There is a letter written in the second century by a man whose name we do not know, addressed to a pagan who wanted to understand what Christians were made of. It is not long. It does not flatter. It describes a kind of man that most of us, if we are honest, have not yet become.

The author tells Diognetus that Christians cannot be picked out of a crowd by their clothing or their accent or their table manners. They live in whatever city they find themselves in. They speak the language. They marry, raise children, work their trades, and pay what Caesar demands.

And yet something sets them apart so completely that the author reaches for the most dramatic comparison he can find. The Christian, he says, is to the world what the soul is to the body. Present everywhere. Identical with nothing. The body wars against the soul not because the soul has wronged it but because the soul will not let it have everything it wants.

That is the arrangement. It has never been renegotiated.

The Strenuous Life

There is a kind of life that demands everything from a man and gives him back something no comfortable existence ever could. It is the life of toil and effort and hard endeavor. Not the life of ease. Not the life of ignoble peace bought at the price of conviction. The life of a man who has decided that what is true and good is worth every cost the world can extract from him, and who pays without complaint.

The Christians described in the Letter to Diognetus were living that life to its fullest expression. They were condemned without cause and returned blessings for abuse. They were put to death and raised to life again. They were persecuted by everyone who encountered them and loved everyone who persecuted them. They were destitute and yet enriched many. They suffered dishonor and called it glory.

These were not soft men. These were not men who had negotiated a comfortable arrangement with the world and called it faithfulness. These were men who had stepped fully into the arena of human life and conducted themselves there with a courage and a joy that no merely human philosophy could produce or explain.

That is what the strenuous life looks like when it is ordered toward something greater than earthly victory.

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We Have Gone Soft

Men, let us name the present condition plainly, because a man who will not name his condition cannot treat it.

The Catholic men of this generation have largely made their peace with the world on the world’s terms. Not all of them. Not entirely. But enough, and enough of the time, that the distinction the Letter to Diognetus describes has grown difficult to see. We consume what the world produces without asking whether it is forming us toward holiness or away from it. We absorb its assumptions about success, comfort, ambition, and the purpose of a man’s years without submitting those assumptions to the scrutiny of the faith. We have pursued the strenuous life in the gym and in the office and on the weekend, and we have chosen the path of least resistance in our souls.

There is a man who has acquired comfort and confused it with achievement. The faith has its own version of this man; the Catholic who attends Mass on Sunday and has made no serious demands of himself the other six days of the week. Both men have stopped short of what they were built for. Both have chosen the grandstand over the arena.

The Christian is not built for the grandstand. He is built to press through.

Full Citizenship, Foreign Soul

The Letter to Diognetus does not call the Christian out of the world. This must be stated plainly because there is always a temptation among serious men to confuse withdrawal with holiness, to mistake distance from the world for superiority to it.

The letter says the opposite. Christians play their full role as citizens. They are present in every city as the soul is present in every part of the body. The soul does not retreat to the safest corner and wait for the body to improve. It animates the whole thing, governs it, holds it together from within.

The Catholic man is asked to do exactly this. To be fully present in his neighborhood, his workplace, his city, his culture, carrying something the world around him cannot produce on its own. Not a man apart in the sense of distance. A man apart in the sense of substance. Made of different material. And it shows in how he works, how he leads, how he treats the men below him and the men above him, how he goes home at night and what he does when he gets there.

He is a citizen who is also an alien. Fully in. Never entirely at home.

The Enemies Within

The strenuous life has enemies, and they do not announce themselves. They arrive as reasonable accommodations, as deserved rest, as the quiet voice that says you have earned this comfort and there is no harm in it.

Sloth. Timidity. The love of ease. The preference for comfortable mediocrity over difficult excellence. These are the enemies of any man who wants to amount to something. They are also the enemies of every Catholic man who wants his faith to mean something beyond Sunday morning.

The desires of the flesh, the letter says, govern the man who is of the world. The Christian lives in the flesh but is not governed by it. That distinction is everything.

A man governed by his appetites is not a free man. He is a man whose decisions are made for him in advance by whatever his body happens to want at the moment. He cannot lead his family because he has not led himself. He cannot build anything lasting because he has not built the interior discipline that lasting things require.

Fasting is not a devotional extra for particularly serious Catholics. It is training. Voluntary sacrifice is not religious affectation. It is the mechanism by which a man stays free from the world’s gravity. The willingness to accept inconvenience and hardship and the hostility of a world that does not share your commitments is not weakness in religious clothing. It is the proof that you mean what you profess.

A man who never denies himself anything is not yet the man the faith demands. He is an appetite with a baptismal certificate.

The Soul of the Body

The letter makes a claim that ought to stop every Catholic man cold.

It is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together.

This is not a metaphor about cultural influence. It is a statement about what is actually happening in reality when a man lives the faith without apology in the middle of ordinary life. His fidelity is doing something. Not just for his family, not just for his parish, but for the social fabric around him in ways he will never fully see or measure.

The man who prays his morning offering, leads his family to Mass, does his work with integrity, loves his wife without reservation, raises his children to know who they are and whose they are, and shows up for the poor and forgotten in his community is not simply a good man living a quietly decent life. He is holding something together that would otherwise come apart.

That is not a small thing. That is the whole thing.

The Question

The Letter to Diognetus was written to explain Christians to a curious pagan. The assumption behind every line of it is that Christians were different enough from the world around them that a reasonable man needed an explanation.

The question it puts to the Catholic man in modern times is simple and uncomfortable.

Does your life require an explanation?

Not different in dress or dialect. The letter already granted that. Different in what you will not do. Different in what you pursue at cost to yourself. Different in what governs you when your appetites and your faith point in opposite directions.

The strenuous life is not lived in the grandstand. It is not lived in the comfortable pew of a faith that demands nothing. It is lived in the arena, fully present, taking the hits, giving everything, for something worth dying for.

Men, the world is waiting for its soul.

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Be the Creed
Nick | Catholic Manhood

If you missed the previous week’s installment of the Imitation of Christ, no worries! You can check it out here.

If you are brand new to this paid subscriber series, start here.

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If you missed the previous week’s installment of the Imitation of Christ, no worries! You can check it out here.

If you are brand new to this paid subscriber series, start here.

