Pints With Aquinas - 192: Thomism, indulgences, and the Mother of God, W/ Fr. Gregory Pine

Episode Date: February 11, 2020

I sit down with the one and only Fr. Gregory Pine to discuss Thomism, indulgences, the Mother of God, the priesthood, and a whole lot more. 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

G'day and welcome to Pines with Aquinas. My name is Matty Fraddy and today I'll be Matt Frad, sorry. Today I'll be interviewing Father Gregory Pine about St. Thomas, his relevance, his contributions to the field of ethics and metaphysics. We talk about how to develop a prayer life, why single people shouldn't act like they're living in a cloister, all sorts of things. I think you're really gonna enjoy the show. Hey, check out this rosary isn't that beautiful um i want you to go see my friends at catholicwoodworker.com they are absolutely beautiful rosaries that they make and home altars you know as funny as i advertised catholic woodworker uh on the craig interview and

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That'll do. Here is my interview with Father Gregory Pine. All right, we rolling? G'day, Gregory. Nope, sorry. Hello, Father Pine. Sorry. Do you have someone who,

have you ever met people who call you by your first name and you're like, no, this isn't going to happen? Plenty of people call me by my first name. Like my mother, for instance. Yeah, well, that's appropriate. Yeah, I mean... Is that a thing anymore, though? I feel like Catholics, you know, when I was growing up,

priests would often be like, call me Jim. And I'm like, okay, Father Jim. Is that a thing? I think some people prefer it, some people don't prefer it. I think it's just a matter of, like, nicknaming, for instance. I think when you give someone a nickname, you're saying, I have this kind of affection for you. Yeah.

You know, so you're expressing it with like a diminutive. You're not just Matthew, you're Matt. And so I know you. And as a result of which, blah, blah, blah. But I think sometimes titles get in the way of that. And so sometimes people are like, I want to be respectful and call you father thus and such. But I also love you and have a friendship with you and have known you for a while. So heads up is it so yeah is it a weird thing as a priest because i imagine you want to kind of be

a spiritual father to people that you're encountering so yeah so on one level there's going to be a sort of separation you know yeah i guess um yeah what strikes me as sometimes strange is when when priests will insist on a separation that can feel at times artificial or like put on. Yeah. So I think that, yes, there is spiritual fatherhood involved in the priesthood. Now, what does that entail? I don't think it involves me saying like, well, my son, this is my spiritual paternity. Because one, I look like a tall child.

You're very tall. How big are your shoes? What size are your shoes? I'm wearing size 14 shoes right now. That's incredible. Yeah, exactly. Do they even have your shoes when you go bowling? I haven't gone bowling in a long time.

I also, I just order them online. So I don't know if they have them in stores. That's kind of like an antiquated thing. Going in stores for shoes. Who would do that? All right. Tall boy. Tall. Yeah. So I look like very young. And if I were to like insist on it as a kind of

thing, then they'd be like, what in the world? So I think in part, your paternity isn't like imparted by the office. So it's, you're a priest. And so you're a giver of divine things and you generate people in the spiritual life. And that's what it is. It's not so much like, I will assume a pastoral relationship with you in which I am superior and you inferior, and we will reaffirm this at every turn. Because then at a certain point, you on the receiving end are like, I want to leave. But I can imagine if I became a priest, I'd worry how to act. I look at myself with my oddities and my abruptness with people and my awkward things. I think there'd be this temptation to be like, okay, now I need to be like a generic,

good person. Do you know what I mean? Did you ever feel this sort of pressure to be like a holy priest and you had this idea of what that looked like? Yeah, I think I've thought about that. But what I came to discover over time was that comporting myself according to a standard often proved catastrophic. An example, I like talking to people. I like chatting with people. But again, I'm tall. My face is kind of gaunt. I use strange words and I dress weird.

I would like this to be your Twitter bio. You have Twitter? I'm tall. I'm kind of gaunt. And I say, anyway, et cetera. Yeah. So I find that in public places, when I start conversations with people whom I don't know, their first thought is, run away. So I just like chatting with people because I find people generally pretty interesting

and fun. And so I look for opportunities, but I can't just launch in like, I've never had a best friend. Are you my best friend? So what I do, like when I go to an airport, for instance, is I just pray, dear Lord, may I meet people and have good conversations with them. And I always also pray to meet religious because it's nice to see religious in airports. You're like, what's up?

Jesus is Lord. Yeah. So when it comes to, okay, should I observe some kind of standard as to what it means to be a holy priest? Yeah. I mean, priests should be evangelical and affable and a man of the people. But my experience has been that when I try to be those things in an assertive way, that I scare people. So I just bring my book and I read it and I ask the Lord and then I make eye contact with people at appropriate junctures, dot, dot, dot.

You get it. I asked you this last time. I don't know why I'm so fascinated by it. But what happened today? Like when you, you know, when traveling, did you get any weird looks or any conversations? Did I get any weird looks? Weird looks for sure. That's kind of par for the course.

And it's funny. Sometimes you can almost begin to feel objectified, which, so like I find myself trying to catch people's glances and then bring them up to my eyes like, hello, you know, here I am. But did I have any significant conversations today? No, not so much. I left at 6 a.m. and everyone was pretty slumberful. And then I arrived at 7.30 a.m. and it was cold in Atlanta and everyone was pretty upset.

So as a result of which, here we are. I have a gift for you. Whoa. I'm excited. It's right here. No way. Get out. Yeah, it's a gift.

You'd have to open. Do I have to open it now? Yeah, you have to open it right now. Okay, right now. My wife wrapped that because we didn't have tape. Isn't she cool? Get out. What a woman.

She's a good woman. Respect. Wow, cheers. She did a great job. Yeah. Irrespective of whether or not tape was used, this is a nice wrap job. Oh, my goodness. There it is.

Check this out. Isn't that great? That is great. Yeah. This is handsome. Yeah, because they probably haven't sent you your copies yet. They have not sent me copies yet.

I got an email saying the copies were on the way. So for those... And here's a copy. For those watching, this is a book that Father Pine and I put together

called Marry and Consecrate... What's it called again? Marry in Consecration with Aquinas. Yeah. Whoa. It's beautiful, eh? You inscribed it. I signed it for you.

So you're welcome. Thank you very much. Yeah. This is nice. I like it. I like the size of it. As do I. And I like that it's thin.

Take it. It's thin. Yeah. It feels good. It feels good in the hand. So I thought we could talk about that. And it's take it it's thin yeah it feels good and it feels good in the hand so i thought we could talk about it's got that matte finish which i like very much like but then you got the glossy and the matte glass matte yeah matte glass yeah wow it's good yeah it feels nice so um thank you so much for all your help on this any brilliant theological insights in this ought to be attributed to you um but so i just thought we could talk about that and this would also like

sell the book um so shameless plug for both um i think i got the idea i saw a book it was a nine day preparation for consecration based on the teachings of colby okay and i just thought that's cool because i tried reading louis and he's awesome but i couldn't get into him cammy could you get into him could you get into de montfort yes you could did you like de montfort louis de montfort oh um i did the consecration yeah so i you know did it and i was like it's okay so but i'm glad i so i thought it'd be cool you know people who don't necessarily like him because he's french no it's fine to be French. Nothing wrong.

I can't concentrate that far. Yeah. So, and then I found that beautiful prayer from Aquinas to Our Lady, which is incredible. Because I think sometimes when the people say that, like, what did he have to say on consecration to Mary? And obviously nothing. But this prayer is very De Montfortian. Yeah. Look, there's one line here. Where are you little bugger here it is um i entrust your merciful heart my body and my soul all my acts

thoughts choices desires that's crazy yeah it's beautiful that's pretty comprehensive so anyway there you go there it is we should talk about talk about Marian consecration and Mary in general. Because obviously I think people see this. We have some Protestant listeners and viewers. Sure. We address this in the intro, but it can make people a little nervous talking about Marian consecration. Yeah.

How do you explain prayers to Mary and devotion to Mary? What does that look like as a Dominican? Excellent question. Yeah. Let's see. Well, as a Dominican, it's something that you just start with. So it's not something that you kind of work your way up to. Nice.

Paper disappeared. That's how we clean here. So it's not something that you gin up the courage to do. You know, they're like, okay, just work on entering the novitiate, you know, like learning how to pray to Jesus and then work on the whole Marian aspect later on. It's something into which you're initiated at the outset, which is emblematic, I think, of Christian life. It's not something that you kind of cozy up to.

It's something that's just part and parcel of what it means to love the Lord. Okay, that seems like a pretty strong claim. Now I will defend it. So I think that there are two ways strong claim. Now I will defend it. So I think that there are two ways to worship, two principal ways to worship. The one we call sacrifice or adoration, and then the other we call veneration. So in the first case, this is a type of worship due only to God, because there are certain things that are true only of God, or of our relationship with God. So to God, we owe everything on account of the fact that he is our creator and our end. And so in litanies, for instance, it's appropriate to ask God to have mercy on us.

Because when you ask somebody to have mercy on you, you're saying, I'm in a miserable state and I want you to alleviate that miserable state because you are sovereign in a particular and peculiar way. Whereas we wouldn't say of the Blessed Mother, you know, ask her to have mercy on us. So there are certain things that are due only to God, adoration, sacrifice, like the offering of the Mass, for instance. But then there's other worship that is due to saints or to excellent persons. And what you're doing there is the worship of veneration. So you're saying on the one hand that God is glorious and is saints. So you're honoring the great work that God has done

in making this person holy, perfect, excellent, and this, that, or the other way. But you're also asking for their intercession. So you're asking that the merits that they won in their life be applied in yours. Why? Well, because God has made known in the dispensation of salvation history that he likes to work through certain people. So in the case of the Blessed Virgin Mary, God could have chosen to be incarnate in any way, shape, or form, or by any means he thought, you know, dignified. But he chose to take flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. This is important because I think sometimes people think that the Immaculate Conception was necessary for Christ to be sinless.

And so they're not aware, of course, that Christ could have taken flesh within a prostitute, say. Right. Or Christ could have. It wouldn't have been fitting, perhaps, but he could have. Yeah. Or he could have beamed down to earth. Well, I was thinking about that, though. I mean, how would he have assumed our human nature

if he beamed down to earth? There'd be problems there, wouldn't there? I think there'd be problems for our imagination, but not necessarily for the possibility of it. So I think if you just kind of take it at face value, is it possible for God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, to assume human nature? We know by virtue of the fact that he did that it is. So what's then the mechanism? Ordinarily, one takes or assumes a human nature in the womb of his mother, but already we're seeing things that are weird with this one

on account of the fact that he doesn't have, you know, there's no contribution from an earthly father. So he's able to tinker with the rules a little bit so we can probably at least admit the possibility that he didn't even need the mother really i'm still having trouble with that because wouldn't he have to take flesh from the race of adam in order to redeem it if he came what are you laughing at i'm thinking of terminator you know when the lightning strike and then eric like arnold schwarzenegger's kind of stands up from the lightning thing. You know, just get more science fiction-y with this. I'm not saying that the faith is science fiction-y.

No. But I am saying that I wouldn't let our imagination be kind of compassed just by what we would ordinarily think is within the realm of possibility. So this is like Ambrose's argument, I think, for the Eucharist. He says, if you can admit the fact that the Son of God can take flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, then how is it crazy to think that he could assume, or that he could be present under the appearance of bread and wine by this type of change? One of the quotes we use in the introduction there is from Augustine. It's my all-time favorite quote about the Blessed Mother. He says, He who the heavens cannot contain the womb of one woman bore.

She ruled our ruler. She carried him in whom we are. She gave milk to our bread. It's a great point. When you stop and think about the incarnation, the Eucharist, yeah, it's certainly doable. Yeah, so I don't know exactly what I would say would be the means, the instrument whereby he would come. Lightning strike, Arnold Schwarzenegger style. I'm still having a problem with that.

Beaming down from the heavenly mothership. Because yeah, wouldn't he have to assume human... how can you assume human nature independently of a human? I mean, he at least assumed it through the Blessed Mother. If he just rose up from the dirt like Adam is said to have. I can't see how. Well, Adam assumed a human nature having been raised up from the dirt. Yes, but it would be different to our human nature if Christ didn't take it from the lineage of Adam, wouldn't it? Well, certainly there would be the, okay, so with respect to original sin,

like St. Thomas entertains the question of whether or not one born kind of like apart from the patrimony or excuse me, like the lineage of Adam would have contracted original sin. He says, no, you know, because it's by way of the line, you know, so it's something that original sin is present in his nature, it's present in his loins, it's present in his choice. And so if a human person were born outside of that, they would not contract original sin. So there's a fittingness.

There's a connection between the fact that Mary is a daughter of Eve and that Christ assumes it, but then breaks the pattern of original sin. So there's all these things that I would say are by way of fittingness, but they're not by way of strict necessity. Fair enough. And then you use some language here that I think some Catholics will find a little different, initially problematic. Because I find that as we try to explain to Protestants our relationship with Mary, we'll say something like, we don't pray to the saints, you know, we ask for their intercession. Sure. And I feel like they, I don't like when we do that because it begins to kind of erode what's actually happening when you change your language around something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But then another thing I don't think many Catholics would say is worship, right? And so you're using worship in a specific sense. And so I think Catholics are like, no, no, no, no, no. Gosh, we don't worship Mary. We don't attribute divinity to Mary. We pray to her, you know. But yeah, so what do you think about that? I mean, do you think that we should remove that language? Because it does get kind of complicated if you're talking to a Protestant saying, yes, we worship Mary and we worship God.

It seems so fuzzy to people. I think the evangelicals objection is that you're taking the focus away from God. Right. So I think that's a good objection. And short answer is I don't know what's the most apologetically effective, to be completely honest. I think the reason that I use the language is because I have certain arguments in my mind and I'm trying to work within those arguments. So worship, meaning just declare worthy. Yeah. So something that's often cited is in the Anglican or the old form of the Anglican exchange of wedding vows that you would say, I thee worship with my body. So it's, I declare thee worthy, basically

of myself or of my honor. And so when we talk about worship, we can understand it as just a declaring worthy, but there's a peculiar form of declaring worthy that's proper to God. And then there's another form of declaring worthy that's proper to saints, angels, et cetera. And I think what happens after the Protestant Reformation is that the peculiar form of declaring worthy that's proper to God gets a bit collapsed. I don't say that like polemically, but I'm saying that when you lose the sacrifice of the mass, you lose the prayer, which is most distinctively... There you go. That's interesting. Adoration, sacrifice, or like the Greek word is latreia. So that kind of starts to get flattened.

And then once everything appears to be on the same playing field, then it becomes more... It sounds sillier, or it sounds like you're detracting from the worship of God to use the same language of the saints, because you've lost what what is particular or you've lost what is peculiar about the worship of God. I think something like that. That's good. Yeah. The way I've kind of explained it apologetically is, and we've heard this a lot probably, but I can ask you to pray for me. And in so doing, I'm not usurping the fatherhood of God or something like that. And if death does not separate us and if the saints in heaven are alive and more alive than we, and are perfected in love, then they would, this idea that there's this kind of iron curtain or this wall that goes up that separates us doesn't seem, I don't know why you would think that. So just to ask them for their intercession is sort of what we mean, isn't it? It is. And I think that it's an especially beautiful time to pray to saints on account of the fact that what we need, it seems, is a communion.

