You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine

Institute, an Apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

Hello and welcome to Form Now. I'm Taylor Kemp with me as Dr. Ben Acres.

Dr. Ben Acres, we're talking about St. Mary Magdalene today.

Yeah, I love this series that we've been doing on Catholic Saints. And people have responded too. They've appreciated getting into the saints. These are our older brothers and sisters in Christ, alive in Christ in heaven. Transform by the love of God. Transform by the love of God. And I always find it edifying, growing up, edifying, going through the different lives of the saints. I agree. And every time I read the lives of the saints, I'm like, that's amazing. Yep. Because they are so creative in the way that they live out, faith, hope, and charity.

Yep.

And we all have the same three virtues infused to us by God, orient us to God, a gift given to us at baptism.

And everyone's creative in how they live it out.

The saints are.

Well, yes.

I remember listening for the first time to We have an audio drama on St. Francis of Sisi,

which eventually led me to choose him as my confirmation saint. I remember listening to a story

being like, this is amazing. Like it's so cool. There were so many ways in which I related to it.

But I do remember just being like, his time's a little different than ours. And then recognizing,

you know, as the church teaches, that God is continually helping people live out faith, hope, and charity in the time in which they actually find themselves. And then, like, God is working for that time. That's why the saints are inspiring, but it'll look different in our lives. Did you choose St. Francis because he played Calcho? I don't know what that is.

It's the time for soccer, man. Did he actually? No, they didn't. I was going to say, it probably existed. Yeah, probably they kicked something, a leather ball or something around, yeah. No, honestly, the reason I liked it was because at the time I was playing professional soccer, and I read, I read into the breach

the apostolic exhortation from

Ashbishop

Holmsted Archbishop Holmsted and he talks about some like great heroic male saints

and he talks about St. Francis and he said one of the particular things about Francis was that

he gathered a group of men around him and they all supported each other and eventually that would become the Franciscans. And I remember like, hey, I'm surrounded by a group of men all the time because of my soccer team. And so I remember just really like, I just liked that. Like I liked that Francis was like, how can I get other guys to take on this way of life with me? And I remember looking around and be like, I'm surrounded by a bunch of guys, I got to figure out how I can get other guys to do this, take on this way of life with me?

And I remember looking around and be like, I'm surrounded by a bunch of guys.

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