Pints With Aquinas - The Spiritual Life w/ Dr Brant Pitre

Episode Date: December 5, 2021

Dr Pitre's excellent new book: https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Spiritual-Life-Walking-Prayer/dp/0525572767 🍺 Support Pints Directly! (THANK YOU): https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd  🙏 Join Hallow's Advent #Pray25 Challenge! https://hallow.com/partner-mattfradd/?utm_source=influencer&shortlink=59c565e&utm_campaign=mattfradd&utm_medium=email&referrer=mattfradd&c=Matt%20Fradd%20Custom%20Landing%20Page&pid=Influencer&af_channel=Influencer 📈Ethos Logos Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints 🟦STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/ 

Hey, Matt Fradd here. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. If this show has been a blessing to you, please consider supporting us directly at pintswithaquinas.com slash give or at patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. Any dollar amount would be a blessing to us. Thank you so much for considering. Okay, here we are. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd. I am super jazzed to have Dr. Brant Petra on the show. One of the things we're going to be focusing on today is the spiritual life. He's written a new book on this topic and I've delved into it and have really already learnt quite a lot. We'll be talking a little bit about Thomas Aquinas, what he has to say about prayer, we'll talk about distractions, we'll take some of your questions. It's going to be absolutely fantastic. But before we do, and speaking of prayer, I want to tell you about Hallow. Hallow is a fantastic

app. You've heard me talk about it before. It's the number one downloaded Catholic app, tons of five-star reviews, and they've just released this challenge for Advent. it's called Pray 25. So if you don't yet have the Hello app, download it and journey towards Christmas with them. They are sensational. There used to be a time where we would say things like, it's good for a Catholic app, or it's good for a Catholic website, no longer. I mean, Hello has put a ton of resources into making this app to be as good as it gets. I mean, I actually just for fun downloaded a meditation app. It was like a Buddhist leading you in, you know,

it's very, very popular mindfulness sort of app. I didn't really use it. I just wanted to see how good it was. I have to say in all honesty, the functionality, the look and feel of Halo is superior to that mindfulness app I downloaded. So kudos to them. Check it out. This challenge is all about journeying

to the manger through the eyes of Mary. During the first three weeks of Advent, they'll focus on themes like hope, faith, and joy, leaning on scripture to help us understand and grow in all these areas. Check it out. Really good stuff. My wife and I have used it in the past and I'm always really impressed with it. So if you want to take your prayer life to the next level, which today's episode is all about, this could help. Hello.com.slash.mattfrad so that they know we sent you. Hello.com.slash.mattfrad The link is in the description below. Okay, Dr. Petra, great to have you. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me, man. What is the most annoying way people mispronounce your last name?

The way you just did. No, no. Man, did I screw it up? No, no, no, you didn't. I mean, well, the reality is, so, most people pronounce it P-Tree here with a long E on the end, but you actually pronounced it correctly. I'm just teasing you. But I get Peter, Pete, Pete, actually in certain parts of South Louisiana, it's pronounced Pete. And in other parts,

it's pronounced Petri. And the ones who say Pete are actually more correct because it's a French name. I'm Cajun French. My ancestors are from Nova Scotia, Petri family up there and then back from France. So yeah, you can say however you like, Matt. Whatever you like. Nice. I think I told you this in our last interview, but Dr. William Lang Craig was doing this study, Bible study, and he referenced you. Oh really? Yeah, he's something like Dr. Pithré. You know how he always uses his accents well, and I don't know how he said it right or wrong, but I thought, man, this is so cool. We've got this prominent evangelical scholar quoting a Catholic scholar. So, yeah, no, that would be the actual French way to do it. Cajun French is not real French. But anyway, no, that's cool. Yeah, I suspect he probably referenced some of my books like The Case for Jesus, which is going to be more along the lines of the scholarship that he's done,

looking at the reasons for faith, looking at the biblical foundations for why we believe what we believe. So yeah, praise God, that's awesome. One thing that impresses me about you, and it also impresses me about Dr. Hahn, is you seem to do a really good job of threading the needle such that those on the more left side of the church and the right side of the church really love the work that you're doing What's the secret here? Did that make sense? People are really happy with the work that you've done. You've really helped them it seems Wow, well, that's that's really kind. Um, I don't know what the secret is except that I try to write my books In such a way that they can be read by anyone, no matter where they are in their spiritual journey, in their theological journey, in their personal religious journey.

So my own background, I have a lot of exposure to different viewpoints, different religious traditions. So I went to a secular state school, Louisiana State University for my undergraduate. I went to a historically Protestant divinity school, Vanderbilt, for my master's, where I was taught by a Jewish New Testament professor. And then I went to my first Catholic school was the University of Notre Dame, where I did my doctorate. So that wide variety of experiences of people of different religious backgrounds, different denominational backgrounds within the Christian tradition has kind of opened me up to be familiar with not just kind of my own Catholic bubble, if that makes any sense. And so I always try to write in such a way that even if a non-Catholic or a

non-Christian is reading something that I've written, that maybe they can hear it, if that makes any sense. I try to make it as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. So that is something I'm intentional about when I write. So thanks, I'm glad you noticed. Good, good. So you just wrote a book on the spiritual life and I was telling you off air, although we didn't get into it, that I have to confess. I only read the first two chapters, I think, but already I'm really excited for what I think the Lord wants to do in this book for me because I'll tell you what just sort of revolutionized

my prayer life. That might be too strong of a word, I don't know. We'll see, we'll see about my perseverance. But, and that was the fact that when you look at what the saints have had to say to laypeople in the world, they all sort of seem to be saying, you should be praying an hour a day. Like you should at least be, you correct me

if I'm getting this slightly wrong, but an hour of mental prayer a day. And I was really struck by that because I know that I can't keep making excuses for my poor little prayer life, you know, throw off a Hail Mary or a morning offering, go to Holy Mass, you know, and I really got to be more intentional about this most important of relationships. And so with the help of my spiritual father, we're kind of coming up with a plan to kind of ease me into that. And it's been such a blessing.

So praise God and thank you for your book. It must be wonderful to get people obviously confident in the person of Jesus Christ and the historicity of the New Testament documents. But if that's where it all ends and our relationship with Christ isn't developing, that's a problem. So thanks for writing this book. Well, no, thank you, man. That means the world to me. It's so funny that you kind of homed in on one of those key points at the very beginning of the book. I think it's in the second chapter on daily meditation, because that was transformative for me as well. The first book of spiritual theology

that I ever read, almost 20 years ago now for sure, was St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, which actually the title to this book, Introduction to Spiritual Life, is an homage to Francis de Sales. And one of the things that Francis was so distinctive for was that unlike many of the other works of spiritual mystical theology that had been written

either by Eastern or Western Christian writers Was that Francis intentionally wrote his book for laypeople living in the world? And so that was one of the first books I read and I remember being blown away When in his section on daily prayer, he almost says in passing Well, of course, you know before dinner each day You should devote at least an hour to prayer and meditation I thought oh man, that's not what I learned growing up You know Like you say your prayer before you eat a meal and then you say a little prayer before now I lay me down to sleep

You know and then you call it a day So in my own kind of Catholic formation growing up as a Christian I always in a sense reduced prayer to just saying my prayers, right? The kind of basic vocal prayers. And here was this Francis de Sales, a doctor of the church, teaching me one of the spiritual classics in the Western tradition. No, actually, if you're a lay person living in the world, the bar is a lot higher than that and you need to strive for that. And so that challenged me, it continues to challenge me as a father, a married man with five children, but it also made me realize that if I'm going to take my spiritual life seriously and take

progress, like growing in the spiritual life seriously, then I need to actually devote time and energy to it. I like to tease my students sometimes. You know, one time I heard a homily where the priest said, you know, if you can just pray for five minutes each day. And look, it was well intentioned. I really appreciated it. But I remember thinking at the time, imagine if you paid like, if you, if you had like a trainer, a physical trainer, right? And you're paying them to help you make progress in your growth and physical strength and in your overall health. And that trainer said to you, okay, um, I want you to exercise for five minutes a day. You would fire him. You'd fire him. Yeah. Yeah. You would fire because you would know he's not really serious about you growing.

He actually doesn't think you've got what it takes to make any headway and to grow physically. Well, the same thing is true spiritually. So the saints are going to be really clear that the spiritual exercises that help us to grow, although we definitely want to start small, that's not, there's nothing wrong with small beginnings, right, that even lay people in the world are called to the fullness of Christian charity and to growth in virtue and to rooting out vice. So this book for me as a lay person was very much about asking the question, what is the basic, universal, universally applicable teachings of the Christian spiritual tradition? And not just what are they, but where are they in scripture? And

in particular, and this is really where I felt like I had something to contribute, what does Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth teach about the spiritual life? Right? Because at the end of the day, you know, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, St. John Climacus, you know, whoever it might be, John Francis of Sales, these are all great spiritual masters, but the ultimate spiritual master, right, the master of masters, the teacher of the Christian's spiritual life, is Jesus himself. And yet, when I looked around, I couldn't find really any one book that laid out not only what the saints have said about the purgative way or the illuminative way or the unity way and the vices and virtues and prayer and meditation all that what did Jesus teach about and

How would his disciples have understood it in a first century Jewish context? So you could have called this book Jesus and the Jewish roots of spirituality, but I didn't want to you know, I didn't want to Bang that drum too often although that there's very much what's going on here as well the Jewish roots of spirituality, but I didn't want to, you know, I didn't want to bang that drum too often, although that very much is what's going on here as well. But I specifically wrote it for laypeople also, so I'm glad that you already felt that impact. Yeah, one of the things you say, I think it's in the first chapter, is that when you were a kid you thought there are basically two stages to the spiritual life, the state of mortal sin or the state of grace. And this was like a revolving door.

