Your heart is restless. It wants more than this world can give. It longs for a love that will not fail, a peace that will not pass away, a home that cannot be taken from you. You know this—perhaps you have always known it—even when you try to silence the longing with lesser things.

In the seventeenth century, Jesus revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque the answer to that longing. He showed her his Sacred Heart: aflame with love, wounded by ingratitude, yearning for souls who would console him through their devotion. What she saw was not simply a vision but an invitation. Christ was opening his heart to her—and through her, to us—saying in effect: This is what you have been seeking. This is where you belong.

The Sacred Heart has become a home for many saints over the ages. In this episode, I want to share with you, briefly, three saints who fostered a devotion to the Sacred Heart. I add this to a previous episode where I shared a longer reflection on St. Margaret Mary Alacoque herself. 

These reflections are taken from my new book, The Rule of the Sacred Heart: Finding Rest in a Restless World. I crafted this book as a 33-day devotional, leading us, step by step, toward intimacy with Christ in his Sacred Heart and responding to his mercy in our lives. Over the 33 days, we meditate on biblical scenes, probe the revelations of the Sacred Heart to Christ’s saints, and give our minds and hearts little by little to the Sacred Heart each day, all while taking on small but intentional devotions.

What I share with you today are short introductions to three saints that accompany the devotions in the third week of the devotional journey. I hope you enjoy.

Follow-up Resources:

• The Rule of the Sacred Heart: Finding Rest in a Restless World by Leonard DeLorenzo (OSV)
• “St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and the Devotion to the Sacred Heart,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Drawing close to feel the beating of the Sacred Heart,” by Leonard J. DeLorenzo, article via Our Sunday Visitor

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

What are we building? Pope Leo XIV puts that question to us in his new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence. The title itself echoes Mary's Magnificat — the song of a humanity whose grandeur is recognized in being lifted up by God, not in seizing heaven for itself. That grandeur, the Pope insists, is revealed in its fullness only in Christ, and threatened today by new forms of dehumanization.

The encyclical takes its bearings from two biblical images: the Tower of Babel, where a unified language and a unified technology serve a project that aspires to reach heaven without God; and the rebuilding of Jerusalem under Nehemiah, where a city is reborn through prayer and the shared responsibility of all. Pope Leo asks us which of these we are building. Technology, he reminds us, is never neutral. It takes the character of those who devise, finance, and deploy it.

Brett Robinson joins me today to help us read this encyclical. Brett is my colleague here in the McGrath Institute for Church Life, where he leads our efforts in Catholic Media Studies.

Follow-up Resources:

• Magnifica Humanitas, Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIV
• "Dilexit Nos – Part 2, a conversation with Abigail Favale and Brett Robinson," podcast episode via Church Life Today
• "Edge of Belief: UFO's, Technology, and the Catholic Imagination, with Brett Robinson," podcast episode via Church Life Today
• "AI, Ethics, and the Common Good, with Adam Kronk," podcast episode via Church Life Today
• "AI, Education, and Doing Hard Stuff, with Adam Kronk," podcast episode via Church Life Today
• "The Next Wave of Artificial Intelligence and Our Humanity, with Stephanie DePrez," podcast episode via Church Life Today
• "Dilexi Te: On Love for the Poor, with Fr. Cristian Mendoza Ovando," podcast episode via Church Life Today
• "Habemus Papam, with John Cavadini," podcast episode via Church Life Today

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

When Pope Leo XIV issued his first apostolic exhortation, he chose a title drawn from the Book of Revelation: Dilexi te — "I have loved you." Those words, addressed to a community with little power and little standing, become in this document Christ's word to the poor of every age. The poor are not a problem to be managed. They are, the Pope insists, the place where Christ continues to speak.

But who exactly are the poor? That question turns out to be less obvious than it sounds. Poverty, as Fr. Cristian Mendoza Ovando helps us see in this conversation, is not one thing. It is material and spiritual, negative and positive, something suffered and — in a different sense — something chosen. Any serious reading of Dilexi te has to reckon with that complexity.

Fr. Cristian, who teaches at Santa Croce in Rome, joins me today following a lecture he gave on Dilexi te at the University of Notre Dame.

