• The Crucifix Prayer

    Blessed are you, Lord God,
    Father all-holy,
    for your boundless love
    The tree, once the source of shame
    and death for humankind,
    has become the cross
    of our redemption and life.

    When his hour had come to
    return to you in glory,
    the Lord Jesus,
    Our King, our Priest, and our Teacher,
    freely mounted the scaffold of the cross
    and made it his royal throne,
    his altar of sacrifice, his pulpit of truth.

    On the cross,
    lifted above the earth,
    he triumphed over our age-old enemy.
    Cloaked in his own blood,
    he drew all things to himself.

    On the cross,
    he opened out his arms
    and offered you his life;
    the sacrifice of the New Law
    that gives to the sacraments
    their saving power.

    On the cross,
    he proved what he had prophesied:
    the grain of wheat must die
    to bring forth an abundant harvest.

    Father,
    we honour this cross as the sign
    of our redemption.
    May we reap the harvest of salvation
    planted in pain by Christ Jesus.
    May our sins be nailed to his cross,
    the power of life released,
    pride conquered,
    and weakness turned to strength.

    May the cross be our comfort in trouble,
    our refuge in the face of danger,
    our safeguard on life’s journey
    until you welcome us to
    our heavenly home.

    Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

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  • The Prayer of St. Ephrem

    {Making a prostration}

    O LORD, Master of my life,
    grant that I may not be infected with the
    spirit of slothfulness and inquisitiveness,
    with the spirit of ambition and vain talking.

    {Making a prostration}

    Grant instead to me, your servant,
    the spirit of purity and of humility,
    the spirit of patience and neighborly love.

    {Making a third prostration}

    O Lord and King,
    grant me the grace of being aware of my sins
    and of not thinking evil of those of my brethren.
    For you are blessed, now and ever, and forever.

    Amen.

    Lord Jesus Christ, King of Kings,
    You have power over life and death.
    You know what is secret and hidden,
    and neither our thoughts nor our feelings
    are concealed from You.
    Cure me of duplicity;
    I have done evil before You.
    Now my life declines from day to day
    and my sins increase.
    O Lord, God of souls and bodies,
    You know the extreme frailty of my soul and my flesh.
    Grant me strength in my weakness, O Lord,
    and sustain me in my misery.
    Give me a grateful soul that I may
    never cease to recall Your benefits,
    O Lord most bountiful.
    Be not mindful of my many sins,
    but forgive me all my misdeeds.
    O Lord, disdain not my prayer –
    the prayer of a wretched sinner;
    sustain me with Your grace until the end,
    that it may protect me as in the past.
    It is Your grace which has taught me wisdom;
    blessed are they who follow her ways,
    for they shall receive the crown of glory.
    In spite of my unworthiness,
    I praise You and I glorify You,
    O Lord, for Your mercy to me is without limit.
    You have been my help and my protection.
    May the name of Your majesty be praised forever.
    To you, our God, be glory.
    Amen.

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  • PWJ: S4E103 – Bonus – “Season Finale” (Part 2)

    David, Andrew, and Matt wrap up Season 4 with the Season Finale. This is Part 2 of that Finale. Listener Survey: https://forms.gle/X4zq7Uk69KmYo1v3A

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  • PWJ: S4E102 – Bonus – “Season Finale” (Part 1)

    David, Andrew, and Matt wrap up Season 4 with the Season Finale. This is Part 1…

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  • PWJ: S4E101 – Bonus – “Jack vs Tollers”

    After the previously-planned interview fell through at the last minute, David sat down to record a solo episode to talk about his newborn son, Sidecar Day, blue flowers in Narnia, and also to make his tongue-in-cheek case as to why C.S. Lewis is better than J.R.R. Tolkien.

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  • PWJ: S4E100 – AH – “After Hours” with The Gray Havens

    The Gray Havens are an American Christian folk pop husband and wife duo, David and Licia Radford, from Crystal Lake, Illinois. On October 8th they will be releasing their new album, Blue Flower, so David Radford came on the show to talk to Andrew and David about how C.S. Lewis inspired their recent work.

