...prayer at Mass, because the prayer for the 9th Sunday, the opening prayer for the Mass, begs God to help us see with the eye of the heart. And this is exactly what discernment is and inner vision. Maybe it seems like I'm belaboring all this point a little bit about the discernment, but it's not just in the Christian religion, but in every major religion that spans millennia. The idea of right seeing, right thinking, right thought is inner sight. It's what it is. We even say, I see. But the idea of right thinking is paramount because everything begins with a thought. Everything. There is nothing that doesn't begin with a thought. Not a word, not a chair, not a cathedral, not a medical apparatus.

[01:03]

Everything begins with thinking. So for all major faiths, the idea of right thinking is paramount And that's why, for my own sake, and hopefully for yours, I'm trying to help us remember all the ways of applying right thinking in the complexity of our own lives, the complexity of our own vocations, and certainly the complexity of the world, and the complexity of the lives of people who come to us for help. I use the example of Tobiah today, and it's a really important one, because what I started the retreat by saying was, if our Lord put so clearly before us good and bad, life and death, why do we have so much difficulty choosing right?

[02:08]

Because we certainly do. And one of the reasons, as I reminded us, is that our vision is already challenged by original sin and by our own sin that we add on top of it, which makes us compromised and not able to see well. But we also have the problem of shared discernment. There's almost no decision you make about your life That's not joint with someone else. Joining a community, the community also has to see that you have a vocation. You want to marry somebody, they also have to see they feel called to marriage. the complexity of the situation of Oscar Romero, where the nuncio saw his way, but the nuncio has to see, the Pope has to see, not just Archbishop Romero. It's the interplay of all the discernment that has to be done, which complicates things a lot.

[03:13]

So in Tobit, for example, it's really important because he really messed things up when he accused his wife of stealing this goat. He messed things up. The story is there for us to learn. The scriptures are a mirror of human life. It's what they are. The story is there to look into it like we're looking into a mirror and to learn from it. But we should consider a few rules of psychiatry when figuring out discernment. Some of them are very basic. A normal reaction to a normal thing is normal. An abnormal reaction to a normal thing is not normal. A normal reaction to an abnormal thing is not normal. Something is wrong. So he has a very strong reaction which provokes division between his wife and himself, and she hurls at him the kind of thing that maybe your family has hurled at you once or twice, mine certainly has.

[04:28]

Oh, you're so good, and here you are, now the real you is coming out. Because he was phenomenal at seeing and acting right in the community. especially related to the dead, and with courage, and now over a stupid goat. He's completely unreasonable and irascible, and hurting her. He hurt her. He called her a goat thief. It's all he had left was Tobiah and his wife, Anna. He had no one else left. And he calls her a goat thief. He hurt her. And she reacts very strongly by saying, now the real you is coming out. And of course she's just trying to hurt him back, and God knows he's hurt enough. But it's true that under stress we're not normal. Ground that we gain in the development of our character and in our virtues

[05:29]

ground that we gain over a lifetime, and we do it gradually. The way you act becomes a habit. Your habits shape your character, and your character leads you to the end result of your life, which is your destiny. But we all regress under stress. It's perfectly normal. The human being that does not regress under stress is not normal. So we can allow that Tobit was regressing because of his blindness and he was already desolate. It's just the same night. He's already desolate of the dead brother that was found on the street that day. So the point is we have to make allowances for ourselves, and we have to make allowances with our brothers and with people that we're counseling or trying to help in any way, that it's not an even playing field.

[06:32]

It's like your blood pressure. You might say my blood pressure is 120 over 80. Well, a minute ago it was 118 over 115, and five minutes from now it'll be 122 over, it's not static. There's nothing static about it. As a matter of fact, static blood pressure equals dead. When your blood pressure is static, you're dead. And this is how it is in life in general. When we are static, we're dead, either physically or inside, but we're dead. So we have to make for the allowances in discernment that come from the normal human ups and downs and the extreme ups and downs that people face that make it very uneven and why somebody can be enormously wise one minute and enormously foolish in another if they're not related to the same thing. In any case, thought, right thinking, shapes what we say,

[07:38]

and you know many words can never be taken back. And right thinking shapes how we act, and we've all done many things we regret. So trying to keep the inner vision, the thinking, finely tuned so that it's right thinking which is our guide is one of the enormous difficult challenges of the inner life, anybody's inner life, but especially for those whose life is devoted to the inner life. The Gospel reading clarifies something more than there was time to talk about in a brief sermon. knowledge, knowledge in Aramaic and for the Essenes, because the Lord had amazing influence from the Essene community.

