What's up and welcome to Ask Father Josh, the podcast's wigit to hear you out, listen to your heart, pray with your questions, and then hopefully respond in such a way that it's helpful for you to become a saint in your walk toward eternity.

Here's to the show goes, you send me three to five questions dealing with anything and everything from Catholic morality, to Catholic spirituality, justice, charity, evangelization, discipleship, catechesis, relationship, advice, whatever.

And these questions and all these questions are all okay because the reality is this your life, my life, our lives are really messy.

And so sometimes whenever we're confronted with these issues with regards to these questions, we might not be able to find a Catholic feeling blank easy to go to response.

So the purpose of this show is for me to accompany you.

It's simply a company you in encountering Jesus so that Jesus Christ can speak his truth to you.

I will pray with your questions that you send me. I will hopefully study a lot about the questions that you send me to respond in such a way that's helpful for you.

But the reality is this I'm broken, I'm in perfect, I'm a sinner. And so there's going to be times that I try to answer your questions with the heart of Christ and as a son of the church.

But I might not answer your question well. So I apologize in advance. I repent if I give you any advice that is not helpful for you to become a virtuous, holy, awesome saint.

However, if the advice that I do share with you is helpful, then I would encourage you to lean into it even if it's difficult to ask God to give you the grace to respond in such a way that you will be able to grow and mature in your walk toward Jesus Christ.

If you're a first time listener, then I want to invite you to email me your questions at askfatherjosh at ascensionpress.com.

Let's ask FR-josh at ascensionpress.com. You can email me your questions, your concerns, your comments, and your critiques. I will take it all.

You can also rate and review us on iTunes, which helps other people discover the show and see what it's all about.

Today's show, our topics are about the afterlife. Is it true that if we're once saved, we're always saved?

The other question is, how can I quit smoking? I'm thinking it's about cigarettes. I'm going to respond as if it's a smoke of cigarettes and not smoking that green gongin, our marriage rwana, our marriage jay, or whatever it is that the kids call it these days.

The final question is about working mothers. How do we both be a good mother and a wife and also work in the world?

Before we get jumping into those topics, I want to share with you a glory story.

The first glory story for today is this. Years ago, I did this retreat and I got to spend some time with this priest. His name is Manciner John Esif.

Manciner John Esif, he's this holy priest from up north. I think a spiritual director was Padre Pio. He's super legit. For years, I'd heard about Manciner John Esif.

I wanted to meet him and pray with him. I got to spend some time praying with him back in, maybe it was 2010, I think.

One of the core teachings that he tried to get through my head and into my heart was that I am the body of Jesus.

He would always ask the question, who are you? Who are you? Because he really fundamentally believed that if we believe that we really are Jesus' body on earth today,

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