I am so excited to share Saint Peter Eymard with you today! Join me as Joe Valentic shares his journey with this Saint and the story of his beautiful apostolate.
About Joe:
Joe Valentic is a Catholic entrepreneur, author, and apostolate leader. He has a passion for sharing the Catholic faith and for helping people to integrate their faith into all areas of their life to achieve their full God given potential.
Joe has over 30 years of business experience and over 19 years of Catholic apostolate experience. He has served in the community in multiple board and executive roles for Catholic and pro-life organizations. He currently serves as the volunteer Chairman of Alliance Catholic Credit Union and the President of the board of Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament Apostolate.
Joe is blessed to be married for 32 years. He and his wife have 7 children with us and 2 with the Lord. They also have 4 grandchildren. Joe lives in metro Detroit and has been blessed to be engaged with multiple parishes.
Tonight we attended Mass at the church in Lake Jackson, where the Lord showed me my word of the year for 2022. The scaffolding is gone and the antennae tower stands tall outside of the window. I smiled when I realized what I was looking for outside of the window.
It may be the most unusual word I’ve ever had for my word of the year. And it may also be the most meaningful. Visual reminders throughout the past two years kept me seeking and quiet, trying to understand what He was showing me though scaffolding.
In Assisi – my very first overseas trip to Italy, the summer of 2022.
I kept the word in 2023, feeling that I still had much more to learn.
At our home parish – St. Philip the Apostle – on the day of Mary Alice’s first communion.
In New York, when we visited Julia.
And inside my parents’ home as they replaced their roof. A tornado sent a tree into my parent’s roof. They weren’t home. They were at my home watching my children while we were on our pilgrimage this summer to Belgium. Glass and drywall covered my mother’s recliner, but she wasn’t there. This incredibly practical word unfolded over the past two years into something poetic.
Scaffolding is to be temporary. It is not to be a replacement for permanence.
In Assisi, it was a kind reminder that our time away from home was fleeting but full of meaning and lessons and growth.
In New York, the scaffolding seemed to be a permanent part of everyday life. As if people were thankful that it kept them dry in the rain and shaded from the hot sun, offering a fast solution for the needs of those who lived there.
At our parish, it was the huge red bow placed on the church to remind me that Jesus was there with us. The scaffolding was a very loud ‘hello’ from Heaven, celebrating the Eucharist and our community.
At my parents’ home, scaffolding became a reminder of God’s faithfulness after months of wrestling with the insurance company, sincerely wondering if my parents would ever have a new roof again. The presence of scaffolding signaled that what the tornado destroyed would become new in His time.
Strong and sturdy, straight and purposeful.
Are we to become scaffolding? Are we going to be the ones who support each other temporarily while we rebuild?
When grief comes spilling out and we cannot stand.
When we reach the end of our paycheck and we search for a way to fill our car with gas.
When our bodies need mending and we are suddenly unable.
We our mind fills with worry and we can’t see when it will ever be okay.
When we question why we are here and what we believe.
In these times, I pray you have a friend that steps in and becomes your scaffolding. I pray you have the faith to be salt and light in the dark times.
You may remember Nicole from our episode on St. Francis de Sales. After we finished recording that episode, we had a beautiful chat about Our Lady of Guadalupe and I knew she just had to come back to tell us all about it!
Join me as I talk with Nicole about her special experience with Our Lady of Guadalupe!
I had the privilege of speaking to Belinda Terro Mooney this past week!
As soon as we started talking, her calming presence and sincere love for Jesus touched my heart in a profound way. This episode is a little longer than the usual podcast episode, so be sure and carve out a little special time for you to really enjoy her love and teaching of the church.
We talk about St. Gertrude the Great and so many more wonderful saints! In true tripping over the saints’ fashion, listen in as another Saint is trying to get our attention!
Have a wonderful day friends! May you come to know the Saints who are praying for you on your journey.
About Belinda:
I love to serve by writing, teaching, training, and speaking at conferences. I’ve had experience as an adjunct professor in human services or social work at three different colleges (Georgia State University, Oglethorpe, and Lone Star College Montgomery). I’ve helped develop an addictions course at Belmont Abbey College. I have been a licensed professional social worker and addictions counselor for over 15 years, having worked in educational, hospital, and clinical environments. My specialized clinical experience is in addictions, group therapy, and case management. I owned my own business training other professionals in addictions, self-care, and ethics and speaking at local, state, regional, and national conferences. I have been blessed to be able to home educate my seven children over the last 28 years and to write articles and speak at Home Education conferences. I have taught human services classes at Lone Star College Montgomery. My workbook to help plan self care and prevent burnout. My Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes Workbook: Creating a Comprehensive Plan for a Calm, Ordered Life can be seen on my website: www.tlcwellnessinstitute.com
I am writing a Catholic edition of the workbook. Praying with the Saints on their Feast Days (tentative title) to be published by OSV. more books to be published soon. I love my faith and hope that all I have done will give glory to God.
