Electric Prayer

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Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati and Blessed Carlo Acutis were canonised by Pope Leo on 7 September, and the podcast of that date tells you more about these new saints (you can find a link to it below). They will be a ‘saint for me’ for some people who, looking at the calendar of saints, can’t see anyone who could be their ‘friend in heaven’. But even for the rest of us, their lives have a lot in them to teach us and inspire us. I wish I had been able to be like Frassati in my early twenties, but I didn’t even know it was possible. Is it too late now? No, with God nothing is too late.

Universalis and Catholic Calendar

People sometimes get mixed up between Universalis and Catholic Calendar. They are essentially the same app, but paid for differently.

• Universalis is a single purchase. It costs £9.99 or your equivalent. It works on one kind of device: on iPhone/iPad, or Android, or Amazon tablets.
• Catholic Calendar (which is free) plus a monthly subscription gives you the same as Universalis. Some people prefer a monthly subscription rather than a single purchase.
• Catholic Calendar plus a registration code, bought from us, gives you the same as Universalis. The code costs £19.99, but you can use one and the same registration code on iPhone/iPad, Android, Amazon, Mac and Windows.

You can read about the apps here.

The Litany of Loreto

The Litany of Loreto is new this month. This litany to Our Lady is one that some people sing at the end of the Rosary: either every day or on special occasions. Thanks to the efforts of a kind and musical family, you can now listen to it, sung in Latin, when you listen to the Rosary in the Universalis apps on iPhone/iPad and Android. You can choose how to do it. You can sit back and listen and let the music carry you along into meditation, or you can read each line, highlighted on the screen, as you hear it sung.

Here is a complete table of the features of Universalis plus all its various optional add-ons.

An upcoming event

The Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark is holding its annual Day for Catechists on Saturday 20 September, and I have been asked to give the keynote address, on ‘The Creed is our Bones’. Pray for me!

I will do my best to arrange some sort of recording of the talk, but I am only a guest so I can’t tell exactly what will happen.

The weekly podcasts

Here are the episodes which have come out since the last newsletter. You can listen by clicking on the link. Each is around 20 minutes long.

24 August: The end of the world and the Day of the Lord. Zephaniah and how to read a prophet. ‘Whom the Lord loveth, he chastiseth.’ Saint Louis. St John Chrysostom. Saints Monica and Augustine. Our Lady of Częstochowa (and Hilaire Belloc).

31 August: Confirmation, catechesis and the Creed. “I” and “we” revisited. Saint Gregory the Great; bishops as icebergs (most of what they do is below the surface). Mother Teresa and why people hate her. More saints to hate! Differing views of judgement. The Litany of Loreto.

7 September: Saints, Blesseds, and canonisation. Our relationship with the saints. Blessed (soon to be Saint) Pier Giorgio Frassati and Blessed (soon to be Saint) Carlo Acutis. Saint Peter Claver.

14 September: Faith: more than a theological virtue. Hope: a hard virtue. The civilised martyrdom of St Cyprian. The Korean martyrs: “I am”.

More than ten thousand people listen to the podcast, from all over the world. Some of them even use it as an opportunity to have their whole family gather and listen together, and talk about God afterwards. For the podcaster, that is pretty humbling! Whatever it is that God is doing through the podcast, may he continue to do it.

If you haven’t listened yet, do. If you have, and you like it, tell all your friends.

• Here is a link to the Podcasts page. You will find all the podcasts listed there. There are almost 80 of them by now.
• You can also find links to Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube at the bottom of this newsletter.
• If you don’t want to have to send your friends a link, tell them to go to the home page at universalis.com and they’ll find a Podcasts button at the top right.
• And apart from all that, all the Universalis apps and programs will show an alert in the About Today page whenever a new podcast is ready.

New podcast episodes come out on Friday or Saturday each week.

Thank you all for using Universalis. If you have trouble or questions, or suggestions, do write to us at universalis@universalis.com or use the Contact Us button in one of the apps. Let us all keep one another in our prayers, as always.