Episode 91 - Healed By His Wounds, Series on Conversion by Fr Haggerty (Part 2 of 8): Chapter 3 Remembering your sin can be uncomfortable. But it’s not about the sin—remembering your sin is remembering God’s mercy. It’s going back to Jesus’s presence at that moment, and to the way he changed it. Remembering that is the start of understanding your conversion more deeply, and to living your conversion more sustainably. A conversion based solely on feelings just doesn’t last. After all, we don’t gr...
Jan 12, 2022•48 min
Episode 90 - The Spark of Conversion, Series on Conversion by Fr Haggerty (1/8): Introduction, Chapter 1 There’s a reason that this book is required reading for all CFR postulants. It’s intense, and we’re ready to get into it in this series. Because it’s all about Jesus. And conversion is at the heart of the daily experience of saying “yes” to Jesus. Conversion isn’t something that happens “out there”; it’s not a personal project or a formation program. There’s nothing abstract about it. It’s a ...
Jan 05, 2022•58 min
Episode 89 - Ending the Year Well Our last episode of the year… a time that often means reflecting on the last year and looking forward to the next one. As you look back on 2021, there are probably loose ends—struggles, situations—that haven’t been resolved. It’s easy to wish that everything would just make sense, but sometimes it just doesn’t. And looking forward to 2022, well: it can be hard to know what is in store. There’s great mystery in it all. But we have a great model in sitting before ...
Dec 29, 2021•45 min
Episode 88 - Imaginative Prayer (Advent 2021) Maybe you’ve heard about the nativity scene plenty, and seen it depicted endlessly. Do you really think you’ve entered as deeply into that mystery as you can? There’s more! The Holy Spirit is never exhausted. It’s the same with all of Scripture. This isn’t a collection of abstract ideas; these are stories of real people, and these stories can bring us into real relationship. How can these stories become personal? A type of lectio divina emphasized by...
Dec 22, 2021•53 min
Episode 87 - The Resourcefulness of God (Advent 2021) Fourth Week of Advent The Lord doesn’t need a perfect moment to do what he does. He can use—and has used—all the secular events and moments in history to bring about his plan. The detours and decisions and even things that feel like inconveniences—he’ll work with it all. And it’s not that he’s just done this once or twice… it seems to be his method. God works through the stuff. It’s all very incarnational. Never doubt that any situation is be...
Dec 15, 2021•41 min
Episode 86 - Our Father is Faithful (Advent 2021) Third Week of Advent As a people and a Church, we have a common patrimony and inheritance of promises kept. Over time, salvation history involves real people and real stories—God breaks into history. Think Elizabeth and Zachariah. Simeon. Anna. We are part of this story, living in salvation history. We must remember that God has been faithful to us, and use that memory to stay. God can’t fulfill his promises to us if we leave. The saints we look ...
Dec 08, 2021•41 min
Episode 85 - Give God Time (Advent 2021) Second Week of Advent God doesn’t make empty promises. But for many people… there are promises they won’t see fulfilled in their lifetimes. In receiving his promises, we also have to receive his timeline. What does it look like to let God take his time? Start with stillness; sit in it; talk to him about it; think about when God has fulfilled his promises in your life. He hasn’t abandoned you before, and he won’t abandon you now. Start off with what we kno...
Dec 01, 2021•53 min
Episode 84 - Hope for a Hard Life (Advent 2021) First Week of Advent The lived experience of most people is: life is hard. We’re still in this valley of tears. We live it, but might not be relating it in a way that’s helpful… we just drag it around. Enter: Advent. A season of hope and of promises fulfilled. Expectant hope, with confidence that the Lord is good and is at work for our good in our lives—the ultimate hope of heaven and of tears being wiped away. Whatever you’re experiencing—God’s co...
Nov 24, 2021•56 min
Episode 83 - Mercy, Mercy, Mercy!, A series on King David: Part 4 of 4 Are we good at repenting? When someone notices our stuff and points it out… are we open to it? To repenting wholeheartedly? Or do we hold onto it? We need help repenting and finding healing, so God constantly sends prophets to speak into the lives of his chosen people. David’s a really good example of how to be formed; how to be led. Look at Psalm 51 for a model of repentance. The orientation is totally towards God; it’s not ...
Nov 17, 2021•51 min
Episode 82 - A Father's Faithfulness, A series on King David: Part 3 of 4 David sinned when he wasn’t doing what he was supposed to be doing; when he had pulled back from God’s calling. We have to be careful of comfort and of being distracted, because it leads to a place of being unfaithful. Instead, we have to keep moving forward in God’s will, which can regularly take us to less comfortable places. We’re called to lay down our lives—to endure the crosses of life and get to heaven. It’s not eas...