And this idea that you're actually supposed to grow in your spiritual life was revolutionary to you. So speak to that. Yeah, no, that's absolutely the case. So maybe other people can resonate with this. But that was kind of the idea that I grew up with. Not that anyone ever said it explicitly, but the way the spiritual life was spoken about was basically as a revolvingving door in which, you know, on one side you've got a state of grace and the other side you've got a state of mortal sin. And what you're striving to do is make sure you die on the right side of the door, right? You want to die in a state of grace. But I felt like spiritually I was always just moving in and out of those spheres. So just going in circles and if anything, backsliding and not really making any progress.

And yet when I began to read the spiritual classics, the metaphor that they used over and over again for what the Christian life is like is not that of a circle or much less a revolving door, but of a hot-ass in Greek, a path, a way, a road, right, that has a starting point, like all roads, and then has an ultimate destination. And the whole point of that metaphor is to show that you should, if you're on a road, it means you should either be moving forward, right, or you're moving back. No one sits on the side of the road and does nothing, right, and if they do, there's something off there. So the challenge, as I began to study was to realize

that the spiritual life and in particular the teachings of Jesus are really about a path, right? There is a journey. It has a beginnings point. It has an ultimate destination. And then there are also stages of growth along the way. So just as ordinary human life goes through certain stages, right, childhood and adolescence and then adulthood, and we can move through those stages at different rates and they're different for each one of us, right? We have different challenges in each one of those. At the same time, there's still this one path of growth that Jesus has given to all of his disciples. And that path is the path that I'm trying to illuminate in this book on walking the path of prayer with Jesus. I think something that I've run into in the past is sometimes people find something that works for

them in the spiritual life and they sort of dogmatize it and sort of demand that everybody else follow their spiritual path. And if they're not, they look on you like a sub-Catholic somehow. But I've also read, or at least have been told, that the spiritual life is going to be very individual in a sense, although there are obviously similarities. It's the one path that we're walking. But our Lord is relating to us personally. Yeah, no, this is actually one of the great things about studying the spiritual life and studying what Jesus and the saints teach about it is that it is both infinitely variable because every single human soul is totally unique. Like there's not another person that is exactly like Matt Fradd. Matt Fradd's individual soul, the mystery of your soul, is particular

to you and the same thing for me. And then the mystery of each person's state of life. I mean, the variety is almost overwhelming when you think about how different all of the saints are, right? Whether you go from popes to priests or nuns to hermits and desert fathers versus Carmelites, and then there's Ignatian and missionary. I mean, it's just, the variety is bewildering and beautiful and stunning. And yet, at the same time, Jesus says, I am the way, ho'odos, one way, the truth, the life. So there's both a unity and a diversity

that is mysterious to the spiritual life. And so sometimes, especially I think in our own day, the temptation can be to emphasize the diversity to such an extent that we lose the sense of unity and recognize, no, no, actually there's one teacher, like Jesus says, you have one teacher, the Christ, right? And there's also one path, right, the way that Jesus teaches. So what does that path look like? What does he have to say about it? What does Jesus teach about vocal prayer and meditation or contemplative prayer? What does he teach about the spiritual

disciplines like prayer and fasting and almsgiving or temptations? How do we deal with temptations? What are the major temptations? What about the capital sins like, you know, anger and envy and lust and gluttony, as well as the virtues that we're supposed to be cultivating? So I took all of those things that are pretty basic and universal in the various spiritual classics, and I put them all together in this one book to look at what does the Old Testament say about them? What does Jesus teach his disciples about them? And then how is this played out practically in the wisdom of the saints over the centuries? Francis de Sales is such a brilliant teacher. I forget how many analogies he uses, but somebody has sort of summed it up and it's a lot. And I was going to ask you, like,

were you intimidated writing a book like this? Because it's like, thanks, Brandt, that's cute. But we already have, we really already have Francis de Sales. Now, I don't think that, but you know, I imagine. No, no, no, no, no, no, I get it. Yeah, no, I've never been more intimidated and nervous and even, you know, potentially humiliated than writing this particular book, because on the one hand, if you're gonna talk about the spiritual life

and if you're gonna talk about the teaching of Jesus and the saints on it, you know, people can perceive you as, oh, you're presenting yourself as a spiritual master, right? Because so many books on the spiritual life, say for example, Teresa of Avila, are very introspective and revelatory of what's going on within her own interior journey. And when we pick up those books,

a lot of times, at least my experience, maybe you've had this experience, you start reading, say, Teresa's interior castling, you're like, I have no idea what you were talking about, because that does not resonate with my puny spiritual life and my puny spiritual growth, right. So there's there's that danger, of course. At the same time, though, as a teacher, you know, sure that the best way to learn is to teach. It challenges you in a way that just learning about it doesn't. But also, frankly,

the reason I wrote this book was for myself, my children, uh, my wife, uh, to share what I had discovered in reading the scriptures and reading the same. So this is just one disciple sharing with another disciple, some of the road signs that I've learned about as I'm walking along the path. And, and, and one of the reasons I liked this book so much is because there's actually not a lot of me in it. It really is just asking, what did the Old Testament say about this? What does our Lord

say about this? And then what do the apostles and the Christian tradition say? So I try to get out of the way as much as possible in the book and just use the gifts that I think God has given me to just sum things up and make it clear and share what I've learned. That's really what the book's about. You know, as a side note, I think it can be really a sign of a sort of pride or a false humility to disregard the gifts that our blessed Lord has given you. You know, He has placed you, Brent Petrie, I know you know this, but let me tell you anyway, in this time to lead souls to Christ, to tear down strongholds and to build up the body of Christ. And I think, not that you're doing this, but I think I do this myself, you know,

where I'm too quick to dismiss the good that I see that the Lord's doing through me, as if this had anything to do with me anyway, as opposed to saying, glory to you, Lord Jesus Christ. So I'm so glad. Absolutely. There's a grave temptation that we can give into the fact that given to the temptation thing. Well, I'm not good enough. I'm not holy enough. So I don't have anything to say. And that's not true because we each have a testimony.

We each have a witness. We each have certain gifts that the Holy Spirit is given. Read 1 Corinthians chapter 12. So the idea is to ask ourselves, what are those gifts and how can I share them? So in this case, I tend to see things about the Jewish roots of certain teachings and in this case, as I was reading spiritual classics, I was really making connections with the Old and New Testaments that I didn't see being made anywhere else. And also my own personal love for looking at Jesus in

the Gospels. I mean, I just love the Gospels. Helped me to recognize as I was reading through the classics, well, man, this is fascinating. Ignatius, Teresa of Avila, Francis de Sales, John Climacus, they're all getting these teachings. They're not just making them up out of their own mystical experiences. They're actually getting them from the Gospels. They're deriving them from the teachings of Jesus. And yet, I couldn't find a systematic presentation that laid out, well, what does Jesus say about gluttony? What does he say about slur? What does he say about lust? What does he say about meditation? Or does he say anything about those things? So that's what I was trying to do as I was putting

this together. And I did take some comfort in the fact that at the very beginning of Francis de Sales own introduction, he says, I write about the devout life, though I myself and not devout. Amen. Yeah, they all do that, right? I thought, okay, well, if he could say it that way, although we know that's not true of him, at least I could give it a shot here. And also, I'll say one other thing. As a teacher, I've taught a number of courses on the Bible and spiritual life over the last couple decades. And on the one hand, when I would assign spiritual classics like John of the Cross or Teresa

of Avila or Introduction to the Life of the Students, it was clear that they found them exhilarating. It was also clear, however, that they often had a difficult time identifying with those authors and relating to the books just because they're 400, 500 or more years old, right? Even with Francis de Sales, he wrote it for Laity, but he did it centuries ago, and things have changed. And so the gospel always has to be presented afresh, it always has to be presented anew, and that's what I was really very humbly trying to do in this little book on spiritual life. Thank you for doing it. What's something that Jesus teaches about the spiritual

life that most of us wouldn't get right away? Oh wow, that's a good question. What is something Jesus teaches about the spiritual life that most of us wouldn't get right away? You said there's this kind of connection between the old and the new and you're seeing Christ and what he's saying through a Jewish lens. Yeah, let's start with meditation. How about that? We'll start with meditation. So in my experience, if you say the word meditation, most Western Christians, right, are going to think first and foremost of like Eastern religions or Eastern forms of meditation, say Buddhist or whatnot. And they'll often think of that as something that might be foreign to the Christian tradition,

