• 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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In The Beginning: Not just a house, but a temple…

The other day I did a post in which I looked at the sequence of events in the creation narrative of Genesis. In verse two of Chapter 1, we are told that “the earth was without form and void” and I explained how God spends the rest of the chapter fixing these two problems.

He solves the problem of formlessness in the first three days by creating the domains of time, space and habitat. He then solves the problem of emptiness by then populating each of these realms with rulers: first sun, moon and stars, next fish and birds, and then finally land animals and humanity.

I compared Genesis chapter one to the building of a house, God first builds the structure of the house and then fills its rooms. However, at the end of the post I explained that God wasn’t just building a house, but a temple

Creation

Why do I say that God was building a temple? Well, we know that other cultures at the time of Genesis’ authorship also considered the cosmos to be something of a temple in which the gods were to be worshiped, but we also find a similar strain of thought concerning the first book of the Pentateuch…

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Horn/Chadwick Abortion Debate

Last week Trent Horn from Catholic Answers engaged in an abortion debate with Professor Cecili Chadwick. The title of the debate was “Should abortion be legal?”.

The debate was at California State University San Marcos and I managed to attend. In my “Drafts” folder I had begun a short review of the event prepared, but I saw yesterday that the video of the debate was already up on YouTube!

I found Professor Chadwick’s position rather problematic, particularly given what she was willing to admit concerning unborn. I also found it a little frustrating how, in her responses, she regularly presented false dilemmas, as though one cannot be both against poverty AND abortion. But rather than flesh out my review, I’d simply invite you to watch the debate and reach your own conclusions.

Journey Home: Brantly Callaway

Many of you will have heard of the Coming Home Network, an organization which supports converts and reverts entering the Catholic Church and shares their inspiring stories. A couple of days ago Brantly Callaway was on the show. It’s really good episode, even if Brantly’s three-year old son apparently thought it was “boring”  🙂

Brantly also has a blog. If you didn’t get a chance to read it before, I’d invite you to read the series Brantly wrote with his wife, Krista, entitled Why we’re contraception free. If you’ve ever been puzzled by the Catholic teaching concerning contraception, this is one of the clearest, methodical, yet engaging stories I’ve read.

If you’re in the mood to read even more, Brantly’s article on Total Apostasy really gets to the heart of the claims of groups such as Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons, as well as many Protestants, who claim that there was massive corruption in the Early Church.

Who’s conversion story have you found most inspiring?

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