It's likely a truism that the statements "This is difficult" and "This is easy" are the two sides of most endeavors-- the beginning and the state of mastery. But instead of seeing difficult things as invitations to the journey toward mastery, we (and perhaps others) often recoil from the difficulty. 

We talk about beginnings, and beginning well, and setting ourselves up for success in this episode. We also tried recording it visually, so that we could post it on youtube. Wish us luck in that endeavor!

Feel free to drop us a line at [email protected]!

We did upload it to youtube! https://youtu.be/Y8mM0Z-5lfE

As always, 

• check out our work, and join our email list, at https://ouroutpost.org/
• join our free resource library platform here
• catch our other podcast, Love Your Marriage, by clicking here: https://ouroutpost.org/podcasts/
• see what we have upcoming in terms of events here: https://ouroutpost.org/events/
• send us an email at [email protected]
• and please rate, review, and share!
• If you're a Catholic husband, feel free to sign up for some time to chat with Joseph! https://bookme.name/ouroutpost/45-minutes-with-joseph

Holy matrimony is a pretty great thing. We think so, and it seems like God does too, what with blessing it with a three-fold blessing and all. In this episode, we talk about how there's an evangelical dimension of each of the blessings of marriage-- procreation/education of children, fidelity, and the sacrament itself, or as St. Augustine put it, proles, fides, et sacramentum.

We reference Humanae Vitae by Pope Paul VI, which is well worth a read, and pretty short. https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html

And we reference Casti Connubii by Pope Pius XI, which is also well worth a read, but a bit longer. He really does a deep dive into those three goods of marriage, though. https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19301231_casti-connubii.html  (Joseph was off by one day in the episode-- Pope Pius XI promulgated the letter on December 31st, 1930. But it was probably 1931 over by the international date line by the time it went to print...)

Feel free to drop us a line at [email protected]!

And our website is www.ouroutpost.org

As always, 

• check out our work, and join our email list, at https://ouroutpost.org/
• join our free resource library platform here
• catch our other podcast, Love Your Marriage, by clicking here: https://ouroutpost.org/podcasts/
• see what we have upcoming in terms of events here: https://ouroutpost.org/events/
• send us an email at [email protected]
• and please rate, review, and share!
• If you're a Catholic husband, feel free to sign up for some time to chat with Joseph! https://bookme.name/ouroutpost/45-minutes-with-joseph

The famous atheistic/Nietzchean cry that God is dead, and we killed him, is lived liturgically from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. But from Easter Sunday to Divine Mercy Sunday, we can live liturgically through a strange period of agnosticism alongside Thomas the Apostle. 

While we'd love to say that arguments for the divinity of Christ and the historicity of the Resurrection are airtight, and definitely convincing, the reality is that Thomas the Apostle had all of the basic arguments before him-- ten apostles witnessing, two disciples with all of the arguments from the Old Testament, an empty tomb, and no reason for anyone to have faked it-- and none of the arguments, nor the accumulated force of all of them, swayed Thomas. If that's not worth sitting with for a bit, then this episode definitely isn't worth listening to or sharing. (On the other hand, if it is worth sitting with for a bit, it may be worth listening to this episode and worth sharing it...)

Oh, and we didn't bring this up on the episode, but Joseph once wrote an entire retreat on the Holy Spirit based around the events of Good Friday through the martyrdom of Stephen. It never got a chance to be piloted, as COVID happened, and then it got covered in dust, but that's a thing we might put on sometime, if there's interest...

As always, 

• check out our work, and join our email list, at https://ouroutpost.org/
• join our free resource library platform here
• catch our other podcast, Love Your Marriage, by clicking here: https://ouroutpost.org/podcasts/
• see what we have upcoming in terms of events here: https://ouroutpost.org/events/
• send us an email at [email protected]
• and please rate, review, and share!
• If you're a Catholic husband, feel free to sign up for some time to chat with Joseph! https://bookme.name/ouroutpost/45-minutes-with-joseph

Are we taking time to be leisurely? Are we free to study the true, good, and beautiful? Are we liberated enough to spend time on the liberal arts? Or are we stuck in a consumer culture that pushes a sterile curiosity? All this and more on this episode!

Joseph referenced a book by Paul Griffiths, called Intellectual Appetite. We recommend it!  https://www.cuapress.org/9780813216867/intellectual-appetite/

And we referenced Josef Pieper's Leisure: The Basis of Culture-- also highly recommended! https://ignatius.com/leisure-lbcp/

As always, 

• check out our work, and join our email list, at https://ouroutpost.org/
• join our free resource library platform here
• catch our other podcast, Love Your Marriage, by clicking here: https://ouroutpost.org/podcasts/
• see what we have upcoming in terms of events here: https://ouroutpost.org/events/
• send us an email at [email protected]
• and please rate, review, and share!
• If you're a Catholic husband, feel free to sign up for some time to chat with Joseph! https://bookme.name/ouroutpost/45-minutes-with-joseph

Just some thoughts about Holy Week from Joseph and Crystal Gruber.

Feel free to reach out to us a [email protected], and while we're still getting other resources put together, there's a mostly-complete course on dating like a Catholic that you can check out here: dating.ouroutpost.org

Happy Holy Week!

