Journeying With The Saints

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims, and welcome back to another great day with St. Francis. Today, I'm going to get political because, well, what I have to talk about fits the reading so well.   I've told you before that I am a very black and white person. What's wrong is wrong and what is right is right. I'm not super interested in gray areas. I'm a very justice-minded person. I believe in giving people wh...

Welcome, Catholic Pilgrims. I truly appreciate when you join along with me here on the podcast.   Over the years, my husband has talked pretty consistently with our kids about working out your discipline muscle. This relates very well to today's topic which is on being faithful in small and great things.   Let's jump right in today and turn to Chapter Thirty-Five of the Third Part.  

Hello, fellow pilgrims. Welcome back. We've got a super short reading today, a bit of a continuation from last time's reading.   Now, you may be thinking to yourself that St. Francis doesn't want us to have any fun—no dancing, no games of chance, recreation needs to be super limited.   I think it's important to remember that St. Francis isn't saying that we can never dance, or never go to a ball,...

Welcome back, Catholic Pilgrims. We are still learning about how to live virtuously here in the third part of the book.   I will start today by saying, if you have sensitive ears around, this may not be the podcast for them. So, just to warn you before we get started.  If I would have read today's reading back when I was in high school, I would have considered St. Francis the biggest stick in the...

  Hello, Catholic Pilgrims. Thank you for joining me today. I have a feeling today's reading is going to make some roll their eyes or disregard it because of the subject matter.   When I was first reading it, I thought, "Oh, boy, St. Francis is going to have a hard time convincing people of the problem with dice and gambling card games."   But…but…as you read or listen to what he is saying, he mak...

Welcome back, Catholic Pilgrims. I hope that your day is starting well or ending well. Or, hey, maybe you are in the middle of your day and, if so, I hope it's going well.   Everywhere we turn, we hear about stress. People are constantly saying that they are stressed about this and stressed about that. Headlines talk about how stressed everyone is and how our society is one of the most anxious, st...

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims. We are back to learn more and reflect more on how we can better live a devout life.   The point of this book is not for us to just listen and then think, "That's nice. I sure do agree." The point of the book is for us to put into practice what we are reading about here. Obviously, we can't put all of these into practice all at once and 100% perfectly, but we do need to be...

Welcome, fellow Pilgrims, to another reading from our wise St. Francis.   One day, I was thinking about our current political circus and I thought to myself, "If my husband ran for president or if I did, what dirt would they try to dig up in my past to ruin my reputation?"   Thank God, I grew up before cell phones, but there are still things that people could dig up about my past that would cast a...

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims. Thanks for hitting play and joining me.   Today, we are going to be talking about rash judgment. Boy, oh boy, is judgment a hot topic. On the one hand, you will have people tell you that we can never judge. And then on the other hand, we have the internet mob that will judge you right, left, up, down, and sideways.   You wouldn't believe the lengths I have to go to someti...

Welcome, Catholic Pilgrims. Wherever you are in the world, I hope you are having a good day.   When I was a teenager, I pretty much watched, read, and listened to whatever I wanted. Because I am naturally draw to beautiful expressions of art—be that music, movies, or books—for the most part, I entertained myself with mostly okay things.   However, I still engaged in whatever entertainment I wanted...

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims. Welcome back. Today is a super short reading, but a good one nonetheless.   One of the things about being on social media that is extremely important to me is that I never sound different than how I really speak. I'm not a "keep it real" potty mouth, but I'm also not someone that sounds like a cheesy TV evangelist. If you were to ever talk to me in person, you'd find that...

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims. What a great day to read St. Francis together. I truly love meeting you hear to read his words. I've been told that I'm an old soul. If I had to pick a decade from the 1900s that best suits me it would be the 1940s. I love the dresses that the ladies wore. I love the way men wore suits everywhere. I like the music, the aesthetics, in general, I like the vibe of the 40s.  ...