And we are, in the 21st century, struggling to find an adequate communion. So a lot of people are lonely. A lot of people feel isolated. A lot of people think about their social engagements as something that they choose, not something that they're born into. But the fact is that we're born into relationships, right? You're born into your family, you're born into your city, town, whatever, you know, kind of social milieu. You're born into your faith. When you think about baptism of infinites, you don't really choose that. You're born into your language. You're born into so many

things and that involves you with other people in a particular way. But so too with the church, you're born into a network of relationships that are saving because we're meant to go to God together, not only by way of encouragement, but also by way of intercession, by way of the application of merits and things like that. We just draw on such a rich association of persons who have striven to love the Lord well, to respond generously to His call, and that should bear us up. It's not as like our choice for God is only good insofar as I do it in isolation from or abstraction from others. Like that way it's more me. No, it's like, no, like to be you is to be with, to be you is to be mutually entailed

in these relationships. And so God shows in salvation history that he likes to accomplish his ends by drawing people together, specifically through saints, angels, etc. And your salvation is part of that larger story. And so when he applies it in you, when he works it out in you, it should assume a similar shape. So yeah. Yeah, that's really good. How familiar are you with speaking about indulgences and the church's teaching on that? I don't want to drill into things. I know you're not an expert on everything, so I don't want to drill into an area you're not totally comfortable with. Maybe I've already begun drilling.

I should just stop talking. I would say I know some things about indulgences. Indulgences, I've always found them difficult to understand. Sure, yeah. I've always found them difficult to understand. Sure, yeah. So I get that an indulgence is the remission of the temporal punishment due to our sin. Sure.

And it would seem to me that if Christ has given authority to the church to remit the eternal punishment for our sin, then to say, well, you can remit the temporal punishment due to it follows. But I still find it difficult. So maybe I'll explain that, but maybe explain first what indulgences are, especially for those who are watching and are like, yeah, what are they again? And then maybe I'll share with you some of my difficulties in trying to understand it. Sure. So I think a good way to approach indulgences is from the vantage of the sacrament of penance. So with the sacrament of penance, what's requisite for it? Well, contrition, confession, satisfaction, and then absolution.

So you come with your heart contrite, crushed. So you have a sorrow and a hatred of your past sins because you see how they have sundered your relationships with God and with others. And then you confess them. So you say the sins, you know, number and kind, and then pertinent circumstances. And then a penance is given to you to atone for those things. And you say that penance, and then, you know, the absolution is given that pardons all of your sins and remits their eternal punishment. But there's a sense in which penance is part of a bigger story of sacramental healing, and that that has all of these different facets.

So what's the point? You can think of our spiritual life as analogical with our organic life. So just as we are born and we are healed and we come to maturity in ordinary life, so too we are baptized, we are confirmed, we receive the sacrament of penance in the spiritual life. And so penance is really, it's about a healing that grows you to the fullness of Christian age. And, you know, like you can think about the anointing of the sick isn't just for, you know, people kicking the bucket.

It's to make up for everything that is lacking. It's to supply them with the strength for the final endurance. And so when we think about penance, then penance is going to kind of work itself out into further dimensions. So that way, we're not just healed superficially, or we're not just healed in one way, but that all of it is tended to. And so what indulgence do is they, I think they extend the logic of penance into this facet of temporal remission. And it's not that they're kind of a get holy quick or get out of purgatory quick thing, because what they recommend that you do are the types of things which mature you in the faith.

So it's not like you arbitrarily assign indulgences to random acts, like jump on your leg 13 times and then spin around 18 times and then say the words, Bob's your uncle, four times, and then you'll have no temporal remission. It's like do the things that make you holy, and then you'll have no temporal remission. It's like, do the things that make you holy, and then the church recognizes how they make you holy, and it assigns these concrete things to those acts. So, a plenary indulgence is something that can be implied to you or to those who have passed and may still await the vision of God. We can't know, but we can apply them to the souls of the faithful departed. And for that, you perform the indulgenced act, which may be, you know, you go to a particular shrine,

you do a particular pious thing, or it may be one of four ordinary ones, which is to do the Stations of the Cross in a public oratory, to pray the Rosary in common, to make meditation for 30 minutes in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament or to read scripture for 30 minutes. If you do one of those acts, that's an indulgenced act. And then you do the things that accompany it. So that would mean receiving Holy Communion that day, going to confession, basically within a week in either direction, saying prayers for the Pope. A lot of people will say a creed and Our Father and a Hail Mary. And then having, like trying to be detached from sin effectively. So that one's, you know, as you are able or kind of like as the Lord indicates. So in those things, then you are like the temporal punishment associated with sin is

remitted and you're unburdened by the ordinary punishment that would go along with the sins for which you have not yet sufficiently satisfied. So for those listening who are still a little unclear, if one commits a grievous sin, repents, he's been forgiven. All things being equal. Yep. Goes to heaven. Great. But you're saying there's this kind of residue that the sin kind of leaves that needs to be dealt with. Sure.

And then someone would say, well, this seems like you're kind of robbing the cross of its power. Maybe they would say that, you know, like how come Christ's death isn't sufficient? Why do you have to work? Why do you have to do all these things? Why can't you just receive it? And maybe that gets to what you were saying about this is more than just a declaration. It's an inner healing. Right. And I think a helpful distinction to draw is the difference between punishment and satisfaction. So in punishment, you just suffer the penalty. So when we talk about sin, we talk about fault or culpa. And then for every fault or culpa, there is a penalty or pena attached. And so, you know, you do this bad thing and there is a just

punishment attached to it. And you either atone for that in this life or you atone for it in purgatory. Satisfaction is different than just suffering punishment. It's a willing suffering of punishment. So your will is actually aligned with the one who meets out the punishment, the just and merciful God. And so you see the logic of the punishment and you assume it as something good for you. So your will, your heart is actually being aligned with the heart of God as concerns your particular salvation. And I guess for the point as to whether or not it robs the cross of its efficacy, I think it's the kind of thing where the cross, the efficacy of the cross has to be applied in such personal fashion

that it can't just be like, well, I can't say what it can and can't be, but it seems that there is a logic to indulgences in as much as they apply the passion to you in a personal way. So it's Christ tells salvation history, you know, in his flesh. He merits salvation for all. One drop of his blood is sufficient for the salvation of all. But he also tells that story in each human heart in a way that's proper to you, in a way that's personal. And the logic of indulgences is that you're like rehearsing in your body the effects of the passion as the merits of the passion are applied and worked out, you know, to the tips of your fingers and to the soles of your feet. So that way, not only do you assent to the fact, acknowledge the fact, receive the fact that

Christ is Lord, that he has suffered and died for you, but you feel it in your bones in a kind of extended metaphorical, analogical sense. Yeah. I mean, the way I've tried to describe purgatory to some Protestants is I'll say, okay, so many of us who will die and go to heaven are at the end of our life, either still sinning or attached to sin. But when we're in heaven, you know,

we will not be attached to sin. We won't have the wounds that sin brought about. Therefore, it would seem that there has to be some sort of middle place where I'm cleansed of those wounds and those attachments. But I suppose my problem comes as I try to think through this is it seems like we use two different kind of ways of speaking about it. One is like medicinal. Yeah.

So the Lord heals us. And then the other is the punishment thing. And so it's like, okay two different kind of ways of speaking about it. One is like medicinal. Yeah. Most of the Lord heals us. And then the other is the punishment thing. And so it's like, okay, you've committed the sin, so do these things and then you'll get out of purgatory. But then that sounds in contradiction to the healing thing. I mean, if I've been immersed in sin my whole life, say pornography or stealing theft or something, you know, this has wounded me.

And the idea that I can then get a plenary indulgence is the argument, well, and then you do not need purgatory because you've done this thing and therefore do not need the healing. That seems to contradict. You see what I mean? Yes, I do see what you mean. I think that our understanding of justice has been somewhat shaped or tinged by the discussion of justice in like the kind of civil sector. So typically when you would punish someone, you know, by court of law, that there would be three aspects to that punishment. So on the one hand, it's for the rectification of justice. So it's just just to punish like punition is part of it,

or vindication, I suppose. Second, you also want it to be healing, medicinal, right? And so this is especially present in the utilitarian tradition, whereby we start to call prisons penitentiaries, and we start to model it after monastic life. Notice the name of a room for a prisoner. I never made that connection. It's a penitentiary. A cell. Is that where that came from? I think so. That's really neat. Yeah. So I went to this, let's see, this prison in Dublin, Ireland, Kilmainham Jail or Gull or however you pronounce it. Yeah. And they're explaining this

because it was modeled on this whole penitentiary thing. And you would have all of the cells visible to a guy who could stand in the middle. So I can't remember exactly what they called it, but it was basically the panopticon. So you would be before the all-seeing eye of God, effectively. That is incredible. I had no idea. And penitentiary coming from the same root as penance. Exactly. Which means what? Where does penance come from, that word? Do you know? I don't actually. So it comes from pena, so punishment. Yeah.

And I don't know what the... No, that was good. That's all I was going for. Cheers. All right. Okay. So you're saying we have a... Yeah, we can have a... So we're talking on the one hand about punition. We're talking on the other hand about this medicinal healing penitential aspect. And then the third piece is deterrence. So you don't want

other people to do the same thing. And so you make the punishment such that they wouldn't want to attempt it just for fear of what might happen to them. But I think that we've really lost the punition element because we've really lost a sense that justice needs to be rendered, right? That there's a kind of cosmic order. And so like, I think this, this tinges a lot of way that people think about Christ's satisfaction, because a lot of, a lot of people will read it and think that like God is creepy, right? So he's got this wrath that needs to be satisfied. And so he sends his only begotten son who assumes human flesh. And the first thing that he does is to satisfy God's wrath. It's like,

no, like God is indebted to himself. And that's a debt that he can remit without the sacrifice. Exactly. But he chooses so that we can see that cosmic order resonate through creation, right? So it's not as if God suffers by virtue of the fact that we have sinned against him. God's immutable. But he wants to show that things that require a restitution or that require a recovery of justice should be done in that way. But this is the type of thing that can only be recovered by Christ himself. Okay. So, that's a long preamble. Yeah. covered by Christ himself. Okay. So that's a long preamble. But I think that something to say that there's a punitive element and to say that there's a medicinal element doesn't mean to say that they're in contrast. Both can be present in a just mercy. So God gives us the opportunity in justice and by virtue of his mercy to be reconstituted in relationship to him, which is something that we are not owed. We are not owed that by any stretch of the imagination. It's fitting that because we have been created for a supernatural destiny, that we should have the opportunity to reclaim it, but it's still super natural. It's still beyond us.

And so God in his mercy, which is, you know, underwrites every act of justice, affords us the opportunity to be reconstituted in a relationship, but he does it in such a way that's fitting for us according to our nature, which is discursive. So we come to our end by steps progressively, and we come to our end, um, hylomorphically, right? So body and soul, we do it as an embodied soul or as a, an ensouled body, but it's something that, that we kind of rehearse in our flesh in order for those spiritual realities to actually take root in our soul. And so we suffer it, but we suffer it as something healing in the way that like, I think all parents try to teach their children. I'm not just saying like, don't put your hand on the stove because I'm, I'm a maker of arbitrary rules, but because I want you

to be happy. I want you to be healthy. I want you to grow. And I might permit you to do this so that it's impressed in your memory one time, but I'm going to try to protect you from it. And if you do it, then not only will the punishment be your hand, but I might assign a further punishment to reaffirm the fact of what has happened. I don't know if that's at all getting to your point. Yeah. I mean, I still get hung up on this idea that someone is a vicious person. Right. And right before they die, they receive a plenary indulgence, which is to say this full remission of the temporal guilt.

So how do you go from a vicious person who does this one thing, and then all of a sudden no healing is necessary, no purgatory is necessary for you? And maybe that's not what the church is saying, but it seems that way to me. And it seems to me you would have to say, well, we just don't know how plenary indulgences, well, we may be able to explain how they work, but just like we can't judge where somebody is in their relationship to God and the state of their soul, we can't judge how, whether or not

an action was efficacious, you know, in receiving that indulgence maybe. But, I mean, are we going to say that, well, that one action you did and received, that was the healing for your entire life of being a, you know, vicious person and you did this one thing and plenary indulgence and no purgatory? Do you see what I mean? I do. Where's the healing? Right.

That purgatory is supposed to supply. Right. So, healing ordinarily, St. Thomas talks about how healing is. So when you use medicine, when a doctor uses medicine, he's assisting the nature of the person. So the primary healer is the nature of the human being who works towards, you know, like by the principles of his own constitution, works towards bodily integrity. So if I like get a cut on my hand, I could do precisely nothing.

I could just, you know, keep it clean, precisely nothing. And it'll heal over time. Or I could add Neosporin to the wound, and it'll heal a little more quickly. It'll heal with less of a scar, right? But what the medicine is doing is that it's assisting nature. So in the ordinary course, you know, we heal by virtue of our nature. The analogy kind of, it breaks down a little bit when it comes to supernatural healing, though, because there are organic stages of growth in supernatural healing. So you go to the sacrament of penance, right? You have your sins remitted. You perform the penitential acts assigned to you. You try to

incorporate those penitential acts into a lifelong practice. You frequent the sacraments with themselves, occasions of healing. You pray, which reorders your heart to God. You are in friendships, which themselves kind of work towards your own betterment as you pursue the Lord together, dot, dot, dot, et cetera. Yeah. Okay. So like there are these kind of ordinary stages of growth, but miraculously God can do in an instant what will ordinarily take time.

Right. So like Ratzinger even talked about this prior to becoming Pope. He talked to purgatory, maybe not taking any temporal duration at all. This is his, I don't know. Sure, an eschatology. Yeah, this would be in conflict, I suppose, with Thomas. But the idea was that maybe it's the encountering of God's love which purifies us in that instant. So, I think in this particular regard, so, St. Augustine has this image where he talks about the miracle of the wedding feast at Cana. This is in his tract. So I think, I think, uh, in this particular regard, so St. Augustine has this image

where he talks about the miracle of the wedding feast at Cana. This is in his tractates on John. Okay. He says, what's the miracle? God takes, well, the Lord Jesus Christ takes water and makes it wine. Okay. So that's an extraordinary event. What is the ordinary course whereby we get wine? He asks, well, rain falls, waters the vineyard, you know, you gather the grapes, you crush them, they ferment, and then you get wine. So over the long haul, it's just, it's the sameyard. You know, you gather the grapes, you crush them, they ferment, and then you get wine. So over the long haul, it's the same thing. You start with water, rain, and then you get wine. So what is so extraordinary about the miracle? It's that it does instantaneously what ordinarily takes time.

And so I think that when you have those really significant deathbed conversions, and somebody goes from being a vile sinner to a just person, and then, you know, the remission of punishment is affected in that person's life, you have God doing miraculously what ordinarily develops organically. So both are marvelous, but the extraordinary or the miraculous one draws our attention really to how marvelous is the ordinary course. So God is always healing, but sometimes in different fashions. And so you can think of literary examples like in Brideshead Revisited, how Cordelia quotes to her, she quotes to Charles that passage. I've never read it. You've told me to read it, but I haven't. Sorry.

No, it's all right. There's a passage from a Father Brown story, G.K. Chesterton story, and she quotes it in regard to her brother, maybe even her sister, some of her family members who have wandered away, most particularly her father, who has really been in a bad way for decades. And she says that God basically will permit you to wander to the very edge of the earth, only to pull you back by a twitch upon the thread. So that God can do miraculously at the end. Yeah. So what we're saying then is if this person received that indulgence, that something essentially supernatural has taken place. There has been an inner healing of sorts. There has been an inner healing, but it's been an accelerated one, or it's been an instantaneous one.

So ordinarily the healing takes time, but a healing of this sort can happen instantaneously. So you see in the deathbed reconciliation of the father of the family, Lord Marchman, he receives the sacraments at the end. He receives last rites, and he signals that just by making the sign of the cross. So very small. But what happens there? He turns his will. He receives the sacraments at the end. He receives last rites. And he signals that just by making the sign of the cross. So very small. But what happens there? He turns his will.

