“Nothing new can happen between my son and me. And while I have taught the parable of the prodigal son many times, these days I feel not just why, when the lost is found, there is great cause for celebration, but how truly the zest goes out of life with such a loss. There is no word for the pairings of emotions one feels in grief—the enormity of love mixed with the enormity of sorrow.” Those words come from Robert Cording in an essay he published in the Image journal with the title, “In the Unwalled City.” In this remarkable essay, he puts into words what cannot be contained in words: his grief for the death of his son Daniel, his desire to keep communion alive with his son, and his duty of remembrance that raises his son to life in his own life. I reached out to Professor Cording after reading his essay and he graciously agreed to join me here on our show today. If you’ve been listening to recent episodes of our show, you know that I am working on a project between my own McGrath Institute for Church Life and Ave Maria Press about our relationship with our beloved dead. This is part of a book I am writing on this topic. As part of the project, I’ve been talking with people about their memories of and their hopes for their beloved dead. I’ve asked a few of those people if they would be willing to record an episode for our show so you can listen in, too. This is the third of these episodes––on the previous two I hosted Laura Kelly Fanucci and Stephanie DePrez. My guest today––Robert Cording––is professor emeritus at College of the Holy Cross. His most recent poetry collection is Without My Asking (CavanKerry). You can find some of his other recent work in the Georgia Review, New Ohio Review, Hudson Review, and The Common.

Church Life Today

Life in Death in Life, with Robert Cording

We are developing a mini-series here on Church Life Today about the relationship with our beloved dead. We’re talking about death, grief, longing, hope, and a lot more. This is connected to a project I myself am working on between the McGrath Institute for Church Life, where I work, and Ave Maria Press, which is a book on this topic. Animating that project are questions like “Where do our beloved dead go? How do they live? And what does this all mean for us, who remain?” I have been talking with people about their experiences of the death of loved ones and their desire for communion with them. I’m not recording all of these conversations, but I have asked a couple people—and maybe I’ll ask more––if they would be willing to record an episode for our show so that you can listen in, too. This is the second of those episodes, the first of which appeared under the title “Heaven in the Midst of Death.” My guest today is my friend Stephanie DePrez, a professional opera singer, a comedian, a voice coach, an artist. I’m so grateful to her for her willingness to talk with us today about her mom, Susie DePrez, and her own grief, desire, and hope.

Life is changed but something ended, with Stephanie DePrez

“Where do our beloved dead go? How do they live? And what does this all mean for us, who remain?” Those questions are animating a project I’m working on between the McGrath Institute for Church Life, where I work, and Ave Maria Press as part of the Engaging Catholicism series. To help with this project, I have asked a few people if they would talk with me about their experiences of grief, about their hope for communion with loved ones who have died, and about their images of Heaven. I’m not recording all of these conversations, but I am asking a couple (or maybe three) people if they would be willing to record an episode for our show so that you can listen in, too. Today is the first of those couple or maybe three episodes. My guest is Laura Kelly Fanucci, a writer and speaker who has worked extensively on grief and longing and hope and vocation. But she’s also got a story you’ve got to hear. Thanks for listening in.

Heaven in the Midst of Death, with Laura Kelly Fanucci

What do you want? We get asked a question like that often: when you order at a restaurant, when generating a Christmas list, when at a crossroads in a dating relationship. But of course, there are differing levels of seriousness to that question: sometimes it is what do you prefer or what strikes your fancy, and sometimes it is what do you really want. In other words, what do you desire? It is hard to think of a more piercing or demanding question than that: what do you desire? What do you really want? But then again, there is another question that goes right along with that one that most of us don’t confront even if we do take seriously the question of what we want. That other question is how do we want… how do we desire. And it is precisely that hidden question of “how do you desire” right alongside the slightly more evident question of “what do you want” that my guest on today’s show takes utterly seriously, and helps us to take seriously, too. Luke Burgis teaches business at the Catholic University of America, where he is also Entrepreneur-in-Residence. An entrepreneur himself, he has co-created and founded four companies in wellness, consumer products, and technology. Now he is managing partner of Fourth Wall Ventures, an incubator that he started to build, train, and invest in people and companies that contribute to a healthy human ecology. On the basis of his extensive experience along with his equally extensive classical training, research, and spiritual formation, Luke has authored a book filled with stories of woe and transformation, analysis of the mysterious workings of desire, and proposals for beginning to lead a healthier, more creative, truly human life. His book is Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life. You can find an excerpt of the book in the Church Life Journal in an article titled, “The Joy of Hate Watching.”

Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life, with Luke Burgis

“While the shift to at-home learning has underscored the ubiquity of learning, [especially since March 2020, it has also cast into sharp relief [a crucial but suddenly imperiled dimension of education, which is] the distinct gift of teachers and artful teaching.” Those words appeared in the Church Life Journal as part of an essay titled, “New Pathways for Catholic Schools After the Pandemic.” The author of that essay is Dr. Kati Macaluso. Kati works and teaches at the University of Notre Dame within the Institute for Educational Initiatives, where she forms new teachers and helps to strengthen Catholic schools all across the country. She enables us to see that the experiences of education over the past year now force upon us urgent questions about the meaning and end of education, about the special mission of Catholic education, and about what exactly we hope that our children receive through their education. What Kati has to share would always be relevant, but in our day and age it is not only relevant but timely and even prophetic.

New Pathways for Catholic Schools After the Pandemic, with Kati Macaluso

What if your decisions about how to use technology were based on your fundamental beliefs about what it means to be a human being, and what human flourishing is? Now, what if your children also made their decisions about technology in that way? I know that sounds like a doubly-tall task, like a fantastic sort of idealism. But what if I told you that this is not only doable, but utterly practical and liberating? And I know just the book that can help you think about the right use of technology, and help your kids to do so, too. My guest today is the author of that book. She is Amy Crouch, who wrote My Tech-wise Life: Growing Up and Making Choices in a World of Devices. In fact, she wrote this book when she was 19. I have read more books about technology than I’d like to admit, and I can tell you that this book is among the very best. Part of what makes it so spectacular is that Amy gives us a practical vision of how she and her family made their decisions about technology as a community and developed specific, intentional practices to cultivate their most cherished values while avoiding potential vices. And the book is just so readable, and enlightening. Amy joins me today to talk not just about her book, but about the vision of the good life that underlies her “tech-wise life” and how we can all make very small and practical decisions to be more fully and genuinely human.

My Techwise Life, with Amy Crouch

When we educate our children, what are we educating them for? In the Catholic tradition, the end of education has always been sanctity: to form truly free, wise, virtuous disciples who love God and their neighbor. This kind of education concerns the cultivation of the whole person: mind and body, heart and imagination, especially in terms of the habits developed, the affections nurtured, and the abilities fostered and ultimately perfected. Over the past year on this show, I have spoken with a number of leaders across the country in Catholic education, including some who are reclaiming and reproposing classical, liberal arts education as distinctively conducive to the aims of Catholic formation and the holistic education of young people. If you have been listening to our show for a while, you may remember an interview with Elisabeth Sullivan of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education, as well as a pair of interviews with Thomas Curtin, Head of School at Our Lady of the Rosary in Greeneville, South Carolina. If you don’t remember those, you can find those episodes on our podcast––and I recommend them to you. In line with those episodes, today’s conversation will also focus classical, liberal arts education in the Catholic tradition, except this time, it is all a bit closer to home… at least to my home, in South Bend, Indiana. My guest is Dr. Margaret Blume Freddoso, Head of School and board member of the St. Thomas More Academy in South Bend, which is a private, independent classical liberal arts school in the Catholic tradition, opening its doors with full enrollment in August 2021. Margaret holds a PhD in theology from the University of Notre Dame, as well as a BA from Yale University. Along with President of the Board at St. Thomas More Academy, Dr. Kirk Doran, and others, Margaret has been laying the foundation for and is now building this new classical, liberal arts school to pursue the ideals of a robust Catholic education, with a view to the full dignity and splendor of the human person in Christ.

Introducing the St. Thomas More Academy, with Margaret Blume Freddoso

Would you ever consider moving thousands of miles for the primary purpose of living in a committed and passionate Catholic community? Of course, people move all the time for jobs and other reasons, but to make the pursuit of a Catholic environment the main reason for a major move seems a bit unconventional. Today, we are going to talk about the unconventional with someone who is seeing just this sort of 6thing happen… and who is helping it to happen. My guest is Thomas Curtin, Headmaster at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic school in Greenville, South Carolina. Tommy joined me on a previous episode to talk about his work of building this particular Catholic school from the ground up, expanding from an elementary school to a K–12 institution that is modeled more on the family than on a university. I am happy to welcome him back to talk about some of the fruits of the kind of school he, his pastor, and the parishioners at Our Lady of the Rosary have been building, specifically in terms of Catholic families from all over the country moving to join their community. 

