The Restless Hearts Podcast

Episode 136: Our Call to be Human as Jesus was Human—Session 7, Loneliness as the Locus of Revelation (7/13/23)

With this seventh conference of the retreat the focus shifts from reflections on experiences that evoke emotions to experiences that are universal and pervasive in human life and yet are profoundly prone toward denial, illusion, and a lack of self awareness, while tempting us to compromise the values we profess to live by.  In this session, the very noxious and uncomfortable experience of loneliness that typically isolates us from others and cries out to be relieved in a host of unhealthy and even addictive ways is explored as something that can reveal the full truth about our real selves and join us in solidarity with the human race and be a foundational building block of authentic community.

Episode 135: Our Call to be Human as Jesus was Human—Session 6, From Shame to Humility (7/12/23)

The sixth conference of the retreat focuses our attention on those experiences of life in which we know ourselves to be inadequate, imperfect, and incomplete which inevitably evoke the emotion of shame and the myriad of unhealthy instinctive reactions to which it tempts us, including disappearing, blaming, doing violence to oneself, and shamelessness as well as to the capital sin of pride which is simply the other side of the same coin as shame.  It invites consideration that the fully human antidote to shame is the virtue and practice of humility which is defined as allowing others to see us as we truly are and allowing them to make the choice to accept us in love or to reject us, with trying to influence that choice.

Episode 134: Our Call to be Human as Jesus was Human—Session 5, From Sadness to Gratitude (7/11/23)

Noting that life is filled with loss and so is also filled with the unpleasant and inconvenient emotion of sadness, this fifth conference invites listeners to take note of losses that have been ungrieved and so unhealed, to see loss as an essential part of life and the emotion of sadness as possibly the most humanizing of our emotions, and the reality that sadness is in direct proportion to how much we have loved who or what we have lost so that to avoid sadness is to deny love.  While the process of grieving is painful and difficult, the courage to enter it is a choice to be more fully human as sadness reveals love which can move us from emptiness of loss to the fullness of gratitude.

Episode 133: Our Call to be Human as Jesus was Human—Session 4, From Anger to Passion and Compassion (7/11/23)

The fourth conference of this retreat invites listeners to attend to experiences in life in which our needs and desires are not met and so evoke the emotion of anger and its instinctive drives toward hostility, aggression, and violence as we assert the satisfaction of our needs as paramount to anyone else and so act in a more than human ways as well as the less than human tendency to see ourselves as undeserving and worthless.  The talk suggests that anger properly listened to and understood can be an invitation to the fully human experiences of solidarity with the rest of humanity and its suffering and deprivation as well as a righteous passion to correct harmful and exploitative practices that deprive people of their humanity.

Episode 132: Our Call to be Human as Jesus was Human—Session 3, From Fear to Trust (7/10/23)

The third conference of this retreat invites listeners to reflect on experiences in life that evoke the emotion of fear and the instinctive responses to fear; namely flight, fight, or learned helplessness may not serve us well in all circumstances (while they may be quite appropriate in others).  It further invites us to consider that experiences that evoke fear may well be invitations to trust and so lead us to growth, courage, and faith.

Episode 131: Our Call to be Human as Jesus was Human—Session 2, Four Steps to Health and Holiness (7/10/23)

The second conference of this retreat outlines a method of reflection on our experiences so that we can respond to them in fully human ways rather than reacting instinctively in less than human or more than human ways.  These steps to health and holiness are; first, to tell the truth about our experience without denial or illusion; second, to engage in honest self awareness using our emotions to reveal our needs and values; third, to be conscious of the values that our mission, call, and vocation in life call us to live out; and fourth, to choose a course of action that will be truly life-giving because it is consistent with our vocation to be fully human.

Episode 130: Our Call to be Human as Jesus was Human—Session 1, Introduction (7/9/23)

This and the following nine episodes of the Restless Hearts Podcast were recorded between July 9 and 14, 2023 during a retreat for the community of the Motherhouse of the Dominican Sisters of Peace in Columbus, OH.  The title of the retreat is “Our Call to be Human as Jesus was Human.”  This introductory session invites listeners to focus on the humanity that Jesus shares with us and to see our true human vocation in his true and full humanness rather than trying to imitate his divinity.  It points out that being fully human does not come naturally to any of us as being human is hard and filled with anxiety, tension, and unpredictability.  It lays the framework for the rest of the conferences by noting how there are two ways to “sin”, namely to choose to respond to life in ways that are either less than human or more than human, both of which deny our true call to be fully human and describes how Jesus’ responses to life are examples of what fully human choices might be.

Episode 129: Vision Correction (Fr. Ray's Homily from 6/9/24)

This episode of the Restless Hearts Podcast includes the Proclamation of the Gospel and Father Ray's homily from the Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time on June 9, 2024. You can view the full liturgy of the Word for this Sunday under Daily Readings at usccb.org.

Episode 128: A Mystery To Be Lived (Fr. Ray's Homily from 5/26/24)

This episode of the Restless Hearts Podcast includes the Proclamation of the Gospel and Father Ray's homily from the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity on May 26, 2024. You can view the full liturgy of the Word for this Sunday under Daily Readings at usccb.org.

Episode 127: A Glimpse Of How Things Could Be (Fr. Ray's Homily from 4/28/24)

This episode of the Restless Hearts Podcast includes the Proclamation of the Gospel and Father Ray's homily from the Fifth Sunday of Easter on April 28, 2024. You can view the full liturgy of the Word for this Sunday under Daily Readings at usccb.org.