• 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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My weekend

So, I spent this weekend sick in bed. It began with a sore throat Friday night and progressed to my head and chest through the weekend.

Although I’m feeling better than I did, my voice still isn’t great, continuing to sound like Barry White, and I feel rather drained still. As such, I’m not feeling up to recording a video today, sorry. The next one will be posted on Tuesday.

Today has been rather strange in that I haven’t been to Church. I’ve been trying to think of the last time I didn’t get to Mass/Liturgy on a weekend and I think it’s got to be well over a decade. Every now and then I get into a discussion with a non-Catholic concerning the Catholic understanding of the necessity of going to Church, but honestly, if I could find a way to communicate how I currently feel, it would probably be far more compelling of an argument. Deprived of the Bread of Heaven, today seems…incomplete. I feel…hungry.

That is not to say that God has held back the grace today. I have been able to offer up my discomfort for the many intentions of those around me and it really hasn’t been that uncomfortable. I have spent last the time listening to talks, reading books (God bless Peter Kreeft!) and spending time in what Matthew Kelly would call “The Classroom of Silence”.

I had a lot of things that I had planned to do this weekend and I achieved very few of them. In the well-known story of “Mary & Martha”, Martha busies herself and Mary sits at the Lord’s feet and listens and, for this, Jesus says that she chose “the better part”. Sometimes the Lord chooses “the better part” for us. He loves us like that 🙂

Colossian Questions

As I mentioned before, I’m currently updating the New Testament questions and answers which I run through at the beginning of every Bible study. Today I’d like to cover the questions surrounding Colossians:

58. What was Paul’s situation when writing Colossians?
The evidence seems to point to the same situation as the other captivity epistles (Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon and Philippians). He is in Rome under house arrest in approximately AD 62.

59. Had Paul ever been to Colossae?
No, but he had stayed in nearby Ephesus for three years.

60. Who founded the Church at Colossae?
A Colossian native called “Epaphras” appears to have been converted through Paul’s ministry and first taken the gospel to Colossae.

61. So why did Paul write to the Colossians?
It seems Epaphras visited Paul in Rome and asked him to write to this nascent congregation to speak to the various heresies attacking the Church in Colossae.

62. What were the heresies with which the Colossians struggled?
They appear to be several, but they included issues surrounding circumcision, asceticism, the person of Christ, secret knowledge and human wisdom.

63. Who are the opponents in Colossae?
This very much depends on how one interprets the heresies described, but scholars suggest either Jews, Pagans or early Gnostics.

64. What is noticeable about the way in which Paul speaks about Jesus in this letter?
We call it “High Christology”, since Jesus is described as “the image of the invisible God”, “the firstborn of all Creation”, “in him the fullness of deity dwells bodily” etc.

65. What does Paul say about suffering in this letter?
He describes himself as “complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions”.

66. During the letter Paul speaks about a hidden “mystery”. What is it?
That Jesus came for us…all of us, both Jew and Gentile

67. What Sacrament does Paul speak about in this letter and in what terms does he describe it?
He speaks about baptism, describing it both in terms of circumcision and death.

1-16 | 17-27 | 27-42 | 43-52 | 53-57 | 58-67 | 68-71 | 72-81
All Questions

Meat and Milk

I make a habit of posting here every day and I have been doing so for the majority of the five years that I have been blogging. As a result, to date I have 1,872 posts on this blog!

Posts

Now, not all of these posts are substantial posts. Every Monday I post a music video (“Music Mondays”), every Wednesday I post an inspiring quotation (“Wise Words on Wednesday”) and every Friday I post a funny picture or video related to the Faith (“Friday Frivolity”). Not only that, I often advertise other people’s websites and articles. However, mixed in with all these simple posts are the more substantive articles which I have written.

For quite some time now I have been concerned that many of my old posts now go unread because they’re mixed in with all these other posts and are therefore hard to find. One reader sent me a message saying that, once he discovered my blog, he went back to the very beginning and read through all of them! While that’s impressive dedication, I doubt many would do that. I recently set about taking some steps towards remedying this situation and making my more substantial articles more easily available…

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