Pints With Aquinas - Prayer and Intimacy with Jesus w/ Fr. Boniface Hicks

Episode Date: June 8, 2021

This week’s episode of “Pints with Aquinas” is all about prayer! I talk with Fr. Boniface Hicks, a Catholic priest and Benedictine Monk of the Saint Vincent Archabbey, about the intimacy of prayer and how to enter into an intimate conversation and relationship with Jesus. We also discuss: - The history of the Benedictine Order and St. Benedict himself - Fr. Boniface Hicks’ life story and how he converted to Catholicism - How Fr. Boniface relates his story about learning how to pray intimately - How to hear the voice of God in your life   Download my FREE ebook, "You Can Understand Aquinas," now! ------------------------------------------ SPONSORS ------------------------------------------ Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/ Homeschool Connections: https://homeschoolconnections.com/matt/ ---------------------------- GIVING ------------------------------ Patreon or Directly: https://pintswithaquinas.com/support/  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 co-producer of the show. ---------------------------- LINKS ------------------------------- 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 Gab: https://gab.com/mattfradd Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas --------------------------- 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

Tix, how's it going? Great, Matt. Wonderful to be with you. Yeah, thank you so much for making your way down. How long did it take you to grow that beard? Well... Just the trip this morning? Pretty much. You know, it gets about this long in about a year. Do you get a lot of comments on it?

It's pretty much the first comment that everybody makes, yeah. How long did it take you? That's usually a question, yeah. When did you start growing that beard? When I had to use some cheap tricks to win over a high school crowd and get some laughs out of a youth ministry gig, I put a picture of a baby with a beard. Like this is me when I was a kid. Yeah. Yeah, I came out of the womb with this beard.

I feel like monks ought to have beards. It just seems appropriate. Well, our monastery is the first monastery in the U.S. We were founded by Boniface Wimmer, and when he was blessed by Blessed Pius IX, Boniface Wimmer had a great beard, and Pius IX loved his beard. It said, Long live Boniface Wimmer and his magnificent beard. Oh, that's nice. So all of our monks at that time were asked to grow beards. Oh, really? Now, how many monks are in your monastery and where is your monastery? We're in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, just a little west of, a little

east of Pittsburgh, and we have about 150 monks. It's the biggest Benedictine monastery in the world. That's amazing. That's bigger than some high schools. I mean a small high school, but still. So do you know everyone? We have a priory in Brazil. And so some of those monks came into the monastery in Brazil. They're officially part of our monastery. So there's maybe 15, 18 there, a few of whom I don't know. The rest of them I know. And I imagine you have close, kind of more intimate relationships with some of the monks. Sure. Yeah. And by class, the guys that we enter with and around are in seminary with, and then just some spiritual friendships. So I've

written a couple of books with Father Tom Acklin, who's been my spiritual father for 17, 18 years. And so, yeah. And tell us a bit about being a Benedictine monk. You know, what's distinctive about that as opposed to a different order? Well, the Benedictines are really the first religious order, and in some ways it's like vanilla. It's the church's introduction to religious orders. I think in the Orthodox Church, it's like the only religious order even still. So it's kind of the fundamental religious order, you might say. And we follow the rule of St. Benedict. He lived 1,500 years ago and wrote a rule that has been lived continuously. So you can look at St. Augustine wrote a rule,

but there haven't been Augustinians around since St. Augustine. The Carmelites like to claim being the first. Plays. Yeah, right, exactly. There haven't been Carmelites since Mount Carmel and Elijah. Right, exactly. There haven't been Carmelites since Mount Carmel and Elijah. But St. Benedict wrote a rule in 500 that has been followed by monasteries continuously in the last 1500 years. Why is it so successful? I think there's a simplicity to it and there's a flexibility to it. It sort of takes hold of

some spiritual principles, but then he allows room for the abbot to make adjustments according to time and place. There's a certain moderation to it. There's a previous rule called the rule of the master. It's not entirely clear who the author is, although it's thought that it's St. Benedict. It's really thick. It's hundreds of pages, and it details everything. You know, if the monks wake up an hour late because the bell ringer fell asleep, then this is the thing that you do to correct vigils, and I mean really down to the every detail, and it's very hard. And Saint Benedict apparently was a bit harsher himself. He had fled from Rome, the decadence of Rome,

and then went to Subiaco, began to live as a hermit. Some monks asked him to be abbot over them, and he told them, I'm going to be too harsh. And they insisted. And then he was right, and they tried to kill him. What? We think we've got problems in the church today, and we do. But I haven't heard of something like that.

So he went back into the cave and let them be. But there's one line that says, well, it's the kind of St. Benedict who wrote the rule of the master who emerged from the hermitage. He was probably really strong and had high expectations, high standards. But then what eventually developed into the rule of Benedict seems to have a real appreciation for the limits of our humanity. So this big book you were talking about, that was written prior to Benedict's rule? Yeah. So it's a little bit like when we do the synoptic comparisons and you see, wow, you know, Matthew's or whatever, Mark's gospel has exactly the same text. In Benedict's rule, you have exactly the same text

as the rule of the master, but there's a lot of stuff missing, and then there are interesting additions. And so you can make this kind of comparison. So what are some interesting things about the Benedictine rule that people might not know of? Well, an example of this moderation, which is kind of fun, St. Benedict, who also comes forward as a sort of idealist on a few occasions in the rule. And one of them is, we hear that monks should not drink wine, but since the monks of our day cannot be convinced of this, let us at least agree to drink moderately. This is what it says, just like that. Just like that. That is very humorous. Yeah, yeah. So, and St. Benedict allows for a siesta after the midday meal. He also allows for monks who may not want to have a siesta.

So, there's a certain flexibility there. But he says then at least they need to be quiet and respect the other monks who do want to have a siesta. So, there's a kind of human quality to it. He's Italian. Yeah. He's Italian. Yeah. Well, was it the 1500s with Teresa and John of the Cross, I believe, trying to reform the Carmelites? Has there been something like that in the Benedictine order?

Is there a desire to kind of go back to live a more rigorous life? Well, the Benedictine, the expression of the Benedictine life became very diverse very quickly. Within 30 years of the deathine life became very diverse very quickly. Within 30 years of the death of St. Benedict, a Benedictine was made Pope, Gregory the Great. And then Gregory the Great sent Benedictine missionaries to England. And so the Benedictine order, which normally we would think is a cloistered monastic, were missionaries within 50 years of the death of St. Benedict.

Interesting. A hundred years after that, St. Boniface went to Germany from England. And so this missionary Benedictine thread goes hand in hand with a more cloistered studying, praying. So there's always been some diversity there. But then Benedictine monasticism became very integral to Catholic Europe, tied in with Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire, Benedictine monasteries, really established culture. Abbots became kind of a local bishop and still celebrate mass like a bishop as a result of that. And that grew up into some very big monastic orders. The Order of Cluny, for example, or the Monastery of Cluny and a number of the daughter houses. They had basically perpetual divine office. They had shifts of monks praying the liturgy of the hours and for the intentions of the nobility.

But that grew to such a place, and this was under Saint Abbott, so it wasn't like there were problems, but there was also a desire to get back to a simplicity of the rule. And that's when three monks went and founded the monastery at Sito, which developed into the Cistercian order. They hit some hard times, and about five or six years after they were founded, St. Bernard showed up with his entire family. So literally his entire family. entire family. So literally his entire family. His brother left his wife and his father came and the whole family, along with 30 others or 28 others who joined them. So anyway, the Cistercians were a reform in the 11th century. And then the Trappists were a reform of the Cistercians in the 17th century or so in La Trappe in France. And there have been a

few other, the Camaldolese who we have here down the road are a kind of certain specialization. There's an option in the rule for hermits. Saint Benedict identifies four kinds of monks, the monks who live in community, and then some of them become strong enough to live the solitary life as hermits, and then the other two are reprehensible. Yeah, which are what? Cerabytes who follow their own will and gyrovagues who go everywhere. And what would you be? That last one used to sound like, I mean...

Stop. Stop now. I could be accused of being a gyrovague, but I... So one of the things that we do as Benedictines is make a vow of stability. So I always come back to home base, which is my monastery. But it sounds like what you're saying is that even from the earliest days of the Benedictines, you had some of them leaving the monastery to evangelize and come back. So if you were to kind of return to how it was originally,

you wouldn't necessarily have to stop traveling and do podcasts with me. Is that right or no? Well, I think Augustine of Canterbury never came back. He went to go found monasteries. But certainly evangelization, missionary work. But in that sense, he went to found a monastery and presumably remained there, took a vow of stability there. He made a new monastery, new stability.

St. Boniface, though, really was a lifelong missionary. He was eventually ordained a bishop and then sent into Germany to evangelize that way. He retired. At age 75, he retired to one of the monasteries he founded. He lasted for about a year and a half, and then he went back out into the mission field where he was martyred. So I'm not sure what that says about that missionary spirit that can't quite stop. Because my understanding was part of the point of the mendicant orders was to be like monks, but in the world, to live in the more suburban areas and evangelize. So presumably they were taking on a role in that sense that the Cistercians and Benedictines weren't. But is that still the case today, or do you have monks like yourself who preach missions?

Oh, sure. Yeah, there are. Well, and our monastery is especially outward facing. Our founder, Boniface Wimmer, was actually a diocesan priest when there were no monasteries in Europe. From 1800 to 1830, all religious life was suppressed in Germany. The monasteries were closed. When they opened them back up in 1832, he eventually joined but always had this very missionary spirit. And so he founded St. Vincent in Latrobe, my monastery, with

a view of taking care of the needs of Catholics in the area. So he always had this very missionary outlook. And our monks have been involved in lots of things. We run a college and a seminary. We also have foreign missions in Brazil and Taiwan at the moment. We actually founded the first Catholic university in China back in the 20s in Beijing. So we've always had a very apostolic spirit and other monasteries, well a number of our daughter houses do as well.

Monte Cassino, was that the first monastery that Benedict founded? So Benedict was a hermit in Subiaco, which is not too far from Assisi if I'm not mistaken about that. And he founded his first monasteries there, about a dozen monasteries. So after the monks that tried to poison him, he went back into the cave, but then some others found him a little later, and maybe he was more ready and they were more ready. And that's where he lived 30 years, was with those dozen monasteries. And then the local parish priest tried to kill him. And so he took that as a sign that it was time to move on. And that's when he went to Monte Cassino,

which is where his relics are. Oh, I see. Which is where Aquinas would have been an oblate as a young child, perhaps even wearing the Benedictine habit. Yeah, yeah. But not having made official vows since he was too young and then of course joined the Dominicans.

I love your habit. It's so cool. I love just the simplicity of it. Here's a question for you, which I'm not sure if you know the answer to or not, but we'll see. Why is it that in the Orthodox Church you don't have, it seems at least, the same sort of reforms of monasticism and the different types of monasticism? monasticism and the different types of monasticism. Well, the... So Aquinas and... The real introduction of other religious

orders happens in 1200. So which is after the split. It's 1054, right? Thereabouts, yeah. So St. Francis, St. Dominic, the whole development of the mendicant order has happened a little bit later. Why it happened in the West and not in the East, I'm not entirely sure. But if you were to look at the Cistercians, the Trappists, the Benedictines, they all look basically the same. They're all monastic, yeah. So it's just a way of interpreting. You made the comparison with the Carmelites.

It would be more like that. I mean, the reformed Carmelites look basically like the non-reformed Carmelites, just living the rule in a stricter way and a different sort of interpretation of the rule. But the mendicant orders are a whole new phenomenon. And then you'd have several centuries later with the development of active religious women with St. Louis de Marillac and St. Vincent de Paul founded the first order of active women nuns. How did you first hear about the Benedictines? Because I know you're a convert, and I'm very looking forward to hearing that story. Well, from the priest who baptized me. So our Benedictines run the campus ministry at Penn State.

So you were how old when you were baptized? 21. How did you become a Catholic? We have time. Well, there are short, medium, and long versions of the story. Medium. You can press the point and open up the space at any point. But I was raised, I've learned to be careful about this. There's a way I can tell my story that it seems to throw

my parents under the bus, which I don't want to do, and they don't deserve to have happen to them because my parents weren't really raised anything. But they grew up in the 40s and 50s when the country was still Christian. And being good people, breathing Christian air, they sort of absorbed a lot of Christianity. But I just have one sibling, and my brother and I, growing up in the 70s and 80s, were no longer living in a quite so Christian-saturated air. And so as I moved through high school, I was very into science. I was, I don't know, cutting edge enough, self-sufficient. My parents really, to their credit, loved me well enough to give me a lot of confidence,

which also developed into a lot of pride and arrogance, which is a constant battle for me. But coming into college at Penn State, I didn't think that anybody was seriously Christian. I just had no serious Christian witnesses in my life prior to that. Were you baptized? I was never baptized. Right, so good Christian people in the sense that they, as you say, kind of imbibed the— Morally, but it's not clear that my mother was ever baptized. To skip ahead towards the end of the story, I conditionally baptized her.

Beautiful. A year or two before she died. Yeah, so, yeah, my parents weren't really raised going to church. My dad went to church a little bit. My mother never went to church growing up. And so they didn't really have anything to offer to me and my brother. And it was, I guess, not a burning enough question. We made a little foray in that direction when I was in middle school, I guess. But I was already, even then, had sort of written off the idea. So coming into college, I considered myself atheist and didn't think that I was particularly avant-garde by doing so. I just

thought like any normal scientist, well-adjusted person, didn't believe in God. And I met a number of Catholics immediately after I got to Penn State who were in the scholars program in science and engineering and going to mass and completely incapable of explaining to me why they were going to mass. And by the end of college, they were not going to mass. So that didn't work. Because of you or because of the culture in the university um just well i think the shallowness of their own faith so when you were questioning them was it in a sort of antagonistic way or were you genuinely interested i was genuinely interested and it was probably antagonistic uh that's uh lest i would be vulnerable you know so yes uh but i was

i was genuinely interested i remember having a conversation in uh you know as a freshman in college we spent these long nights talking about all of these amazing things because we were whatever so cool and what amazing things what do you mean oh i you know like the state of the world and how to you know solve world hunger or something. I mean, just anyway. But I asked them at one point, I said, so you guys go to mass or I probably said to church. And they said, yeah. And I said, and like, you believe in God? And they said, yeah. And like, what does that mean? You talk to him? And they started to get a little uncomfortable. Yeah.

