Fr Joseph Esper

REVEREND JOSEPH M. ESPER is a priest of the Archdiocese of Detroit and pastor of Immaculate Conception parish in Anchorville, Michigan. He received his Master of Divinity degree from St. John's Provincial Seminary in Plymouth, Michigan. Through the years, Father Joe has lectured at Marian conferences, appeared on EWTN, spoken on Catholic radio, and written more than a dozen articles for This Rock, The Priest, Homiletic and Pastoral Review, and other publications. He is also the author of numerous books, including Saintly Solutions, More Saintly Solutions, After the Darkness, Lessons from the Lives of the Saints, and Why Is God Punishing Me? In addition to Amazon, many of his most recent books are available through Queenship Publishing.

That’s How I Need to See Him Again

Once upon a time there was a widowed mother whose only family member was her son, and she loved him with all her heart. The boy grew up, and as a young man entered the army and went off to war. One day the woman received the tragic news that her son...

Asking God for Wisdom, Strength, and Courage

In October 2021, a pregnant girl in South America was considering abortion, but she changed her mind; because of the loving support of pro-life volunteers and priests at a women’s shelter run by the Church, she decided to have her baby. This...

God’s Ways Are Not Our Ways

I’d bet that, for many of us when we were growing up, one of our favorite movies was The Wizard of Oz. One of the scenes from the movie that’s always stuck with me is when Dorothy and her friends return to the wizard’s castle and bring him the...

Lent: An Opportunity to Set Things Right

A priest was once introduced to an Army officer who was a much-decorated war hero. The priest happened to know that the officer was a fallen-away Catholic, so he said to him, “Captain, as a fellow American, I’m proud of you. The medals you’re...

God Performs Miracles On His Time, Not Ours

A young nurse named Leslie once witnessed something that, according to her, defied medical science. A patient was told by a hospital surgeon that his badly infected leg needed to be amputated—but a few hours later, the doctor discovered that...

Resisting Evil in Our World

Some years ago, there was a woman in Mexico who supposedly possessed great spiritual powers, including the gift of healing; people from throughout the country were going to her for help, and afterwards singing her praises. This was brought to the...

A Family Garden

The sheriff’s department in a large city once distributed a list of rules titled “How to Raise a Juvenile Delinquent in Your Own Family.” The rules were: (1) Begin at infancy to give the child everything he wants; this will teach him that the world...

Failing to Recognize God’s Gifts

Once there was a little girl named Marcie who had a very strange and unusual reaction to Christmas: she didn’t like to receive Christmas presents. Every year when it was time to unwrap the presents under the tree, she would go to her room and wait...