Author page: Fr. Barnabas Powell

My dear bride has a hard and fast rule for my two girls: “Wash your hands!” You see, my wife is a trained elementary school educator and part of that training has to do with hygiene. Teaching children to wash their hands before they eat, after they play, and after their potty breaks is all…

G. K. Chesterton once said “True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.” So true. Real contentment is something that doesn’t come “naturally” in a world that is always telling you…

The late Fulton Sheen once said “Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.” And there is simply no other vice that destroys both parties as jealousy. It cankers the soul of the one who experiences it and it reduces the object of jealousy to a forever unreachable “thing.” No wonder jealousy and envy occupy…

  The act of communication is an amazingly difficult task, because we humans communicate on so many levels: Verbal (obviously), Visual (both in writing and gestures, facial expressions), Auditory, and Sensory. We communicate, intentionally and unintentionally along all these spectrums all the time. And guess what, we still struggle with misunderstanding! Just think of the…

Have you ever thought about all those people Jesus healed during His ministry here on earth? They were so happy, grateful, and changed. In some cases (the illness of leprosy) they were now free to rejoin society, be reunited with their families, and finally get their life back. They went on to live their lives.…

  I love this quote from C.S. Lewis: “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit…

The great 20th century thinker, Aldous Huxley, once said “Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.” Funny, now that I think about it, he’s right. Children have the power of a clarity of thought that is absolute and clear. No…