Side Project: YouTube Live Stream Scheduler – Part 1

One great thing about computers is that they can be programmed to do things that are repetitive and boring. I try to look around in my life to see what things I can get a computer to do for me, so that I don’t have to do it myself. Today’s case is scheduling weekly YouTube live streams for my church. Every week someone’s got to schedule the live streams for the upcoming weekend. They look like this: So you might be thinking, this seems pretty trivial, like it’s just a few clicks to schedule this in YouTube. It can’t take Continue Reading

The virtue of hope

This was originally prepared as a reflection for a youth ministry session at St. Anthony of Padua parish. “Hope” is a word we use a lot on a daily basis.  We say things like, “I hope you are doing well,” “I hope I get this job”, “I hope the restaurant has gluten-free food,” “I hope the pandemic will end soon.”  We hope for something which is difficult to attain ourselves.  We don’t say “I hope there will be air to breathe tomorrow,” because we expect there to be air. But what does “hope” mean in the Christian sense?  What is Continue Reading

The virtue of charity or love

This was originally prepared as a reflection for a youth ministry session at St. Anthony of Padua parish. The word “love” in English is used to mean so many different things these days.  For example, when I say “I love pizza”, does the “love” in that statement equate to a husband saying “I love you” to his wife? In other languages we find different “types” of love have different words.  For example, in Greek, four main types of love are: storge – familial love, love between parent and child philia – friendship or bonds between people with common values or Continue Reading