• 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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Weekly Young Adult-only Mass?

A little while ago, one of my friends suggested that there should be a parish where there is a Young Adult Mass held every week for all members of the Diocese. The idea was that it would be really nice to have a place where the younger members of the Diocese could gather knowing that there would be lots of other young adults present. There would be superb music, excellent preaching and lots of young people.

There was a time in my own journey when I would have enthusiastically embraced this idea. In fact, in our Diocese we have a similar event each year, known as “Mega Mass”, where all the young adults come together and it’s very successful. However, I think that a weekly event would be extremely problematic.

No wrinklies allowed!

Aside from the politics of selecting a parish in the Diocese and personal preferences concerning music, establishing a young adult Mass would be difficult because it’s not like you could stop those who did not fall into the young adult age range from attending. As a consequence, if the young adult Mass were mostly made up of those outside the young adult age range, it is unlikely that it would attract many more young adults.

On the other hand, if the Mass did start to attract more and more young adults, I fear that it would end up depopulating other parishes of their young adults which I think would be disastrous. Something of this dynamic often exists naturally, with one or two parishes of the diocese being known as the “young adult parish”, robbing surrounding parishes of their young adults.  Who will be the next generation in these parishes?

My other serious concern with an idea like this is that it plays into a kind of ecclesial consumerism which we’ve seen very clearly in the Protestant world. Obviously, we want music to be good, preaching to be inspiring and for our churches to be filled with the young, but part of me can’t help but think that to enter into such an initiative would be to start training people to think that these are the primary things which should be used to determine what makes going to Mass important. It also sets up a problem further down the line because what happens if the music takes a bit of a downturn? What if the homilies get a little stale? What if the young adult population dips? There will always be some other church somewhere which does it better and if that’s what we’ve trained people to value most, why would they want to stay in the Catholic Church?

What are you thoughts? Would you ever want to see a Young Adult Mass every week in the Diocese?

Top Five Ways to be a Rockstar Godparent

Over the last few years I’ve had the honour of sponsoring several people for Baptism and Confirmation. Over my time as a godparent, I’ve asked other sponsors what they do to live out this special vocation.

infant_baptism-600x398

In today’s post I’ve assembled all the advice I’ve heard from other godparents and sponsors and come up with the top five ways to godparent like a rockstar…
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Book Announcement!

Today I’d like to share with you something I’m going to be working on during my sabbatical. For the longest time, my bucket list has contained an entry which reads “Write a book and get it published”. I think it’s finally time to cross off that entry…

Typwriter

The Need and the Vision

I’ve been involved with different Bible Study groups, both in the USA and back in England, for about ten years. During this time, I’ve searched for a book to help guide me in leading these different groups. Unfortunately, that book doesn’t appear to exist! In the Protestant world, I’ve found books which help with basic Biblical exegesis and personal reading, but nothing substantial on leading a group study. In the Catholic world, there are even slimmer pickings. In light of this, over the next couple of months I’m going to be writing the book that I wish I had read a decade ago!

This book is going to lead the reader through the entire process of running a Bible Study, from beginning to end. My goal is to make this book extremely practical, coving all the nitty-gritty details of setting up and running a group. It will guide the reader through a typical Bible Study meeting, providing lots of handy hints as to how to nurture the discussion and avoid common pitfalls. In the appendices I hope to have all kinds of usual material, including a modified version of my commentary on Philippians. It is my hope that, even with no prior experience, once somebody has this book in his hands he will have everything he needs to start a successful Bible Study in his parish.

You’re Involved too!

As a reader of Restless Pilgrim, this involves you! I will be blogging about the book over the coming months and asking for your feedback. This begins today! I’m currently trying to come up with a working title for this book. Please help me choose it by voting below:

I’d also like to choose a tag line or subtitle for the book:

I’m really excited about this and I’d love to hear your thoughts! What would you look for in a book like this? Is there a particular issue related to Bible study groups which you’d particularly like to see addressed?

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