Do not yield to every impulse and suggestion but consider things carefully and patiently in the light of God’s will. For very often, sad to say, we are so weak that we believe and speak evil of others rather than good. Perfect men, however, do not readily believe every talebearer, because they know that human frailty is prone to evil and is likely to appear in speech.

Not to act rashly or to cling obstinately to one’s opinion, not to believe everything people say or to spread abroad the gossip one has heard, is great wisdom.

Take counsel with a wise and conscientious man. Seek the advice of your betters in preference to following your own inclinations.

A good life makes a man wise according to God and gives him experience in many things, for the more humble he is and the more subject to God, the wiser and the more at peace he will be in all things.

Practical Reflections

Nothing is more opposite to charity, or more fatal to salvation, than the evil reports we make of one another, whether they be true or false; because they irritate the mind, disorder the heart, foment divisions, and embitter hatreds, and because we cannot obtain God’s pardon for them, unless we resolve in our confessions, to repair the evil we have done, and to reconcile those we may have set at variance. We should therefore neither spread evil reports of others, nor listen to them; and if we do hear anything against our neighbor, we should be careful not to repeat it.

Prayer

Grant, O my Savior, that I may observe, with the greatest care, Thy precept of charity towards my neighbor, to love him as Thou has loved us, since this is absolutely necessary for salvation. Give me also the tenderness of charity which may prevent me from wounding it in any way: for Thou hast said that to offend our neighbor is to wound the apple of Thine eye. Grant, therefore, that I may avoid Thy displeasure by not incurring the displeasure of my neighbor.
Amen.

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I recently had the absolute honor of sitting down with the Yes Catholic podcast for a deep, honest conversation about my conversion story and what authentic Catholic masculinity actually looks like in 2026.

The episode dropped on April 10. If you haven’t listened yet, I have dropped the links below.

Apple Podcasts

YouTube Version

The whole conversation felt like a long, fireside chat with a brother in Christ. We covered the moment everything shifted for me in college, how I went from agnostic to baptized Catholic just days before my 21st birthday, and why I started Catholic Manhood back in February of 2019; to call men higher and help us reject mediocrity.

The Conversion That Lit the Fire

I didn’t grow up Catholic. In college I was drifting; secular ideas of “manhood” sounded good on the surface, but something was missing. Then came the pivotal moment. I encountered the Real Presence in the Eucharist and the biblical reality of the “keys to the kingdom” given to St. Peter. Suddenly the authority of the Church clicked. The faith wasn’t just rules or rituals; it was true.

I said yes to Jesus, got baptized, and everything changed. That “yes” didn’t make life easy, it made it real. And it sparked a burning desire to unite the best of what the world calls masculinity with the only masculinity that actually saves, which is the masculinity of Christ.

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What Authentic Catholic Masculinity Really Is

In the interview I kept coming back to one truth, true masculinity is rooted in humility, obedience, and love. Not dominance. Not bravado. Not the endless scroll of gym selfies and hustle culture. Real strength looks like St. Joseph. It is silent, steady, sacrificial. The ultimate blueprint for strong, gentle leadership.

We talked about the everyday choices that form us, carrying your Cross, fighting the real spiritual battle and leading out families with Christ’s love.

Holiness and strength are not opposites, they go hand-in-hand. The men who are truly great are the ones who daily surrender to Christ for the good of their families and the world. That’s the heartbeat of everything I do at Catholic Manhood. The blog, the social media, this Substack; none of it exists to make me look impressive. It exists to remind men that we are called to Be the Creed. To align what we profess on Sunday with how we live Monday through Saturday. To be saints in the ordinary.

Why This Matters Right Now

We live in a world that is confused about men. Some voices tell us to be soft and passive. Others tell us to be hard and hyper-independent. The Church gives us the fullness of the Truth; men are made to protect, provide, and lead through humility and self-gift.

When we embrace that, our marriages flourish, our children see what a man of God looks like, and the culture around us gets a living witness that holiness is manly. My ongoing conversion is still happening every single day. The interview was just one more “yes”, one more chance to point men toward the only thing that satisfies: Jesus Christ and the life of virtue He calls us to.

The mission is simple. Be a man. Be a Saint. Be the Creed.

Let’s keep saying YES to Christ.

Be the Creed
Nick | Catholic Manhood

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Break the box and shed the nard;
Stop not now to count the cost;
Hither bring pearl, opal, sard;
Reck not what the poor have lost;
Upon Christ throw all away:
Know ye, this is Easter Day.

Build His church and deck His shrine,
Empty though it be on earth;
Ye have kept your choicest wine—
Let it flow for heavenly mirth;
Pluck the harp and breathe the horn:
Know ye not ’tis Easter morn?

Gather gladness from the skies;
Take a lesson from the ground;
Flowers do ope their heavenward eyes
And a Spring-time joy have found;
Earth throws Winter’s robes away,
Decks herself for Easter Day.

Beauty now for ashes wear,
Perfumes for the garb of woe,
Chaplets for dishevelled hair,
Dances for sad footsteps slow;
Open wide your hearts that they
Let in joy this Easter Day.

Seek God’s house in happy throng;
Crowded let His table be;
Mingle praises, prayer, and song,
Singing to the Trinity.
Henceforth let your souls always
Make each morn an Easter Day.

He is Risen.

Be the Creed
Nick | Catholic Manhood

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1. Our business managers
don't know how to manage
the things they try to manage,
because they don't understand
the things they try to manage.

2. So they turn to college professors
in the hope of understanding
the things they try to manage.

3. But college professors
do not profess anything,
they only teach subjects.

4. As teachers of subjects,
college professors
may enable people
to master subjects,
but mastering subjects
has never enabled anyone
to master situations.

Peter Maurin
The Catholic Worker

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If you missed the previous week’s installment of the Imitation of Christ, no worries! You can check it out here.

If you are brand new to this series, start here.

Happy is he to whom truth manifests itself, not in signs and words that fade, but as it actually is. Our opinions, our senses often deceive us and we discern very little.

What good is much discussion of involved and obscure matters when our ignorance of them will not be held against us on Judgment Day? Neglect of things which are profitable and necessary and undue concern with those which are irrelevant and harmful, are great folly.

