In this special edition of All Things Catholic, the Sri family shares a special Christmas and New Year’s message accompanied by some beautiful music!

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Where did the first Christmas really take place? Dr. Sri unpacks the story of Christ’s birth, offering us biblical insights into the context of his birth and explaining the significance of Christ entering this world as a fragile and vulnerable infant.

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How do we discern God’s will for our lives? Whether it’s contemplating a big move, asking someone on a date, or accepting a job offer, we all face moments in life when desire to know the will of God for our lives. Dr. Sri takes us through a foundational moment in his life when he had to make an important choice and offers us three key insights on how to discern the will God in our lives.

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Discernment often involves wrestling with God, learning to surrender, and discovering our own desires, attachments, and fears. 

How much did the Blessed Virgin Mary know about Jesus? Dr. Sri reflects on a popular Christmas song that challenges us to think about whether Mary knew that Jesus was the Savior of the world. Dr. Sri explains how Mary’s familiarity with Scripture prepared her to understand that Jesus was the fulfillment of all the prophecies of the old testament.

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Mary’s mind was so deeply immersed in Scripture that she was able to identify the incarnation of Christ as the great crescendo of the story of salvation.

What does it mean to prepare the way of the Lord? Dr. Sri explains how we can use this Advent season to prepare the way of the Lord by growing in virtue so we can give ourselves as a gift of love to God and to others.

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The Advent season offers us an opportunity to meet Christ in a transformative way so he can fill the valleys in our souls and straighten our path to salvation.

It can be easy for us to rush into the joy and excitement of Christmas without truly living the Advent season. Dr. Sri offers us three simple and essential ways to prayerfully enter into the season of Advent.

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Advent is the season when we patiently wait for the Lord and prayerfully meditate on the great gift of his birth.

Imagine a throne at the very core of your heart, who is sitting on that throne, you or Christ? As we approach the great feast of Christ the King, Dr. Sri invites us to acknowledge the kingship of Christ by kneeling before his throne, surrendering our whole lives to him, and letting him reign in our hearts.

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“Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ- and you will find true life.” ~ Pope Benedict XVI

What does it mean to be true to yourself? Dr. Sri unpacks Adele’s new hit song, Easy On Me, and explains how this popular song expresses an inverted definition of personal happiness. Although we are all tempted to find happiness within our own feelings, Dr. Sri reminds us that true happiness is found when we live for God and for others.

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“We find our identity and purpose not in an inward quest of our own feelings, but rather, in an outward quest that leads us to love God and those he has placed right in front of us.”

It’s easy for a Christian to feel like an outsider in today’s secular age. Dr. Sri draws our attention to the early Christian martyrs and reveals how they can inspire us in our walk with the Lord. We learn that the secret of these martyrs wasn’t necessarily their extraordinary strength, but rather, it was their passionate love for Christ.

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“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

As the Catholic Church gets ready to celebrate All Saints Day, Dr. Sri reminds us that this great solemnity is not just about remembering those great canonized saints, it’s also about recognizing all those unknown holy men and women who faithfully followed Jesus throughout the ages. Dr. Sri invites to reflect how God may be calling us to be saints and to love extraordinarily in our ordinary circumstances.

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On All Saints Day we remember all the holy women and men, both canonized and unknown, who loved God and others extraordinarily in their ordinary circumstances.

Have you ever been accused by friends, family, or acquaintances of being judgmental or intolerant because you believe that some things are right and some things are wrong? Try this response tactic to flip the conversation around and start challenging the relativism that pervades today’s culture.

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“When someone accuses you of intolerance, don’t be afraid to push back and start asking questions. If you let the other person do the explaining, it will become clearer and clearer that relativism is completely illogical, and he or she might start wondering if there’s a better lens through which to view reality.”

Feeling overwhelmed in parenting can often be a discouraging experience. Today, Dr. Sri and his wife share openly about the struggle of parenting, and how parents can turn to God in those hard moments when they are tempted to feel disappointed in themselves.

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Parents often feel unseen in their struggle raising their kids, but in the eyes of God, every loving effort of a parent is seen by him and precious to him.

