Contemplata

God is commonly present to all things, but in our baptism, God comes to be present in our souls in a new way, in a special mode. So how can we understand this special mode of the presence of God that we call the indwelling Trinity? In this episode, Fr. James explains that this mode of God’s presence in our souls is something really distinct. It's a way of being present that's person to person, heart to heart, so to speak....

Through our baptism, and so long as we are living in a state of grace, each of us has the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit living and dwelling in the depths of our hearts. In this episode, Fr. James explains the mystery of the indwelling Trinity, which is so important because this particular mystery describes the point of contact between the highest mystery of them all, the Holy Trinity, and the mystery of our own souls. And one of the...

What's in the future? We are weak in our faith and we tend to conceive of the future as if God is not going to be there. In this episode of Contemplata, Fr. James explains that in the fifth paraclete promise assures us there is no future without God in it. In fact, the future belongs to the Father. We don’t know the future or what the circumstances or the events of the future will be, but we do know that whatever they are, God...

The Lord promises to send the Holy Spirit to penetrate the hearts and minds of people who are listening to the proclamation of the gospel. And he promises that when the Spirit comes, he will convince them of sin and of righteousness and of judgment—so the fourth paraclete promise could be called the promise of convincing concerning sin. But what does this mean, to convince the world of sin? In a word, it means that the Spirit will ...

Why would we expect anyone today to come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, to come to believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and to come to practice the Catholic faith? The reason we expect that is because in the third Paraclete Promise the Lord promised to send us the Spirit of Truth to bear witness along with us to these truths of the faith.

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The second Paraclete Promise the Lord gave us at the Last Supper was the promise of memory and understanding. This promise tells us what the Holy Spirit promised will do in us—to bring to our memories all that the Lord has told us and to teach us. 

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At the Last Supper, the Lord promised to send his Spirit to dwell in each of us. And when you and I were baptized, we received the Holy Spirit in a whole new way—we came to have the very person of the Holy Spirit himself living and dwelling in the depths of our souls. You and I can also pray for this indwelling of the Holy Spirit to grow and to increase in us more and more.

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In this episode, Fr. James Brent, O.P., introduces us to what scripture scholars call paraclete promises, which are found throughout scripture and are a great reason to be confident in our prayer before God. Fr. James will point to many of these promises that God has made (which can be found in scripture) and, over the next 5 episodes, he will look at the 5 Paraclete Promises the Lord promised to send in the Upper Room. Pope St. Jo...

Petitionary prayer, meditation, contemplation, the Our Father, and the Hail Mary, the Glory Be. The Rosary has it all. If we stay with it and practice praying the Rosary, the different elements of it come together and gradually we realize that this prayer has the power to dispose our hearts, and the eyes of our hearts can then begin to look at the Lord with more love and affection, and the truth of what he has done for us in each o...

God is a refiner's fire, and he says through the mouth of the prophet Zechariah, “I will refine them as silver is refined.” What does that mean? You and I can ask for God to plunge us into the fire, to purify us, to separate out the lead from the silver within us. And he will do it because God is good and he has these graces of purification for us. The process of purification is going to be different for each one of us, depend...

There’s one prayer in particular that’s the best prayer and it is the name of Jesus. When we call upon the name of Jesus with faith, we should expect to receive his grace. The name of Jesus will work in our hearts and will do in our hearts, in a certain way, everything that Jesus himself does in the Gospels.

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“O God, come to my assistance, O Lord make haste to help me.” This prayer was taught to John Cassian and his friend Germanus by one of the desert monks, Abba Isaac, who told them if they just pray this prayer over and over again, their hearts will be set on fire. This prayer is a prayer you can pray in all circumstances.

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In this episode, Fr. James Brent, O.P., gives an example of how javelin prayers can be helpful in the spiritual life as he recounts a story about someone he knew who was a high-powered lawyer in New York. She barely had any time for extended daily prayer but could see the people around her were looking very lost and empty. She saw in them a real desire for God and wanted to find a way to slake their thirst somehow. By praying these...

As we’ve discussed for a few episodes now, one of the principal pathways to metanoia is prayer. And one of the principal challenges to prayer is distraction. Aside from external distractions which many of us suffer from, we have interior distractions. Even the Desert Fathers, who committed their entire lives to prayer, faced interior distractions from prayer. But they found a solution—short, frequent prayers—or “javelin prayers” as...

People—especially busy people—forget we can ask God for help with everything. No matter how busy we are, all of us are able to make frequent short prayers throughout the day. “Lord, help me with this situation at work. Lord, help me prepare the meal, etc.” Proud human beings don’t ask for help, but humble human beings live from one petition to the next. If we season the day with little short prayers, that’s a way to always have, or...

When people hear the word prayer, they think about the various prayers that we say—the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Anima Christi. That’s one sense of the word prayer. We’re called to not only say acts of prayer, but to live the life of prayer. The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives this definition: the life of prayer is the habit of being in the presence of the thrice holy God and in communion with him. Fr. James Brent, O.P....

The purpose of our lives is to enter into the life of the Holy Trinity, and come to know something of the holy, awesome, and awe-inspiring life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The question is, “How?” The Lord Jesus tells us the answer very clearly. In the Gospel of Mark, the first thing the Lord says is this: “the time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” The Greek word for repen...

The purpose of our life is to know, love, and enjoy God. More specifically, the purpose of our life is to know, love, and enjoy the Holy Trinity. In this episode, Fr. James Brent, O.P., meditates on the sign of the cross, a simple gesture that contains two great truths of our faith – that the purpose of our life is to participate in the life of the Trinity and the way is to follow Jesus Christ and him crucified. 

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In previous episodes, we learned about the Eucharistic sacrifice and about the qualities of heart we need when we go to Mass. One of these qualities is thanksgiving. We need to take time to count our blessings. And two of the best ways we can prepare for Mass is to count our blessings and pray the Rosary. We can combine these two. Learn how in this bonus episode of Contemplata.

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