right? And that Christianity is largely focused on, you know, saying vocal prayers, for example, whether it's the beautiful recitation of the Psalms and the Liturgy of the Hours, or whether we have the supreme vocal prayer, which is the Our Father, right? The Lord's Prayer, right? When Jesus teaches his disciples to pray,

he teaches them a vocal prayer. He gives them the Lord's Prayer. However, I have a chapter in the book where I actually show, no, if you look at the concept of meditation carefully, you're going to see it's actually deeply rooted in both Jewish scripture, the teachings of Jesus, and in the gospel tradition, the apostolic tradition. But you've got to try to see it through Jewish eyes. So for example, go back to the first, the opening lines of the Book of Psalms, right? The very first Psalm in the Masterpiece of Prayer, that is the Old Testament, is all about meditation. Psalm 1 begins this way, Blessed is the man who walks not in the

counsel of the wicked, there's the image of a path, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the sea of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he what? Meditate day and night. Day and night. Psalm 1, 1 through 2. So notice a couple things about that passage. First, if you want to be blessed, if you want to be happy, that's actually the Hebrew word, what do you need to do? Meditate on the scripture, right? And not just, you know, every Lent and every Christmas, you know, occasionally at holy times of year, but daily, right? This is the secret to blessedness. It's the secret to happiness is learning to love the law of God. happiness is learning to love the law of God. Second, when it uses that word meditation,

the verb meditate from Hebrew is fascinating, it's ha-gah, and it literally means to groan or sigh. So this is not just reading scripture or just studying scripture, analyzing it. Meditation in Psalm one is about taking the word into yourself and sighing over it, groaning over it, pondering it interiorly, and doing that every day and every night. And when the ancient Greek translation of Septuagint

rendered this word, the ancient Jewish translation into Greek, it actually translated that word as meletah'o, that means to think about or ponder. This is where we get the more, a little more cerebral Western tradition of meditation as thought. Now it is that, but it's both, it's both mind and heart. But it's an interior pondering of the word of God that already in the Old Testament is being commanded to every single person to be done every single day, every morning, and every night. Now, if you fast forward to the Gospels, you're never going to find Jesus use the word meditation. He doesn't say, okay guys, here's how you meditate, you know, step one, step two, step three. He doesn't do that, but in the parable of the sower he actually alludes to this very famous psalm on meditation psalm one

using the imagery of a Seed that's going to bear fruit, right? so, you know the famous parable of the sower right the sword goes out and he throws the seed in different places and Out of the the four kinds of soil into which it falls, only one of them bears fruit. And in Luke 8 verses 11 and 15, Jesus says, as for that that's in the good soil, these are those who hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bring forth fruit with patience." Alright, so notice this is fascinating. When Jesus talks about the parable of the sower and he identifies the seed that the sower is sowing as the Word of God, right, in

a first century Jewish context, this would have called to mind not just the scriptures in general, but Psalm 1 in particular, which uses this image of a man meditating on the Torah, on the word of the Lord, as the way, as the path to bearing fruit. And the psalm here, and Jesus also obviously, isn't talking about apples or oranges or, you know, natural fruit, ordinary fruit. He's talking about spiritual fruit. And what Jesus says, the person holds it fast and an honest and good heart. This is really cool. I didn't know this until I started looking at this in this way. The Greek word there is catecho, right? We get the word catechize from there. It literally means to keep in one's memory, right?

So you hear it, but then you also interiorize it. You memorize it by writing it in your mind and in your heart. Okay. So Jesus's teaching on meditation on the Word of God is the parable of the sower, right? And guess what he says? The only way you're ever going to bear fruit is if you hear the word of the Lord and you don't just skim it or let it kind of blow past you or even worse, if become like one of the first three kinds of soil, right? Where you get excited about it for a time, but then the devil snatches it out of your heart or you receive it with joy, but you don't let it take root in the soul, so that as soon as temptations come or tribulations come, it just it dries up like a shallow rooted

plant. I remember one of the things you said in there was, you know, our Lord says the word is choked by the anxieties of daily life and you were like, just that? Like, doesn't have to be some like, you know, binge or orgy to drive it out. Like, just the anxieties will do. No, that man, that's the verse that always got me whenever I, whenever I started looking through this, I looked at that particular, uh, that parable, it really hit me because he didn't say that the word got choked by adultery and idolatry and abominations. No, just the anxieties and the cares of this life.

They're enough. Which is like, if I don't dedicate time to pray, if I don't make the Lord my top priority, I'm gonna be bombarded by people's concerns about me, people's demands upon me Advertisements like I suck I won't be able to but get taken away by the anxieties of life unless I make the Lord my top priority That's exactly right. It's like it's like planning. It's like going to Lowe's Bringing home some seeds and planting them in your driveway. They're not

There's not enough soil. It's, they're gonna, the sun's gonna beat down and they're gonna dry up. So that's why meditation is... I've been, um, you keep going, I'm sorry. I'll let you finish your thought there on the... The point is, this is why vocal prayer is, it's crucial. But this is why you look at the Christian tradition, they're gonna be absolutely unequivocal about the fact that every single Christian is called to meditate on scripture every day, to read the Word of God and to spend time pondering it, because Jesus Himself said it. It's the only way to avoid being one of the first three kinds of soil and not, you know,

being the fourth kind of soil. And it's why Teresa of Avila, I had a quote in here from her that really challenged me. She says, meditation is the basis for acquiring all the virtues and to undertake it as a matter of life and death for all Christians. I mean, tell me how you really feel Teresa, right? I mean, she's, she's not missing any words. Show us, show us that front cover again, Brent. Oh, sure. Yeah. It's a beautiful book. Yeah. I want to just encourage you to show it to, yeah, put it in front of your face. We be able to see it. I've got a link at the top of the description below. I want to encourage everybody to go out and get this book if you really want to take your prayer life to the next level. are inspired by this conversation right now, they should click that and check it out. Yeah, I got another analogy that came to me recently. I haven't really fleshed this out, so it could be hopeless, but we'll get your take on it. One of the things I've been doing lately is kind of reading the Eastern Fathers about the Jesus Prayer, and I've been kind of dedicating time

to praying the Jesus Prayer. And I thought, I don't know if you're a pipe smoker, Brent, but I thought when I sit with somebody who's not a pipe smoker, I have to teach them that you want to kind of tap the tobacco down, and then you want to get that little cherry, the kind of the flame deep into the heart of the tobacco. If it's just going to stay on the surface, it's going to keep going out, you're going to keep having to relight it. You really want to kind of get it to work it down in you. Something similar with the Jesus Prayer I found, and no doubt with all prayer, is that it can't just be a matter of the lips.

It has to sort of work its way into my being. So what do you think of that analogy and how much you make it better? No, that's actually, okay, so true confessions. I do smoke. I have a pipe and I smoke my pipe a few times of year only on the cold days in Louisiana, which are about three But no, that's a beautiful analogy and you're absolutely right that the flame as long as it just remains on the surface Where it can be blown about by the wind, right? It's not gonna take it has to get down into the heart of the bowl

in order to really ignite. And this is precisely why quiet meditation on scripture, which by the way is what the Jesus prayer is because the Jesus prayer is nothing other than the words of the blind man Bartimaeus, as well as the tax collector in the temple, Pharisee and tax collector, a whole chapter on that, taking those words of scripture,

which are inspired and chewing on them, and pondering them, and literally interiorizing them to where you're saying them throughout the day, and they become a part of who you are. So yeah, that's a beautiful analogy for exactly what meditation is and how it and vocal prayer should synergize and become something not just an exterior act that we engage in, but something that actually begins to work down into our minds and into our hearts in order to configure them and to conform them to

God's Word and conform them to Christ. So yeah, that's a great analogy. I like it very much. Okay, let me ask you a question because people hear things like vocal prayer, mental prayer, contemplation, meditation, and they'll get like a really great explanation that you just gave,

but sometimes it's kind of hard to hold the definition. So I wanna ask you if you would, maybe in a sentence or two, define for us what we mean by those four things, vocal prayer, mental prayer, meditation, and contemplation. Sure. Yeah. So at the beginning of each of the three chapters, I'd start off with those three forms of prayer. These are kind of the major expressions, vocal prayer, meditation, which is sometimes referred to as mental prayer. So I'll tend to use those. Yes. And honestly,

and then, and then contemplative prayer, And then show where Jesus talks about each one of them. So if we had to boil it down, which is always a little dangerous because prayer is mysterious, right? Right. We'd just have to get the book to learn the whole thing, but just if you give us a tweet for each one. So vocal prayer would be using words to communicate with God, right? So just like we tend to use words, that's our ordinary manner of communicating with other human beings, language is a distinctively human way of communicating, vocal prayer involves using words to communicate with God. Supreme examples, the Book of Psalms, is a masterpiece of vocal prayer, 150 vocal

prayers. The Lord's Prayer is the vocal prayer of all prayers. And then also the liturgy, the mass, the divine liturgy. What are they except one enormous, beautiful, splendid community, right, communal vocal prayer. So that would be vocal prayer. Using words that communicate with God. Meditation, I would say, would be using the mind Meditation, I would say, would be using the mind to ponder the Word of God, right, in order to allow it to transform our minds and our hearts. So if vocal prayer is talking to God with words, meditation is using the mind to think about God, right. And you can actually see this in the book of Deuteronomy, for example, when Moses says to the Israelites, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength, the great Shema, right?

