And then all of a sudden, boom, I get something, and something else. And gradually, I said to myself, whoa, this is very important. It's very important for connecting the word of God and the doctrine of the Trinity. He taught the Trinity. He taught about the word of God, about the Holy Spirit. and the human mind that's the image of and the human spirit, the best image we have. Am I stepping on something? Best image we have of Trinity. Hello. Oh, he's adjusting it in there. OK, that's good. So anyway, it was very important for me.

[01:00]

And some of the things I'll say during this retreat will be based on what Father Lonergan taught and said. But I want to especially help us to get hints and guesses about the great book that you know, has a lot of hints and guesses about what life is about. And that's the book of the Psalms that was taken over by the church and taken over by, first of all, by Christ and his own life by Jesus and then taken by the writers of the scriptures and the church down through the centuries so that we prayed together the Psalms this evening. which are songs and Cardinal Newman said they were the, it was the greatest book of poetry, religious poetry ever put together.

[02:08]

There's so much of humanity in the Psalms and so much depth and so much of the love of God connecting with our own lives and our own hearts. And so I wanted to just mention some of these little themes that, and I have a reading that, I put together for you, and I guess we have that later on. Is it the one about hints and guesses? Yeah. Yeah. Is that on the table? No, we can give it out later. Don't worry. That's all right. We'll give it out. Yeah. As people are leaving, they can. Yes, it's called and chosen, that's right, yeah.

[03:20]

My article within that is called, yeah, Hints and Guesses, Discerning Value. So, that's an article that I wrote for lay leaders in the church, leaders of hospital ministries, leaders of parish ministries and so forth. So there are a number of themes in that article, and I think they're themes that can be helpful in thinking about what we're doing on a retreat and what we're doing as we sit in church, as we bring ourselves to this time of quiet and openness of heart. The themes in the article, I'll mention them because they'll be themes that I'll touch on during this time together. The themes are these, our infinite human quest, the fulfillment of our quest, discernment, community, conversion,

[04:37]

And finally, habits of the heart. So tonight I'll talk especially about our infinite human quest. The Psalms are all about searching. They're all about longing. They're all about desire. Father Lonergan uses the expression, the passionateness of being, the passionateness of being, which is a strange phrase. Being is something that probably Father Damascus talked about and learned about in the philosophy he studied. Being is sort of a philosophical term. And so you never expect it to be connected to a word like passion or desire.

[05:39]

But Father Lonergan talks about the pure desire to know that deep beneath all our other desires, we have a desire, you might say, for everything. to know everything, to be connected with everything in some real sense. It's an openness of our being. We obviously have desires for all kinds of things. I went walking up on the hill today and was watching the sheep. And it was really great to watch the sheep. They spend all day eating. I mean, that's really something. And I suppose they sleep sometimes. But that's desire. It's desire. And we all have all kinds of desires, and the Psalms are filled with longing.

[06:42]

And beneath it all, it's longing to be united with God, to be united with all that is good, all that is whole. all that is worthwhile, as Saint Paul said, all that is beautiful. That's why we come on a retreat. There's something that's drawn us, something within us that's drawn us. And of course, we believe the Spirit of God encompasses us and helps us in our humanity. to desire, to search and to seek. And it's that deep longing that's in our hearts that sparks the images that come into our minds and the hints and guesses that we pick up from the Psalms or from the scriptures or from walking and seeing nature.

[07:57]

So many of the psalms are about nature. They're about the world. So the passionateness of being. Being is what we're made for. The universe and its concreteness. And it works itself out through our bodies. through our body, so neuroscience today and biology and so forth. How are all these linked in some vision that integrates them all into a desire for something that none of the sciences encompasses or can answer? So the first part of this article that I gave you is about this quest that we have. And if you go back to ancient philosophers, somebody like Plato really put his finger on this desire.

[09:07]

Plato said, you wouldn't ask questions unless you had some kind of an idea of what you're looking for. You wouldn't ask questions unless you had some kind of an idea of what you were looking for, some shadowy anticipation, so that when you do get the answer, you say, ah, that's it. I got it. I got it. In many ways, that's what Father Lonergan's 700-page book on insight is all about. It's about this desire that's not just empty, It's seeking the truth, seeking meaning. And it works itself out when you're sitting in chapel, perhaps before the Blessed Sacrament. Just ruminating, desiring, thinking about your lives.

[10:10]

And maybe you get a hint, or maybe a guess. Maybe you make this connection with that connection. I certainly was making that connection as I was thinking about my relationship to this man that came from Germany so long ago. So we make connections because we're built to do that. We're built to do that. Cardinal Newman has beautiful writing on the self. And he said, if I don't use myself, I have no other self to use. I have to use myself. And what I have to figure out are the laws of my being. How do I work? Is it good to come on a retreat?