[08:52]

But our understanding of wisdom, for example, and discernment, is very much Greek and Latinized. whereas the understanding of our Lord Himself of wisdom and discernment is earthy, Aramaic. And for sure, centuries of other elaborations and comparisons and study have enriched the notion for us. It's not that we should say, let's dump all the Latin and Greek heritage that we have and go back to the Aramaic. For sure, they add layers and layers of richness and understanding, but the original understanding should not be lost or crowded out by the newer layers. And the ancient understandings are very fascinating. For example, wisdom, which is what discernment is. It's seeing the right way to act or speak right now.

[09:57]

It's what it is. It's very practical. It's not like the Greek idea of wisdom and then physics and metaphysics and you just go higher and higher and farther and farther away from practical life. It's enormously practical. Wisdom means you know where to put your foot next. And if you can think of any moment in your life when you didn't know where to put your foot next, you understand the importance of this idea of wisdom. Dabhi turvobis. It is given to you. It will be given to you where to put your foot next. If you believe, if you're living in the Spirit, it will be given to you where to put your foot next. It's that practical. Wisdom is that practical. every step of the way being guided by the Spirit. The idea of wisdom in Aramaic has too many meanings for English.

[10:57]

We have to break it up. So, for example, when we talk about wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord, as the gifts of the Holy Spirit, three of them are related to wisdom. It's just for us to understand them, we have to break them down. Wisdom, understanding, and knowledge are three words we need to try to understand the one word for wisdom in Hebrew and Aramaic. And this is how it plays out, and it's fascinating, and I'm mentioning it because you see it played out in this form that's parsed out in our Lord's response to the Herodians today. Wisdom, our word wisdom in English, if we could take the Aramaic meaning, it means you have an instinct immediately when you're talking to somebody.

[12:07]

This person is false, this person is true. This is a trap, this is an open door. But you have an instinct right away. This situation is life-giving, this situation is death-dealing. Open your heart generously, close your door, the doors of your heart tight. This is danger. It's an instinct of knowing right away, is this safe, not safe, good, bad, trustable, not trustable. It's an instinct. Our Lord had it. They were on their way to him and he already felt they're coming here to trap me. Understanding then, once you have that instinct, Understanding then is to see what's under it. To understand what's under, understand, to see what's under it. What are the complexities that are under it? In the case of this morning, he sees this is a trap and this is a good question.

[13:08]

It's mixed. Knowledge is what very few people professional have. Knowledge means you know how to connect everything you know with a very practical action. Unfortunately, most people are so lost in worlds of thought and know every single thing about heat and how toasters and ovens and spaceships are made, but they can't even make a piece of toast. It's a real disconnect that we see in our world which is the best way to explain it is the complete loss of common sense in our world. It's not there. And it's because there's this huge disconnect between knowing and doing. Huge disconnect. Knowledge in the Aramaic way that we use the word knowledge for it means you have the instinct You see what's underneath and you know how to practically act at the moment.

[14:15]

They're all gifts, three gifts. One without the other is useless. If you don't get the instinct right away, we have the proverb, fools rush in where angels dare to tread. You mess everything up if you don't have that first instinct of what you're getting into. The second, if you don't see what's under it, you have no way of acting. You can either stay there because your instinct is this is good, or run away because your instinct is this is bad. But if you don't have the understanding of it, you can't act. Knowledge is the gift of acting, just the right way. Here are some really interesting things about discernment. Let's take the case of our Lord. How about this? Looking at our Lord and knowing that that's the Lord. That's pretty basic. Almost none of the apostles had it. Almost none of the disciples had it.

[15:17]

It really took a long time for them to get it, that this was the Messiah. Even when he appeared after, You walk miles with him to Emmaus, you have no idea it's him. He's cooking fish on the beach, you have no idea it's him. He walks through raging storms on the water, you're scared to death of him, you have no idea that it's him. What is it that we can look right at Christ and not see that it's him? Here's the more fascinating thing. The devil never doesn't know that it's him, never. The devil every time knows that this is the Christ. Every time knows that this is the Christ. Humans don't get it and evil does. But the devil has to be tuned into him. This is the one that can crush his head like the serpent. The devil has to be tuned into him. And here's the other fascinating thing, and in fact, the whole work of Evagrius Ponticus talking back, Antireticus, is based on this.