Jesus adds the line to that, which is pretty shocking in a Jewish saying. He says, you shall also love the Lord your God with all your mind. That's not in the original Hebrew. Jesus had that. So what does that mean? Well, if you keep going in context, Moses says, these words, I command you this day shall be upon your heart. You shall teach them to your children.

You shall talk about them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise. So how do I love God with all of my mind? I constantly think about His Word. That's how. Because see, when you love somebody, you think about them often. And when you never think about someone, you probably don't love them all that much, right? So this has to do with the transformation of our memories and the relationship to memory and identity. So our words are going to help our exterior, our physical, our bodies be configured to God, right? But then meditation begins to configure our intellect, right? Which is the faculty of the soul by reading His word, by pondering His word, and then also by conversing interiorly with God about that

word. All right, so if vocal prayer is using words to talk to God and meditation is using thought and until I could think about God, then contemplative prayer is the most mysterious of the three. And if I might, can I use my own definition for my book? Can I quote myself as that? Of course you can. No, no. This one's interesting. You'll see that when the saints talk about contemplative prayer, and there are different degrees of it, right? So it's a very mysterious, very transcendent form, but in its most basic form, the word contemplor in Latin means to look at or behold or gaze attentively. So

while vocal prayer uses exterior words to talk to God, and meditation uses interior thoughts to think about God, contemplation in its most basic form is a gaze of love between the soul and God. In contemplative prayer, a person takes time to be alone with God out of a simple desire to be in his presence, to listen to his voice and to seek his face. So for my money, the most, how about we quote Aquinas? I was going to get to that soon. Yeah, I want to get to that soon. St. Thomas Aquinas says, contemplation regards the simple act of gazing on the truth. So you'll frequently see the saints use this image of the silent gaze of love to describe contemplative prayer.

It's a form of prayer that transcends words and transcends even thoughts and is focused more on this interior gaze of love. And at least with my students over the years, I've liked to try to use as an analogy of this, the spousal gaze between a husband and a wife. Yeah, it's just immediately what I thought of. Yeah, exactly. So like when, I'm sure like you probably had this experience.

I met my wife, I was 14. We went on our first date and we've been, and we've been together ever since. So when you, when we first started dating, what did we do? Well, I snuck into the room with the phone late at night, you know, pulled the cord and my parents couldn't see, and then we'd just talk and talk and talk and talk and talk for hours and hours and hours, right?

A lot of verbal communication, right? But as time goes by and as relationships mature, now we can be in one another's presence and simply be silent. We can look into one another's eyes and say more with an intentional gaze than we could ever say in all those words that we shared when we were young, right? So that kind of intense gaze of love that you know, if you've ever looked into the eyes of someone you love, not just your spouse, but your children or your friends, right? When you really look into someone's eyes, that's a kind of communication that transcends words. It can transcend thoughts, but it's not less intimate, right? It can be intimate, right? It can be more intimate, right? And so, as I show in the book, this image of a gaze of love, that is in its most basic form is a definition for contemplative prayer. And you're going to see this in the Old Testament, you're going to see it in the teaching of Jesus, you're

going to see it in the Christian tradition. Just to take one example, Moses in the book of Exodus, chapter 33. We always tend to think of Moses what? As the great lawgiver or the great liberator. You know, he's the one who gives the Torah, he's the one who sets them free, the Israelites free from the Red Sea. But in Jewish scripture and in Jewish tradition as well as Christian tradition, Moses was also regarded as the great mystic because he would, he went up the mountain to encounter God and he would regularly go into the tabernacle of Moses that you know the portable temple that the tent in the book of Exodus and there it says that when Moses went into the interior tabernacle speak to God face to face as a man speaks to his friend. And the Hebrew word there for face is panin. It literally means face, but it literally means presence as well. So what kind of prayer did Moses engage with with God?

Because God in the Old Testament, he doesn't have a physical face. What does that mean face to face? Well, you can also translate that as presence to presence. Okay? So he's in the presence of God, intimate gaze, not just Moses looking at God, but God looking at Moses, right? This mutual gaze of love. That is the heart of contemplative prayer. That's the most basic level of prayer. It's the gaze of love. And David will talk about it in the

Psalms and elsewhere. Yeah. I could go on about it. No, this is great. So when mental prayer and meditation are used by the saints, is this usually meant to be synonymous then? Yes. You'll see customs of how to refer to these will change over time. They'll also be different in different circles. So for example, in the East, you'll frequently see the Eastern Fathers

like in the Villa Cali or elsewhere talk about prayer of the heart. That'll be one way they're talking about contemplative prayer. You'll see Western writers use different terms for it. You'll see sometimes the switch between meditation or mental prayer. Usually in the West, especially

in the modern period, mental prayer is just another way referring to what we call meditation. Okay. So in any given case, you really have to kind of look at the context of what the particular writer is saying or doing or meaning in context. If they have maybe technical, you know, technical definitions that lie behind it or more specific connotations. But as a basic rule, yeah, mental prayer and meditation are two ways to talk about the same thing. Now, actually, let me ask you this then. Eastern Fathers, you know, mystics throughout the West,

how do they complement each other? As I've been reading this Orthodox anthology on prayer, Theophan, the recluse, and others, I think I said that right. It's fascinating to see saints and fathers who may not have ever read each other kind of use similar analogies. So I think Teresa in Interior Castle talks about how you can do a lot of work to generate water maybe through some sort of pump or a well, but then the rain falls from the heaven. And I think sometimes when I read the Eastern Fathers, they talk

about this kind of living prayer, so it's not something you're kind of like working towards, it's something you're passively receiving. So I don't know if you want to talk about that a bit, but then also just how you've seen the East and the West complement each other in what they have to say when they talk about prayer? Yeah, no, this is a great question. So, if you're paying close attention to my writings, which you don't have to for sure, but you might have noticed that in the last couple of books that I've written, like so in the book on Mary and then in this book in particular, I've been paying more attention and being more intentional about trying to cite both Eastern and Western fathers,

both Latin and Greek writers, as well as Syriac, of course. Primarily just because I'm fascinated by everything in the Christian tradition. Also because in the Eastern traditions of the church, you'll see, especially in Syriac fathers, but also the Greek ones, there's a deep conaturality with Judaism, right? Because they're coming out of Semitic context and they have a lot of Semitic forms of expression and thought. So that's always been attracted to me.

But in this book, I was very intentional about trying to draw on both Eastern and Western fathers so that both Catholics and as well as our Orthodox brothers and sisters might benefit from it and also see the common tradition. So in my own experience, which again, it's still limited, I'm still learning about this. But for example, reading the writings of St. John Clemicus, right, his famous Ladder of the Divine Ascent was fascinating to me as I was working through this book, because what you're going to see is,

although the Eastern and Western fathers might not be reading one another, they are saying the same things about the spiritual life, the same things about the mystical tradition, the same things about the capital sins, right? They might order them differently, they might say, well, is there seven or are there eight? You know, there's some divergences within that. But they're saying the same thing precisely because, and this is especially clear in the East, their teaching on spiritual life is rooted in Scripture. It all goes back to the Word of God. So, for example, you mentioned Teresa of Avila using the image of water or living water as an

image for contemplative prayer as a recognition of the fact that in its purest form, contemplation is not something we do, but something God does in us, right? Well where does Teresa get that from and why do the Eastern Fathers have it? Well because they're getting it from Scripture, right? So if you go and you look at John chapter 4 and this is the image I begin the book with, the famous story of Jesus and the woman at the well. You know Jesus says there, if you knew the gift of God and who it was that was speaking to you, you would have asked me and I would have given you living water, right? Now in Hebrew, living water literally means just running water as opposed to stagnant water, okay?

