Over the past year, I have been reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to my two younger boys, now age 7 and 9. We were into the third volume––called “The Return of the King”—and had just concluded the chapter entitled “Houses of Healing.” This is after the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, from which came great suffering and destruction, but also great bravery and friendship. In the Houses of Healing, the wounded are being tended to, though some are so deeply wounded that their recovery is uncertain or even doubtful. But then Aragon is summoned to the Houses of Healing and is eventually revealed as the true king because he has the power to heal those who are wounded in body and spirit––wounds so deep that the normal courses of treatment could not heal. And my 9-year-old, Josiah, suddenly said, “That’s like Jesus who showed his kingship by healing people.”I want to talk about this kind of healing today on our show. Not explicitly Jesus’ healing touch, but profound meditation that Tolkien invites into in his Lord of Rings, where the health and wellbeing of the wounded is never only physical, never just bodily, but indeed psychological and especially spiritual. Tolkien’s meditation emerges, of course, from his Catholic imagination, and so though not explicitly about Jesus’ healing, it is nevertheless about Jesus’ healing in and through others.To talk about these kinds of sicknesses and this kind of healing, I am so happy to welcome back to our show Dr. Kristin Collier, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan, where she is also the director of the medical school’s Program on Health, Spirituality, and Religion.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

If you were to see the sacred, what would you see? Would you see beauty, light, color, form, simplicity, complexity, joy? One thing we can be sure of is that what we would see would be immersive and full-bodied. To really see the sacred is not about a fleeting or casual glance; it is a long, loving look that changes us.My guest today is an expert in helping people to “See the sacred,” She is Jill Alexy, who works with the Vatican Patron of the Arts, where she regularly takes people not only through the artistic treasures of the Vatican, but those scattered all throughout Rome and across Europe. She has launched a new initiative called “Seeing the Sacred,” that brings some of those treasures to you, where you are, while also teaching you and guiding you towards a more profound encounter with God through beauty. Let’s talk about Seeing the Sacred.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

If you could see the full expanse of the universe, do you think that might change your perspective? That probably seems ludicrous to even consider, but I gotta tell you: it happened to me. In 2006, I walked into a digital planetarium, and a couple hours later I walked out beginning to see things differently. The man I met when I walked in? Phil Sakimoto, former NASA astronomer, professional planetarian, and, for the past 15 or so years, my partner in creating the unique planetarium presentation, “All Creation Gives Praise”—a journey of scientific observation and theological reflection.Phil and I are together recording the audio for the final version of this presentation, which will soon become “exportable” to pretty much any other digital planetarium in the world.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

In a world where forgiveness seems less and less possible because transgressions are rendered more and more permanent, how can there be a tomorrow? Or maybe we need to ask that question another way: Is there a Christian way to have a tomorrow? Professor Joshua Mitchell of Georgetown University seeks to show us what is at stake in questions like these. He joins me to discuss his new book, American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time, where he addresses the ills of our contemporary society and attempts to chart a path forward, partly dialogue with great social theorists like Alexis de Tocqueville and Plato.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

Every child is a mystery, but as scientific advances in prenatal testing grow, so does the temptation to know more and more about our unborn children. Will they be healthy? What are the chances they will have a disability? With questions like these comes another question: how much is too much when it comes to trying to know who our children will be? My guest is Dr. Mary O’Callaghan, a developmental psychologist who, among other things, studies, writes about, and teaches on “disability selective abortion” and issues of human dignity.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

In an age when belief in God seems more and more difficult to achieve, and perhaps less and less likely to be recommended, how do we commit our lives to God? This is indeed a spiritual question, but it is also a philosophical question, a question of incredible practical import, a question of faith and reason and beauty and imagination. My guest today dives deep into the question of belief in God for people like us, living in times like ours.Joining me is Fr. Ryan Duns, a member of the Society of Jesus and assistant professor of theology at Marquette University. We will be discussing his new book, Spiritual Exercises for a Secular Age: Desmond and the Quest for God, which is out now from the University of Notre Dame Press.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

Do you have hope for the future of American politics? Is now the time for the pro-life movement to take a leading role in that future? We’re going think about things that like on today’s show, as I welcome Dr. Charlie Camosy, associate professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University. We’ve got a lot to talk about, which means I’ll keep the intro brief.I’m Leonard DeLorenzo, this is Church Life Today, thanks for listening in.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

When we think about bringing Catholic young people into adulthood, what should be included and prioritized for their formation as mature disciples? There is a lot we could talk about around that question, but today we will be talking about the crucial role of intellectual formation for Catholic young adults, especially in and around the college years. Joining me to talk about the intellectual formation of Catholic young adults is my friend and colleague, Dr. Tim O’Malley, who is the director of education in the McGrath Institute and teaches in the department of theology at Notre Dame. Among other books, Tim is the author of Liturgy and the New Evangelization, Bored Again Catholic: How the Mass Could Save Your Life, and Off the Hook: God, Love, Dating, and Marriage in a Hookup World.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

When Time Magazine named Sister Norma Pimentel as one of the 100 most influential people of 2020, they said that she “has been on the front line of mercy for three decades.” The front lines of mercy. That’s where God’s preferential love for the poor and suffering meets people who are hungry, thirsty, homeless, and seeking not just safety, but compassion. For Sister Norma, that meeting place is the area around the US-Mexico border, on both sides.Sr. Norma has been the executive director of Catholic Charities in the Rio Grande Valley for over a decade. In that time, her organization has housed and assisted well over 100,000 people at the border. During his visit to the United States in 2015, Pope Francis thanked her personally for her work and witness. And in 2018, the University of Notre Dame awarded her the Laetare medal, which is the oldest and most prestigious honor given to American Catholics.To talk about the sanctity of life amid the humanitarian crisis at the border as well as her own religious vocation and family history, Sr. Norma joins me, Leonard DeLorenzo, on Church Life Today from Redeemer Radio and the McGrath Institute for Church Life.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

Every year more than 100,000 people visit Notre Dame’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart (though of course, the year 2020 may be an exception). Nevertheless, those who walk in the basilica’s doors, discover a worship space that is immaculately maintained, utterly impressive, and completely orderly. But the order and intentionality of that church is not merely a matter of polishing and tidying up; it is in fact written right into the space itself: a space that was intentionally designed and ordered with a theological and spiritual vision. That vision is perhaps most visible in the light that bends through and illuminates the 44 stained-glass windows that contain 220 scenes throughout the basilica. Those windows tell the stories of the radiance of God’s love in the lives of his saints and the events of salvation history. These are Stories in Light. Nancy Cavadini is co-author of the new book Stories in Light: A Guide to the Stained Glass of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. This is a beautiful book, both in how it is written and how it is presented, replete with full-color photographs of these windows. This work of art history and theology undertaken by Nancy Cavadini and her co-author Celicia Davis Cunningham, brings the stories of this remarkable church and its resplendent stained-glass to both those who have visited the Basilica and those who have not yet in a fresh and indeed illuminating way.Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.