RA #237 - Spiritual Hunger and Technical Difficulties
Rosary Knots that Fit, Rabbit Tales, Trappist Beers and basil, Dark Knights and Dark Nights, Rediscovering Catholicism, and Matthew Kelly. 206-984-1899 for Feedback!
Links and songs from this episode:
On spiritual hunger.
I think we know when we lack intimacy with God. Pope Benedict totally encourages the personal relationship with Christ. We can do so much to learn more ABOUT God, but what we really want is closeness and love for God. You mentioned prayer, let your prayer lead you closer to Jesus. Here is an awesome prayer of St. John Vianney:
I love You, O my God,
and my only desire is to love You
until the last breath of my life.
I love You, O my infinitely lovable God,
and I would rather die loving You,
than live without loving You.
I love You, Lord
and the only grace I ask is to love You eternally…
My God, if my tongue cannot say in every moment that I love You,
I want my heart to repeat it to You as often as I draw breath.
To help me through my spiritual desert, one of the best tools I have daily is a bunch of great podcasts - including yours! For more serious stuff that really gets me thinking, I really love Into The Deep. That’ll keep me going for a week or more.
I’ve been reading the Scott Hahn books, and that’s helping to give me some great perspective.
And this summer, I had a chance to attend the Sacred Music Colloquium in Chicago - that was an amazing experience on many different levels. It gave me a lot to work on for my own contribution to the Church and our parish.
God bless your work-
Carl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slurpee
Are you (Greg) aware that you are panned to the left and Jennifer is more to the right. Just wondering if you are aware. Thanks for the show!
Bob
Hi Greg and Jennifer. Thanks for playing my feedback. I think I have a whole bunny family now. Sorry to hear about your lightning damage. It was a bad weekend. A home in my neighborhood caught fire from lightning. The weather is kicking up again tonight.
I understand what Jennifer was saying about being hungry for spiritually fulfillment. I’m finding myself watching more EWTN. I did start a blog to discuss various aspects of my conversion from the Baptist faith. Working on that has been like a personal revival.
Peace,
Jan Pitts, SFO
Greg and Jennifer,
First let us say, “excellent job” on CNMC. We were able to attend, and have grown from the experience. Also, we have been keeping you, the boys and the new baby in our prayers.
Regarding spiritual hunger…
1) We pray the rosary (sometimes 1 Hail Mary or 1 decade at a time).
2) Praying before the Blessed Sacrament NEVER fails !
3) Open the Bible and see were The Holy Spirit leads you..it is surprising, how often, you will relate to the reading.
4) Greg touched on this idea in the podcast…”Turn off the TV”….well for the most part. (Of course EWTN is an exception to this rule). We don’t realize it but most of the shows and commercials on TV can drain our Spirit and often we don’t realize it !
Thank you for all you do and we will keep you in our daily prayers.
Bud,Ruth and Kaitlin from Orlando
PS from Ruth
I have no idea how to change it, but I don’t like the smiley face next to our comment. It looks angry…can that be changed?
Thank you.
@Ruth: You can set up your own avatar at http://www.gravatar.com. It’s become the standard service for these images, and works across a wide range of websites.
Well, I tried the gravatar site and I uploaded some pic’s. It seems that it works ok.
Hi everybody!
I believe that Gregg is doing a great work, he’s an example of what means “let the Lord go his will upon him”. I’ve been hearing the rosary army podcasts and all I can say is THANK THE LORD THAT HE AND HIS WIFE ARE IN BETWEEN US.
It has no relation to this current podcast, but I found a site that offers the Rosasy pray in the way is prayed in Mexico and most of LatinAmerica. Don’t worry about language, it’s fully translated to English. If you want to have a different experience in praying the Rosary, then go to http://www.ixeh.net/faith/Treasure/Prayerbook/mxrosary.html
NOTE: you’ll need to have enough time for it, it takes normally 40 minutes to 1 hour. Try to pray it with your family.
Best regards.
(May God bles what falls into the belly)
Father..thank you for the tip. I just went to site and changed our avatar to sunflowers.
It was really special to see you at the CNMC. Thank you for all that you do. God Bless You.
Bud, Ruth and Kaitlin
Greg, I can identify with that ‘dark feeling’ thing. I love listening to talk radio because I am a political junkie. But sometimes it’s so toxic and I feel deflated and kind of dirty after listening. I work all day at the computer at work and have the freedom to listen to what I like and I love listening to an internet radio station called Ancient Faith Radio at http://www.ancientfaith.com. This is an Orthodox station. I love the Eastern Catholic Church as my husband, Rich, is a Melkite Catholic and is in his third year of study as a deacon candidate. The Eastern Catholics are Orthodox in nature and the teaching is chock full of stuff! Very deep stuff. Ancient Faith Radio has 2 different stations - music and talk. The talk station features all their different podcasts on all kinds of subjects. This stuff is challenging and really feeds me. The music station has chant and choral music (a lot with a Middle Eastern tone) and it’s so peaceful to listen to while I work.
