St. Josemaria Institute Podcast

In this podcast, Fr. Fred Dolan leads us to reflect on freedom. Rightly understood, freedom is a gift from God, Our Creator and Father. If we do not recognize that fact, we run the risk of becoming existentially orphaned and homeless.“Do you love me?”, Jesus asks Peter. We hear the Lord looking at each one of us and asking the same thing. The Christian life is a free response, imbued with initiative and availability to this question of the Lord.We are not self-created, but rather, we are creatures of a loving Creator. We do not dare to attribute to ourselves the so called right to define our own concept of existence, because God has given that to us.God has given to each one of us very specific, unique qualities. Along with those qualities, come our own limitations. Therefore, Fr. Dolan reminds us that we need to remove the chief obstacles that hinder us from achieving it; for example, self-centeredness, egotism, grudges, arrogance, deceit, and resentment.God loves each one of us, as we are, and he loves to see us struggling to become better and to be free.View TranscriptVisit Show PageSupport the showTHANK YOU FOR LISTENING!Let us know that our podcast is important to you: Share your favorite episodes with others and leave us a rating or review. Stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: www.stjosemaria.org Also, if you enjoy the podcast, please consider helping us keep our episodes free and accessible for all our listeners: Give today!

In this podcast, Fr. Eric Nicolai helps us to reflect on the distinction between what it means to be productive/successful in life and what it means to be fruitful. Some of us might be productive, but we are called to bear fruit, which frees us from the danger of thinking that our life is useless.Fr. Eric explains, "God said to the first man and to the first woman, when He blessed them, Adam and Eve, to be fruitful and multiply, fill the Earth and govern it. God directs us to be fruitful, but we interpret this often to be productive." To be fruitful requires authentic humility and transparency in our life. It requires docility to the promptings of the Holy Spirit who produces in us the gifts of love, joy, peace, and understanding. As Our Lord promised, the gifts of the Spirit lead us to a fruitful life: to patience, kindness, goodness, self-control, and gentleness. In this way, we are able to multiply the good that our lives, our undertakings, and our work would have for all souls.View TranscriptVisit Show PageSupport the showTHANK YOU FOR LISTENING!Let us know that our podcast is important to you: Share your favorite episodes with others and leave us a rating or review. Stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: www.stjosemaria.org Also, if you enjoy the podcast, please consider helping us keep our episodes free and accessible for all our listeners: Give today!

In this podcast, Fr. Eric Nicolai reflects on St. Josemaria’s last moments on earth and how his docility to the Holy Spirit and good humor until the end led him to have so much effect on people's lives.God granted St. Josemaria a deep spiritual paternity through which he embraced everyone that would come in contact with him. "And since this paternity was completely supernatural," Fr. Eric explains, "it was strengthened by the fact that he went to Heaven. He could continue to exercise that spiritual paternity by interceding for us." St. Josemaria became somebody to emulate as he was somebody with impressive dreams, magnanimity, and great apostolic zeal. He was driven by his sudden understanding that sanctity is within the reach of anyone who freely wants to let themselves be led by God.  Therefore, he knew how to bring out the best in people and helped them to realize their dreams of pursing what God was really calling them to. He formed saints that came in contact with him; that is, he provoked great desires in others and opened up their horizons. St. Josemaria had many reasons to be cynical and even pessimistic about his mission and the work that he was doing for God. But, with the grace of God, he flourished through the power of his good humor. His good humor and cheerfulness helped him to have a greater vision, for himself and for others, beyond the immediate. As we celebrate the feast of St. Josemaria (June 26), Fr. Eric encourages us to go to St. Josemaria to learn what it means to have good humor, to be cheerful, and to open up our horizons to a greater vision of life led by the Spirit.Note: Fr. Eric Nicolai preached this meditation in Toronto, Canada on June 19, 2023, in preparation for the feast of Saint Josemaria.View TranscriptVisit Show PageSupport the showTHANK YOU FOR LISTENING!Let us know that our podcast is important to you: Share your favorite episodes with others and leave us a rating or review. Stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: www.stjosemaria.org Also, if you enjoy the podcast, please consider helping us keep our episodes free and accessible for all our listeners: Give today!