Nov 10, 2021•56 min
Episode 81 - The Good Shepherd: Tender and Fierce, A series on King David: Part 2 of 4 David is tender to his sheep, and also willing to fight for them. And he’ll be the same in his future vocation—the way that he was shepherd is the way he will be king. As he fights Goliath, he reveals something to us about the heart of God: God will go to battle against our giants. Though David wasn’t skilled or qualified like everybody else was, he was aggressive in his confidence before the Father. As if to ...
Nov 03, 2021•40 min
Episode 80 - We Are Not Self-Defined, A series on King David: Part 1 of 4 There’s always some mystery involved in an anointing. God doesn’t select the person we expect; this happens throughout the Old Testament and with the Apostles. There’s a mystery of who God calls and how God calls. God still calls really talented people, but not because they’re talented. We are not our skills. God sees beyond that, even when we’re really focused on what we can bring. In David’s case, he was the only one who...
Oct 27, 2021•46 min
Episode 79 - Believe That God Is Enough “I haven’t believed enough that he is enough.” That’s what Br Angelo says as a guest on this episode, and how true is it for each of us? Even when we experience God’s goodness, repeatedly and in big and small ways, it can be a struggle to keep believing that God is enough. He is LORD. He is enough, and we only have to give him permission to work. It sounds simple, but it can be tough when we’ve faced rejection in other areas of our lives. How do we believe...
Oct 20, 2021•46 min
Episode 78 - Trust Is Hard for Everyone, Week 4 of a series on A 30-Day Personal Retreat with the Litany of Trust, by Sr. Faustina Maria Pia, S.V., available here: https://stpaulcenter.com/trust10/ Trust is hard for everybody. The grace to trust—especially for the long haul—is always given to us by the Lord. There’s always human effort in the spiritual life, but it’s all gift; all grace. It can feel like we’re never going to be able to trust; that we’re so “bad” at trusting, particularly in the ...
Oct 13, 2021•52 min
Episode 77 - Trust That Mercy Is Greater, Week 3 of a series on A 30-Day Personal Retreat with the Litany of Trust, by Sr. Faustina Maria Pia, S.V., available here: https://stpaulcenter.com/trust10/ There are some sins that we just can’t seem to shake—habitual sins that keep us coming back to the confessional over and over (and over) again. But no matter how consistent this sin seems, there’s one who is more consistent: the Lord. His mercy and grace are greater than our sins and failings. Maybe ...
Oct 06, 2021•38 min
Episode 76 - Trust God With Your Past, Week 2 of a series on A 30-Day Personal Retreat with the Litany of Trust, by Sr. Faustina Maria Pia, S.V., available here: https://stpaulcenter.com/trust10/ Grace is in the present; there is no grace in the past or in the future. The challenge, though, is that we’re all professional escape artists. We can get antsy and we don’t know how to be present, which means we don’t know how to receive God’s grace. We’ve got to give up the hope of a better past—it has...
Sep 29, 2021•44 min
Episode 75 - Trust Comes From Relationship, This episode kicks off a four-part series on a new retreat based on the Litany of Trust from the Sisters of Life. You can get yourself a copy of the book at https://stpaulcenter.com/trust10/ There are some virtues we can work on and grow in—but trust isn’t like that. It’s not your own project. You don’t work on it directly, because it’s the fruit of relationship with the Lord. If you want to develop more trust, focus first on that relationship; on conv...
Sep 22, 2021•49 min
Episode 74 - A Holy Hiding For 30 years, Jesus lived quietly in Nazareth with Mary and Joseph; his “hidden” years. Through his normal day-to-day living of going to school and having friends and putting in a hard day’s work, Jesus made sacred the hidden space. That hidden space is where most of us live most of our lives—out of the public eye, going about our everyday without much notice by others. Hidden from the world, but absolutely seen by the Father in that uniquely silent space that is set a...
Sep 15, 2021•41 min
Episode 73 - The Father’s Blessing Affirmation feels different when it’s public, out loud and in front of everyone—as at the Baptism of Christ and the Transfiguration, where God audibly affirmed Jesus as his beloved Son. That affirmation becomes the foundation that allows Jesus to be free; to weep and be compassionate and angry, to be a revelation of the heart of God. The hearts of the sons and daughters of God long to hear the Father speaking a blessing over them—a blessing that allows them to ...
Sep 08, 2021•40 min
Episode 72 - The Tears of God You see a different side of someone when you see what makes him or her cry. Seeing a person weep, and knowing why—the thing he or she cares about so deeply as to be moved to tears—is a deep insight. Lazarus. Jerusalem. Sin. Jesus weeps at these. That tells us something important, for a man who weeps in the face of suffering is a man who loves deeply, who is profoundly affected by what is happening. It’s deeply personal. He’s not far away or abstract. He wants to cry...