[16:27]

It's based on copying. It's based on copying who? Jesus. It's based on copying Jesus when? When he's in a lot of trouble. The whole Antireticus is based on that. And this is what is noticed in how our Lord was. Our Lord never did not answer. Even to the devil, he never did not answer. He always entered into the dialogue. It's not stick around because this is good, run away because this is bad. It's stand your ground and dialogue. With the goodness and with the evil, you stand your ground and you dialogue. Discerning our Lord's way is an important part of our discernment. because we have to incorporate our Lord's way into our way. The devil recognizes it's him all the time and he challenges the devil every single time.

[17:28]

And by quoting the scriptures, the devil makes himself scarce. And when the devil wins out over our Lord, it's only because of other people who don't make themselves scarce when the devil talks. And then accept the hatred, the destruction, the annihilation, which he's looking for, which then becomes wrought on the Messiah through human hands. Other people who don't dialogue. and use the scriptures and challenge, but rather absorb the tendencies of evil, which, as we saw from the beginning of the expulsion of Adam and Eve, are crouched like a lion, trying to destroy everything good and noble and true, everything and anybody who tries to approach the goodness of God. So, our Lord sees them coming.

[18:30]

He recognizes right away this is bad. He recognizes right away the question is good and it's helpful. And using his instinct and using his seeing underneath, he comes up with this gem of a response that keeps everybody astonished, both the evil ones and the good ones. But the wisdom that we pray for has to be this, the wisdom of strong and immediate instinct, the wisdom of understanding all the structures around it, and the wisdom of being able to act without losing any time. I'd like to give another small example of of discernment, and it's something that I know about Mother Teresa from her sisters, because I work with them a lot.

[19:39]

You know, Mother Teresa left Albania when she was 16 years old to join the Franciscan Sisters of Loreto, and so she wound up in Dublin or somewhere in Ireland, and joined there and went through all of her formation there and from there she was sent to India and she worked for many years with the Sisters of Loreto as a teacher, never having been home since she was 16 years old. In the meantime, as you know, this huge iron curtain falls and Albania is on the other side of it and India is not. And so, even if she has a chance to go home, it's not possible to go home. Then she has her vocation within the vocation, and the inner church politics of that were not pretty, I can assure you, where the sisters that she was leaving were not allowed to speak with her or help her in any way.

[20:46]

because she was leaving that community and she was really on her own, fending on her own, trying to... This is another example, the discernment of the community and the discernment of the member were not the same. There's no automatic on this that the discernment of the community is always right and the discernment of the member is always wrong. There's no automatic on this at all. And what has to be sorted out with that is, like I said, the challenge of the freedom of discernment. Was the nuncyo really free to discern, being so tied up with power and money? Was he really free to discern? And this is often the part that's missing in discernment, is the challenging of the very discernment. Is the discernment free or is it not free? And this is something we'll look at later, the freedom that comes from the Evangelical Council and where they come from in scripture and why.

[21:51]

But in any case, Mother Teresa went through hell on the streets of India with no patrimony, with no matrimony, with no nothing, trying to find her way. which eventually, as we all know, the hard part being hidden, that this became a very wondrous vocation for which she was roundly admired. And when she was in her mid-60s, her mother, who was in her late 80s, was dying, and wrote to her and begged her to come to see her. And Mother Teresa wrote to the dictator in Albania and asked permission to go and see her mother. And the answer she got was, you're most welcome to come to Albania, but if you come, you will never leave. And then she wrote again, and she tried to explain that the work of her community was worldwide, that she was very essential part of it still, that she couldn't come and stay in Albania.

[23:00]

She wished only to see her mother. And the answer that she got back was the same. So she had to discern. Do I follow the Ten Commandments? Do I honor my father and my mother? Do I take this absolute last chance to hold her in my arms and be held in hers? Do I comfort my mother in her dying moments and help her through her death? Or do I not? This, this, what I was saying about, unfortunately in catechesis and whatnot, spiritual life and religious life seem so easy. She went through hell with this, questioning God. I don't, I don't even own a watch. I own nothing but the bucket I wash my face in. I don't even know. I have done everything, everything you have asked me to do.

[24:01]

Is this really the answer? Is this really the answer? That I cannot see my mother who gave me to you before she dies. This is really the answer? And of course, it was the answer. And it wasn't the answer that God was imposing. This is once again like the people who come into the hospital and save sick children and shout out at God about it. God didn't organize communism. God didn't develop an iron curtain. God didn't develop Marxism. This is human beings and the price that we all have to pay because of what human beings do. In any case, she didn't go home. And her mother died. And this remained a desolation for her. Years go by. The iron curtain falls. Now she can freely go to Albania and freely leave again.