But if you go back to the Old Testament, it's so much more than that. So living water was also used in the temple in order to wash away sins. So it was it was cultic water. It was it was sacred water, right? It would be mingled with sacrifices in order to purify souls. So it was sacrificial water as well. It was also living water was used in bridal bath. So before a bride would be united to her spouse on the on the night of consummation of the wedding night, she would take a nuptial bath and it had to be in living water. So all these connotations, sorry, are swirling about under the surface of this expression. And so when Jesus says to the woman at the well, if you would have asked me how to give you living water, he's not talking about H2O. He wants to give her the gift of the Holy Spirit, which he'll say later in

John 7 verse 37, right? He says, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water. And then John says, the evangelist, he said this of the Spirit. Because if Jesus is the master and model of prayer, the Holy Spirit is the interior architect, the animator of prayer, right? He's the one who's actually living within us, right? Who teaches us how to pray because, as St. Paul says, we don't know how to pray as we are. But the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with sighs and groans, too deep for words. That's contemplative prayer. That's the grace of contemplative prayer that is very present in the New Testament

and very deeply biblical. And that's why the East and the Western fathers and doctors and mothers are gonna say the same thing about it, because they're meditating on the word of God. And that's where they're getting their spiritual doctrine from. Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, I wanna ask you in a moment to kind of share a little bit more with us what Thomas Aquinas has to say about prayer. One thing that

came to mind as you were saying that was in the Summa he answers the question, can we pray at all times? And his answer is somewhat nuanced. He says, well, yes, but of course no, meaning we have all sorts of occupations we have to engage in. We can't be praying all the time. But if memory serves, he quotes Augustine and says that we can pray at all times through desire. Does that ring a bell? And what do you have to say about that?

Yeah. Well, I have to say is that if Thomas said it, my default is always he was probably, although not necessarily, but probably right. It's always my default with St. Thomas. Well okay, so this is something I'm actually going to address, not in this volume, but in a subsequent volume on this. The verse you referred to, 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, where Paul says, pray without ceasing, was one of the most discussed verses in the

Christian tradition hands down in the mystical literature. They all wrestle with this. How is it possible for St. Paul to command us to pray without ceasing? Because he wouldn't command it if it wasn't possible, and yet as we strive to do it, it seems beyond human capacity. So you'll see that in the Eastern Fathers, a lot of their answer to this is going to be largely focused on the recitation of the Jesus prayer, right? On beginning by learning to pray the Jesus prayer vocally, right, throughout the day, and making it so much a habitual part of yourself that you actually begin to think it, you begin to pray it in your sleep, you pray it without even uttering the words, it's an interior prayer that's constant. So in the East, there's going to

be a strong tradition that focuses on the Jesus Prayer in particular as the answer to that. But I would say that with St. Thomas, at least based on the way you summarized his answer there, I think what Thomas is recognizing here is that the duties of our state in life, just the ordinary demands that living in a human body and living in, especially living in the world as a lay person put on us, is that we're not going to be able to recite vocal prayers all day long. Maybe in the, say for example, the kind of way that a cloistered Carmelite would, right? Praying in the office all day long, going to mass every day, right? As well as in addition to other forms of meditation,

contemplation, filling the day with prayer. But there is an interior form of prayer when, first of all, but we can punctuate our day with vocal prayer and you see this even in the West with traditions like the Angelus, right, marking certain moments of the day with vocal prayer, but also with learning the habit of that interior prayer where we recollect ourselves, we withdraw from a moment from the world in order to have that surge of the heart that Teresa talks about to Focus the eyes of the soul on Christ right in order to just express little aspirations

I love you Lord Lord Jesus Christ in me his sinner right the Practicing those praise or the Hail Mary right to say the Hail Mary the practice of the rosary These are all ways that we can begin to suffuse the day with prayer and try to actualize that command of Paul, pray without ceasing. Here's a direct quote from him. I just pulled this up. Let's see here. Yeah, so this is in the Secunda Secunda, question 83, question 14. Here's a section, so it doesn't kind of encapsulate everything he wants to say, but he says, the quantity of a thing should be commensurate with its end. For instance, the quantity of the dose should be commensurate with health.

And so it is becoming that prayer should last long enough to arouse the fervor of the interior desire and when it exceeds this measure so that it cannot be continued any longer without causing weariness, it should be discontinued." And then he's about to say what you just said about the short, he calls them ejaculations or ejaculatory prayers, like you say, like, Lord Jesus have mercy on me. Wherefore Augustine says, it is said that the brethren, I love that referring to our Eastern brethren in Egypt, make frequent but very short prayers rapid ejaculations as it were lest that vigilant and erect attention which is so necessary in prayer slacken and languish through the strain being prolonged and one more sentence here so by doing they make it sufficiently clear

not only that this attention 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. And just as we must judge of this in private prayers by considering the attention of the person praying, so too in public prayers we must judge of it by considering the devotion of the people." That sounds like a nice bit of advice for a priest, you know? It's like in public prayers, if you're going to pray all three mysteries of the rosary, well, let's just settle there, maybe. Yeah, Thomas is so wise. There's so much there. Yeah. Well, I think what he's probably doing, just based on what you read to me there, at least what strikes me is that that's good

advice for especially those of us who, let's say, in the first fervor of a conversion or you're trying to live spiritual life, one temptation can be to think, well, if I'm going to be holy, I need to say a lot of things. I need to say a lot of vocal prayer so that quantity equals quality, right? And I think what Thomas is saying is, no, not necessarily. That's not necessarily the case. In fact, because for one thing, one of the perennial temptations in prayer, one of the perennial difficulties is going to be distraction, right? That we weak mortals can only keep our attention for so long on so many things. In fact, there was a quote I put in the book, I think it was on page 10. I put it in here purely because it consoled me.

This is from Thomas in the Summa. He says, quote, even holy men sometimes suffer from a wandering of mind when they pray, end quote. I thought, thank you Jesus. Even Thomas admitted, look, even the holy said men, you know, suffer from distraction. So I think what he's trying to recognize there is on the one hand, we don't want to force prayer, right, by overestimating the kind of activity that has to go into it, right? On the other hand, we don't want to just say our prayers and then forget about God for the rest of the day. And this is where the punctuations throughout the day, I like to call them aspirations, right, from the heart, a prayer from the heart, can really

help us develop the habit of not forgetting God throughout the day, so that we can strive toward that goal of praying without ceasing. And so it's a combination of local prayer, but also meditation, pondering God's Word, and then also that contemplative gaze, taking time to withdraw and look at the Lord with the eyes of the heart. If somebody comes to you, Dr. Petra, and they say, look, I really want to get serious about my prayer life, but quite honestly, I barely pray, but I'm willing to do it. Tell me what to do.

So suppose somebody were to say that to you and you were to take them up on it. What would you have them do? Don't give them something too general. If someone said to you, be specific, tell me how I could begin my prayer life, what would you tell them? The first thing you have to do is get up at a fixed time. In other words, if you don't make time for prayer, if you're not faithful to a time of prayer, praying sometimes, you're never going to pray all the time. So, a fixed time of prayer, whatever it might be, figure out what works for you in your state of life, right? Where you can carve out at least half an hour, preferably an

hour, although you can split that in a day, where you can have time alone with God. It's very, very important. Jesus, you'll notice Jesus, don't misconstrue what I'm about to say, but Jesus never commands his disciples to go to mass. He never commands them to go to the liturgy, right? But he does command them to go into their room in secret and pray to their father in secret, right? And that the father who sees in secret will hear them. So the reason I say he never commands him to go to Mass is sometimes we can fall into the temptation of thinking, once I've done my communal vocal

prayer, whether it's the Mass or the liturgy, right, then I'm done. But Jesus obviously considered secret, private prayer alone with the Father to be an essential part of the spiritual life. And yet how many of us think, well, no, it's the public prayer, that's the main thing that I do, and then I'll get to the private prayer if I have some time for it. Okay, so the first thing I would say is, commit yourself to a fixed time of rising, because morning is the best time. That's what all the saints say. St. John Klimekos says, the way your morning goes will determine the way the rest of your day goes.

And I know all you night people out there might be saying, oh no, I can't possibly pray in the morning. I'm just telling you what the saint said. It helps when I'm a morning person. Don't shoot the messenger. Don't shoot the messenger. Don't shoot the messenger. Okay, so because what you're doing when you get up at a fixed time is you're giving God the first fruits of your day. And let's face it, whenever we wake up, whatever that first thought comes

in our mind is, that's usually a good revelation of what we love or what we're attached to or what we're anxious about. So make a concerted effort to make your first thoughts, the first roots of your day about God, focused on God. That'd be the first point, fixed time of rising. The second point is, I would say, begin reading scripture and start with the Gospels if you don't know where else to start. The saints are really clear on this, both in the East and the West, that the best place to begin meditating is on the life of Christ, on the words of Christ and on the life of Christ. St. Teresa, St. Therese of Lesault said that in her Sovereign Soul. She says, above all, it's the Gospels that

consume my time of meditation. I'm always finding fresh lights in them, new and enthralling meanings. You can never tap out the gospels, right? And then the third thing I would say is, if you wanna begin practicing kind of slow, quiet meditation on scripture, Saint Ignatius of Loyola and other saints will advise, start with the Lord's Prayer, the words of the Lord's Prayer, right?

Most like- I love, I think it the Lord's prayer. Right? Most likely. I love, I think it was, Go ahead. Sorry, I think it was Ignatius who said maybe, at least from what I read in your book, it sounded like he was saying, hey, just take an hour and just meditate on it. Maybe just take the word, our Father,

just spend 20 minutes on that or something. Just thinking about it, yeah. No, I remember thinking that thing and wow, Ignatius, yeah, you're setting the bar, right? Right there at the very beginning. But you know, he was very powerful and holy saint. But no, but that's actually good advice that you'll see elsewhere. So people might say, well, I don't know the Bible well enough.

