• 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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Introduction to Islam (Part 3 of 5: Faith)

I began this series examining the founding of Islam and the person of Muhammad. Next, I took a very broad look at the Qur’an and some of its teachings and application to Islamic life.

Islam demands of its believers “faith” and “religion”.  In today’s entry I would like to look at the “faith” of Islam.  I will deal with the demands of “religion” tomorrow.

As I said yesterday, I have done my best to ensure factual accuracy in all these posts and have used Islamic sources as much as possible to ensure that I’m not propagating Christian misconceptions of Islam.  I did send this to some Muslim friends for comment, but I have yet to hear back. If you are a follower of Islam and believe that I have misrepresented your religion, please drop me an email and I will remedy the situation.

The Articles of Faith within Islam are thus:

1.  The existence and unity of Allah: Muslims are absolute monotheists and unitarians.  Even the suggestion of any kind of subdivision or plurality of God is utterly rejected. Islam explicitly rejects the divinity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity.

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Introduction to Islam (Part 2 of 5: Revelation)

In yesterday’s blog post I began a brief introduction to Islam.  I focussed primarily on the founding of Islam and Muhammad.

Today I would like to look at the divine revelation which Islam claims to have received, which is found principally in the Qur’an/Koran.

As I said yesterday, I have done my best to ensure factual accuracy in all these posts and have used Islamic sources as much as possible to ensure that I’m not propagating Christian misconceptions of Islam.  I did send this to some Muslim friends for comment, but I have yet to hear back. If you are a follower of Islam and believe that I have misrepresented your religion, please drop me an email and I will remedy the situation.

The Qur’an

As mentioned in my previous post, the Qur’an (literally, “the recitation”) is a compilation of the messages given to Muhammad.

Christians and Muslims understand the concept of scripture differently.  Christians describe the Bible, in the words of St. Paul, as being “God breathed” (theopneustos).  As Dei Verbum explains:

“In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted” – Dei Verbum, Chapter 3

Muslims, on the other hand, view the Qur’an as the word of God in the most literal sense, believing that the text bears no imprint of the writer’s character whatsoever. Rather, they believe that the Qur’an is the literal word of God, dictated to Muhammad, written down verbatim.

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Introduction to Islam

This is one of the many blog entries I was halfway through before being distracted by something shiny… I started preparing this series of entries around the time of the media storm from the “Burn a Qur’an Day“. I was rather surprised by the reaction of many Christians to this dispute, but what I found even more troubling was their apparent lack of basic familiarity with the religion of Islam.

In this series of posts I will not be disputing any assertion made by Islam. I only intend to provide a brief sketch of the religion.  I would like this to be an introduction and brief overview for the average Christian who is unaware of Islam’s claims.

Please note, I have done my best to ensure factual accuracy in all these posts and have used Islamic sources as much as possible to ensure that I’m not propagating Christian misconceptions of Islam.  I did send this to some Muslim friends for comment, but I have yet to hear back. If you are a follower of Islam and believe that I have misrepresented your religion, please drop me an email and I will  remedy the situation.

Muhammad

Islam (“submission to God”) was founded by Muhammad in the early 7th Century, a little over six hundred years after Jesus’ ministry, seven hundred and sixty-six miles away from Jerusalem in Arabia.  In the early part of Muhammad’s life he was a successful trader and then, through marriage to a wealthy widow, he became an important figure.

Thanks to his wealth, at the age of forty, Muhammad was able to spend much of his time in meditation in a cave on the outskirts of Mecca. It is said that it was during this time that he began to receive messages from Allah (God) through Jibril (the Archangel Gabriel).  He was told that these messages were to be preached to all mankind.  They were subsequently written down by his companions and collected together to form the Muslim holy book: the Qur’an/Koran (literally “the recitation”).

Muhammad’s followers were initially fairly small in number, consisting mainly of his own family. There were soon violent persecutions in Mecca against the Muslims, causing Muhammad to move to Medina where Islam was more favourably received.  A little later, the first jihad (holy war) took place. Muhammad returned to Mecca and destroyed the idols there and within eight years Muslim armies had conquered (and effectively converted) the whole of Arabia.

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8% Checkup

It’s hard to believe, but January is already basically over. That’s 8% of the year gone already!

This means it’s time to check up on my New Year’s Resolutions and see how I’ve done so far… (told you I take these things seriously!)

1. Spend 30 minutes every day in Scripture: Okay, I have done not too badly on this one. Between preparing the Sunday Gospel for the JP2 Group and preparing other Bible Studies, I’ve been spending some time in Scripture pretty much every day.

However, I’m still not quite regularly up to the full half an hour and it’s not quite as meditation-focussed as I would like. That’s something to work on…

2. More dancing: I’ve been limping through this resolution. So far, I have been out dancing once each week, which is certainly more than I was doing last year, but I still don’t feel I’ve really embraced the spirit of this resolution yet.  I have a plan though…

3. No more rushing: I’m rather pleased with this one. I have certainly cut down my number of social engagements, distributed them better and set aside more time to just chill at home. My state of mind has definitely improved as a result.  This one is a “win” 🙂

4. No chocolate: Not touched a single piece.  I really miss it though…I even had a chocolate dream last night 🙁

5. Get into the best shape of my life: Really have done very badly on this front. I’ve definitely cut down my food intake and increased the amount of fruit and veg, but the exercising really hasn’t happened. Must do some lengths in the pool before bed tonight…

6. At least five minutes of guitar practice every day: This one is another “win”. I’ve done a minimum of five minutes every day, but very often more, particularly at the weekends.  Love it.

7. Keep proper track of my finances: Utter fail.

8. Get back to England for a couple of weeks: All flights are now booked. I’m going via Washington to see the lovely DC people and coming back via Philadelphia to see Jen.

So…all in all, I don’t think I’ve done too badly. I think the two big ones I have to concentrate on this next month are (5) and (7).

See you next month 🙂

What do you mean, I don't communicate good?

One of the charges I’ve had leveled at me in the past is that I’m not a very open person and that I’m not very good at communicating what I’m thinking. Now, I personally don’t think this is true, but I guess one can only deny something like this for so long, particularly when the rest of the world seems to think otherwise.  And so in the spirit of good communication….

Knowing God’s will

It has been said that it’s easier to preach a hundred sermons rather than to live one out. Equally, I’ve found that, more often than not, the advice we freely hand out to friends, family and even strangers is usually the advice that we ourselves need to hear.

At the moment I’m taking a bit of time out to consider the things going on in my life and to ponder where all this is heading… I have done this at other points in my life and, more often than not, I’ve ended up tying myself up into knots trying to discern God’s will for my life.

The other week I said something to a friend that, tonight, I realise I needed hear myself:

“Knowing God’s will? Well, that’s easy! Love the Lord your God will all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all your mind…and love your neighbour as yourself. Everything else is just details” (c.f. Mark 12:29-31)

Important details, sure, but still details nonetheless…

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