Discerning Hearts Catholic Podcasts » Inside the Pages with Kris McGregor - IP#486 Fr. Thomas Berg – Choosing Forgiveness Part 1 on Inside the Pages with Kris McGregor podcast

IP#486 Fr. Thomas Berg – Choosing Forgiveness Part 1 on Inside the Pages with Kris McGregor podcast

11/24/23 • 28 min

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Discerning Hearts Catholic Podcasts » Inside the Pages with Kris McGregor

What a delight to be joined by Fr. Thomas Berg to discuss Choosing Forgiveness: Unleash the Power of God’s Grace. Hands down, this is one of the very best books I’ve read on the subject of forgiveness. Practical, compelling, and needed today more than ever, Choosing Forgiveness is a must for every home and vital to every heart. Don’t miss this conversation!

“This work will stand the test of time as it is anchored in an authentic Catholic anthropology, psychology and spirituality. It is a complete and robust presentation on forgiveness. Every page invites realism and hope. This would be a useful book for pastors and clinicians and spiritual directors. The Church will be aided greatly by the authors’ insights and faith.” — Deacon James Keating, Ph.D., Professor of Spiritual Theology, Kenrick Glennon Seminary

For Part 2 of this conversation visit: IP#486 Fr. Thomas Berg – Choosing Forgiveness Part 2 on Inside the Pages with Kris McGregor podcast

You can find the book here

To say that offering forgiveness is a challenge is an understatement. Forgiveness is tough! Forgiveness is often messy. Forgiveness doesn’t feel good to most of us. And when it comes to the biggest, deepest hurts in life, forgiveness can seem impossible.

Some hurts are the everyday, garden-variety irritations we endure for having to live in the company of other human beings who lose their tempers, get up on the wrong side of the bed, say nasty things, are ungrateful, selfish, and irritable. Some hurts are of a magnitude that far transcend these — degradation, exploitation, abandonment, rejection, humiliation, racism, bullying, physical, sexual, or emotional abuse. But with God’s grace, even in those most difficult cases, forgiveness is possible.

In Choosing Forgiveness, Fr. Thomas Berg and Dr. Timothy G. Lock are your guides on the way toward forgiveness through the grace of God. This book will help you discover the pathway to healing, peace, and interior freedom, releasing you and those who have wronged you from the bondage of unforgiveness.

The post IP#486 Fr. Thomas Berg – Choosing Forgiveness Part 1 on Inside the Pages with Kris McGregor podcast appeared first on Discerning Hearts Catholic Podcasts.

For Part 2 of this conversation visit: IP#486 Fr. Thomas Berg – Choosing Forgiveness Part 2 on Inside the Pages with Kris McGregor podcast

You can find the book here

The post IP#486 Fr. Thomas Berg – Choosing Forgiveness Part 1 on Inside the Pages with Kris McGregor podcast appeared first on Discerning Hearts Catholic Podcasts.

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IP#500 Sr. Mary Ann Fatula – The Wonders of the Mass and the Eucharist on Inside the Pages with Kris McGregor – Discerning Hearts podcasts

Sr. Mary Ann Fatula on “The Wonders of the Mass and the Eucharist: Insights of the Saints”

Join Kris McGregor as she discusses the book “The Wonders of the Mass and the Eucharist: Insights of the Saints” with Sr. Mary Ann Fatula.

You can find the book here.

From the book description:

“Above all other blessings, the most precious gifts of the Holy Trinity to us are the Mass and the Eucharist. In this awe-inspiring book, Sr. Mary Ann Fatula takes you to the feet of the saints to ponder these Sacred Mysteries. You will learn how to rest in the Lord’s intimate physical presence and gain peace of soul, receiving the remedy for temptation, sweetness in struggles, and healing from pain.

As Sr. Mary Ann breaks opens the treasure house of writings on the Holy Eucharist, the saints will lovingly teach you about the immeasurable graces the Lord gives you at Mass and through this most wondrous sacrament. You will learn how to grow in recollection during Mass, how to cherish the Lord’s intimate presence in Holy Communion, and how to rest in the Lord in Eucharistic adoration. As your love for the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament deepens, you will begin to treasure anew the delight of the Trinity’s intimate love, the light and warmth of the Holy Spirit’s anointing, and the joyful hope of eternal salvation.

In pondering with Sr. Mary Ann the insights of Church Fathers and other beloved saints, such as Thomas Aquinas, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Ávila, John Henry Newman, John Vianney, Thérèse of Lisieux, and John Paul II, the Mystery of Faith will come alive to you in a new way. You will never experience Mass in the same way again, nor will you tire of returning to these saints’ insights to be inspired again and again.

