Hi, I'm Father Gregory Pine. And I'm Rebecca Dockertie. And you're listening to the Catholic Classics podcast, where we seek to grow our interior lives by learning from the church's greatest saints and teachers. Each season will read through a great work, explain its spiritual principles, and help you to apply its timeless wisdom to your life. The Catholic Classics podcast is brought to you by Ascension. This season, we are reading

Ascension's exclusive translation of the practice of the presence of God by Brother Lawrence.

In today's pre-launch episode, we'll offer a brief introduction to the text, share more about

Brother Lawrence, and give you a preview of the themes you can expect this season. Before we

dive in, a few important reminders. To get the free reading plan for the

practice of the presence of God, visit ascensionpress.com slash Catholic Classics. The best place to

listen to this season is on the Ascension app. There you'll find reflection questions, full

transcripts of each episode. It's totally free to watch or listen. All you need to do is download the app and create an account.

You can download the Ascension app on your smartphone or tablet by searching

Ascension in the App Store, or you can listen on your computer by visiting app.

Ascensionpress.com.

All right, we're pumped about this pre-launch episode because we've got a lot of fun, new, and exciting things for you.

First is, I'm going to introduce my new co-host, who also happens to be my sister.

You think to yourself, what kind of sister?

Religious sister, blood sister, it's the latter, my blood sister.

Her name is Rebecca Docherty, so get excited.

And then we're going to introduce this season of Catholic classics, specifically the book that we're reading, which is the practice of the presence of God. And books don't just appear. They come from someone's hand. Well, I suppose that hand is connected to a body and the body has a brain and the brain. Never mind. Keep going, Father Gregory. But we're going to talk about Brother Lawrence of the resurrection, who he was when he lived, his experience of life and how that informs this work. And then we'll

break down some of the parts of the practice of the presence of God, not so that we can be great

scholars of this work, but so that we can enter into its spiritual riches with delight and abandon.

And then we'll pick out some of its

central themes, so that way your spiritual antenna can be up, and you can attune yourself to what

it is that the Lord is teaching us through the work of this holy Carmelite brother.

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