• 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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Last Minute Post #2: Please pray for Paul

PaulMy other last minute post prior to my December blogging silence is a request for prayer…

For several years now I’ve read the blog The Rest of the Old, Old Story, written by a chap named Paul, in which he discusses Church history and Sacred Scripture. I haven’t always agreed with his positions, but our debates in the Comment Box have always been warm and good-natured.

Paul had previously been diagnosed Leukemia, but now it appears he has lymphoma. In his most recent post, he wrote the following:

I have readers that are Protestant, ex-Protestant, Catholic, ex-Catholic, and Orthodox. I have loners and standard church people reading this blog.

Nonetheless, I plead for one reaction among this “family” of readers.

Those who have given themselves to Jesus, bowing their knee to him as King, are his chosen. God takes over their lives, monitoring everything that comes their way, and moving them by the Holy Spirit to respond as they should. He leads, he guides, he disciplines, he protects.

He works all things together for good for people like us. We do not reject his word, we love and long for it. When trials come, even if they are leukemia and lymphoma, we consider it joy. We do a little dance, and we rejoice that we are being molded by God into someone patient. Patience works in a person, producing character and resulting in a maturing work that produces a completed saint, lacking nothing (Rom. 5:2-4; Jam. 1:2-4).

So I’m asking you, my readers, to pray for me to honor God by my obedience to his promises and by joy, which proves my belief in his words to us. You can pray for healing if you want. A miraculous healing would glorify God as well.

However, I’m not among those convinced that God always wants physical healing. Sometimes the healing of our characters and self-will is more important than the healing of our bodies. Pain and suffering are routes to eternal joy, opportunities to clear our souls of self so that the glory of God can be revealed through us.

Please, my dear readers and those who know me in person, join me in rejecting the cares of this world, casting those on Jesus, who cares for us, and praying for one another that our lives would glorify God in the midst of everything. Let’s be the overcomers, testifying to the world and to the devil himself that “though he slay us, yet will we praise him with joyful shouts and singing.”

I’ll sign off now with a few words of Scripture and a request that you pray for my friend:

If one member [of the Body] suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. – 1 Corinthians 12:24-26

Last Minute Post #1: Wear The Veil Day

I know in my last post I said I wasn’t going to blog anymore, but since it’s not quite December yet, I figured I wouldn’t be “breaking the rules”, if I got out a last couple of posts before December 1st…

So, this is a post just to remind everyone that next week is “Wear the Veil Day”:

(If you’d like to change your Facebook profile to raise awareness of this event, you might like to consider the “Wear The Veil” graphics I created last week)

See you in January…

I’m going to be taking a bit of a sabbatical from blogging.

I’m going to take a break for all of December. Advent will be beginning and I think I could do with a bit of time off. Also, the next few weeks are going to be rather busy, involving a lot of travel, as well as the wedding of my housemate, Nathan.

I’ve got a couple of special things planned for the New Year, but if there are any particular topics you’d like me to tackle when I get back, please feel free to leave a comment below.

If you’d still like something to read every day next month, simply “Like” my Facebook page. Each morning I’ll still be sharing an old post (“Classic Pilgrim”) which should then appear in your newsfeed. See you in January 🙂

Historicity of Jesus Debate

A few days ago I published a post of a debate which Trent Horn from Catholic Answers had on the subject of abortion. Today’s post is of another debate in which Trent recently engaged, this time with the famous mythicist, Dr. Richard Carrier:

I was fortunate enough to ask a question Dr. Carrier a question concerning Ignatius of Antioch. There other question I wanted to ask though. Given that Dr. Carrier regards the Gospels as large works of allegory, what does he make of all the New Testament scholarship which explores the different senses of Scripture, one of which is the allegorical sense. Wouldn’t that mean that we have allegories inside allegories?

I will certainly say that Dr. Carrier knows his stuff, but by the end of this debate I was honestly bewildered by his position. Not only is it rather complicated, he has to go to great lengths to explain away the all the evidence which points to a far simpler narrative: that there was a man named Jesus of Nazareth who lived in the First Century whose followers claimed rose bodily from the dead.

Hark the herald angels sing…

As we’re a few days away from Advent, I wanted to highlight a campaign currently underway here in San Diego, lead by my friend Salma:

Screen Shot 2014-11-20 at 9.41.19 AM

As is well-known, the Christmas liturgy attracts many visitors to church who will otherwise not darken the doorway for the rest of the year, with the possible exception of Easter. As such, it is a ripe mission field! In order to capitalize on this, my friend Salma is raising money to allow her to hire professional musicians to augment the music at the Sunday Mass, to provide a setting in which souls will be more docile to the moment of God’s Spirit. Please check it out and, if you live in the area, go listen to the results 🙂

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