And then I said, and then what? And then, does he talk back? So how about them Stillers? Yeah, that was a good game this last weekend. So that was about the extent of my conversation, kind of ran into a limit. But in the midst of that, after my freshman year at Penn State, I was doing some research over the summer and sitting out under a tree, enjoying a nice technical paper in computer

science. And a total stranger walked up to me and eventually asked me if I would study the Bible with him one-on-one. God bless our Protestant brothers and sisters. I presume that this was a Protestant Christian. Yes, indeed. Yeah. So he came up to you and just asked you flat out. Total stranger. Glory to God. Yeah. If you're a Protestant watching right now, we love you. We want you to be Catholic, but we don't want you to cease to be awesome. Please come in and bring that zeal with you. Amen. Amen. Yeah.

Yeah, and to his credit, I mean, a really humble, authentic man. And so I didn't really have an excuse why not. I had kind of opened up some things. My cousin was studying philosophy at Penn State. We'd have these philosophical discussions. I think I had read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by this time. I was becoming, you know, sort of looking at the transcendent, thinking big things. And I thought, well, whatever, you know, I can give Christianity a try. This guy wants to sell me something. And so I'll at least listen to what he has to say. And then he tells me that we'll start with the book

of Genesis. Well, anyway, so I'll just straighten him out about science and then I'll move on with my life. And in the meantime, he just, again, very humbly and authentically, just didn't engage me in debate. He didn't try to convince me of things. He didn't, just really shared his faith. And as we read Genesis chapter 1, it became clear to me that this was not a cookbook on universe creation, but rather a story of relationships. God's relationship with creation, God's relationship with man, man's relationship with creation. And at the end of our Bible study, he said, you know, God made man with a purpose. And do you ever think what that might be for you?

Back off, dude. Yeah, why not? He's getting in there, right? That's an intimate... Yeah, yeah, that's right. And he was really good at, you know, he didn't press me to answer that question, but just left it that way.

And so I felt free to... It was just a totally different worldview. You know, my idea was I was given this life. I need to make the most of it that I can. I was on my path to a good paying job. I was dating a girl at that time. I have a wife, two and a half children, a dog, a house, and live the American dream. And he just totally shifted that. Like, I was made with a purpose, and did I think of what that might be? So it was a great experience. He was very vulnerable, honest, authentic, and it opened that up in me. So I came back the next week, and the next week, and the next week. Was it just the two of you, or was there a group? Just the two of us, yeah. Yeah, they're very committed.

It's a group called the University Bible Fellowship, and that's their mission, to do Bible studies with college students one-on-one. Bless them. And really to send them back into their own churches. So they're not principally, you know, they're non-denominational as much as one can be non-denominational. So they're not trying to, quote-unquote, sheepsteal, as it were. That's right, yeah. So, I mean, in reality,

they do have a ministry, they do have house churches, they do have some of those elements, but it's part of my story that they didn't really have a church. And so, after about a year of this Bible study, we went through Genesis chapter by chapter through the story of Abraham, and I had no way to connect any of this to my life. In fact, I remember David, the man I was studying the Bible with, asking me, like, if God said to you, like he said to Abraham, to take everything and leave and go to a place he would show you, would you do that? And I thought, if God showed up to me and talked to me, yeah, I think I'd do that. So you can see how that worked out.

But I had no idea what that meant at that time. What does it mean for God to speak to us? So I had this whole thing that was sort of developing over here and this very good experience, this relationship with this man. I was sort of living the of developing over here and this very good experience, this relationship with this man. I was sort of living the college life over here and studying computer science and planning out my future. And I was also doing a little bit, as I mentioned, my cousin was into a little bit of Zen and Taoism, these kinds of things. I had some of these sources in my life and was reading a little here, a little there. My brother, independent of me, made his own journey into Christianity and also ended up backfilling a few things for me in terms of making some of

these connections between like, you know, Zen and Christianity. But the, you know, it's very interesting. I've discovered now, it's come back around many years later, but the Tao Te Ching, which is, you know, one of the three major Chinese philosophy religions, really the Tao Lao Tzu is kind of like Plato. So it's really to see it as a philosophical system that just happens to have what doesn't really have religious, it's really like Plato. I mean and in some ways a little bit closer to Christianity than some of the Greek philosophy is. But it was it was kind of captivating because it opened me to something transcendent which was really

missing in my life. Well, anyway, after studying through Genesis, we jumped ahead to the prologue of John's Gospel. Interestingly, in some Chinese translations, they will say in the beginning of the Bible, in the beginning was the Tao. And so some of these things that were already beginning to percolate about transcendence and a different worldview, some of this stuff I found landed in Christianity. And the sort of mystical that also became flesh, the word through whom all things were made became flesh, this just captured me. And I thought, oh, okay, Christianity has everything. Everything's here.

So, and there was a grace, you know, a grace I wish I could bottle and give to every other unbeliever. But it was really in that moment, I had been doing this Bible study thinking like, if God exists, if the Bible is true, then the answer to this question is, and I made a very concrete decision at that point, God does exist, the Bible is true, I'm dropping the conditionals. It's quite a leap. I mean, to believe that God exists is one thing, to believe that the Bible is true is another. How did you arrive at that conclusion? Well, finding...so all of this had been really building over this year of Bible study and accepting this as a reasonable philosophy, I suppose, a reasonable approach to life.

And then sort of seeing these other threads that were compelling to me, fulfilled in Christianity. So I was willing to take a step forward and say, I think this is what I'm looking for. I'm willing to jump in and start living it out. You're familiar with Henry Newman's illative sense, are you? Well, I think it's the idea you've got these kind of converging strands of proofs, maybe none of which is sufficient. I think the example he

uses is most people in England accept the shape of England, though nobody's actually walked it. But you have these different things, maps and what people tell you are satellite images, etc. And you just come to believe something, even though you might not be able to justify any of those things. But I like what you said there, that it was just this acceptance. You had to, at some point, make the leap. Yeah. Yeah. And very consciously, and I was convinced enough to take a step forward and begin living inside of it rather than watching it from the outside. And it was really at that point that I thought, well, I guess I need to do like the Christian thing now and do something on Sunday.

And at that point, I thought, well, I just had this sense that Catholicism was the whole thing. And without having studied that very extensively, I thought, well, other people might be doing other things, but seems watered down, seems reduced, seems, you know, I'm gonna start going to Mass. Wow. What did you folks think about this? Were they aware? Well, by this time my brother had been baptized, I guess, and so, and my parents, the same time my brother and I started looking into things, my parents started going to a Methodist church. My mother had always had this desire to do something and had felt some guilt about not having something to share with her boys.

And at one point formed something like a prayer that was, well, maybe my boys will find something and share it with me. Yeah. Which was amazingly fulfilled, it seems. Could I share with you a little poem here? It's not long. It's by Sheldon Van Ocken. He wrote A Severe Mercy. He was a friend of Lewis. It was a Catholic, I believe. And anyway, what you just said sounded like this, and it's so beautiful. he's talking about making that choice to believe and he says between the probable and proved there yawns a gap afraid to jump we stand absurd then see behind us sink the ground and worse our very standpoint crumbling, desperate dawns, our only hope to leap into the word that opens up the shuttered universe. Wow, that's beautiful. That's powerful for you too. Isn't that glorious? Yeah, just this idea that it's like, if I don't make a decision, I'm making a decision.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's not a good one. Yeah, I can't say that I had, That's right. And it's not a good one. Yeah, I can't say that I had, I felt a lot of freedom. I mean, the Lord was so patient with me. And I never felt pushed. I never felt pressured. You know, I just felt a lot of freedom to take steps and slowly discover. You know, if I could summarize my two objections to Christianity from

the beginning of my journey, it's that Christians were too stupid to figure things out on their own and so they made up a God. And Christians were too weak to deal with their own problems and so they had to have a God to call, cry out to. What's funny is I think the first half of both of those statements are true. Well that's exactly what I came to. And the Lord never hit me over the head with that. He allowed me to just very slowly discover the limits of my own mind and the limits of my own strength.

And that was really kind of the next breakthrough. I was studying in Germany about a year after this experience with the Gospel of John, and I had started going to Mass, going to Mass every weekend, and I would have just come into RCIA, but I was doing...I studied the spring semester in Germany, so I knew I'd be away during Easter, and I thought, well, I'll just come back to Penn State. So you're going to Holy Mass, but not receiving Eucharist and getting to know people there, presumably, or standing in the back? No, I sort of waited in. The girl I was dating

was also a Catholic. So she, yeah, you know, so I knew where mass was and we went together many times. But in Germany, I really ran into the limits of my own strength and was just stretched enough taking graduate classes in German and computer science and mathematics and felt really far away from home and just disconnected and really cried out to God for my weakness for the first time. And it was in the wake of that that I finally had an answer to the question that I had asked the other college students. You talk to God and then does he talk back?

the other college students, you talk to God and then does he talk back? And recognizing his presence, and it wasn't a sort of extraordinary phenomenon in any way. I didn't hear audible voices or see anything, but recognize that still small voice that was amazingly familiar. And yet for the first time, I recognized that it was the voice of God who was speaking to me in his own obscure ways that keep us free. But anyway, it was in the midst of that experience that I started thinking about giving my life to sharing that gift of prayer for the first time. What year were you when you entered RCIA? So I came back after that experience in Germany. I was a senior in college. What year was that? Oh, well it had been 19, the year, 96, 97 school year. So I was

baptized in 97. Wow. And what was the RCIA experience like for you? Not great. Yeah, I had had such a rich experience. I was already going out fishing for college students at this point. Nobody ever took me up on it, but, you know, I had the courage, the nervous courage to go and ask people to study the Bible with me on Penn State campus. And my experience of faith, of praying spontaneously with people, even discerning, listening to God, having a sense of his presence.

All of these things were so developed, and the RCIA was a little bit flat at that time. Were you going through it with anyone else? Yeah, there were eight of us baptized. And were there intellectual seekers like yourself or not really? Not the same, yeah. That's got to be hard. Yeah, so a few of the catechists, the student catechists there were some beautiful people and actually introduced me to the

charismatic renewal that became a thread of my story in that time. Yeah, some of the students were really great witnesses of faith and kind of full-hearted, full-bodied people. And to be honest, I needed a little bit more of that than the intellectual stuff to balance some things out. Yeah, that was where I was at as well. One thing I loved, and I know people can criticize the charismatic renewal and maybe justly in certain instances, but one thing I loved about my charismatic friends is that they acted as if God existed and was working now.

Right, right. It wasn't just a sort of philosophical system I had to adhere to. It was a relationship that was actually active now. And that really corresponded with what I had experienced in Germany and the sense that I was living under. I got so excited about that when I made the connection when I was in Germany that I started asking God about everything. Like, should I take a left to go to class today, or should I take a right? Should I have ham for dinner or turkey? Just like asking him about

everything. And then I kind of, ham. Okay. Good. Always ham. God would never suggest turkey. But yeah, very much found a resonance with that in the charismatics. Were your friends put off by the fact that you not only become a Christian but a Catholic? Well, that was a chapter. I tend to be a little bit conflict-averse, and so I didn't bring that up right away. I just kind of kept doing the Bible study, and they knew I was going to Mass, and they, you know, they had a Sunday. I

also went to their Sunday worship service quite a bit, and they, the group at Penn State in particular was more Catholic-friendly than some of the other groups. The head of that group had grown up Catholic, had never really rejected the church, just kind of didn't get it, wandered away, met the Bible study group, and then had really found a place there. So I remember him talking about lauding John Paul II as being a great missionary, for example. So there was something that was kind of Catholic-friendly there. But when I eventually told David that I was going to be baptized in a couple months, he started to question that decision. And it wasn't until Holy Thursday that we had met for a Bible study. And he said, you know, I've been really trying to figure out

how to express this to you. And I think this is it. If you're baptized Catholic, I think you really need to commit yourself to ministry in the Catholic Church, because I basically was doing ministry with the University Bible Fellowship and kind of moving on that track and then sort of sacramentally becoming Catholic. And he was seeing this, you know, like do one or the other. And he said, you're going to be a leader wherever you go, but I think you need to make that decision before you're baptized, you know, make a commitment upfront one way or the other. And he said, and really, I bless your decision. And so, so I really wrestled with that. I just skipped all my classes for the day, spent the day in prayer. I went to talk to the priest on campus and had a nice chat. Ironically, being here in Steubenville now, he had mentioned Scott Hahn,

and he could see, because what I really hadn't experienced was anything evangelical in the Catholic Church. And he could see that in me, a desire to share the faith. I mean, that was really this driving thing that happened in me. And he said, well, you know, a lot of people have brought in the gifts of the Protestant Church into the Catholic Church. You know, we really grow from that. That's what I was just talking about a moment ago. Exactly. Yeah. So he encouraged me and he said, you know, ultimately you have to make the decision.

And so he prayed with me a little bit and then I went on my way. It should have been a sign to me that I was drawn to go. I walked to the church downtown. I wanted to pray in the church. And as I was kneeling there, and interestingly, you know, I had sort of gotten the Eucharist, but it wasn't anything I had struggled with. And so there was a way, I suppose, that I hadn't gotten it. I had just gone to Mass several times. We moved from John 1 eventually to John 6. I read John 6. I thought, oh, that's what's going on at Mass. And I just kind of moved on and didn't really reflect on what that meant, although I was very aware of not receiving communion.

