minutes to the top. Near the peak, the end suddenly appears much further away, and steeper. At that moment, a descending hiker often offers encouragement: “Keep going! The peak is right there. It’s not as far as it looks. You can do it!” It usually works. After another five minute push, you summit and enjoy a glorious panorama of the Sonoran Desert in the Valley of the Sun.

During my baseball career, my best coach often said, “You shouldn’t be worried if I yell at you. Be worried if I don’t. If I stop pushing you, it means I don’t think you have any more potential.” He demanded a lot, and I knew it meant he saw that I could be something special on the baseball field.

Last summer I was at the National Eucharistic Congress when Fr. Mike Schmitz delivered an impassioned call to repentance in his keynote address during an evening revival session. The crowd received his message with great enthusiasm. Their applause and the cheers shook the Lucas Oil Stadium.

The next night, Sr. Josephine Garrett took the stage and, in her address, got into the nitty-gritty of what it means to be a disciple, what it means to live repentance — or, as she so beautifully put it, to embrace the hunger. And in doing so, she called back to the previous night’s thunderous approval of Fr. Mike’s message.

It’s 9:08 on a Saturday morning, and I am too darn busy for confession. I’ve probably written before about how hard I find it to get to confession — I say ‘probably’ because I really can’t remember. I whine about it so frequently that it’s hard to tell if I’ve made it the subject of a written piece or if it is simply an oft-recited refrain from the Litany of Colleen’s Perpetual Complaints.