Well, really, if you, certainly if you were raised Christian, you probably know Matthew six verses nine to 13. You probably have them memorized. Even if you're Catholic, you probably have them memorized. They go like this, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. I mean, so most Christians have Matthew 6, 9 to 13 memorized. So start there. Pondering the words of Lord's Prayer, our Father. Think about that. What does that mean? What does it mean to call God Father? What are the implications for what it means for who He is?

What are the implications for what it means for who I am? What does it mean for the implications of who the world is, right? All my brothers and sisters in the world. Who am I praying for when I address God as our Father? How audacious is it of me as a little creature, as a worm of a man, to speak to the Creator of the universe as not just Lord, not just master, not just kurios, right, the Lord, but as father. So just take some time to think about that and then work through each of the lines of Lord's Prayer. And you know what? If you're puzzled by it, you don't know what it means,

good, ponder it, ask God, what does this mean? Lead us not into temptation. Think about it for a while And that's precisely how meditation will begin to help you grow. So I would say The my basic, you know advice there is get up at a fixed time Begin reading the Word of God begin reading the Bible every day probably not more than a chapter For sure. Just take time, just a little bit. You don't have to do a lot, right? And then leave time to think about what you've read, to reflect on it, and really most important, then talk to God about it.

Don't just think about it, but then talk to Him about it, whether you're using vocal words or just interior conversation, then that'll begin the habit of taking the word into yourself and moving beyond just the kind of exterior recitation of vocal prayer, which is really important, but it isn't somewhere we want to stop. We don't want to stop there. Yeah, yeah. That's really helpful. Thank you for giving us those kind of practical tips. I want to ask a few questions if you don't mind that have come in from my patrons. Oh, sure. Hey, one last practical point, Matt.

Let me just say this. Please. I forgot about this. So crucial. At the beginning of each time of prayer, take a moment to remember who it is you're talking to. Teresa says that. Don't just start talking, right? We all know somebody, we all know somebody

who has conversations with us and we can tell they're not there, we might as well not be there, they're just monologuing. Don't just monologue. Before you begin, remember who it is you're speaking to. And then begin. That's so important, yeah, thanks for that. Got a couple of questions that have come in here from patrons. Let me see. I forgot my spectacles today and I'm getting old and so this is getting more and more difficult. But here we go.

Brannon Broxton, thanks for being a patron. Brannon, he says this, I'm a Protestant convert currently enrolled in RCIA thanks to your work and other Catholic scholars. How important is praying the rosary for the spiritual life? Should one aim to pray the rosary at least once a day? Thanks for all your work." Wonderful, wonderful question. Yeah, well, let me answer it by saying this.

Well, what is the Rosary? That's the first question. Yeah. So what the Rosary is, is a beautiful combination of vocal prayer, meditation and contemplative prayer. Okay. So at the level of vocal prayer,

the Rosary is a combination of the Our Father, right, which is from Scripture, Matthew chapter 6, the Hail Mary, which is a combination of two passages, the Angelic Citation and Elizabeth's greeting to Mary in the Gospel of Luke, and then the Glory Be,. So those those vocal prayers are the words of scripture. Right. So you're praying through the exterior form of the rosary, vocal prayer, words of scripture. Secondly, however, and this is important, what John Paul the second in his apostolic letter on the rosary, which I'd highly recommend you're reading Rosarium Virginis Mariae on the Holy Rosary, he says, however, that's the body of the Rosary.

The soul of the Rosary is meditation on the mysteries of the life of Christ, right? So you have the joyful mysteries, the sorrowful mysteries, the luminous mysteries now were added by John Paul the Second, and the glorious mysteries. And so in that way, what each decade does of the Rosary, as you're engaging in vocal prayer, you're also focusing the interior eyes of your mind, right, on a given mystery from the life of Jesus. And so when you do that, it transforms the rosary from just vocal prayer into meditation. And then finally, the rosary is contemplative prayer as well,

because you're not just looking at the mysteries of the life of Jesus and thinking about them. As John Paul II teaches, you're also trying to see them through the eyes of Mary, right? With the contemplative gaze that Mary herself had as she witnessed the life of Jesus unfolding over the course of his public ministry all the way through to his passion and death.

So insofar as the Rosary is a blend of vocal prayer, meditation, and contemplative prayer, it is absolutely essential and beautiful and, shall we say, vital for the Christian life because it is those three forms, those three principal forms of prayer, all put together into one package. So, although it's primarily a Western tradition, you can see, again, this is one of those times where the East and the West overlap, because any Eastern or Western Christian mystic is going to tell you, vocal prayer, meditation, and contemplative prayer, they're all essential. And in this case, the rosary is just a beautiful Western expression of those that is part of

our particular patrimony, and for me at least, something that I do every single day and have done. I'm going to ask you a question that could be misunderstood, but is it possible to idolize a devotion, a devotional, like the rosary? Oh, sure. Okay, yeah, I see where that's come from. Let me be clear here. So when I say essential, I mean in terms of its form, not in terms of its content and substance, like, of course, as a historical form of a devotion, the rosary itself took centuries to develop

and isn't practiced by Christians everywhere, right? So I hope that was clear when I was just- Oh, yes, it was. Absolutely. I wasn't saying that in response to what you were saying. Okay, good, okay. I just see... But there are more people out there who will... Yeah, okay, I got you. Yeah, so yes, as a devotion, it is, I think...

Hmm, how should I put this? We do have to avoid the temptation that could be present to make the particular form of vocal prayer or meditation or contemplation which we find fulfilling or to which we are attached or which is part of our own patrimony, like say within the West or within the Roman right or within the East or within Eastern rites, to make those the end all and be all that all Christians of whatever right or tradition or personal persuasion have to follow in order to be real Christians, right? So, yes, we can, it would be a real problem to take any devotion and make it into a kind of litmus test for authentic Christianity, because if you want to look at the Gospels, I mean Jesus himself never commands anyone, right, to ponder the angelic salutation or the Elizabethan greeting or something like that. Now these are forms that the Holy Spirit manifests and works out over time and

space and throughout human history in the living tradition of the church, precisely because it is living. So yes, we definitely want to avoid the danger of making the form of spirituality or a particular expression or devotion to which I happen to be attached, the one that every Christian has to follow, because just historically that's going to be problematic, right? Let's say nothing of spiritually. But speaking out the other side of my mouth now, am I getting your point? Well, you are getting my point exactly, and I'm in full agreement with you. But if someone is sort of, someone is devoted to say Al-Latih Fatima,

which of course is a private revelation, I understand that, but if somebody still believes it, and you've got our blessed mother every single time telling people pray the Holy Rosary, it kind of gets weird now. You're like, well, it's not absolutely essential, and yet if you're looking at Al-Latih Fatima, and she's saying this in every sort of apparition, it's hard not to see it as essential.

Sure. No, this is a great question. Okay. So here, what you're raising really is the question of the distinction between private and public revelation, right? And one, and at least according to the catechism, the Catholic church has a really excellent section on this in the catechism. Yeah. According to the, you mind if I just looked that up real quick? Yeah, let's go. Actually, rather than just hearing what Grant Petrie thinks about it, let me, um, let me give it, now you might find it quicker than me because you probably

got, uh, some kind of, uh, some sort of computer. Let me see here. We'll see. Um, no, I think I can find it quicker than your computer. Okay. I think it's in 50. Let's see here. We'll see. No, I think I can find it quicker than your computer. Okay, I think it's in 50. Let's do it. 67? Yeah, there you go. Throughout, oh golly, throughout the ages. Throughout the ages, there have been so-called private revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of church. They do not, however, belong to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve

or complete Christ's definitive revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the magisterium of the church, the census fidelium, the sense of the faithful, knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the church. So you'll notice here, the Catechism is giving a very nuanced statement here, that private revelations, even those that are authenticated by the church, accepted by the church, like Our Lady of Fatima, right, which we celebrate, we have a feast for that. At the same time, they do not belong to the deposit of faith.

And it's only the deposit of faith that is binding on all Christians everywhere to the same degree, as matters day-fi-day, to which we have to give the assent of faith. We do not have to give the assent of faith to private revelations in such a way that they would be binding in, say, the same way as the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount on the public revelation of Jesus Christ, or the dogmas of faith for that matter. So in this case, it takes a bit of discernment, right? What does Catechism say? That they help us live more fully by it at a certain period of history.

