• 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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Sunday Lectionary: All you need is love

I’m going to start trying to make these Sunday Lectionary posts a little bit shorter, both so that I get more of my weekend back and also so more people read them!

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time: October 23rd, 2011

The Readings this week focus around the “vertical” and “horizontal” dimensions of our faith, how we love God and how we love our neighbour. This finds its simplest and clearest expression in today’s Gospel passage when Jesus is asked which is the greatest of all the commandments…

“Therefore the first commandment teaches every kind of godliness. For to love God with the whole heart is the cause of every good.

The second commandment includes the righteous acts we do toward other people. The first commandment prepares the way for the second and in turn is established by the second. For the person who is grounded in the love of God clearly also loves his neighbor in all things himself.

The kind of person who fulfills these two commandments experiences all the commandments.”

– St. Cyril of Alexandria, Early Church Father, 5th Century

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Dateless: Something Something Relationships

Last week I wrote a short post saying that I was soon going to try and tackle a question I often hear asked among my female friends:

Why doesn’t that nice Catholic boy ask me out?” 

I wrote that blog entry announcement partially to ensure that I didn’t chicken out! The subject of relationships and dating is tricky and it’s inevitable that many people would not agree with my conclusions. I’ve tried to do this series a couple of times before but I always managed to find something else to do instead. By publicly saying that I’m going to do it, I’m making sure that I actually will…

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Addressing a bishop?

I’ve got a meeting today at the Diocesan Center and Bishop Brom is going to be in attendance. This got me to thinking…

How do you address a bishop?

Okay, I just checked… It appears that I have two options. I can either address the Bishop as…

“Bishop Brom” …or… “Your Excellency”

Phew! Social faux pas narrowly avoided!

Now I’ll be able to engage him in conversation and finally find out if it’s true that he can only move diagonally…

Bible Canon Questions

Today over at St. Joseph’s Vanguard Devin wrote an article about How Evangelicals Know Their Canon Is Correct. It describes an exchange Devin had with an Evangelical concerning which books belong in the Bible.

Now, not all Evangelicals will hold those views expressed in the article, but I have to say that Devin’s exchange bears a strong resemblance to conversations I myself have had with non-Catholics concerning Sacred Scripture…

In my experience, when a Catholic-Protestant dialog reaches this stage it often stagnates. You then spend a lot of time going round and round in circles… 🙁

In an effort to stop this from happening, I find that it is generally best to keep asking questions. These questions will hopefully reveal to the non-Catholic his unknown dependency upon Catholic Church with regards to the formation of the Canon.

You may recall a little while ago I wrote about an exchange I had with a chap called Jay. When we were talking about the Bible, these were some of the questions I asked him:

1.  Let’s say I don’t believe James should be in the Bible.  Show me why I’m wrong. What’s to stop me from just taking this book out of the Bible?

2.  Let’s say I believe that Clement’s letter to the Corinthians should be in the Bible.  Show me why I’m wrong.  He was alive during the time of the Apostles and Clement has strong credentials for being taught by them…

3. Who wrote the Letter to the Philippians? What about the Gospel of Mark? How do you know?

4. Who were the people who painstakingly copied the New Testament manuscripts throughout the centuries?

5. Have you checked the authenticity of every book in the Bible? Are you sure that we have all the available “inspired texts”? How did you reach your opinion over what and what isn’t the Word of God? Are you 100% certain? Can I trust your judgment on this? Because if you’re wrong I could be ignoring text which is the Word of God and reading text which isn’t…

6. Who assembled the canon of the New Testament and when? Please give me names and dates.

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