“Relocatio” with Thomas Curtin

When we are young, we need the guidance of mentors. We never really outgrow that need for guidance, but at some point, a change must take place if we are to reach maturity. Instead of always being the one who is guided and mentored, we become the ones who provide the guidance and mentoring to others. We stop always looking for the adult in the room because we have become the adult in the room. My guest today was recently awakened to the fact that she is very much at the threshold of that transition. Sarah Pelrine is a bona fide young adult Catholic, but one who is quickly moving away from the “young” part of that description and instead stepping into what it means to be an adult Catholic, a mature disciple. Professionally, Sarah works in the Archdiocese of Chicago where she applies her training in both theology and in business to help parishes undertake organizational transformations to better pursue their mission of evangelization. Personally, Sarah is relatively recently married but previously spent a great deal of time in her formative twentysomething years living and working in L’Arche communities. Together, we will talk about what we need and what we don’t need to be well-formed, engaged, and mature people of faith.

Becoming the Adult in the Room, with Sarah Pelrine

The heart of the Christian is not his own. Instead, our hearts belong to Christ. Our lives as Christ’s disciples are an ongoing formation to love what he loves, to care for those whom he cares about, and to join him in offering our hearts to the Father. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is open to all of us. Fr. Joe Laramie of the Society of Jesus has been praying into the Heart of Jesus for decades. But now, he has been called to bring people from all across the country into this devotion, joining in the prayer of Jesus and offering our own hearts to the Lord. Fr. Joe serves as the National Director of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, through which Catholics and others around the globe pray and work to meet the challenges of the world identified by the Pope in his monthly intentions, all while allowing the heart of Jesus to form our own hearts. Fr. Joe joins me today to talk about this apostleship of prayer, the relationship of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus to Ignatian Spirituality, and even his own book, Abide in the Heart of Christ, which leads people through a 10-day retreat at home.

Praying into the Sacred Heart of Jesus, with Fr. Joe Laramie

“The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life.” But do we, as Catholics, really understand what the Eucharist is? Let me rephrase that: do we really understand who the Eucharist is? Actually, let me try one more time: Do we fully revere and adore him who meets us in the Eucharist? Maybe we could use some help with all of that. My friend and colleague Tim O’Malley has written a book that will help all of us both to understand the Eucharist better and, especially, to grow in our love of the Eucharist through devotion, prayer, and longing. Tim’s new book is Real Presence: What Does It Mean and Why Does It Matter? The book is part of the new “Engaging Catholicism” series from our McGrath Institute for Church Life through Ave Maria Press, where we explore important but perhaps misunderstood doctrines and devotions of the Catholic faith. In Real Presence, Tim teaches us about the related but distinct doctrines of transubstantiation and of the real presence, but he does more than merely teach us things to know. He shows us how what we come to understand must be joined to how we pray, and how we allow the Lord to transform and illumine our spiritual senses as we meet him in the Eucharist. This is an utterly practical book even as it is an utterly learned book. And today, Tim joins me to talk about the Eucharist, Eucharistic formation, and Eucharistic spirituality.

The Real Presence, with Tim O’Malley

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. You’re familiar with that, aren’t you? But have you ever really thought about what that is saying. God loved the world. This world. This world that does not love God very well, and in fact more often rejects God that welcomes him. God loved this world so much that He gave this world what is most precious, most intimate, most beautiful: his only begotten Son. And you know what can embody and manifest that kind of love? Filmmaking. And television. I bet you didn’t see that coming. And I bet that you haven’t thought about the art of filmmaking or television in quite the way that my guest today thinks about it. But that’s why we’re here: to listen to what he has to say about it. My guest is Doug Tooke, Vice President for Ministry Advancement at Outside Da Box Films and Renovo Media Group. No one has ever had a boring conversation with Doug Tooke. You and I both are going to enjoy this conversation.

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