His will is, by God's grace, turns towards God. And then with the infusion of charity comes the justification of the sinner. And then the sacraments themselves supply for the remission, both eternal and temporal, of what is associated with those sins. Provided that one has the right disposition and you're not simulating it. Yeah. Thérèse of Lisieux talked about a man on death row when she was young and she prayed for him. And she said that right before he was executed, he may have kissed the priest's cross. And she took that as a sign from our Lord that he did.

So that's kind of maybe what you're talking about there. And he, Henry Franzini is the name of the guy. And he had brutally murdered like two, I think, or three women, like helpless, defenseless. He had just broken into their home, I think. So he was, in the late 19th century, understanding of things. And for Therese, the most vile of sinners. And he turns with a very small gesture, but it's one sufficient to assure her that her prayers are beneficacious.

I don't know if we've talked about this before, but on her deathbed, have you read Story of a Soul? I have. It's a bit floral and flowery, speaking of French people. I love it. I find it difficult i just like ah this like french kid who likes bonbons and stuff it's hard to get into but um but she's she i've heard someone say she shouldn't be called a little flower she should

be called like the iron rod or something you know she she's she's got a uh yeah a will of iron you know um but on a deathbed i believe this is in story of a soul the sister said to her, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but it's no wonder you're so confident of heaven. We don't think you've ever committed a mortal sin in your life, you know? Yeah. And she has this beautiful line. She says, it's not because of my lack of sin that I go to God with confidence. Even if I had committed the most vile sins imaginable, I would still be this confident. She said, I've seen the way he spoke to Magdalene.

I saw how he spoke to the woman caught in adultery at the well. And she says, no, nothing can frighten me. No, nothing can frighten me, that confidence. And she says, I would go to our Lord, my heart bruised and broken. And I know that my sin compared to his mercy would be like a drop of water flicked into a raging furnace. That's what you're up against. Isn't that beautiful? It is. Yeah, there's no real proportion between our sinfulness and God's mercy.

He takes the least for it. Yeah. If he's infinite in all of his attributes, then his mercy is infinite. Ours can only be finite. So, yeah. Yeah. So, it's kind of like if I went up against a UFC fighter. Kind of like that, yeah.

But infinitely different. Yeah. Yeah, okay. That's good. Thanks for shedding light on that. Now, when you read books, especially old books, they'll say something like indulgence 800 days. People misunderstand this.

Explain that to us. So formally, a period of time was assigned to indulgenced acts. Like this would remit X number of days of purgatory. That practice has been suspended because it's hard to make an association between time spent on earth and time spent in purgatory. Because I think it's appropriate to be agnostic about how long things take in purgatory. But I think those times assigned were just kind of like relative times. So this act is more efficacious than that act. And so we assign it a greater number of days.

But I don't think anyone was claiming to know exactly how many days one spent in purgatory. Because, I mean, a solar day is something measured by the movement of the celestial bodies, which who's to say where purgatory is and whether it's actually measured by such things. Yeah, exactly. Hey, you want to take a pause to say a big thank you to our third sponsor for today's show, Covenant Eyes. You've heard me talk about them before, and here we go again. They are the best filtering and accountability software on the web.

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And then you have to try to answer it without your theological lingo hiding your ignorance, right? So here's a question that Peter asked me the other day. Where is heaven? Is it a place? And so I would stretch that question and say, is it within the universe? Is it in, if we live in a multiverse, is it one of them? Apparently it has to be somewhere.

So where is it? And yeah, I guess that's it. Where is it? So I have no idea. Good answer. Unsatisfying, but the most honest I can provide. I guess we have a kind of confidence that it will be somehow connected with our experience of the material in this life because the apostles and the women, the faithful women recognize Jesus. Right.

So they recognize his glorified body, even though it exhibits these attributes of, you know, immutability and clarity and agility and subtlety, etc. Speaking of another Frenchman in this regard, Pascal. Yeah. He actually addresses the question, like, how do we get to heaven from here? What does it even mean? Like, how do you get there? And he says something to the effect of, it's more bizarre that we went from nowhere and nothing to here

than we should go from here to heaven. There you go. That's a good answer. I like that, yeah. So, yeah, we have some confidence that it will be a place in as much as Christ has a body, the Blessed Virgin has a body. But place can be variously defined, as St. Thomas treats in his discussion of the angels. He says place can be understood as contained therein, but it can also be understood as exercising influence there.

Yeah. influencing influence there. Yeah. Right? So I don't think that it will be place in the way that we experience place here, like literally this kind of place, like the innermost, what was it? The innermost limit of a containing body, I think is Aristotle's definition. Who cares? Whatever.

No, I can. That's really neat. Hey, cheers. But it will be something that takes into account our materiality because with an eye towards the resurrection of the dead, and it'll be something wherein we can enjoy a communion that is embodied. That's not to say that it will be crassly material, but that it will take account of and transfigure the matter that is present.

So I have no idea. Well, I mean, when you read Aquinas, I think it's in the supplementary section, he talks about heaven, and it seems like he has a really weird view of heaven. According to his view, it would seem like there's no grass, there's no trees, there's no animals. Am I right in assuming that was his view? I haven't read the supplement. Yeah.

Spoilers. Where is it? Track it down. I have it somewhere. I actually do. Nice. It doesn't matter. Okay.

Let it ride. Okay, well, I don't want to make, I don't want to attribute to Aquinas something that's false, but I thought he was kind of saying that, you know, because people often ask if their dogs go to matter. Okay. Let it ride. Okay. Well, I don't want to make, I don't want to attribute to Aquinas something that's false, but I thought he was kind of saying that, you know, because people often ask if their dogs go to heaven. Right. Why don't you share that with us? Burst our bubble.

What does Aquinas have to say? You vicious brute, you. What's the deal? So all dogs don't go to heaven with the exception of, what was it? Black Russian Terriers. Yeah, they're good. Especially if named Pushkin. So you'll be fine.

It'll be great. You don't care. I don't care. I like my dog, but if he died, I'd be fine. I feel terrible about that. You meet people who have this great relationship with their dog, but if my dog got sick, and it doesn't matter, I could get in trouble for saying this. So dogs going to heaven, yay or nay?

Here's my initial thought. Well, one, I think a healthy agnosticism is appropriate. I don't think one should be like overly swaggeringly certain about the fate of dogs because i think being overly swaggering swaggeringly certain about anything that happens i want that on a shirt you ought not to be anyway uh-huh so uh what what would you say well there are different kinds of souls so there's plant souls there's animal souls there's human souls and plant souls and animal souls don't have any operation which transcends the bodily organs in which they take place. So they're circumscribed by the organs. What does that mean?

Okay, so if you're these things, you've got nutrition, you've got growth, you've got reproduction, you've got sense cognition, you know, like outer senses, inner senses. You've got sense appetite, so like the passions. You've got locomotion. But all of those things are delimited by, are wholly bound by the corporeal organs. So the thought is that when the body fails and dies, that the form just breaks up, as it were, or it just passes out of existence. Whereas with human souls, we have two powers, namely intellect and will, which are seated in corporeal organs so it's it's right to associate our our intellect with our mind with our brain right but it's not wholly delimited by that so it's not it's not mmm it's not

seated in that organ so as to be kind of stuck there as it were because it has an operation that transcends the organ so as a result of which we judge that this activity per doors and so the soul per doors, and so the soul passes on to some state beyond the present one, whereas we can't make that same jump with animals. And so when it comes to animals' eternal fate, we're just, all that we're saying, we say that we're not especially sanguine on their hopes is that they seem to perish with the body. But then you take account of this vision of heaven, right? So you got beatific vision and then you got kingdom of heaven dimensions. So heaven is something that's both intellectual, volitional, right?

A loving vision of God that wholly engages the person, but one that has dimensions that are extend beyond the individual person. It's not as if all those heaven dwellers just gaze on the vision of God and are entranced thereby, irrespective of their environment. It's something that actually has us in communion. So it's like a new heavens and a new earth. There's a lot of kingdom imagery, which seems to entail that it'll be like a polity. So if that's the case, then there will be citizens and the citizens will play out every dimension of a city. And so I think we can have hopes for the recovery of certain earthly things purged of their

earthly imperfections and transfigured in that realm. And so I realize this may be unorthodox when it comes to the Thomistic line, but I mean, I wouldn't be surprised to see dogs in heaven. I'd be like, oh, what's up? Nice. Yeah, yeah. Or I know there's, I was talking to Tim Staples, who I used to work with at Catholic Answers, and he said, he thinks there'll be hunting in heaven.

We need animals to hunt, you know? And he wasn't said he thinks they'll be hunting in heaven with animals to hunt. And he wasn't joking. So they wouldn't go from here to there, he doesn't think. Well, that actually brings me to a point about like – I wanted to ask you about Thomas Aquinas. What is a Thomist, generally speaking? And then I wanted to ask you how much can one disagree with Thomas while remaining a Thomist? And then I suppose a third question is should much can one disagree with Thomas while remaining a

Thomist? And then I suppose a third question is, should we even care whether we're a Thomist? I'm not sure if Thomas would have been. Sure, yeah. So what is a Thomist? Okay, so you can approach the discipline of theology in a variety of ways. I think the best way to approach the discipline of theology is by asking, what is God? So the theology should principally be about the study

of God and then all things in light of God. And when you approach that, what do you need in order to begin the discourse? You just need faith. Hopefully, it's a faith burning with charity, a faith breaking forth in love, because that gives you a greater sympathy with the things described. It gives you the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the requisite virtues, which make it so that your life coheres with the things studied and reveals them as such. But basically, all you need to practice theology is faith. And by virtue of faith, you know more than even the wisest of ancient philosophers. And faith in this context means what? Faith, I guess you can describe it in a variety of ways, but I'm talking about the virtue.

Like a trust in revelation that's given to us. So, St. Thomas takes his first definition from Hebrews 11.1, which is faith is the assurance, no, the evidence of things hoped for, nope, the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. Or he also uses St. Augustine's definition, which is to think with assent. So, faith is God who is divine truth, first truth speaking, reveals himself to the person, and we have a virtue in our mind, a kind of augmented capacity, which makes us susceptible to or receptive of God's revelation. So we believe because God is trustworthy and because we can hold fast to his testimony, but we believe the

things that he reveals. So we believe God, we believe in God, his testimony, but we believe the things that he reveals. Right. So we believe God. We believe in God. That's to say we believe what he tells us. And we also believe unto God, which is to say that there is a kind of trust element. Right. So we lean into that relationship. And then as a result of which we have the confidence that what he says is true. Yeah.

So I like that, though, a bit, what you said about, I mean, even my grandma, right. She knew more than Aristotle. She did, yeah. And St. Thomas comments that. In relation to God. A little old lady. A little old lady knows more than the most wise ancient philosopher. Yeah. I'm going to bring this around to what we're talking about unless we go far afield.

So, okay, I asked you, what's a Thomist? What's a Thomist? Okay. So I think that a Thomist is just somebody who does theology according to the form and matter of St. Thomas' exposition or the way in which he did theology. So some people will want to say, like, in order to do theology, to be a Thomist, you just need to kind of deploy his method.

And they'll say his method is just reconciling different things. So reconciling Aristotle and Christian revelation, or reconciling Augustine and Aristotle, or reconciling the East and the West West or reconciling, you know, faith and reason. So they'll talk about him as a great reconciler or they'll talk about him as using the most recent sources as informative of his practice. Right. So someone could say, there's no need to be stuck on Thomas Aquinas, just do what he did. Just like Thomas incorporated all this wisdom. So much has happened since Thomas, so let's just continue to incorporate it, even if that means perhaps rejecting some of his

conclusions. So I think that's, yeah, that's often what you'll, you'll often hear this argument as a way of trivializing some of St. Thomas's claims or distancing yourself from claims of St. Thomas that you find unhelpful or unsavory even. And so this would be the formal element, like you practice theology as St. Thomas practiced theology. So you're doing faith discourse, God's revealing, you're studying God. But really what you're about is reconciling these different aspects of an unfolding tradition and trying to proceed by your best lights. So that's like the formal element. And then there's the material element, which is St. Thomas is a good teacher of the faith and that you learn to enunciate the faith or you learn to study the faith and so enunciate the faith accordingly as St. Thomas described it. So, for instance, you take time to study St. Thomas's philosophy and his theology, which is to say you take time to study philosophy

and theology as he understood it and as he teaches it in order to assume the very mind of St. Thomas. So, not only do you practice theology as he did, but you see in theology as he practiced it, an especially good, sure, stable, certain exposition of the revelation. And so prior to Aquinas, aren't people still doing that to some degree? I mean, Augustine's incorporating the pagan philosophy. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, like prior to Aquinas, a lot of people would have self-described as Augustinians. Okay. And what did that mean? So, I think like with St. Augustine, the theological method is a little bit different in as much

as he's not as much of a systematizer as St. Thomas is. So, it can feel reading St. Augustine that it's a little more eclectic. Yeah. Now, mind you, there are great benefits to that because it feels often more personal. Yeah. It feels more personalistic, like when you read the Confessions by comparison to St. Thomas's autobiography, which doesn't exist. So people would have identified as Augustinians, and that's principally by associating with his teachings in polemical controversies. So like St. Thomas against the – excuse me, St. Augustine against the pagans, St. Augustine against the

Manichaeans, St. Augustine against the Donatists, St. Augustine against the Pelagians or semi-Pelagians. So he really teaches you a way of understanding the dispensation of grace in a big way, of the sacraments in a big way, of Christology, things like that. And so an Augustinian would be reading St. Augustine's texts and they would be engaging with these themes polemically. So like in the 13th century, you're engaging with Albigensians or Cathars, and you're using St. Augustine as a model engaging with the Manichaeans, right? So you're deploying his method. But you're also assuming the doctrinal content. So you're doing form and matter, and you would have been an Augustinian. And so when this upstart, well, when Aristotle's texts are recovered

from the Arabic tradition, so when you get the, you know, like back in circulation, you get the physics and the metaphysics and the de anima and the Nicomachean ethics and things like that, then that represents a kind of threat, I suppose, to the coherence of your tradition, because St. Augustine is working within a Platonic tradition. Right. So a student of, you know, like Neoplatonians

and very much steeped in that philosophy, which was like his first conversion from Manichean, or his conversion away from Manicheanism, involved what he thought was a deeper fidelity to the Platonic tradition. So when St. Thomas kind of comes on the scene, he's not really understood as a rival tradition. I think that's something that really only happens in the 16th century. I can't defend this claim. Oh, I see. That he's thought to be a rival to, say, Augustine or how theology was done prior to him. Yeah. So I think that people would have just seen St. Thomas and said, this is a novel incorporation of Aristotle and it's destabilizing for the Augustinian

consensus. And so it should just kind of be ruled out. But it wasn't so much thought as like, you can be an Augustinian or you can be a Thomist. Right. Because like no one were Thomists except for Dominicans for centuries. Would have Thomas thought of himself as an Augustinian? Like would he have used that language, do you think? Or the equivalent to express his allegiance to Augustine? I think so.

Yeah, I think because that just meant to be a traditional theologian. Yeah, I see. To be one working within the tradition who wasn't kind of like head over heels about eclectic insights that came from whatever corner. So St. Thomas was very much traditional. And so he saw himself as occupying a place within that tradition because all scholastic theologians basically did, with some exceptions. So, yeah, I think that... So, like, what is a Thomist? Yeah, try and sum it up in a sentence for me. So, a Thomist is one who studies theology as Thomas did, but also sees in St. Thomas an especially excellent, sure, and safe guide for studying theology, as St. Thomas did. So, then my question, the next question was was how much can one first of all should we even be that interested in titles like this i mean can we have like a

an unnecessary allegiance to a particular saint rather than just listening to the church and disagreeing with him and because i mean there's there's there's different kind of ways of expressing there's different options right in regards to figuring out soteriology and um free will and um that are available to us as catholics yeah so can we be unnecessarily attached to a particular saint i think it is possible to do such a thing um have you met have you met people like that i i yeah i may have even been someone like that um so i think it is possible to do that especially if one's allegiances are tribal okay so i don't want to like overly polemicize or kind of lampoon. Yeah. But I think the reason for which one is a Thomist is because one sees in St. Thomas a

particular way of reading scripture, inheriting tradition, defending, arguing, enunciating, magisterial teaching, but like effectively of knowing and loving God. Right. And he's recommended as such, but what's important is the deposit of faith. What's important is the Lord Jesus and how he reveals himself in time and space and how we receive that according to the light of faith. And St. Thomas, I think, is an excellent guide, both method-wise and also content-wise for doing that. And so, I think that it can be done poorly, though, if one just sees in St. Thomas a kind of touchstone for orthodoxy by comparison to heterodoxy, or if one sees in him a kind of touchstone for tradition versus a progressive notion of the faith or things like that.

