Journeying With The Saints

Welcome to another reading, Catholic Pilgrims. Today, we are going to get asked lots of questions.

St. Francis is going to ask us questions in order to examine the state of our souls. They are different than most questions from, say, like an examination of conscience.

These are questions that don't need a lot of reflection from me but that we do need to seriously ask ourselves. So, I would encourage you to answer them honestly and sincerely. Give them their due reflection.

With that, let's open to Chapter Four of the Fifth Part.

Welcome, Catholic Pilgrims. How's life treating you out there in the big wide world? I hope well, but if you are struggling right now, I pray that God blesses you with many graces to hang in there.

When I was a young teen, after I was baptized, I pretty much thought that was the pinnacle of my spiritual life. Now, I hadn't read the Bible yet and I didn't pray too much, but I believed in Jesus and I knew He died on the Cross and rose again at the Resurrection. What more did I need?

Now, of course, this was a naive teen talking, but it's a common thing for many believers to stop accessing their spiritual life.

There is one key thing, one very key thing you need to do in order to access your spiritual life and that is what we are going to talk about after the reading. So, let's turn to Chapter Three of the Fifth Part.

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims, welcome back to another great day of learning from St. Francis.

Last time, we heard about how we need to renew our devotions to God, at least once a year. We need to look thing over to determine how we are doing. Have we neglected things in our spiritual life? Have we given up on things that we pledged to do? If so, why? What's kept us from our pledged devotion to God?

I think those are important questions to ask ourselves. St. Francis is going to talk about our pledges to God, so let's open our books to Chapter Two of the Fifth Part.

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims. Welcome to the fifth and final part of the book. We only have 19 more readings left together in the season. The whole Fifth Part is about renewing our souls in devotion, which makes sense as the the book is called, "Introduction to the Devout Life."

So, let's go ahead and open our books to Chapter One of the Fifth Part.

Welcome back, Catholic Pilgrims, to the last reading from the Fourth Part.

If you remember, the Fourth Part has been all about temptations. Last time, we talked about dryness and barrenness in the spiritual life. There is a real temptation when we feel dryness to think that God has utterly abandoned us and that nothing we do makes any difference. We think this because we don't feel anything. We like to feel consolations in our relationship with God and when we do good works we like to feel full of fire and passion when we do them.

However, sometimes we don't and the temptation is to give up. Today, we are going to hear about a person who came into the faith full of zeal and then the dryness set in. St. Francis is going to give us examples of what to do and what not to do during periods of dryness.

So, let's open our books to Chapter Fifteen of the Fourth Part.

Welcome back, Catholic Pilgrims. Today, our topic is on spiritual dryness, something that most of us feel at one time or another. It's also something many of the saints dealt with in their lives.

I belong to a book club and we recently had our October meeting to discuss the book "All That Remains." It's a book by a forensic anthropologist. Our group had a great discussion, but towards the end, one of the ladies brought up a controversial topic that was in the book—"doctor" assisted suicide.

I didn't think anyone was going to bring it up and I had actually kind of forgotten about it being in the book. The author is all for it, btw, something that I strongly disagree with.

Anyway, each of the ladies there were mostly supportive of it, except me. So, I knew that I had to speak up.

What does "doctor" assisted suicide have to do with spiritual dryness? Well, I'll reflect on that after we hear from St. Francis. Let's open our books to Chapter Fourteen of the Fourth Part.

Welcome, Catholic Pilgrims, to our 100th episode of Season Four! It's really amazing if you think about it. So, since it's our 100th episode and that's quite a milestone, I thought I'd share with you who I am reading for Season Five.

But, you'll have to hear about that after our reading. I know, I know, I'm terrible, aren't I?

Today's reading is the longest one we've had. Because it is so long, I am just going to read it and not offer a reflection.

It's on spiritual consolations and if you listened to me read St. Teresa's Interior Castle last season, a lot of this is going to sound familiar to you.

Now, just because it's long doesn't mean it's not worth listening to and giving it our time and attention.

So, with that, let's open to Chapter Thirteen of the Fourth Part.

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Hello, Catholic Pilgrims. Thank you for joining along today.

There are five people in my family and I am the only one with a melancholic personality that manifests itself sometimes.

My oldest daughter barely lets anything get her down, my middle finds a way to keep smiling through adversity, my son can turn a frown into a smile pretty quickly, and my husband rarely, if ever, lets sadness overtake him.

Then there is me.

It's not as if my other family members don't get sad, they do. They just have been trained by their father to not wallow in sadness. They don't let sadness overtake their lives and because they don't, they don't struggle with the anxiety that so many face. They are aware of bad things, they aren't utterly sheltered, they don't live fakely happy all the time, but they do know how to manage sadness well.

It's impressive and through their witnesses, I have gotten better over the years.

Last time, St. Francis talked to us about anxiety and if we are anxious about all the bad things we can't fix or impatient over the good things we want, we will grow sad. Let's hear what he has to say by turning to Chapter Twelve of the Fourth Part.

Welcome, Catholic Pilgrims. Today we are going to read about an issue that we hear all over the place—anxiety.

Even though we are the most counseled, self-helped, medicated people in all of history, rates of anxiety are not going down, they are increasing at alarming rates. My daughters' generation—Gen Z—is the most depressed and anxious generation that has ever been recorded.

Could it have something to do with all the screen time? Yes, I believe so.

Could it have something to do with a lack of faith in God? Yes, I believe so.

Could it have something to do with a hyper-focus on the self? Yes, I believe so.

But, I think there is also another important factor to add to this that combines all three of the ones I've already mentioned. We'll discuss what that is after our reading.

So, let's open our books to Chapter Eleven of the Fourth Part.

Welcome, Catholic Pilgrims. Including today's reading, we only have 25 readings left from this book. Isn't that crazy? We will be done before we know it, but it's been wonderful having this time to get to know St. Francis and learn from him.

So, with 25 readings left, we still have much to learn. Today is the last day where St. Francis will focus on temptations and it's another short reading. Let's open our books to Chapter Ten of the Fourth Part.