Christians worldwide are rejoicing at the news of a Catholic podcast that has taken the number one spot from the massively popular “Joe Rogan Experience” at the beginning of the year. Father Mark-Mary Ames of Ascension Press hosts “The Rosary in a Year,” which held onto the #1 spot in Apple podcasts for the first three days of the new year. The show “guides listeners in a step-by-step journey that will change the way you pray” according to its synopsis. Speaking to Fox News, Ames described how he left a life of comfort and wealth to reach the poor. “I heard that there’s a group of Franciscans in New York who are hardcore and sleep on the ground. And I looked them up, and I read our constitutions — which are what we say we’re about — and I’m like, ‘if that’s true, that’s everything I’m looking for.’ So I was a very, very normal kid, on a normal path. And then God just sort of made this happen,” he said. Ames is following in the footsteps of Father Mike Schmitz, whose “The Bible in a Year” podcast was from Ascension as well and met with massive popularity.

Ames stated that the rosary can be intimidating, but that “it’s really good for our humanity. We’re all over the place. It’s really hard for us to focus and to concentrate and the human ability to focus in the concrete for an extended period of time is somewhat of like, the foundation on which prayer is built.” The podcast will breakdown the six phases of understanding the rosary, including a deeper reflection on what it means to pray in general. Ames hopes listeners will “grow in their life of prayer and that particularly they fall in love, maybe for the first time, maybe again, with prayer and with the Lord and with Our Lady and with the rosary because they experience the rosary as this privileged doorway in which they get to encounter the Lord.”

Ames also keeps humble despite the podcast’s success. “I just try to be faithful to what’s before me. And if God wants to make this thing number one, awesome. If he wants to do all sorts of awesome, that’s kind of for Him,” he said. “There’s many, many people in my life who are doing things that are much more beautiful and much more moving than having a podcast hit number one,” he added. Reflecting on the popularity of “The Bible in a Year,” “Catechism in a Year,” and now “Rosary in a Year,” which have all held top spots, Ames pointed at a hunger for God. “The world offers so much, but we want God,” he told The Daily Wire. “ I can’t help but see this cry being echoed by the millions of people who have participated in ‘Bible in a Year,’ ‘Catechism in a Year,’ and now ‘Rosary in a Year.’”