Pints With Aquinas - 187: How to be gentle with yourself W/ St. Francis De Sales

Episode Date: January 7, 2020

Today I sit down with St. Francis De Sales to chat about how to be gentle with ourselves. I think you need to listen to this episode. SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

Hello and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. Happy New Year. My name's Matt Fradd. Today, I was sitting around the bar table with Thomas Aquinas, who this podcast is about, and he ducked off to the dunny for a bit. And to be honest, I think he blew me off. I think he nicked off home. And I was about to leave, turn around, and I saw this guy in the corner.

He looked French. He had a beard, crucifix with a ribbon thing around his neck. I'm like, who are you? He said, I'm Francis DeSales. Who are you? I said, doesn't matter. Talk to me, baby. Anyway, hey, what's up? That was weird. Today, I want to look at Francis DeSales and what he has to say about being gentle with ourselves. I think you're going to really enjoy this episode. I hope it's a blessing to you as you begin this new year. And please stick around to the end of the episode where I share a powerful kind of conversion that's taken place through somebody

watching the Matt Frad Show episode with Stephanie Gray on abortion. This is really powerful stuff. All right. Did you like that transition? I have been reading a lot of Francis DeSales lately, and I just love him. I'm reading Introduction to the Devout Life. It's a book I would highly recommend. And there's a chapter in here. It's not very long. I want to go through it. It's only two and a half pages on gentleness towards ourselves. Now, next week, I'm going to be sitting around the bar table with Father Gregory

Pine to discuss around a dozen metaphysical terms that Thomas Aquinas uses in the Summa Theologiae and elsewhere so that you can read him and better understand him. I think there's just a lot of terms like accident and evil and good and causality. He says a lot of things that we're not really sure what he means, especially if we haven't studied philosophy. So next week, we're going to do a deep dive so that you can pick up the Sumer on your own and better understand it. All right. But this week, I just wanted to take a pause as we begin this new year and to talk about gentleness. Why? Golly, I think most of you, it's true of me, it's true of many of my friends. So I assume it's true of you.

Many of us have kind of crashed through Christmas, right? We're out of our routine. New Year's comes around. We feel the pressure to have a New Year's resolution, but we also kind of feel guilty because we've made them in the past and haven't really kept them. And we've also heard people tell us that we shouldn't be making them. We want to be better, but we're really tired and there's a lot going on and we're not really sure what to do. And we really haven't paused long enough to ask our heavenly father, father, who am I? Who are you? What are your intentions towards me? What are you one of me? And I think we can just barrel into the new year. We rip the old calendar off the wall and we talk about how important it is for us this year to get our bloody prayer life in order once and for all,

to finally start working out, to get a gym membership and this time to bloody mean it, right? To start that book I said I'd read a hundred times that I've never gotten through. And I think when we fail at these activities, these resolutions that we set for ourselves, we can fall into a sort of despair. And it may not be a despair that we look at directly because we know we'll despair and so it just sort of remains in our peripheral and we just sort of push it to the side and we go on with life barreling through like a man who has broken his leg but refuses to sit down to rest, to allow the doctor to tend to him. We just barrel on through. So today's episode is not going to be about here's how you need to get your crap together for 2020. Today's episode is going to be how you and I can be gentle with ourselves. Because I, look, I just got to say, this is true of me. I look at my own life and I see the ways I fail. And in the past, and even now, I see that anger that I feel at myself. Like, why can't I get it together? Like, why can't I be a better father than I am? Why am I so selfish? Like, why am I so odd?

selfish. Like, why am I so odd? You know, I feel like everybody else is like Jim and Pam from The Office, and I'm the oddball. And I don't want to be, I don't mean to be. I'm a bit eccentric. People look at me and they're like, well, he's a bit awkward. I don't mean to make this all about me. But I have to think that many of us are like that, and we can become angry with ourselves. And sometimes we look at that like it's a virtue. I'm going to whip myself into gear. I'm going to pull myself up by my bootlaces. I'm not going to put up with this. It's time to be an adult.