[25:07]

And so she takes a few sisters with her because she wants to go to her mother's grave. Leaving the airport in Albania, she stops at a florist and she buys two wreaths. And she goes to where her mother is buried and she lays a wreath there and she has prayers. And then she finds the grave of the dictator who would not allow her to see her mother. And she places a wreath at his grave and she prays for him. And the sisters say to her, how could you ever find it in yourself to do this? And she said to them, it doesn't happen overnight. It's not automatic. You have to live through and work through and pray through to come to the levels that we're supposed to be living at, which is, in her case, this high level of forgiveness and the inner peace that it gives her, not to be carrying a grudge to her grave against this man, but rather to be able to wish him well, whether he does or not.

[26:24]

It's phenomenal. This is why these people are heroic, following her own discernment in a way that crucified her. But this made her heroic, and her heroism is admired universally. But as is with the case of all the saints, her heroism shows us what we are capable of. As you know, most of the great people we admire have very troubled stories, enormously troubled stories. It's supposed to be that way because we're supposed to see that none of us, none of us can use it as an excuse. Anything about our lives, none of us. My God, Peter would have been the last choice of any chapter room to be the vicar of Christ. And Saul was a killer. And for Saul to come into the company of apostles and be one of the great... This isn't logic that works in human economy.

[27:30]

But the point is, there is no human being that can use anything about their past, or about their way of thinking, or about their character, as an excuse to stop the march towards greatness. And we don't have to be great publicly to be great. We can be as phenomenal in the way that we carry people in our hearts and in our prayers, and as phenomenal in how we deal with people privately as an Archbishop of San Salvador can be with a whole metropolitan city. The march is ours to make, armed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. There's something that unfortunately has gotten very lost in human beings, which helps all of this a lot. Because in all of our desire to see and know, we have a lot of strengths to draw from.

[28:35]

Our prayers, especially to the Holy Spirit. The Veni Creator wasn't written for nothing. Close friends, people who know us really well. who know our tendencies to think wrong this way or think wrong that way. People who help us plot where we are now on a longer timeline so that we see is there a consistency or not to our movements. But there's something else which has been completely given up in the world, and that is In older times, everybody knew that there are three ways that we know. Three ways. We know by our mind, we know by our heart, and we know by our gut. And they each tell us a different thing. In a way, our gut is very good instinctually. What is your gut telling you to do?

[29:39]

And our heart also knows by a way of relation with people that this is right or this is wrong. Our mind uses logic and intelligence to analyze and help us to decide. What's really fascinating in science now, in embryology, when we're first this pluripotent stem cell and then we start multiplying out and then we every cell can become something like a bone or a heart or an eye or a nerve which is why the medical scientists want to get the original matter now in order to try to make it develop into something that you can replace in a person. But in the migration of the brain during embryology A third of the brain stays in the head.

[30:45]

Two-thirds of it goes down to the level of the heart. And then later, one-third of it goes to the level of the gut. In other words, the brain is not just here. This is scientific, what I'm telling you. The brain is not just here. The cells of the brain are throughout our body. And they're strongly present in our heart. which receives a different way, and they're strongly present in our gut, which receives a different way. It's a Trinitarian way of knowing. And here's something that's really interesting. Since the Enlightenment, any kind of knowing except rational has been completely debased. You're superstitious, you're caught in the dark ages, but only reason is glorified since the age of the Enlightenment, and it's still that way.

[31:49]

There's lots of rebelling against it with all kinds of other spiritual movements, which John Paul II used to say show that our countries are really spiritual at heart, they're just really poorly informed. But your gut will never let you get away with a wrong decision. It will not on you. And your heart will never let you get away with a wrong decision. It will tighten in your chest. But your mind will fully collaborate, even with the wrongest decision, by a process that we call rationalizing. When it doesn't fit and we want it, when the gut is rebelling and the heart is rebelling and we want it, then we use all kinds of logic to give ourselves the permission to do it because this is the right way. So the point of all this is that we have to recuperate for ourselves

[32:54]

for the benefit of the people that we pray for and receive and minister to in any way, we have to really recuperate and really refine in ourselves right vision. It's the beginning of everything. And understand that in right vision we have all of this auxilium, all of this help from our intelligence, from our heart, from our gut, from good people around us, from the scriptures, from our prayer to the Holy Spirit, We have all this help in order to see right. But then we enter the difficult arena, the very difficult arena, which is something else that weakens us once again. Because the whole point of these days, as far as I'm concerned, is what weakens us? What makes us sick? What makes us not able to carry the great light that has been given us to carry? Once we're good at discernment in our own selves, we still have to enter the arena of contrary discernments, which is very painful and weakening.