So all of those things were in me, and I was looking at the tabernacle. I was praying, and I just said, Lord, I just want to do whatever you want me to do. And then I saw the light on the flame and the vigil candle, the tabernacle candle, just flared up for a moment. And I don't think anything extreme, but it's just, you know, the timing of these things, right? So that I was looking there, that I noticed that it flashed. And then these words came to me, right? So that I was looking there, that I noticed that, it flashed. And then these words came to me, I want you to fan the flame of my church. And so that really resonated and moved me. And then as I moved away from, I went to walk back to campus, then the thought of not receiving the sacraments started to go through. And I thought, well, that's ridiculous. Maybe I could put this off

a little bit longer. I had been going to Mass for basically two years and hadn't received communion. Maybe I could do another six months or something. But I thought, never in my life being baptized, well, I would have been baptized in this other UBF probably, but never in my life receiving Holy Communion, never receiving the Sacrament of Confession, never being confirmed. Well, this is clearly not an option. So then the decision went forward, and on Holy Thursday, already with a sense of,

if I'm going to commit myself to this, it's a real commitment to serve and to give myself to the church. So I had already been thinking about priesthood for nine months before this, it's a real commitment to serve and to give myself to the church. So I had already been thinking about priesthood for nine months before this, and that desire to move forward with the vocation was really strong at that point. Did you discern any other religious orders? Well, I didn't even know what a monk was. Although the campus ministers were monks, I didn't really quite make the connection. I don't know. Maybe they didn't preach about it. They also wore clerics as well as they,

the one wore his habit also. But they had a, the director of campus ministry brought students to St. Vincent every semester. And that happened to be the weekend after Easter. So he invited me to come along on my first vocation visit a week after I was baptized. And on the one hand, I thought, well, I'm not called to be a monk. I'm called to evangelize.

This is really this desire to share the faith is this strong thing in me. But then when I got to St. Vincent, I experienced the community. I saw the outreach and just really felt a strong connection there. I then went to World Youth Day a couple months later. Whereabouts? In Paris. Okay, yes. And got to see the Universal Church.

And I also read my first biography of a saint, which was Chesterton's biography of St. Francis. I fell in love with St. Francis. Yes. I asked about authentic Franciscans, and someone directed me to the CFRs. Yes. So I visited the CFRs. I loved the CFRs. I wanted to be a CFR.

And God wanted me to go to St. Vincent and be a Benedictine. Uh-huh. And it was really a very strong experience in prayer that I just couldn't deny that the Lord was directing me to be a Benedictine. So I joined the Benedictines, and it seems to be working out. Beautiful. Tell us, let's talk about prayer a little bit, and maybe we can begin just sort of from the understanding that prayer is difficult, and that we try to pray. We're not really sure how to pray. We're not really sure how we ought to be feeling when we pray.

We hear people like you talk about prayer and just sort of suspect that maybe you're one of these special individuals that's able to pray while the rest of us have to sort of muddle our way through, I don't know, you know, something opposite to heartfelt devotions and things like that. And I just, I'd love you to kind of help us here. I know you've written a book on this topic. Remind us what that is. Personal Prayer, a guide for receiving the Father's love. And yeah, let's put a link in the description below to that. That's with the St. Paul Center, correct? So St. Paul Center, what's the URL, Joseph? Stpaulcenter.com.

stpaulcenter.com. Okay, personal prayer. You and your spiritual father wrote this? Father Thomas Ackland. That's right. Cool. What was that like, writing this book? Because it's not a small book. I mean, it's a book on personal prayer,

but I started reading it and am very much enjoying it and plan to continue. Yeah, it's the second book that we wrote together. We wrote a book on spiritual direction before that, a guide for sharing the Father's love. And it was a beautiful experience writing both books. My spiritual director is 70 years old and has been at this, giving spiritual direction, obviously living a life of deep prayer for a long time.

In spiritual direction, he formed me as a spiritual director and also gave me spiritual direction. Everything we talked about, I understood from the inside. And so I was really able, he did a lot of talking, I did a lot of notes, and then I folded my thoughts and his thoughts together. Everything he said, I understood. And it was a beautiful experience. As we started to write the book on prayer, also a very beautiful experience,

but he's a different kind of person. He's a little bit more melancholic. He says he has no imagination. I keep pushing him on that. I have a hard time believing that. But anyway, I'm a very imaginative person. I'm a little more phlegmatic, a little more buoyant personality, I suppose. And so I found that our experience of prayer was quite

different. Interesting. And so I think it made a really rich combination, complementarity. combination, complementarity, the thread that really holds it together is relationality. And what we try to do in that book, and I think we're relatively successful, is on the one hand, talk about prayer in objective terms. And I've read a lot of the masters on prayer and things in the East and things in the West and Carmelite and Passionist and Dominican and really try to fold these things, Franciscan, Benedictine, obviously. And I love all of that. I love to learn. I love to get all of that and be able to teach things that are sort of trustworthy and in the tradition, but then also to really bring it down to experience. And what's this like? It's one thing to use all of these words, but then what's the actual experience of that from the inside?

And that's where I think that Father Tom and me, with different experiences in some way that go along with the way that we're made humanly, but then obviously a similarity in experience was really valuable. And a couple of pieces that we pick up on are, well, really the dimension of relationality, that developing a relationship with God. And that's where we can draw from our human relationships. So I've had a chance to spend several hours with you today. And as we get to know each other and share with each other and the conversation opens up and the more vulnerably that we share, then the more interiority is opened up and the more intimacy that can develop.

Yes. And the same thing is true in prayer. And so... That's really good. The thing is to find those ways and what draws the vulnerability out from us? Well... Trust. Yeah. And in terms of... You're gonna say something else. I'm sorry. Well, no, the obvious,

certainly trust. And like, I will bear myself to you. You know, if you and I got to know each other and became friends, I would begin to unfold my interior life to you. But only if I trusted that you would try well to receive it. That's right. And that's only going to happen with time. So there's no substitute for time. Oh, that's good. And also, just to pause on that for a moment, that's an interesting point as I've just moved here to Franciscan and I'm trying to, you know, get these nice relationships, try to encourage these good relationships. So we have this little get together on Sundays after Holy Mass and we've got a few different people we're having potlucks with and things like this. But yeah, there's no substitute for history.

You know, I've got some old friends in Atlanta who I love, and you want so desperately to be there already with these new people that you're meeting. But you need more than just a few deep conversations. It's almost like this familiarity as well as sharing each other's life leads to this intimacy. So I just made that connection there. Just like in friendship, there's no substitute for time and history. That's really interesting with prayer. Well, and naturally, we tend to meet each other and show the best side off. Yes.

So I'm telling you all of the best things that I know the most about. I mean, anyway, trying to also be humble and vulnerable in talking with you now and as we get to know each other. But we do that with God, too. We like to come with our pre-scripted texts that are safe, and we do that. We do the kind of right thing. We show God the best thing. We ignore all of the parts of our life that are embarrassing and limited, and we sort of hope they go away on their own. And we don't really want to bring them into this relationship.

And for prayer to go deeper, we've got to learn how to do all that. And silence is really helpful with that. When we're sort of stuck there, there's nothing like spending a couple hours in the adoration chapel and allowing all the stuff to come up and the discomfort and then to pay attention to what the discomfort is and allowing all the stuff to come up and the discomfort and then to pay attention to what the discomfort is and what's the thing I don't want to show them and what am I trying so hard to run from and hold back. And this is why it's so difficult to come up with a sort of structure. Like here's how to pray. You do X, Y, and Z because I love how you put that like all this embarrassing stuff that I hope will just go away on its own and we can forget about.

that, like all this embarrassing stuff that I hope will just go away on its own and we can forget about. But there's no prayer book that explicitly shares with you how to deal with your junk and history and bring that forth before the Father. It just requires that sort of vulnerability, which, yeah, cool. Which I guess structured prayer can lead us to. That's right. Well, and I mean, again, I think the relational analogy is so helpful. I mean, so give me the formula for a relationship. Me? You want me to do that now? I'm thinking of it as far as like a dating relationship, you know, like I get to know my wife, we start to spend time together,

we start to desire to be with each other more intentionally, and then we decide to give ourselves to each other. You have some structure up front. But at the same time, you know that there's no dating guide in the Bible, for example. I mean, there's something that's sort of human, cultural, personal. You can't really have a, you know, there's some real basic steps, and that's about as much as you get in terms of structured prayer as well.

You get some basic steps. You've got to show up. You've got to spend some time. Here are a couple of good starting lines, you know, some pickup lines, right? You know, you can start to woo God a little bit. And, yeah, so there are some real basic structural things. But ultimately, it becomes very personal. And then every relationship is different.

Yes, yes. And the same with every human relationship I think just like a married couple might fall you know into being discouraged when they look at other couples and think we should be more like them maybe not realizing that God has given them their own personality and their own mission I think my wife and I have like dealt with that a little bit you know we're both kind of louder personalities and you'll sometimes meet these other couple who are very quiet and soft-spoken and organized. You think,

gosh, that looks great. What are we doing wrong? What are we doing wrong? Yeah, so we're always tempted to look at that other guy in the Adoration Chapel that seems to have it all together and is, you know, all composed and there's a saying to bring in monasticism for a moment that the novices, the first-year guys, look holy but aren't. The next phase, the juniors don't look holy and aren't. The seniors don't look holy but are. Oh, glory to God. Isn't that beautiful?

And isn't it true with marriage too, right? It's so true. You meet an older couple who you're like, they don't look like they're trying that hard. But if the two of them are joyful, they must be. Right. And it is true. Like a lot of our movies center around that initial stage of love. It's that romantic love, not the kind of companionship love

that's borne out over the years of trust and intimacy. That's often not celebrated. These aren't usually what movies are based around. But this is where we all want to end up if we're doing it right. You and I were talking about your conversion a little bit before the show. And I think it's those early stages. We're good at talking about it in the movies, and we're not good at talking about it in the faith. It's also a beautiful stage, that falling in love stage. Good, yes. There's something when that experience of the Lord breaks through. And you had shared with me

about World Youth Day. And I have also my Germany story. I also have a Paris story. Having desired priesthood, it was in Paris that I was praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament. And for the first time, it felt like I heard the Lord calling me to that. I knew it was my desire. Everybody told me, it's your first fervor. Everything's exciting. And I had to accept that. I mean, what do I know? But it was really an adoration for the first time. I felt like, as I said to the Lord, I want to do whatever you want me to do. And I heard in my heart, I want you to be a priest. And I was so excited. But those heady moments and that falling in love, there's a place for that in our faith. I love that because we do tend to sometimes put that down, don't we? Like, well, that's just the

passionate and you can't trust your feelings and you have to go with what you know. And surely that has to mature like any relationship. But there's something about those moments that makes us really vulnerable. We're really willing to put all the pieces on the table. We're really willing to spill our whole hearts and to commit everything. We want to go on the journey. We want to engage the Lord. We want to take Him at His word. And those are beautiful moments of faith and moments that get renewed at different times,

but that dimension of experience is so important. And then that has to move into a place of regularity because what tends not to come out, well, maybe it comes out a little bit in those moments, but there's a whole bunch of our junk that tends not to come out in those moments and it's only through the long haul as we get to know each other

that we can't keep that stuff down. Yeah, if I had known the kind of junk that would have come up in my marriage due to our marriage, I don't think I would have got married. It would have scared me too much. And you just can't hide it. You can't run from it. But that's the stuff. That's where the Lord wants to meet you in those places, eh?

Yeah. That's where you're the most real and there's something so terribly lovely about being your worst and being loved in that yes my goodness oh my gosh if my wife can stand me in my worst our blessed lord might be able to well and that's why marriage is a sacrament right yeah you're really encountering god's love for you and her yeah yeah yeah beautiful yeah i was thinking this recently too like the lovely thing about growing in self-knowledge is that no matter what somebody says against you it pales in comparison to what you already know to be true about yourself you can do are you kidding me you have no idea how depraved i am accused myself of much worse you know i with these Byzantine monks in Wisconsin. I'm not sure if you know the Holy Resurrection maybe.

I spent an eight-day silent retreat there last year. Beautiful. One of the monks made this good point. He said, well, if you want to see how the, what did he say, how the amateurs sin. Go to Vegas. Fornication, drinking. If you want to see how the grown-up sin, come to a monastery. Backbiting, envy, arrogance, pride.

I thought that was such a beautiful thing to say. Because that's the stuff. Grown-up sins. Yeah. But okay, so showing up, being regular in our encountering of the Lord. And I think sometimes people are afraid that we are psychologizing the faith when we start talking about things like junk and issues and baggage, you know, especially as we apply psychological terms to these things. I think there is this fear, oh, wait a minute.

This is not how the early fathers spoke. This is, or at least that's the perception. And so therefore, I should try to get back to that more archaic language because that was when people lived the faith for real. Do you agree with that, and what do you think of it? I think generally the problem, we have this tension, even in the interpretation of St. Thomas, of a kind of conceptualist view. All of these things are dogmatic statements given from the top down,

and we just have to work with them as they are. And then the transcendental Thomists were really focused on the dimension of truth that comes through an experience. And we tend to flop to one side or the other. The conceptualist view is a lot safer. We can just work with all of the dogmas and their pristine purity. We don't sully them by our own human experience. It's all correct.

And there's a beauty to it as well. I mean, I love that. I love Gary Goulagrange and love reading how these things fit together. But the other view that there is truth that comes through in the experience. There's something that my experience... It's like this conflict or supposed conflict between phenomenology and Thomism, right? Is that kind of what you're referring to? So you can...

The real goal is to hold these things in tension. Yeah. There is a telos, and then there's my experience of the world. That's right. Talk about that a bit. There is a telos, and then there's my experience of the world. That's right. So the psychological language is really getting at that language of experience.

And there's something that, you know, so how do I, what does a grace feel like? You know, it's nice to talk about actual graces and sanctifying graces, and it's like, but what difference does this make in my life? You know, this is what I'm interested in. I don't want to get rid of sanctifying grace and actual grace. I just want to know, like, how it interacts with me, how I experience it. And so that's where the psychological language is helpful for putting words to the concepts in terms of my experience. The Desert Fathers certainly did that.

And, you know, I mean, St. John Cassian, who becomes a bridge, the Anthony of Egypt, all of these, the Eastern monasticism was translated into Latin and brought to the West through Cassian's conferences and institutes. Leo the Great had sent him over to gather up the monastic wisdom, and he brought that over, and then that becomes a foundation for Saint Benedict 100 years later. But it's really, it's very psychological language. It's, you know, it's using its own sort of Greek foundations and vocabulary. You can talk about the nous and the pneuma and the psyche and the pathé and the logos moi and the, you know, all of these other things. You put Greek names to them, but ultimately it's talking about distractions.