And there's a sense in which that can be admirable. But I think a lot of us are hurting. I think a lot of us haven't processed things that have taken place last year, let alone when we were kids. And so today, my brothers and my sisters, I want us to both drink deeply from the wisdom of Francis de Sales. Before we get into that, though, I need to say thanks to our sponsor, Halo, for helping support this episode. Halo is an app that will help you pray. It's really excellent. If you're having trouble praying and you want to pray and you need some help, download the app Halo. It's 100% Catholic and incredibly sophisticated. Sometimes you think of Catholic things and you're like, oh, it's Catholic,

so it's not very good. This is actually incredibly good. So check out Halo, H-A-L-L-O-W. They offer a permanently free version of their app, which includes content that's uploaded every day, as well as a paid subscription option with premium content. But by using the promo code Matt Fradd, one word, you can try out all of the sessions in the app for a full month totally for free. To take advantage of this special offer, visit hallo.app slash Matt Fradd. I'll put a link in the show notes. Create your account online before downloading the app. That's hallo.app slash Matt Fradd. All right, let's take a look at what Francis DeSales has to say about being gentle to ourselves. One of the best exercises in meekness we can perform is when the subject is in ourselves. We must not fret over our own imperfections.

Although reason requires that we must be displeased and sorry whenever we commit a fault, we must refrain from bitter, gloomy, spiteful, and emotional displeasure. and emotional displeasure. Pause. Wow. You're failing at this. Don't feel bad about it. That's the whole point, right? We fret over our imperfections. We become bitter and gloomy and spiteful and emotional. And at the beginning of the show, I'm talking about resolutions we've made that if we don't keep them, they aren't necessarily sinful. We beat ourselves up over that. That's not what Francis DeSales is talking about. Francis is talking about sins, right? Your arrogance, the way you gossip about people and then realize only after the conversation is over. The fact that you masturbated last night and still haven't gone to confession about it, you know.

You fall into these sins and you hate yourself for them. You lose your peace. You're not gentle with yourself in the way that Christ is gentle with you. You're not gentle with yourself in the way that Christ is gentle with you. You're not gentle with yourself in the way that you would be gentle with somebody if they had approached you in all humility and shared with you something they just felt, something they just fell to, rather. Listen to this. This is very powerful. He says, many people are greatly at fault in this way. When overcome by anger, they become angry at being angry, disturbed at being disturbed, vexed at being vexed. By such means, they keep their hearts drenched and steeped in passion. It may seem that the second fit of anger does away with the first,

but actually it serves to open the way for fresh anger on the first occasion that arises. Moreover, these fits of anger, vexation, and bitterness against ourselves tend to pride and they spring from no other source than self-love, which is disturbed and upset at seeing that it is imperfect. So you fall to that sin you said you wouldn't fall to again. Perhaps your sin was on public display and you're very embarrassed and you feel very angry. You lose your peace. You become anxious and angry at yourself. And you may not articulate even internally these sorts of accusations against yourself, but they're there bubbling beneath the surface. And he says we shouldn't do this. It's funny, we get angry at ourselves and think that somehow we're what, you know, remedying the peace we lost through sin. But Francis is saying here, essentially, that any reason for us to lose our peace, anything that causes us to lose our peace, anything including sin, is a bad reason. Now, he does say we must be sorry for our faults.

Okay. Of course, of course. But, and this is what you and I aren't good at, we must be sorry for our faults in a calm, settled, firm way. Listen, when a judge is guided in his decisions by reason and proceeds calmly, he punishes criminals much more justly than when he acts in violence and passion. If he passes judgment hastily and passionately, he does not punish the crime because of what they really are, but because of what they seem to him. Now, this really struck me when I read this, because as a parent of four somewhat small children, I know what it's like to be angered by something they've done repeatedly that I find very irritating, and I might lash out at them, you know, and get really upset with them.

