Contemplata
The purpose of our lives is to come to know God, yet on account of sin the eyes of our hearts have grown blind to the presence of God. Just as Jesus healed the blind men in the Gospels, so God is now at work to heal the eyes of our hearts by the light of his grace. Contemplata is a podcast for those seeking to grow in contemplative prayer—the loving awareness of the presence of God. Fr. James Dominic Brent, O.P. is a Dominican Friar of the Province of St. Joseph.
Episodes
41 episodes
Contemplata Episode 39 | Communion | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
Every word of scripture is full of fire from the Holy Spirit. Every time you and I take a word of scripture to heart great things begin to happen in our souls. We begin to recover our sense of the presence of God in our lives and in the world a...
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Season 1
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Episode 39
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7:26
Contemplata Episode 38 | How God Loves You | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
The great plan of God is to unite human beings everywhere with His eternal Son, Jesus Chirst, by the power of the Holy Spirit. His plan is to make us live on a whole new level, so that we can worship Him with Jesus. In our baptism the love of G...
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Season 1
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Episode 38
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11:58
Contemplata Episode 37 | God's Plan for You | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
Very often it doesn’t seem like God has a plan. It can feel like everything is going wrong. But we need to remember—God has a plan for the whole world, and for each of us personally. St. Paul called God’s plan “the mystery.” Through...
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Season 1
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Episode 37
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12:00
Contemplata Episode 36 | Your Way to Contemplation | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
In order for us to live the spiritual life and really grow in our awareness and knowledge and love of the Holy Trinity dwelling in our hearts, one of the best practices we can take up is the practice of Lectio Divina—the slow prayerful reading ...
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Season 1
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Episode 36
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7:46
Contemplata Episode 35 | How to Become Aware of God | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
Each of us has an interior life—an inner room which Scripture often calls the heart, or the deep heart. And the Lord is telling us to go there to our inner room within each of us. He also tells us to close the door. That's what we've been talki...
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Season 1
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Episode 35
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8:07
Contemplata Episode 34 | How to Live in the Presence of God | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
How do we interact with the indwelling Trinity and live in this presence of God? In this episode, Fr. James tells us there are three things we need to do. First, we need to guard our hearts, and not be pulled away from God by distractions and s...
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Season 1
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Episode 34
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8:23
Contemplata Episode 33 | How God is Present to You | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
God is commonly present to all things, but in our baptism, God comes to be present in our souls in a new way, in a special mode. So how can we understand this special mode of the presence of God that we call the indwelling Trinity? In this epis...
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Season 1
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Episode 33
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8:24
Contemplata Episode 32 | The Indwelling Trinity | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
Through our baptism, and so long as we are living in a state of grace, each of us has the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit living and dwelling in the depths of our hearts. In this episode, Fr. James explains the mystery of the indwelling Trinity, w...
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Season 1
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Episode 32
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6:53
Contemplata Episode 31 | 5th Paraclete Promise | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
What's in the future? We are weak in our faith and we tend to conceive of the future as if God is not going to be there. In this episode of Contemplata, Fr. James explains that in the fifth paraclete promise assures us there is no future withou...
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Season 1
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Episode 31
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6:48
Contemplata Episode 30 | 4th Paraclete Promise | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
The Lord promises to send the Holy Spirit to penetrate the hearts and minds of people who are listening to the proclamation of the gospel. And he promises that when the Spirit comes, he will convince them of sin and of righteousness and of judg...
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Season 1
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Episode 30
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10:27
Contemplata Episode 29 | 3rd Paraclete Promise | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
Why would we expect anyone today to come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, to come to believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and to come to practice the Catholic faith? The reason we expect that is because in the third Para...
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Season 1
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Episode 29
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8:21
Contemplata Episode 28 | 2nd Paraclete Promise | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
The second Paraclete Promise the Lord gave us at the Last Supper was the promise of memory and understanding. This promise tells us what the Holy Spirit promised will do in us—to bring to our memories all that the Lord has told us and to teach ...