It's talking about my interior, about passions. It's about the psyche, my interface with the world, where I am interiorly. So there's a way to marry these languages. I mean, psychology has done a great service in really studying the human person and trying to tease these things out. Although, Thomas, you know, the treatise on the passions is the biggest part of the Summa and is one of the most overlooked. And so there's a lot of richness in the tradition looking at human interiority and trying to fit some of these things together. And I suppose we can only use language that

makes sense to us. Like if I'm trying to explain my experience of shame or embarrassment or coming before the Lord and asking him to come into those areas, even that language I'm just using now, come into this part of me, shine your light, heal, untwist. I can only, if I want my faith to be meaningful, I can only use language that is meaningful. That's right. I mean, I can only, if I want my faith to be meaningful, I can only use language that is meaningful. I can adopt a different sort of vocabulary to sound different, but unless I'm saying what I mean, this is not really a personal relationship that I'm engaging in. And I suppose this language that we're using now is going to sound archaic 300, 3000 years from now anyway. So yeah. Is this the first time you've encountered that objection, the psychological The language that we're using now is going to sound archaic 100, 3,000 years from now anyway.

Is this the first time you've encountered that objection, the psychological babble, you know, all this wound stuff? No, no, certainly. And we use the language of vulnerability quite a bit. And that seems to be – it's something that people really hold on to. I remember even early on, right after I was ordained a priest in 2004, I was sent back to Penn State where I was able to be a chaplain for three years and then also continue studying computer science. But as a chaplain, I was a spiritual director for a number of the students. And I'll never forget one of my directees saying, after I said something about vulnerability again, he goes, it's all about the V word, isn't it? And I hadn't realized I was using it that much or that it had

been so thematized already in my own mind. But that's something that Father Tom and I bring out quite a bit and that people really hold on to. When we taught our spiritual direction course at the Vita Consecratia Institute, there's a great Norbertine priest, Father Thomas Nelson, who's steeped in a lot of good things and conceptualist Thomism, among other things. But he said, vulnerability is a very psychological word, isn't it? And he said, what would that translate into in the concept, in the tradition? Where does that fit? And I've thought about that. I'd be open to your ideas. The best that I've come up with,

it's certainly connected to humility in the sense of that honesty of self-revelation. But humility doesn't require another. I think vulnerability always requires another. So it's like humility in relationship. Yes. And I don't know where that is in the tradition other than just sticking those two concepts together. Humility is obviously very strong

throughout everything, but humility is not necessarily in relationship. And I think that's one of the real gifts, even as John Paul II sort of expanded what image and likeness of God means from just intellect and will to intellect and will and relationship, to be in the image and likeness of God means from just intellect and will to intellect and will and relationship. To be in the image and likeness of God is to be in relationship. It's male and female he made them. In his image and likeness he made them. And so John Paul II really introduces that dimension in his personalism, in his theology of the body. And so I think that the relationality that has really come to fruition in our time is a beautiful thing. And, you know, even if you don't find that explicitly in some of the tradition,

when you read Teresa of Avila, I just read her, not seven story mansion, that's what's his name, mountain. The interior castle. Interior castle, thank you. I mean, humility is like every sentence. What's his name? Mountain. Interior Castle. Interior Castle. Thank you. I mean, humility is like every sentence. It's incredible. It's like be humble or go to hell.

Be humble and you can't go to hell. It's so amazing. It's foundational. But also, I guess what I was getting at is you see her intimacy with the Lord. That intimacy we long for and that vulnerability, even if she doesn't, and I haven't read all of her works, but even if she doesn't teach you how to do that, she's expressing it in how she talks to our blessed Lord. And there's those charming anecdotes about her wagon wheel falling off and she says to the Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, it's no wonder you don't have many. So it's shown in those personal... That's right. And that relationality with the Lord only develops if we also have that

relationality with other human beings. Really? We learn relationality from our human relationships. And then now our relationship with the Lord is not merely a projection or a summation, but we learn to relate. We learn to be vulnerable. We learn to be loved. We learn to feel, But we learn to relate. We learn to be vulnerable. We learn to be loved. We learn to feel, to receive. We learn all of that from human relationships.

And it develops and grows in human relationships. This is one of the nice complementarities, parallelisms, between a book on spiritual direction and a book on personal prayer. The relationship that gets lived out in spiritual direction, in radical vulnerability, makes it possible and enhances there's a there's a mutual reinforcing my relationship with the Lord is not the same as my relationship with my spiritual director but the vulnerability that I practice in one scenario overflows into the other scenario so I'm I immediately went to the negative of that whereas like if human intimacy or intimacy with God is

based on intimacy with others, you can see why, you know, your negative relationships with your family or your parents or your siblings or your spouse can interfere with that. You know, maybe you've shown too much of who you are to somebody and it wasn't received and it wasn't welcomed and they showed disgust and they left. And then you've got to deal with that. And how do you bring that to the Lord if that's what you've learned? Yeah. And certainly there's a lot of that going on in people's prayer lives where they have ideas of God that are not God. So again, our relationship with God can grow beyond our human relationship. Sometimes it's experienced in the negative. You know, every father is a failure, right? No father is God. And so we

experience both in the successes of our fathers and in the failures of our fathers kind of held up against divine revelation. We recognize something in our heart that wasn't met by our father. And if we can acknowledge the truth of what's in our heart of a way that, you know, maybe he didn't see me, he wasn't there for me, he didn't help me, he, you know, didn't have time for me, whatever it was, but I sort of know in my heart that that wasn't right. Yes. And in the process of forgiving him, I'm also opening to what God wants to provide for me. So, but it's still in reference to human relationships. Those human relationships make it possible for us to really grow in our relationship with God.

So is this why a monk shouldn't be a hermit too quickly? Like I would imagine, I don't know any hermits, but I would imagine either they come back into the world absolutely nuts, just crazy, or saints. Like how do you remain alone with yourself for that long and come out normal? I mean, you tell me because you've probably had experiences with hermits and taking extended periods of time in solitude. Yeah, I had the blessing this year of giving the retreat for the Kamaldolese monks

who are down the road from here and who are hermits. They come together to pray the divine from here and who are hermits. They come together to pray the divine office, and that's basically it. Otherwise, they're in solitude all the time. See, I just think that would be so bad for me because I only began to realize that some of my behaviors were passive-aggressive or manipulative or whatever based on how my wife started to react to them. I'm like, oh, wow, I do that. I'm so sorry I do that. Whereas if I didn't have community, I wonder.

Well, that's exactly what St. Benedict says in the different kinds of monks. He says that the hermit vocation is after someone has been tried and tested in the context of the community of the Chernobium. So, yeah, very much exactly your insight that that needs to be drawn out of us in order to really face that and refine those things. Otherwise we end up worshipping ourselves really

which is also a good definition of hell. So probably the pain, well God's blessing the pain of the hermitage as we worship such a limited creature in ourselves pushes us to not maintain the vocation. But when we recognize that we're just so poor and we're so broken, we're such a mess, and yet we're so loved, and we can really forget about ourselves and focus on him and give him the shreds of our humanity,

that's when the more solitude is possible. So back to this eight-day silent retreat I took last year. I wonder if you can help me gain some insight into this. I was really excited about it. I had a wonderful time. I had a friend reach out to me recently and they said, I know you took an eight-day. What would your suggestion be? And I said, which I think is good advice you know don't be a perfectionist about it just show up and allow our lord to do what he wants to do and so with that in mind i even took like a novel i took a cigar for each day you know so i wasn't like i wasn't i also took teresa ravala and some people there's a lot of prayer involved

but i remember like i take a nap every day because there's not much to do and i remember waking up like the second and the third day and this sadness descending upon me when i realized i still have bloody four days left five days left of this i'm done aren't i i'm done just that the awkwardness of being alone and there being no outlet for my i remember just wanting one of the monks to talk to me. I was just so desperate, you know, for human interaction. And it was weird, you know, noticing that stuff within you, which you wouldn't notice unless you were to go into solitude. Yeah. Yeah, and when we realize that God loves that stuff,

so we get sick of ourselves. Thank God we get sick of ourselves. But he doesn't. He loves us. And we can open that stuff up to him. And it's certainly a point. A real point of conversion was a similar period. It was just when I had switched to Father Tom for spiritual direction.

I was making my deacon retreat, and I went to the Passionist Nuns in Pittsburgh. And so we prayed the divine office. They fed us meals. And I asked Father Tom, I was like, well, what do you want me to, you know, should I like bring a book on this or, you know, on deacons, maybe some deacon saints have all these ideas?

And he's like, the best thing to do would be just to spend as much time as you can in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I thought, I don't know how that's going to work out. So I took him at his word. I just stayed in the chapel with nothing for five days, basically. And yeah, you really- It's hard work. Doing nothing is hard work when you're intentional about it. Isn't that amazing?

Yeah. It was Pascal who said all of the world's evils can be boiled down to the fact that man does not know how to sit alone in a dark room silently. That's right. It's so profound. I would really encourage people to try that. It's like here's a litmus test. See how depressed you are, you know.

Turn off the phone. Turn off the music. Sit. What can I do? Nothing. Don't even pick up the beads maybe. Just sit. You come smack into your insufficiency.

Yeah, yeah. I was never so unimpressed with myself and really felt like, I don't know how to pray. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know if I can just sit here. It's really uncomfortable. I'm distracted by everything in this chapel. And fortunately, so I met with Father Tom each night, and I was too embarrassed even to share these things of the mess. I was so aware of what was happening inside of me and so unimpressed with it. Like I got nothing. And fortunately, Father Tom, in his beautiful transparency,

he started sharing a little bit of what he was experiencing. I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's it. And it gave me courage to start talking about it. It was similar? Yeah, he was encountering his own poverty in his own ways. But just helped me to really see like, oh, encountering my poverty is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. Blessed are the poor in spirit.

The kingdom of heaven is theirs. And it started my love relationship with poverty and and learning to love it in others and and learning to let it be loved and and how does that work practically how do you love poverty in another how has that happened recently with you yeah I like to say you know vulnerability is always lovable when I I see people who get insecure, they don't know quite what to share, they're struggling with finding their way. Gosh, I meet with so many people who, yeah,

who just really run into the limits of themselves. Married men who experience how poorly they love their wives or their children and just very humbly manifest that. It's so lovable. It really is. And yeah, just such a privilege. And that helps me to love it in myself too when I'm able to see, I feel what it's like to love it in someone else. And then it gives me courage to believe that God could feel that towards me. I have that experience as a father when I've seen my children become very agitated, angry, embarrassed, awkward. And I look on them and I'm like, oh God, I love you. I just think you're lovely. And I see them wanting to escape my embrace or to be alone.

And they're raging sometimes. Not often, but I mean, there's times where they're very upset over something. And I look at them. They are completely acceptable to me in that moment. Like, I love you. I love you. And you want to kind of help them believe it and just sit with them in it. And I suppose that's a nice analogy for prayer as the Father looks upon us as we rage. And to not be afraid to do that in prayer. Rage if you need to rage. Hurt, feel, be honest, bring your heart. How does someone begin to pray? You've touched

upon it, but let's just kind of circle this again for those who are like, all right, okay, I want to pray. How do I do it? It's funny because it's almost as natural as relationships. So when somebody asks you the question, you almost want to say, you already know. Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. I mean, by doing it. But setting the context, I guess, setting the environment is important. It's nice to be

able to do something like go to a church or go to an adoration chapel, and that helps to set the context. Because our bodies also pray. Sometimes we make prayer too heady an activity and don't pay attention to what our bodies are doing. But, you know, what we see, what we feel, what we smell, our posture, these kinds of things matter, you know, without over-exaggerating. They do matter. And so, you know, going to an adoration chapel or finding a place in your home. I love the, I know we love the same Byzantine nuns. A little shout out to the Christ the Bridegroom Monastery. But I really learned from them about having a prayer corner, set up an icon, put a candle.

And then even I have a ton of stuff in my office, but I have a prayer corner, and I can just block out the rest of it, just have an icon of Jesus and Mary, not something like that one, and just look into the eyes of the icon. Or in a chapel, looking at the Blessed Sacrament helps to focus us a little bit. And then I think there's a value to making it explicit. What's it like? You know, you and I are sitting here together. I know what that experience is like. Imagine Jesus really sitting there.

It's not just imagination. It's not make-believe. My imagination is helping me to visualize an invisible reality. He really is there. In the Blessed Sacrament, he's really there in bodily form, but in all times he's really there with us. And so making that explicit, I think, is a helpful starting point. And then even imagining ourselves just talking to him. I remember that year after I was baptized, I stayed at Penn State for a year. I started the graduate program in computer science after I was baptized and was kind of figuring out where to land in a religious order.

And they would have adoration weekly, and so I always made time on Fridays. And I collected things that I was aware of throughout the week, like, we're going to have to talk about this, you know, make a little note. And then I just came before him and started talking about these things, like, okay, Lord, this is my thing. And then I would stop and just imagine, well, what's he going to say back to me now? And now my imagination is not his voice, but there's a way that I can make my imagination kind of wet clay that he can form in some way. And then we, you know, just so we can get into Ignatian things and whatever else to start to distinguish between my voice and his voice and my imagination and his reality. But anyway,

just starting to have that conversation. Or even if you're, some people are a journaler, you know, and you like to write something, write your part of the conversation and write his part of the conversation. And again, we're not becoming scribes for God in that way, but there's making it explicit, imagining God actually spends time with me, loves me, and wants to talk with me. That already moves us forward in relationship. As the relationship goes on, things become more simple, and things like sitting with him and being in silence, and that kind of grows naturally, like it does in any human relationship. But I think if people are really a beginner, starting out more explicitly

is helpful. And scripture is helpful in that way too, just taking a passage from the gospel. And, you know, you can open it randomly. You can take the passage from daily mass. You can take your favorite passage, whatever it is. It's always God's voice. And St. Augustine says, you know, when we read scripture, that God talks to us. When we pray, we talk to God. And so if we want to have a conversation with him, which is ultimately the goal of prayer, then open up the Bible and give him a chance to speak and really listen. What does this mean for my life? What is this revealing about God? Do I see maybe the mercy of Jesus, his wisdom, his presence, his love, and imagine that, let it be real for me, and then begin to engage in that way. You know, speaking of taking a little bit of the scripture

and reading it, that's something I've been trying to do lately, and I won't try to plow through several chapters. I'll even take like five sentences. And something just smashed me the other day that I didn't realize, and that is after Lazarus, after Christ raises him from the dead, they try to kill him. Did you know that? They tried to kill Lazarus after he rose from the dead. Like the man hasn't been through enough already and they were trying to kill him because he was spreading the good news about Jesus. I had never read that before. Like I've read the Bible.