We have eyes and do not see.

What, therefore, have we to do with questions of philosophy? He to whom the Eternal Word speaks is free from theorizing. For from this Word are all things and of Him all things speak– the Beginning Who also speaks to us. Without this Word no man understands or judges aright. He to whom it becomes everything, who traces all things to it and who sees all things in it, may ease his heart and remain at peace with God.

O God, You Who are the truth, make me one with You in love everlasting. I am often wearied by the many things I hear and read, but in You is all that I long for. Let the learned be still, let all creatures be silent before You; You alone speak to me.

The more recollected a man is, and the more simple of heart he becomes, the easier he understands sublime things, for he receives the light of knowledge from above. The pure, simple, and steadfast spirit is not distracted by many labors, for he does them all for the honor of God. And since he enjoys interior peace he seeks no selfish end in anything. What, indeed, gives more trouble and affliction than uncontrolled desires of the heart?

A good and devout man arranges in his mind the things he has to do, not according to the whims of evil inclination but according to the dictates of right reason. Who is forced to struggle more than he who tries to master himself? This ought to be our purpose, then: to conquer self, to become stronger each day, to advance in virtue.

Every perfection in this life has some imperfection mixed with it and no learning of ours is without some darkness. Humble knowledge of self is a surer path to God than the ardent pursuit of learning. Not that learning is to be considered evil, or knowledge, which is good in itself and so ordained by God; but a clean conscience and virtuous life ought always to be preferred. Many often err and accomplish little or nothing because they try to become learned rather than to live well.

If men used as much care in uprooting vices and implanting virtues as they do in discussing problems, there would not be so much evil and scandal in the world, or such laxity in religious organizations. On the day of judgment, surely, we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done; not how well we have spoken but how well we have lived.

Tell me, where now are all the masters and teachers whom you knew so well in life and who were famous for their learning? Others have already taken their places and I know not whether they ever think of their predecessors. During life they seemed to be something; now they are seldom remembered. How quickly the glory of the world passes away! If only their lives had kept pace with their learning, then their study and reading would have been worth while.

How many there are who perish because of vain worldly knowledge and too little care for serving God. They became vain in their own conceits because they chose to be great rather than humble.

He is truly great who has great charity. He is truly great who is little in his own eyes and makes nothing of the highest honor. He is truly wise who looks upon all earthly things as folly that he may gain Christ. He who does God’s will and renounces his own is truly very learned.

Practical Reflections

To study the truths of religion, not so much to know as to practice them; to listen to the Divine Word, which speaks more to the heart than to the understanding; to know and to do what is necessary for salvation, is the true science of a Christian. I am weary of speculative knowledge, which does not change nor move my heart, but only flatters the curiosity of my mind; I am tired of knowing and saying so much concerning eternal truths and salvation, and yet doing so little to obtain it.

Prayer

O Jesus! Who hast taught us that not all those who say Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but only such as do the will of Thy Father, whose lives correspond with their belief, grant us a truly Christian spirit, a Christian heart, and guide us in the paths of a Christian life. Grant that I may become detached from all things, and in all things seek Thee alone. Grant that I may direct all my knowledge, my whole capacity, all my happiness, and all my exertions, to please Thee, to love Thee, and to obtain Thy love for time and eternity.
Amen.

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Beauty is subjective - is a common lie passed down to us and pushed down our throats essentially since the “Enlightenment” began. This lie further suggests that beauty is a matter of personal preference and feeling; that there is no difference truly, between the Cathedral of Notre Dame and a brutalist parking garage. “Who is to say?” they scold.

This giant lie has giant consequences. It has given humanity ugly churches, ugly cities and and ugly lives. Beauty is not a decoration and it is not a luxury. Beauty, properly understood, is a path that leads to God. To abandon beauty is to cut off this path. That is what men who despise the Creator want.

Catholic tradition has never accepted any subjective take on beauty and neither has science or mathematics. The Church could never do this because beauty transcends. There is Truth, Goodness and Beauty. St. Thomas Aquinas, expanding on St. Augustine’s theological perspective, identified beauty with three conditions:

• Integritas (Integrity/Wholeness)

• Consonatia (harmony/Proportion)

• Claritas (Radiance/Luminosity)

These three conditions are not preferences. They are not bugs, but features of reality. When something meets all three of these conditions, that something is what humanity calls beautiful, objectively, regardless of what someone’s personal taste is. Just because a man strolls past a Cathedral and has a bad feeling, does not disprove the Cathedral’s beauty. In fact, it only reveals the disorder in the man’s perception and the formation of it.

The Man Who Builds

Men build things. The masculine nature demands it within our participation in God’s creative act. Building expresses what a man believes about the world, his fellow man and about God.

Walking into the nave of any Gothic cathedral, something happens to an individual before forming any single thought. By design, the arches pull your eyes up. You notice how the light coming through the expertly crafted stained glass moves, illuminating everything you see. The builders who designed these structures in the middle ages built these things a certain way because they believed a certain way. They were not simply sheltering people from bad weather. They were carving their theology in stone. Material beauty is ordered toward immaterial transcendence. Even the light through the windows falls in line with the thought that light itself participates in divine nature. This is the tradition that built the great churches of Europe. We cannot say the same of the ones built through the 1970s.

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What Ugly Buildings Confess

Building an ugly church is not a neutral act. Architectural choices are confessions of belief. Take flat roofed buildings for example. Architects replaced vertical ceilings, ones that made you look to Heaven, with ones with a horizontal focus of “community”. Community is not bad, but without the ideal of Heaven, community in and of itself is disordered, much like many modern buildings.

Churches removed their altars from central positions and stripped ornamentation under the false pretense that simplicity = humility. Modern man forgets that such ornamentations were not built for man, but for God. A fatal neglect. Beauty in a house of God is reverence, not vanity. Sacred Art and Architecture have their own purpose to draw man to God and to surrender man’s soul to adoration of Him.

Roger Scruton, the British conservative philosopher, has argued throughout his career that ugliness is a “cult” and when ugliness is built into a human’s environment, it is not only an aesthetic failure, but a moral one. Ugliness communicates to the populace that they are not worth an ounce of beauty and that their lives do not owe any attention. The brutalist blocks and civic buildings do nothing for humanity but send them into a deep depression. This depression, many would argue, is by design.