In this podcast, Fr. Javier del Castillo reflects on how the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus reminds us of our "need to have a heart within us that beats at the same pace as Christ's, because that's what it means to be truly human."St. Augustine wrote, “You have made us for you, O Lord, and restless will our heart be until it rests in you.” Fr. Javier explains that "we can interpret this as our hearts will be restless until we actually synchronize our hearts to the heart of Christ." And, our hearts are made to be synchronized with the heart of Christ in timing, intensity, and extension. It is through these three aspects that God can renew our hearts so that we can truly love the way He wants us to love-- in a human and divine way, with one heart with which we love God and with which we love everything else.Only a heart synchronized to Jesus' heart can love and can actually co-redeem with Him by loving with His own heart. And it all happens if we allow Him to do it... substituting our heart of stone with a heart of flesh which is capable of Divine Love.Visit Show PageView TranscriptSupport the showTHANK YOU FOR LISTENING!Let us know that our podcast is important to you: Share your favorite episodes with others and leave us a rating or review. Stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: www.stjosemaria.org Also, if you enjoy the podcast, please consider helping us keep our episodes free and accessible for all our listeners: Give today!

In this podcast, Fr. Javier del Castillo guides us to contemplate the beautiful gift of the Eucharist in which Jesus fulfills the promise to remain with us and to transform the world from within.The Eucharist, Fr. Javier explains, has "a double effect of restoring the spiritual losses caused by sins and defects and of increasing the power of the virtues. This is what happens when we go to Communion, when we receive the Body and Blood of Our Lord... this food is not transformed into us, we are transformed into Him."As we prepare for the feast of Corpus Christi, therefore, we can pray about "how we can correspond to Our Lord... Anything we do for Our Lord will be little in comparison to what He deserves." So, we want to be humble even though "He outdoes us in humility. He lowers Himself; He stoops Himself even more than we ever can.The Eucharist is truly that which will allow us to persevere in our call, in our call to holiness. It keeps you going and gives you strength when you're tired, when you're exhausted, in, your works of charity, in your Christian life... Turn to Our Lord in the Eucharist and draw new life from that infinite well of holiness and charity, which is the Eucharist."In the Eucharist, God is with us. We have to be in awe that God is with us, all the power of God. He doesn't have anything else to give, He has given everything to us. We should cast away our fears of giving ourselves to others. We should adopt this Eucharistic generosity in our lives." Visit Show PageView TranscriptSupport the showTHANK YOU FOR LISTENING!Let us know that our podcast is important to you: Share your favorite episodes with others and leave us a rating or review. Stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: www.stjosemaria.org Also, if you enjoy the podcast, please consider helping us keep our episodes free and accessible for all our listeners: Give today!

In this podcast, Fr. Javier del Castillo leads us to pray and reflect with humility on the mystery and eternal love of the Holy Trinity: God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have been in love, from all eternity, before the foundation of the world," explains Fr. Javier. “Because that love is so great… the Holy Trinity has freely chosen to create us, to have creatures with which they can share this great happiness that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have had from all eternity.”Especially as we prepare to celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, we recognize that our hearts and minds cannot fully understand this great mystery of faith. "It's too big to fit in our minds. And yet, through faith, it has been revealed to us that it exists and that truly it is the end of our existence. We know that there must be something we do not know towards which we feel driven, and that is the Blessed Trinity, in whose image we are made." In baptism, the Holy Trinity sanctifies us and elevates us to a new level of children of God.Visit Show PageView TranscriptSupport the showTHANK YOU FOR LISTENING!Let us know that our podcast is important to you: Share your favorite episodes with others and leave us a rating or review. Stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: www.stjosemaria.org Also, if you enjoy the podcast, please consider helping us keep our episodes free and accessible for all our listeners: Give today!