But that means that they don't necessarily help every Christian at every period of history in every different place live it more fully in the same way. So they're just, the point is, they're not universally binding in the same way that dogmas or doctrines of the faith are. So I would say in this case, with regard to Our Lady of Fatima, what would be required would be discernment and ask, what is Our Lady saying to the children to whom she appeared, and then what is she saying to me through them, right? And while a person might take a personal vow, binding themselves, for example, to say the rosary every day or to always celebrate first Saturdays, for example, as a response, an authentic

response to Our Lady's call, that doesn't mean that that answer is going to be binding on every Christian in every way at the same, you know, throughout Christian history in every place. Is that helpful, Matt? Does that make sense? Very clear. Thank you very much. Please don't turn, in other words, please don't turn private revelations into public revelation. We always get in trouble whenever we do that. Don't bind what the church hasn't found and don't lose what the church hasn't lost. That's what I like to tell you. Amen. Amen. Michael Biederman is saying that it looks like he's a Protestant convert and when he became a Catholic he was disappointed to discover that there weren't that many solid Catholic commentaries.

So he says, since Dr. Petra is a good, great, he says, biblical scholar, I'm wondering if he has any insight or advice regarding this. Are there any even relatively cheap Catholic full Bible commentaries? Right now, I still just reference Matthew Henry a lot. Yeah, what's some good commentaries people could check out? Okay. Do you have two hours, man? I mean, I don't like... No. two hours, man? I mean, I've been to each one of them. I'll do some shameless self-promotion first. So I would tell him, okay, where's the camera? In front of your face, in front of your face. Okay, so if he's looking first of all for a kind of single volume commentary on the

Old Testament, Dr. John Bergsmann and I wrote this book, A Catholic Introduction to the Bible. This is volume one on the Old Testament. It's a little book, just about a thousand pages, but it will take you through each book of the Old Testament looking at it from a Catholic perspective. So I would definitely say start there. There also, there's another series known as the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture. These are a little bit more in depth because they're one volume commentaries on each Of books of the New Testament that would be another resource that you could check out and then

There's so many here in terms in terms of ancient medieval commentators I really would highly recommend that he start looking about as well St. Thomas Aquinas wrote commentaries on the gospel of Matthew the the Gospel of John, as well as all of the Pauline epistles and Hebrews, which he considered Pauline. So if he wants a good example of Catholic exegesis from the medieval period that's both spiritual and exegetical, Thomas Aquinas' commentaries are just absolutely outstanding,

and he'll give you a sense of the breadth of the Catholic tradition. Yeah, and I'd add to that, check out Emmaus Road, which published, I think, that book you were holding that you had written. But they have an excellent little copy of Aquinas' commentary on Romans. So they also have ones where you've kind of got the Latin and the English, sometimes the Latin, the Greek and the English all lined up, and they have these massive big blue books, but they also have a very beautiful, somewhat short book on his commentary on Romans.

So you might want to check that out too. Well, I'll throw out that it was actually Ignatius Press who published the Old Testament. I don't want to- Ah, I do not want to get that wrong. Don't let him get mad at me. Yes. That's just a place to start. And he can always, if he digs about a bit,

there's definitely a lot out there. You don't have to just keep reading Matthew and Henry. Okay. We've got excellent resources that are coming up. I'm actually, this year I'm supposed to wrap up, finish the New Testament volume with Dr. Bergsmar. So that should be coming out in the foreseeable future. But then we'll have, it'll be basically a 2000 page commentary on the old New Testaments from a thoroughly Catholic perspective So tell them just just hold up a little longer. We'll get that New Testament intro out as well Two more questions here Patron Eric old I think that's how I say his last name Eric. Thanks for being a patron. He asks you dr

Peter what are the do's and don'ts of Eucharistic adoration? I'm also currently enrolled in our CIA and would like to learn more about this Do's and don'ts of Eucharistic adoration. I'm also currently enrolled in RCIA and would like to learn more about this. Do's and don'ts of Eucharistic adoration. Wow, I don't know that there's any official list of those. So I'll just give you a few tips. Actually, maybe drawing a little bit from the book itself, from the introduction of spiritual life. So I've seen in my own lifetime a resurgence of interest in and practice of Eucharistic adoration among Catholics, going to Adoration Chapel or into a sanctuary with the Blessed

Sacrament and sitting before the Blessed Sacrament, spending time, doing the Holy Hour. Fulton Sheen was very prominent in making this practice widely known in the 20th century and really fostering devotion to it and excitement about it. So a couple things. First, I would say that Eucharistic Adoration, let me talk about some do's first. First of all, do it. It's wonderful and it's deeply rooted in the spiritual tradition of the church. We were just talking about how important it is not just engaging communal vocal prayer although that's absolutely essential the master by liturgy

also to take time to be alone with christ so private prayer or secret prayer as jesus calls it at a university iterations a perfect example that because you take time away you go to a sacred space just to be alone with Jesus Second thing I would say is during that time one of the questions people tend to have is well, what do I do? Well, one thing you can do if you need to focus your attention is to take that time as a time to meditate on Scripture meditate on the Word of God because when you're reading the Bible, this is really important

It's not like you're taking your focus off of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, because Christ isn't just present in the Blessed Sacrament, He's also present in His Word, okay? Insofar as He is the Word made flesh and the scripture is the inspired Word, reading the Bible isn't just about reading words on a page, it's also encountering the Word in the Word of God. So meditation during a holy hour on Scripture is a great way to help focus and to begin thinking about Christ. And then the other thing I would say as a do is, like we talked about in contemplative prayer, in the chapter on contemplative prayer. If contemplation is a silent gaze of love, right, between the soul and God, where I look at God and God looks at me, then Eucharistic

adoration is a supremely perfect occasion to practice contemplative prayer in that simple form. Because what are you doing? You're literally sitting there quietly gazing at the face of Christ which is hidden on the appearance of bread and wine and then he is present to you. And at the risk of talking about another book in my book, Jesus and the Jewish Church of Eucharist, this really hit me hard. The chapter called the bread of the Presence. This was an ancient bread that was kept in the tabernacle, kept in the Old Testament sanctuary.

And in Hebrew, it's literally the lechem ha'panim, and that means the bread of the face. Now, insofar as the bread of the face is a type of the Eucharist, which is the bread of the face of God, Christ, who has become man. What am I doing when I go to Eucharist Adoration? I am going into the fulfillment of the bread of the face, the bread of the face of God, the bread of the presence.

I'm entering into Christ's presence so that I can gaze upon His face, hidden, to be sure, but under the appearance of bread and wine and yet truly and really present. So there's no more exquisite place for contemplative prayer to begin practicing that than before Christ, the bread of the presence, just like Moses would go into the tabernacle to speak to God, Panin to Panin face to face. So too in Eucharistic adoration, that's what we do. So that leads into the don't. The one don't I would say is don't give in the temptation and think you have to do a bunch of stuff when you're in the Adoration Chapel. Just go,

read scripture, ponder it, and then take time to just look at him and love him. Yeah. We have a super chat from Esteban Marquez. He says, Dr. Petra, what is the difference between your new book and the talk about the three stages of the spiritual life that you sell on your website? Oh, okay, great question. So what he's alluding to there is I have a course on my website called Spiritual Theology,

Christian Prayer and the Three Stages of the Spiritual Life. This is actually audio recordings of a series of lectures I gave almost 15 years ago now on this topic. And so the book actually flows out of that experience of teaching that class. So what I would say to him is there's a ton of overlap between that course and this book. This book is me trying to take a lot of what I shared in that course and put it into a written format. However, I've learned a lot since I taught that course. And so there's more in some ways, there's more in the book than there was in the class lectures. In another way, there's there's less in this sense. In the course lectures, I tried to take the students through what the saints had to say and what scripture said, about the Purgative, the Illuminative, and the Unitive ways, the three stages of spiritual growth. In this book I'm focused primarily on the first stage, on the Purgative way, going all the way up to

the dark night of the senses, which is a transition from the Purgative to the Illuminative way according to St. John of the Cross. And the reason I did that is because my wife was reading the manuscript and when she saw that I had like 53 chapters, originally I planned to do all three stages in one book, she said you might want to reconsider that because you might want someone to actually read this book. And if it's good 600 pages, it's going to dramatically reduce the number of people who feel intimidated by it. It might make people think, this is too much for me. So just start at the beginning.

So that's really what this book is, is focusing on the purgative way, focusing on the beginning stages of spiritual growth according to Jesus and the saints. Okay, and then my final question comes from a patron, Nate, golly, I should never try to pronounce last names. That's what I've learned through this interview. So Nate asks, do you have any advice on how to approach Protestant friends and family about the difference between having an active Holy spiritual life versus trying to earn salvation or appear holy?

That's a great question. Very good question. This is going to be one of the issues that the fathers of the church are going to deal with in some depth. For example, St. John Cashion, who is a great spiritual father, learned from the Desert Fathers, and he's one of the few Latin fathers who is revered and read equally in the West and in the East. So he's in the Filicalia in the East, but he's also, Saint Dominic, for example, used to carry around Saint John Cashion's conferences with him, along with his Bible. It's like his go-to book on the spiritual life.