Beauty Is Not Soft

Here is another lie that is told to the modern man; that beauty and the sense of caring about it is somehow “unmanly”; it belongs to a world of women. At worst it is a costly lie and at best it is a grave mistake.

The builders of the great cathedrals of Europe and the sculptors, painters and craftsmen that adorned them were not gentle souls of leisure. They were men who poured their heart out in brutal labor, intelligent engineering and at a major financial cost. These men often set forth to build something they knew they would never even see finished. Why would a man take as much time crafting something a human couldn’t see as they would with something front and center? It is because they knew that God could see. The work was done in offering. Beauty in this sense was a form of worship or prayer. Just like the liturgy of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, this demanded the best these men had to give.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, one of the best Catholic theologians of the 20th century, structured much of his work around beauty. To summarize, he held the position that a world that has lost beauty, will inevitably lose truth and goodness. The three belong together.

A man that lacks the capacity for beauty cuts himself off from the communication of God. The Psalms are poetry, with a specific structure; they are beautiful, objectively. Some truths can only be approached from the perspective of beauty. The same applies to sacred music, like Gregorian Chant and the polyphonic musical texture. Such art and beauty is the fulfillment of liturgy and shouldn’t be thought of as simply ornamenting it.

The Objective Order

Dietrich von Hildebrand, a philosopher that Pope Pius XII called “the 20th century Doctor of the Church” was also a modern defender of the objectivity of beauty. In Aesthetics, Hildebrand explains the first and second powers of beauty. The first power, sensory delight is beauty that strikes a person immediately, much like when one enters a cathedral and takes it all in. The second power is something deeper. A great work of music does not only please the ear. It unlocks something in the mind. Hildebrand argues that elevated art uses material means to communicate a spiritual reality beyond the art itself.

That is the Catholic understanding of beauty. Beauty is not a feeling, it is an encounter with reality and exists whether or not you can perceive it. The correct response to beauty is not enjoyment, it is stillness and awe.

What This Demands of Catholic Men

So we have proven that beauty is objective and we have also shown that it is a primary way that God draws the man toward Himself. This means that the Catholic man has obligations in reference to beauty.

The first obligation is formation. A man has to train himself to see beauty. Read about sacred art and poetry, visit Cathedrals, listen to sacred music. You are not indulging, you are cultivating a capacity of encounter.

The second obligation is resistance. A man must deter ugliness wherever one has influence, specifically your home. We do not need wealth to make our homes beautiful. We need intention. Put a crucifix over the door, focus on books on shelves as opposed to screens on a wall. These are statements to the family you protect and provide for about what you believe and indicate what your family is being formed toward.

The third obligation is to fight for beauty in the Church. When a parish council decides to take away the altar rails; you push back, hard. Protect beauty and you will protect truth and goodness. When ugliness confronts a Catholic man, it is a man’s duty to object. The ugliness you see around you was not by accident. It was a series of choices made by specific people who either cared little or hated much. Sadly, it can happen again, but it won’t if we don’t let it.

The men who built Christendom were not trying to impress anyone, they were crafting their theology in stone, glass and wood. They understood that beauty is not a reward, it is a duty. The real question for the Catholic man today is not really whether beauty matters, but whether or not the Catholic man will receive it, fight for it and pass it on to our posterity.

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Nick | Catholic Manhood

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Men,

Today is the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There are no recorded words from St. Joseph in the Gospels and yet the Church calls him the Patron of the Universal Church, the Terror of Demons and the Guardian of the Redeemer. In silence, Joseph acts, obeys protects, provides and then disappears. St. Joseph’s role wasn’t a supporting role, it was THE supporting role and one of the best examples of fatherhood and being a husband in history. For those who take their vows as seriously as St. Joseph, check out 15 Ways to be a Better Catholic Husband.

He Just Moved

An angel appeared to St. Joseph four times. There was no arguing and no negotiation. Joseph heard the call and he moved. Saint John Chrysostom noted this extraordinary, but quiet life and lifted it up as a model of a man whose faith was rooted so deep that it allowed action without having all of the answers. St. Joseph did not wait for certainty. God’s direction was enough. Many of us men have attempted to negotiate with our vocations, even when we know full well what is being asked of us. We find reasons to delay action. Joseph is the rebuke of such thinking.

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The Workshop

St. Joseph was a builder. He worked with his hands. He lived a tradesman’s life. In St. Joseph’s “workshop”, Jesus spent his early life. According to Pope St. John Paul II, Joseph’s labor sanctified human work from within because God chose to be taught by a workman. He chose to learn how to make things. Every man who works with his hands or runs a business has a patron in that workshop. Your daily work, when rightly ordered, is not a distraction from your spiritual life, it is part of it.

Terror of Demons

Terror of Demons….a carpenter? Doesn’t seem like a terror to anyone at first glance. So why does the Church give St. Joseph this title?

Joseph stood between the King Herod’s massacre and the Christ child. Because of Joseph’s obedience and action, the child survived.

The enemy failed because a father did his job.

That is why St. Joseph is the model. A Catholic man is a protector of his household. He is not passive, but willing to move when the occasion calls.

As husbands and fathers, we have been entrusted with the protection of others. Here is what St. Joseph asks you through his action; does your readiness match the weight you have been entrusted with?

The Hidden Life

St. Joseph worked in obscurity. He had no audience, no recognition, no record of his words. No one was watching, but God was.

Thomas à Kempis, in the Imitation of Christ writes that is better to be unknown and to know yourself than to be famous and proud. It is a life well lived, not a life well known to man that is the key. This is hard to come to grips with at times in a world that applies value by the size of a person’s audience. It was hard in Joseph’s time too.

He did it anyway.

What He Asks of Us

Are you obedient to your vocation or do you negotiate?

Do you protect your wife and the loved ones in your care?

Do you work as an offering or just for a paycheck?

Do you live as a faithful Christian even when no one is watching?

Now you know what St. Joseph is asking you, will you get up?

St. Joseph, Terror of Demons, pray for us!
Nick | Catholic Manhood

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1. Business men say
	     that because everybody is selfish
	     business must necessarily
	     be based on selfishness.