I might lash out at them and get really upset with them. And when I do this, I'm not really acting rationally and I'm not really seeing things for what they are. Rather, they're magnified in my mind and I end up dealing out a punishment that's not only unjust, but is ultimately unhelpful. And I think if you can recognize that in your own life, if you can see the ways that you can become angry and then act unjustly because of your passions towards other people, well, then it should be no surprise that you and I act this way towards ourselves unjustly and unhelpfully. I mean, this is something I've spoken a lot about when I speak to people who are falling to pornography again and again. When people fall to this sort of sexual sin, they get very embarrassed and very upset with themselves. This is counterproductive.

I mean, forget anything else. It's just not a good way to overcome porn. Like many of the things that we turn to, we do so to soothe ourselves. These things that we do too much of, say, we drank too much, we watched too much TV, we spoke too much and ended up saying things we regret. We look at pornography. A lot of these actions we turn to to try to make our emotional state more calm, right? That's why we're doing it. Incidentally, I'm going to stick to this. This is why I think as great as Exodus 90 is, if you're listening to me and you would consider yourself addicted in the true sense to something, I don't think giving up legitimate pleasures like nicotine and alcohol and a warm shower, et cetera, is the way to overcome porn necessarily, right? It can happen, but I think nine times out of 10, it won't. Why?

Because if I'm right, and the primary reason we turn to sexual sin is to soothe ourselves, when we deny ourselves legitimate soothers, what can end up happening is we just become more and more agitated, and then we end up reaching for the largest soother of all, which perhaps isn't nicotine or those chocolate cookies, but maybe pornography or something like that. But the point is, if we condemn ourselves harshly, we're just keeping ourselves in this emotionally frantic state, which was the reason we sinned in the first place, to try and calm ourselves. So to do that is just counterproductive, if nothing else. Okay. So just like this judge ought to deal out punishments when he's in a state of calm,

ought to deal out punishments when he's in a state of calm. Francis de Sales says, also we correct ourselves much better by calm, steady repentance than by that which is harsh, turbulent, and passionate. Violent repentance does not proceed according to the character of our faults, but according to our inclinations. For example, a man much concerned with chastity, maybe that's you, maybe that's me, will be very bitterly disturbed at the least fault he commits against the virtue, while he will only laugh at an act of gross detraction he has committed. Only laugh at an act of gross detraction he has committed. So you become very emotional and upset and anxious about the thoughts you've been having and whether or not it constituted a sin or whether you had control over that. And you're very scrupulous about this thing. All the while being completely oblivious to the fact that you just spent 10 minutes speaking very negatively about somebody else.

And you may have done it in a sort of pious sounding way. You know what I mean? I really feel sorry for that guy. We need to pray for him. He seems so arrogant and so full of himself and that sort of thing. On the other hand, says Francis de Sales, a man who hates detraction torments himself because of some slight whisper against another while he takes no account of a gross sin against chastity. So also for other sins. All this springs from this source that such men form their conscience not by reason, but by passion. And this is what

Francis de Sales says we shouldn't be doing. Now, one of the reasons I love this book, Introduction to the Devout Life, is that it was originally a series of letters that he was writing to his spiritual daughter. He was the spiritual director of this woman, I believe it was. He was the spiritual director of this woman, I believe it was. Upon the urgings of someone who saw the letters, he put it into a book and changed the name. So he calls her Philothea. Or Philothea. I'm not really sure how you pronounce it.

I love this quote here. So please pay attention to this. Let's call her Philothea. Although that sounds terrible. So Phil to this. Let's call it Philothea. Although that sounds terrible. So Philothea, Philothea, Philothea, Philothea. We're going to go with Philothea. Believe me, Philothea, a father's gentle, loving rebuke has far greater power to correct a child than rage and passion. wrecked a child than rage and passion. So too, when we have committed some fault, if we rebuke our heart by a calm, mild remonstrance with more compassion for it than passion against it. Oh, brothers and sisters.