So Saint John Cashion talks about this, and you'll see others, they wrestle with the question of the relationship between divine agency, or grace, right, and human effort, or works, as we might describe it. And so what I would say to any Protestant who might say, your emphasis on activity smacks of works righteousness or makes me concerned about that, I would simply respond first and foremost by saying, it's not my emphasis, it's Jesus's emphasis. If you go back to the Sermon on the Mount, it's not me who's saying my disciples need to pray, they need to fast, and they

need to give alms. It's Jesus himself saying that those works, and that's what he calls them, although translations sometimes obscure it, these works of piety are basic practices of being a disciple of Jesus, right? So you don't have to be a Catholic to think that those are important. You just have to read the Sermon on the Mount and look carefully at it and recognize it's Jesus himself who says,

okay, if you wanna be my disciple, these are what you have to do. When you pray, say these words, vocal prayer, memorize vocal prayers. When you fast, do it in this way. Don't do it so everyone can see it. And when you give alms, not if you give alms, but when you give alms, do it in secret. So those basic works of piety are part of the Christian tradition because they're part of the teaching of Christ. And then look at the letters of Paul also, like it's everywhere in Paul. We'll talk about works of the flesh and fruits of the spirit. I mean, this is part of the spiritual life. And the way you

would answer them is by quoting the saints, St. John Cashion, for example, that it's absolutely essential for us to engage in these works of piety, these good works. And at the same time, we absolutely have to acknowledge every single time we engage in one that the only reason we're able to do anything, the only reason we're able to pray well, the only reason we're able to give alms, the only reason we're able to fast, is because of the grace of God. It's all through grace. Oh, well, thank you so much, Dr. Petra, for coming on the show. Hey, have I sent you one of these beer steins? You have sent me one, although I dropped it and hit the floor. Oh no, I'm trying to see if this is gonna...

Because I'm clumsy, yeah, yeah. Well, can I send you another one? Of course, of course. Yeah, please, if you want one, just shoot me an email. For everybody else, you're going to become a patron, but for Dr. Peter, he's special. So yeah, just email me your address and I'll ship you one. But God bless you, and all the best on this new book, and thanks kindly for being on the show. I think it is.

I mean, how can it not be? I think one of the primary reasons we quit praying is we feel like we suck at it and we don't like to suck at things. And so stop the things we think we suck at. And so, yeah, amen. We have to be humble and realize, yes, we're not good at. And so, yeah, amen. You have to be humble and realize, yes, we're not good at it. Yes, it's a battle. It's a struggle. But you know what?

Prayer or hell. Yeah, it's, it's pray or die. As Agathon said, prayer is warfare to the last breath. Hmm. So that reminds me of what Chesterton said about marriage. He said it's a duel to the death, which different, different analogy. But yeah, yeah, I love that. Love is right.

Love involves two wills that sometimes the clash of two different wills that don't see things the same way, but the ever less are seeking union. Right. Someone, someone said something beautiful here in the live chat. that don't see things the same way, but nevertheless are seeking union, right? Someone said something beautiful here in the live chat. They said, I think I listen to Matt, me, more than I pray. Time to stop listening and start doing. I would agree with that. I mean, and look, and this applies to all of us, right?

So this isn't me trying to make anyone feel bad. I'm trying to, you know, but it's like, look, if I've got time to listen to a podcast, if I've got time to watch even 10 minutes of a YouTube video, and we all do, well, then I gotta be praying. But, you know, I think a kind of Thomistic concept, this isn't a quote of Aquinas',

but I think the idea is the only way to conquer a desire is by a stronger desire, you know? And I'm not going to be conquered to pray more by someone shaming me. It's going to be the love of Christ that I think that that's that's the in recognizing that and desire to love him in return. That's that's the thing that's going to conquer my apathy. And so we need to grow in love with Jesus. And no, that's and you know what else? One of the reasons I did this in the book, it was following Aquinas, is that in every chapter on the

vices, originally I just had chapters on the vices and my wife was reading it and she's like, this is too heavy. You've got to give some hope here. So I added to each chapter the opposite virtue because we don't want to just root out vice. We want to grow in virtue. And once you begin to see yourself growing in certain virtues, it'll give you encouragement, to go on and to keep going down the path, to keep trotting down the path. Because look, Matt, there's so much going on in the world. You know that. There's so much we can just spend time complaining about, being angry about.

But it's so much harder to look at myself and say, well, what's wrong with me? Amen, brother. How can I, what do I need to fix? Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Gosh. This is one of the reasons I wrote this book because there's a lot in the world and yeah. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Well, sorry. You just, you struck a chord there. I mean, I think those who are conservative look at who they call and who I call leftists and say, look, you're pointing at things that are outside of you

and demanding that they change while you while nothing seems to be required of you. You know, like you're complaining about global warming or you're complaining about racism. Some of these are legitimate things that need to be rectified, of course. But like, what are you bloody doing personally? Or are you just pointing at other things and feeling morally superior? Okay, that's what those of us who might be more on the on the right say. But if we're honest, we can do the same thing who might be more, you know, in the conservative camp. It's like,

gosh, you keep renewing your ecclesiastical political feed, and we're kind of doing the same thing. Like we're condemning the bishops, we're condemning Pope Francis, we're condemning this priest or that priest, and we feel morally superior, and we feel outraged, and outrage kind of feels productive, but it's like when I go to,

and I know we all know this, so forgive me for preaching, but when I go and stand before my blessed Lord, He's not going to ask me about Pope Francis. He's not going to ask me about my parish priest or my bishop. He's going to say, did you love the poor? Did you forgive your enemies? Did you? Yeah. It is so easy in a time of scandal and confusion and all those things to allow the focus on our own sins and on our own faults and on our own failings within our own lives and in our own homes to go by the wayside and not realize that the reason the world is as bad as it is, is because I'm not as holy as I should be. Somebody should go tweet that immediately. That is, or better yet, break Twitter and never go on it again. But amen, amen, amen, amen, amen. Yeah, thank you, Dr. Petro. I am glad you exist. Thank you for your yes to our Lord and to your bride and your children. And thanks for thanks for being on the show. Hey, finally, you've got an excellent, excellent YouTube channel. Every time I go over to your YouTube

channel, I'm like, how is it that this man gets this many views? Well, it's kind of obvious after hearing you speak, but I'll put a link in the description to that too. But just quickly, what's that called? How can people find that? Oh, I don't even know that. So the guys at Catholic Productions, if you go to brantpeacher.com, Catholic Productions there, they run all that for me. And the YouTube channel, what we do there, I guess it's just Brant Peacher. I'm sorry. This is embarrassing. I shouldn't... No, it's beautiful. This is either because you're like an academic or you're holy or both. It's one of those.

I cut my nose in the books and off the screens as much as possible. But at the YouTube channel, what we do is, I have a weekly program that I do called The Mass Readings Explained. So every Sunday, you can come on and I'll walk through the Old Testament, the Psalm, the second reading, and the gospel, and I do videos about 45 minutes for each week for a subscription. So if you subscribe, we'll give that to you every week. But then we also wanted to make shorter videos that excerpts from that available just to

the public on YouTube. And so a lot of those videos on YouTube on the… Okay, Catholic Productions, yeah. Yeah, theproductions.com, yeah, and brantpetree.com. Either one of those should have a link to the YouTube channel. And then on YouTube, I'm sure it's just Brant Petree, just look it up, Brant Petree on YouTube. And there on that channel, what you're going to do is you're going to find me just explaining the Bible to the best of my ability, taking you through passages from the Gospels, the

Old Testament, from St. Paul, largely from the readings that are part of the lectionary of the calendar, but trying to show where those come from in the Old Testament, how they relate to the New Testament, and then what the implications are for your own spiritual life. So you might check that out on the YouTube channel and see if that's helpful to you. There's lots of- Yeah, great. I'll put the link in the description. And just a reminder to those watching, if you want to get that book by Brian Petra, Dr. Petra, click the link in the description below on the spiritual life

because even though I've only read two chapters, I was really struck by it and I'm really looking forward to reading the rest. You do a really good job at speaking. Yeah, just like a fellow brother. It's not overwhelming, it's not above my head. Yeah, I was just thinking of an analogy. It'd be like if you went on a pilgrimage, right?

Like, you know, what's that thing in Spain, the way of St. James? Yeah, the way of St. James, yeah. You know, it's the difference like going on YouTube and listening to someone who's crushed it every year and their advice to you, that's kind of like reading St. Teresa of Avila. You know, talking to the schmuck next to you,

you know, who's at least doing better than you are, that has its own merit. It's like, dude, how are you doing this? How are your feet not blistered? It's like, that's a beautiful and worthwhile thing. And and and so I'm not calling you a short person to an X. Right. Yeah. Like I'm writing this as a lay person. I hope that it's going to be helpful to consecrate religious.

I've already met religious and priests who found it valuable. But at the same time, I really wanted to write a book that anybody could read. And by the way, if you did like it and you found it accessible, it's because my wife edited every single chapter. She's a much better writer than I am. And she would say, Brandt, you're you're you're going too high. Take it down. Make it clear. And she really helped us be if you think it's a beautiful book,

it's because you you see you'll see her hand in it as well as mine. All right. Beautiful. Dr. Petra. God bless you. Thanks for being on the show. See you later. Thanks so much, Matt.