[34:06]

One more time, and that's what I want to speak about in this afternoon session, about this very difficult and challenging arena of contradictory discernments. Brothers, the closing of known is very striking.

[46:18]

Lord, wash me of my inner faults and defend me against those of others. Both of those are sure a lot easier said than done. I want to tell you a little story. of a young boy that had cancer that we found at Mother Teresa's brothers in Pele, near Citi Soleil in Port-au-Prince, because I work a lot with the brothers and with the sisters, and on the certain day that I went down to do clinic off the back of the truck, One of the brothers said to me, there's somebody for you to see under that sheet, under that tree. But you really have to see him over there. And when you take the sheet off, you'll know why. So off we went, trotting across the courtyard of the tree. And as we got nearer, it stunk of death and rot.

[47:23]

And so obviously, this boy, part of him was rotting. And when we took the sheet off, it turned out to be his face. And it turns out that he had what would have been a very simply treatable skin catcher, if he was lucky enough to have been born here. But since he wasn't so lucky, and living in such a poor place, the cancer got the best of him and was destroying his face. His name was Markinson. He was about 10 years old. So the cancer had already destroyed his eyes. He had no eyes. It nearly destroyed his nose. It wasn't at his mouth yet. But he was frightful, and there were magnets everywhere. And I tell you honestly, very unfortunately, these stories are not rare, not in Haiti and not across the globe.

[48:29]

These stories are not rare. So, of course, I told our team we have to take him up to our children's hospital and they thought I was out of my mind because he would scare all of the other children to death. And not only that, but the staff would walk out because of the smell. So I said, well, I'm sure there's something we can do about it. I mean, we'll wash him down. We use formaldehyde to drive the maggots out. So we'll drive the maggots out, and we'll wash him down, and we'll do something like Phantom of the Opera. We'll bandage his face, except for his mouth. and make sure that his wounds are cleaned thoroughly a few times a day in order to avoid this. He didn't speak at all.

[49:31]

He was obedient. What else could he be and what else could he do? So he came with us up to the hospital and to everybody's horror up there, because we already had to redress him by the time that we got there, the whole place started getting used to this phantom of the opera, who is now one of us. So began his transformation, and so began the transformation of everyone else. Once he started feeling comfortable with us and feeling comfortable there, Very remarkably, and I mean very remarkably, his child would return to him. Not this burden of a corrupting, death-bound old person, which is what he was like, but his child would return to him.

[50:32]

very funny, very playful, very talkative, and, you know, being able to keep his face covered and the smell down. He blended in very well with the other children. He blended in very well with the staff. They all liked him a lot. We had two nuns that really took really good care of him, Sister Filomena and Sister Lorraine. Lorraine has since died, and Filomena is way up into her 90s now. But he transformed and it was really nice to see. And he teamed up with a kid who couldn't walk, who could see but couldn't walk. Because Markinson could walk but he couldn't see. So he got a wheelchair and this other kid would go in it and they would make their way all through the hospital raising hell, you know, because one could see and one could walk and between the two of them they could get wherever they wanted and do whatever they wanted. And he loved ice cream, really enjoyed ice cream, and he had to eat soft things, so ice cream was really a good match for him.

[51:47]

But it really turned out to be amazing. The most amazing thing to me was as he approached his death, how free he was about his death. Tell me where you find that throughout the United States of America, that people feel free about death. And he would ask questions about death. For example, he said, when I die, do you think that God will take me? And I said, well, Markinson, you are under a tree, in bad shape, and God didn't want you there. And God found a place for you to be, and people for you to be with, and all that worked out really well for you. I can't imagine that God stops there. It doesn't make any sense that that's where God stops.

[52:49]

And he said, well, do you think there are flowers in heaven? And I said, hmm, are there flowers in heaven? Well, Saint Paul says, all of creation groans for the fullness of eternity. So I would imagine that includes flowers. There must be something like flowers in heaven. And he said, well, how will I smell them? I don't have a nose. And I said, well, The risen Christ, when he showed himself, had all of his wounds, but everything was glorified and worked just fine. And then he said, well, when I die, when I go to heaven, when I enjoy those flowers, I'm going to pray for you. And I'm going to pray for everybody who has taken care of me. Now imagine the freedom, and this is the point of the story, imagine the freedom of somebody who has every reason in the world to be bitter and cynical and roll over and die like Job wanted to, as he expressed many times.