And then one uses him as a cudgel to bludgeon other people into submission. So you'll often hear people who, you know, like I did this for sure. I read three sentences of St. Thomas, and then I was just a real punk in a couple of my philosophy classes, and I'd be like, well, St. Thomas says, you know, like by contradiction to my much more learned professor, who was delivering a nuanced point which involved, you know, X, Y, and Z other factors, and I was just being a bore.

Yeah. So I think that it can be problematic when St. Thomas's name is used irresponsibly. And then it often causes in people in different corners of the church an allergic reaction to the mention of his name because he's often used in a way that is pedantic or doctrinaire or kind of belligerent. So I don't think we want to do that. But I think it is important to know St. Thomas because I think it's an important part of being a traditional thinker. I don't think that one has to be a Thomist, right? He's a lowercase t tradition as part of many lowercase t traditions within the church.

He has a privileged place in as much as like authority confirms. Universal doctor. But also use seems to corroborate. And so he's not just like to be thought as one of a number of options. I think that one needs to know St. Thomas well in order to understand other traditions well, especially those that come after him. And I think he gives us a great entree to traditions that come before him, right?

I think he's an excellent and sympathetic reader of St. Augustine, and he often systematizes St. Augustine's thoughts. Because when you read Augustine on his own terms, like in the De Trinitate, a lot of people find it very overwhelming and kind of confounding. It's like, what is going on?

You know, it's beautiful, but it's difficult to say exactly what has been accomplished at the end of books 13, 14, and 15. When you read St. Thomas's treatise on the Trinity, you're like, aha, this is excellent. This is a super helpful tool. So I think that St. Thomas is a kind of touchstone for our understanding of what goes before and for our understanding of what goes after. And I think that a lot of other theological traditions don't rise to the level of tradition in the way that Thomism does, because they don't have the same desire to be as systematic or to describe all things. Whereas I think that St. Thomas has an especially privileged position precisely because he is

wise in an encompassing way. So he wants to say what there is to say about everything because he has it kind of like it burns in his bones the desire to give adequate expression to God's revelation as it touches every facet of human and divine life. And so other traditions just tend to be less ambitious. And I think a lot of other traditions tend to be more eclectic. So there's things to say about this and things to say about this and things to say about that. But they're not trying to do the whole as a going forth from God and as a returning to God. So I think it's, you know, for some of those reasons and for other reasons yet, that St. Thomas is especially good to know.

Are there teachings from St. Thomas Aquinas which you disagree with that make it awkward since you're a Dominican? You know, do you Dominican brothers sit around and be like, yeah, he's i think he's dead wrong on this and the other one's like no he's dead right yeah so um usually there's like pretty good consensus as to what holds and then like what doesn't hold okay so there are some things about saint thomas that represent in the 21st century i guess you would call them embarrassments. Yeah. Like hell being within the earth? Right.

I haven't thought about that too terribly much. Okay. But things that people respond to. So in church circles, the Immaculate Conception, that St. Thomas got it wrong, but for the right reasons. Cheers. Read the book. That St. Thomas got it wrong, but for the right reasons is the way that we kind of feel good about ourselves at the end of the day but then people respond to his his

reception of aristotelian science and then you try to defend that by saying it was the best science available he was also very responsible in his use of it so he didn't make a lot of his theological claims to hinge on the scientific claims oh there's there's that part in the summa where he talks about having wet dreams and how maybe eating meat can lead to this yeah and so yeah there's those scientific issues i guess i'm talking more about the theological issues like because yeah you could disagree with aquinas's science and be in good terms right with other tomists but i mean what about like substantive things i mean we can't deny certain things so like aquinas is a big proponent of simplicity right but that's we have to believe

that as catholics it's not one among many options for us but what we just spoke about a moment ago about animals in heaven like i've met people who are like i think i think it would be kind of contrary to god's justice when you consider in australia right now we've got all these fires and millions of animals are dying uh someone might say that that they not be sort of uh that they wouldn't go to heaven so i could see someone making an argument for why animals go to heaven um yeah so like why can't you could agree and just say i think thomas was wrong there sure so one thing i would say is uh as regards the doctrine of creation so the first part of the summa you know like the first question is on

methodology and then questions 2 through 43 about the Trinity. And then after that, he talks a lot about creation. So he has like questions 44 through 49, which are an intro. And then angels are 50 through 64. And then he talks about the work of the six days, 65 through 74. And he talks about man, 75 and beyond, and then picks up some other stuff at the end. I find a lot of those questions kind of uninteresting because I think they're speaking out of an idiom that translates less well to the 21st century. And also because I think that some of it is just, yeah, is maybe dubious is the word that I'd use. So specifically in the treatise on the work of the six days, when St. Thomas is under, he's working with St. Augustine's literal commentary on Genesis, his other work on like

against the Genesis against the Manichaeans. He's trying to synthesize the tradition. But at this point in the tradition, the only person who really read the work of the six days analogically, or allegorically, I should say, is Augustine. Basically, everyone else was content to say that it was a literal six days. And St. Thomas kind of hedges. He doesn't really know. So we'll often say that there's this vein within the Catholic tradition that defends an allegorical reading of this, and this squares with evolutionary science and our understanding that, you know, 13.8 billion years, you know, and then 4.5 billion years and then X number of years. So like all of these points at which, you know, big bang and then, you know, life, appearance of life and then development of things. So we know these things from the

scientific evidence and then we have to square that with scriptural revelation. So St. Thomas didn't have access to that science, but he didn't feel the same urgency as St. Augustine did to read this allegorically. And so I think that St. Thomas is an excellent reader of scripture. For me to even pronounce upon that as a judgment is like silly in as much as I am a child and he is a full-grown man. But I think that this particular treatise doesn't hold up so well. It's not really interesting, and I think it his that this particular treatise doesn't hold up so well it's not really interesting and i think it's which particular treatise on the work of the six days oh so that's like yeah whatever i said questions 65 through 74 or something like that that's those numbers are made up but they're ballpark yeah um so there's one person it's it to you when you were

in college doing this and he's watching and he's checking his sumo right now and he's angrily commenting exactly yeah he deserves to be angry so i've betrayed him um so yeah it's it's stuff like that that's like one instance and at the end of that same book you know he picks up other things that he thinks pertains to creation which i again i just don't think are that interesting and i think that they can get a little bit science fictiony so i'm content to like play out the implications of revelation and metaphysics to a certain point. And he does that when it comes to the knowledge of the angels and how one angel teaches another. Yeah. That's pretty impressive. It is. It's beautiful to read, but...

Some of the latter stuff, like how do angels assume bodies and then move things and then like about fate. I just, I mean, I've read those... Quite speculative, would you say? Yeah. Super speculative. And it just doesn't seem to merit the same place within the treatise as other things do. So it seems to indicate that St. Thomas is considering different questions than we are in the 21st century, which is fine. He doesn't live in the 21st century, but I just, like some of those things I suspect probably aren't true. And I don't want to put my neck out for them because it's- Because it's your man. He's on your team.

Yeah, exactly. I was speaking to someone recently and they were at a catholic university and they were studying philosophy and they did you know the the pre-socratics and then ancient philosophy um and they skipped medieval and went to descartes and the argument is well nothing nothing really happened and there's no point studying aquinas because he made no serious contribution so i wanted to ask you that like what contribution say to metaphysics metaphysics or otherwise philip philosophically speaking did aquinas make what why should we be interested in studying him today sure so i can think of a couple of things just tell me to stop talking when this becomes

wildly uninteresting let's raise my hand ballfist. So I think that sometimes St. Thomas' scene is not making a contribution because a lot of people will read it and say that he just adds Christian revelation to the insights of Aristotle. But I think what he's doing is actually developing philosophy. And now mind you, this is like a vexed question of whether there is a Christian philosophy and to what extent revelation actually impinges upon the practice of philosophy. We're going to bracket that for now. But I think that what is important is that St. Thomas is coming to insights that are clearer than those of Aristotle by an argumentation that is sounder than that of Aristotle. So a classic example is at the end of the physics, Aristotle ends up at the unmoved mover, right? But in the process, he ends up saying that time is eternal, right?

So that the world is eternal. Why, he says, because each moment, each instant, each now is the meeting point of past and present. But you have to extend that logic infinitely in either direction in order for that to hold. But in doing so, he's question begging. So mind you, St. Thomas has Christian revelation that the world has a beginning, right? So that God created it. And with it, he concreated time. So he has that.

But he also makes arguments and shows how Aristotle's arguments are weak and for what reason, like in his commentary on the physics. And by virtue of the fact that he is arguing when he is and that he has a revelation that he does, perhaps some of these arguments are more clear to him or they appeal to him in a different way than they did to his 4th century BC predecessor. But I think that what we see in St. Thomas is that he's developing in a way that can't be easily dismissed as just Christian revelation. So, regarding, you know, the age of the universe is one particular place where I think that's helpful. But also, you can think about this in terms of like the moral life. Okay, so think about ethics.

St. Thomas has a different hierarchy of virtues than does Aristotle. So for instance, in Aristotle, there's no humility, right? There's just no humility to speak of. And you can scour the ancient tradition. There really isn't humility. When you look in Cicero, when you look in Aristotle, when you look in Plato, there's some sense that one ought not be an overweening tool bag. But there isn't... From the Greek. Exactly, exactly. Tool bag, yes. But there is a sense that there isn't the same sense that humility is so foundational for, yeah, for being a good human person. But in St. Thomas, it is, right? And I mean, like the question on humility is kind of near the end, like, I don't know, like 161 or something like that.

But for him, it's of a holy foundational position, or it assumes a foundational position in the Christian life. And then you think about charity. Like St. Thomas, his insights as regards love are beyond anything that we have heard before or since. So St. Thomas takes the Nicomachean ethics and he digests it in a way that's awesome, but he adds to it a scope that it could never have assumed given its setting. So like Aristotle will talk about the connection of the virtues and prudence. He'll say that as the man is, so he sees. So you can only exhibit right reasoning with respect to things to be done if you are justly

ordered or well-ordered towards goods. So you have to be just, you have to be, you know, courageous, you have to be temperate in order to be prudent or otherwise like your inordinate attachment to these different things will make it so that you can't see the situation well. And as a result of which can't choose. So he connects the virtues in prudence, but St. Thomas goes ahead and connects the virtues in charity. So he's using the Augustinian tradition and he's using the Aristotelian tradition. Not only is he synthesizing them, but he's actually transposing them into a new register. And in so doing, he puts it in all in terms of friendship, right?

Because the first question that he asks about charity is utrum amicitia sit, or sorry, utrum caritas sit damacissi, whether charity is friendship. And so he makes this whole virtuous life. He gives it a new hierarchy, but he also transposes it in the order of love so that the whole thing is taken up in the sweep in like having a Godward gaze or having a common life with the Lord. And then this distinction that he has between like love of concubiscence and love of friendship has two dynamics in love. Like you regard the good, but you regard the person. And that all of it, well, I'm starting to get out of control. No, this is good. Okay, so this is some of his development, say, in morality, in ethics. What about metaphysics?

So what about metaphysics? Well, you can think about the way that he redefines substance and accidents, for instance. How does he redefine them? So for him, it's a matter of he has the doctrine of the Eucharist, right? And in the doctrine of the Eucharist, you find some strange things happening. So it's the one instance of a substantial change without an accidental change. Yeah. Except if you play the game Euchre, okay? Never mind. I haven't played it. There's a game called Euchre.

It's a dice game. No, it's like a Trump game. You have a few cars. Michiganders are great at this game. No, it's like a trump game. You have a few cards. Michiganders are great at this game. I learned it from a Michigander on a train in Austria when I was 19. But like one card, you know, you have two jacks, two red jacks. And if the suit is hearts, then like the jack of diamonds effectively becomes a heart. Okay. So substantial change and accidental change.

I like it. Both things begin with the word euchre. Okay. Or the phrase. Never mind. Stop it. So, but this is, I mean, I'm trying to wonder how, because what I ask, what I want you to do is, I suppose there's like a secular philosophy teacher and he's listening to you.

Yeah. And I want to say like, well, what contributions has Thomas made such that it would be a good idea to teach him? But here are we beginning to talk about theology? Right. So, sorry, that's an intro to an understanding of substance and accidents. Okay. So, when we talk about the Eucharist, we're talking about a substantial change with no

accompanying accidental change. And then the accidents, they don't inhere in the substance. Gotcha. They're suspended there miraculously by the power of God. So, it's accidents, it pertains to accidents to inhere in a substance. It pertains to a substance to be that thing in which accidents adhere, and it itself does not adhere in another. But Aristotle understands it in a particular way because he's observing. He's a marine biologist by trade, and he's observing the changes that happen in the world, and he's trying to categorize them and then predicate things accurately, but also describe them as they exist. But then St. Thomas has more data, right? So he has more data. But then St. Thomas has more data,

right? So he has more data in as much as Revelation gives him more data, but that has him return to the philosophy in a way that's more sober. So it's not just true of a substance that other things adhere in it, right? But it's that to which it pertains for other things to adhere in the ordinary course. It's just like a longhand version. So someone could reject transubstantiation and still benefit from Aquinas's discussion on accidents and substance? I think so, yes. Because he's purifying what exactly is at stake in these philosophical categories, and he's getting it to a degree of rigor. Okay, you're still unconvinced that he's made a signal contribution to the study of metaphysics. So let's keep going. Okay. Do I

look unconvinced? I don't know. You look like mildly skeptical. I just have a resting unconvinced face. I'm sorry. It's just. What about natural theology? I mean, Aquinas says that God's existence isn't a matter of faith. There's nothing to stop someone from having faith in God's existence if they can't understand it. But it's not strictly speaking a matter of theology. Theology is about the revelation of God.

not strictly speaking a matter of theology. Theology is about the revelation of God so that we can... And of course, in the tradition, you've got people coming up with philosophical arguments for God's existence. So I don't suppose that was terribly new. Yeah. But what about there in natural theology? I mean, is that something that Aquinas made great contributions to? Yeah.

So there's a 20th century Thomist, Etienne Gilson, who says that this is the biggest thing. This is the biggest metaphysical contribution is the real distinction. So the distinction between essence and existence, sometimes called essay, sometimes called the octo-sysenia. There you go. This is a huge year. Now I'm very convinced. All right, great.

I'm delighted. Yeah, let's explain that for people because this is a powerful insight. So this is, St. Thomas has a vision of creation, a metaphysics of creation, whereby he sees God as pure act, right? God is just to be. Right. So it's God's very nature, his essence, his quiddity, whatever word you want to use, is just to be. Right. As opposed to... As opposed to be this, to be that, to be whatsoever. One particular... Right. So it's a kind of limited thing. Exactly. It's to be, but in this particular kind of container.

And as a result of which, it's not to be in other ways. Whereas God is just to be. That's good. I'm just thinking of the word definite, right? Define. Define that, right? Yeah, exactly. Delimited.

