About the show

Thoughts from the Trailer is a weekly blog from ACTS XXIX (https://www.actsxxix.org/trailer)
This podcast is the audio version of those articles.

If you are blessed by our podcast, and wish to support us, please click https://www.actsxxix.org/give

Thoughts from the Trailer with Fr. John Riccardo on social media

Episodes

  • Episode 113: Faith Is Not Blind

    March 26th, 2025  |  7 mins 9 secs
    acts xxix, actsxxix, encouragement, faith, fr. john riccardo, hope, inspiration, mission, prayer, reflections, weekly

    Like the blind man who encounters Jesus in the Gospel this Sunday (cf. John 9:1-41), baptism moves us from blindness to sight, and from darkness to light. Those who refuse to believe, who refuse to honestly examine what God has done for us in Jesus, remain in darkness and blindness. And out of love, we should be eager to bear credible witness to them by our words and actions of the difference Jesus makes so that they too might walk in the light and come to know this astounding truth that is increasingly necessary in a lonely and anxious culture: God is Love, and the object of that love…is each one of us.

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    Episode 112: The Promise Keeper

    March 19th, 2025  |  6 mins 32 secs
    acts xxix, actsxxix, encouragement, faith, fr. john riccardo, hope, inspiration, mission, prayer, reflections, weekly

    As He did with Abraham, God is asking you and me again today to put our trust in Him, and perhaps especially for things we cannot yet see.

  • Episode 111: What Makes a Good Citizen?

    March 12th, 2025  |  7 mins 29 secs
    acts xxix, actsxxix, encouragement, faith, fr. john riccardo, hope, inspiration, mission, prayer, reflections, weekly

    As we continue these early stages of our Lenten journey, let’s seriously consider where our identity is truly found, where our ultimate allegiance really lies, and how we can today advance the Kingdom of God by the joyful and beautiful power of attraction.

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    Episode 110: You Can Come Home Now

    March 5th, 2025  |  11 mins 53 secs
    acts xxix, actsxxix, encouragement, faith, fr. john riccardo, hope, inspiration, mission, prayer, reflections, weekly

    Lent is a great opportunity to ponder again the story, the narrative arc of history, if you will. Doing so allows us the chance to reflect on God’s intention in bringing everything into being in the first place, what the conclusion will be, and what our role as disciples is until that day.

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    Episode 109: “Your Labor Is Not in Vain”

    February 26th, 2025  |  7 mins 42 secs
    acts xxix, actsxxix, encouragement, faith, fr. john riccardo, hope, inspiration, mission, prayer, reflections, weekly

    In these days of Eucharistic revival in the Church, we are continually being invited to consider why the Lord gives Himself to us at Mass hidden under the appearance of bread and wine.

  • Episode 108: Do We Know the Story?

    February 19th, 2025  |  6 mins 25 secs
    acts xxix, actsxxix, encouragement, faith, fr. john riccardo, hope, inspiration, mission, prayer, reflections, weekly

    Paul’s proclamation, and the message of the New Testament, is the announcement that Jesus is the true King of the world; that by His death on the cross He has defeated (and one day will destroy) the enemies of the human race; that He has rescued us for the world — not from it; that you and I are now personally being summoned to lovingly and gratefully pledge Him our loyalty and allegiance as our rightful King; and until the day He returns and makes all things new (cf. Rev 21:5), we are to live our lives in such a way as to be both working models of His recreation and active agents in His hands, doing all we can to reconcile, restore and recreate this world that God loves.

  • Episode 107: Why Would Anyone Want To Live Forever?

    February 12th, 2025  |  10 mins 26 secs
    acts xxix, actsxxix, encouragement, faith, fr. john riccardo, hope, inspiration, mission, prayer, reflections, weekly

    In this great Jubilee Year of Hope, I have found myself rereading Pope Benedict XVI’s rich letter on hope from 2007. The words of Saint Paul this week remind me of a passage that I find very provocative as we not only consider the Lord’s resurrection but the life to come which Paul emphatically preaches. I pray you, too, will find it worth praying with this week.

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    Episode 106: Used to the Magnificent?

    February 5th, 2025  |  6 mins 5 secs
    acts xxix, actsxxix, encouragement, faith, fr. john riccardo, hope, inspiration, mission, prayer, reflections, weekly

    Paul reminds us in another letter that this laying down of Jesus’ life wasn’t some generic sacrifice offered up by the Creator of the universe but rather was a personal act of love for him, Paul, by name. “I have been crucified with Christ,” Paul writes to the Galatians. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

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    Episode 105: Playing Catch Up

    January 29th, 2025  |  4 mins 38 secs
    acts xxix, actsxxix, encouragement, faith, fr. john riccardo, hope, inspiration, mission, prayer, reflections, weekly

    Paul is for me the best example of a man whose psychology caught up with his ontology when he wrote, “For me, life is Christ and death is gain” (Phil 1:21). Gain! In other words, so long as we live, we will do so for the glory of God and the good of our neighbor. But death need not frighten us. It has no power over us. What’s up head is infinitely greater than all that is behind....

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    Episode 104: Can Unity Really Happen?

    January 22nd, 2025  |  9 mins 18 secs
    acts xxix, actsxxix, encouragement, faith, fr. john riccardo, hope, inspiration, mission, prayer, reflections, weekly

    “You are Christ’s body,” Paul says. This is not an image. It’s a reality. In baptism we personally became members of Jesus’ body. His body has many parts, and so we are united not only to Him but to each other through our unity with Him. It cannot be otherwise. When we receive the Eucharist too, we are united not only to Him but to each other. This is unlike anything the world can conceive or do.

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    Episode 103: There Are No Bystanders!

    January 15th, 2025  |  7 mins 52 secs
    acts xxix, actsxxix, encouragement, faith, fr. john riccardo, hope, inspiration, mission, prayer, reflections, weekly

    The truth is that our communities need us all to contribute; everyone needs to step up. As my Archbishop, Allen Vigneron of Detroit puts it, “There are no bystanders in the Church” — and no consumers.

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    Episode 102: Mother of God, Teach Us to Trust!

    January 1st, 2025  |  10 mins 9 secs
    acts xxix, actsxxix, encouragement, faith, fr. john riccardo, hope, inspiration, mission, prayer, reflections, weekly

    Trust is something that, if we’re honest, we all desperately need. Not trust that God will answer our prayers the way we think best. Trust that He is good, faithful, and knows what He’s doing, especially when we don’t know what He’s doing.