"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
I’ve just had someone ask me about Eucharistic Adoration in San Diego. I know that some of the pilgrims who read this blog are practically professional Adorers, having visited virtually every chapel and church in the county, so…
Where and when can you go to Adoration in San Diego?
(Please indicate if a key or code is required for access)
Matt and I discuss Screwtape’s sixth letter where he explains how the patient’s uncertain future should be exploited.
S4E11: Letter #6 – “Should I stay or should I go?” (Download)
If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe manually, or any place where good podcasts can be found (iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Podbean, Stitcher, TuneIn and Overcast), as well as on YouTube. The roadmap for Season 4 is available here.
More information about us can be found on our website, PintsWithJack.com. If you’d like to support us and get fantastic gifts, please join us on Patreon.
Read moreI haven’t done one of these in a while, but I thought it’d be good to get into the habit of posting the recipes I’ve been trying. Here’s a really simple chicken sauce recipe I recently learned:
1. Make Sauce
Make a sauce using the following ingredients:
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons ketchup
3 tablespoons white sugar
2. Cook Chicken
Finely chop one onion and saute in 2 tablespoons of olive oil until translucent. Add 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves.
3. Simmer
Pour sauce over the chicken, and bring to a boil.
Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 25-35 minutes.
The first time I cooked this I used the measurements listed above, but the next time I attempted it, I doubled the measurements for the sauce, changed it to a red onion…and it all worked out wonderfully:
Today’s post is one of those posts which I’m writing purely for my own benefit. Who said this has to be selfless?! I’m hoping that, in the process of writing this, that the information will stay in my brain, or at the very least, make it easier for me to find when I forget it… 🙂
If any of you have heard Fr. Donald Callaway give a talk, you will have almost certainly heard him mention at some point something called Fetal Microchimerism, the biological process whereby cells from a fetus pass through the placenta into the mother’s own body (and vice versa).
The amazing thing about this process is that these cells have been shown to persist not only beyond pregnancy, but have even been found to remain in the mother’s body for decades afterwards. As far as I can tell, the scientific community is uncertain as to the consequence of the presence of these cells, with some suggesting that this is a source of potential disease, while others suggest that the child’s cells actually help to defend the mother.
When speaking about Fetal Microchimerism, Fr. Callaway reflects upon the intimate nature of the connection between mother and child. Even after a child has grown up, or even in the tragic cases of miscarriage or abortion, through Fetal Microchimerism, part of the child lives on in the mother.
Of course, where Fr. Callaway really goes to town is in the application of this biology to the area of theology. If this process is found in normal human pregnancies, then it is more than possible that this took place during the Blessed Mother’s pregnancy with Jesus. This would mean that some of the Saviour’s cells passed to His mother and remained there. The Lord’s human nature lived on in Mary’s body, even as He lay in the grave and even after He rose again and ascended into Heaven.
Not only that, if it is true that the child’s cells come to protect the mother from disease, then this has implications for Mary’s Assumption/Dormition, as well as providing a beautiful foreshadowing of the Eucharist, whereby Jesus gives us His Body, in the words of St. Ignatius of Antioch, as the “medicine of immortality”.
I first encountered Islam about six years ago when I was living in London. After meeting a Muslim for the first time, I decided that I should probably become more familiar with the religion, given that it is followed by 1.6 billion people, approximately 23% of the world’s population.
In my naiveté, I decided to start reading the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam. Oddly enough, I had been given a copy of the Qur’an at my (Catholic) school’s prize-giving about ten years earlier. I dug out my copy and started reading…
I’ll admit that I found the text of Qur’an very dry and I gave up after reading it when I was only about a third of the way through. Jumping straight into the Qur’an is very difficult, particularly if you don’t know much about Islam. It would have been helpful to know, for example, that the chapters (“suwar”) are not placed in chronological order, meaning that as I read sequentially through the chapters, I was jumping between very different periods in Muhammad’s life.
I’ve recently been reflecting on the subject of Islam and have concluded that the need for Christians to be familiar with this religion will only become greater with time. I’ve therefore decided to do more posts on this subject over the coming months. I have already written an introduction to Islam and the odd apologetics post, but in preparation for these upcoming articles, and for the sake of gaining credibility, I have decided to read the Qu’ran from cover-to-cover, but on this occasion I will read the chapters in chronological order.
Below you will see my reading plan, with the chapters arranged in (rough) chronological order. Discerning the exact chronology of the chapters is somewhat difficult for Muslim scholars to discern, particularly give that some chapters even contain verses from different periods. I found several different chronological orderings on the Internet, but I have chosen this one. There were other orderings I found on Christian websites, but in an attempt to limit Christian bias (which I will already bring to the text), I chose to use a chronology from a Muslim website.
My plan is to post some very brief thoughts about the chapters I read each day. I’ve also written a glossary of Islamic terms to make these easier to follow. From time to time, I’ll visit an Imam in San Diego, in order to clarify anything which I have found confusing.
When we last left Lewis, he had got on a bus in a grey town and was now flying through the sky towards an unknown destination. In today’s episode we learn more about the passengers on the bus.
S2E3: “The bus ride in the clouds” (Download)
If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe manually, or any place where good podcasts can be found (iTunes, Google Play, Podbean, Stitcher, TuneIn and Overcast).
Read more