Motivation – Peter Darcy

Unraveling Our Personal History

By Peter Darcy|2019-03-06T13:01:08+00:00March 6th, 2019|Motivation, Our Lady|

While the Blessed Virgin Mary has a very visible role to play in the season of Advent, she is less prominent in Lent. She acts behind the scenes, so to speak, accompanying us on our penitential journey, leading us to the apex of the season, which is the Hill of Calvary, where she stands interceding [...]

Comments Off

New Week’s Resolutions: A Better Idea

By Peter Darcy|2019-01-07T23:06:57+00:00January 7th, 2019|Motivation, Recent, Spirituality|

My New Year’s resolution is to make no more New Year’s resolutions. I’m going to stick with “new week’s” resolutions from here on out. New Year’s resolutions just don’t seem to work for me. Making resolutions by the week rather than by the month or year is really the best way to be more productive [...]

Comments Off

The Virgin Mary and the Pro-Life Movement

By Peter Darcy|2018-08-05T22:45:05+00:00August 5th, 2018|Culture, Motivation, Our Lady|

The Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary always reminds me of Pope John Paul II’s visit to World Youth Day in Denver in the summer of 1993. The culmination of the event was an outdoor Mass with 400,000 kids in Cherry Creek State Park. Because of the dry heat that day, it felt like we [...]

Comments Off

Broken Harp: The Deadly Abortion Deal in Ireland

By Peter Darcy|2018-07-01T22:51:54+00:00July 1st, 2018|Culture, Motivation|

Ireland has always been known as a place of enchantment, particularly in its poetry, music, and dance. As if to remind us of this, the Emerald Isle itself is even shaped like a harp! But to adopt the metaphor of Don McLean’s classic song, American Pie, May 25 was “the day the music died” in [...]

Comments Off

Advent Lessons From an Old Testament Priest

By Peter Darcy|2017-12-08T22:59:45+00:00December 8th, 2017|Angels, Motivation, Spirituality|

The Scriptures in Advent present us with a number of excellent role models of faith, but the father of John the Baptist is not one of them. Zechariah, a priest of the Law of Moses, serves rather as a negative example, at least at the beginning of his intriguing story. The account of how he [...]

Comments Off

Hollywood and the Beasts of Revelation

By Peter Darcy|2017-11-17T22:16:19+00:00November 17th, 2017|Culture, Motivation, Recent|

Hollywood has dished up some horrific monsters in the past hundred years. You can name them as easily as I can: Godzilla, Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Alien, Frankenstein, Harvey Weinstein, etc. All but the latter were creations of someone’s fertile imagination. Hollywood’s fictitious monsters may be occasions of entertainment or catharsis for us, [...]

Comments Off

Jesus, Purity of Virgins

By Peter Darcy|2016-06-04T23:50:36+00:00June 4th, 2016|Christ, Motivation|

Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR I am already the spouse of a Lover much more noble and powerful than you. He is a Prince whose bride keeps, as the most glorious of crowns, a spotless virginity. To this Lover, I have vowed my fidelity. (From Acts of the Martyrs, the words of St. Agnes as she [...]

Comments Off

Angry Birds, Twisted Culture

By Peter Darcy|2016-05-21T01:12:49+00:00May 21st, 2016|Culture, Motivation|

It takes a lot to offend me nowadays, given the thick-skinned attitude toward movies that we all must, of necessity, develop as media consumers. However, I became an angry bird myself while watching the eponymous movie on its opening weekend. Like any kid movie, Angry Birds contains the expected inane humor suited to an adolescent [...]

Comments Off

Notre Dame’s Moral Equivalency Award

By Peter Darcy|2016-05-18T01:06:02+00:00May 18th, 2016|Culture, Motivation|

By Thomas J. McKenna Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame… What though the odds be great or small Old Notre Dame will win over all While her loyal sons are marching Onward to…moral equivalency and rampant degradation of Catholic teaching. The famed “Notre Dame Fight Song” is supposed to end with the rousing phrase, “Onward [...]

Comments Off

Jesus, Master of the Apostles

By Peter Darcy|2016-05-05T23:46:05+00:00May 5th, 2016|Christ, Motivation|

By Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR For you, Eternal Shepherd, do not desert your flock, but through the blessed Apostles watch over it and protect it always, so that it may be governed by those you have appointed shepherds to lead it in the name of your Son. (Preface I of the Apostles, Roman Missal, 2011.) I [...]

Comments Off

Athanasius the Exile

By Peter Darcy|2016-05-02T00:14:58+00:00May 2nd, 2016|Motivation, Spirituality|

Feast Day of St. Athanasius: May 2 An extremely bright light and fiery character of the early church was the 4th century Bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, St. Athanasius (AD 296-373). What a champion he was. He almost singlehandedly stood as a pillar of iron and a wall of brass against the very influential churchmen of [...]

Comments Off

The Priest and the Sinner in Extremis

By Peter Darcy|2016-04-02T00:39:11+00:00April 2nd, 2016|Angels, Motivation|

In the 1920s automobiles were a relatively new and expensive technology but my grandfather owned one because he was a mechanic. That made him the “go-to” guy for his parish priest who didn’t own one. From time to time his pastor, a Belgian priest named Fr. Seion, would call my grandfather late at night to [...]

Comments Off