Do you ever feel like you have nothing left to give? There are seasons in our lives when we feel like we have nothing left to give to God, to our relationships, or to our jobs. Today, Dr. Sri encourages us to see our nothingness as an opportunity to meet God in humility.

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When we have nothing left to give, we can turn to God, knowing that he can take our nothingness and turn it into something beautiful.

St.Thérèse of Lisieux spent ten years trying to overcome her deep seated weakness- her sensitivity and inability to control her emotions. Today, Dr. Sri reveals what we can learn from this beautiful saint’s example as we struggle with our own inability to change and overcome our own faults.

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“The work I had been unable to do in ten years was done by Jesus in one instant.” ~ St. Thérèse of Lisieux

What was it about Padre Pio that made him so extraordinary? Dr. Sri gives us an insight into the holiness of Padre Pio, and the secret to his incredible life.

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My past, O Lord, to your Mercy; my present, to your Love; my future, to your Providence! ~ Padre Pio

Why do Catholics exalt the Cross? Today, the Church celebrates the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Dr. Sri explains the history behind this great feast day, and how the Cross reveals the love of Christ and teaches us to lean on our heavenly Father in times of suffering.

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Jesus didn’t go to the Cross so we wouldn’t have to, he went to the Cross, so he could live his perfect gift of self giving love in us and through us.

Have you ever wondered what it would have been like for Mary to receive her first Holy Communion? Dr. Sri invites us to reflect on the mystery of that moment, and explains the profound connection between Mary carrying Jesus in her womb and a person receiving Communion.

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“For Mary, receiving the Eucharist must have somehow meant welcoming once more into her womb that heart which had beat in unison with hers.” – St. John Paul II

Who was the Roman Centurion who said, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you”? What makes his words so remarkable that they amazed Jesus and now precede the most important moment in Mass—the reception of Jesus’ body into our own bodies? Dr. Sri reveals how this surprising figure of faith and humility models the way we should approach our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in Holy Communion—and in all that we do.

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At every Mass, Jesus invites us to be his bride in the mystical wedding supper of the lamb. Today, Dr. Sri unpacks the biblical significance of the image of the wedding supper of the lamb mentioned in the book Revelation, and helps us see Christ as the bridegroom of our souls.

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“Every Mass is a mystical marital union with our Lord Jesus Christ, the bridegroom of our souls.”

Do you easily get anxious about the concerns of this world, or about the future? Drawing from the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, Dr. Sri breaks down the roots of an anxious heart, and how we can overcome anxiety so we can live in Jesus’ peace.

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There are two demons that keep us from living in the present moment. The demon that reminds us of our past and fills our hearts with regrets, and the demon of “what if?”, that fills us with fear about the future.

Following through with our decisions can often feel overwhelming and paralyzing. Dr. Sri teaches us today about the virtue of decisiveness, and how God wants us to set us free from the fears that hold us back from committing to our decisions.

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“Our indecisiveness often keeps us from living in God’s peace.”

How do we learn to make decisions we won’t regret? Dr. Sri teaches us about the virtue of prudence, and why this virtue is so important when it comes to making good decisions that orient us towards love and goodness.

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“Prudence is the foundational virtue because it directs and guides all of the other cardinal virtues.“

How can we possibly learn to love like Christ? Today, Dr. Sri shares a powerful story about how reading Thomas Aquinas’ work on the virtues changed his life and helped him to love his wife, his family, and God the way he truly desired.

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“Aquinas provides a beautiful vision for the virtuous life, and a roadmap for how to grow in it. His treatment of the virtues is so inspiring, through it we see the beauty of an integrated human person.”

Pope Benedict XVI once said that we have lost the “art of living,” but what does that really mean? Today, Dr. Sri dives into what it means to rediscover the art of living, and how we can pass it on to our friends, family, and loved ones. The world likes to tell us that the highest form of enlightenment is thinking for ourselves and ridding our lives of traditions, but in doing so we’re also ridding them from the teachings of the Church, and of the summation of our faith.

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The secular world likes to tell us that we can pave our own way through life, only using our own resources and making our own truths, but by living according to our own judgement we are blocked off to the classical roots of our faith and what this life is meant to be.