I recently had the absolute joy of speaking with Daniel McInerny!
Join me as he shares the beautiful way that St. John Henry Cardinal Newman asked to be his friend.
About Daniel:
Daniel McInerny is a novelist and dramatist as well as associate professor and chair of the philosophy department at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia.
In March 2023 Chrism Press published his novel, The Good Death of Kate Montclair, which his fellow Catholic novelist Maya Sinha has called “an instant classic of 21st-century Catholic fiction.”
The Good Death of Kate Montclairdepicts a brave woman in midlife struggling to come to terms with a terminal diagnosis by joining an apparently innocent death discussion group (loosely modeled after the contemporary phenomenon of The Death Café). It is a suspenseful, heartbreaking, topical, and often humorous story set in Washington, D.C./Northern Virginia during COVID Year 2020, with flashbacks to the Italy of the 1980s, told from Kate Montclair’s present tense POV. The book deals with one of our culture’s most hotly contested issues, euthanasia, as well as with the themes of conscience as an argument for God’s existence, and bespoke spirituality and ritual in our contemporary world.
Acclaimed Catholic poet James Matthew Wilson has said the following of the novel:
“Daniel McInerny brings us a novel of characters flirting with the temptation to be their own author only to discover the plot of their lives is not up to them. This is a book of and for our dreary moment but one which reminds us that a good story brings serious pleasure and joyful wisdom to transform even the darkest of ages.”
As a scholar Daniel is foremost interested in retrieving an Aristotelian understanding of mimetic art, long out of favor among philosophers. In June 2024 Word on Fire Academic will bring out his scholarly monograph, The Way of Beauty: A Philosophical Reflection on the Arts. Early reviews of the book have said the following:
“This is literally the best book on beauty that I have ever read: the most convincing, clear, and comprehensive; the most eye-opening and satisfying; the most insightful and delightful. It is a masterpiece. I do not use that word lightly, but there is no other word for it.”
–Dr. Peter Kreeft, Professor of Philosophy, Boston College, and author of Socrates’ Children (Word on Fire 2023)
“Daniel McInerny’s book clarifies why we enjoy works of art—pictures, music, drama and movies, poetry and novels—and it also shows why we revere such works: not as ends in themselves, but because they place us in the truthful presence of what they depict. The book reactivates Aristotle’s understanding of mimesis and Aquinas’s enhancement of it. It shows how art elevates what it displays as well as the community that experiences it. It is a metaphysical and theological reflection on the arts, written in the style and spirit of C. S. Lewis: limpid prose, abundant citations, colorful examples. A book to study and learn from, then to browse in and enjoy.”
—Msgr. Robert Sokolowski, Elizabeth Breckenridge Caldwell Professor of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America
At Christendom College Daniel teaches courses on the Philosophy of Art & Beauty, the Philosophy of Technology, the Philosophy of Culture, and Ethics & Imagination.
He received his BA in English from the University of Notre Dame (1986) and his PhD in philosophy from The Catholic University of America (1994). He has taught and worked at various universities in the United States, including a stint as associate director of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture, now called the DeNicola Center for Ethics and Culture, at the University of Notre Dame (2003-09). He has taught at Christendom College since the fall of 2019.
Daniel is also the author of three books in the humorous Kingdom of Patria series for middle grade readers, as well as a play, The Actor, on the early life and wartime dramatic activities of Karol Wojtyla, the man who would become Saint John Paul II, which will premiere at Christendom College in the fall of 2024.
He also writes the Substack newsletter, The Comic Muse, where he shares weekly reflections on philosophy, the arts, technology, and culture.
Daniel is a native of South Bend, Indiana. He is the youngest child of the late Ralph McInerny, revered philosopher at the University of Notre Dame for over fifty years, and best known by many as the author of the beloved Father Dowling series of mystery novels.
Daniel and his wife Amy have three grown children and one preternaturally adorable grandchild, and they live in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
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