St. Josemaria Institute Podcast

On April 25th we celebrate the Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist. St. Mark wrote one of the Gospel accounts and was a companion of St. Paul on his first missionary journey. However, in the Acts of the Apostles, we discover that St. Mark abandoned St. Paul, and that St. Paul would not allow St. Mark to accompany him on his second journey.In this meditation, Fr. Javier del Castillo explores the interesting dynamic between St. Paul and St. Mark, and what we can learn for our own life.Support 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!

Monday, April 20th 2015 is the anniversary of the election of the Prelate of Opus Dei, Bishop Javier Echevarria. Just as all bishops, he makes the Fatherhood of God present to us here and now.To celebrate this special anniversary, Fr. Javier del Castillo reflects on St. Paul’s understanding of spiritual fatherhood in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 4:14-16), and illustrates how St. Josemaria Escriva understood his calling to spiritual fatherhood, even at the young age of 26.Support 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!

As the Easter season continues, we encounter another great feast, Divine Mercy Sunday. We invite you to take some time to reflect on the Gospel for this Sunday (John 20:19-31) with Fr. Javier del Castillo on the St. Josemaria Institute Podcast.In this meditation, we will see how Christ forgives us, just as He forgave Thomas and the Apostles for running from the Cross and not having believed on Good Friday. St. Josemaria recognized that God’s forgiveness is even more impressive than His ability to create something out of nothing, and that "His absolute power is best shown in His power to forgive.” On our part, we ultimately have to accept God’s gift of Divine Mercy through the Sacrament of Reconciliation that He established. After this encounter with the resurrected Christ, we must be sure of God's forgiveness, and move on to forgiving others. “Go out and tell people what God has done in your soul. If Christ has risen, and He has forgiven us, then the only logical thing is that we also forgive one another.”Support 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!

Today’s meditation by Fr Javier del Castillo on the St. Josemaria Institute Podcast invites us on this Good Friday to stand in the darkness with Mary, John, and the women at the foot of the cross of Jesus and to contemplate how Jesus, the Son of God, was able to overcome all his suffering and was able in his humanity to persevere until the end. Our encounter with Jesus on the cross leads us to understand how we are to embrace our cross, our ordinary cross. We are called to give freely what we have freely received. This is what gives us light in the darkness. “But may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).Support 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!

Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week. What does our Lord try to teach us through today's celebration? Today's meditation by Fr Javier del Castillo on the St. Josemaria Institute Podcast helps us to reflect on the lessons that we can learn from the "little things" of today's Gospel- the donkey, the palm branches, and the rocks. Their apparently insignificant role in today's Gospel "point us to a deeper humility that will allow us to know the truth and have the courage to live by it."Support 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!

As we begin the final week of Lent and prepare for Holy Week, we share with you on the St. Josemaria Institute Podcast a meditation for the Fifth Sunday of Lent: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life" (Jn 12: 23-25).Fr Javier del Castillo encourages us in this meditation to reflect on the meaning of death-- death to self and death in this world-- and to understand "death as a remedy for evil and as a gift." Being aware of our death can help us to live each day with a supernatural desire "to do penance and to make many acts of love confident that God will be there at the end-- to love today so that I can love for eternity."Support 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!

Today on the St. Josemaria Institute podcast we bring you a special meditation in honor of the Solemnity of St Joseph.Who was Joseph? What was he called to do? How did he answer God’s call? How did he provide for the needs of Mary and Jesus? Fr Javier del Castillo invites us in this meditation to contemplate the holy life of Saint Joseph who was “a family man and an upright worker and citizen.” We also prayerfully consider this two-fold vocation in order to learn from Saint Joseph how we can live these two aspects of our vocations (family and work) wherever we find ourselves.Ite ad Ioseph: “Go to Joseph"Support 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 meditation Fr Javier del Castillo invites us to reflect on a passage from the Second Reading of the Mass of the Fourth Sunday of Lent.God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ — by grace you have been saved — raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. Our greatest hopes lie in the richness of the mercy of God-- in His infinite amount of mercy, grace, and forgiveness-- which is always available to us. God will always forgive us, but to receive forgiveness is up to us. We should not stay away from His mercy, from the Sacraments, out of feelings of guilt. If we are challenged by guilt or a lack of humility, a good way to be open to forgiveness, as Fr Castillo explains, is by forgiving others and by doing it sooner and more generously each time. In this way we begin to open ourselves to receiving mercy in our lives."If a thief moved the heart of Christ on the cross, how could a Christian, you or I, not move the heart of Christ much more so." Support 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!

Our meditation today invites us to reflect on the value of the virtue of Holy Purity. “People in love demand total exclusivity,” explains Fr Javier del Castillo, “if their love is going to be sincere and true. Love requires a purity of heart… This is in essence what our Lord teaches us today in the Gospel, this Sunday.” “Since the Passover of the Jews was near,Jesus went up to Jerusalem.He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as the money changers seated there. He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables, and to those who sold doves he said,‘Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.’His disciples recalled the words of Scripture, Zeal for your house will consume me” (John 2:13-17).Lent is an appropriate moment to closely examine the aspects of our lives which can be transformed by living Holy Purity; for example, our choices of entertainment and relaxation, our conversations with friends and coworkers, our attractions and desires, and our dress and appearance. Our desire and effort to live Holy Purity is a joyful and positive affirmation of our desire to grow in intensity of love, especially when we serve others and when we truly and sincerely serve God.Support 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 the Gospel for the Mass of the Second Sunday of Lent (Mark 9:2-10) we contemplate the Transfiguration of Jesus. "Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves.And he was transfigured before them…" (Mark 9:2).He takes them up Mount Tabor, as Fr Javier del Castillo explains in today's meditation, "to show them the full truth about himself, about his divinity, so that they can have hope in eternal life and they remember this experience of divinity, of bliss, of eternity, when it comes time to suffer through the passion.""In considering this scene at Tabor, we try to go to Jesus, to look at him, so that we may be enlightened. So that whether we are ill, suffering or dying-- or sick and tired-- we actually try to discover the Tabors behind the Calvaries."Support 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!