This week, we're sharing a bonus episode as we end the Month of May dedicated to Our Lady!In this podcast, Fr. Eric Nicolai helps us reflect on the times when our faith and trust in God may seem quite fragile, even weak. In these moments, Fr. Eric explains, St. Josemaria would recommend recourse to little aspirations, glances at images of our Lady and other simple devotions, because these small acts end up awakening something within us. Mary seems to stir up devotion in us. She awakens our faith and makes us strong. She helps us, as St. Josemaria would say, to “stir up that fire of faith. Christ is not a figure that has passed. He is not a memory that is lost in history.” She does this because she was both the Mother of God, and our Mother. She has two motherhoods. She is twice a mother. First she became the mother of God when consenting freely to the incarnation, her “Fiat" made her mother of Jesus. But then she became mother again, when she stood at the foot of the Cross, and became our mother at the request of Jesus, by taking care of John. But that too required a Fiat.Visit Show PageView TranscriptSupport the showTHANK YOU FOR LISTENING!Let us know that our podcast is important to you: Share your favorite episodes with others and leave us a rating or review. Stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: www.stjosemaria.org Also, if you enjoy the podcast, please consider helping us keep our episodes free and accessible for all our listeners: Give today!

In this podcast, Fr. Javier del Castillo helps us prepare for the great solemnity of Pentecost by guiding us to ask ourselves: What is my relationship with the Holy Spirit? Am I docile? Do I listen?  "Wherever the Spirit is, there is newness, there is life," explains Fr. Javier. "There is definitely a difference between what the Apostles were before, and what the Apostles are after they received the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:1-11). And, "it's the power of humility... of the docility of the Apostles that let go and let God. Let God the Holy Spirit act in and through them in spite of their own weaknesses..." Fr. Javier says that, "Our Lord is challenging us to be docile to the Spirit. And, to be docile means to give the Holy Spirit a blank check... It means to take a risk, it means that we won't know where He comes from and we don't know where we're going. But we know we're in sure hands. And that's what it means to commit ourselves to the Christian life."  We ask the Holy Spirit "to come in a new Pentecost" to each one of us today to help us be docile in order to let God into our lives and to take us wherever He wills. We also ask the Holy Spirit for His gifts, especially wisdom, to understand the ways of God and to understand the things of the world from God's point of view.Visit Show PageView TranscriptSupport the showTHANK YOU FOR LISTENING!Let us know that our podcast is important to you: Share your favorite episodes with others and leave us a rating or review. Stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: www.stjosemaria.org Also, if you enjoy the podcast, please consider helping us keep our episodes free and accessible for all our listeners: Give today!

In this podcast, Fr. Peter Armenio reflects on Christ’s last words before his Ascension issuing the commission to his disciples to preach the Gospel to every creature. In fact this commission is a “global apostolic assignment” that will remain until the end of time. It is an assignment, “to make disciples of all nations,” that reaches us today and should encompass every dimension of our lives as Christians. “Out of a hundred souls we are interested in a hundred,” said St. Josemaria Escriva. This means, as Fr. Peter explains, that “we need to reach for the peripheries… those people completely alienated from Christ.” To do this effectively will require that we get out of our comfort zones with God's help. It also requires that our apostolic spirit and evangelization "come from the heart and from the gut," says Fr. Peter. "We have to love so much that we will take the risk of being rejected, and being judged, and being labeled.” Visit Show PageView TranscriptSupport the showTHANK YOU FOR LISTENING!Let us know that our podcast is important to you: Share your favorite episodes with others and leave us a rating or review. Stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: www.stjosemaria.org Also, if you enjoy the podcast, please consider helping us keep our episodes free and accessible for all our listeners: Give today!

In this podcast, Msgr. Fred Dolan reflects on the profound role for Our Lady in our lives as Christians and our need “to embrace Our Lady to remind her of how much we love her.” He especially reflects on the meaning and devotion to the Holy Rosary and how it is an expression we can you use to repeat our love for Our Lady “again and again and again.”As St. Josemaria Escriva wrote: “Today as in other times, the rosary must be a powerful weapon, to enable us to win in our interior struggle and to help all souls. Exalt holy Mary with your tongue: God asks you for reparation, and for praise from your lips. May you always want to know how to spread peace and happiness throughout the world, through this beautiful devotion to our Lady, and through your watchful love.”View TranscriptVisit Show PageSupport the showTHANK YOU FOR LISTENING!Let us know that our podcast is important to you: Share your favorite episodes with others and leave us a rating or review. Stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: www.stjosemaria.org Also, if you enjoy the podcast, please consider helping us keep our episodes free and accessible for all our listeners: Give today!