I also love reading “The Way of a Pilgrim” when I need to be fed. It’s a deceptively easy read but full of stuff. Another book like that is Vinny Flynn’s “Seven Secrets of the Eucharist.” You can read that book easily in an hour but it is really deep and requires meditation. It totally changed the way I look at the Eucharist.
And Jennifer, I can also identify with your feelings of restlessness and lack of peace. I feel that way when I’ve been too busy to pray. And you’re right - you just have to stop right where you are and address it aggressively. The enemy will use busyness to get us off our game, but being aggressive about confronting busyness always works.
Susan
Much of the things you rememebered when you were kids, still exists as part of our everyday life in here. We do have slurpees, icees and those blasting frozen beverages we really like. People like me (I mean, adults), love those. And we do have a bunch of 7-11’s stores everywhere. It seems that everytime it rains, another store grows like mushrooms. Now is part of our culture.
There’s a sense of following darkness in Mexico, must of the young people is trying to have their own social group, but most of them follows those “emo”, “dark”, “anti-Christ” tribus, without looking back to God’s love, and that’s mainly because of fashion. There’s a big struggle to have those kids back to the light, and that’s the major challenge of Mexican Church. People like me, in some part of our life, belonged to those dark tribus, and we know, in the flesh, how dark the other side could be, that’s why we’re trying to have the ones in darkness coming back to the light, and give Jesus a little hand with it.
And in relation to darkness, there’s a huge simpathy for the Joker. Quite strange, huh? Not that much. The Joker, since we grew up watching the batman series starred by Adam West, means the twisted side of comedy and there are actually guys and girls who feel identified with the him. Different points of view, I guess.
Anyway, this is just a slight differente in cultures between the American and the Mexican.
Best regards.
(Next time I’ll try to have my english even better typed)
(May God bless what falls into the belly)
My favorite quote:
“Today we’re doing the show the old-fashioned way like Mac and Catherine do.”
The left and right channel thing was kind of … entertaining. I was walking the dog and occasionally I had one earbud unplugged (wanted to be able to be more aware of the traffic around me and the dog…). It took me some time until I realized that I had to change earbuds in order to listen to both of you… Interesting note: the left earbud did deliver the sound on an almost uninterrupted basis (Greg), whereas the right one (Jennifer) was silent more often. Just kidding!
It was a fun episode to listen to. Maybe, even because of the technical glitches. Looking forward to the next one!
This is my first time commenting … big fan of your show. I love listening while I run.
This episode in particular, while entertaining, was a little harder to run to. Greg’s voice seemed quieter than Jennifer’s and the feedback from listeners was way louder. Needless to say I did a lot of volume adjusting. Surely I did not look like the graceful runner that I am
I’m sorry to hear about your technical issues. Things in our house are crashing/breaking left and right. IT IS NO FUN!
Where to comment? RA.com or SQPN.com? I commented on both, hope you don’t mind!
Greg, just wanted to write and say I’m a big Batman fan too. I was interested though in your take on the new movie, I haven’t seen it yet myself but wasn’t Batman supposed to be dark? That was the key to the appeal for me, the light in this world of darkness.
I got hooked around the time of “Death in the Family” and “Dark Knight Returns” and so the Christian Bale incarnation kind of fits the bill for me, although I wish they’d go back to the proper yellow logo on his chest (yes I know the original logo didn’t have the yellow, but for me Jim Aparo’s batman is the right outfit!)
Great show by the way, I’ll leave you with a great video link to Batman v Batman (link in my blog post here - http://www.resurrected.co.uk/2008/07/little-off-topic.asp), enjoy!
Greg and Jennifer,
Great episode!
The discussion about dryness / spiritual restlessness was very interesting. Saint John of the Cross makes the point that sometimes dryness means that God is trying to wean the soul from certain things it has become dependent on, in order to lead them to depend more fully on God, and that we can actually slow our progress toward Him by returning to former spiritual practices.
The key, though, is to discern whether God is placing one in a night of the senses or not. Sometimes the cause of the dryness is simply negligence or depression. I’ve written a series of short posts unpacking John’s concept of the dark night and, in particular, looking at John’s criteria for discerning whether God is placing the soul in a night of the senses.
Nothing like having a Doctor in the house!