	2. But when business
	     is based on selfishness
	     everybody is busy
	     becoming more selfish.

	3. And when everybody is busy
	     becoming more selfish,
	     you have classes and clashes.

	4. Business men create problems;
	     they do not solve them.

Peter Maurin
The Catholic Worker

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If you missed the previous week’s installment of the Imitation of Christ, no worries! You can check it out here.

If you are brand new to this series, start here.

Every man naturally desires knowledge¹; but what good is knowledge without fear of God? Indeed a humble rustic who serves God is better than a proud intellectual who neglects his soul to study the course of the stars.2 He who knows himself well becomes mean in his own eyes and is not happy when praised by men.

If I knew all things in the world and had not charity, what would it profit me before God Who will judge me by my deeds?

Shun too great a desire for knowledge, for in it there is much fretting and delusion. Intellectuals like to appear learned and to be called wise. Yet there are many things the knowledge of which does little or no good to the soul, and he who concerns himself about other things than those which lead to salvation is very unwise.

Many words do not satisfy the soul; but a good life eases the mind and a clean conscience inspires great trust in God.

The more you know and the better you understand, the more severely will you be judged, unless your life is also the more holy. Do not be proud, therefore, because of your learning or skill. Rather, fear because of the talent given you. If you think you know many things and understand them well enough, realize at the same time that there is much you do not know. Hence, do not affect wisdom, but admit your ignorance. Why prefer yourself to anyone else when many are more learned, more cultured than you?

If you wish to learn and appreciate something worth while, then love to be unknown and considered as nothing. Truly to know and despise self is the best and most perfect counsel. To think of oneself as nothing, and always to think well and highly of others is the best and most perfect wisdom. Wherefore, if you see another sin openly or commit a serious crime, do not consider yourself better, for you do not know how long you can remain in good estate. All men are frail, but you must admit that none is more frail than yourself.

Practical Reflections

The thoughts of man, says the Scripture, are vain and useless, if, in them, he does not apply his mind to know and to love God, to forget and to hate himself. The simple and lively faith of a soul which believes all that God teaches, without examination or hesitation, and performs all that he requires for the attainment of salvation, is preferrable to all divine and human sciences, which, of themselves, without such a faith, only fill the mind with pride, leave the heart dry, and avail naught for salvation.

Prayer

Moderate, O Jesus, my eagerness to know so much, and correct my negligence in doing so little for salvation, since Thou wilt not judge me according to what I have known, but by what I have done, or neglected to do, to obtain it. Can I apply my thoughts to know Thee thoroughly, and not admire and love Thee? and can I truly know myself, and not despise and hate myself? O life unknown! life hidden in Jesus Christ, in God! what an excellent means art thou practiced amongst Christians! grant, O Lord, that all may know, esteem, and love it, and be directed by it. Amen.

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Have you ever experienced an intrusive thought, seemingly out of nowhere, and embarrassingly realized how evil it was? Or, after clenching your fists and grinding your teeth for five minutes, have you realized you had been internally contemplating a current event that caused you to lose your temper and unjustly lash out at someone? How do we combat these intrusive thoughts?

How do we cultivate interior peace and guard our senses to quickly dismiss these thoughts when temptation arises? I would like to suggest that, in the face of evil thoughts and temptations, we should adopt a spirit of “watchfulness.” When accompanied by prayer, watchfulness is a spiritual practice that can lead us to one of the eight beatitudes, purity of heart (Matthew 5:8).

This grace given by Christ frees us from impure thoughts, impassioned words, and evil actions. It strengthens our will to keep custody of our mind and guides us to a holy way of life. Watchfulness is the guard incessantly analyzing and halting thoughts at the entrance of our hearts. And this is of great importance since our Lord said that we would be judged not only by our deeds but by our thoughts: “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man” (Mark 7:21-23). Clearly, evil thoughts are dangerous when entertained and perversely cultivated.

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Four Types of Watchfulness

St. Hesychios of Sinai is not a well-known saint, and nothing definite is known concerning his works, as only fragments remain. However, many ascetic monks commend his work on watchfulness, inner attentiveness, and the guarding of the heart. In his treatise On Watchfulness and Holiness, St. Hesychios instructs his readers to be aware of four types of watchfulness that can assist in purifying the heart and keeping the eyes fixed upon heaven.

1. Closely scrutinize every mental image or provocation.

We are bombarded with thousands of images every day. Corporations pay top dollar to fight for your attention and put their logo, branding, and message in front of you. What we consume affects our behavior and memory. If we intentionally fill our minds with things of truth, goodness, and beauty, our minds will, in turn, be drawn toward and recollect these transcendentals. On the other hand, if we fill our minds with the contrary, it will dominate our being, darkening our intellect by violently pushing us further from reality.

The darkened intellect reaches devastating power when the imagination has built a world in its own image and likeness, surrounded by restlessness and the deafening noise of nothingness. However, guarding the purity of our imagination serves our intellect and ensures that we see the world as it really is—a world in which we are made in God’s image and likeness and meant to rest in Him. Let us be watchful of the images we consume.

2. Free the heart from all thoughts, keeping it profoundly silent and still in prayer.

It is the contemplation of our Lord that bars entry to evil thoughts. Prayer quiets the mind, brings to light disordered attachments, draws the heart to higher goods, and reveals the need for reconciliation. In prayer, the soul can be still in the depths of simple and singular contemplations, quenching man’s profound thirst to rest in his Creator. St. Hesychios states, “When the heart has acquired stillness, it will perceive the heights and depths of knowledge; and the ear of the still intellect will be made to hear marvelous things from God.”

With Christ’s help, this watchfulness keeps sins from entering our minds and cuts off sinful thoughts that previously assaulted us. While this silent prayer can initially be intimidating or awkward, offer that awkwardness to our Lord, praying that you desire comfort and rest. Ask Him to bring to light the times you have carelessly entertained impure or unholy thoughts and beg for the strength and courage to mindfully guard your intellect. Watchfulness and prayer reinforce one another. Watchfulness purifies our prayers by revealing our daily struggles and asking the Divine Physician to heal us.

