Dear Padre

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Pastoral reflection for a Good Friday world.

The gist

Dear Padre turns Sunday readings into pastoral commentary on resurrection, suffering, authority, shame, and hope. Its sermons move from Episcopal worship and biblical scenes into skating rinks, Army counseling, marathons, food banks, and family memories.

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About Dear Padre

Dear Padre is a Christian reflection show built around sermon-length meditations on scripture, worship, and the moral pressure of ordinary life. It is warm, but not soft. The speaker often begins with a Gospel reading or church season, then lets the passage widen into personal memory, pastoral concern, and cultural observation. Easter becomes a way to speak about death, funerals, childhood loss, and the fragile belief that resurrection is more than a seasonal word. Maundy Thursday becomes a test of leadership. Foot washing is not treated as a quaint ritual, but as a picture of authority that gets its hands dirty before it presides at the table. Palm Sunday moves from celebration to desperation, turning Hosanna into a human cry for rescue. Nicodemus becomes a figure for the conversations people avoid until night, when reputation, fear, and longing start telling the truth. The Samaritan woman is approached with care, with her relational history named but not made into the most important thing about her. A healing story lingers over parents, a grown son, dependence, and the intimate distance between a newborn child and a mother's face. The wilderness temptation is read through depletion, running, injury, shame, and the old lie that a person is not who God says they are. The show is openly Episcopal in its references to Eucharist, Sunday resurrection worship, parish life, and Holy Week practice. It is also shaped by Army chaplaincy, war memory, counseling, veterans, and the speaker's habit of translating theology through embodied experience. Its humor is modest and self-aware. Its gravity is real. Death, institutional failure, food insecurity, suffering, and spiritual despair are not treated as abstractions. They become the terrain where Christian hope has to prove its weight. Dear Padre is most compelling when it refuses easy answers while still speaking from conviction. The Bible here is not a puzzle box for clever interpretation. It is a living frame for grief, courage, authority, and love. Listeners looking for tidy inspiration may find it too searching. Listeners drawn to pastoral reflection with theological backbone will find a show that keeps circling the same hard claim: Good Friday is real, but it is not final.

Made for: For listeners drawn to Christian reflection, Episcopal worship, sermon craft, and faith that speaks honestly about grief, shame, institutions, and hope. It especially suits people who want theology grounded in lived experience rather than detached commentary.

What sets it apart: Dear Padre stands apart through its blend of Army chaplain memory, Episcopal sacramental life, and candid personal storytelling. It turns biblical passages into pastoral field notes on bodies, families, leadership, suffering, and resurrection.

In their own words

When I was an Army chaplain, my soldiers asked me all kinds of wild questions. They also called me “Padre.”

As heard by us

Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026

Dear Padre pairs close biblical teaching with candid reflections on suffering, forgiveness, institutional religion, and the stubborn practice of hope.

Dear Padre turns biblical passages into sermons that keep one foot in church tradition and the other in ordinary strain. The host moves from Nicodemus, Lazarus, and the Beatitudes to difficult conversations, forgiveness, poverty, and institutional failure.

Read our full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A kilt opens the sermon; your comfortable faith may need to find another seat.

Press play if you want

biblical stories that make you reconsider the distance between your table and someone else's hunger
room for grief and resurrection hope without pretending one cancels the other

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

resurrection and Holy WeekEpiscopal worship and Eucharistdifficult conversationsservant leadershipdeath, grief, and hopeArmy chaplain experienceshame and spiritual identityinstitutional church critique

Talks about

Religion & Spirituality Christianity

Best episodes of Dear Padre

Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.

Under Cover of DarknessMar 2, 2026

Nicodemus, difficult conversations, and a sermon about courage under scrutiny.

Dear Padre treats Nicodemus as a study in the conversations people dodge, from money to fear to the risk of being seen. It opens with Esther and Bishop K.