As always, 

• check out our work, and join our email list, at https://ouroutpost.org/
• join our free resource library platform here
• catch our other podcast, Love Your Marriage, by clicking here: https://ouroutpost.org/podcasts/
• see what we have upcoming in terms of events here: https://ouroutpost.org/events/
• send us an email at [email protected]
• and please rate, review, and share!
• If you're a Catholic husband, feel free to sign up for some time to chat with Joseph! https://bookme.name/ouroutpost/45-minutes-with-joseph

Joseph listened to a Catholic/Protestant debate about sola scriptura recently, and was struck by how both sides seemed detached from the Catholic sensibility about where scripture comes from.

The quote he shared is from G.K. Chesterton's The Catholic Church and Conversion:  https://ignatius.com/the-catholic-church-and-conversion-ccacp/?gclid=CjwKCAjwq-WgBhBMEiwAzKSH6ES1t3UdpbJ9Q_ysbl-J-FpQminmh2pfPORS9GXOyKr46EBhYpZ0ZxoCUmsQAvD_BwE 

As always, 

• check out our work, and join our email list, at https://ouroutpost.org/
• join our free resource library platform here
• catch our other podcast, Love Your Marriage, by clicking here: https://ouroutpost.org/podcasts/
• see what we have upcoming in terms of events here: https://ouroutpost.org/events/
• send us an email at [email protected]
• and please rate, review, and share!
• If you're a Catholic husband, feel free to sign up for some time to chat with Joseph! https://bookme.name/ouroutpost/45-minutes-with-joseph

Is fasting good for us more than just spiritually? Is that even a question, and is Joseph just a gnostic at heart? 

Crystal has been reading a book about the health benefits of fasting, which prompted today's episode. 

We reference the book Eat, Fast, Feast by Jay Richards: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/eat-fast-feast-jay-w-richards?variant=32207678439458 

As an aside, we also referenced Gary Paulsen's classic YA novel, Hatchet, as the main character loses all body fat throughout his adventure: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Hatchet/Gary-Paulsen/9781481486293

And Joseph wanted to bring up a story by Franz Kafka, called "A Hunger Artist", but we ran out of time and maybe it wasn't at all relevant in the first place...: https://www.kafka-online.info/a-hunger-artist.html

As always, 

• check out our work, and join our email list, at https://ouroutpost.org/
• join our free resource library platform here
• catch our other podcast, Love Your Marriage, by clicking here: https://ouroutpost.org/podcasts/
• see what we have upcoming in terms of events here: https://ouroutpost.org/events/
• send us an email at [email protected]
• and please rate, review, and share!
• If you're a Catholic husband, feel free to sign up for some time to chat with Joseph! https://bookme.name/ouroutpost/45-minutes-with-joseph

The most perfect prayer, taught by the perfect Teacher, is the Our Father. But we're not perfect pray-ers, and it's worth taking some time to look at the prayer taught by Christ and see what lessons we still have to learn from it. 

Because, guaranteed, none of us are able to pray the Our Father with our desires rightly ordered, yet. St. Augustine wrote, "The entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise of holy desire" and we still need a fair bit of exercise...

Feel free to get in touch with us at [email protected], and check out what we're up to at www.ouroutpost.org!

As always, 

• check out our work, and join our email list, at https://ouroutpost.org/
• join our free resource library platform here
• catch our other podcast, Love Your Marriage, by clicking here: https://ouroutpost.org/podcasts/
• see what we have upcoming in terms of events here: https://ouroutpost.org/events/
• send us an email at [email protected]
• and please rate, review, and share!
• If you're a Catholic husband, feel free to sign up for some time to chat with Joseph! https://bookme.name/ouroutpost/45-minutes-with-joseph

https://www.etymonline.com/word/alms#etymonline_v_10906

Apparently, the word almsgiving comes from the Greek word for mercy. Who knew? Our pastor knew. So he told us that on Ash Wednesday, and Joseph has been thinking of that off and on for the past week. 

In other news, you can always reach us at [email protected], and we welcome your correspondence! We're starting a new ministry, so please keep us in your prayers! You can check out www.ouroutpost.org for more info.

As always, 

• check out our work, and join our email list, at https://ouroutpost.org/
• join our free resource library platform here
• catch our other podcast, Love Your Marriage, by clicking here: https://ouroutpost.org/podcasts/
• see what we have upcoming in terms of events here: https://ouroutpost.org/events/
• send us an email at [email protected]
• and please rate, review, and share!
• If you're a Catholic husband, feel free to sign up for some time to chat with Joseph! https://bookme.name/ouroutpost/45-minutes-with-joseph

On February 1st, we started to work full-time on Our Outpost-- we're just trying to awaken an authentic Catholic culture through holy matrimony. That's it.

This episode, we thought we'd tell you a bit more about that, and why we feel called to work on it, and to give you a preview of things to come.

Check out our website at www.ouroutpost.org 

And you can check out our funding page at https://www.xaviermissionfund.org/partners/our-outpost

As always, 

• check out our work, and join our email list, at https://ouroutpost.org/
• join our free resource library platform here
• catch our other podcast, Love Your Marriage, by clicking here: https://ouroutpost.org/podcasts/
• see what we have upcoming in terms of events here: https://ouroutpost.org/events/
• send us an email at [email protected]
• and please rate, review, and share!
• If you're a Catholic husband, feel free to sign up for some time to chat with Joseph! https://bookme.name/ouroutpost/45-minutes-with-joseph