[54:12]

who is fun and loving, can imagine himself dying, and even more so, imagine himself practicing charity from heaven towards those who cared for him. This is freedom, and it's beautiful. And somebody 10 years old got it, and somebody in that kind of condition. Let's compare it to something else. The reading at noon again today, they're very painful readings. If you've ever seen piles of massacred people, you know what I mean. These are painful readings. And when you live in the conditions where seven or eight families have everything and everybody else is hanging on by their toenails to life, trying to survive, they're painful.

[55:17]

These are painful readings. And some of the things that stood out so clearly to me in today's reading was it was all happening at the time that the coffee market was expanding. Do you know that after oil, coffee is the number two commodity in the world? After oil? After oil. Only after oil is coffee. Do you really think with that kind of intoxication for wealth and power, that Romero stood a chance standing up against the drunkenness for the wealth of coffee and the vastly exponentially accumulating market for coffee, that he honestly stood a chance standing up for the rights of all of these poor people who are being chewed up and spit out by the selfishness of these few people.

[56:19]

Oh my God. And, you know, as the 500th anniversary of Christianity in the Americas was approaching, these are the kinds of questions that were asked at the time. How is it that all of these civil wars are all in countries that have been Catholic for hundreds of years? Why has Catholicism not worked? The generals are Catholic. These oligarch Catholic families are Catholic. How is it to celebrate 500 years of Christianity in a place that has destroyed the indigenous people, turned local economies upside down, and have generated poverty for 80 or 90 percent of the inhabitants in the country? How is it? And as you know, the celebration of the anniversary became enormously challenged.

[57:22]

How can a 10-year-old boy so disgraced by illness see so clearly, and these Jesuit-educated oligarchs who go to Mass every Sunday cannot see what they're doing to their own people? How is it? Of course, There's nothing to blame of Catholicism or there's nothing to blame of Christianity for this. It's humanity that's to blame. I don't think anybody else is doing a better job than Christians are in trying to curb the deadly sins in the human beings that belong to their faithful, especially these terrible ones of pride and wealth. Saint Thomas Aquinas said very wisely, it's a pity the sins didn't stop at things like sex and gluttony.

[58:27]

Because there's only so much you can eat and there's only so many times you can have sex and you're done. But pride makes for megalomania. It keeps going and going expansively. And the desire for money never ends. The more you have, the more you want, it never ends. These are the real deadly sins. The pride and the lust for money and power and wealth. But in any case, that's what we're up against. It's that. and people like that don't get it and it's the same in Haiti except we have eight families and not fourteen and eighty percent of the people are living in abject poverty they don't have a spot to drop dead on and when they're dead nobody can even afford to bury them it's what it is, it's pathetic it's really really pathetic and it's clamoring out for something else and how do you find these little jewels in it like this little boy Markinson

[59:34]

His story that way is also not unique, because the people in their poverty show exceptional faith, exceptional trust. It's really exceptional. After the earthquake in Haiti, I think it was even more apparent. The whole world should stand up and take their hat off and bow low to the Haitian people who answered a simple question for all of us who are Christians. What do you have left when you have nothing, nothing but your faith, your hope and your love? What do you have left? And the Haitian people showed hands down that when you have nothing left but your faith and your hope and your love, you have everything. That's what this little boy showed us. We're so afraid of that. We don't really believe it.

[60:37]

We have to have so many things we're hanging on to just in case it's not true. just in case it's not true that love is enough, that faith is enough, that hope is enough, that friendship is enough, just in case we have to stockpile and then also stockpile weapons to defend our stockpile. It's really, really bizarre, but it's absolutely the way that it is. Oscar Arnulfo Romero. discern among other discernments. We all have to do it. And the problem is, among the various discernments you make the decision, you named the topic, among the players who discern, There is not the same transformation over time. There is not the same vision. And mostly, mostly, there is not the same freedom to decide.

[61:42]

This is really key. The deadly sins are not called deadly sins for nothing. And their opposites are the cardinal virtues. So, in any case, In the book also, at noon, the author said very clearly that a revolution which starts because of a massive unfairness, that starts with 20 people and leads to countrywide massacres of anybody who even looks like an Indian or looks like they're poor, gets spun And it gets spun so it doesn't look like it's a bunch of poor people fighting for life. It's spun so that it looks like it's barbarians who are trying to attack civilization and society.