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  • PWJ: S4E99 – AH – “After Hours” with Mike “Gomer” Gormley

    As we approach the end of Season 4, David is joined on the show by Michael “Gomer” Gormley. Among other things, they discuss Ted Lasso, tea, and the Atonement. Also, find out what Gomer would do if he ever became the Pope!

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  • PWJ: S4E98 – AH – “After Hours” with Patti Callahan

    New York Times bestselling author, Patti Callahan, returns to the show to talk about her forthcoming book, “Once Upon A Wardrobe”, which will be released on October 19th.

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  • PWJ: S4E97 – AH – “After Hours” with The Tolkien Road

    A few months ago, John and Greta from The Tolkien Road podcast did a series of episodes on religion in Tolkien’s Legendarium. David invited him onto the show to talk about those episodes and to encourage the Pints With Jack listeners to listen to them.

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  • PWJ: S4E96 – AH – “After Hours” with Rod Bennett

    Author Rod Bennett joined David to talk about a presentation on he gave at a big Christian rock festival about C.S. Lewis’ relationship to “Pulp Fiction”.

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Resolution Update

So far this year I haven’t posted any updates regarding my new year resolutions. Well, I’m pleased to report that things are going pretty well…

Resolution #1: Read the entire Bible
I have been sticking with my Bible study reading plan and I’m actually a little ahead of schedule. I’ve finished the entire Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), Matthew’s Gospel, Acts of the Apostles and I’m nearing the end of the Psalms. On the subject of Bible reading plans, Meg Hunter-Kilmer recently posted an article about an alternative reading plan, which I might tackle next year.

Resolution #2: Get back into martial arts
I have now been doing Kung Fu (Choi Li Fut) for three and a half months. I’ve already got my first three stripes and I should be taking my Yellow Sash test sometime in May, after the Kung Fu tournament this weekend.

Resolution #3: Run a marathon
Out of my three resolutions, this is the only one which is a little shaky. I have been building my fitness back up. As well as Kung Fu, I have returned to playing Ultimate Frisbee each week (far more enjoyable than just running sprints) 🙂 I have also been having some intensive massage therapy to sort out some of my muscle issues in my right side. I hope to start actually going out for runs sometime next month.

Ip Man

Vatican Website Updated!

*sigh*…the Vatican website has been updated again…and it’s still terrible.

Website

Here’s a selection of my favourite comments about this that I’ve seen on Facebook:

At World Youth Day, Pope Francis did say, “Go, make a mess!”
The Vatican web-designers took him literally.

What the… Great, now I need to go to confession.

There are no ‘boing’ noises when I move the cursor to a hyperlink. Why are there no ‘boing’ noises?

I thought Lent was over? Why are we still being made to suffer?

The church should recognize that IE 6 makes Jesus cry.

Look, someone discovered how to use the <table> tag in HTML!

I’m not too keen on the Times Roman font. They really should be using Comic Sans!

You know, for an outfit that’s big on infallibility, this really doesn’t bolster their cred…

Meet the new website, same as the old website.

Maybe they used the folks who did the new translation of the roman missal.

Still Better Than Obamacare

One and a half thousand!

This morning’s post marks the 1,500th entry on this blog. I don’t know about you, but I can tell you that Stephen Colbert is extremely excited about this…

I began this blog about four years ago, on 11th June 2010 to be exact. At that time in my life, a few things converged and I decided that I’d have a go at running a blog. I began with a free blog at WordPress.com and, after completing a hundred posts, I decided to buy my own domain name and do things “properly”!

Since 1,500 posts is quite a milestone, I’ve put in a little bit of thought into what I could do to mark this anniversary and help take this blog to “the next level”, whatever that is! So, with that, I have a couple of announcements…

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Music Monday: Jesus in disguise

Today’s music comes from one of my long-time favourites, Brandon Heath:

Ever get something in your head?
It’s nothing you heard or something you read
Ever had a cut but you never saw a blade?
Brought to your knees but you never prayed?

Jesus in disguise, Jehovah passing by
The burden of a tear hanging in your eye
Jesus in disguise, a scar across the sky
You were looking for a king you would never recognize

Ever feel like you been somewhere before?
You hold the key, you know which door
Speak the word your lips have never known
Because your heart told you so

So open my eyes wide as I can
Blind as I am, blind as I am…

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