Hello, welcome to Pines with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd. If you could sit down over a pint of beer with Thomas Aquinas and ask him any one question, what would it be?

In today's episode, we are joined around the bar table by Father Damian Ferrance, who is the author of a new book called The Strangeness of Truth, Vibrant Faith in a Dark World, to discuss the sort of, what do you say, the intellectual heritage of the Catholic Church?

As he's demonstrated through the two awesome individuals, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine.

So if you ever wanted to know a bit more about those two figures, how they complement each other, how Aquinas builds off Augustine, why maybe you're super into Aquinas but still need some Augustine in your diet, this is the show for you.

Yep, welcome back to Pines with Aquinas, this show where you and I pull up a bar stool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theologian philosophy.

I love Father Damian Ferrance. In fact, I just wrote an endorsement for his new book. It's on the first page, it says this,

Father Damian Ferrance is one of my favorite people, like ever. That's right, I said like, comma, ever in an official endorsement. So there you go, that's why I don't write as many books as Father Damian certainly will.

But yeah, we talk about that book. Before we get into today's episode, I want to let you know that obviously the great fast lent is coming up and Thomas Aquinas wrote daily meditations for lent.

And what I did is I recorded these daily meditations and if you support me on Patreon, patreon.com slash Matt Fred, you can have access to them.

And you could actually listen to a meditation every day. So I record them individually so you could wake up on Ash Wednesday and actually like click play and listen to a three minute meditation from Thomas Aquinas.

So it's not my take on what Thomas Aquinas said. I'm just reading you what Aquinas said. I'm not even giving you commentary on it. That might be a really cool way to do lent this year or at least, you know, I think that could be a cool supplement to lend.

It really sounds like something that Matthew Kelly would do or some Catholic author, you know, 40 meditations for 40 days or something like that. But actually Aquinas wrote this specifically for lent. Isn't that really neat?

Anyway, if you want access to that and a bunch of other stuff, feel free to become a patron. Do you like how soft sell that was by the way? Feel free. You know, if you want, if you're into that thing.

Yeah, go to what is it patreon.com slash Matt Fred and that would be awesome. Also, before we get into today's show, I need to say thanks to our sponsors at Exodus 90.

You've probably been hearing more about Exodus 90 lately. Am I right? It's an ascetic call program for men.

It's pretty cool and you should consider doing it, especially if you want to be holier if you want to grow in relationship with our Lord.

I think it's a really manful way to respond to the current crisis in the church as well.

Because it's really easy to kind of bitch and moan and gossip about all that's going on in the church. And certainly there's a lot to grown about.

And I think some fingers ought to be pointing at certain individuals. I'm not saying that's not the case. But too fast to offer up suffering for the church and for men in the church, that's a really cool thing to do.

So if you want to check out Exodus 90.com slash Matt Fred. If you go to the slash Matt Fred, put in your email. You'll get you'll get some emails back from the guys at Exodus 90 and they will include three exclusive videos that I recorded that will kind of help you understand Exodus 90 a little bit more and why you might want to do it.

So even if you're not that interested in doing it yet, but you kind of open to it, still go to Exodus 90.com slash Matt Fred, put in your email and you'll get those exclusive videos.

But basically you give up stuff you'd rather not give up. You take on things, you know, like a daily rosary going to adoration having a cold shower.

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