Receiving a Share of God's Kingdom: Vocation and Christian Life according to St. Paul – Fr. Jordan Schmidt, O.P.

The Thomistic Institute

Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Thomism, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality, Catholicism, Philosophy, Christianity

4.8 • 873 Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2026

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Fr. Jordan Schmidt says that vocation is a grace-filled cooperation with God’s kingdom, where renewed discernment helps us choose our way of life and embrace suffering with Christ for the salvation of ourselves and others.

This lecture was given on March 28th, 2026, at Dominican House of Studies.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Fr. Jordan Schmidt graduated with a BA in English and Philosophy from St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN in 2002. He entered the Order of Preachers in 2005 and after completing his theological studies (STL and Mdiv), he was ordained a priest in 2012. Fr. Jordan initially served as associate pastor of St Mary’s parish in New Haven, CT, and subsequently returned to the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC to pursue doctoral studies at CUA, ultimately earning his PhD in biblical studies in 2018. He is currently an assistant professor of Sacred Scripture at the PFIC where he teaches various Old Testament courses, including survey courses on the Pentateuch, Prophets, and Wisdom literature as well as seminar courses on biblical inspiration, eschatology and apocalyptic literature, theological history, and creation theology.

Keywords: Adoption, Body of Christ, Discernment, Grace, Kingdom of God, Renewal, Suffering, Wisdom

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Tumistic Institute podcast.
0:05.0	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:12.0	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Tumistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:18.0	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at
0:21.7	to mystic institute.org. I wanted to build on what I spoke about last night in terms of
0:30.0	the kingdom of God and Paul's presentation of the kingdom of God as we understand our vocation
0:35.4	as Christians and disciples of Christ.
0:38.3	And I want to eventually get to how this really pertains to us as individuals.
0:44.3	But in order to do that, I just want to reinforce some of the points that I made last night about how this call, this word, vocation comes from the Latin word to call,
1:00.5	and how we are called by God for a specific purpose to a specific destiny.
1:06.7	And the main point that I want to make here is that it is really and truly God in the first
1:13.6	instance who is doing something for us and through us when he calls us to the kingdom.
1:21.6	The emphasis in the Bible is very much on God and God's activity, And there's a way that we could speak about God as working before us. He comes before, works before us. He forenows and he predestines and he calls us before we are ever born. But there's also a way in which God accompanies us along the way.
1:47.0	And there's a way that God helps us to persevere in our vocation.
1:55.0	So the language here of kind of God's prevenience in Colossians.
2:01.6	He speaks about it in this way.
2:04.1	God has delivered us from the domain of darkness
2:06.5	and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son.
2:10.7	It's God's action, what God has done through us and for us.
2:14.9	It's God at work.
2:17.4	And how God helps us to persevere in Second Timothy. He says
2:22.7	this, the Lord will rescue me from every evil deed, and the Lord will bring me safely into his
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 16 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Thomistic Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Thomistic Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.