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Season 1
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Episode 28
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7:49
Contemplata Episode 27 | 1st Paraclete Promise | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
At the Last Supper, the Lord promised to send his Spirit to dwell in each of us. And when you and I were baptized, we received the Holy Spirit in a whole new way—we came to have the very person of the Holy Spirit himself living and dwelling in ...
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Season 1
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Episode 27
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9:53
Contemplata Episode 26 | What are the 5 Paraclete Promises? | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
In this episode, Fr. James Brent, O.P., introduces us to what scripture scholars call paraclete promises, which are found throughout scripture and are a great reason to be confident in our prayer before God. Fr. James will point to many of thes...
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Season 1
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Episode 26
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9:46
Contemplata Episode 25 | Why Pray the Rosary? | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
Petitionary prayer, meditation, contemplation, the Our Father, and the Hail Mary, the Glory Be. The Rosary has it all. If we stay with it and practice praying the Rosary, the different elements of it come together and gradually we realize that ...
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Season 1
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Episode 25
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8:14
Contemplata Episode 24 | How God Purifies You | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
God is a refiner's fire, and he says through the mouth of the prophet Zechariah, “I will refine them as silver is refined.” What does that mean? You and I can ask for God to plunge us into the fire, to purify us, to separate out the lead from t...
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Season 1
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Episode 24
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6:09
Contemplata Episode 23 | The Name of Jesus | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
There’s one prayer in particular that’s the best prayer and it is the name of Jesus. When we call upon the name of Jesus with faith, we should expect to receive his grace. The name of Jesus will work in our hearts and will do in our hearts, in ...
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Season 1
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Episode 23
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8:03
Contemplata Episode 22 | God Helps You | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
“O God, come to my assistance, O Lord make haste to help me.” This prayer was taught to John Cassian and his friend Germanus by one of the desert monks, Abba Isaac, who told them if they just pray this prayer over and over again, their hearts w...
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Season 1
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Episode 22
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8:13
Contemplata Episode 21 | A Busy Heart in Prayer | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
In this episode, Fr. James Brent, O.P., gives an example of how javelin prayers can be helpful in the spiritual life as he recounts a story about someone he knew who was a high-powered lawyer in New York. She barely had any time for extended da...
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Season 1
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Episode 21
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9:25
Contemplata Episode 20 | Javelin Prayers | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
As we’ve discussed for a few episodes now, one of the principal pathways to metanoia is prayer. And one of the principal challenges to prayer is distraction. Aside from external distractions which many of us suffer from, we have interior distra...
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Season 1
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Episode 20
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12:16
Contemplata Episode 19 | Frequent Short Prayers | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
People—especially busy people—forget we can ask God for help with everything. No matter how busy we are, all of us are able to make frequent short prayers throughout the day. “Lord, help me with this situation at work. Lord, help me prepare the...
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Season 1
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Episode 19
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10:44
Contemplata Episode 18 | The Life of Prayer | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
When people hear the word prayer, they think about the various prayers that we say—the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Anima Christi. That’s one sense of the word prayer. We’re called to not only say acts of prayer, but to live the life of praye...
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Season 1
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Episode 18
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10:45
Contemplata Episode 17 | Metanoia | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
The purpose of our lives is to enter into the life of the Holy Trinity, and come to know something of the holy, awesome, and awe-inspiring life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The question is, “How?” The Lord Jesus tells us the answer very...
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Season 1
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Episode 17
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12:51
Contemplata Episode 16 | The Purpose of Life | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
The purpose of our life is to know, love, and enjoy God. More specifically, the purpose of our life is to know, love, and enjoy the Holy Trinity. In this episode, Fr. James Brent, O.P., meditates on the sign of the cross, a simple gesture that ...
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Season 1
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Episode 16
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10:14
Contemplata Bonus Episode | Rosary of Gratitude | Fr. James Brent, O.P.
In previous episodes, we learned about the Eucharistic sacrifice and about the qualities of heart we need when we go to Mass. One of these qualities is thanksgiving. We need to take time to count our blessings. And two of the best ways we can p...
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Season 1
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4:01