• 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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TOT: Year of Faith

Year of FaithThe purpose of Theology On Tap is to help Young Adults grow together in their faith in a relaxed, informal environment. A few days ago I posted the audio from Dr. Michael Barber’s Theology On Tap talk at John Paul “The Great” University on the subject of “Spiritual lessons about politics from the book of Revelation”.

Today I’m posting the audio from another talk in that series, this time by Fr. Andy Younan. Earlier this year Pope Benedict called for a “Year of Faith”. Fr. Andy’s talk addresses this subject as well as another subject you may have heard a lot about, the “New Evangelization”

The talk is entitled “The Year of Faith & the New Evangelization” and is available for download by clicking on the link below:

Main Talk (Download)

Q&A (Download)

One of the parishes with which I’m involved here in San Diego will be hosting a conference as part of the Year of Faith. As soon as we have our dates and speakers confirmed I’ll post some more information.

Private Revelation

In my various wanderings I have, on occasion, come across a certain breed of Catholic who is extreeeeeemely attached to stuff like the Marian apparitions in Medjugorje, as well as medals and other specific prayers and devotions, all of which leave me feeling rather…meh.

Now, I’m not rubbishing any of these devotions, not at all. In fact, some of them eventually won me over and now feature significantly in my spiritual life, such as the Divine Mercy Chaplet. However, I’ve often found the rather overzealous promotion of some of these devotions to be rather off-putting.

I think what I have found unsettling is the unspoken (although sometimes spoken!) assertion that such-and-such a devotion IS Catholicism, or at least a fundamental part of it. My expressions of disinterest, therefore, have been taken almost as acts of apostasy! How could any self-respecting Catholic NOT be absolutely enthralled by this devotion?!

So why am I bringing this up? Well, this morning I was clearing out some of my old browser bookmarks and came across a great article by Mark Shea where he addressed this very question and gave some superb advice:

“[T]he good news is that the Church binds you to none of it… If it helps your devotion to Christ, then great.  If not, or if it gives you trouble, just stick with the public revelation [i.e. the official, binding teaching of the Church] and it will be fine.” – Mark Shea

You can read the full article here:

private revelation

What do you think? Are there any devotions which you follow which you’ve found helpful? Or have you ever been put off by someone’s extremely zealous promotion of one?

TOT: Spiritual Lessons about Politics

Did your Christmas presents disappoint? Did Santa get lost on the way to your house? Were you naughty and not, in fact, nice? Well, no need to worry! In today’s post there’s a present we can all enjoy! 😉

Back in November we had another round of Theology On Tap here in San Diego, this time at John Paul “The Great” University. The first talk was from Dr. Michael Barber, entitled “Spiritual Lessons about Politics from the book of Revelation”Dr. Barber’s talk is broken into two MP3s, roughly half an hour apiece, and is available for download below:

Main Talk (Download)

Q&A (Download)

No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength…
We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.
 – Psalm 33:16-20

Four Horsemen

They clearly want us to vote Republican…

This year I’m actually going to be re-reading Dr. Barber’s commentary on the Book of Revelation and studying it with my friend Kevin, so you can probably expect to see a few Apocalyptic-related posts “coming soon”… 🙂

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