• 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: 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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The “brothers” of Jesus

A friend recently sent me a Facebook message asking about a passage from the Bible she had heard at Mass:

“Can you shed light on the “brothers” of Jesus in the gospel today for me? James, Joseph, Simon and Judas…” 

The passage referred to was from Matthew’s Gospel:

They were astonished [at Jesus] and said, “Where did this man get such wisdom and mighty deeds? Is he not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother named Mary and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? Are not his sisters all with us? …”  – Matthew 13:54-58

So what do we make of these guys, these “brothers” of Jesus?

Mary, Mary, quite contrary…

The Catholic Church teaches that Mary was not only a virgin at the time of Jesus’ birth, but also that she remained a virgin for the rest of her life. However, doesn’t the above passage mention the “brothers…[and]…sisters” of Jesus? Doesn’t that prove that Mary had other children after Christ?

As you can imagine this issue is often raised in Catholic-Protestant dialogue, since the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary found in Sacred Tradition seems to many Protestants to obviously contradict Sacred Scripture.

There’s a lot which could be said on this subject, but in this post I would like to offer a brief response and explain how Catholics understand the mention of Jesus’ “brothers”.

Mary

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Catholic Dating: Fear of rejection

So, earlier today I wrote that I wanted to resurrect the abandoned blog series I began last year. I wanted to finally return to address the question I’ve so often heard asked about Catholic guys: why do they seem so averse to asking girls out on dates?

I would suggest that the main reason is simply fear of rejection.

It’s a pretty basic answer, but I think that this is all-too-often the reason why the Catholic guys I know haven’t dated more. This reason applies to non-Catholic men as well, of course, but I think there are some uniquely complicating factors for Catholics and I’ll talk about those in a bit.

Living Dangerously

Asking someone out is not exactly a stress-free activity. It involves risk. It involves “putting yourself out there” and risking  rejection. Sometimes that rejection can be swift and direct (“Sorry, but no thank you”), sometimes laced with platitudes (“You’re really special, but I think of you as more of a brother”) and sometimes you’ll just be ignored. However, in the mind of a guy there is always the irrational fear that it’d be cold and brutal (“You want to go on a date? Ewh! Ewh! Get away from me!”).

This fear of being shot-down is very real for a lot of guys, particularly those of the more sensitive variety. The lack of confidence and fear of rejection can lead to a paralyzing insecurity.

rejection

Asking someone out requires courage and willingness to be vulnerable, but I think there are two complicating factors which are unique for Christian men… Read more

Catholic Dating: Let’s try this again…

A long, long time ago I announced that I was writing a series of posts which would attempt to respond to a question which I have heard asked in frustration by many of my female Catholic friends concerning my brothers in the Faith: “Why doesn’t that nice Catholic boy ask me out?”

Despite having received a lively response to my original blog entry, it is well over a year later and I have posted nothing further on the subject 🙁

Now, I did begin sketching out a few initial articles, but unfortunately I soon began to feel rather nervous, unsure as to how such posts would be received, particularly by those within my immediate Church family. So, to cut a long story short, I chickened out. I stopped working on them and didn’t publish anything further on the subject.

And in case you were wondering, no, the irony of this was not lost on me…

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The Lord of Time & Space

tardisA few days ago I received this email:

Any chance you could write about miracles that involve time (if there are any). There are miracles of all types it seems, but I’ve never heard of a miracle that involved some manipulation of time. Just curious if perhaps you had.

The first example I thought was from the Book of Joshua where one reading of the text (Joshua 10) would suggest that time stood still while the Israelites won the battle.

The other example I thought of was that of “bilocation”. In miracles of bilocation, a person is seen in two different places at the same time. In fact, the patron Saint of this blog, St. Drogo, was reported to have bilocated.

The final miracle I thought of was the Eucharist since, through the words of consecration, the sacrifice of Jesus is made present on our altars.

These were the only three examples I could think of though. I guess the problem with miracles concerning time is that they’re kinda hard to keep track of!

Can anyone think of any other examples of miracles concerning time?

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