Rich Agnello
Our Marian Pulpit: From A Lector’s Soul House
Humans can be devoted to many things. For Catholics Christians in particular, devotion has special purpose and meaning, especially to Our Savior’s Mother.Too often for those in the Lector ministry, though, devotion is synonymous with dedication, as it merely applies to the skill or craft of performing a role in liturgy. Preparation and execution then become separate and apart from any prayer and purpose, and this demeans both God’s Word and the Liturgy of the Word building into the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.Author Rich Agnello can certainly advocate from a craft view, applying 50 years nationally to this ministry, including eight at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate ...
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A Tenth Station Confession
Our Marian Pulpit author Rich Agnello invites you to rediscover the Sacrament of Confession in the bold and powerful way he once did: Gazing upon the Tenth Station of the Cross, Jesus is Stripped of His Garments, in the church where he was married.A Tenth Station Confession provides the penitent with a guide along the Stations of the Cross that allows Jesus' way of suffering, or Via Dolorosa, to accompany ours before, during, and after we partake in this great healing and merciful sacrament of our Catholic Church.Agnello shows us quite simply and yet very efficaciously that from the first through tenth stations, Jesus and we walk together towards Calvary’s agony. Like Him, there is condemn...
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Jojay and the Joy of Anyway
His name is Joseph James Pennyway, or Jojay for short. His world is the lower York Road uber-blighted corridor of Baltimore’s St. Pius V parish, and if Charm City’s Archdiocese had an absolute hell on earth, this just might be it. No one would blame Jojay if life hardly mattered to him. He learned much longer ago to develop much broader shoulders than his immediate universe required of him.What else could he do as the only Catholic young man amidst Pentecostal and Evangelical neighbors who’ve tried to recruit him into their lodge since his eighteenth birthday? Who is he supposed to be in life, with a father in Jessup prison, and a mother addicted, insane, and homeless since God knows w...
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Going to Williamsport
Second Edition, newly revised for KDP2023 Sports Category Finalist--American Fiction AwardsWhat would you do if you were the 12-year-old new ace pitcher of a very small town baseball team, and you and your teammates went on in one magical year to represent your far western Oklahoma panhandle roots at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and you were much too embarrassed beyond mere words to see your own mother cheer you on in the bleachers as you take the big stage hundreds of miles away?This is Sooner’s situation, and his story is Going to Williamsport, as he experiences his mom suffering through acute paranoid psychosis during the early years of deinstitutionaliz...
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Adoring Andy
“We’re more than eagles, we soar even higher!”You might expect such a team motto, inscribed on the patch of their uniform sleeves, to befit a boys’ youth soccer squad known as FC Aviators. And needless to say, when a boisterous bunch like these kids are based in an historic aviation city such as Wichita, Kansas, well, of course, you’d just expect them to naturally soar even higher on the pitch, right?Well, maybe not, if you asked their coach going way back to their little shaver days of Under 8 rec league before ultimately reaching the pinnacle of the Dallas Cup well into their middle school years at the Under 14 elite select level. Andy Founder is about as local as they come, and ...
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