Evangelize Kansas Now!

Father Andrew Strobl asked me to write a profile post to get started. Not only is this my first post for Evangelized Kansas, this is my first blog post ever!   I am very grateful for Father Strobl’s invitation because I have a great heart for evangelization.  

I am a priest of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, ordained in 1995, and have served in a great variety of parishes and ministries. As a young priest I served as chaplain at Bishop Miege and Bishop Ward High School (Go Stags and Cyclones).  I have served as parochial vicar at Saint Ann in Prairie Village and at the Cathedral, pastor of Sacred Heart in Ottawa, pastor of Saint Ann in Prairie Village and for the last seven years have been blessed to be the Director of the Saint Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas.  Along the way, I found time to pick up a Licentiate and Doctorate in Moral Theology from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome (Angelicum).  I grew up in Shawnee, attended St Joseph Grade School, Aquinas High School and graduated from the University of Kansas in 1988.

I would use two Latin words to describe myself, “vir ecclesiasticus,” a “man of the Church.”  This description, attributed to Henri de Lubac, is explained this way, “Such a person will have fallen in love with the beauty of the House of God the Church will have stolen his heart.  She is his spiritual native country, his ‘mother and his brethren,’and nothing which concerns her will leave him indifferent or detached; he will root himself in her soil, form himself in her likeness and make himself one with her experience.  He will feel rich with her wealth; he will be aware that through her and her alone he participates in the unshakeableness of God.  It will be from her that he learns how to live and from her that he learns how to die.”

While I know there are many difficulties and struggles in the Church today (I know, what’s new?), I am convinced that we are in a unique and blessed time (I know, what’s new?) with great opportunities to proclaim the truth, goodness and beauty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I am in the midst of preaching a five-homily series, A Renewed Catholic Spiritual Roadmap of Life, which includes the proper place of evangelization (helping people to meet Jesus and make them his disciples).  If you would like to listen to them you can go to www.st-lawrence.org as each of them are posted.