Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe on friendship, silence, and struggling with prayer

The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin, S.J.

America Media

Christianity, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 650 Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On the first episode of “The Spiritual Life,” Fr. James Martin, S.J., talks to Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe, O.P., former Master General of the Dominican Order and a retreat leader for the Synod on Synodality. Together, they talk about: Dominican spirituality and prayer Friendship with God and dialogue in the church Cardinal Timothy’s spiritual insights from aging and recovering from illness Watch a video recording of this conversation on America Media's YouTube channel. Read Fr. Jim's article on this conversation with Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe. Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe’s recent books: Listening Together: Meditations on Synodality Surprised by Hope: Further Meditations on Synodality Do you have a spiritual question for Fr. Jim? You can write to us at: [email protected] Become a subscriber today at Americamagazine.org/subscribe

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the spiritual life. I'm Father Jim Martin. On this podcast, we reflect on how people experience God in their prayer and in their daily lives. And I am joined by my wonderful producer, Maggie Van Dorn. Maggie, good to be with you.
0:17.5	So good to be with you, Jim, on our very first episode of the spiritual life.
0:22.2	Did you ever think we'd get here? I had faith. I knew we would eventually get here.
0:27.0	How would you describe what this ambitious podcast is about? Well, as I said, it really is a way to look at
0:33.2	people's spiritual lives in their daily life and in their prayer. That's kind of the two ways you find God.
0:40.1	And we have some really interesting people, some people that are pretty well known, people that are
0:44.5	practitioners and scholars and good spiritual directors. And what I really wanted to do was kind of
0:49.9	go deeper than a lot of places you would see online to not settle for, you know, just kind
0:54.9	of superficial answers to talk about not only the joys and constellations of the spiritual
0:59.5	life, which are many, but the challenges and the struggles. And also my hope is that when people
1:04.7	listen to our guests, famous or not so famous, they can take away something for their own
1:09.6	spiritual lives. So I'm really excited
1:11.6	about it. Yeah. And who do we have on this very first episode? We have Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe,
1:18.3	who is just one of my favorite people, and I think people are going to love listening to him.
1:23.1	And you met him at the Synod on Synodality. Is that right? Well, I did. I knew him a little bit beforehand. I was familiar with his writings, and I think
1:31.8	I met him once or twice, but it was really at the Synod on Synodality where we spent October
1:36.9	2023 together and October 24 together. And I got to know him and just, he's just, he's an amazing
1:42.5	person. I really think he's a spiritual master.
1:45.1	And for those who might not be following the Synodononinality as closely as we all have been here in America,
1:51.5	how would you briefly describe it?
1:53.7	Yeah, so it was a multi-year meeting of Catholic leaders from around the world.
1:57.6	It sought to listen to people from all these different parishes and dioceses.
	...

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