It doesn't show up in the lectionary. Yeah. I don't think that line is in the lectionary. But did you, are you aware of this? See, this is so funny. So it's such a smack in the face to me that I'm convinced

that nobody could have been aware of that, that they actually try to kill Lazarus. The the poor bug he just comes out of the tomb let me see if i can find it here it's at the the end of john 11 yeah that's where i am right now i think jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the jews but went from there to the region near the wilderness, etc., etc. Yes, they want to arrest Jesus, and they want to bloody kill Lazarus. That just blew me away. But yeah, it's amazing how we start to realize things within Scripture when we slow down. Yeah. Hey, talk to this for a second. There are a lot of people who watch this channel who are converting Protestants. We get lots of emails from people who are coming into the faith. And one of the things they say is they feel very

overwhelmed by the cornucopia of devotions that are at their disposal. And it's easy to become like really enthusiastic and you're praying all the chaplets and wearing all the scapulas. And this can even be a real turnoff to people as they get overwhelmed by it all. So I guess, speak to that and what role devotions can play in our prayer life. Well, and it's a little bit funny asking a Benedictine about this because we're sort of known for not having devotions. Our devotion is the liturgy. I remember talking to a Dominican and he said, yeah, I was asking a Benedictine, what. I remember talking to a Dominican and he said, yeah, I was asking a Benedictine, what devotional prayers do you have? And he said, you mean like besides the liturgy? Yes. So we don't have a rosary. We don't have all the stuff.

And I asked you that this morning and you got to give that answer. Why don't you wear a rosary, Father? We predated the rosary by about 700 years. Okay. you wear a rosary, Father? We predated the rosary by about 700 years. Okay. But certainly devotional, I mean, popular piety. Piety is a word for love, right? Devotion is about love. And as an expression of love for the Lord, there's something beautiful in prayers that are kind of pre-constructed. And normally words form inside of us and we express them. But whether it's with the scripture in the fullest sense, God's own word, or with devotional prayers, which are generally the words of saints, the words can be outside of us and then form what is inside of us. And so we can be formed by the prayers of others and the devotions of others. And it helps to flesh things out.

Because the other thing, you know, I mean, people will read Scripture and have a hard time interfacing. I know it was hard for me. The language is a little different. The expressions are different. The kinds of details we normally include in things aren't there in Scripture. And these other details are there. aren't there in Scripture, and these other details are there. And so devotions are really kind of translating the faith into more culturally accessible terms. And so they can be very beautiful, but we need to engage them in the same way.

We need to let them open up vulnerability with us, not just become a thing that I do to get it done, but rather become a mode of relationship. I know exactly what you're saying, I think, but there is something to just having something that you get done. Like you go on a date night and the relationship may not be banging on all cylinders, you may not have any kind of vulnerable moments, but you're committed to it because you know that if you weren't committed to it, you wouldn't end up having those vulnerable moments. One of the things I like about praying the rosary daily and committing to that is sometimes it is just like I'm going to get it done. And it's not – I mean, I would want to have the idea of, okay, I want to enter into the mysteries and, like, come before Our Lady. That would want to be the intentionality.

Just like the date night. You don't go on the date night just to get it done. That's exact. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. You wouldn't go on the date night to get it done, but you would recognize committing to it, even though you might foresee that it won't be that enjoyable because you've got to get back early or because you're not feeling terribly well or, you know, but you get it done. But you're open to the moment. You are. Yeah.

You know, I mean, there's a, it only takes a moment, really, to have a lightning of grace in a relationship or in prayer. So we're open to that while recognizing you don't ever get there. That's where I think the problem falls on the other end is like, well, so you're not going to have anything structured? How's that going to work? But this is, I like to think of this in terms of the body, right? The skeleton and the musculature. We don't like to hug a skeleton, but we don't like to hug a blob of muscle either. You really need both of those things together. You need some structure, but then you want to put some flesh on it. And that's going to be more or less at any given time.

So we need to keep up the structure. And flesh that out for me. Skeleton, and what is the skeleton and the flesh in this analogy? Well, so the devotional, you know, that I have, the structure, whether the liturgy or the rosary or the, you know, my divine mercy chaplet or my litany of trust I saw you had out there. It's beautiful. Yeah, it is beautiful. We have these different, you know, or the date night. So there's a structured, hard, fixed, but then allowing it to kind of come alive in this moment, this time, to speak to me here, to become a vehicle by which I can give myself as much as possible, while knowing sometimes it's there and sometimes it's not. And the thing is, a real relationship is an encounter of two freedoms, right?

So if it were always up to me, then it wouldn't be two freedoms. Now, my side, my freedom is up to me, so I have to bring myself, but I can't determine what the other end of the relationship is going to do at any given time. And that's where I have to let God be free to, you know, just have the date night that's checking a box this time. But if I didn't have that date night, I wouldn't have the other date night where all the lights went on. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. I'll keep saying this quotation. I still don't know who said it, but I think there's marvelous wisdom in it. If you know, you tell me. There are many

devotions within the church's treasury. Choose only a few and be faithful to them. I think it's Francis de Sales. Really? Cool. That's who I've always referred back to. You've heard that quote? I don't know anybody who's heard that quote. I'm trying to figure out. Not word for word, but the idea of kind of the devotions you start with.

Pick a few, and those are the devotions that you stick with. Yeah, yeah. I think there's real wisdom in that. Well, the Benedictines, we don't make the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. I make neither a vow of poverty nor chastity. How about that? That's amazing. So you have just obedience. Obedience, stability, and then conversion of life according to the monastic rule. So that's where poverty and chastity get worked in. They slip it in there. Although our idea...

I didn't know I was making a commitment to that. rule. So that's where poverty and chastity get worked in. They slip it in there. Although our idea of poverty is not Franciscan poverty, as evidenced by luxurious Benedictine monasteries. It's a communal poverty, communal ownership. But in any event, we make a vow of stability. That's one of the unique Benedictine vows. And I think there's a real, you know, that's where the danger of just floating from one devotion to the next, because why are you moving on? To get a thing? You know, this is like, you got to pick... Another rush, another dopamine hit. Yeah, yeah, right. You got to pick one woman, you know. The date night, whatever. She's going to have her imperfections, but eventually, if you're going to get married, you got to stick with one. If you're going to keep having first dates, then it's not gonna go anywhere that's really good yeah yeah yeah speaking of

the this vow of stability it seems to me that we live in this kind of increasingly sort of fluid culture where people are just getting up and leaving say the Steubenville who knows like that that or choosing to kind of live in RVs and just be nomads and I get the appeal to that absolutely but maybe in your own experience why why has why is it maybe an important thing to consider staying where you are sort of geographically yeah because that's that's the decision my wife and I have come to that's a difficult one in February in Steubenville. In a pandemic. In a pandemic. But we're just like, all right, we're committed. Let's stay here. Let's stay here

now. We've moved a lot. It's beautiful. As Benedictines, we sanctify a place. And I hope you can come visit us at St. Vincent. Everybody that comes says, it's so peaceful here. Well, yeah, there are 650 monks buried up on the hill, right? And they gave their whole lives to sanctifying this place. We've been praying the divine office, chanting the Psalms for 175 years in this place. And places absorb that. So I don't know where we've lost that sense in our modern culture. Science has not allowed us to have the idea that prayer can affect matter or something. I don't know where that comes from.

But there's something beautiful about sanctifying a place. And on the one hand, it can be painful. Sometimes we have painful memories that get stuck in a place and there become some triggers. But sometimes it's important to have those to run into so that we can actually work through them. We can't just leave all of our skeletons behind. We can't just leave all of the wounds behind. And certainly the beautiful moments, they pile up. And I think we experience that in family homes that have been around. Now, again, sometimes there are demons there, maybe literally or at least figuratively

from bad experiences, but the beautiful experiences that develop over generations in the family home. I remember my, so I was a Navy brat. We moved around growing up, but we spent a lot of time visiting my father's family home on a farm outside of Penn State. And that home, I can still feel it right now. There's a quality to it of things that build up. And so I don't know. I think we've lost a sense of that. We tend to make everything short term. We don't keep things very long. We're ready to replace it with the next generation. And I love this. You know, there's something about the studio and maybe this wood and some other things here that have a kind of gravitas. Yeah, exactly. I wanted to feel like the nook of an Irish pub, as it were, just someplace to sit and chat. Yeah, an Irish pub that's been there

for more than a year and a half. Yeah. Right. That's had a lot of people, a lot of life has passed through there. Television. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, exactly. That's great. So, but it's a, there's a commitment there and a risk there in putting down roots and deciding, well, for better, for worse. Right. I mean, it a not unrelated to the commitment of marriage and we can't just keep moving on and and everything's going to be limited but there's a there's a depth that can develop there's that saying wherever you go there you are yes and that's just bloody spot on isn't it yeah we can keep starting over but we're still going to be running into ourselves. That's right. The Benedict Medal. Are you familiar with this? You've heard of the St. Benedict Medal? Less than a few, yeah. Tell us about it. Well, if I'm not mistaken, so this is actually the

front of the medal, the insignia, the CSPB, Crux Sancti Patris Benedicti, the Cross of Holy Father Benedict. And it goes back to the, I mentioned that Benedict was nearly killed twice by his would-be murderers. One of the ways that he found that out was by making the sign of the cross over the goblet, which then cracked, and he saw an image of a snake and realized it was poisoned. And then he made the sign of the cross in different situations that brought healings, that exposed evil. And so the cross of Holy Father Benedict has a power against evil and a power to bless. In fact, the name itself, Benedict, means blessing, Benedictus. So the cross is there. and then the other letters,

may the cross of Christ be my light, may the devil, the dragon never be my guide, is on the crossbar itself. And then around the edge is, turn back Satan and drink your own poison. And so these inscribed in the image itself are exorcistic prayers. This image was not developed by St. Benedict. If I'm not mistaken, it actually appeared in the, the earliest version is found in the crypt of our mother house in Metten, Germany. So I feel a little personal connection to the medal of St. Benedict. And then this particular version of it with this image,

a kind of Boerene's image of St. Benedict, was minted in the Jubilee in 1880, the 1400th anniversary of Benedict's birth. And the prior who minted this was Boniface Krug, who was one of our monks who joined Monte Cassino. Another little connection. But the blessing over the medal also has an exorcism. So the priest exercises the medal first and then pours out the blessing on it that we might also be protected from evil.

So it's a very popular. See, I'm surprised that y'all wouldn't wear one, just like the Carmelites have their long brown scapula, you know? Well, we are the benedict medal i suppose that's it's fashioned after us so it's fair um but i do carry one i have yeah yeah beautiful i have one on my own rosary all right so when we come back uh from our little break here we're going to start taking some questions from those in the live chat and on patreon so if you have a question for Father Boniface, if you've always wanted to ask a question to a Benedictine monk, and now's your time. So feel free to put them up. All right, cool. All right. Thanks for watching. Hope you're enjoying the show. I want to say thank you to our sponsor, Homeschool Connections.

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All right, back to my discussion with Father Boniface. All right, so what was funny about that is that was a pre-recorded commercial. So for those of you who are watching, you're like, what just happened? Why do they have whiskey bottles on their table all of a sudden? That's why. All right, so first of all,

talk about moderation again, because you know there's going to be some people who are like, why would they drink whiskey? Well, because it's amazing. That's why we would. It's like liquid bread. Whiskey? Or beer?

Well, whiskey is the same stuff as beer, but just distilled, right? Hmm. All right. Okay, this is Bib and Tucker. It's pretty good. I like it. It's a great bottle. Hmm.

It is a great bottle it is a great bottle good so all right this has been great hey i wanted to ask you before we get to questions about the benedict option yeah it seems to me that that's a pretty massively misunderstood book whenever people seem to talk about it and criticize it it sounds like they're saying exactly what rodreher wasn't, namely, isolate yourselves, you know? Yeah, that's always the first thing that if I say the Benedict Option, people say, oh, is that really what we need is a ghettoized Catholicism? Yeah. Or people who want a ghettoized Catholicism who say, yeah, I really like that book,

the Benedict Option, because that reaffirms the thing that I already think. And no, I thought if I can pitch my third book on St. Joseph, Through the Heart of St. Joseph, I called the last chapter of it the Joseph option because I make the proposal that Benedict himself chose the Joseph option, which is really to form a Nazareth and a place where there is real love, where the presence of God is always appreciated, where there is a tender authority that rules over the place. But I think Rod Dreher is, as far as I can tell, the main proposal that you could accept or reject is the idea that Christians need to give up on reforming Christendom by electing the right guy

or by taking over the government or by working at that kind of level. And he encourages people to work on the small scale, to be 11 and to form Christian culture wherever they are. And as far as I can tell, the rest of the book is then just descriptions of how that's happening in a lot of different communities, in a lot of different communities in education or in media or in just family life in communities or in forming a more liturgical spirituality or I don't remember all the topics off the top of my head, but I think the idea of how do we form Christian culture and do that on a small scale rather than worrying about sort of taking over, you know, St. Patrick evangelized Ireland by converting the king, right? It's one of the modes. But basically, as I read Rod Dreher, he's saying, we're not going to convert the king. We need to just build up Christianity from the grassroots. Yeah,

which is what we're doing here in Steubenville. Yeah, that's right. All right, let's take some questions here. Nigel, thanks for being a patron, Nigel. He says, what would you recommend when prayer is dry for an extended period of time? Is it more important to show up and just honor the time or should I be doing something different to try to get out of the rut? Well, it's, I can imagine three different scenarios with three different answers to that question. So maybe I'll just throw a few out and he can wear whatever one fits. But certainly persevere. I think the very simple guidance of St. Ignatius in his first week rules of discernment that in a time of spiritual desolation, don't change your spiritual plan. So if God wants you to do something different,

he'll inspire you to do something different. Don't start shifting everything around to try and catch the right wave. Second thing to consider is sometimes prayer is dry because there are things we don't want to bring to prayer. So it's like God is only willing to talk to us about one thing, and we're determined to not show him that part of our life. And maybe that's the very fact that prayer is difficult and I need to express that. Or like we were talking about earlier, just being willing to say, gosh, I've been at this. I've been a monk for 23 years and I feel like I don't know how to pray. That's very humbling.

