I’m really tempted to open by saying that this episode it is about teaching your children how to die. Now I’m not saying that; all I’m saying is that I thought about saying that so you know it was an option. Why might I have said that? Because, as my guest will share, guiding your children toward the rest and surrender of sleep is, in the grand view, a preparation for death, and even more, of placing your whole self into the hands of God.

So maybe I should start again by saying this episode is about teaching your children to place themselves into the hands of God. That sounds nicer. It is also true because this episode is about introducing children to the basic rhythm of the Church’s night prayer, known as compline. And my guest has written for us a profoundly abbreviated and developmentally appropriate little book for just that purpose.

My friend Bo Bonner is a teacher, speaker, radio host, poet, husband of one and father of five, but he is also a Benedictine Oblate at Clear Creek Abbey in Oklahoma. What he and his artist collaborate have created is a book for children to pray with that brings them into the wisdom and the discipline of Church’s life, as it is mostly subtly and brilliantly expressed in the monastery, in the keeping of liturgical hours. That’s what this episode is about … but it is also really does have to do with teaching your children how to die because it is shaping them in how to live in Christ.

Follow-up Resources:

• A Very Little Office of Compline: Night Prayer for Children, by Bo Bonner, illustrated by Gwyneth Thompson-Briggs
• “You Gotta Confront What You Are!” by Travis Lacy, article via Church Life Journal
• The Church Communications Ecology Program (CCEP) from the McGrath Institute for Church Life, where Bo was a participant in 2022

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

Every fall, the McGrath Institute for Church Life hosts the wildly popular “Saturdays with the Saints” lecture series. For one hour on the morning of Notre Dame home football games, a scholar typically from Notre Dame delivers a public lecture on a saint. The room is always full and, in fact, there are auxiliary rooms to hold the overflow crowd. People who gather on campus for football games apparently also really want to learn about the saints. We’ve been hosting this series for 15 years now, and this year we focused on “Saints of the Sacred Heart.”

I want to offer you, our dear listeners, a little taste of this series through our humble podcast. In episodes to come, I’ll talk with some of the lecturers from the 2025 series about the saint of the Sacred Heart that they themselves spoke on. But it is hard to do that with the presenter from the first lecture in this year’s series because that lecturer is me. So, here’s what I’m doing today. I am going to deliver my lecture here, on our podcast. I’ll link in the show notes the few slides I included, but otherwise you will hear what the audience at Saturdays with the Saints heard.

My saint was St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, specifically as the saint who ushered in the rebirth of the devotion to the Sacred Heart in the modern world. I hope you enjoy.

Follow-up Resources:

• The slides that accompanied this lecture are available here.
• Learn more about the “Saturdays with the Saints” series: https://mcgrath.nd.edu/events/saturdays-with-the-saints/
• “Dilexit Nos – Part 1, a conversation with Joshua McManaway and Melissa Moschella” (about Pope Francis’s encyclical on the Sacred Heart of Jesus), podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Dilexit Nos – Part 2, a conversation with Brett Robinson and Abigail Favale” (about Pope Francis’s encyclical on the Sacred Heart of Jesus), podcast episode via Church Life Today

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

What if a university included among its common learning goals for its students, cultivating the practice of disciplined attention and becoming active participants in your holistic formation? That would mean, I suppose, that such a university would be interested and invested in not just what their graduates could do or produce, but also in who they become. Such an education would value the education of the heart alongside and integrated with the education of the mind. This would go a long way toward giving a fresh, persuasive response to the increasingly pressing questions of what is college really for and is it really worth it.

These two learning goals – cultivating the practicing of disciplined attention and becoming active participants in your holistic formation – are in fact the stated goals of the newly launched first-year seminar at the University of Notre Dame. This is a course that every single Notre Dame student takes in their first semester of college, in a seminar setting comprised of 19 students, one instructor, and one peer leader. It is called the Moreau First-Year Seminar, named after the founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross, Blessed Basil Moreau. The seminar seeks to give students a common entry point for their collegiate education, an education that takes seriously the responsibility and privilege of pursuing a life well-lived.

Joining me today to talk about this vision of education and the challenging project of creating a common yet substantive seminar for all undergraduate students is my friend and colleague, Professor Bill Mattison. Bill serves as the academic director of the Moreau Program, in addition to his role as Wilsey College Professor of moral theology and ethics.

Follow-up Resources:

• Learn more about the Moreau First-Year Seminar at https://moreaufirstyear.nd.edu/
• “In Search of a Full Life,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Forming an Intentional College Culture, with Joe Wurtz,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Becoming the Adult in the Room, with Sarah Pelrine,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “There is no such thing as winning at life, with Elizabeth Klein,” podcast episode via Church Life Today

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.