AfterMass

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Taking September off from YouTube + the podcast 🤍

I’m giving myself the month of September to spend some real time working on AfterMass and a few other projects that have been sitting in my brain for a very long time.

One of the biggest things I’m working on is aftermass.org. My hope is to build it into a real Catholic hub for e...

Tomorrow, August 22, the Church celebrates the Queenship of Mary, eight days after the Assumption. Most Catholics have said "Hail, Holy Queen" hundreds of times without knowing where that title actually comes from or what it means in practice.

The answer isn't in medieval royal courts. It's in the ancient Israelite office of the gebirah, the king's mother, the one figure with the standing to bring a request to the throne and be hear...

Padre Pio spent decades hearing confessions, and the sin he came back to most wasn't the one people expected. It was gossip, and more specifically what the Church calls detraction and calumny, revealing or fabricating things about someone who isn't in the room. This video breaks down the difference between rash judgment, detraction and calumny, why truth isn't a defense against it, and a simple test you can run before you speak abo...

A team of Italian cardiologists put people on heart monitors and had them pray the rosary in Latin. What they measured surprised even the researchers: praying it at a normal pace slowed people's breathing to almost exactly six breaths a minute, a rate where the heart and blood pressure systems fall into sync. Separately, neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Newberg used brain scans to study what happens during repetitive, verbal prayer like t...

Purgatory gets treated two ways: either as an overcomplicated invention or as something Scripture never actually supports. Both are wrong. Drawing on a video Fr. Mike Schmitz made years ago on Ascension Presents, I break down what purgatory actually is: three simple claims, real scriptural backing (1 Corinthians 3, 2 Maccabees 12) and why it's less about punishment and more about mercy finishing what it started. If you've ever wond...

What if the inconveniences, exhaustion, and suffering you experience every day could actually become prayer?

I first heard this practice from Catholic author and speaker Megan Hjelmstad at the Defending the Faith Conference at Franciscan University. Megan is the author of Offer It Up: Discovering the Power and Purpose of Redemptive Suffering, and her approach completely changed the way I think about the ordinary hard moments of my w...

St. Francis fasted 40 days every year and it left wounds that never healed. Padre Pio kept the same devotion for the same reason.

It's called St. Michael's Lent. It starts this Saturday, August 15th and almost no Catholic outside Franciscan circles has heard of it.

In this episode I cover the apparitions at Monte Gargano that started it all. The pope who added a prayer to every Mass after a vision that shook him. And why both saints ...

Saint Ignatius of Loyola once considered walking off a cliff because he couldn't stop confessing sins he wasn't even sure he'd committed. That's scrupulosity and it's more common than most Catholics realize.In this video: what scrupulosity actually is, how it's different from a normal working conscience, where religious OCD fits into the picture, what saints like Ignatius and Alphonsus Liguori actually did about it, and what real, ...

Can your guardian angel read your mind? See your dreams? Know your future? Can you name your guardian angel, and what happens to your angel when you die?

Catholic teaching on guardian angels is a lot more specific than most people realize. In this video, we're going through 13 questions about guardian angels, from what St. Thomas Aquinas taught about their knowledge and abilities to what Scripture and Catholic tradition tell us abou...

Are you sanguine, choleric, melancholic, or phlegmatic?The four temperaments have been used by Catholic spiritual writers for centuries as a way of understanding our natural strengths, weaknesses, and patterns in the spiritual life.

In this episode, we break down all four temperaments, where the framework came from and what each one can reveal about the particular virtues and vices you may need to pay attention to.We’ll cover...

Fr. Chad Ripperger recently sat down with Shawn Ryan and shared some fascinating Catholic theology about what awaits us after death. Will we interact with relatives who have died? Will we really see our entire family lineage? Did Jesus have a guardian angel? And what does God’s mercy actually look like from the perspective of eternity?In this video, I’m breaking down some of the most interesting parts of their conversat...

Most Catholics fast twice a year and wonder why the same sin is still sitting there untouched. Fasting isn't a diet or a once-a-year obligation, it's a weapon most of us have never picked up. In this video: the actual mechanics of why fasting works, how to start (even if you've never fasted before), and why Christ paired it with prayer for a reason.

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Before Adam. Before Eve. Before the world even existed - there was a war. This video walks through the real story of Lucifer's fall, the first battle in Revelation, and how that one moment set up everything that happens in the garden, on the cross, and in your life right now. If you only know the Adam and Eve story, you're missing the chapter that comes before it.

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What actually happens to your soul in the first hour after death? Not the funeral or the grieving, the soul itself. In this video I walk through what the Church actually teaches: the particular judgment that happens immediately at death, why purgatory isn't a punishment but a purification, what the saints and mystics have said about that first encounter with Christ, and the role your guardian angel plays at the moment of death. I a...

Fr. Chad Ripperger, one of the most experienced exorcists working today, has talked openly about what actually happens in the first minutes of an exorcism, and it's nothing like the movies. No screaming, no spectacle. In this video I break down the quiet, disciplined process behind it: the months or years of Church discernment that happen before anyone ever enters the room, the three specific signs the Church actually looks for, wh...

Most Catholics have sat through the Mass hundreds of times and couldn't tell you why any single part happens when it happens. It's not a personal failure.. it's just that nobody ever handed us the blueprint. In this video I walk through the entire structure of the Mass, piece by piece: the Introductory Rites, the Liturgy of the Word, the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and the Concluding Rite - and what's actually happening (and being as...