St. Josemaria Institute Podcast ST. JOSEMARIA INSTITUTE

In this podcast for the Second Sunday of Advent, Fr. Leo Austin reflects on the invitation we receive this season to go to the desert-- a mysterious and quiet place where we can meet Our Lord face-to-face without distractions and without hiding to contemplate our lives and specifically our vocations.

Even if he already knows everything, it is good for our relationship with Jesus Christ to open our hearts to him and tell him the story of our lives. This is always a little bit scary, as Fr. Leo explains, but God does not come to accuse us or threaten us. He comes to walk with us and offer us his light.

This Advent, therefore, can be a great opportunity to open our eyes and allow Our Lord to point out things that maybe need to change or scars from the past that are not completely healed. Through an examination of our lives and through confession, we experience God's healing and the peace of having him inside us.

A bonus of being forgiven is being able to forgive and to bring that peace and dignity to the world that sometimes is so hectic and also in need of God.

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Did you enjoy this podcast? Explore "A Time for Hope: Advent with St. Josemaria Escriva" - a collection of devotions, readings, and meditations from the St. Josemaria Institute to help you prepare for the Nativity of Our Lord and the season of Christmas.
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In this podcast for the First Sunday of Advent, Fr. Leo Austin offers an inspiring meditation to help us focus not necessarily on what we are going to give to Jesus, but on the gifts that Jesus gives to us. He is not asking us to be perfect. He is inviting us to a relationship with him saying, "Come to me."

Advent is a preparation for an encounter. It's not about being scared or tense because God is going to show up at any moment and catch us. Advent is a time for us to realize that Our Lord is coming to this world to call us to happiness.

As Fr. Leo explains, "It's God coming to see you, to be with you." This is our vocation: God coming into this world, creating us, and then giving us freedom to develop, to unfold, to discover, and to explore. God is telling us, "I love you before you were aware of that and I'm preparing for you something special--an encounter, a friendship, that is unconditional."

Yet, if sometimes we don't trust God, the funny thing is that he trusts us. God knows that sometimes we are blind, scared, wounded, and discouraged. For those moments, he provides us with the gifts of faith, hope, and love. And, as we read in the Gospel, he comes to heal us and he tells us these three consoling words, "Come to me."

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Did you enjoy this podcast? Explore "A Time for Hope: Advent with St. Josemaria Escriva" - a collection of devotions, readings, and meditations from the St. Josemaria Institute to help you prepare for the Nativity of Our Lord and the season of Christmas.
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In this podcast, Fr. Eric Nicolai reflects on the authority of Christ as King of heaven and earth to help us renew our desire for Christ to reign deeply in our hearts and to proclaim with the saints and martyrs, "Long live Christ the King!"

The Solemnity of Christ the King was established in the 1920s by Pope Pius XI in response to the great rise of secularism in which people increasingly lived their lives as if God didn't exist. It is not unlike the battles and crises that we are confronting today that also fuel our desire to spread God's kingdom on earth. But for that to happen, Christ has to reign in our hearts now.

Fr. Eric reflects on the ways in which we see Christ depicted as king in scripture and in art. Among those images is Jesus's entry into Jerusalem on a humble donkey. "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; hosanna in the highest” (Mt 21:9). What is an hosanna? Hosanna is a word that was used in the Hebrew liturgy, and then later in the Christian liturgy, as a shout of jubilation and a sign of respect and honor for he who saves. But in Jerusalem, it was especially a shout of praise and adoration and a kind of recognition of Jesus as the Messiah.

Like those people, we can also offer so many hosannas to Our Lord to acknowledge him as our king. Fr. Eric encourages us to throw our cloaks under Our Lord as a beautiful sign of our submission to his will. We want to let him trample on our comforts and willfulness, under his donkey, so that we rely more not on our things but on his will, and so that his will is what really reigns in our heart.

Tune in as we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King.

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In this podcast, Msgr. Fred Dolan guides us to pray and ask God to help us to stand back to take a look at our life on earth and to realize that our time here is very short.

The great project of our life is gradual transformation into another Christ, explains Fr. Fred. We long to change and to be transformed. Therefore, a sign that we truly and passionately want to be fully alive is our willingness to be mindful of every moment and day of our life.

We don't want to be sleepwalking or flying blind through life. We want to reflect on deeper things and focus on things that are important, asking ourselves often: Why do I give so much importance to things that just do not matter in the bigger scope of things? This gives us perspective and peace. And it allows us to give ourselves and our souls space to take time to do things calmly and in the right order.

Fr. Fred also shares strategies that can help us to live heroically every minute of our life, including not allowing ourselves to waste time trying to undo the past and focusing on the importance of helping our loved ones prepare for death. The fact is that a life well lived, which is what we're all looking for, will have reverberations down through the centuries.

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In this podcast, Fr. Peter Armenio reminds us of our invitation as disciples of Jesus Christ to connect with God through the humanity of Jesus, especially through the Gospels and through the geographic area revealed by the Gospel itself.

Like Christian pilgrims throughout the ages, Fr. Peter shares how he had always dreamt and aspired to the possibility of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and how the experience exceeded his expectations. It is a very profound spiritual experience and an extraordinary privilege to walk among the sites and landscapes where Jesus lived.

The Holy Land is the only place on earth that also has an eternal dimension to it because of Jesus Christ, God made man. These places are not just sites from a historical period of time, but they are sites made holy by the Eternal Word made flesh who lived there, worked there, socialized there, worked miracles there, died there, and redeemed us there. The redemption of the world took place there in a given place and set of circumstances.

Therefore, Fr. Peter explains, it is obviously the will of the Holy Spirit that we encounter Christ in a special way in the Holy Land. We encounter Christ by contemplating his humanity and seeing the land where he was born and dwelt among us.

The Holy Land holds a special place in the hearts of all Christians around the world. During this period of war and unimaginable suffering in the region, we join our prayers with the Holy Father, Pope Francis, asking for peace and reconciliation in the Holy Land, especially through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Peace.

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In this podcast, Fr. Donncha Ó hAodha guides us to pray about the gift of the month of November. It is a great gift because it gives us the opportunity to focus on reality, to focus on the truth and love of God, and to recover our perspectives on our own journeys through time and to eternity.

This is important, as Fr. Donncha explains, because when we elevate and perfect all the bits and pieces that make up our day, seeing them within the horizon of eternity-- one universal horizon-- we will find the integrity and maturity that give meaning to all the aspects of our being.

In the month of November, especially with the Feast of All Saints and then the Commemoration of All Souls, we're also reminded straight off that when we consider time and eternity, we're not alone before this mystery; we're not alone before this journey. In life and in death, we're always accompanied, loved, and supported by our brothers and sisters who have gone before us, who love us, and intercede for us.

The saints are our good friends. They're our brothers and sisters. We can be sure that we are always surrounded by the reassuring company and consoling presence of the saints and the souls in purgatory, and by the whole Church.

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