And sometimes that's the thing I need to bring up and look at that. Well, why do I feel like I ought to know how to pray? And is there a dimension of pride there that I need to bring up and look at that. Well, why do I feel like I ought to know how to pray? And is there a dimension of pride there that I need to face? And can I just accept that in the end, I'm a little child and I'm always going to be one and I need a father and I just need to surrender to that. Anyway, sometimes there is a kind of interior thing. And Ignatius says the same thing. Don't change the external, like going to prayer, change the internal, see if there's something you're not bringing up, or just try to meditate, praise God in a certain way, some suitable penance, or, you know, one of these ways,

or just asking God for help. Lord, it's dry, help me. So I think that's, yeah, certainly persevere. I mean, and again, you can get into all of the things, but I mean, it could be a night of the senses in a deeper way. I like to, as we were talking about the conceptualist versus the experiential language, these nights of St. John of the Cross have gotten all of this kind of mystical quality to them, all the magical nights. But in a very basic way, it's running into the limit of ourselves. And it may be precisely the experience that our questioner is going through, is sort of hitting the limits of what his own efforts can produce.

John of the Cross is the path of nada, right? Not say nada. I know nothing. I know nothing. I know nothing. Ultimately, when we reach the limits of ourselves, we can only transcend those by walking in that disorienting space of not knowing what's going on and walking in the silent love of his presence. Matthew Cahoe, thanks for being a patron, Matthew, he says, in your book on spiritual direction, you make the recommendation of not mentioning idiosyncrasies of the directee because it can cause attraction. The prima facie

seems like a natural part of friendship. Would that be wrong? Not sure if this question fits with the interview. Does that make sense to you? I know. I know exactly what he's talking about. And I think it says to be careful about those things. So a little bit related to what we were talking about earlier, how, you know, kind of the lovable qualities in relationship that we notice little things, you know, you notice the little things that your wife does and that she herself doesn't realize she does. And pointing that out and delighting in that is a way that you grow in your love relationship with her. So in spiritual direction, the director may notice those things

and needs to be a little bit careful. He's not trying to develop a love relationship with his directee. And so that's where just being a little bit careful about that. But sometimes it's possible to point out, you know, that I see your foot kind of moving there. I like the way you, you know, you turn in your foot there a little bit. And then suddenly the person becomes aware of themselves and, you know, can melt a little bit and there can be a beautiful opening. But anyway, it's, there's some power there. And so one wants to be a little careful about exercising that.

That's the point. Does every Christian need a spiritual director? Are too many Christians seeking out spiritual direction? Not enough? What say you? Well, I really like, again, the Orthodox tradition of everybody having a spiritual father, and there being a kind of parallel with apostolic succession and spiritual father succession, you know, I think

is a beautiful thing. The tradition seems pretty clear that it's a gift. It's not a necessity. It's not a right. So there isn't a, you have a right as a Catholic to go to mass. And so that necessitates a priest having an obligation to say Mass, and even multiple Masses to provide for the rights of the faithful. There isn't a right to a spiritual director. But I think it's a tremendous help. And Pope Francis, well, Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict before him, but Pope Francis has really brought this out. And even in his exhortation, Christus Viv Vivit after the Synod on the Youth,

there's a little section that says how important accompaniment is even to the point that perhaps an ecclesial office should be or an ecclesial title should be given to that. And I said, yes. So anyway, we have a school of spiritual direction at St. Vincent that I'm in charge of, and forming more spiritual directors is part of what I'm trying to do so that I can maybe get a little bit more direction at St. Vincent that I'm in charge of, and forming more spiritual directors is part of what I'm trying to do so that I can maybe get a little bit more sleep at night. Is it important that somebody seek out a priest, or can somebody who is not a priest be a spiritual

director? Yeah, and again, the original spiritual directors were the desert fathers who are not priests, so it certainly seems to be a charism. Now, often it's a charism associated with the priestly office, and the Congregation for Clergy said that all priests should be offering spiritual direction. So hopefully all the priests who are watching this are paying attention to that. And at the same time, it's a charism that, and many of the people who come to our school are lay people who have a real spiritual life, who themselves are receiving spiritual direction, and their spiritual directors feel like they have a gift to accompany others.

Okay. We have a question here from an atheist, so we're going to read that. Double base. Thanks for being here, mate. He says, I have a question. As an atheist, I am scared of the idea of eternally burning in a lake of fire. When I die here on earth and I have not become convinced that God exists, what will happen to me?

That's a great question, isn't it? I have a lot of hope in God's mercy. So all we offer in the church is the ordinary means of salvation. So the way that we know is the way of the sacraments, the way of faith in Christ. And so I can only share what I know will lead us to a relationship with him and an eternal happiness. But we have hope for everyone. We have hope in God's mercy that he will take somebody who has really tried. And I think that would be my, you know, just my reflection question for our questioner. You know, are you really trying?

Are you really willing to let God into your life? Are you able to say a prayer? I think there's a guy at Penn State who's been preaching in front of the Willard building for like 30 years. I'm not sure if he still is today, but he was as of at least 10 years ago. And I remember walking past there one day when I was considering myself an atheist, and he said, you can't really be an atheist because you can't be certain that there is no God. You have to at least admit the possibility. And so if you're agnostic, then wouldn't you want to find out? And I would say the first way to find out is certainly asking questions like this. I give the viewer credit

for that. And then just trying to say a prayer. God, if you exist, I want to know you. I think you said a prayer like that. Yeah, that was my prayer. Well, you say, Lord, if you exist, show me in a way that I would understand. I also think Pascal's wager is often misunderstood for a number of reasons. It's not an argument for God's existence, obviously, nor is it an argument to shut down your intellect and just accept any old thing. But it seems to me that if you have two available, say, live options before you, and you can't decide between the two, it's not irrational to ask, well, what do I get from accepting or rejecting either of these things? And so, you know, obviously, if you consider the

alternatives and atheism makes more sense to you, then it might seem rather, what would you say, hypocritical? That might not be the word, but to accept Christianity. But that said, if God doesn't exist, I'm not sure why we should be terribly concerned with being moral or acting morally. Right. But I do think that's a compelling argument that one of the things Pascal says, right, if you've got these two available options before you, say they are Catholicism and atheism, and you can't really decide between the two, he says, okay, well, just bet on God, as it were. And that's rather crass, but God stoops to conquer, and perhaps you can begin there. And then he says to do things that Catholics do.

You say, well, I don't really feel it. Okay, well, do what they do and you will feel it. So begin to use holy water, begin to receive the sacraments if you're baptized, these sorts of things to pray in these. I think Ratzinger says something similar in Introduction to Christianity. Basically, this is a meeting point of believers and non-believers is on the point of uncertainty. So we all have doubt, and doubt is a healthy thing because there's room for freedom, and so there's room for faith. But he says, let's act as if God exists. And what does that look like? So just very exactly what you're saying. You've said more clearly, but that's a

beautiful invitation. And I think ultimately, I mean, I expressed it poorly, but I think in my own journey, I came to a point that I was willing to take a step forward and try it out. And that was the fundamental step of faith. Okay, I looked at it long enough from the outside. It seems compelling to me. There are good people on the inside. I'm going to take a step. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we have a question here from Aaron Miller. Thanks, mate. He says, in adoration, why does exposure of the Eucharist matter? I can't look into his eyes. Well, I would say one thing is that exposition of the Blessed Sacrament is a liturgy. So there's something that's active about that. It's my

understanding that's why you need somebody there. It's not to protect the Blessed Sacrament. It's not like the 85-year-old lady who's there at the middle of the night is protecting the Blessed Sacrament. But it's because there's a liturgy that's taking place. And then if you think about that, in some of these adoration chapels, we have these liturgies that have been taking place for months and months. We always repose everything on Good Friday, so we can't say years continuously, but it's like a six-month long or a nine- or twelve-month long liturgy that we can only sustain together. So I'm sustaining a liturgy with other people. Something very beautiful about that.

So I think that the liturgical dimension of that exposition is one thing. And then I think you can take, you know, there's something about him being exposed. We use the word, and of course, there's a vulnerability there. And you're right, of course, you can't see his eyes, but you can imagine that he's taken himself a degree out of the barrier or out from behind the veil. He has revealed himself, exposed himself in order to come closer to us. So I think all of those dimensions, which are, you know, there's a symbolism in the best sense, a signification, a meaning to that, that's valuable to see the way that God wants to meet us.

Wes says, thanks for being a patron, Wes. He says, any thoughts on prayer journals? I've never used one and really thought using it would get in the way, but many swear by them. I think it's very personal. I'd never really used one either. I take notes in my, I use Verbum for my Bible and I take notes on Verbum when there are things that stand out to me. And that's been fun to kind of come run into the scriptures again years later. I tend to pray with the gospel of the day. I've been doing that for years. And so running into my own notes, sometimes I'm inspired by my own prayer from five years ago. So that's its own value. But I know people who write in prayer journals,

and you can do that in some different ways. I find some people, especially who are very extroverted, need that kind of external processing. They need to be able to express themselves to kind of keep things moving. And then it's great. So use a prayer journal. Other people want to kind of gather together the wisdom. Usually, if you make a 30-day retreat, your retreat director will ask you to keep a prayer journal so you know what to talk about in the spiritual direction meeting,

but also because you're making four holy hours a day for 30 days. There's a lot of stuff there, much more than you can unpack in 30 days. And then having that prayer journal that you revisit a year later, a year later, a year later, can bring you back in touch with some of the graces that God has been giving you. Yeah, I need to do that more. One thing I've been doing lately in my kind of prayer experience is I'll send myself an email and I'll star the email so I can go back to it and pray with it

because our Lord can encounter us in some powerful ways and reveal some truths to us that he wants for our own edification. But we tend to forget these things. And so it can be helpful for sure. What do you think of that whiskey? It's not great. I don't know. It's being watered down.

Someone may have put water in it. Drink that and then we'll try that one over there. I apologize for that. I don't know what this is. This is like an old-fashioned mix. Sorry. I didn't know you would drink with me, so I didn for that. I don't know what this is. This is like an old-fashioned mix. Sorry. I didn't know you would drink with me, so I didn't think to get the good stuff. I learned to appreciate single malts when I was studying in Germany.

I had a good German friend that I met there who had a love for single malts and gave me a taste for them. Can I share with you a toast that I recently heard? Love it. All right. To the years spent in a in the arms of another man's wife my mother oh yes my mother right yes nice good someone did that recently i'm like oh dude no i get you it's better a bit too sweet because it's a mix, but it's at least not watered down. Better.

What do you think? Tell me why beer has been such a big thing in sort of monasticism. Why did it seem like there's a lot of monasteries that produce ale? I should have a better answer for that. The things that I've heard are obviously keeping things that, you know, in general, when you keep things through the winter, you need things that ferment, that have already gone bad, so they're not going to go bad. And so you control how they go bad. And I think that a lot of things, you know, like sauerkraut or blue cheese or, you know, there are different fermented things that have developed. or blue cheese or, you know, there are different fermented things that I've developed. So I think with the grain harvest, one of the ways that you preserve the grain and its nutrients and some other things is by sort of letting it go bad in a controlled way.

Yeah, that makes sense. You know, and it's a tasty beverage, and I'm sure that Scripture has, what is that, Psalm 4, you have given us a greater joy than they have from corn and new wine. But the corn is really, you know, beer and wine. So it brings us a joy, and the Scripture is acknowledging that. But, of course, the Lord is a greater joy. So we wouldn't understand what the Lord's wine cellar meant if we didn't have actual wine cellars and what they meant, you know.

So there's a good and, know God is always better sort of like where st. Paul says like physical exercise is to some avail you know right something to that effect so he is acknowledging that there is a good to sort of physical working out all right we got a question here from Ellen thank you for being here question she says I am not Catholic, but something is compelling me towards it. I am a Protestant Christian. I am a member of a church I love. What steps do you recommend? There's a, well, I guess it's hard to say without knowing exactly what's compelling and what the connections are, but because it's not, you know, Catholicism isn't an idea, right? It's a living body, and so getting

to know Catholics is important. Obviously, the liturgy is the source, center, and summit of the faith, so ultimately there needs to be something brought into the liturgy, although probably if she's a Protestant Christian, she can appreciate worship and then maybe can come into the Mass. But then it's hard to just come into the Mass or the Divine Liturgy if you don't know what's going on. And so I guess it would be important to have a little bit more context, yeah, of what steps to take.

But certainly if there's a Catholic in her life that she knows, what is it that's compelling exactly? And then probably that's a direction to press into. You know, maybe it's the Matt Fradd show, Pints with Aquinas. And so watch more of that and pick up more of the wisdom and then maybe try to tease out what it is that's compelling or what's not there in the Protestant church. I would also say, too, to maybe check out Father Mike Schmitz

on Ascension Presents. If you're not familiar with that Catholic YouTube channel, type in Ascension Presents. Maybe look up some Father Mike Schmitz videos. It's kind of a nice, kind of slow way to get introduced to the faith. You don't have to feel put on the spot or cornered or anything.

You can just, you know, one of the nice things about YouTube, I suppose. Father Matthew Marinelli says, good to see, you know who who that is do you? I do good to see Father Boniface he has helped many seminarians and priests to know the Father's love God bless isn't that lovely he's a newly ordained priest in the diocese

of Metuchen in New Jersey and a marvelous person good I look forward to meeting him one day Sean says, why doesn't the church promote meditation? I find it brings me closer to God and my Lord, Yeshua. Since starting it 11 years ago, I've had many mystical experiences. So does the church promote meditation? Does she not?