Follow-up Resources:

• Dilexi Te, Apostolic Exhortation by Pope Leo XIV
• “Anthropological concerns regarding digital technologies,” by Fr. Cristian Mendoza Ovando, journal article via Church, Communication and Culture
• “The Sacred Heart of the New Encyclical,” by Leonard DeLorenzo, article on Dilexit Nos in Church Life Journal
• “The Church is the Sacrament of the Preferential Option for the Poor,” by John Cavadini, article in Church Life Journal
• “The Eucharist Commits Us to the Poor,” by John Cavadini, article in Church Life Journal

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

There is a lot of animosity out there, a lot of distrust, and a lot of fear and persistent anxiety about so many things. Where, in all that, can we go to find words that bring life? In particular, where might we find books that rise above the morass of the day to show us art that builds on the foundations of truth, beauty, and goodness? Providing a place that does just this, where a community of thinkers, writers, and readers are engaged in the common mission of preserving literate culture for generations to come … is precisely the mission of the new imprint from Word on Fire, called Luminor.

By publishing novels, short stories, memoirs, poetry, and more, Luminor brings out buried riches from the treasury of Catholic literature and highlights fresh voices among writers formed by Catholicity in our time.

 Joining me today is Katy Carl, editor of Luminor, to share with us why this mission is so important today and what we can expect to find in this new imprint.

Links:

• Learn more about Luminor at https://www.wordonfire.org/luminor 
• “When Nobody Reads Anymore: Positionality, Prophecy, and the Artist’s Vocation” by Katy Carl, article via Church Life Journal
• “Why Literature Still Matters, with Jason Baxter,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Graham Greene’s ‘The End of the Affair,’ A Conversation with Josh McManaway,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Dilexit Nos—Part 1, a conversation with Josh McManaway and Melissa Moschella,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Dilexit Nos—Part 2, a conversation with Abigail Favale and Brett Robinson,” podcast episode via Church Life Today

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

When you are a new parent, you may desire a genuine religious experience, but your young child often has other ideas. It’s not that the child is opposed to God per se; just sort of opposed to your plans and schedule and rhythm. You know what that’s like, right? The drama of the pew at Mass, the irregularity of morning and nighttime rituals, the joyful uncertainty of a rapidly developing young human being who has urges and powers and interests of their own.

 The conversation on our show today is about the desires of faith and the practice of parenting. It is about creating beautiful things for small hands and new eyes; of building up the basic habits of a life of faith; and even of parents and children, older folks and the youngest folks, coming to share their lives together more deeply around things that help you to think, move, and rest in sacred ways within ordinary life.

My guest is Raquel Rose, founder and creative director of The Little Rose Shop, which seeks to bring the faith into everyday life with Catholic and Christian gifts and books.

Follow-up Resources:

• Find ways to bring the faith into everyday life at thelittleroseshop.com 
• My First Examen (board book) at The Little Rose Shop
• Morning Offering Prayer Catholic Mug at The Little Rose Shop
• Learn More about the McGrath Institute for Church Life’s program on childhood and the liturgical imagination, Contours of Wonder
• “Grace for the Hard Days of Early Motherhood, with Jessica Mannen Kimmet,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Parenting as Complex and Beautiful Vocation, with Holly Taylor Coolman,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “The Joy of Life, with Maggie Garnett,” podcast episode via Church Life Today

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

“It is the one peculiarity of the Christian character to be dependent … It is the Christian’s excellence to be diligent and watchful, and yet to be in spirit dependent; to be willing to serve, and to rejoice in the permission to do so; to be content to view himself in a subordinate place.”

 These are words preached by St. John Henry Newman in a sermon on the “Communion of Saints.” He speaks to and indeed proclaims where the true meaning of Christian life is found: it is in receiving from God and responding in tune, or in the words of Jesus in St. Luke’s Gospel: “to hear the Word of God and act on it.” Newman discerned this fundamental obedience as the inner heart of sanctity, but not only that. It was also and surprisingly the inner heart of history, not just an individual’s history, but the world’s history, salvation history. That is a profound and revolutionary thought, if we grasp it. But for Newman, it was not merely a thought; rather, it was first a life, a person, a model … indeed, a mother. It is Mary—first among all the saints—who breaks open in her own unflinching duty before the Word of God, the true meaning of being a contingent and limited creature: a true human being. Everything about her points to her Son, and everything about him reveals her beauty. What Newman discerned is that this exchange is the true meaning of history, which all the saints themselves testify to.

I myself learned to recognize and understand this remarkable truth better by listening to my guest today, Dr. Rebekah Lamb, who is Lecturer in Theology and the Arts in the School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. She joins me today in studio as part of her visit to Notre Dame to deliver a lecture on “The Marian Turn in Newman’s Thought,” which is the topic of our conversation today.