If something's definite, it's this thing and not every other thing contrary to it. So God is not being by contrast to other beings. God just is to be. So God exhausts all that there is of being. So it pertains to God by nature or by right to be. So he doesn't look for his existence from elsewhere. It's not as if God were like lying dormant or were potentially God. And then there was some other thing added to God, and then he was activated as God. Yeah. It's just the fact that God is to be. Whereas by contrast, everything else is to be on loan.

Or it's... Explain that. Or it's... Well, it's to say that, like, it doesn't pertain to anything else to be in the way that God is. So, like, God exhausts all that there is of to be, whereas we receive our to be from God. So like you can think about the world and you can imagine it in this way or in that,

and you can imagine it like with you in it or you can imagine it without you in it. And so with that recognition, you have to admit that I could have not been or I could have been otherwise. I'm a contingent being. And so we need to account for the fact that I am, that I am this person, that I am not another person, that I am this way and not another way. And there we have the beginning of the revelation of this distinction

between essence, what you are, and then existence, that you are. But then with that distinction, we have to further explain that these two principles are conjoined. Now that's like a kind of weird way of describing it. But how is it that you are and that you're not? So why is there something? Yeah. How is it that a unicorn doesn't have existence but does have essence? Right.

Or like a pterodactyl doesn't have existence but does have essence. But that like a black Russian terrier has both essence and existence. So some things were and are no longer, some things never were and never shall be, and some things were and continue to be, and how do we account for that? And so St. Thomas says that they have existence, right? They have this actus ascendi, or essay, imparted to their nature. And that's something on which they are always reliant. It's not something that they can ever like take the reins on. It's like God kind of gets the sleigh started and then he hands them over to you.

And it's like, you've got it from here, lad. Because God always refers to young men as lad. It's one of my favorite words in the RSV translation. When this kid comes up with five loaves and two fish, it's like a lad was on hand. It's like, yes, awesome. Keep the lads. So this is not something over which we have competence. It's something that we'll always receive.

And so, it pertains to God to be. There is no distinction between essence and existence. Right. Whereas everything else, there is a distinction between essence and existence. And so, then we can see all of creation ranged about God as participating his to be. All of us are sharing in his to be. I was going to ask you that. Like, if you say that God exhausts all of to be, well, he's not me and I am. So, how is he? That's what someone might say. So,

how is he exhausting all of to be if he's not this and this and this? Right. Well, you are God. Okay. So, here we go. You are God. Cut that. I want that to be a clip. I want that to be a clip. You are God. Okay, so here we go. You are God. Cut that. I want that to be a clip. I want that to be a clip. You are God. So God knows all the ways in which different things can share in his life. Yeah. So God knows.

So we talk about the divine ideas. Yeah. This is, I think in the first part, maybe like question 15. As long as they're close enough. So God knows all of the ways in which creation can share in his divine life. And to some of those things, he conjoins his will and those things are. So, he knows the way in which his life can be participated as such that you are, right? So, it's not that God isn't you. It's that God has you as a thought in super eminent fashion. He is you more than you

are, my friend. And that you are to the extent that you are adequate to that idea, that you are assimilated to that idea, that you approximate that idea. Yes. One Australian might say, the best version of myself. Exactly. I don't like that language, but I get it. It's it makes sense yeah yeah so so yes it's i'm sorry to catch off i'm thinking of um you know what he says about the problem of evil right and the objection is if there's infinite goodness there'd be no evil discoverable and so my thought was like if god's infinite being how is that other beings discoverable and maybe you've probably just explained that but but I'm still wrestling with it. Right.

It's a difficult concept. So you want to rule out pantheism, that all things just are God and they're assumed are panentheism, which I don't actually really understand the distinction between those two things. I just repeated it for logical exhaustion. So we want to rule those out. It's not as if the world were just God or the outworking of God or somehow part of God. Rather, each thing is what it is, properly so-called. It has its own nature, and that is distinct from God. But its nature, its being, is a participation in God. So, Robert Sokolowski talks about this in his book,

The God of Faith and Reason, where he calls it the Christian distinction, namely that creation doesn't add anything to God. Yeah, okay. So God plus creation is not greater than God, okay? It's just an expression or a manifestation of God in a particular concrete and instantiated form. So we don't add anything to God, nor do we say something about God that God himself is not saying eternally from the dawn of creation, you know, whatever.

You get it. Yeah. How do we say that God is simple and doesn't change when, you know, he probably knows that it's, I don't know, 1104 right now, doesn't he? Yeah. And he'll know in a minute that it's 1105. So how is he not changing? How is God not changing?

Okay. 1705. So how is he not changing? How is God not changing? Okay. Because I get why he can't change vertically or horizontally. Not vertically. Just vertically, up or down. Right. I get that. He can't become better.

He can't become worse. But maybe he can move horizontally. Right. You know, so, yeah. So, okay. I mean, this is difficult. These are difficult questions. I mean, you know, when people talk about the incarnation, they'll say, yeah, well, it was the human nature that changed.

It wasn't God. But there was a time, right, that God wasn't and then was Christ. Sorry, there was a time where God was not incarnate and then was. How do you wrap your head around that? So, okay. Divine simplicity. I'm just going to run it like Chris Brown once did. I don't know what that reference means.

Well, he's a rapper. He had a song called Run It. It was great. I liked it a lot in middle school. I think I was in middle school, whatever. So here we go. So St. Thomas introduces divine simplicity in the first part in question three. So question two is where he proves that God exists. And then question three, he transitioned into what God is. It'd be typical

for an Aristotelian science that you would prove that the object of your study is, and then you would move on to describing what it is. But with God, it's difficult on account of the fact that we can't really know what God is because he so exceeds the compass of our minds. So St. Thomas says we cannot so much say what God is as how God is not. And so as he proceeds, he's ruling things out. So simplicity, perfection, goodness, infinity, eternity, immutability, omnipresence, unity, with all of those attributes, which occupy us in questions 3 through 11. He's saying God is not this. God is not that. God is not otherwise.

So with simplicity, he's ruling out division, or he's ruling out composedness. He's ruling out complexity in the way that we understand it. And he goes through, I think in maybe eight articles, and rules out different forms of composition. So God is not composed of form and matter. God is not composed of form and matter. God is not composed of substance and accidents. God is not composed of essence and existence, as we described earlier, things like that. So, he's just going to show that there is no division in God. Now, once we've said that,

for us, this is a kind of imaginative obstacle, because the way that we interact with people involves plenty of composition or plenty of steps stages thinking through the matter discursion whatever but but for God such is not the case so God is simple he's also eternal which is to say that he has the whole and simultaneous embrace of endless life so he holds all creation together in himself and all of it is present to him in one everlasting instant. And so for God, there is no growth and decay. There's no development. There's no evolution and devolution. All things are eternally present to him by virtue of the fact that he is giving them being, giving them agency. They're transparent to his gaze.

So when it comes to like the incarnation, for instance, how do we account for the fact that God seems to change in his interaction with reality? Well, you can approach this from the side of God. You can approach this from the side of creation. So from the side of God, the fact that changes occur does not mean that he changes. So for instance, you as a parent can determine, I am going to reward my son after he reads 10 books. And when he reads 10 books, I'm going to get him, I don't know, like a copy of some sweet movie, Wreck-It Ralph.

Okay. I don't know. That was like 2014. He didn't give him. Yeah, whatever. Okay. I'm going to – that's such an antiquated example. In the age of streaming, the old crusty priest talks about dvds it's like

oh in my day yeah the new installment of the mandalorian vibes exactly okay continuing that give him that give him season two give him another year of disney plus you know in addition to the one that you got with changing to verizon um so you have made up your mind. Yeah. You have formulated a thing and then time passes, things change with him. And then you do what you had intended to do from the start. God is like that with all of creation. So when it comes to the incarnation, he foresaw, okay, foresaw, we're speaking here somewhat loosely. He foresaw that Adam would sin and that the human race would languish under the weight of that sin for generations. And that in the fullness of time, he would send his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to deliver from the law those who were subject to it.

So he already has in mind, he's looking forward to this thing. He's not like kind of watching as Adam fails and relishing it in as much as he's hoping to make it better later. But he has seen and fores for suffered, anticipated and gone before. So there's no change in God, but God simply accounts for all that happens within the bounds of his providence. He has one notion that orchestrates the movements of all particular causes in accord with his nature, which is one. And that notion just is him. Okay. So there's no complexity in God or there need be no complexity in God, just taking into account the fact that things change out here, especially as concerns God's interaction with us. And then on the side of creation. So St. Thomas talks about creation

as a mixed relation. So it's the type of thing where creation is related to God, but God isn't related to creation in the sense that relation obtains in his Aristotelian understanding. So, relation is a kind of being towards. He says it's an odd essay. And so, creation is in dependence, or it's in a relationship of dependence upon God for everything, for its being, for its agency, etc. And so, that is a factor or that's a facet of what it means to be created. It's something in the created thing, namely that it is dependent upon God, who is its creator and end. But in God, that doesn't change God.

His creating things doesn't change him because as we said, all things are but participations, delimitations, kind of circumscriptions of what it means to be, which God exhausts. So none of these things come to him as a surprise. None of these things come to him as a novelty. He doesn't look out on his creation and say, wow, fascinating, nice work, chief. They're all just so many different participations of his nature. And so when it comes to the incarnation, it's just a peculiar instance of creation. So the Lord Jesus Christ, right, is a divine person to whom is united hypostatically a human nature.

And that human nature is related to the divine person, but the divine person is not related to the human nature. So it represents a change in the humanity, but it does not represent a change in the divinity. So you have God foreseeing change and accounting for it in the simplicity of his nature. And then you have the things themselves, you know, related to God, but God not related to them in the simplicity of his nature. And then you have the things themselves related to God, but God not related to them in the same or reciprocal way, because God remains unchanged. So, to take it from the side of God and then from the side of creation. What's your elevator pitch to explain that? You get in an elevator with an atheist and he says, all right, explain to me how the incarnation doesn't involve change on God's part. How do you sum that up?

I would say it's a change in creation. It's not a change in God. If I got like two and a half sentences. Let's say he's getting up to the 20th floor. So you got a couple more. Okay. All right, perfect. Is it like a good elevator?

It's a slow elevator, but not that slow. Okay. Like an Otis elevator circa 1997. One of those ones with the thingy. Like in the movie Charade. Yeah. I'm for it. They're really small.

Nice. So you want to get out quickly. Okay. It's very tight quarters. Very tight. And you associate it with murder mysteries and you don't want to be, okay, the one murdered. So what would I say? I would say that God accounts for all time and space, right? All are equally

present to him and his plan accounts for them unchangingly changed. So, unchangingly in him, but changed in them. And the incarnation is a change in creation. It's a change in the humanity assumed, but not in the change in the God assuming who has foreseen and foresuffered, who has gone before, and who has led all things back to himself in the incarnation is it difficult that's good is it difficult to come up with an analogy i mean because we don't experience timelessness and yeah is it difficult to come up with an analogy um so i mean like maybe the one which i used an antiquated example with dvds so a change in stuff that looks like it would be a change in you but isn't in fact a change in you

but that takes account for you so maybe something like you are planning for your future okay and you have a 401k i don't know anything about this stuff i'm hoping that this is right um you have a 401k which is appreciating without your doing anything to it. And that at a certain point, you use the money for your 401k to buy a vacation home on some island off the coast of South Carolina. But you have always foreseen that thing. You have like been talking to contractors. They've been laying the foundation. They've been working on it. You've actually made some down payment. And it's something for which you have kind of like planned the last 15 years in anticipation. And then it comes time to move into the house. That's not a change in you. Like you've already

been a South Carolina denizen at heart and by intention. And while it's like, it's a physical change in place when we're talking about this world, you've been, like your whole life has been ordered to that point. Okay. This is like a human example. Yeah. Now with respect to God, God is not so much defined by his interaction with creation. And so in that sense, the analogy kind of limps.

Right. But God has always been intending one thing. He has always been intending one thing, and that thing is love. So God is love, which is to say that God, like, I mean, he subsists as love. He subsists as a kind of generosity of a giving of himself, of a willing, a good of the beloved, whether that be beloved, be, you know, in God, God willing the good of himself, non-egotistically, but substantially. But then in creation, he has been love from the start. So he chooses to create by love, which is to say he affords us the opportunity to share in his divine life.

The very pattern of his creating is love, which is to say that the whole purpose for our existing is that we might partake of the divine life. And then the goal of it is love, that we would return to him and that we will God's goodness with his goodness. Again, not because God is a megalomaniac and he wants us to affirm him, but because that represents our perfection. So from start to finish, the whole plan has been love. And what we see in these different points in salvation history are particular touchstones or landmarks or peculiar manifestations of that love. So at the dawn of time, he is loving. And in the incarnation, he is loving. And at the end of the age, he is loving. And that love assumes different shapes, but shapes for which he is accounted, for which he has laid the foundation, something like that.

Yeah, I've heard atheists say, and it's a reasonable objection, you know, this idea that if God knew all of this, he's not kind of responding to things he's not aware are about to happen. Why would he create man knowing that he would screw up? You can parody Christianity by saying, like, God created something, he knew it would break, and then decided to become man and have himself killed by this broken thing to somehow reconcile it. It can sound silly. Sure.

But the idea of knowing that Adam and Eve would fall. Right. What's the point of that? I mean, I'm thinking of Felix Kolper. I'm thinking of Augustine's thing there. But is that where you would go? Or would you say, yeah, God's not terribly good at this? I mean, if he was willing one thing for all eternity,

could he not have willed something other than he has willed? Right. I would divide my response into possibility and then into goodness or fittingness. So with respect to possibility, we admit the possibility of our having fallen. Well, we observe it, right? But why would God make us capable of falling, I guess, is a question with which to begin. Okay. Why?

Well, think about the purpose. The purpose for which God created isn't that he would generate automata, who would just blindly carry out his will. But the purpose of his creating is to manifest his goodness and then have creation return to him as a response to that. So St. Thomas asked the question, it's in the Prima Pars, maybe question like 26 on the power of God. He asks whether God could have created a better world than he did. And he says, yes, he could have, but God created this world. So what we're doing in the work of philosophy and theology is examining why this world, what's good about this world, not like could God have done better because for everything that he has done, he could do something better. So why then

this world? So you think about it then creation is a a work of manifestation. In creation, we see God's many attributes. We see God's many different properties. You see his love, you see his justice, you see his mercy, you see his wisdom, you see et cetera. Those things are all made visible in different ways in the different facets of creation. And God is almost as if filling creation at every rank with testimony of his goodness. So he makes minerals, which are, they manifest as goodness by being rocky. And then he makes plants and they manifest as, you know, you get it.

He makes animals, he makes ice, he makes angels, et cetera. And we manifest his goodness precisely as being embodied souls who can choose freely for him, but with the possibility that we will choose against him. So God could have made us such that we always freely chose for him. Right. Right. So he could have done that. Like we'll presumably be doing in heaven.

