The Pilgrim Soul

This month, we're sharing a testimony Sofia recently gave about her experience ten years ago at Fundación San Rafael in Asunción, Paraguay, a center for the poor started by Fr. Aldo Trento. Through the story of his life, of the mission, and of her summer in Paraguay, the talk explores how Christ reveals Himself in our poverty and in the Eucharist, transforming our hopelessness and monotony int...

We are excited to announce our first-ever live recording of The Pilgrim Soul ! Join Adrianna and Sofia in Bridgeport, Chicago on July 31st for an episode on "The Two Banks of the River: Prayer and Communion." We are grateful for the hospitality of St. Mary of Perpetual Help, and hope to see you there! 6 PM: Mass 7 PM: Dinner & Live Episode Tickets are available at this link , and inc...

Join Sofia in praying the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary, guided by reflections from Father Luigi Giussani. Please know of our prayers for you—and please pray for Giuli (and baby Luke) and Adrianna (and baby Cecilia) during their maternity leave! You can find the other set of mysteries here: Glorious Mysteries Sorrowful Mysteries Joyful Mysteries

Join Giuli, Sofi and Adrianna for a conversation about identity. How is the identity of a Christian both a gift and a task? What falsehoods about identity tempt us away from this reality? Which experiences and relationships have built and revealed our identity to us? // Our media recommendation is Mike Posner’s song “ I Went Back to Ibiza ”, with his prior song “ I Took a Pill in Ibiza ” for conte...

Adrianna, Sofi, and Giuli have a conversation about failure. How do we, shaped by our modern culture, often face failure reductively? How does God respond to human failure? Is it possible for failures (ours and those of others) to be places of encounter with Christ? What helps us live with the posture of a beggar? // Our media recommendation is Rembrandt’s painting The Return of the Prodigal Son ....

This month, we are discussing culture. What is the source of an authentically Christian culture? How does it differ from retreating into exile from the world, on the one hand, or conforming oneself to its mentality, on the other? What helps us judge everything in light of the Christian event? // Our media recommendation is the memoir The Shadow of His Wings by Fr. Gereon Goldmann. And our monthly...

This month, we are discussing love for the poor—the subject of Pope Leo XVI’s first Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te . What does it mean that God ‘prefers’ the poor? How and why is our faith manifest in caring for those in poverty? Have we experienced  such charity as reciprocal? // Our media recommendation is Vincent Van Gogh’s The Good Samaritan . And our monthly challenge is to give alms, being...

This month, to celebrate the end of the 2025 Jubilee of Hope, we have a conversation with our friend Amanda Achtman about her mission. Amanda is the founder of Dying to Meet You , a project of cultural renewal to prevent euthanasia and encourage hope. How did she arrive at this mission? What needs, desires, and forms of suffering has she discovered in the hearts of others–and her own? Where can an...

Join Adrianna, Giuli and Sofi for a conversation on the art and science of care. Can our power to medically intervene serve, instead of competing with, our task to affirm and accompany those who suffer? What makes Christian care distinctive? How can medicine come closer to its origin in the mercy of God? This episode was inspired by the 2025 MedConference. You can learn more at theAAMP.org // Our...

In honor of the 2025 Jubilee of Hope, we are joined by our friend David Dorsey for a conversation about hope: What does it mean to be a pilgrim of hope? How can the experience of profound loss open the heart to be surprised, daily, by the gift of hope? What educates us in this poverty of spirit? // David’s media recommendations are an essay by Walker Percy called “The Loss of the Creature” and Lou...

This month we’re sharing responses to questions asked by you, our listeners. The questions center around living a charism in the Church, accompanying others in the spiritual life, discerning God’s will for your life, and growing–daily, concretely–in a loving relationship with Christ. Thank you to everyone who submitted a question! // We’d love to hear from you. Write to us at pilgrimsoulpodcast@gm...

Join us for the first-ever in-person episode of The Pilgrim Soul! During their vacation together in Idaho, Giuli, Sofi and Adrianna had a conversation about leisure. What is leisure? How are we tempted to distort it? What instead is its right relationship to prayer, work, and community? How are we educated in a true use of our free time? // Our media recommendation is Louis Armstrong’s song What a...

