• 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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Catholic Dating: Friends First

Continuing our discussion concerning the Christian dating scene, today I would like to talk about “Friends First” dating. I would like to ruminate over some of the advantages of this approach, but I would also like to discuss some of the potential pitfalls, at least as I see them.

In Christian formation and catechesis, you often hear praise of romantic relationships which were first based on friendship, before the addition of a romantic component. This is what is known as “Friends First” dating.

FriendsThe approach certainly has much to commend itself. After all, it makes sense to get to know someone, that person’s character, personality, interests etc., prior to the big rush of hormones and emotions that come with dating. The “high” that comes from being in a relationship can leave one blind to the warning signs. It’s not hard to find examples of what happens when someone rushes headlong into dating and becomes so emotionally entangled with the other person that it becomes extremely difficult to deal with problems in the relationship, or even to recognize when problems exist.

I know plenty of people who have got together through physical attraction and initial chemistry, only to find out a month or two down the line that there isn’t really anything else on which to base the relationship. To their shock, they realize that the other person is not the person they thought at all! After all, it’s not too hard to “hide the crazy” for the first few months… 😉

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Happy Feast Day of St. Dominic!

Q. What is similar about the Jesuit and Dominican Orders?
Well, they were both founded by Spaniards, St. Dominic for the Dominicans, and St. Ignatius of Loyola for the Jesuits. They were also both founded to combat heresy: the Dominicans to respond to the Albigensians, and the Jesuits to respond to the Protestants.

Q. What is different about the Jesuit and Dominican Orders?
Well, have you met any Albigensians lately?

Dolan-Laughing

The article Happy Feast Day of St. Dominic! first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net

TOT: How to pray with confidence!

Fr. Jacob (Andrew) Bertrand, priest at Santa Sophia, recently gave a talk at Faith On Fire, an event in our San Diego diocese much like Theology On Tap, but specifically targeted at those in their late teens and early twenties.

Fr. Jacob was scheduled to speak at another Faith On Fire series at the end of last year, but was unfortunately sick on the night of his talk, meaning that I had to do my best Fr. Jacob impression and cover for him at the last minute. Fortunately, this time Fr. Jacob ate his Wheaties and took all his vitamins so he was in tiptop, fighting form for his talk on prayer.

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The lecture was entitled “How to pray with confidence”.  You can either listen to it using the embedded player or download it in MP3 format using the link below:

(Download Main Talk)

There was also a brief period of Q&A and that audio is available here:

(Download Q&A)

At the end of his talk Fr. Jacob gave a quiz, awarding prizes to those with the most correct answers. Here are the questions he asked:

1. What are the three stages of the spiritual life?
2. What are the four forms of prayer?
3. How many petitions are there in the Our Father?
4. The illuminative way is also known as spiritual adulthood. True or false?
5. Name one of the kinds of evil the Father will deliver us from.
6. God leads us into temptation to see if we will sin. True or false?
7. What is the one conditional petition in the Our Father?
8. The Our Father is considered the ______ of our desire.
9. St. Therese said that prayer is a ______ of the heart.
10. What is Fr. Jacob’s middle name?

If you would like to listen to more of Fr. Jacob, his homilies are available on Sound Cloud.

The article Fr: Jacob: How to pray with confidence! first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net

Catholic Dating: Not wanting to be “that guy”

In recent posts I’ve been sharing my thoughts about the question often asked by Catholic females, “Why doesn’t that nice Catholic boy ask me out?”

In my last post I wrote about how the fear of rejection plays a significant part in the answer to this question. In addition, I suggested that a warped sense of Christian masculinity contributes to the problem and that all this is exacerbated by the close communal nature of faith groups.

Today I’d like to continue looking at this issue and examine briefly another of the reasons why Catholic guys tend not to ask out Catholic girls as often as they perhaps should. In today’s post I would propose that guys sometimes fail to do so because they don’t want to be that guy.

In each Catholic community I’ve belonged to, there has always been that guy. You know who I mean? I’m talking about the player. He’s the guy who’s always scanning the pews at the Young Adult Mass or Bible Study, keeping an eye out for any new arrivals. As soon as a new girl turns up, you can guarantee he’ll be the one jumping in to offer her a warm welcome to the parish…which’ll quite likely involve a dinner and a romantic drive by sunset beach…

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