You will learn that, at every Mass, the Lord Himself makes present to us His most tender Last Supper, His sacred death on the Cross, and His glorious Resurrection in order to feed us with His own precious Body and Blood. You will discover many other astounding blessings that the Lord wants to pour out on us at Mass, such as the grace that transformed St. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s skepticism about the Catholic Church into a desire to give everything for the Faith. As you discover how to come to Mass with eagerness and awe, Sr. Mary Ann will unveils:

- The key to seeing with faith the profound mysteries invisibly taking place at Mass
- The depth of the Lord’s desire to work miracles of love for us through the Mass and the Eucharist
- The comfort, tenderness, and sweetness of the Lord’s intimate physical presence within us in the Eucharist
- Many other wonderful blessings the Lord lavishes upon us when we receive Holy Communion with the desire to love Him
- How the Holy Eucharist ignites our love for one another, especially the poor and the suffering
- The wondrous power of the Precious Blood of Jesus — even in the lives of hardened sinners
- The power of the Eucharist to make the devil flee from us
- The grace that the Eucharist gives us to approach death with confidence and trust

This is a must-read book for the Eucharistic revival. The saints show us that when people begin to appreciate the truth about the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, the Holy Spirit powerfully draws them to the Church, or back to the Church, and immeasurably deepens the joy and love of those who learn to cherish the life-giving treasures of the Mass and the Eucharist.”

About the Author: Sr. Mary Ann, O.P., holds a doctorate in systematic theology from The Catholic University of America and taught theology for more than 30 years at Ohio Dominican University in Columbus, Ohio.

The post IP#500 Sr. Mary Ann Fatula – The Wonders of the Mass and the Eucharist on Inside the Pages with Kris McGregor – Discerning Hearts podcasts appeared first on Discerning Hearts Catholic Podcasts.

Next Episode

IP#484 – Deacon James Keating Ph.D. – Abiding in Christ on Inside the Pages with Kris McGregor Discerning Hearts Podcast

Deacon James Keating Ph.D. – Abiding in Christ on Inside the Pages with Kris McGregor

In this compelling conversation with Deacon James Keating, a spiritual master of the highest order, we discuss those things that block us from having a closer relationship with God. We also discuss the importance of making time for Lectio Divina, living in the liturgy of the Church, and the danger of letting prayer become too complex.

Abiding in Christ: Staying with God in a Busy World is a wonderful how-to-pray resource. This book helps readers to find a quiet space wherein they can be present to God and offers suggestions of how they can be more open to God’s movement within them. We highly recommend this book to those souls seeking a deeper relationship with God.

You can find the book here

Here are excerpts from our conversation in the podcast –

“Sin, to some extent, possesses us, usually at the level of pleasure. Even if you think about the sin of anger, it always seems like it’s mayhem, but it’s actually pleasurable. People get a rush out of being angry. They get a rush out of being greedy. There’s a pleasure in sloth, in daydreaming, in fantasizing, in not doing the duty or the work we’re supposed to do right in front of us. There’s a pleasure in sloth.

And so that pleasure is the glue, the adhesive that keeps us in love with our sins. And that’s what God is alwaying fighting. He’s trying to displace that false love that we have set up by the way of pleasure. God knows that pleasure is not the deepest reality of existence. And so he’s not going to play the game back and like trump the pleasure of sin. He is going to attract us away from the pleasure of sin, by the beauty of truth.

As Joseph Ratizinger used to say, “The face of God, is the beauty of God’s face.” What’s that mean? That means that the truth, the radiance of truth will eventually win us over even against the strong undertow of sin’s pleasure. If we give him a chance, spend time with him, open our hearts to be affected by him, then over time, this beauty of his own face, the truth of who God is will move us away from the immediacy, the gratification of the pleasure that’s hiding within all of our sins. And that’s what salvation is. Salvation is finally surrendering to truth and its beauty over and against the fleeting pleasure of self-involvement.”

also

“The liturgy is your participation in being loved and loving back. Catechesisis not learning in a classroom style. It’s learning how to pray. If we don’t learn how to pray, we won’t even be interested in the catechism. Why would you be interested in the catechism if you don’t know the person whose voluminous beauty fills the catechism? Why would you want to open that book?

The Catechism at its heart is learning how to be with Him, to receive Him. And then your intellect is a flame to want to know Him. We do it backwards. We’ve always done it backwards. I don’t know for how long, but since my birth, we’ve done it backwards. Reducing the mystery to academics. And that’s inherently boring because to study anybody you don’t know, to study anyone that you have no motivation to learn about, is boredom. So we have to let them be burned by the fire first. This is why to some extent, parishes have to be remodeled. Maybe God is doing this by making our parishes so much smaller.

People are leaving. They’re not saying this. They’re leaving because they’re bored. They’re leaving because they haven’t encountered. They’re leaving because they don’t know God. And they’re looking for God, but maybe we have to make our parishes more like retreat centers than some type of bureaucratic paperwork center where you go through and get certified to receive this sacrament or that sacrament. It has to be more of a retreat encounter so that people will want to know God because they’ve met to God.”