Likewise, prayer bolsters our desire to purify our thoughts and to remain vigilant to approach our Lord in prayer with a clean and pure heart. Through prayer, we can judge our thoughts quickly, clinging to all that is holy and discarding what is not. Let us be watchful in prayer.

3. Continually and humbly call upon the Lord Jesus Christ for help.

It is impossible to cleanse our hearts from impure thoughts without the constant invocation of Jesus Christ. Cleansing the soul of impassioned thoughts makes room for the salvific name of Jesus, bringing the soul joy and peace. But this does not happen accidentally; we must develop the virtuous habit of calling upon our Lord throughout the day. In her great wisdom, the Church has provided us with a blueprint through a compilation of prayers called the Liturgy of the Hours.

While the laity is encouraged but not required to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, the routine of praying morning, evening, and night can help us form the habit of turning to our Lord throughout the day. By developing this habit, we can be equipped when temptation knocks on our door, instinctively invoking the Holy Spirit for guidance, for the Spirit mystically confirms Christ’s presence in us. If we fail to do so, succumbing to temptation and falling into sin, we build a city of vanity and pride populated with unholy thoughts.

We must beg our Lord and His Mother for a pure and contrite heart, tearing down the prideful city through the sacrament of confession, and begin again to build upon the foundation of sanctifying grace. Let us be watchful through the day and never tire of calling upon our Lord Jesus Christ for mercy and guidance.

4. Always have the thought of death in one’s mind.

An overemphasis on worldly security is compensation for losing the sense of our eternal end. Recalling that we are not made for this world but for the next reminds us that the world cannot truly satisfy our desires. Bringing our death to the forefront of our consciousness can order our thoughts to our ultimate purpose, namely that we are children of God and can find hope for eternal salvation in Christ’s death and resurrection. “In all you do, remember the end of your life, and then you will never sin.” (Sirach 7:36) Let us be watchful and remember we, too, will die.

Sin creates a proclivity to sin; it engenders vice by repetitions of the same acts (CCC: 1865). One of the great benefits of watchfulness is seeing mental images of evil thoughts as soon as they are formed in the intellect, exposing these thoughts as evil, and quickly dismissing them. By scrutinizing our thoughts, developing a silent prayer life, forming a habit of daily calling upon our Lord, and remembering that this life is fleeting and that someday we will die, we will attune our intellects and wills to the promise that the pure of heart will see God face to face and be like Him. (CCC 2519)

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This post was written by Adam Minihan. Adam is the founder of M6 Marketing and writes about business, philosophy, agrarian life, and fatherhood at The Grounded Builder on Substack. He is also the co-host of The Catholic Man Show.

Catholic Manhood

Start Here: Why We’re Reading the Imitation of Christ

You’ve probably heard of the Imitation of Christ. Maybe you even own a copy. And if you’re anything like most Catholic men, it’s sitting on a shelf collecting dust, or you made it through the first few chapters years ago and never went back…

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2 months ago · Catholic Manhood

“He who follows Me, walks not in darkness,” says the Lord. John 8:12. By these words of Christ we are advised to imitate His life and habits, if we wish to be truly enlightened and free from all blindness of heart. Let our chief effort, therefore, be to study the life of Jesus Christ.

The teaching of Christ is more excellent than all the advice of the saints, and he who has His spirit will find in it a hidden manna. Now, there are many who hear the Gospel often but care little for it because they have not the spirit of Christ. Yet whoever wishes to understand fully the words of Christ must try to pattern his whole life on that of Christ.

What good does it do to speak learnedly about the Trinity if, lacking humility, you displease the Trinity? Indeed it is not learning that makes a man holy and just, but a virtuous life makes him pleasing to God. I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it. For what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all the philosophers if we live without grace and the love of God? Vanity of vanities and all is vanity, except to love God and serve Him alone.

This is the greatest wisdom: “to seek the kingdom of heaven through contempt of the world.” It is vanity, therefore, to seek and trust in riches that perish. It is vanity also to court honor and to be puffed up with pride. It is vanity to follow the lusts of the body and to desire things for which severe punishment later must come. It is vanity to wish for long life and to care little about a well-spent life. It is vanity to be concerned with the present only and not to make provision for things to come. It is vanity to love what passes quickly and not to look ahead where eternal joy abides.

Often recall the proverb: “The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing.” Try, moreover, to turn your heart from the love of things visible and bring yourself to things invisible. For they who follow their own evil passions stain their consciences and lose the grace of God.

Practical Reflections

If we would really honor Jesus Christ, we must apply ourselves to know Him, to love Him, and to follow Him in the practice of every Christian virtue. This is absolutely necessary for salvation, as we cannot become true Christians, but by knowing, loving and following Christ. To pretend to please divinity, without endeavoring to follow His example, without living as He lived, would be most dangerously to delude ourselves.

Prayer

What will it avail me, O Jesus, to study and to know in part Thy supreme greatness, and the most sublime of Thy mysteries, if I endeavor not to derive advantage and merit from them, by cherishing Thy disposition and copying thy virtues, since, to save my soul, I must not only know, but practice what Thou has taught me by Thy word, and manifested in Thy life for my imitation - I must know and practice my religion? This, my Saviour, is the grace which I now ask of Thee, with a firm hope that Thou wilt grant my petition. Amen.

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You’ve probably heard of the Imitation of Christ. Maybe you even own a copy. And if you’re anything like most Catholic men, it’s sitting on a shelf collecting dust, or you made it through the first few chapters years ago and never went back.

Life is busy and there’s always something else competing for your attention.

But this book has been sitting there waiting for you for a reason.

Thomas à Kempis wrote it in the early 15th century, and it became the most widely read Catholic book after the Bible. St. Thomas More carried it with him. St. Ignatius of Loyola read it every single day. For over six hundred years it has quietly shaped the souls of saints, popes, and ordinary men trying to hold the line in a world that never stops pulling them away from God.

It shaped them because it tells the truth. About pride. About distraction. About the gap between who we say we are and how we actually live.

That’s why we’re reading it together.

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Here’s how it works

Every Sunday morning at 6 AM you’ll get one chapter. The text, a short reflection, and a prayer to close it out. Nothing long, nothing complicated. One chapter, one week, let it sit with you.

