Episode Details

Deacon Don welcomes Aidan back from a week in Medjugorje where Aidan reports packed daily Masses, outdoor adoration, long confession queues, and a strong sense that a revival in the Church is underway. Aidan recaps the previous week’s exploration of temperance from the Catechism — moderating pleasures, the will’s mastery over instinct, keeping desire within what is honourable — and introduces the theme he wants to build on: beauty. He argues that the culture of the ugly (disturbing modern art, music that glorifies disfigurement) is the opposite of temperance’s true fruit, and draws on Catechism articles 31–33 and Saint Augustine’s challenge — “Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea… these beauties are subject to change; what made them if not the Beautiful One?” — to show that beauty is a path to God.

Deacon Don reflects on a Franciscan church in Medjugorje, its gilded altar an act of reverence, and on the beauty of a beating heart and the dexterity of a human hand. The programme moves into prayer for the dead and lapsed children, anchored in 2 Maccabees 12 and the Book of Baruch, and Deacon Don shares a deeply moving story: going to confession the day after a young friend’s sudden death, asking the priest to receive his apology to God on the young man’s behalf, and then hearing clearly in prayer after Communion: “His parents’ prayers have saved him.”

L'articolo The Healing Power of the Sacraments – Role Models of Temperance – Deacon Don and Aidan Byrne proviene da Radio Maria.