See, I think sometimes we do fall into this sort of, what do you call it, sort of Pelagian sort of heresy. We think that any kind of talk about being gentle with ourselves is soft nonsense. Not at all realizing or remembering as we think that. How merciful Jesus was with prostitutes and tax collectors and Peter when he denied him three times. Yeah. And yeah. So we're going to be compassionate for our heart rather than passionate against it. That's what he just said.

He's a saint and he's a doctor of the church. So if you disagree, shut up and listen to him. And encourage it, that is our heart, to make amendment. Then repentance conceived in this way will sink far deeper and penetrate more effectually than fretful, angry, stormy repentance. How's this doing for you? How are you doing as you hear this? Listen to this. For my own part, if I had made a firm resolution not to yield to the sin of vanity, for example, and yet had fallen seriously into it, I would not reprove my heart after this manner. Please listen to this because I really do think we're guilty of this. We fall into sin and we absolutely berate ourselves. I've said it before, Satan in scripture, Revelation chapter 12,

he is referred to as the accuser of our brethren. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, is called the advocate. He's our defense attorney. That's what paraclete means. That's where it comes from. But we sometimes talk to ourselves as if we were the accuser. Now, again, Francis makes this very clear. None of this is to say we ought not to reprove ourselves. The whole point is we ought to reprove ourselves gently in light of the infinite love the Heavenly Father has for us. So, here's how Francis says he wouldn't reprove his heart if he had fallen into the sin of vanity. He's going to give an example, and he's going to give you an example of how he would do it. And you should really take heed of this. He says, I wouldn't say this.

Aren't you wretched and abominable, you who have made so many resolutions, abominable, you who have made so many resolutions, and yet let yourself be carried away by vanity. You should die for shame. Never again lift up your eyes to heaven, blind, insolent traitor that you are, a rebel against your God. I would correct it, says St. Francis, in a reasonable, compassionate way. Here's what he'd say to his heart. Alas, my poor heart, here we are, help us to be steadier in the days to come. Let us start out again on the way of humility. Let us be of good heart and from this day be more on guard.

God will help us. We will do better. us, we will do better. My brothers and sisters, in all honesty, when is the last time you spoke to yourself like that after you fell into something you were incredibly embarrassed about? I'm so convicted just by reading this, that this is the Christian response that we ought to have. Because, as it says in that wonderful book, I Believe in Love, which is spiritual meditations on the teachings of St. Therese de Lisieux, the Father is bent over us, looking at us with inexpressible tenderness. He's opened heaven under our feet. But you and I so often act as if it were hell that had been open under our feet. We are certainly men of little faith.

1 Timothy 2.4, he desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. He loves you and he doesn't want you to hate yourself. He doesn't want you to hate what he doesn't. That should be pretty obvious, shouldn't it? Anyway, what a beautiful way to correct oneself. He continues, on the basis of such correction, I would build a firm, solid resolution never again to fall into that fault, using the proper means of avoiding it under the advice of my director. the reason we're afraid of hearing gentle advice like this, right? Which I think is the Christian sort of response to a heart that longs to love and serve God, yeah? But you might be thinking, okay, but look, there are people who really need a lot more than that. And maybe you've been in situations where you've needed a lot more than that, right? We all know people who, if we were just to say, well, God loves you, so you'll be great, they wouldn't convert. And by the way,

notice that Francis nor I are saying that. So don't hear us say that. Don't hear him say that. But what about that though? What if we say to ourselves, come on heart, trust in the mercy of God, but we're not really eradicating the near occasion of sin in our life. Well, what do we do then? Here's what he says. He says, if anyone finds that his heart is not sufficiently moved by this mild manner of correction, he may use a sharp, severe reproach and rebuke so as to excite it to deep sorrow. But this must be on the condition that after he has curbed and chided his heart in this rough way, he closes all his grief and anger with sweet, consoling confidence in God,

in imitation of that illustrious penitent who saw his afflicted soul and raised it up in this way. Why are you sad, O my soul? This is from the Psalms. Why do you disquiet me? Hope in God, for I will give praise to him, the salvation of my countenance and my God. One short more paragraph and then we're done here. So, here's what you have to do. Lift up your heart again whenever it falls, but do so gently. By humbling yourself before God through knowledge of your own misery, and do not be surprised if you fall. It is no wonder that infirmity should be infirm, weakness weak, misery wretched.