Fellow Pilgrims, welcome back. Today, we hit 70 episodes for this season which is amazing. I have felt that this season is flying by and before we know it, we will be starting season five. Five seasons. That's crazy.   I do know who I'm reading for next year, but I'm not ready to disclose yet. I'll just let your curiosity drive you nuts. :) The other day I saw a video of a new restaurant in, I thi...

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims. Thank you for joining me today as I read St. Francis' words. We've moved out of the section on friendship which was excellent and today we are reading about external mortifications.   This is a longer reading, but an important one as a lot of people are freaked out by external mortifications and in a world that preaches self-indulgence, mortifications are utterly foreign...

Welcome back, Catholic Pilgrims, to our last reading on friendship. Today, I'm going to say some hard things to hear, but I think they must be said.   One of my biggest pet peeves is when people say, "Yes, but Jesus ate with sinners." I get this in response to people trying to defend abortion, LGBT ideology, and the like. They are trying to make the point that since Jesus ate with sinners, we shou...

Welcome, Catholic Pilgrims. Friendship is our topic again for today and today we are focusing solely on evil friendships. (Dracula laugh in the background.) Why is so hard for us to give up a friendship or even a romantic relationship that is not good for us?   I think a big part of it is that we all think that we are a good judge of character and we just can't imagine that we would pick a bad fri...

Fellow Pilgrims, welcome back for another great reading from St. Francis de Sales. We are still on the topic of friendship and like I said in a previous episode, St. Francis really covers this topic very thoroughly. This is good because not enough people talk about healthy and holy friendships.   In fact, I think it's a topic that we don't talk about with our kids enough. Oftentimes, we wait until...

Welcome back, Catholic Pilgrims, to another reading that covers the topic of friendship. Today, specifically, we will be hearing about true friendship. As you know, my daughter is a Focus Missionary at Berkeley. Most people turn up their nose when they hear that she is a missionary there, writing off the students as utter loss causes. I was worried about her safety when she first told me she was g...

Welcome, Catholic Pilgrims, to another day of talking about friendship. Today's topic is an interesting one, but I'm glad St. Francis is discussing it. It's about flirtations.   The other night, my family was watching the more recent Jumanji, the one staring Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, and Jack Black.   In the movie, five high schoolers get sucked into the video game version of Jumanji and when th...

  Hello, fellow Pilgrims, my friends. Today, we start the first of six readings on friendship, so clearly this is something that St. Francis considers an important topic and not one that we often hear about.   For anyone that currently has or has had teenagers, you know that your kid can be heavily influenced by their friends—for good or for bad. Because acceptance is so important to humans, it is...

Welcome, Catholic Pilgrims. We have another day where we are hearing about riches and poverty.   Many of you have heard my earthquake story that occurred when we were stationed in Turkey. If not, in summary, on October 30th, 2020, Izmir, Turkey was hit with a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that went on for 45 seconds. That is an eternity in earthquake time. My children and I happened to be on the 15th f...

Fellow Pilgrims, it's time for another reading. Something I wanted to note last time but forgot is that we hit the half-way mark in the book. That is cause for celebration. It's hard to believe we are already half-way through the book, but when you stick with things and you show up, even in little spurts, you can make it through anything.   I've never been what you would call a rich person. Growin...

Welcome back, Catholic Pilgrims. Today is another great day to read and learn from St. Francis.   Thomas Sowell, a great American economist, philosopher, and political commentator, writes and says many excellent things. He is truly a brilliant man. One of my favorite quotes of his, is, "I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to tak...

Hello, hello, Catholic Pilgrims. Welcome back. Last time we talked about the virtue of chastity and why its so important. Today, St. Francis is going to share with us the rules for preserving chastity. As like with last time, listener discretion is advised.   It is hard in this day and age to cultivate the virtue of chastity. A big reason for that is because of the devices we all carry around in o...

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims. Welcome back to another beautiful day with St. Francis.   Today, we are covering chastity, so you may want to be wary of younger ears being present.   've mentioned before that my Masters is in Applied Behavioral Science where I specialized in studying sexual violence crimes. It would be an understatement to say that I have dealt with unchastity on unprecedented levels. ...