You're listening to the SSPX podcast.

Father Stephen McDonald is putting together a virtual retreat on the topic of the sacred heart.

This first episode dives into the story of the Pharisee and the publican.

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$5 a month. If we have enough people to do that, that will greatly help with this apostolate,

and to be able to reach more people with the beauty and the truth of traditional Catholicism.

Now, here's Father Stephen McDonald. During these days of self-confinement, of restriction, where we're forced in some ways to pull ourselves away from our normal activities, our normal jobs, functions, we are afforded more of an opportunity to step back

and to pray, to consider what is most important. We can ask ourselves the great question that

St. Bernard used to ask all of his monks when they entered at the monastery. Great question, why are you here? Why do we exist?

We know, of course, we were made created by God to know him, to love him, and to serve him,

and in doing so, of course, to gain eternal happiness with him in heaven. We also know, of course, that our Lord Jesus Christ

is the way, the truth, and the life. Therefore, we must know Christ. We must know His teachings.

Again, St. Bernard used to say, unless you speak to me of Christ, I do not want to hear it. For St. Bernard, of course, our Lord was everything.

Dom Marmion, the great Irish Benedictine spiritual writer, echoes those sentiments when he writes

to one of his spiritual children. You will ask me, my child, like the disciples to St. John,

why do you always repeat the same thing to me?

It is because this is all I know and this contains everything. Quote, I judged not myself to know

anything among you, but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, unquote. It is because while loving you more than ever,

I no longer feel the need to write you to you much.

I feel that I have cooperated a little with our Lord

to make enter into your heart and be engraved upon it,

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