The book has 114 chapters across four books. That’s a little over two years of Mondays. Some weeks will feel straightforward. Others will stop you cold. Thomas doesn’t ease you into anything. He writes like a man who has already wrestled with his own pride and weakness and is done pretending otherwise. He’s not going to flatter you. He’s going to challenge you.

Good. That’s exactly what we need.

Is this for you?

If you’ve never finished this book, this is your chance. If you want your faith to be more than something you practice on Sunday, this is for you. If you feel that gap between who you are and who you know you’re supposed to be, Thomas à Kempis has been writing to men like you for six centuries.

The question he keeps coming back to is worth sitting with all week:

What does it profit you to know much, if you lack humility?

Subscribe to this section and you’ll get every Monday post straight to your inbox. Start wherever we are, or go back to Chapter 1 and begin at the beginning.

Either way, show up every week. One chapter at a time.

Let’s begin.

The Imitation of Christ (Deluxe Edition)

Be the Creed

Nick | Catholic Manhood

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    1. A politician is an artist
              in the art of following the wind
              of  public opinion.

        2. He who follows the wind
              of public opinion
              does not follow
              his own judgement.

        3. And he who does not follow
              his own judgement
              cannot lead people
              out of the beaten path.

        4. He is like the tail of a dog
              that tries to lead the head.        

        5. When people stand behind their president
              and their president
              stands behind them
              they and their president
              go around in a circle
              getting nowhere.        

Peter Maurin
The Catholic Worker

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1.  Politicians used to say:
             "We make prosperity
             through our wise policies."

        2.  Business men used to say:
             "We make prosperity
             through our private enterprise."

        3.  The workers did not have anything to say
             about the matter;

        4.  They were either put to work
             or thrown out of employment

        5.  And when unemployment came
             the workers
             had no recourse
             against the professed makers
             of prosperity,
             politicians and business men.        

Peter Maurin
The Catholic Worker

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Writing about the Catholic Church,
   a radical writer says:
  “Rome will have to do more
  than to play a waiting game;
  she will have to use
  some of the dynamite
  inherent in her message.”
To blow the dynamite
  of a message
  is the only way
  to make the message dynamic.
If the Catholic Church
  is not today
  the dominant social dynamic force,
  it is because Catholic scholars
  have failed to blow the dynamite
  of the Church.
Catholic scholars
  have taken the dynamite
  of the Church,
  have wrapped it up
  in nice phraseology,
  placed it in an hermetic container
  and sat on the lid.
It is about time
  to blow the lid off
  so the Catholic Church
  may again become
  the dominant social dynamic force.

Peter Maurin
The Catholic Worker

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Peter Maurin was born in 1877 in a small village in southern France, the eldest of twenty-two children in a peasant farming family. He was educated by the Christian Brothers, joined a Catholic youth movement called Le Sillon in his early twenties, and spent years wrestling with what it meant to live out the Gospel in the modern world.

He never settled into a comfortable life. He worked as a laborer, a farmer, a teacher, and spent time as a wandering scholar, reading voraciously and thinking deeply about the relationship between the Church, society, and the dignity of the human person. He eventually made his way to the United States, where he continued working manual jobs while developing the ideas that would define the rest of his life.

In 1932 he walked into the life of a young journalist and convert named Dorothy Day and changed everything.

The Catholic Worker

Maurin had a vision. He believed the Catholic Church held the answer to the chaos of the modern world, not as a political program, but as a way of life rooted in the Gospels, the saints, and the social teaching of the Church. He wanted scholars who would become workers and workers who would become scholars. He wanted houses of hospitality where the poor would be welcomed as Christ. He wanted farming communes where men could live and work with dignity.

Dorothy Day had the pen, the platform, and the drive to make it happen. Together they launched The Catholic Worker newspaper in 1933, selling it for a penny a copy, a price it still holds today. The movement that grew from it established houses of hospitality across the country, fed the hungry, sheltered the homeless, and gave a generation of Catholics a vision of the faith that was demanding, practical, and alive.

Maurin never sought fame or recognition. He slept in the same conditions as the poor he served, owned almost nothing, and spent himself completely in service of the vision he believed God had given him. He died in 1949, worn out and largely forgotten by the wider world, but leaving behind a movement and a body of writing that still speaks clearly to anyone willing to listen.

The Easy Essays

The Easy Essays are exactly what they sound like. Short, punchy pieces written in plain language, almost like poetry in their rhythm and structure. Maurin wrote them to be read aloud, shared on street corners, and understood by anyone regardless of education.

But don’t mistake simplicity for shallowness. Behind every short line is a serious idea drawn from Scripture, Church teaching, philosophy, and history. He was diagnosing the failures of modern culture, calling the Church back to its radical roots, and challenging ordinary men to think differently about work, poverty, community, and what it means to build a society worthy of the human person.

He believed that ideas have consequences and that bad ideas had brought the modern world to its knees. He wanted to replace them with better ones, one essay at a time.

Why We’re Reading Them

Once a week you’ll get one Easy Essay, Some will challenge how you think about work. Some will challenge how you think about the Church. Some will simply remind you that the problems we face today are not new, and that faithful men have stared them down before.

Peter Maurin believed the Catholic man had a role to play in the renewal of the world. Not through politics or programs, but through how he lived, worked, and treated the people around him.

That idea is worth exploring one essay at a time.

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Let’s begin.

“Character” is often a frivolously used and poorly understood word in today’s time. We speak of character as something to admire in a person and we claim to value it. We speak of character at people’s funerals, but also in critique of the living. As a thought exercise, say someone held you at gunpoint and demanded that you tell him what “character” meant, clearly. Perhaps the first thing on your mind would be that whatever character is, it is certainly the opposite of a man holding you at gunpoint asking you to define the word. In that extreme exercise lies the problem, right? If you can’t clearly define a thing, how can you claim to truly pursue or attain it?

Let’s begin to define character by what we can understand around the word. We can look back in history to those who have helped build Christendom brick by brick and quickly realize at the very least, that our forebearers deeply understood something that modern man is forgetting with each passing generation; civilization is inseparable from the character of it’s inhabitants. This would have come as common sense to the men of the past. Plato knew it, Aristotle knew it, Augustine knew it and so did Aquinas. A civilization is not a machine. It is an organism; a moral one. A civilization’s rise or fall depends on the hearts of the men who compose it.

