• 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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Rest In Peace

A few years ago I went on a pilgrimage to Rome with some friends from Washington DC. We spent a wonderful few days touring the sights and praying in some of the most beautiful churches on earth.

Sadly, this weekend I received a message on Facebook that one of the priests who accompanied us, Fr. Bill Dunn, recently died. A doctor for thirty years before entering the seminary, he was a kind and gentle soul. I hadn’t met him prior to our trip, but he and I had the opportunity to become better acquainted on one of our itinerary-free days in “The Eternal City”. We ended up wandering around the city in a search for the best cappuccino money could buy:

Rome

Fr. William Dunn: Rest In Peace

The natural human response at the death of a friend is one of mourning, sadness at being physically parted from a loved one. For the Christian, however, death is not the end. As Christians, we also respond with thanksgiving, praising God for allowing us to share in the life of one who loved the Lord so deeply. Finally, the Catholic also responds with petition, that God will have mercy on our friend’s soul and grant entrance into Heaven. I say it is a Catholic’s natural response but, in truth, I think it is the natural response of every Christian, Catholic or otherwise. We want the best for our loved ones, in this life and the next, so we naturally want to intercede for them in this life and the next.

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Science built on philosophy

In my random atheist encounter last weekend we spent some time talking about faith and science. I spoke about the limits of science (the material world) and the philosophical presuppositions which science must assume to be true:

1. A world outside our minds must exist
2. We must be able to attain true knowledge of this world
3. Logic must be operable
4. Our sense must give us trustworthy data
5. Nature must be orderly and constant

(I didn’t make up this list, I read it a while ago on Soul Device)

Our Traditional Family Meal

On Thursday I wrote a little bit about John 6 and the Eucharist in response to a conversation I had with Gerry, a non-Catholic. Today I would to take a very brief tour of the belief in the Eucharist in Early Church.

Fathers

The problem with saying that Jesus is only symbolically present in the Eucharist is that apparently nobody told this to the Early Church. Below are a collection of quotations from Christian documents of the 1st and 2nd Century. These demonstrate without a doubt that Christians have, from the earliest times, understood the Eucharist to be a sacrifice performed by priests in which Jesus Christ is truly present:

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