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.

Remembering What Life is Supposed to Be About

One day a man came up to a priest and asked him, “Father, would you like to shake hands with a converted drunkard?” Naturally, the priest was happy to do so, and after they shook hands, the man told his story. “Father, years ago I had a good job, a...

Passing Along Our Love

About forty years ago, a ten-year-old boy named Dave was taught how to play chess by his grandfather, a World War II veteran. They played frequently, and, after three years of trying, Dave, at age 13, finally beat his grandfather. As he helped him...

Our Compassion Toward Others

A famous movie made back in 1959 was the religious epic Ben Hur, starring the great actor Charlton Heston (with a remake made in 2016). In this fictional story, Judah Ben Hur was a wealthy Jewish prince living in Jerusalem with his mother and sister...

Looking and Listening for Things that Really Matter

A wise old farmer was visiting a friend who lived in the city, and after dinner—because it was a nice evening—they decided to a take a walk over to the park. To reach it, though, they first had to go down a crowded sidewalk along a busy street...

Things Aren’t Always as They Appear

One morning the mother of a two-year-old boy was horrified to find him playing with an empty bottle of her husband’s heart medicine. She couldn’t get her son to tell her what had happened to the pills in the bottle, so she rushed him to the...

The Choice is Ours

An elderly priest was reminiscing about the earliest days of his priesthood, which occurred during World War II. Father Smith, as we’ll call him, served in a rural diocese, with many small parishes scattered throughout the countryside; he was...

Sometimes the Right Thing to Do is Trust

I was never really a fan of the Star Trek TV series, but I did end up seeing and enjoying most of the Star Trek movies. One of my favorite characters was Mr. Spock, the first officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise:  a natural second-in-command who was...

Jesus Asks Us to Believe in His Promise

Whenever Mass is celebrated, the Scripture readings are taken from a book called the Lectionary, from the Latin word lectio, which means “reading.” For some centuries, the Church had a lectionary in which the same passages were repeated on any given...

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