[62:45]

It's demonic. And that narrative, when it overrides the narrative of all the poor people, they don't stand a chance, and everybody gets pulled into that narrative, including Oscar Romero, until finally the violence is also aimed at him. I'm from West Hartford, Connecticut. I can assure you all this stuff was brand new to me. These are not the problems that we have in West Hartford, Connecticut. It was all a real fast learning curve. I wasn't in Honduras a week before this French-Canadian sister came to me and she said, can you come to the penitentiary to hear the confessions of political prisoners? I said, Francine, if I do that, And the archbishop finds out, and the American ambassador finds out, I'm going to be labeled as the newest American know-it-all meddling in the problems of Central America.

[63:57]

It's not what I'm here for. I can't disrupt what I'm here for in order to get a reputation like that which is going to work against everything that I'm here for. I said, why doesn't a Honduran priest go? She said, they're scared to death to go. And with good reason they're scared to death to go. Because they'll be killed as political activists. So I said, look, I'm sorry, I can't. I just can't. So she said to me, they're on their 19th day of a hunger fast. They're dying men. Well, there was nothing to talk about anymore. This was confession for people who were facing their death. There was nothing to talk about anymore. So I went, and it took three visits to go. And to get in there, they would photocopy my passport and send couriers off with it to God knows where. And there were about 25 Most of them were campesinos, Hondurans who worked on the border of Nicaragua, who were being forced to fight with the famous Reagan freedom fighters and refusing to fight.

[65:16]

And, of course, the freedom fighters were mowing down the people who were trying to stand up for their rights in their own country. In any case, it was difficult. They were 18 years old. I couldn't imagine when I was 18 years old having to make a decision like that. But it was so unfair and they were not going to put up with it and they would rather die than put up with it. I had notes and messages to take to their girlfriends. I had notes and last messages to take to their mothers and fathers. As they confessed what? Almost nothing. That they didn't want to fight a dirty war against their own people. But there were seven or eight who were out and out guerrillas and they told me that. I'm an out-and-out gorilla. I carry guns. I carry guns at the side of priests and nuns.

[66:19]

We fight together against this." Anyway, it was really a lesson. And I remember saying at the end, when I was finally finished, I said, I don't want my presence here to be taken as either an endorsement or a condemnation of what you're doing because I'm not in your shoes. I can't know. I'm here to bring you the sacrament. I'm here to do merciful act and to bring your messages to your family. I'm way too confused by this to know whether this is right or wrong. Anyway, After, when I went out, I had a friend who was working at Fox Christie in Erie, Pennsylvania, and I called him. I said, this is exactly up your alley, what's happening down here. And himself, together with America's Watch, publicized what was happening.

[67:26]

And the presidential palace in Honduras was bombarded with telegrams. And they had to release the prisoners under all this pressure. Francine came this evening. She said, did you hear the news? I said, yes, thank God, it's great. She said, you think that's great news? I said, well, what were we working for? She said, at least there, they wouldn't dare kill them. But now that they're out, they'll follow them and kill them. They'll just all of a sudden be dead, hit by a car, nobody will know the real reason, or shot in an alley, somebody thinking that it's a crime. I said, I really give up, Francine, I don't know where. How do we solve these things? So she said the eight that were gorillas were really the ones that we had to hide. because the others were more insignificant. And she said, if I would hide poor, she would hide poor. And we were building an orphanage, a large orphan home for children and a school.

[68:34]

And I said, well, I'll take them and I'll put them on the construction team out there. And they just have to not tell anybody who they are or why they're there. And they can stay there till they have enough money to go somewhere else. But it's limited what I can do. And that's what we did. But I fell into that with no desire to jump into the politics and the unfairness and the injustice. I was glad to do it, but it's not what I was there for. And the church is big enough to do everything. We have nuncios and we have Mother Teresa. The church is big enough to do everything, but not one person. It doesn't work that way. There's too many lines get crossed. And I remember telling the Archbishop later, just to get it off my chest, because I was afraid if he heard and thought and was wondering, and I went to see him and I told him the whole story later of what happened and what I did. He was very old then. He was succeeded by Oscar Rodriguez, who's one of the G.A.

[69:39]

for Francis now, who I also knew really well, when he was exiliary at the time. But the old Monsignor Santos, sitting in his rocking chair, smoking his pipe, very quiet and serene, looking at me while I told him this story. At the end he said to me, you did exactly what I would have done. And it was a huge affirmation and a tying to the real pastoral sense of the church. But it could have gone really bad for me. It could have gone really bad at the embassy. It could have gone really bad if the bishop was a different bishop, if the nuncio was a different nuncio. It could have gone really bad. And it would have been another narrative determining what happened to me, not the narrative of the truth of my involvement in this. When I went to Haiti and was running into a lot of the Missionhurst fathers, the spirit fathers from Belgium, they're called missionaries in the United States, very politically active and helping Aristide ascend to power, the priest who went walkers later.

