Hey, I'm Father Mark Mary with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, and this is the Rosary in a Year podcast.

Welcome, everybody.

For those of you, meeting me for the very first time, it's very nice to meet you.

I look forward to meeting you as well as we continue this journey together and together get to know and to grow in love

with our Lord and Our Lady and the mysteries of our faith. But first, before we get started,

I'd invite you to visit ascensionpress.com forward slash rosary in a year where you can get the

rosary in a year prayer guide, which can give the layout of the journey that we're about to undertake.

And I am joined by Father Mike Schmitz. Fing's. Hey, Father. Good to finally collab with you and something like this.

You know, it's funny. That's the term. That's what the kids are saying these days. This is our

collab. Our first one. Our first one. And so, yeah, I'm grateful to be with you.

And what we're doing today is essentially introducing kind of the next in a year series

with Ascension, building upon what you did with, essentially with the Bible in your podcast

and the Catechism in your podcast.

It feels to me like a very kind of organic movement and development. And I'd love to hear your

thoughts on it. The two images that come to mind for me are the first one is of a garden and the second

one is of a basilica. Yeah. In a lot of ways, what we did with Bible in the year podcast first is, if you

will, found the land, got the land, tilled it, created the garden,

planted some seeds, et cetera.

And that catechism in the year, essentially, like, as future gardeners,

we kind of were educated in how to take care of this garden, in the different seeds we have, the different plants, the different vegetables, what they need.

And then the rosary in the year is this ongoing, certainly maintaining, cultivating of this garden, but also the enjoyment of its fruits.

And that's kind of the envision.

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