So does the church promote meditation? Does she not? One of the problems with these words, meditation and contemplation get used to mean so many different things I'm guessing if it's something the church is not promoting That he might be thinking about something like transcendental meditation Which would be derived from Buddhist Eastern spiritualities, which would be using a mantra or trying to empty the mind. Sometimes it's been called mindfulness, or it's been brought in. Centering prayer was a way of sort of bringing that into Catholic circles. I would say that that kind of, you know, the reality is we live in a very noisy world, right? So, and we're always multitasking.

We've got 15 different things showing up on our phone and coming in from every angle. And so our minds tend to be like those snow globes, you know, that you shake up and it's got the things all. And there's no way to like force all that stuff to the bottom, which is kind of what needs to happen so that we make some room for God as we enter into. Because prayer does slow things down. God tends to communicate a little different speed than the way that we're running our lives normally. And so there is a place for letting that stuff, the snow, settle, as it were. And can we help that to happen?

no settle, as it were. And can we help that to happen? Well, sure. And I think, you know, the Jesus prayer is one way that the Christian church has developed to just have a slowly repeated word that's focusing us on Christ. It's helping some of that stuff to settle. I think the problems have come in when we've said, oh, that's prayer. No, no, that's an ascetical preparation for prayer. That's a psychological exercise that prepares us for going deeper in prayer, and it's a way of setting other things aside in order to make room for God. And so it can be a nice preparation. Transcendental meditation, meditation as such could be opening us to all kinds of things. That's where, as we're doing that kind of ascetical preparation, we need to be focusing our attention on the living God who has come to us not as a nothingness,

but has come to us in a person who became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus Christ has a face and a voice. And so trying to disembody our prayer is not the goal. We are embodied, he is embodied, and our prayer, you know, includes our humanity. So there's a way that transcendental meditation can also kind of try to remove our humanity. So anyway, to tease out, I'm not claiming that the questioner is doing anything in particular, and I'm not trying to condemn or endorse whatever he's doing. But as far as I understand the question,

transcendental meditation gets, we have to be careful about how that really is coming into the faith and whether that's really opening us to a relationship. That's the other thing is some of these things, you know, and people talk about mystical experiences, but it really has nothing to do with relationship. It's about using a technique to generate a psychological experience. That's also not prayer. So that can be a preparation for prayer.

Sometimes the experience of closing the doors and turning off the lights and being in silence makes us feel so good because we're so assaulted by so many other things that having a little bit of natural peace feels really good. That's not prayer. That's natural peace. Then that becomes prayer as it becomes relational and we start to connect with the Lord, which can happen also with distracted thoughts and hot rooms and vacuum cleaners and a lot of other things. So we don't require external circumstances or even internal psychological states to have a relationship with God. How many hours do y'all pray a day, technically, like when you're in the monastery?

I'd say liturgically two and a half to three hours, and then usually a holy hour individually, and then maybe some other devotional prayers. Sometimes the rosary gets worked into the holy hour or happens somewhere else for some other devotional prayers. But I'd say something like three and a half, four hours a day. And how have you as a community had to be vigilant, say, against the onslaught of technology? One of the things I love about the Friars of the Renewal is they refuse to have the

internet in their friaries, which I think is marvelous. I don't know if that's the case with y'all. So how has that been an issue? Surely you've seen it as monks who are meant to be devoting yourself to prayer. And then how have you begun to push back against that? Or do you still need to? Yeah. And then how have you begun to push back against that, or do you still need to?

Yeah. So we run a college and a seminary, and there are a lot of things that we use computers for and the Internet. But we have, in fact, we just had the discussion pretty recently in the community about having the Internet in the monastery. So the monastery building is its own thing. And we have a – so in the old days, they had a scriptorium. We have sort of an electronic scriptorium, a place where there's Wi-Fi and a couple of computers. And it's in a public space. And so it actually has gathered

community. We just introduced that, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, maybe not even. And that's actually gathered community in a nice way. And so, you know, seminarians can go there and work on their studies. Other people can go use the computers there. But there was just a push to spread the Wi-Fi throughout the monastery, which was resisted. Good. Yeah. So we recognize, you know, there are a couple of old monks who, that's their only, they can't make their way over to the college for other purposes. So we put in a mobile hotspot in one place just to make accessible to some that, you know, can't move quite as far. But we resisted. Yeah, I'm really happy about that. Reactionary Opinions says, As a former Protestant, although I'm not sure if you were,

although you had that experience with the Bible study, what is Father Boniface's thoughts on the Reformation of the Church and how we should go about accommodating our brothers and sisters in Christ? Wow. Well, you're right. I was never formally a part of any Protestant denomination, although I certainly had that experience. And I certainly would say, as you beautifully said, Matt, you know, thanks to our Protestant brothers and sisters for their evangelical zeal, for their willingness to reach out, and many things that we can learn from them about making a personal profession of faith and doing personal evangelization.

In terms of accommodating Protestants, you know, one thing I think about is, and it's come out interestingly in the pandemic and the sudden spread to mass online everywhere. But Pope Benedict asked the question, looking at the courtyard of the Gentiles. So in the Jewish temple, there's the Holy of Holies, there's the sanctuary for the priests, there's the courtyard of the men, the courtyard of the women, and then a courtyard of the Gentiles. And that's where Jesus drove out the money changers. Pope Benedict interprets that prophetically as saying that's where Jesus drove out the money changers. Pope Benedict interprets that prophetically as saying that's because God was now fulfilling the temple and he's making room in his own heart for the Gentiles. And so we have to clear out, because really the Gentiles never

used the courtyard of the Gentiles. And that's why the money changers and the people selling everything moved in there. But Pope Benedict asked the question, well, where is the courtyard of the Gentiles today? Where is the place that non-believers or non-Catholics can come close to the worship? If I can, one interpretation for the, from the question is, you know, it is awkward when we bring Protestants to Mass. We often, we do everything at Mass, and so we automatically bring people to Mass, but it's not actually for non-believers or for non-Catholics, for those not in communion. The Mass of the Catechumens, the first part, the Liturgy of the Word, could be used that way. We have the

dismissal at RCIA, but Mass is not really the place. So where's a place that people can come close to pray with us, to worship with us? And that's where I think things like festivals of praise, Eucharistic adoration. But now some of the online things have made it possible. Because the other thing that happens, you bring a Protestant to Mass and you got to, you know, stop them from receiving communion. And then they feel excluded. They feel like they don't fit in. They don't know when to sit or stand or what to say, and it feels very awkward, and then sometimes they go away feeling worse than when they came. So that's not helpful, but that's not a sign that we should change the

mass. That's a sign that we should find a courtyard of the Gentiles, and one of the things that came out of that proposal of Pope Benedict was the Pontifical Council for Culture created a courtyard of the Gentiles. So they had a gathering outside of Notre Dame Cathedral of happy memory, hopefully a future glory in Paris, where they had artists and poets and philosophers and musicians. And they gathered together for a sharing of these cultural goods. And then, of course, Notre Dame Cathedral is there, and there were things going on inside. And so if people wanted to go in and begin to experience some of the mystery, they could do that.

But I think some of those sort of shallow entry points, I think we sort of fail a little bit like we were saying earlier with, you know, not really helping people to fall in love with their faith, with the Lord in prayer. I think those are the spaces that I see a need to really develop. Kyle Myers says, why do you think St. Benedict had such a negative view of laughter? Is that true? And why did you just laugh about that? And why did you just laugh about that? There's a comment in, I guess it's the chapter on humility. I'm going to guess that he watched The Name of the Rose and saw the creative development of this idea of the suppression of laughter from that movie or that book.

of the suppression of laughter from that movie or that book. But there are a couple of comments about monks not laughing boisterously, as I was just doing. And at the same time, there's... So that... St. Benedict was writing that in the context of the Goths and the Visigoths, in which that laughter comes forth from a kind of dominant pride. There's a dominating kind of laughter that can be almost sinister in its uncouth and sort of bold. It's the laughter of

victors who are lording it over their enemies, you know. I think that's the laughter that Saint Benedict is referring to, because the rule itself is hilarious in some points. St. Benedict's own sense of humor, as I described earlier, you know, we hear that monks should not drink wine. Since the monks of our day cannot be convinced of this, I mean, there are several places in the rule, how can you read these things and not laugh? So there's certainly a joyfulness and a lightheartedness, but it's, I think, that kind of dominant, more prideful laughter that he's speaking against in those sections on humility. Yeah, in the Summa Theologiae, when Aquinas talks about the virtue of playfulness,

he uses a Greek word, which is the sort of mean between the extremes of buffoonery and boorishness there you go yeah so maybe that we could also think of that sort of buffoonery um that's sort of inappropriate laughter i remember my dad sometimes my brother and i would get into laughing fits he'd say nothing's that bloody funny cut it out which is pretty funny yeah but that is interesting and yeah aquinas even says that like it's a sin to be a bore. Yeah, that's right. Your presence ought to be. He identifies that we're more likely to fall on the side of buffoonery than boorishness.

Most of us need to pull ourselves back more than we need to push ourselves forward. But certainly there are some people that you would put in that category. He uses the image there of John the Evangelist. That's right. ourselves forward. But certainly there are some people that you would put in that category. He uses the image there of John the Evangelist. That's right. With pulling the bow. That's right. Why don't you share that so people know where you're going with that. So John the Evangelist was asked about the joy and love that he was having with his disciples. And he asked the interlocutor to take a bow and shoot it, shoot an arrow, and another one, and another one, and he said, can you do that indefinitely? No, the bow would break. And he said, exactly. And so,

in a similar way, we have to relax the bow. Even praying all the time, what I was describing earlier of spending days in prayer, even that's an extraordinary experience. That's not the ideal, but that was important at that time to kind of break through some of my own limitations, my pride and vanity. But that's not the ideal to, unless we're called to it, you know, there are some really extraordinary vocations in the church that are called to more extended times of prayer like that. Yeah, well, I'm thinking of the Summa Theologiae where Aquinas actually addresses the question of prayer. And one of the questions he asks is, can we pray at all times?

And he says both yes and no. Let me see if I can find it here because it does get to what you're talking about there. Let's see here. Yeah, meditation creates a kind of mental exhaustion. It's one of the reasons that prayer can be a penance, because there's an effort that's exerted. Should prayer last a long time? Let's check that out.

And so let's see here. Wait for this to load. The said contra is, It would seem that we ought to pray continually. For our Lord said in Luke 18.1, We ought always to pray and not to faint. And it's written in 1 Thessalonians 5.17, Pray without ceasing.

The response is, We may speak about prayer in two ways. First, by considering it in itself. Secondly, by considering it in its causes. The cause of prayer is the desire of charity from which prayer ought to arise. And this desire ought to be in us continually, either actually or virtually. For the virtue of this desire remains in whatever we do out of charity, and we ought to do all things for the glory of God.

From this point of view, I love what he's about to say here from augustine this point of view prayer ought to be continual this is why augustine says faith hope and charity are by themselves a prayer of continual longing so i like that but prayer considered in itself cannot be continual i love how practical here is at this point because we have to be busy about other works. And as Augustine says, And he goes on. But I love the practicality of that. We pray at all times by desire and growing in charity. But I love the practicality of that. We pray at all times by

desire and growing in charity, but we have stuff to do too. Yeah, the catechism talks about vocal prayer, meditation, and contemplation. And this is the way it describes contemplation, is that prayer that can be happening at all times. So that's that longing in faith, hope, and love. That's the prayer. You and I are focusing our attention on each other and the things that we're talking about, and we're accessing our memories and trying to engage in conversation. And so our minds are not sort of focused explicitly on the Lord, but hopefully, I think we're in this conversation because of a longing of faith, hope, and love to be more united with him. And so we're carrying that loving awareness of his presence with us. And it's one of the ways

I like to look at St. Joseph too, and that sense of Nazareth. And it's one of the keynotes of the rule of St. Benedict. He says, the divine presence is always with us. And really, you can see the whole rule as arranging the life of the monk to be aware of the divine presence in everything that he's doing. And that loving awareness that we can carry around with us at all times. This book on St. Joseph, was that also published with St. Paul? It is, yeah. On the Mayes Road? That's right, yeah.

Good stuff. Good stuff. I have to throw this next bit out that Aquinas says because we've got an Eastern Christian in the studio today. He says, We've got an Eastern Christian in the studio today. He says, It is said that the brethren in Egypt make frequent but very short prayers, rapid ejaculations, as it were, lest the... Meaning something very different, of course.

Lest that vigilant and erect... Oh, come on, Aquinas. Not ejaculations and erect in the same sentence. Lest that vigilant and erect attention, which is so necessary in prayer, slacken and languish through the strength being prolonged. By so doing, they make it sufficiently clear not only that this attention must not be forced if we are unable to keep it up. Oh, listen to that. Listen to that.

Let's say that again. say that again um that this attention in prayer must not be forced if we are unable to keep it up but also that if we are able to continue it should not be broken off too soon speak to that for a moment wow that's cool yeah so you've heard that saying somebody says like you know the mind can only take what the butt can handle you know sitting down for too long at some point you just can't handle it yeah prayer is kind of like that as well. Yeah, the mind can only take what the mind can take also, and sustaining our attention. I saw this.

There's an interview with Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Pagio, and Jonathan Pagio described liturgy as paying attention to the highest ideal. And I think there's something really beautiful about that, so sustaining our attention. And how do we sustain our attention? In a certain way in our personal prayer, in a certain way in liturgical prayer, through scriptures, different aspects of God,

our songs in community, our, you know, through all of these different venues. But paying attention to the highest ideal because we become that which we pay attention to, and we're formed more and more into Him. So on the one hand, sometimes people will say, oh, I'm always struggling with distractions. Well, yeah, you know, our minds don't like to focus. We tend to flit around, and we need to be patient with ourselves, but gently renewing attention and finding ways to renew attention.