Nevertheless, detest with all your powers the offense God has received from you, and with great courage and confidence in his mercy, return to the path of virtue you had forsaken. A couple of things that really just maybe I want to end on. Earlier in this meditation, Francis is saying to us, when you fall and you get super upset with yourself, it's probably not because you love God. It's probably because you're prideful. And you don't like seeing yourself in such a humbled state. Isn't that true? If you fall into something you're ashamed of, if you don't do what you said you would do this New Year's, like pray in the morning, pray at night, and you start to berate yourself, you start to lose your peace, you start to become anxious, it's probably not because you love God. It's probably because

you love yourself. And you would have liked to think that you are far along the path of perfection, far down the path, far further on down the path than you actually are. But as he says here, love it, love it, love it. Do not be surprised if you fall. Why are you so shocked? Because it is no wonder that infirmity should be infirm. Aren't you infirm? Okay, good. Weakness, weak. Are you surprised that you who are weak or that misery be wretched? Nevertheless, that doesn't give us a license to continue sinning, but to gently detest with all your powers the offense God has received from you, and with great courage and confidence in his mercy return to the path of virtue you've forsaken. Oh, my friends, I pray that this year for you and for me is a beautiful one. I know it's a turbulent time, isn't it?

And I think I've said this before and I keep saying it, I think, in a way to try to articulate it, to try to make sense of this feeling I have and I think that many of us have. We're in a turbulent time in the church. Now, if you're in a turbulent time, like suppose the weather is turbulent. You seek shelter. You naturally seek stability. We cannot remain too long in chaos. We'll go crazy. crazy. So in a period of chaos, we seek order. We seek calm. We seek shelter. We seek stability. Now, you and I live in a day and age where the culture, if you want to call it that, has gone insane. People are saying now with a straight face that men can magically become women and vice versa. That we should be able to kill innocent children in the womb. We're redefining marriage.

We're redefining words. It's a crazy time. And it's crazy. And one of the things that I think we've done in the past is we've turned to the church for that sort of stability. things, and with the confusion that we keep seeing in our news feeds regarding the bishops and bad decisions and evil decisions that people in the hierarchy have made, I think it's just shocking to us. It's not calm out there and it's not calm in here. So what do we do since we can't remain in chaos? I think what we do is we seek to find stability. Now, I think a temptation for us is to seek stability, not in Christ, but in commentators, cultural commentators, commentators in the church, you know, I guess like myself even. I guess like myself even.

And you say, I'm with him. I'm with this group. And if you're not, you're out. And we do this, I think, with great passion because, well, bloody hell, things need to be ordered and they need to be ordered now. Things need to be fixed and they need to be fixed now. And if you're not with me, you're against me and get the heck out. But I don't know. I don't think that's what we ought to be doing. I mean, so much can be said and I can't say it all. And so you can misunderstand

my intention in saying this, if you like, and some will. But I think God exists and he loves you and he knows you And while you were an enemy, while I was his enemy, he died for us It says that in Romans 5, you know So what are you afraid of? While you were an enemy, he died for you And now you're reconciled with him. What won't he do for you now? If while you're an enemy, he did that, the crucifix, yeah? Well, now that he's reconciled you to himself and you've been incorporated into his body

through baptism and so on, what won't he do? So I think, and I say this to me, you know, I think we need to stay close to our blessed Lord in prayer and to go deep with him, to sit in silence, to allow him to speak into those places of our heart that we've shut up, that are wounded, into those places of our heart that we've shut up, that are wounded, that are afraid. We need to be honest with ourselves and honest with other people. You know, we need to strive to be good Catholics who love our neighbours and forgive our enemies and love the poor and we need to flee from sin like it's cancer, all this, you know.