Burning, but not consumedNov 9, 2025

A wide-ranging sermon that ties grief, institutions, and resurrection hope into one steady argument.

This sermon threads Army Chapel memories into a Celtic Highland Festival service in Salado, then moves through remembrance, food bank strain, and Luke 20 as part of one account of public and private life.

Come As You Aren’tNov 2, 2025

Sainthood appears where worldly signs of blessing fall away.

Come As You Aren't treats All Saints as a pressure test for easy ideas about blessing. At St. Isidore's Common Feast in Spring, Texas, the host starts with the feast's uneasy fit in a Protestant frame: unlike Christmas or Easter, it does not rest on a single Bible story.

ForgiveOct 5, 2025

A grounded reflection on forgiveness as honest, difficult work in the presence of real harm.

Forgiveness takes shape through a surprising set of images: trees, roots, rocky soil, and the stubborn places where a crop cannot take hold. The host begins with plants Jesus mentions and with his own fascination with trees that can outlast a human life, then moves toward harms…

LazSep 28, 2025

An un-crossed gulf becomes a searching reflection on friendship, responsibility, and faith after apparent endings.

Friendship, moral blindness, and the stubborn possibility of hope shape "Laz," a reflective episode that moves from Jesus' friends in Bethany to Lazarus and the rich man, then back toward ordinary obligations.

For Men Only: How Not to Ruin Christmas This Year

A Christmas sermon reads Joseph's restraint as a lesson in righteousness, anger, and male fragility.

Joseph's Christmas story is read here as a lesson in restraint, righteousness, and the fragile pride that can wreck a holy moment. The sermon keeps Joseph's predicament in view: the temptation to make a public case, prove innocence, and divide the scene into victim and villain…

Live Sermon Pray Like Joan with 3 Crosses

A Joan of Arc sermon considers prayer when testimony is rejected, healing stays unfinished, and hope still has to be carried.

Dear Padre's live sermon for St. Joan of Arc Day frames prayer as something that can survive trauma, disbelief, and forms of healing that refuse a clean success story.

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Catholic teaching for mission-minded faith.

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About Dear Padre

In their own words

As heard by us

Why you'd press play

Talks about

Best episodes of Dear Padre

Podcasts like Dear Padre

Episodes

Can You Imagine Healing?

Aren’t you glad?

I’m The Ass

18 Inches

Five Husbands

The Walls Are Closing In

New Mic!

Preach Like a Marine

Under Cover of Darkness

The Time I Met The Devil

Super Bowl and the Rules of Valentines Day

Is Jesus the Penguin Heading for the Mountains

Jesus’ Best Parable

Eye Trouble

O Foolish G’s

Pray Like Joan

Trinity

Violent Rushing Wind

Jesus is Praying for You

Ascension

Bonus episode!

School of Love

Don’t Cut Your Flesh

Laws

Azazel

The Carpenter Dreamer

Burning, but not consumed

Come As You Aren’t

Unjust Judge TV Show

Content Warning

Forgive

Laz

All We Can Do Is Weep

The Bar is Low

Lost

The Least Interesting Thing About You

A Sermon Just For Men About Mary

Seeing Stars

I Am Martha

Flood

Prey and Predator

Male Loneliness Epidemic

Male Loneliness Epidemic

Python and Suicide

Bright Sunday Comedy and Macabre Wounds: Part the 2nd

Bright Sunday Comedy and the Macabre Wounds: Part the 1st

Easter People

wasted

Jesus Comments on the News

Dreams of the Dying

Was Jesus Funny?

The Mystery of Mary

John’s Holiday Advice

Can of Peaches

Got That Dog In You

The Crust of Cynicism

Little Girl Get Up

Storm

Those Who Get Away With Murder

Eunuchs

Only Ten?

The Mountain

Leprous Armadillos

Miracle in 1300

What Is It?

Complaints

People are saying stuff

Drowned

Eclipse

The Judas Window

The Five Wounds of Every Man