Right. He could have made it to be such, but he chose that we could choose for him, but also choose against him. He permitted us the possibility of defection. The question then is like, what's the wisdom in that? Or maybe back up, what's the possibility? And then what's the wisdom? So how is it possible that this be the case? Well, whenever you create something below you,

you admit the possibility that it can judge by a standard lower than you. So, St. Thomas uses as an example when he talks about the fall of the angels. He says, picture an artisan who is engraving, okay? Let's say that the very rule of his engraving is just his hand. So then if that were the case, he could not but engrave well, because if he were to engrave something, he would say like, why'd you do it that way? He'd be like, my hand did it. You know, I was just reading War and Peace. And he was talking about how Napoleon was the type of person who only did well, because everything that he did was done by him. well because everything that he did was done by him. All right. So there's no standard apart from the fact that he is the agent. So too with the artisan example, there's no standard apart from the fact that he's the one doing it. But St. Thomas says, if there's a standard higher than the hand, like if we're talking about the vision or the notion that the artist has in his mind, or some universal standard of what good engraving looks like, then we have to admit the possibility that he could fail. And such, he says, is true of a created nature. So, we have a created nature, and we can always proceed according to our own limited lights. And that can, by comparison to

the eternal law, be a failure. It cannot adequately represent what God has in mind or what God intends. And so, defection is possible. And provided that God doesn't continue to work within us so that we choose freely for the good in every instance, then we see that it is at least within the realm of possibility that we would choose against him. And in truth of fact, we do. So then the question is, why is that good? Or how could it possibly be good? And this is the thing that I think clashes most with our sensibilities. But I think the best exposition that I've heard of this is in John Paul II's Salva Fici Doloris, where he talks about it specifically in terms of suffering. How could suffering possibly be understood as good? And I think here he says basically to stay close to the foot of the cross, and it makes

most sense in terms of that relationship. But if we want to back it up and talk about it a little bit metaphysically, we can introduce some principles like St. Augustine says that God only permits evil to befall if he can bring about from it some greater good. That's the Ophelix Culpa part. But also that we're not just meant to represent God's goodness statically, but to do so dynamically, right? So you could be the type of person who just stands erect like Colossus at Rhodes, kind of a thwart to the movement of time and space and just look majestic. But if you see him in motion, if you see him supervening difficulties or overcoming obstacles, then to see that excellence in motion

gives you a greater appreciation for the grandeur and the dignity of the thing. So to be a human is to be good, but also to act well. And I think our goodness is, on the one hand, formed, accentuated, grown in acting well, but it's also made manifest. And again, we're about the work of manifestation. So we're supposed to show God dynamically. And overcoming obstacles is one of the places where we see best the grandeur of the human spirit. And God doesn't permit anything to befall from which he does not also provide a way

through, over, around,, up and under, right? And sometimes those things crush us, but God is always giving grace sufficient for us to find that way through. So I think that it need not impugn his dignity, it need not impugn his justice, but rather seen in light of this kind of wisdom, God's wisdom in making manifest his excellence and our excellence precisely in our nature moving forward, then we have at least like a toehold as to why would God permit it to be so. Yeah, that's good. And then Aquinas, and here's a place that, you know, Aquinas probably differs from some other saints. In the Summa Theologiae, he says that if Adam and Eve hadn't fallen, if we weren't fallen,

then Christ would not have become incarnate. I believe that's Aquinas' position. Yeah, I mean, he's kind of agnostic about it. Like he searches the scriptures and he asks the question, why did Christ come? What does the scriptures give as the reason for which Christ come? And at every page he seems to find because of sin. So Christ came to satisfy, to atone, to redeem us from sin. And then he he introduces a question had we not have sinned would christ have come he says i don't know okay basically i don't know but um maybe not maybe not probably not he doesn't give like a strong and firm like definitely not no way not a chance

and then this would be um in contra distinction from the franciscan tradition which sees like divinization you know christ making man like him as primary, of a primary importance. And so he would have come regardless because this is part of the work of our becoming like God. Drawn up into grace. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Deification or. Whereas Christ, I mean, excuse me, St. Thomas starts close to the kind of scriptural data. Yeah.

It's just a way of reading the tradition, a way of reading St. Augustine. It's a way of reading scripture, St. Augustine, and this gloss. Those are the principal texts that come up in this question. Yeah, I learned recently, cantia aurea. Is that how you say it? I don't know. Oh, catina aure of reading scripture, St. Augustine, and this gloss. Those are the principal texts that come up in this question. Yeah, I learned recently Cantia Aurea. Is that how you say it? I don't know. Oh, Cantina Aurea? Sorry.

Okay. Cantia Aurea. Cantina Aurea. His biblical commentary in which he employs the early fathers on the text of scripture. It's fascinating. And everyone should go buy a copy for their priest. That'd be a great gift for a priest. That would be a great gift.

But I learned the other day that he quotes Chrysostom more than Augustine there. Is that so? Yeah, it is. Okay. I know there are a lot of cool things about that book, but midway through his compilation of it, he also discovered a bunch of other fathers. He was doing archival work at the Vatican Library.

And so for the one on Matthew, he's got some stuff, but then from Mark onward, he's like, I found a bunch of really, really sweet stuff. Book of love, because this one's going to be great. Exactly. That's amazing, isn't it? But I think some of our Orthodox brothers and sisters are beginning to appreciate Aquinas in a way that they haven't.

As a reader of the Eastern tradition. Yeah, and like quoting the Greek fathers there more than the Latins. Yeah, Greek fathers, Syriac fathers. He's working a lot with like St. John Damascene, for instance, who's a kind of, well. It is interesting though, you know, like I don't think he was working with Justin Martyr, was he? I don't know.

I don't know, but I just, when I read the commentary on John's gospel and we get to bits like, I don't know, like when I read the commentary on John's gospel and we get to bits like Mary at the foot of the cross and behold your mother, behold your son or something like that, he doesn't say the things we often think of apologetically. Like here he is giving his mother to the, you know, and I heard i think it was ed phaser no not him it was somebody else who said that well he didn't have access to all of the church fathers and so there are certain things okay that that they read into it that he isn't talking about probably because he didn't have the didn't have those fathers to work from yeah yeah it's it's funny to think like when we just assume that we have universal access to texts yes right you would not necessarily have do we know yeah go ahead i was gonna say do we know much about his like daily routine and and is there any good

evidence to think he was fat um yes there is so i can't remember okay so the the books on this that are the standard are jean-pierre torrell st thomas. Thomas Aquinas, Volume 1 and 2. And readable somehow. And he's using a lot of the early biographers. And I think one of the earliest biographer who might have written like 50 years after St. Thomas died was William of Tocco. Yeah, that's definitely one of them. And I want to say that William of Tocco said that when St. Thomas Aquinas would ride a donkey through the Neapolitan countryside, that the peasants would go outside and admire his corpulent beauty that's it yes yeah i don't know about all the stories about like there being a place cut out at the table to accommodate his gut yeah um but that's true yeah that'd be nice if it were certainly gives

hope um but yeah no i don't know exactly but the only details that i have are from that book when it comes to autobiography or biography yeah but as far as his like kind of ethic and working and things like this, I wonder what his routine would have been like. Yeah, so I think at that time dispensation was deployed pretty widely when it came to attending choir. So at that time, if you were to say all the prayers with your community, you'd be in choir for about five and a half hours. So if you figure, you know, you sleep, whatever, dot, dot, dot, who cares, but you wouldn't have a lot of time to work. So it was customary for masters to be dispensed from a lot of the common prayers. They would do them in private more rapidly. So they would just recite them. They wouldn't sing them. So it was probably the case

that St. Thomas would have been excused from a lot of the common prayers, but then he would have been present for Compline. So I think he started the day by celebrating a mass and then he would serve a mass in Thanksgiving. So with a Dominican rite that he would have celebrated, you know, it's intended that you would have at least a server present. So it would be, it wouldn't make, it wouldn't make a ton of sense just to celebrate it privately because a lot of the prayers are call and response. And so he would have celebrated his mass and then he would have served a mass during which time he exhibited great devotion by all standards. And then, you know, he would have taken his meals and he would have celebrated his mass and then he would have served a mass, during which time he exhibited great devotion by all standards. And then, you know, he would have taken his meals and he would have been back at home for Compline at the end of the day. But during the day itself, he would have been lecturing.

So as a university professor, so he would have been from the time that he was minted as a doctor in 1256 till 1274, he spent a lot of that time as an instructor, both in Paris and in Rome. And then he spent some time in Naples too, in Orvieto. He wasn't always teaching there, but he was teaching most of the time. And so he would have been reading scripture and then commenting the scripture and then giving those basic classes to his students.

And then he would have also taken place or taken part in public disputations at least twice a year, these cold levital questions, but probably with greater frequency. He preached, right? So he would have celebrated these public masses during which he would have preached and oftentimes in the vernacular. And it was said that he was a very moving preacher, sometimes moving himself and the congregation to tears, which is cool to think about. And then, you know, doing his work, the side hustle.

So like the commentaries on Aristotle, side hustle. The commentary, the Summa Theologiae, side hustle. Summa Contra Gentile, side hustle. So like the commentaries on Aristotle's side hustle, the commentary, the Summa Theologiae side hustle, Summa Contra Gentile side hustle. That's all in addition to, and then there you get the stories where he would dictate multiple works to multiple scribes. So he could keep the notes on this thing and the notes on this thing and notes on this thing square. And then as they wrote, he could just lay in. And it seems that he had a pretty good system. I mean, he didn't have a PC, but he had a bunch of note cards. And so he could use texts that he'd used in the past and marshal them for the different things.

Because a lot of times his arguments assume a very similar shape from work to work. And so he's working off a kind of repertoire. Ah, yes. That's how we know. So, yeah, he would have had that at his beck and call. I was reading Teresa of Avila recently. My wife and I were on a vacay. And we call it holiday in Australia. Vacation is very American.

My mom told me off. We're on a vacation. It's a bloody holiday. Well, okay. And we were reading her. And it struck me how different the Carmelite spirituality feels from the Dominican spirituality spirituality and um i wonder if we could talk a little bit about the difference between uh doctrine and theology okay

right like i i guess doctrine is the way it's expressed or yeah yeah because i mean you read theresa of avila and she the carmelites feel very eastern fatherish. When I read them, it's kind of like, it feels world negative. You know what I mean? It feels like just deny yourself and don't be attached to anything in any way. At least, you know. But you read Aquinas and he doesn't feel like, he doesn't sound like that, you know. So how do you, I mean, do you agree with that first of all? It's a pretty vague assessment.

I mean, do you agree with that, first of all? It's a pretty vague assessment. Or at least do you agree with the fact that when you read different traditions, they almost sound in conflict sometimes? I think, yes, certainly. How do you account for that? Yeah. So I don't really know the Carmelite tradition too terribly well.

Let's see. I've read like a couple of books by St. Teresa of Avila. She's hardcore. She is hardcore. Man. And then I've couple of books by St. Teresa of Avila and then- She's hardcore. She is hardcore. Man. Um, and then I've like read things about St. John of the Cross, but I've been told not to read St. John of the Cross until I'm like 40 because then I'll have, you know, sufficient life experience to make sense of some of the devastating declarations therein. Um, so I don't know Carmelites too terribly well, except for like people who comment on

them when doing theology and stuff like that. So my thoughts, that doesn't prevent me for like people who comment on them when doing theology and stuff like that. So, my thoughts. That doesn't prevent me from like sharing my mind on the matter. I mean, that's what this is about. It's about pints with Aquinas. It's not about I'll only speak about what I know to be true. It's just about chatting. It's about shooting from the hip with Aquinas.

So, I think that one of the ways that G.K. Chesterton describes St. Thomas, he said if you were to give him a kind of devotional name or a Carmelite religious name, it would be like St. Thomas Ob Creator or From the Creator. So that St. Thomas has this metaphysics of creation that we talked about, and that informs his worldview in thoroughgoing fashion. So he sees all things as coming from God and all things as returning to God and all things as invested with, prized with purpose and all things as having their own proper excellence and agency. So there's like this real sense that it's all worth it. Yeah. Right.

And this, this, this weighs in or this kind of factors into so-called Dominican spirituality. So by contrast with an earlier tradition, namely the Cisterci earlier tradition namely the cistercian tradition the cistercian tradition tends to be pretty image light so when you go into a cistercian church they're typically pretty bare and sometimes people think like wow this has been recovated you know all of the beautiful adornments have been destroyed but like cistercians don't don't typically have adornments interesting and it's deliberate um so they often have a lot of light in their sanctuaries and their architecture developed to accommodate for more light, even with thick Romanesque walls. But their windows were typically not ornate. They were just simple, like two-tone color or something like that, because I think they're of the mind, and I could be wrong on this, but Cistercians out there can correct me, that they move beyond image in meditation. Yeah.

beyond image in meditation. So you hear those four steps of meditation typically described when it's concerned, Lectio Divina. So it's like you read and then you meditate and then you pray and then you contemplate. So the contemplation for them is something that kind of moves beyond the image driven. Right. So it's not divorced from meditation, but it transcends it. And so it would be something that would be more kind of mystical, effective, and less cognitive, something less something less you know tied to the imagination

whereas i think with dominicans it's funny though because i mean theresa of avila is very image based though i think she would agree with moving from image i mean interior castle for example she uses a lot of imagery but yeah i think she'd be more i don't know what do i know but i've you know since we're shooting from the hip i suppose she'd be more Cistercian in that this idea of trampling these images underfoot because it's the nada. It's the path of the nada, right? It's like rejecting these things. So I think that Dominicans tend to keep images all the way up and all the way down. Thomas has a lot to do with this, this whole kind of hylomorphic understanding of sacramental life,

that we are within this kind of chain of being that goes from God, his Christ, his church, his sacraments, ministers and recipients, all the different instruments that he deploys for the giving of grace, they're all embodied, right? So like in tending to us as embodied creatures, he gives us embodied instruments. He gives us tangible things, things that we can lay hold of so as to lead us back to him. A word that he uses when describing the liturgy is monoduxio, which is like manus and then dutere, like to lead by the hand. That God is like taking us by the hand in these embodied things and leading us back to him in a way that's strong and sovereign. And so I think in the Dominican tradition, there isn't so much concern about a method of prayer as there is about just the consideration of God and his attributes. So what is prayer about? It's

about God. And you're just going to use those things that God has given you. So a typical time for a Dominican to meditate would be after Vespers and then after Compline. Dominicans would typically linger after prayer rather than anticipating prayer because the prayer furnishes you with words, thoughts, and images. You know, The Psalms are just replete with them, and that you would just continue to mull over those things so that your imagination would be charged by the sacred page, and then that that would just continue to work interiorly. And it leads to contemplation too.

One of the things I love about the Eastern Liturgy is how it takes all of you. Some people don't like that. They prefer the silence of, say, the Tridentine Mass, but when you go to a Byzantine Mass, you've been Byzantine? Maybe like once or twice. I mean, you're bowing and singing. It's constant movement. It almost feels like you get it out and now you can contemplate kind of thing.

Is that kind of what you mean? A little bit or no? Is that what I mean? I think that's, yeah. I think that's what I intend. How would I further specify? You were talking more, I guess, about imagery and the scriptures and like filling your mind with that first yeah like it's there's no point in which you leave the body behind yeah right there's a sense in which the body makes it

difficult to contemplate because you need to like get up and use the restroom and you get tired and it it's like tending to your bodily needs tends to interrupt the life of contemplation but that you don't like begrudge the body the body that, because this is precisely how we go to God, or this is the manner in which God has ordained for us to return to him, not as angels, but as men and women. And so if that's the case, then those things that are distinctively human, the animal part of our life conjoined to the spiritual part of our life, all have a contribution to make to our return.

So again, I don't really know the carmelite tradition but i would say that the the way of self-abnegation places a greater emphasis upon the evacuation of like sensible elements right so i think that typically you have the spiritual life divided into three stages so the purgative way the illuminative way and the unitive way and the transitions between are marked by purgations right so saint john of the cross will talk about the active and passive purgation of the senses and then the active and passive purgation of the spirit the latter of which is you know the dark night of the soul and so there's in order for you to advance in your life you need to not only be detached from things but almost violently removed from certain elements of an embodied life. That might be a mischaracterization, but I get the impression

that the Dominican wouldn't focus so much on those transition points as he would upon, you know, ridding oneself of habitual sin, growing in virtue, and then working towards a more prominent expression of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in one's life as the basis of a mystical life. And that's not to say that the Carmelite tradition places a lot of emphasis on the extraordinary. And it's not to say that Dominicans have just despaired of the extraordinary. But a Dominican will tell you that you can have a mystical life even if it doesn't necessarily feel like it. It's about exercising the gifts of the Holy Spirit as they are commonly expressed. And there may not be fireworks.

