Had a very enjoyable pre-Christmas conversation with Mike Jordan Laskey, the host of the Jesuit podcast for Canada and the US. It was a pretty wide-ranging chat, covering having adult children, dealing with materialism and other Christmas-related anxieties, managing and building traditions, my favorite Christmas carol that I couldn’t quite remember at the moment, CAKE OR PIE, and recognizing Jesus, or not. Have a listen!
This was so much fun! Damien and I were guests on the “This Catholic Life” podcast, co-hosted by of Peter Holmes and Renée Köhler-Ryan. Damien opens the show with an incredibly important question you won’t want to miss, and then we go on to discuss all sorts of issues surrounding NFP and sex and love and suffering and happiness and whatnot! And, not to be that person, but fully half the people on this episode have a completely adorable Australian accent.
You can listen to the episode here or on these platforms: iTunes, Google Play, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Stitcher, Anchor, TuneIn, Blubrry, Spreaker, Player.fm, Radio Public, Overcast
Damien and I went to college with Renee and it was a pure, pure pleasure to talk to her again. Hope we can do it again before another two decades elapse.
talking with Joe Heschmeyer and Chloe Langr about Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows, for their series on the way of the cross. This episode, #57, is called “The Women of the Way,” and includes passages by the great Josef Ratzinger.
You can hear and download the episode here.
I talk about how I came to understand why and how Mary truly understands our suffering; and about the sensation of helplessness that so often comes along with motherhood and with love in general, and how that sensation can either tear us away from God or help us meet him more intimately. (This conversation was the impetus for my essay, Mary who stays.)
Their other guest is Deacon Brad Sloan who works with women who’ve been caught up in sex trafficking in the midwest. He says so many of them have never experienced what it means to be loved, by anyone else and certainly not by their maker.
The podcast isn’t just discussion; it’s intended to help you meditate on various themes in the stations of the cross. The goal is to help us understand that we’re not alone in our suffering, and to give us the courage to confront evil in our lives.
The Catholic Podcast homepage is here and feed is here; and you can follow them on Facebook @TheCatholicPodcast.
Image: Station of the cross, Saint Symphorian church of Pfettisheim, Bas-Rhin, France. XIXth century. Detail of the 4thstation : Jesus and his mother. Photo by Pethrus [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]
