• 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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Favourite People: Vic Scaravilli

Today I wanted to advertise another website, Catholic Digital Studio.

Catholic Digital Studio has quite a lot of great resources, but I particularly wanted to draw your attention to the materials produced by Vic Scaravilli. Vic has done a load of talks on a variety of topics which include:

The Basic Gospel Message / Basics of Catholic Faith
Catholic study of Paul’s letter to the Romans
Protestant-Catholic dialog

Some of his talks are available as audio,

I always enjoy watching Vic teach. I particularly like the fact that he takes a big stick with him to class. hmmm….now there’s an idea… 😀

Biblical Language

I was looking through my brower’s bookmarks and came across this nice little post from Aggie Catholics which lists some of the popular phrases which come from the Bible. Here are some of my favourites:

“Living off the fat of the land” – Genesis 45:17-18
“Can a leopard change his spots?” – Jeremiah 13:23
“Eat, drink, and be merry” – Ecclesiastes 8:15
“The root of the matter” – Job 19:28
“Apple of my eye” – Deuteronomy 2:10 / Zechariah 2:8
“Twinkling of an eye” – 1 Corinthians 15:52
“A fly in the ointment” – Ecclesiastes 10:1
“Bite the dust” – Psalms 72: 9
“By the skin of our teeth” – Job 19:20

Email Subscription

When I moved this blog from wordpress.com to my own domain I lost the ability for readers to setup an email subscription to this blog. This has now been remedied. If you would like to receive an email when I make a new entry, please click on the “Subscribe” link on the right-hand menu. Alternatively, you can just click here.


See how happy this feature has made Meg Ryan?

Sunday Lectionary: We were doing so well…

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time: 28th August, 2011

In this week’s Gospel we pick up where we left off last Sunday. Last week Peter gave his confession of Faith, but in today’s reading he doesn’t fare so well….

However, I think the real jewel this week is the Second Reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. Every word of this passage is rich with meaning and worthy of meditation.

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The promised apology

This is my promised apology…

“Okay, Minion, you were right, and I was…less right” – Megamind

Okay, not that kind of apology… On Monday, when I put up the “Lectionary Notes” for yesterday’s Mass Readings, I said that later in the week I would try to do a slightly more apologetics-related post concerning Matthew 16.

Since this is an apologetics entry, if you haven’t read my Ecumenical Apologist post, I would invite you to read that first since it explains something of my perspective and my attempted approach with posts like this.

I was running a little low on time this week so I dug through my email and found a correspondence from a few years ago with a non-Catholic whom we will call “Jay”. Jay raised the question of the Pope early on in our correspondence, but I had resisted talking about the issue of the Papacy until we had covered some more fundamental issues (authority, the canon etc.).

Anyway, here’s what I said in response to his statements about Matthew 16…

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