So your answer to the question, how do I know? Because I think we're all called to the highest mansions of prayer. I think Teresa talks about that. But what is a mystic? Somebody asked you, how can I be a mystic? We have an idea of what that means, but you're saying we all ought to be, and it's not necessarily, as you say, fireworks. Yeah. So I think, how does one be a mystic? It's through the exercise of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which perfect the movements of the virtues, which are a concrete expression of the life of sanctifying grace. And when you go through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so wisdom, knowledge, understanding, counsel, piety, fortitude, and fear of the Lord, each of them kind of extends the range of our supernatural life because they make us receptive to God's gift of himself in a way that goes beyond the way the virtues make us receptive. So the one that you would isolate when talking about the mystical life is wisdom. So wisdom, even though it's an intellectual thing, it actually perfects the movement of

charity. So charity is that whereby we love God with his own love and our neighbor with the same. is that whereby we love God with his own love and our neighbor with the same. And wisdom gives us a kind of effective knowledge of God, A-F-F-E-C-T-I-V, which is to say like where our hearts are tethered to God in such a way that we're led naturally to the very things of God. And so we have a supernatural sensitivity to God's indications, to God's promptings, to God's, you know, to God's love. That makes sense.

And so how does one grow in becoming a mystic? I think it's by holding off at arm's length false wisdom or a kind of false effective tether and cultivating the right one. So it means substituting false contemplation, which, you know, the media offers in wild profusion in favor of a real contemplation. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, what about the Franciscans? Because hasn't there been all those jokes about Dominicans and Franciscans and the infighting? Right.

Talk a bit about that. Like, is there, I mean, because you don't know much about the Carmelites, but you said that. I didn't say that. You said that. Thanks. Yeah. Bloody hell, I guess we'll move on. But presumably, you know a bit about the history between the Dominicans and the Franciscans,

obviously originating for similar reasons around the same time. But as far as the disagreements. Okay. So I would say the kind of difference between Franciscans and Dominicans is some of it's historical, just based on the origins of the two different orders. And then some of it's more philosophical theological. So I think that historically they grew up out of different movements within the church. So St. Dominic was a canon, which is to say he was a priest and he was a religious, a kind of monk of the cathedral. And so Dominican life always has a kind of clerical shape. And there's a real emphasis put on sacramental ministry and on the preaching, specifically like pulpit preaching. Whereas it seems that the Franciscan movement kind of grew out of the

penitential life. So which would have been a lay movement. And you encounter this in a variety of forms in the 13th and 14th century, like the big eons. But oftentimes there were people who would follow maybe a charismatic preacher, but they would adopt a life of strict penance as a way of conforming themselves to the Lord. to the Lord, but they were typically not permitted to preach except by moral exhortation, because typically they didn't have the kind of education that would give them the scope for preaching. Now, things have changed, you know, and Franciscans get just as much education as do Dominicans. But- I'm thinking of Anthony Padua, Bonaventure. Sure, yeah.

But those kind of tendencies still obtain within the order. And so the Franciscans tend to be less clerical. So more Franciscans would not be ordained priests than Dominicans, most of whom are ordained priests historically. And then they tend to have more of an emphasis on the life of, well, this is, yeah, you could describe this in a billion ways. But there's a big emphasis on their fraternity, right? And then I guess Dominicans, you would say there's a big emphasis on their fraternity, right? And then I guess Dominicans, you would say there's a big emphasis on the pastoral fatherhood. And then with the Dominicans, there's this kind of like moral exhortation, but that it's principally expressed through the common

life of the brethren and their dependence upon God is exhibited in poverty. And then in Dominicans, that there wouldn't be the same emphasis, right? But there would be instead this kind of preaching apostolate and the life of study that would be requisite for and sanctifying of. So that's a lot of words. But here's like a kind of summary thought. I went to Franciscan University of Steubenville, and I lived there and benefited from the witness and the life of the Franciscans, for which I am very grateful, and also from their preaching.

And I can tell you that I know a lot about St. Francis because of their preaching, whereas I don't really know much about St. Dominic from the preaching of the brethren, because Francis looms large in their tradition, and specifically his desire for evangelical radicality. He wanted to be an evangelical man in a way that just almost defies imitation. And so a lot of people say, oh, the Franciscans are always splitting up. They're so fractious. But when your model is St. Francis and you want to live by his rule and his testament, by an ideal put in such stark form, that it's quite natural that you would always have this

tendency towards an evangelical perfection. Yeah, exactly. Whereas in the Dominicans, you know, St. Dominic was kind of like more, I suppose, more modest in the, I mean, like in both senses, more modest in the ideal that he proposed. And it's kind of accommodated to, yeah, like a good friar, but not a great friar. So he demands of you a certain, you know, you have to step up, right? But there he kind of affords space for the creeping mediocrity of man while still encouraging one to a life that is radical i asked a dominican once why why are there so many splits in the franciscan order and not the dominicans and he said kind of what you just said that the franciscans follow francis we follow the rule of saint dominic right yeah that's a good summary person is much more interpretable sure yeah so Yeah, so St. Francis, the owner of the Pavarillo, our lady's juggler, or our lady's tumbler, I think is what St. G.K. Chesterton calls him.

He describes him as making somersaults and then seeing the world upside down. And in so seeing it, he sees it as it is. What to us seem great achievements, like tall towers and excellent edifices, are actually just clinging to the surface of the earth as they teeter above the void. So St. Thomas, in his radical humility, excuse me, St. Francis, in his radical humility, saw things as they were. And he lived his life with that kind of reckless abandon. G.K. Chesterton tells a story where he was minding his father, Pietro Bernadone's cloth booth, and that a poor man came and asked him for alms. And he kind of held him off for a second while he finished a transaction. That guy left, and he was just astonished at his callousness. And so he took

up all the earnings from the day and plunged through the streets of Assisi, found that man and bestowed upon him all his riches. And Chesterton says something like, and he never ceased careening from that point on. So there's a kind of careening spirit and the franciscan order yeah which is awesome and is like meant to be of service and of inspiration to the universal church this is one of the beautiful things i love about the catholic church i mean when you look at orthodoxy they have there's not religious orders there's the monks and then there's the priests and i suppose prior to the mendicant orders that was far fewer orders as well. Yeah.

But it's kind of beautiful to have these different expressions responding to different things, I think. Yeah. It feels like it's much more engaging with the world and the issues of the world to bring all to Christ. Yeah. I certainly like, and sometimes it can sound like overly ironic and patronizing to say like, I love everyone and everyone's great. But

for whatever reason in my own life, the Lord made his will known through men of different religious congregations. So I had, you know, great mentors at Steubenville who were Franciscans. The summer that I got excited about becoming a priest, the one place where I went often for Mass and Adoration, because

it was like the only place in Portland, Maine where I could find Adoration, was a Jesuit father, recently ordained, Father Matthew Monick, who's a gem. You should have him on the show. Yeah. And, you know, like, I mean, and then I would used to go on Wednesday nights in Kennebunk, Maine to this monastery of Franciscans who were from, I want to say like Lithuania, one of those three countries, like Lithuania, Latvia, or Estonia.

But they sounded like Count Dracula. And so they'd be like, the blood of Christ. But so I just had the witness of these different men in my life that really wanted me to, you know, like kind of encouraged me to think about it, but to become a Dominican. And the only Dominican that I had met at that point was St. Thomas in a book. So. Well, we're speaking about the multiplicity of religious orders, but I think I'd like to talk a little bit about the kind of the multiplicity of devotions within the church's treasury, kind of getting a little bit more practical here as people seek to live out their Christian life. I forget if it was Jose Maria Escriva or somebody else, but the quote really struck me.

He said, there are many devotions within the church's treasury. Choose only a few and be faithful to them. treasury choose only a few and be faithful to them and i really like that yeah because i think it's just a kind of human tendency to get bored with something and to try something else on you know so you try this chaplet and that chaplet and you wear a scapula too long it doesn't feel holy anymore so you get a different scapula and you know different medals and different prayers. Yeah, just, yeah. And I think John of the Cross talks about that too, about not jumping from devotion to devotion because, yeah,

because of the novelty of it. Yeah. So my thoughts on, well, specifically when it concerns devotions to saints, I think that this rule is good. That's not to say that you should limit your saint intake, but I think it's good to have a few saints with whom you share a common life because I think that those devotions are effectively forms of friendship and you can only be good friends to a few people. And specifically, you can only be best friends to a few people. And I think that's, you know, as we experience like the limitations of our own life, you only have the capacity to keep up in a really good way with only so many friends.

Especially if that means, you know, having, you know, chats on the phone or like writing letters, which especially if they're handwritten can take a long time. You just, you experience your limitations in that, but also you experience your limitations in how much you share your affections. Yeah. How much you share the secrets of your life. Because if you begin to share the secrets of your life with too many people, it can almost feel like exhibitionist, right? Or immodest. And you share your secrets with your friends because they're another self, right? So you don't fear that those secrets could be betrayed or leave you because they remain in you. They abide in you. And as much as that friendship is, yeah, it's with you and another self.

And you don't have an infinite amount of affection to spread around yeah if you try to be best friends with everybody you might not be best friends with anybody and maybe it's something similar with devotions that if i've got you know 30 devotions on the go it's difficult to give my affection and yeah to one or a few and i think like devotion devotion is the saints certainly are a way of cultivating friendship and benefiting from the wisdom and the power, the might of your good friend who is, you know, in the presence of God. And then devotions to the Lord are a particular way of loving the Lord. And I think that if you try to love the Lord in every imaginable way that you'll die of exhaustion.

So you can't be both a contemplative monk and a mother of six. You can't be both a lay evangelist and, you know, like of service to your community in its tax returns. You know, like they're just there when you choose one thing, you choose against others. And so in choosing to love the Lord in a peculiar way or in a particular way, you're closing the door to other things. But in so doing, you're doing it as an act of trust that the way in which you have chosen, as indicated by him, as illuminated by his grace, is sufficient. Right? by him as illuminated by his grace is sufficient, right? Because sometimes the desire to do everything is to try to be as holy in a comprehensive fashion, but it can actually betray a tacit form of despair that like what he has revealed or what he has indicated is not

sufficient. So I need to constantly be doing different things so that I have the security or certainty that all of these things will amount to a good relationship with the Lord. But the relationship is about looking the Lord in the face and about responding to him as he indicates, right? Rather than not according to our own lights of how many different things we can do or how many variations on a theme we can deploy. Because devotions are means to the end, which is union with God, not the other way around. And maybe sometimes we accidentally treat it like the other way around almost.

Like my relationship with God is a means to all these devotions and people treat them like ends and they speak negatively about people who don't share their particular devotion. I like this idea that we should, being a faithful Catholic means submitting to the church when she teaches authoritatively, but it also means not demanding uniformity where the church allows diversity of opinion or custom. And I just find this interesting.

This is going to sound a little aggressive. And so it could be taken the wrong way. And I hope it won't be. But I think sometimes people may not have intimacy. And so they make up with technique what they lack in intimacy. It's kind of what Cosmo is all about. 201, 31 ways to, you know, what you lack in intimacy, you feel the need to make up with in technique. And I wonder if sometimes, as obviously beautiful, great, lovely, as devotions helpful are, I wonder if we become so fixated on certain devotions.

I wonder if we become so fixated on certain devotions. I wonder if sometimes that's not a sign of a lack of intimacy with our Lord. And we feel the need to do this and then that and then this. Does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, I'm going to stay close to my experience and just describe. So in the morning, you know, typically, well, in the morning you spend time in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament in Dominican life. So everyone makes a half an hour, an hour, sometimes more of meditation.

And there can be a temptation to fill that time. And what do I mean by that? Well, there are certain devotions that the church recommends as good, holy, sanctifying, as privileged, right? So you can read scripture. You can recite the rosary. You can read from a particularly good devotional book. I like Divine Intimacy a lot. Me too. I read that. Yeah. Yeah. Cheers.

Speaking of Kamalots. So you can use that time and you can kind of just parcel it out according to those devotions. But then I think there is a temptation to treat those devotions as if they were the point. Yes. Right? That you've made a successful holy hour insofar as you've spent 18 minutes praying the rosary and you've spent 20 minutes reading scripture and you've spent've spent 22 minutes reading divine intimacy and thinking about it a little bit. The point of the text, the point of the reading is to get to the meditation. The point of the meditation is to get to the prayer, and the point of the prayer is to

get to the contemplation, which isn't to say that we're just using these things as a means to an end of contemplation, because the point of contemplation is to see the Lord in a way in which the Lord gives himself. So there's this understanding in the mystical life that contemplation is a kind of active receptivity, but that God is the protagonist, that God is doing the work of salvation, and that we're trying to dispose ourself to best receive him as he reveals and as he saves. And so the things themselves aren't possessed of a kind of sacramental efficacy. They don't obtain ex opere operato.

Rather, they're ex opere operato. Right? Rather, they're ex opere operantes. They're supposed to dispose you as the worker in your reception of grace in such a way as to be docile, as to be receptive, as to be open. And I think that, like, that's—we should focus on the openness, right? You can't just be, like, wild and woolly about it and say, like, I'm most open when I'm wearing underpants and laying prone on a couch. You know, it's like, okay, you probably should be seated or else you're going to fall asleep. You probably should be in a place where the Blessed Sacrament is and you should probably dress yourself accordingly

on account of the fact that it's undignified to be, you know, like whatever, okay. So I think that, you know, we have to understand it in light of, you know, the goal. And so, yeah, I think it's good to do all those things in the context of a holy hour, but that they shouldn't crowd out the space for contemplation. And it can be exhausting to wait on the Lord, things in the context of a holy hour but that they shouldn't crowd out the space for contemplation and it can be exhausting to wait on the lord but i think it's more efficacious to wait on the lord than to dictate the terms of the arrangement it can also be a way of it's sort of like if you were with your spouse and you just talked non-stop and there was never time for maybe you know like

talking should lead to union maybe yeah i'm trying to think of an analogy but i mean like here's an example like let me pick on you like do you wear the brown scapula i do not okay so there would be like talking should lead to union, maybe? Yeah. I'm trying to think of an analogy. But I mean, like, here's an example. Let me pick on you. Like, do you wear the brown scapula? I do not. Okay. So there would be people in the church who would be like really upset about that. What do we do with such people who demand that we adhere to their particular devotion

as if it were mandated by the church when it isn't? Sure. So I think that you can make an analogy with the analogy of faith. So in our explanation of the church's doctrines, we say that some things are more important than others, and that's not to say that the others are unimportant, but it's to say that they assume their place in light of what is most important. So the most important things are the Trinity and the Incarnation. Nestled on the Incarnation, you have the divine maternity.

But it's more important to say that Jesus Christ took to himself a human nature than it is to say he took to himself a human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary, because this is a primary consideration and this is a related doctrine, okay? But so too in the life of devotion. You assign primary importance to the things that God has revealed to be of primary efficacy. So that would be like the sacraments, right? So regardless of what you think about the matter, it's better to receive graces through sacramental means than to carve out your own way of receiving graces, right? And you don't want to extend that logic in a kind of slavish fashion. Because sometimes it's better to make 30 minutes of meditation, perhaps, than to go to Mass that day.