[70:52]

I asked Father Hugo one time, in talking about the same situations but in Haiti, I said, Hugo, I could never understand this, I was telling you about the priests and nuns that fight with guns. I said, Hugo, I could never understand this. How, where in the Gospel, where in the Gospel is there the slightest indication that we should take up arms for the sake of the Gospel? And he said, it's not, you won't find it clearly in the Gospel. But in the theology of the Church, you'll find very clearly the right to self-defense. And in moral theology you find very clearly even the right to take the life of another person who's about to take yours or the life of your child. So much so that we have all this ornate development of the idea of just war. So he said that the thinking is only this.

[71:57]

If you're going to die by this suffocation of poverty, and be completely choked out of existence by this long chain of poverty, why not die fighting to change it? I can't agree with the logic, but it's pretty good logic. In any case, it's a very difficult world. I discerned to help, and it was the right thing to help. And I'm lucky it was confirmed, but it might not have been that way, because in the world of discernment, there's lots of contrary discernments, as you know. Rewriting the narrative, we see it all the time. Poor Mother Teresa, when she was very old, there was this vicious film that came out about her, called Angel from Hell. about how she took without any scruples money from dictators and drug dealers in order to help poor people. In other words, helping them to wash their own minds by giving their dirty money to her and somehow suggesting that that allows them to keep their own filthy systems going because as long as they're giving 10% to charity, it doesn't matter.

[73:12]

The sisters really tried to hide her from the reality of that movie. If they were ever on the street and it was advertised, they would duck down a different road and everything else. But I mean, she was old, but she was with it. And sooner or later, she learned about it. And when she was asked about it, it was a vile movie, a vile movie. And when she was asked about it, she said, I'm embarrassed and I'm glad. I'm embarrassed to have my life's work so foully represented, but I'm glad about something else. Because the scriptures say clearly, you cannot do good without tremendous opposition. It's not possible. And my whole life, yes, it's been difficult with poor people, but it's been ushered to fronts of lines and ushered to first class in airplanes and Nobel Prizes, and my whole life I've thought to myself, there's something wrong with this.

[74:22]

Christ wasn't put in first class, ushered to the front of the lines, and didn't get a Nobel Prize. Finally, finally, this opposition shows to me my work is important for God, or it would never inspire this hatred. My work is important for God. Well, her argument doesn't convince the makers of the film. And it got more difficult for her after she died. Because even though it was against her will, her religious diaries were released, which showed that she spent a lot of her time in dark night and in doubt. And so the new narratives started again. What were they saying? Mother Teresa the hypocrite, Mother Teresa the fraud, Mother Teresa who didn't even believe in God, who used God to make herself a goddess and to make herself famous.

[75:25]

These people who don't understand the first thing about the dark night of the soul and the God who gives us freedom to follow God. And for some people, he pulls away so many of the props and supports in order to see if just by your sheer will, with none of the usual comforts and consolations and graces that we've got. Do you so believe this, that by your sheer will, you will keep doing it? And she did, saying a depressed woman who made a name for herself by giving out bread. Depression doesn't do that to people. Depression makes you self-centered. Depression makes you demand everybody else feel sorry for you. It's a black hole that pulls everything towards you. It is not a centripetal force that gets wider and wider and more generous and more generous and better articulated. That's not what it is. These people are so, so misunderstood.

[76:29]

It's not funny, but it's to be fully expected. Oscar Rodriguez found his inner freedom Mother Teresa found her inner freedom. That 10-year-old boy found his inner freedom that Nunzio still hasn't found his at 97 years old. They go by their inner freedom. Finally, it's our conscience, our formed conscience that is the supreme authority for us. Our formed conscience. It has to be. Nothing else can replace it. But we have to make sure that we're free. We have to be sure that we're free. You'll never be sure the nuncio is, and you can't challenge him on it. You'll never be sure the military catholic dictator is, and you can't challenge him on it. You can't be sure your own superior is, and you can't challenge him on it. But you can be sure that you're free. And this is the highest worth that any of us have, is to be able to live in freedom.

[77:35]

So in tomorrow's session, we'll look really closely at the origin of the evangelical councils, how and why they became so pivotal in religious life, how easy it is to ignore them, or at least to choose the depth to which you will allow them to form you and to mold you. Because finally, it's the evangelical councils that are the guarantee of the depth of our freedom.

[78:04]

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