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The Catechism says that moral virtues are “the fruit and seed of morally good acts; they dispose all the powers of the human being for communion with divine love” (CCC1804). Some call it “civic virtue” and others call it “moral virtue”. Ultimately they are the same thing. The man with an ordered interior life that has learned to self govern is the man fit to govern civilization.

Western Civilization, more specifically, Christendom, has built beautiful cathedrals, elite universities, hospitals, and laws. It is not because of better resources or geography. It was because for centuries these societies built men of well formed character in large numbers to sustain the continuous building of them. When the building of such men collapsed, so did the societies.

What the Character Means

“Character” originates from “kharakter”, a Greek word that means an engraved mark. It is a stamp firmly pressed into clay or wax. This mark was the impression of a craftsman. The mark distinguished things from all other things of its kind.

Your character is the mark of all of the choices you have ever made. Each act of mastery, each fall of weakness, every single moment of obedience, loyalty, cowardice, and sacrifice; accepted or not. All of your actions have been pressed into your soul. Your character is always being formed, there is no question about this fact. The true question is “what kind of man is the forming producing?”

Virtue is “the habit of the will”, according to St. Thomas Aquinas. Virtue is not a cozy feeling you get when you do something good. It is not an emotion, but an action and one performed in different ways, time and time again until it becomes a type of reflex. Practicing virtue over time allows the man to eventually choose good readily and with low effort. The key is daily practice.

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Discipline

A man of character practices self-mastery. The man with developed character does not give in to every impulse. Indulgence may be available, but rarely, if ever, should it be taken. The man of character carries his cross without any complaints and is able to resist comfort when it calls his name. If you can’t deny yourself, how will you ever know what you are made of?

Hardship forges character. Comfort destroys it.

Attachment

Character is built on something larger than oneself. A man committed to his wife, children, community and most importantly to God, is committed to self-governance. The well formed man is one who sacrifices out of love rather than laws demanding it.

This is why St. Paul calls husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church. The model of Catholic manhood is the man who, with humility and strength accepts the full weight of whatever cross he is called to bear.

Autonomy

A decision has to be made. Character is not built by the force of others. It is a choice a man makes for himself and to himself. A virtuous man chooses good freely, from the heart. Because of the daily practice of virtue, the will is strengthened.

Right conduct is not something that only happens when people are watching. Christendom, and the men in it, separate themselves from others of this world by always doing what is right.

The Ordinary Is Where It Happens

The great lie that men are told and that we entertain is that character is built in extreme moments. Character is not created on the battlefield. The battlefield is where it is tested and where it manifests.

It is in the mundane acts of life where character is built.

Ordinary life is the drafting table.

One small decision after another.

Can we keep our temper with our children after a tiring work day? Do we keep our word to our spouse, even about the smallest of things? Do we treat everyone with the same dignity without considering their station in life?

None of the decisions above come across as particularly heroic, they are….ordinary. But when we master the ordinary life and compound those small choices, they add up to a man of character. They add up to the man your children and wife look up to, respect and trust with their life. Be a man of character, even when the pressure is high. You are your family’s rock. Stay steady.

We have to realize that each decision we make in life during those ordinary moments is a vote for the sort of character you will end up with.

The Examination

I present not only an article about character, but an action that can be taken to genuinely improve it. Ask yourself; where are you a slave to your passions? Where are you failing? Who are you letting down that depends on you? Do not think just of the dramatic moments, but of the ordinary ones. Where can you do the harder thing, but have neglected it?

The saints were not born that way. They were ordinary men that made an extraordinary amount of right choices, by God’s grace and in the name of Jesus Christ. That grace is in reach, but will we cooperate with it, or deny Him?

Character is the slow, intentional work of a lifetime. It is the only thing about you that will go beyond the grave. The marks that you press into the clay of your soul will leave impressions on your sons and on the civilization you have on loan from them.

Stamp your soul with good character. Stamp it with Jesus Christ.

Be the Creed
Nick | Catholic Manhood

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Men, there is a kind of man who is always moving.

He has plans. Messages to answer. Opinions to give. He is tired at the end of the day. He mistakes the sweat on his brow for progress.

But nothing in his life changes.

Hemingway understood something many men do not. Movement feels like action. It can be easily mistaken for action. It impresses other men who are also moving.

But it does not cost enough.

Action costs.

A man can read theology for hours and never pray. He can argue about the Church and never go to confession. He can talk about leadership and never lead his own home.

Saint James cuts through the fog. “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”

Hearing is movement.
Doing is action.

It is possible to deceive ourselves with Catholic “activity.” Podcasts. Conferences. Debates. Even ministry.

James does not praise the informed man. He commands the obedient one.

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Christ is even more direct. In the Gospel of Matthew He says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father.”

A man can say the right words. He can post the right verses. He can wear the right medals. But heaven is not entered by movement of the mouth.

It is entered by obedience.

Real action begins where pride ends.

You can pace the house thinking about prayer. That is movement.
You can read about prayer. That is movement.
You can debate prayer. That is movement.

But kneeling in silence before God is action.

“Be still, and know that I am God.” In the Book of Psalms we are commanded to be still before we act.

Most men cannot stand still. Silence exposes them. Stillness reveals whether they are strong or only loud.

Catholic masculinity is not frantic. It is steady.

Saint Paul tells the idle to “do their work in quietness.”

Quietness.

That is not the language of modern masculinity. It is the language of Saint Joseph.

Thirty years of hidden work in Nazareth. No applause. No stage. No audience.

Most men want three years of public victory. They refuse thirty years of hidden obedience. Movement seeks to be seen. Action seeks to be faithful.

Speech is cheap.
Deed is costly.

The Cross looked like stillness. Christ fixed in place. No movement left in Him.

Yet that was the greatest action in history.

Stillness can redeem the world. Noise rarely does.

We must examine our lives.

Are you moving or acting? Are you speaking or obeying? Are you visible or faithful?

Go to Mass.
Go to confession.
Lead your family in prayer.
Work hard.
Guard your eyes.
Keep your word.

Do not confuse movement with action.

Stand still before God long enough to receive your orders.

Then act.

Be the Creed

Nick | Catholic Manhood