Kresta in the Afternoon
For decades, Al Kresta captivated listeners with conversations of consequence on the Things That Matter Most. With the New York Times in one hand and the Catechism of the Catholic Church in the other, he helped us to Build the Church and Bless the Nation. Shortly after his death from cancer in June 2024, Ave Maria Radio retired the Kresta in the Afternoon program. The archives of the program are available here. We invite you to tune in daily to our new program, Ave Maria in the Afternoon, with Dr. Marcus Peter. Subscribe to the podcast at https://open.spotify.com/show/33WgH5YWSQ7ZmLrevatjJY
Episodes
It’s come to this: the final segment of Kresta in the Afternoon. Al’s son James helps us say goodbye, and say hello to our new program.
Al loved taking calls from listeners and one his most popular segments was our annual “Book Recommendation” open line. In these segments, we invite you to call in and share the best book you remember learning about on Kresta in the Afternoon.
If you listened to Kresta in the Afternoon over the years, you know how devoted Al was to his wife, Sally. But you may not know how important she was to the program. Sally gives us a behind-the-scenes look.
For decades, Al and Peter Herbeck worked together to spread the Gospel. Peter shares some memories and discusses how we can use Catholic radio for evangelization.
Today is the final episode of Kresta in the Afternoon. Marcus shares some thoughts on the legacy of the program, connecting it to George Washington’s farewell address.
In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus sends out the apostles two by two, instructing them to preach, heal the sick, and cast out unclean spirits. Peggy Stanton helps us prepare for the Sunday reading.
Senate Republicans have blocked legislation to push abortions up to birth nationwide. Monica Miller has the details.
Marcus talks about St Benedict of Nursia.
Last month a group called “Queers for Palestine” protested a local Pride Parade on the grounds that it was a symbol of oppression. Marcus discusses.
One of Jesus’ most famous parables is the tale of the Prodigal Son, and its message of God’s repentance and forgiveness. This encounter with God’s mercy receives special expression in sacrament of Reconciliation, through which God’s wayward children are forgiven and restored by God’s grace to life in the household of God, which is the Church. James Protho joins us with more.
For months, the Republican Party and pro-life leaders have been engaged in a public and often acrimonious tussle over abortion policy and how it would diverge from the GOP’s longtime pro-life party platform. Peter Laffin joins us.
Over the past decade Rome has been marked with sharp, and often unwarranted, criticism of the Church in the United States and American Catholic life. But very few of the critics have taken the time to talk, systematically, with a wide range of U.S. Catholics to understand their concerns. Francis Maier has had those conversations. He joins us.
Through his career as a performer in the Christian music industry, Chris Bray’s interactions with non-Catholics helped to answer his doubts about the faith and gave him the apologetic knowledge to defend it. He joins us.
The Good News Conference is a conference for individuals, couples, and families who desire to grow closer to Christ through the Good News as preached by the world’s most dynamic evangelists John Hale tells us more about it.
St. Robert Bellarmine writes that a person may be “compelled, when unprepared, oppressed by disease, and scarcely possessed of reason, to give an account of those things on which when in health, he had perhaps never once reflected.” This is the foundation of Bruce Green’s new book: Now and at the Hour of Our Death: Making Moral Decisions at the End of Life. Bruce joins us.
The Devil is Real. Evil is Real. Easy things to say, but what does it mean to believe it? Marcus discusses.
The Shroud of Turin is the world’s most analyzed artifact, yet it remains an unsolved mystery. Could it be the same cloth that wrapped Jesus in the tomb? Russ Breault joins us.
Marcus responds to intellectual problems posed by atheism.
Bland sameness afflicts much of life today. Wherever one turns these days, it is hard to miss some institution proclaiming its commitment to diversity. Businesses, the military, churches, and, especially, universities all claim to be diverse places. But behind these identical claims to difference there is a rush towards sameness, a rush that is particularly acute at the university level. Terrence Sweeney joins us with more.
How much worse off we would all be without physical pain! As counterintuitive as it sounds, pain is your friend. Pain is a mechanism to warn you that something is wrong. Twenty years ago, it was pain that made Robert Kloska go see a doctor – who was able to catch his growing cancer before it was too late. Robert shares more on why he is grateful for pain.
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