It's one of the fun things in liturgy. Well, so I find myself wandering, you know, halfway through the second reading. I have two choices. I can either start wondering why I'm wandering and how I got here and then get upset at myself that I'm always wandering. Why am I always wandering? And I can't ever do this right. And now I've become distracted by my distractions. Or in the middle of the second reading, I can just begin listening to whatever word is happening now and let that take me back to attention and renew my attention. Yeah, something I try to do when I find my mind wandering in prayer is just to pray over that thing.

So whatever it is, maybe I'm daydreaming, here's what I'm going to be doing tomorrow, or here's what I regret, or here's why I feel stupid. That can be a nice way, as soon as you recognize that, to bring that to prayer, as opposed to shoving it aside. And you've done that in our conversation, too. I've appreciated that. At different times, you might, well, when we came back on, you kind of laughed, and then you explained why you were laughing, right? It's this, you're bringing the internal, this distraction, this thought, whatever it is that, you know, it came across your face, it came in, and you brought it into the relationship with me and with our listeners, yeah.

Interesting, interesting. Father B, how do we, as lifelong Christians, avoid purgatory? Totally. Thank you, and God bless. Keep going. Aim for the heights. Justine says, any tips on how to overcome those sticking venial sins we keep doing over and over? You know, I think relationship with both of these things, it's so helpful, right? I mean, how does your relationship turn into one of those really beautiful marriages?

Keep going. You know, as long as there's progress. The old dictum is, if you're not moving forward, you're falling backward. There's no such thing as staying the same. And so we keep making progress as we bring our venial sins. Sometimes it's really necessary to realize we can't overcome our venial sins. We have to reach the end of our own efforts. And finally, before the Lord, with open hands and poor sad eyes, say, please, Lord, you can do this. But anyway, the different things work in different ways. Sometimes the Lord wants to direct us to a new way, a more effort.

Sometimes we have to surrender and kind of hand it over to him. All right. Well, let's see. I think we're kind of running out of questions here. This guy says the Aquinas quote, and your reaction have to be a new clip for the show. Yeah. It reminds me actually of a time.

Because, you know, I give a lot of talks on pornography. I don't know if you know this or not. That's kind of one of the things I'm sort of known for if I'm known for anything. And I was at this talk on prayer once. And I knew the lady giving the talk. And she was going for that word, you know, like the ejaculatory prayers where you say something like a quick burst of Jesus. Yakulo is a dart. Okay.

It's a dart outward. There you go. Right. So she's like, what's that word? And I said, ejaculations. And she went, no. Oh, yeah. No, you're right.

And she said, if anybody else had have said that, she would have accepted it because I said it. That's funny. I was thinking, I know you had a conversation with Christopher West recently. He would have had a field day with the middle of that. Yes, he would have. Let's see here. Book recommendations.

Catholic Conversation asks, book recommendations, what are you reading right now? Wow. Right now, I was listening to the audiobook, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Truman, which is a fascinating study of how we got to this place of politicized sexuality and sort of our sexuality defining who we are. And a lot of interesting things to see where things are, which seem to be so totally crazy and out of control, how we got here. But also, I tend to read in bits and pieces. I'm not good at sustaining individual books, but certainly I've read a lot of books on St. Joseph in preparation for publishing my own book, and I'm always interested in gathering up some bits and pieces uh like some

of the things that Father Calloway has to say there um trying to think of uh what's something you read for fun that wouldn't impress anybody mine is superhero comics and then like I'm trying to get into Tintin you know know the comic, Tintin? No? Well, don't worry about it. Is there something you like to read or do for fun? Oh, gosh. You know, I like take classes for fun and stuff.

I love to learn. I'm getting an STL from Sacred Heart Seminary, which I just added to everything else. I get so excited about learning more stuff that I just sleep less and learn more. So I just read, for class, I read Father Ronald Knox's The Hidden Stream, which is a kind of comprehensive apologetics description of the Christian faith. That might be something for our viewer who is asking about taking steps toward Catholicism. It's a beautiful presentation. Emily Barrows wants to know, do people really hear God's voice? Some people are adamant they can actually hear God say things to them.

I assume that this is a real grace from the Holy Spirit that maybe I've not yet received. maybe I've not yet received. I really, I describe my own experience of recognizing God's voice, that still small voice in the heart. And then I had to go through a whole period of trying to figure out, well, okay, when is that him and when is that me and what is that like? And I really found so much light in the descriptions of spiritual consolation that St. Ignatius gives. He identifies that when we receive an actual grace, it overflows into our bodies.

And so we experience that as being lifted up above all things so that we are beholding the Creator before every creature. Sometimes we experience it as spiritual joy, sometimes as tears of repentance or of love for God, sometimes as an increase of faith, hope, or love. I like to describe that as like, we know that the blessed sacrament is truly the body and blood of Jesus Christ, but sometimes we look at him and we go, oh my God, it's really you. So those moments, you know, spiritual consolation, or we face really terrible things, and we have this real conviction, everything is going to work out. And we know it's more than

just ourselves, you know, so this is like an increase of faith or hope, or certainly of love for God. And then the one that people tend to identify the most is that peace and inner stillness. the most is that peace and inner stillness. And sometimes people say, oh, follow the peace. But there's a point to that. So Ignatius is acknowledging that actual grace resonates in our bodies in different ways. And then he says, the words that come, the thoughts that come in spiritual consolation are from the Lord. And so that's how I tie those things together. So do we hear God with our ears? Well, not normally. I mean, some people do. That's called an exterior locution. And John of the Cross's wisdom that that shouldn't be trusted is good wisdom. Now, in very unusual circumstances, God really does communicate that way. And we have

visions at Fatima or at Lourdes or, you know, the church discerns some of these things. But normally we hear God in those experiences of spiritual consolation. The lights go on for a moment. The thoughts that come are really from him, but they're expressed in our language. You know, does God speak English or does he speak Latin or does he speak Greek? Well, he speaks in the image and the idioms of the person that he's speaking to. Can I give you an example of this? I was discerning marrying my wife, and I was in prayer one day, wondering if I should propose. And it was as if the Lord, I was asking the Lord, give me a sign.

I just want this. And I sensed the Lord say to me, listen, you're old enough and ugly enough to figure this out. What do you want to do? I want to marry her. Well, bloody do that. I'm pretty sure that was the lord or not but that was the conversation i had so it's beautiful like sound like my dad so i did i think it was the next night i proposed to her thrilled that i did wow well it went with a conviction didn't it yeah absolutely you know

there's a there's an increase in faith there's sometimes it's uh he when he describes it as that inner stillness, I really identify that. It's like the constant buzz that's going on just stills. And then that voice that comes through, whether it sounds like your dad or whether it sounds like whatever wrapping that's in our minds, when that comes through, follow that one. Marie asks, any advice for young Catholics?

Many people belittle me because I am young. Oh, there are young saints. I had a blessed Carlos Acutis that was just beatified, canonized. Anyway, he was, what, 13 or something? Blessed St. Jose Sanchez, who's in that For Greater Glory movie, 12 years old, 11 years old. So, yeah, beautiful to be young and faithful and filled with the Holy Spirit. I have some directees who, like, felt that call at an early age to marry Jesus. How beautiful to preserve that innocent faith. And then as it matures, you know, a person in their 30s who certainly has a very mature faith, but it started at such an innocent, it's so unsullied. You know, God does that with some people. So if you're one of those people, be that. Go with that. And Rosary Crusader just shared this verse that many of us may have been thinking about from 1 Timothy 4, 12. Let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.

Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, certainly central to our faith is the courage to be ourselves. What does that mean? Well, God made every one of us uniquely. I love the—C.S. Lewis gives this image of heaven, you know, like God is a jewel with as many facets as there are persons. And each person is entrusted with a facet of God to sort of embody and understand and live and reflect and heaven is sharing my facet of God with everybody and receiving

everybody else's facet of God so I need to give myself over to that completely and you know in st. Therese's littleness or maybe st. Thomas's brilliance or anyway we have a different slice of the pie we have our own you know you know, somebody who becomes...finally discovers it at age 70, somebody who discovers it at age 5. Each thing is a unique...every relationship with God is unique in that way. Yeah, that's really important to say because I think it can become a little trite when you say, be the best version of yourself or something like that. But there is a sense in which that's true that when you come into a relationship with God and he sanctifies you, you don't become less yourself. That's right.

I remember after my trip to World Youth Day in Rome, the next World Youth Day was Toronto in 2002. And my youth minister at the time tried to encourage someone to go and they said, well, I don't want to come back like Matt, me. And she said, well, you won't. You'll come back more like yourself. And that was nice. Yeah. Yeah, love doesn't make us more like somebody else. Love makes us more like ourselves. And we had Cardinal DiNardo before when he was bishop of Sioux Falls,

but he's from Pittsburgh. And he came and he preached the solemnity of St. Benedict for us. And I remember this is when I was a novice or maybe my second year in the monastery. And he said, people sometimes would think that monks living by the same rule would develop into a uniformity. And he said, well, my experience of monasteries is there are never so many unique characters as I find in monasteries. And that's a sign that there's a lot of love because love makes us unique. Love brings us unique and gives space for us to be who we are. That's right.

That's right. Jason Everett made that analogy once. He said, you look at the great dictators of the world. You line them up and they all seem boringly alike. But then you compare Mother Teresa to, you know, whoever else, St. Francis, Ass CC etc and you see it's like a field of flowers mmm amen beautiful well as we wrap up where can people learn more about you we're gonna put that link to your books below st. st. Paul Center and I would just

encourage people honestly like if you're gonna get one of Father Boniface's books, consider buying it from the St. Paul Center. I think it's really important that we, you know, we frequent these Catholic apostolates and not just go directly to Amazon because it's easier. But nonetheless, I'm sure it is on Amazon. It is on Amazon. Yeah, you can give Amazon more money or you can give my monastery more money. Those are the two choices. Why? What does that mean? I get a little more royalty from what goes through the St. Paul Center.

Ah, that goes to your monastery. So otherwise, Amazon gets the little extra. But yeah, and I don't. I made a vow of poverty. That's our poverty is communal poverty. So I literally signed over power of attorney to the abbot when I made solemn vows and I don't own anything of my own we own everything so money goes to the monastery not to you exactly yeah that's right so what book I mean if someone's watching right now like okay I want one

book I don't want to know these three or something but what's the book you want me to get tell me to get that one. Well, I think the personal prayer book is a great entryway. The Saint Joseph book, I would say, is an application of personal prayer to a devotion to Saint Joseph. So I think you find a nice resonance there. And it's the year of Saint Joseph, so Saint Joseph one's a little smaller. I don't know. You got to choose. The spiritual direction book is certainly, first of all, for spiritual directors, and then for anybody who wants to help somebody else on the journey of faith. So I think parents and nurses and doctors and teachers and coaches and a lot of people could

benefit from the Spiritual Direction book, but it certainly would be a little bit more specialized. The other two, pick one of them. I think they're both worth reading. All right. Well, listen, as we wrap up here now, we've got almost 400 people who are watching right now, and we'll have tens of thousands who will watch eventually. It would be just lovely if all of us decided to pray together, and you could lead us in this prayer, and so that those who are watching live, turn your phone off, exit out of all the other windows. And just let's pray together. And would you mind doing that? Would you mind leading us in that?

Unless they're watching on their phone. Then they should leave their phone on. That's right. But all the other windows but this one. So all the other distractions. Get rid of those. Leave this window up and here we go. No, I'd be delighted to pray.

Thank you, Lord. Praise you, Lord Jesus. Just to be delighted to pray. Thank you, Lord. Just to be in his presence, just to know that God is with us. The Father is looking on us with love, each one of us, no matter who we are or what we've done. The Father is looking on us with love. He's just delighted with us, delighted that we would take a moment to be with him after such an exciting conversation. Lord, we're grateful that you inspired us with this conversation and so many other things we could have said and we'd like to say. And maybe we'll say in the future, but we said these things.

And I pray that it was under your inspiration and by your guidance and that you take that and make that work in the hearts of everybody who's watching, is listening. You know what they need. You know what each of us need, Lord, and you want to provide what we need because you want us to have eternal happiness. Thank you. Thank you for making us, for redeeming us, for calling us to yourself. Thank you for being in our lives and being with us in a special way at this moment. Thank you for your love that embraces every person and wants to foster our uniqueness, wants to foster our freedom. You don't mold us into cookie cutter images, but rather make us your children, a field of flowers, a field of humanity. And so I ask you, Lord, also, as you know the needs of each person,

some people are hurting in some way, maybe a broken relationship, maybe hurting because they've tried to find you and they've run up against the humanity of the church or they've run up against the failures of different ministers or different representatives of Christianity. Maybe they're seeking and looking for those answers. Lord, I ask that you would inspire them. Give them light. Give them healing. Give them patience, mercy, forgiveness. Some people who are watching this who are struggling with their own sins and wondering if they can, Matt Fradd and Father Boniface look so holy and they've got it all together. And help them see enough of the truth, not to expose all of our sins to them, but certainly to help them see that we're struggling

sinners as they are and that you have room in your kingdom for everyone. You delight in every person and you're ready to meet us where we are. You don't need us to become something else to earn our place, but you meet us where we are and help each of our viewers to feel that as well. And Lord, I'm just grateful for this time and ask that you would continue to bless me, to bless Matt, to bless the studio crew here and all who will sit in this chair in the future and who have sat in this chair in the past and that this apostolate may be really an instrument for introducing people to you and for building up your kingdom and i just like to entrust all of this to you as we remember the communion of saints and and ask in a special way for the prayers of our lady. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. And through the intercession of Our Lady, and St. Joseph, and St. Benedict, and St. Thomas Aquinas may Almighty God bless you

the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit Amen thank you so much I really appreciate you taking the time to do this this was super fun yeah yeah it's kind of awkward transition

from a beautiful time of prayer to hi but hi thank you for being here if you haven't yet subscribed to our channel, you might consider doing that. Click subscribe and then that bell button and that way big tech will be forced to alert you to every time we put out a new video.

And that's just a cool thing to do. So you should do that right now. Thanks for being here. See ya. Thanks. Thanks. That was great. Thank you. សូវាប់ពីបានប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពាប់បានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបា Thank you. Bye.