Sep 01, 2021•43 min
Episode 71 - Jesus Receives You as a Gift “Nobody has ever been for me like this before.” That’s the difference it can make to receive someone as gift. Jesus looked at the disciples and thanked the Father for the gift of them. He looked around at the faces of people he loved and received each of them and all of them as a gift. In their goodness and brokenness, even in times that didn’t feel quite as much like gift. The Son is always receiving from the Father; the Father is always giving. And so ...
Aug 25, 2021•44 min
Episode 70 - Last Words of Christ Jesus always chose his words carefully. There was great meaning and intention behind each word, part of which we can only begin to understand by listening carefully. How much more, then, should we pay attention to Jesus’s very last words? The ones he painfully uttered as he was dying on the cross? What do these words reveal about the heart of God? Jesus’s whole life was about the Father’s business, and his last words begin and end with “Father.” Meditate on thes...
Aug 18, 2021•37 min
Episode 69 - A Father And Son Moment There’s an intense vulnerability to letting people into your most tender moments. Allowing someone to witness a private, cherished part of life is no small thing, and being a witness to one of these moments is an honor. There’s a particular part of Jesus’s life for which we get to be these witnesses only a few times: his experience of prayer. In these rare instances, we are privileged to see him as he sees the Father look upon him with love and delight. Teach...
Aug 11, 2021•41 min
VIDEO episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9P586wY2HI Episode 68 - House of Prayer, Not Den of Thieves Sometimes we need someone to fight for us. To respond forcefully to injustice in our lives. Jesus does this, as he did in the temple—He’s not afraid to clean house. The Divine Physician heals us, though the medicine isn’t always tender and gentle. The medicine that’s needed is tougher, and the only way to remove obstacles and create space for him to heal. And doesn’t that teach us a new ap...
Aug 04, 2021•48 min
Episode 67 - The Compassion of God Compassion; it means “to suffer with.” Recall those times when you’ve been suffering, alone, and someone has come into that isolation with you. It’s powerful! Now… don’t skip the fact that God became man so he could suffer with us. God is the prodigal son’s father, spending every day looking at the horizon with longing even though his son hurt him in such a concrete and direct way. Want to be a more compassionate person? It’s really hard to love and accept othe...
Jul 28, 2021•53 min
Episode 66 - The Heart of God This episode starts a new series: The Heart of God. The Sacred Heart. This is a series about the goodness of God—not only the reality that he is, but that he is good, with a human face and a human heart that rejoices. A deeper encounter with his heart; that it may be the remedy that heals the wounds of our hearts. The Poco a Poco podcast happens because of generous donors like you. You can give at https://spiritjuice.org/supportpoco . Thank you!...
Jul 21, 2021•33 min
Episode 65 - A Prophetic People We’re called to be prophets. Real, recognizable prophets in our day to day. How does that hit you? What does your life look like? Do people around you see it and think, This guy’s living it. He communicates in the depths of who he is that Jesus is alive and he’s real and he’s risen from the dead and this means something for us. He’s a prophet. We have to live provocative lives—lives that provoke people to ask questions. We can’t be shy about it. At the same time, ...
Jul 14, 2021•41 min
Episode 64 - The Art of Sacrifice To sacrifice is to make holy. Most of us are given enough suffering in this world that if we were to offer it fully and freely to the Lord, that would be enough. We need only to accept—well—the penances that life gives us. Any additional sacrifices—ones that we choose—should be chosen carefully; intentionally, and after checking in with someone else, and always looking toward freedom. We sacrifice to seek always greater freedom to be totally given again to the L...
Jul 07, 2021•53 min
Episode 63 - Learning to Love Like Jesus The fullness of the mission of Christ includes a heart for the poor. This is pretty central, actually, but somehow doesn’t always get a lot of air time. This isn’t just something we do, but who we are. It’s not just a Christian thing—this is being like Jesus. And even once that heart is developed and the desire is there… the how can be unclear. How do we live the Gospel this way? In this episode: examining our heart for the poor, and how to live this out ...
Jun 30, 2021•1 hr
VIDEO: Watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfhPsn_uF30 Episode 62 - Christian Contentment In our world of wanting more and of endlessly upgrading, we have to get good at saying, “Ok, that’s enough.” There’s a game of constant consumption and if we’re not careful, it’s going to take advantage of us. Don’t get played! Simplicity isn’t about getting rid of everything. It’s saying “no” to things you need to say “no” to—creating a space where you’re not controlled by things. How? A poverty check...
Jun 23, 2021•41 min
