St. Josemaria Institute Podcast

In this podcast, as we continue our Lenten devotions, Fr. Eric Nicolai reflects on Jesus' fasting in the desert for 40 days. Why did he do that? Because the desert didn’t offer him absolutely anything, so he relied entirely on his Father. He overcame the devil’s temptations. As soon as he left the desert, he began his ministry. The purpose of our mortification is not to become stoic and impervious to pain. The real purpose was outlined by St. Paul: "I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2, 20).  For Christ to live in us, we have to go up the four steps: First, corporal mortification: The most superficial one. It is for our purification. St, Josemaria said, "One has to give the body a little less than its due. Otherwise it turns traitor" (The Way, no. 196).Second, care for little things: The purpose is not to become obsessive about order or having things in their place, but to acquire a spirit which allows us to reach out to others and make their life more agreeable.Third, interior mortification: This area that purifies us from all that has to do with honor, with our good reputation, our attachment to what others think of us. And the whole world of our imagination.Fourth, passive mortification: This is the most difficult. This is where the Lord comes to seek us out. "I will tell you which are man's treasures on earth so that you will appreciate them: hunger, thirst, heat, cold, pain, dishonor, poverty, loneliness, betrayal, slander, prison..." (The Way, no. 194).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, as we continue our Lenten devotions, Fr. Peter Armenio reminds us of the importance of getting to know Christ, our Divine Friend, and using the Gospels as a medium to hear him and to speak to him. Fr. Peter explains how “the purpose of Lent is to get closer to Jesus” and one of the best ways of doing this is by following the Church’s three Lenten pillars—prayer fasting, and almsgiving—as they all lead us to keep us focused on and in communication with Christ. In the same way that people become friends by means of conversation and spending time with each other, Jesus wants us to spend time with him. “Our Lord wants us to insert ourselves into the scenes of the Gospel. He wants us to listen to what he says...” Lent, therefore, can be a time for us to make progress in our prayer and conversation with Our Lord. We must show up for our time of prayer and commit to it; we cannot make excuses. It is Jesus who waits for us.In this podcast, you will also hear how:Lent can serve as a “springboard” for asking Our Lord to teach us how to pray and spending time each day in dialogue with him.“Jesus is your friend. The Friend. With a human heart, like yours. With loving eyes that wept for Lazarus. As much as He loved Lazarus, He loves you” (St. Josemaria Escriva; The Way, no. 422).Every prayer of ours should be true contemplation; it should mean something to us and come from the heart.Jesus is the Word of God spoken by God the Father to us from all eternity, and there is a personal message for each one of us in the Gospel.The Gospel is a compilation of conversations Jesus had with his friends. And there is an element of each Gospel character in everyone.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. Peter Armenio explains how knowing about Jesus Christ differs from knowing him. And, in order to know Christ, Fr. Peter encourages us to foster a personal relationship with him, with “the knowledge of the heart, the knowledge of a relationship, the knowledge a man and a woman have of each other when they’re courting…”Getting to know him requires intimate conversation, which begins with the “desire to seek Christ.” As St. Josemaria would say, we must seek him “hungrily” and determinedly: “If you act with determination, I am ready to guarantee that you’ve already found him, and have begun to get to know him and to love him, and to hold your conversation in Heaven” (Friends of God, no. 300).In this podcast, you will also hear how:An atheist Jewish writer embraced the Catholic faith after a profound encounter with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.Conversion never begins with a guilt trip, or even an examination of conscience, but with an encounter with Christ.Getting to know a person doesn’t mean knowing more facts about the person, it means loving that person and having a relationship with that person.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 invites us to reflect on how love makes God visible in the world because God gives himself entirely to us. “God is loving us with his 100%. He actually has nothing else to give us, except himself… Think of the Eucharist. There’s nothing else for Him to give.” And so, how can we pay back such great love? With love.Recalling the Gospel passage of the Widow’s Mite, Fr. Javier reflects on Jesus’ comment to the Apostles: “She has put in from her want, not from her surplus.” This is an example of a worthy response to God’s love to hold nothing back. The only way to love God is to never be satisfied with what we have given up to this point. As St. Josemaria Escriva would say, “love is with love repaid.”In this podcast, you will also hear how:• If it is 100% of our love, then it is worthy of God.• When we are united to God through the state of grace, we are able to love in and through the fulfillment of our ordinary duties.• It’s a false assumption to think that in any vocation God does not ask us to give him 100%.• Love is never satisfied with what it has done before because love is not about the logic of the least or the minimums.• We cannot pay 100% of what we have been given, but we could do little details or pay attention to details of love and affection for others.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!