You know, it'll depend on time, place, and circumstance. So we don't want to treat the sacraments like they're magic, but we should accord them primacy. So baptism, confession, holy communion, et cetera, down the line, those things should be accorded a kind of primacy. And then within that, we talked about these indulgenced acts. It's good to pray the rosary. It's good to make the stations of the cross. It's good to read scripture. It's good to spend time in the presence of the blessed sacrament. The church has assigned the merits to them that it has, or it has recognized the merits attached to them that it has, because it knows them to be especially efficacious. And then you kind of go down the line and just examine where this thing comes from in

the tradition, the place that it assumes, holy people that have recommended it and holy people that have done it, and how it's borne fruit. And then you can kind of assign it a place in the relative hierarchy. But if there is a relative hierarchy, that doesn't just run rough shot over the persons themselves. So I enter into that hierarchy in a way that's peculiar to me. So you could, for instance, say that religious life is objectively higher than the married state, therefore I will become a religious. But that's not a way of discerning your vocation, right? I like that. That's a good analogy. Because you're supposed to marry Cameron

Fred and have four kids. And so too with devotions, there might be some things to which you are attracted because of your particular life and history and inclined, but then that doesn't mean that they're for everyone else. So just like I might be of this particular mind when it comes to my worship of the Lord Jesus and when it comes to my pursuit of sanctity, but I shouldn't force that method upon my brother Matty, for instance. I shouldn't tell him, like, you should do X, Y, and Z things because I do X, Y, and Z things, because that's to not take adequate account of who he is.

Why do people do that, though? Because I'm seeing that more and more lately. I don't know if it's because we live in a tumultuous time in the church, people are looking for stability, and so they're demanding these things of other people. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, whatever I do from this point on is going to be people are looking for stability and so they're demanding these things of other people yeah i don't know i mean whatever i do from this point on is going to be tentative psychologizing but

that's what let's go baby yeah um so why do people do that i think sometimes people have found a good thing why do i do it too you know i've seen um maybe you have too instances in my life where i've got really hung up on a particular thing and yeah i would say they've they've experienced the goodness of a thing and they can't imagine their life without it. And then they like lose the capacity to imagine other people's lives without it. Or it seems to them so much madness that other people would exclude it from their life. So like the 54-day rosary novena is something that a lot of people like.

You know, you pray 27 days in anticipation and 27 in Thanksgiving. And some people have had these huge blessings come their way by way of this devotion. And so they tell people like you should always be in the middle of a 54-day novena. And it's like, okay, it's worked for you. It might work for me, but maybe not in this season in my life, right? Because maybe I, for instance, am, you know, like the one time that I have to pray is in the car and I find that the rosary puts me to sleep and I got into an accident a year and a half ago while praying the rosary. I'm still kind of like nervous and triggered by that.

Is this actually what happened? No. No. Okay, just examine. Hypothetical, yeah. I'm still kind of nervous and triggered about that. It would be like kind of traumatizing for me to think about praying the rosary right now. So I'm just going to back off on the rosary for a bit.

Maybe we'll come back to it. But given who I am and what I've done and where I, you know, like presently find myself in life, that might not be for me. And that's just kind of a farcical example, but you can extend the logic into other facets. Yeah, and then people will often point to the origins of these particular devotions. But they all say how necessary they are to one degree or another. Like if you read how the green scapula came about

or the miraculous medal or whatever, how the rosary developed, none of them are like, you don't have to do this if you don't want to. They all are like, here's why it's so important, and here are the graces that you'll receive. Yeah, yeah. But you can't do it all. You can't do all of them. No, you can't.

You can't wear every – I mean, you could. People at Stubing will probably do. Wear every colored scapula. They even sell them, right? They do. So I think a good principle of discernment is that – a friend just told me this recently, that Jesus doesn't discourage. And I think that you're going to want to find those devotions that encourage.

And that's not to say that you just pick devotions based on your own weak psychological state. Like, I just want, you know, happy, fluffy devotions. Like, devotions are always going to place a claim on your life, and they're always going to demand something of you. Yeah. But for instance, I don't read The Imitation of Christ by Thomas Akempis because I find it very discouraging, and it causes in me like I just get crazed when I read it. I've also heard that some people say this of Faustina's diary. You know, like say you struggle with depression or anxiety.

She was a woman who in her day was very sad, very lonely, very anxious in many ways. And if you read that, it can actually exacerbate your own experience of those things. And so maybe that's not the best thing to read. Or if like, you know, you had some trauma in your early childhood, maybe one of your parents died or like all of the, you have like attachment problems and you're still kind of sorting through that. It might not be the best thing to read Story of a Soul to hear St. Therese talk about the loss of her mother and then her father going crazy and then all of her older sisters entering Carmel

and leaving her behind. And yeah, she kind of works it out in the end and attaches to God the Father. But if like going through 150 pages of that is rough, then you don't need to read that. So that again, that's not to say that we pick our devotions based on our own weaknesses and what accords best with our fluffy sensibilities.

But it is to say that there may be some seasons for this and some seasons for that and some seasons where you just stick with the scriptures. You can always know that the scriptures will speak to you because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And this is the inspired word of God. Right. It's the one book the church demands we read. Yeah. Yeah. But beyond that, we're just less certain as to whether or not this is suitable for this time and place.

And we just have to be kind of happy with that. You know, one of the beautiful things about being a religious is that you have, you know, your time for prayer carved out. And I imagine it's quite similar each day. So you're not jumping around from this devotion to that. I mean, you might in your personal prayer with divine intimacy and then you read this or, read this or you get up on this devotion or something. But I wonder how important that is for us as lay people that we do have this irregularity, not just in time, but the thing that we're doing, just kind of set that rhythm as best we can in the day. Yeah. And I think this is a way of, well, addressing the last point, that your feelings on the matter are stabilized or regularized

by God's Word on the matter. So, like when you go to daily Mass, for instance, you hear readings that you haven't chosen. Those readings are chosen for you by the Church, and they're chosen in such a way that you make your way through certain texts, and you are able to experience certain elements of salvation history, and then they recur. So you're within this kind of cycle, this sanctorial cycle and this time-temporal cycle that works on you, kind of like the way the tide works on a beach, you know. It just kind of has this steadiness to it. But I think there's something helpful to implement that in your own personal prayer time. Yeah.

So I often recommend Lectio Continua of the Gospel. So like a continuous reading of the Gospels. You just start at the beginning, you go to the end, and then you start back at the beginning. You just put your ribbon in, you get through how much you can get through. Yeah. And you're not worried about covering great distances. You're not worried about consuming a bunch of the text, but you're just reading the text. And you're also not concerned about how it makes you feel. I think many of us think, But you're just reading the text. And you're also not concerned about how it makes you feel.

I think many of us think my prayer time is determined by whether I felt something. But often, you know, you read the scriptures and I'm trying to pay attention, but sometimes I start to glaze over. But if you were to think, well, it's a prayer time only if I had some deep insight or warm feeling, then you end up feeling like a failure. It's kind of counterproductive because you pick up the scripture. Sometimes you don't feel like that. Well, I'll go read something else then you know yeah yeah no i think so i think the most important thing the most important conviction with which to emerge from prayer is that god is god right and that sounds somewhat uninteresting but again he's the protagonist of the work and it's not it's not it's not something that we ourselves do so much as is done to us with which we cooperate, to which we consent. And oftentimes when we feel in control of the prayer experience, that's an indication that we may not be as docile as we ought to be. So we should rely on the

tradition and how it reveals one ought to pray. We should rely on a kind of rule of life, whether one's in religious life or married, you know, to kind of stabilize our affections. Yeah, I'd like to see that. And I think that like something that I think is helpful in this regard is that it's good to pray in the morning. And there are some people for whom it's true that you... Yeah, my wife could not do that. That you couldn't do that. Absolutely. So I think a lot of people, we give ourselves excuses for not being excellent by saying that, you know, like I'm not a morning person, for instance. But I think... I'm going to have my wife listen to this part of it. I think that when we find ourselves saying those things, we might be buying into a narrative of untruth, and we might be actually imprisoning ourselves in that narrative of untruth. And I

think that the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves ought always to be broken open to God, because He's the one that's really telling it. Beautiful. Right? And we're learning to interpret it. And whether or not you're a morning person, whether you think yourself a morning person or not, it may be the case that God is telling you a story that entails you becoming more so of a morning person. Because throughout the tradition, it just seems to be the case that Christians always recommend that you pray in the morning. In addition, you pray throughout the course of the day, but you pray in the morning because it has a kind of power to consecrate the whole as a work of worship. And there's, for me, maybe I've just made myself psychologically weak and dependent upon it, but if I don't pray in the morning, I just feel a bit out of worship. And there's, for me, maybe I've just made myself psychologically weak and

dependent upon it, but if I don't pray in the morning, I just feel a bit out of sorts, right? Not so much feel as in like, oh, but like metaphysically, I don't fit in my life as well as I do otherwise. So, yes. So, I think that having a kind of stability and regularity in prayer, sticking to some devotions, maintaining those things, praying at the same time of day to the extent that that's possible and persevering in that practice. And then trying to, yeah, have a kind of rule of life to the extent that that's possible. I would like to see some people kind of develop a rule for life. That's kind of, I know what you're saying. I mean, we can't impose things on other people. That's not what

I'm doing. But I think some people, I mean, we really like to be told what to do, you know, like, please just tell me, you know? And so if it was something like, you know, when you wake up, you do this and this and this, you kneel down, you do this, you know, please just tell me you know and so if it was something like you know when you wake up you do this and this and this you kneel down you do this you know and then sometimes during the day pray the holy rosary or something and at night this this this that's what you have to do something like that i mean because as a dominican you get that someone does tell you how to do that yeah whereas we lay people often just kind of bandy about from one devotion to the other and you i mean if you've suddenly got sick of doing the things the Dominican tell you you must do, it's not like you have a choice.

You have to do it. Whereas we don't have that kind of thing. So maybe we excuse ourselves and we just jump around too much. So I think, I mean, part of the genius of the lay vocation is that you're wholly in the world. And the world is a place of greater flux than the monastery. And so part of your being free to jump about is part of your being free to engage with this present evil age and to transform it by your baptismal graces. So I think it's good to live

a lay life, you know, so obviously it's good for laypersons to live a lay life and not to try to live religious life outside because that betrays the kind of interior tension. Don't just get frustrated. Exactly. And if you're not-. And if you're not... Or if you're going to resent their children and their spouse. And you don't, and you wouldn't have the kind of supports that make it possible to live that thing, like cloister, like silence, like imposed penances, like a religious habit,

like a lot of things which are just specifically designed to make a space in which such a thing can be carried out. But I think it is good, yeah, maybe to develop a little bit of a rule of life in as much as it has the power of making immediately present to your mind the things that one ought to do precisely because they make you good. So I think that's the genius of the law is ordinarily we're kind of wending our way prudentially as to what's the best decision, but the law just makes it immediately present to our mind's eye what need and ought be done in this situation.

So you know that you shouldn't shoplift because there's a law, it's enforceable. And so that's not a temptation for you to like abscond with the Skittles from the supermarket checkout line, because you wouldn't do that because the laws made it known. Whereas if you're thinking like, okay, there's no real clear law about how much currency I ought to tender in this transaction. And I paid a little too much last time. Maybe it's time that I just, you know, bring some Skittles with me on the way. You know, like it just takes a lot of time and energy. Whereas the law, the rule of life just makes known to you immediately what need be done. And I think that's possible in a lay life.

I think it should be modest and I think it should be adapted to a state. Yeah. I mean, he would be one example for our listeners if they were looking for something like keep a, he's just an idea, right? Not imposing this upon anybody, but keep a crucifix by your bed. When you wake up, kiss it, say glory to Jesus Christ. Like you sort of set yourself these little things and it can help in my experience to say, okay, no matter what else I do, this, this, I'll do this. this this i'll do this and so this is actually kind of a habit my wife and i've gotten into that every morning now and i wake up and i'm groggy and i feel gross and anything but holy i'll say uh glory to jesus christ and sometimes she'll say glory forever you know but it's a lovely thing to do you know those little things as you say uh you're not trying to live like a monk you're not setting yourself something too ambitious yeah i i again i've quoted jordan

peterson a bunch i i love this line of his. He says, what's something you could do that you would do that would make your life better? Because often we think like, what could I do? Like it's a new year. I could be praying the rosary every day and go to adoration. Will you do it? No, because you suck, right?

Like you're not a terrific person. You know, you don't have that kind of fortitude. So what could you do that you actually would do? And then go and do that, you know. Yeah. And I think that the grace of God gives you both the power and the imagination to do the things that you're called to do. Because I think, yeah, sometimes if we hold ourselves to an apersonal standard of sanctity, like you'll read the lives of the saints and you'll think, you know, St. Francis Xavier, when he did the exercises, he tied bands around his arms and his arms swelled

so much that they actually covered the bands so that the bands were inextricable unless, you know, he'd be tended to medically. And that seems like something that saints do. And so I should do it, but that's like, whoa, you know, I'm not saying that, you know, whatever. You're not saying there was no merit to that. I'm not saying there's no merit to that, but I'm saying that probably no one listening to this is called to do such a thing why because we're weaker now than we were then no because i think that we are still capable of loving the lord and penitential practices with a kind of verve yeah um and i think that some of

that has been erased from the christian imagination in the past few decades and it needs to be recovered and yeah that's something that we can maybe explore at some other point but i remember i remember i remember a priest saying to me um you know don't because he knew me and he was something of a spiritual director and he was telling me not to take on additional penances but to be better about loving my family yeah and accepting those things that come you know sleepless nights and things like that sure because often we want to do what feels holy so i put a pebble in my shoe or i'm going to whip myself or whatever i'm not suggesting anybody do this. But we do something that makes us feel like we're holy,

but then we yell at our kids and we dismiss our wife or something like that. Yeah. And I mean, the penitential practice is maybe a way by which to love your kids and to love your wife, and they may contribute to your spiritual growth in unseen ways or maybe seen ways. It's hard to say. But I think that those things should be adopted in conversation with a spiritual director and as prompted by the Lord rather than as one's own kind of vain musings as to how like holiness looks in the abstract. Yeah. Because holiness is always something that's very personal.

It's always something that's very particular. Yeah. My brother often says, he repeats the words of somebody whose name I've forgotten, that holiness is a secret between you and God. Right? Yeah, because I'm not called to be Padre Pio. You're not. Yeah. And if I tried to be Padre Pio, I'd be kind of missing the point a little bit. You would. I don't mean that I'm not, I couldn't imitate some of his virtuous things. Yes. And that he couldn't be an inspiration, but that you're called to be as holy as God wills you to be. And the holiness that God wills you to be or wills you to have has a particular shape and it's you shaped. And as he gives indication, you know, through the tradition

of the church, through the scriptures, through your life, your actual lived life with your family, the preaching that you hear on Sunday, the podcast that you listen to, you know, all these things, as he kind of works his way into your heart, he'll illumine your mind and he'll give you the moral imagination to undertake the things that are sanctifying for you. Because he loves your destiny in such a way that he's orchestrating particular causes to actually eventuate in your vocation, right? It's not like he's saying like, these are things on offer, choose amongst. He's actually bringing some of them to bear on you because such is the nature of his providence that he can actually orchestrate it in that way. So you can have the

confidence that he'll give you the imagination to undertake the things that represent your growth and that he'll give you the grace to carry them out. And that being said, we can't pose obstacles, but we actually have to give our heart to the thing, but we have to be begging the Lord for that he show us and that he give us the desire to, to adhere. One of the things Teresa of Avila talks about in the way, the way, no, not the way that's Escriva. The way of perfection. Yeah. Way of perfection. Uh, is she says that, um, you know, okay, maybe, maybe you can't take upon yourself these strict penances. Um, but you can be humble. Like you can, you can allow someone to annoy you and not correct

and these aren't her exact analogies but for um advice but you know you can do things like that like uh if my wife wants to do something i don't want to do it doesn't hurt me or affect me in the way that it would if i was to fast that day so i could just submit or i could just be quiet like there are all these ways that we can submit begin to submit our will to the lord yeah all right i think we're coming to an end this has been really great um here's what we're gonna do yeah we're gonna pause we're gonna go over to patreon so this is gonna wrap this segment up uh-huh and so if you're a patron uh go to patreon.com and we'll wrap this discussion