2020 is going to be a crazy year, I think. But it might be your last year, you know. I know people say that, you know, like, it could be your last year, you never know. And you think, well, I kind of do. I'm probably not going to die, you know. And, you know, you probably won't, I suppose, if you're young and healthy.

But I was at CrossFit the other day. A friend of mine, john paul who's a calvinist pastor isn't that funny john paul's his name he's a calvinist pastor great bloke he was telling me that someone in his church just came to christ and was baptized thank god he was 36 years old and had four kids he was diagnosed with leukemia and he said to the pastor, I'm going to fight this. The Lord will be glorified in it. A couple of days later, he got a headache and a few days after that, he was dead. I don't know if you're still listening. I realize I'm kind of bantering a bit now, but I think that

that to me, when I heard that story, I thought, gosh, I don't want to waste my life. I've said this before, but forgive me. I have to say it again. I don't want to waste my life overly concerned with politics, be it ecclesial or American. I don't want to be overly concerned with these things. It doesn't mean I want to be ignorant, but I don't want to make the majority of 2020 me refreshing my news feed and checking in as to what's going on.

I want to, and I think you do too, I want to come before the Lord and allow his healing touch to bring healing into those parts of my life that are still immature and weak and wounded. I want to ask him for the grace to believe him when he says that I'm worthy of his love and his death for me. Because isn't it true that when you're gentle with yourself, people who are gentle with themselves, I don't mean lazy, but people who are gentle with themselves are usually gentle with other people. I want this year, I want to be gentle with myself. So what, we're a week into the new year or something. Maybe you've already, you know, buggered up your bloody resolutions.

Well, give glory to God for whatever advancement you have made. And if you're embarrassed, give glory to God for that. Anyway, brothers and sisters, I love you. I hope this is a help. I'd be much, I think you would be much better served if you stopped listening to me this year and bought An Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales. Man, he's terrific. Thanks for listening. Next week, we're going to have Father Gregory Pine on the show, as I say, to discuss around 10 to 12 metaphysical terms that Aquinas uses in the Summa. I think that'll

really help you. I've got two Matt Frad Show episodes coming out this month, Trent Horn and Dr. William Lane Craig. That's pretty cool. Now, that's a taste. I would love to do two Matt Frad Show episodes a month. I don't know if you want that. It'd be cool. And again, it's not just because you think you have the time to consume two of those episodes. That's not what I'm asking. I don't think many people do. I don't have time to kind of watch me, obviously. But, you know, I want good things to, you know, come out and bless people. And listen to this. I just got this recently. This blew me away. Here is a comment that we got under the interview I did with Stephanie Gray. And you remember, if you watched it, I interviewed her about abortion. Listen to this. This lady, her name's

Alicia Lena Urban says, you changed my mind on this topic. I am not religious, but thanks for showing me this perspective, especially the part about personhood was important to change my mind. I'm getting things like that very regularly. Glory to Jesus Christ. So anyway, we're going to do two episodes of the Matt Frad Show this month. We can do two, but it costs money to do this, right? Flying people in and stuff like that. So we are currently 77% complete as far as reaching the goal we want to reach in order to be doing two episodes a month, creating a Pints with Aquinas app, being better able to travel to Catholics and developing countries for free, at least to them. So anyway, look, I know you get hit up for cash all the time, but

I think the work that we're doing is actually blessing people. If you disagree, don't become a patron. If you do agree, consider it. Go to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. You see all the free things you get in return, books, beer steins, stickers, audio library, book studies by video, a thriving community forum, all that sort of thing. Patreon.com slash mattfradd. If you don't want to, don't do it. But please consider it. God bless you.

Chat with you next week. And I would give my whole life to carry you. Chat with you next week.