“Now is the day of salvation, now is an acceptable time… For what?” As we begin the holy season of Lent, Fr. Javier del Castillo reflects on the readings for Ash Wednesday which remind us once again that now is the time for conversion — Lent is a time for conversion. Our Lord gives us an entire season of the liturgical year to turn back to Him, to be reconciled to God, to purify ourselves, and to identify ourselves with God’s suffering. Our conversion does not have to be big and showy. In fact, Fr. Javier explains how simple acts of penance— like offering up our food and drink, setting a time for prayer, and participating in works of mercy— allow us to identify ourselves with Jesus Christ on the Cross and to bring about deeper conversions. He also explains how the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are ultimately participation in the life and mission of Jesus Christ that help us in our earthly life toward the goal of eternal salvation.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. Peter Armenio shares a historical reflection on the 80th anniversary of St. Josemaria Escriva’s founding of the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross on February 14, 1943. Fifteen years after founding Opus Dei (October 2, 1928), St. Josemaria finally saw “a way, a canonical solution to have priests in Opus Dei.” St. Josemaria had realized early on that Opus Dei needed priests “who have that heightened awareness that Christ wants to be in the workplace. He wants to be in the family, he wants to be in social relations… The layperson can’t just receive the sacraments in a perfunctory way. Those sacraments need to be administered by holy priests who completely understand that the layperson is called to a first-class sanctity.”As Fr. Peter explains, “the priest and the layperson are an organic unity.” Both “have their own role that is indispensable for the New Evangelization, to bring Christ to the middle of the world, and they complement each other and they’re profoundly united to each other.” This is why the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross is so important to Opus Dei and the Church: to meet the “burning need for holiness among the priests” so that they meet the “burning need for holiness among laypersons.”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 special podcast, Fr. Javier del Castillo reflects on the feast of Mary, Mother of Fairest Love (February 14th), and the significance of this Marian title in the life of the Church and the history of Opus Dei.Rooted in the Old Testament, Fr. Javier explains how “fair” in this title of Our Lady refers to “beauty” and “fairest love” means “the most beautiful love.” He also explains how St. Josemaria Escriva helped to revive the devotion to this title applying it to Mary as “the guardian of the beauty of chastity” and “as a way of praying for holy purity, for the sanctity of marriage, for the sanctity of the family, and for vocations to celibacy."The virtue of holy purity is not just about control, as Fr. Javier explains, but it is primarily about love. Holy purity is a gift from God that helps us safeguard the image of God we have in our soul and in our heart, which is “where we are able to love God and make a covenant with God. The heart is the place of truth… So many things happen in the heart. And this interior world has to be protected.”Mary brings us the hope we need to struggle, to tell the truth in our hearts, to repent, and to have the holy purity “to make room in our hearts for God, for true love, for the fairest and most beautiful love… which is her Son.”_____St. Josemaria’s desire to build a shrine to Mary, Mother of Fairest Love in the United States is underway! The shrine will be “a place where people come and ask Mary for many favors for their marriage, for their families, for their vocation, and also for holy purity.” Learn about the “Mary, Mother of Fairest Love Family Shrine” at: https://fairestloveshrine.org/.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. Peter Armenio reflects on the meaning of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ and why “to be a follower of Christ, we have to love the Church.”In the Letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul writes about the Church being “without stain or wrinkle.” Fr. Peter points out that, in today’s media, we often read about and see things that make this seem impossible. Yet the Church is lovable because it was founded by “God himself, God made man,” and Christ defines the Church as “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.We don’t judge the Church by the misbehavior but by the “salt and light of the world”—men and women who accept and live by the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Church, and who make good use of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. The Church, as Fr. Peter explains, “brings the very best out of the human person. The more that human person embraces the teachings of Christ, the greater that person is.”In this podcast you will also hear how:The Church is a sacrament, a sign, and not just a symbol.The Church is a sign of unity, life, conversion, and salvation.Wherever we are—among our family, in our workplace, in all social relations—we are members of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.Scripture, the Sacraments, and the teachings of the Church are an extension of Christ.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. Peter Armenio reflects on how Jesus’ example and teachings on humility are key to knowing ourselves and to knowing God. Reflecting on Scripture, specifically the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, Fr. Peter highlights how we can only know God, and give ourselves to Him, when we own ourselves and are not held back by our pride, resentments, self-absorption, or sinfulness. St. Josemaria Escriva said that Jesus’ greatest act of humility is to be a “prisoner behind the appearance of bread” in order to have an intimate relationship with each one of us and to serve us. Jesus remains in the Blessed Sacrament so that we may have him “all to ourselves; no lines, no tickets, no waiting rooms.” Fr. Peter reminds us to learn from Jesus’ example of self-emptying humility and self-giving love. “Though he was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (Philippians 2:6-7).So, the more we empty ourselves, the more we experience Christ and allow him to live in us and take over our lives. And the more we allow this happen, the more all those around us will be able to see the compassionate and merciful face of Our Lord.In this podcast, you will also hear how:The Pharisee’s prayer “doesn’t work” but the prayer of the Publican is effective because he humbled himself.We can’t be self-satisfied with what we have and try not to give it away - that’s pride.Holiness is more about being a good repenter than being a good performer.Humility is enhanced when we’re honest with ourselves, and making a good confession is a great antidote to pride.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. Peter Armenio guides us to reflect upon the importance of loving God, being united to Him, and being a light in the world that extends and radiates His love to others. But how does God expect us to do this in our lives? Drawing upon the Gospel story of the Rich Young Man, Fr. Peter points out the “three steps” that Jesus shares with the young man to be happy and attain eternal life: 1) make God the center of your life because only God is good and can satisfy you; 2) live the commandments to gain the freedom to own yourself; 3) make a self-gift of yourself to Christ who is number one in your life.To be totally centered on Christ, like all of the saints, is to begin to experience the joy of eternal life here on earth. But, it's not going to work and we will always go away sad if we don't make the decision to give ourselves completely to Christ and become light and joy in the world. In this podcast, you will also hear how: A talented college girl who left the Church found her way back to the Eucharist through the joyful witness of her Catholic friends.Why a modern-day “rich young man” was not happy even though he had everything a boy his age would want.Jesus expects us to interact with the world in order to be its salt and light and preach to every creature (and it’s what being Catholic is all about).The decision to be totally centered on Christ will ultimately make us join the ranks of the saints.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!