Follow-up Resources:

• “C. S. Lewis on Education and the Theological Imagination, with Rebekah Lamb,” podcast episode via Church Life Journal
• “Doctor of the Church for Our Times,” by Rebekah Lamb, essay via Church Life Journal
• “It’s More Effective to Attract than to Simply Chastise (on St. Philip Neri),” by Leonard DeLorenzo, essay via Church Life Journal

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

In this episode I continue my conversation with Abigail Favale, introducing the new podcast series she created and hosts called “The Gender Accompaniment Project.” If you missed the first part of our conversation, you can link to it in our show notes (or just see the episode that posted immediately before this one in our show’s feed). We are going to talk more now about Abigail’s scholarship and her encounter with the people featured in her new project, and we will eventually end up talking about what is required for conversion in Christ, for all of us.

Follow-up Resources:

• Learn more about The Gender Accompaniment Project and the new podcast
• The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory, book by Abigail Favale
• “The Genesis of Gender, with Abigail Favale,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Sex, Gender, and Feminism, with Abigail Favale,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “The Eclipse of Sex by the Rise of Gender,” by Abigail Favale, article via Church Life Journal
• “Gender, Bodies, and the Space of Responsiveness, with Angela Franks,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Transhumanism and Human Nature, with Mary Harrington,” podcast episode via Church Life Today

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

What do we do with unmet desires? That is a deeply human question, but one that might not be addressed or attended to if we have a view of life that avoids such difficulty and tension. Some would seek to live the kind of life that tries to fulfill all desires, whenever they emerge. Some others might seek to live in such a way that ignores or tries to suffocate desires because that is seen as something like strength or virtue. Others still might just live a life that has no consistent ethic, so that the question of what to do with our desires—especially our seemingly discordant or contradictory desires—has no central theme or reason. 

But Christianity actually calls us to wrestle with such difficult things as directly addressing and even confronting or living with unmet desires. Christianity is, if nothing else, a call to wholeness, to integration, because Christ is, in the words of St. Irenaeus, “the whole man” who brings his disciples to wholeness—to integration—in him.

In the new podcast series created and hosted by Abigail Favale and produced by the McGrath Institute for Church, the venture toward whole and integrated humanity is on offer. “The Gender Accompaniment Project” seeks to both identify a better understanding of the Catholic vision of gender, and attend to the personal stories of Christians who wrestle with gender as they seek Christ. This project is an exercise in encounter: going toward rather than away from points of tension precisely by going toward rather than away from each other in our pursuit of life in Christ.

This is the first of two episodes with my colleague Abigail to introduce this project, which consists of 10 episodes, released in batches. The first of these episodes will appear just about the time this episode which you are listening to now is released. Check out our show notes for ways to connect and listen to “The Gender Accompaniment Project” and for other resources that are sure to be of interest to you.

Follow-up Resources:

• Learn more about The Gender Accompaniment Project and the new podcast
• The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory, book by Abigail Favale
• “The Genesis of Gender, with Abigail Favale,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Sex, Gender, and Feminism, with Abigail Favale,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “The Eclipse of Sex by the Rise of Gender,” by Abigail Favale, article via Church Life Journal
• “Gender, Bodies, and the Space of Responsiveness, with Angela Franks,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Transhumanism and Human Nature, with Mary Harrington,” podcast episode via Church Life Today

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

This is the second of two conversations I share with Adam Kronk, the director of Outreach and External Engagement for Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good. If you missed the first episode, it was released immediately prior to this one. Thanks for listening in again, or for the first time, to my conversation with Adam. As you either already know or will soon discover, he is an excellent conversation partner. 

Follow up resources:

• Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good
• “The Next Wave of Artificial Intelligence and Our Humanity, with Stephanie DePrez,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “What is Man that AI is Mindful of Him,” by Jeffrey Bishop, journal article via Church Life Journal

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

The University of Notre Dame received a $50 million grant from the Lilly Endowment to work toward developing a faith-based approach to AI ethics. That grant landed in the university’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good, which is spearheading this work. My guest today is the institute’s Director of Research and External Engagement—my good friend Adam Kronk.

Our discussion is about establishing the kind of practice-based formation for promoting human flourishing in the AI age. It is about education, faith communities, and public engagement. It is about becoming ever more intentional about knowing what our ends are and judging our means accordingly. It is about setting the right conditions for responsible and creative agency.

This is the first part of a two-part discussion with Adam, with the second focusing even more intently on issues related to education, under the looming promise of tacos.

Follow up resources:

• Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good
• “The Next Wave of Artificial Intelligence and Our Humanity, with Stephanie DePrez,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “What is Man that AI is Mindful of Him,” by Jeffrey Bishop, journal article via Church Life Journal

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.