This month, Adrianna, Sofi, and Giuli are joined by their friend Fr. John Nepil for a conversation on how the encounter with Christ transforms the experience of the wilderness. Fr. John is a priest of the Archdiocese of Denver, a member of the Companions of Christ, and co-host of the podcast Catholic Stuff You Should Know. This conversation draws on his excellent book “To Heights and Unto Depths:...

This month, we’re sharing a talk Sofi gave to the Word on Fire Institute on Our Lady as “The Certainty of Our Hope”. You can find a PDF of the paintings Sofi references on our website . // The great desire of the human heart is for perfect happiness, total love, lasting fulfillment—for union with God. This destiny is possible in Jesus Christ. But we can lose hope, stumbling or growing discouraged...

Adrianna, Sofi, and Giuli have a conversation about mission. What is the communal task entrusted to the baptized? What does it look like to live our individual responsibility for the glory of Christ? How does God’s initiative of mercy enable us to embrace the slightest fragment of truth or goodness wherever we find it? // Our media recommendation is The Universal Call to Holiness , a relief in the...

Join Sofia and Adrianna in praying the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary, guided by reflections from Father Luigi Giussani. We pray this Easter finds you "overcome with Paschal joy" at the presence of the Risen One.

Join Giuli, Sofi and Adrianna for an episode on baptism. Is it true that this is the defining event of our lives? How is baptism relevant to our every day? What are the marks of the new creature created in baptism, the one who belongs to the body of Christ? How can we grow in awareness of our baptism? // Our media recommendation is Brideshead Revisited , a novel by Evelyn Waugh. And our monthly ch...

This month Giuli, Adrianna, and Sofia had the pleasure of interviewing Bishop Erik Varden. Bishop Varden is a Cistercian monk and, since 2019, the bishop of Trondheim in Norway. We met with him to discuss his latest book, Healing Wounds , which is a prayerful exploration of the wounds of the crucified Christ. Bishop Varden invites a contemplation of the vulnerability of God in Christ—which leads t...

This month, Giuli, Sofi and Adrianna discuss compunction–a state of abiding sorrow for our sins. How can we distinguish compunction from what St. Paul calls “worldly grief”? What role does compunction play in our relationship with Christ? Have we seen this bear fruit, especially in hope and joy, in our lives? What practices help us beg for this gift from God? // Our media recommendation is Antonín...

Join Giuli, Sofi and Adrianna for an episode on work. What is work, beyond our 9-to-5 job? How do instinctive and cultural approaches to work enslave us to our circumstances? Is it possible to instead start from friendship with Christ and obedience to the Father? What helps us approach work in this way? And what are the fruits? // Our media recommendation is an excerpt of Charles Peguy’s poem The...

Adrianna, Giuli, and Sofi discuss givenness, or God’s gift and entrustment of men and women to each other. What profound truth about God and the cosmos does this givenness reveal? How can a loving preference, or predilection, for one person help us discover the givenness of all others? In the face of the fallenness of our hearts, why does Pope St. John Paul II exhort us not to be afraid to receive...

Join all three hosts for a discussion of the invocation of the Holy Spirit, which takes place at Mass through the prayer called “epiclesis.” What does the Church beg of God at this moment, and why do we need this? Have we seen the epiclesis transform the way we live the rest of our daily lives? Who are models for us of living in the posture of a beggar? // Our media recommendation is the film The...

Sofi, Adrianna, and Giuli have a conversation about Christian memory–or anamnesis. What is the difference between the secular and Christian conceptions of memory? How does the prayer of anamnesis in the Eucharistic liturgy take up the whole of the Christian life? What changes about our days when we are given the grace to live in the awareness of the continued presence of Christ? // Our media recom...

Giuli, Sofi and Adrianna have a conversation about the relationship between suffering and desire. The central claim we discuss is that suffering presents us with an alternative: either my desire is for something impossible and thus life is meaningless, or my desire is undergoing a positive test of its meaning. The Christian proposal is that suffering can be a privileged place of encounter with God...

Join all three hosts for an episode on unity. What does it look like to experience unity in our selves, our lives, our families, and the Church? What can generate and sustain unity? How are we tempted to reduce it to a work of our own hands—and what is our calling instead? // We’d love to hear from you! Write to us at pilgrimsoulpodcast@gmail.com or find us on Instagram at @pilgrimsoulpodcast . Ou...