By Amy White
The Texas Catholic
More than 80 young adults from the Diocese of Dallas and across the United States joined the hosts of the “Godsplaining” podcast on March 21-23 at the St. Raphael Retreat Center for the first Dallas-based Godsplaining Young Adult Retreat.
Hosted by five Dominican friars of the Province of St. Joseph, “Godsplaining” is a popular Catholic podcast that explores life’s big questions through the lens of the Catholic faith and in the context of fraternal friendship. The podcast has found success since its launch in 2019, reaching audiences around the country with its quintessential Dominican blend of intellect and humor.
Since the podcast’s inception, the friars had planned for the Godsplaining project to reach beyond the digital world and into the physical one, podcast host Father Patrick Briscoe, O.P., shared.
“Our intention was always to help Catholics build community,” he said. “So, we began our apostolate as a digital project, but we knew that we wanted to give that community legs, to build bonds of friendship so that it could be incarnate.”
The Godsplaining project now includes Day of Recollection events and young adult, all comer’s, and men’s retreats across the country: in New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Ohio, among other states. The Dallas retreat this March was the first Godsplaining event hosted in Texas.
“When I heard that they were coming to Dallas — which it’s not often that they can come all the way down south — I was so excited to be able to see them,” Ada Mora, a St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church parishioner who attended the retreat, said. “To have these wonderful friars come to visit us here is so exciting, to be able to share (our state) with them and be proud of where we’re from.”
Bonds of friendship
During the Dallas retreat, “Godsplaining” hosts Father Briscoe, Father Gregory Pine, O.P., Father Bonaventure Chapman, O.P., and Father Joseph-Anthony Kress , O.P., invited retreatants to enter a period of prayer and community expressive of the friars’ own Dominican way of life. Retreatants recited the Liturgy of the Hours, prayed the Dominican rite Mass, and bowed their heads for a concluding Dominican blessing. In witness to the fraternal life of the Dominican order, the retreat also included occasions for fellowship among the retreatants.
“Dominican friars operate as community. We joke that it takes five Dominicans to do what one diocesan priest can do, and that’s because one of the primary things we witness is our fraternal life,” Father Briscoe said. “We want people to make lasting friendships, so they know they’re not alone in their life of faith and that they have resources among peers, but also for them to have a confidence in the order, in the Dominican way of life, and ultimately a love for the Church.”
The friars also invited the retreatants to participate in live recordings of their podcast during the retreat. Madison Ohman, a frequent “Godsplaining” listener from Oklahoma, said listening to the podcast hosts during the Dallas retreat allowed her the opportunity to receive the fruits of their Dominican spirituality.
“Dominicans, I think, minister to me very well, my intellect first and then beauty and goodness,” she said. “Their whole apostolate is learning and preaching; and so, it’s a gift. I think they’re doing wonderful things in the Church at large.”
‘Closer to the Cross’
Based on Louis Chardon’s “The Cross of Jesus,” the theme of the Dallas retreat was “Closer to the Cross,” an exploration of the mysteries of Christ’s passion and the meaning of sacrifice. Heriberto Haros, a parishioner at the National Shrine Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe, said that delving into this theme with the friars over the course of the retreat allowed him to enter into Christ’s passion in a deeper way.
“It was a true blessing just to be able to take a step back, look at how we can get closer to the cross, and understand it and meditate on it more through this time of Lent,” Haros said. “It gave more fruits and more spiritual blessings to see the cross not as a stumbling block or something that came up and interrupted Christ’s life, but to fully understand that from His incarnation, He set His face towards the cross.”
Richardson retreatant Chris Landry remarked that, after the retreat, he will continue to reflect on how to embrace the crosses in his own life with intentionality and love.
“How can I not just take on that burden and bear it begrudgingly,” Landry asked, “but also enter into it with a loving disposition for Christ and for the people that I love?”
At the conclusion of the retreat, Father Pine, one of the “Godsplaining” hosts who led the Dallas event, said that he hoped the retreatants would leave with a renewed sense of the joy that can be found in cooperation with God’s divine will.
“The big thing that I’m always trying to communicate is that God knows you and loves you, and you can know and love God,” Father Pine said, “and that while that is difficult in many regards — while human life itself feels like a bit of a slog — yet there is joy to be found in conformity to Christ and in the partaking of Trinitarian communion, which faith and sacraments facilitate.”
Cutline for featured image: Retreatants at the first Texas-based Godsplaining Young Adult Retreat, hosted at the St. Raphael Retreat Center in Dallas March 21-23, bow their heads to receive a Dominican blessing following celebration of Mass March 23.