[11:15]

Is it good to to take time. Leisure, the basis of culture. A wonderful book by Joseph Pieper. The laws of my being, I need time apart. I need quiet. I need the liturgy whereby my very body yearns for wholeness and meaning. and truth and love. So Plato, modern philosophy at its best, it's trying to get in touch with who we are as a person. And that can be very helpful for us to think about God's plan, God's providence, and what God is doing in each of our lives, in each of our hearts, and what we're doing together on a retreat like this.

[12:22]

We're quiet and silence and letting our hearts be and yearning. Father Gellino that wrote the introduction to this book that we use for the Psalms. It has such beautiful words on the very first page of the Psalm book. A whole world of images rises from his words as they call to each other. repeating, following, or clashing with each other. The psalmist makes his point not by reasoning, but by hammering. He reveals not by describing, but by actually touching. He teaches not by explaining, but by putting his words on our lips.

[13:30]

A very beautiful expression of the bodily-ness of our prayer. even though we're longing for the whole universe. The Psalms are a series of shouts, shouts of love and hatred, shouts of suffering or rejoicing, shouts of faith or hope. Beautiful imagery of the Psalms as human beings, our brothers and sisters, the people at our work, people in the world that are suffering, experiencing meaninglessness, hoping, rejoicing, and a beautiful doctrine of the Trinitarian life going on in us.

[14:31]

So we pray the psalms not just for ourselves, but for the community of the world. And if we're not feeling what the psalms are expressing at the moment, in some sense we're praying with Jesus as he is feeling and experiencing in the poor and the suffering. We're in those who are joyful about the beautiful, beautiful world that we live in. So because I'm a philosopher, I'll slip a little philosophy in every so often. I hope you don't mind. You might spot it a little bit. But it's in order to think about what we're doing. And I was struck in Father Damas's biography by how he was influenced by Romano Guardini, a great theologian, German theologian.

[15:37]

And he was influenced by the renewal of the liturgy in the church. So there are things going on that can really help us renew our lives. Ways of thinking, ways of understanding, ways of even perhaps acting in new ways as we leave the retreat. I was thinking about my own experience on retreat and I was thinking about something that happened to me a number of years ago. I made a directed retreat not too far from here at Lemoyne in Syracuse with a Jesuit some years ago. It was an eight-day directed retreat, silent directed retreat. And I know I came on the retreat, I had something I was really trying to figure out. It was a problem I had and I was really wrestling with it.

[16:40]

And I came to the retreat with this, you know, sort of obsessed with this problem. And the first thing the Jesuit director told me was, why don't you just bracket that for a while? Just put that aside a little bit. And especially in the beginning of the retreat, thank God for being here. And praise God for being here. And that was really, it really, I understood something through that and through that experience. You know, at the end of the retreat, I looked at the problem and it somehow moved. Sometimes just letting go of what we bring and the problems we bring. Prayer is letting go. That's what's wonderful about the liturgy. It's a physical letting go. And a physical letting God be God, let Christ carry our burdens.

[17:49]

And and putting them into his hands in a real way. Now, he sometimes gives them back to us changed and transformed. So, I guess my major point this evening would be to let go, to let God, to praise God, to allow that pure desire beneath all our other desires, to come to the fore. Sometimes people find journaling very helpful, or just walking, or being, or thanking God for all the good things in our lives. Thanking God for his blessings. So that article, it's a little philosophical, but the themes are themes that are part of the Psalms and part of our lives.

[18:55]

The themes of the infinite human quest and the fulfillment of that quest and discerning the hints and guesses of God's presence and community, life, and conversion as God is changing us and developing in us habits of the heart. I thought I'd end with just one Psalm tonight because it's one we read often and I'll just make a couple of comments on it. It's Psalm 18. The heavens proclaim the glory of God, and the firmament shows forth the work of his hands. Day unto day takes up the story, and night unto night makes known the message. No speech, no word, no voice is heard, yet their span extends through all the earth.

[20:01]

The words to the utmost bounds of the world. There he has placed a tent for the sun. It comes forth like a bridegroom coming from his tent. Rejoices like a champion to run its course. At the end of the sky is the rising of the sun. To the furthest end of the sky is its course. There is nothing concealed from its burning heat. The law of the Lord is perfect. It revives the soul. The rule of the Lord is to be trusted. It gives wisdom to the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right. They gladden the heart. The command of the Lord is clear. It gives light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is holy, abiding forever.

[21:03]

The decrees of the Lord are truth. and all of them just. They are more to be desired than gold, than the purest of gold. And sweeter are they than honey, than honey from the comb. So in them, your servant finds instruction. Great reward is in their keeping. But who can detect all his errors from hidden faults acquit me? From presumption restrain your servant, and let it not rule me. Then shall I be blameless, clean from grave sin. May the spoken words of my mouth, the thoughts of my heart, win favor in your sight, O Lord, my rescuer, my rock. There's so many symbols and so many images.

[22:06]

The Psalms, one symbol after another. That Psalm obviously talking about nature and God's presence in nature. And then God's presence in his word. as God's presence converting us, changing us, cleansing us from our hidden faults. So let us during these days together pray for each other, pray that God bless each one of us and give us peace and let his light shine in our hearts and be with us. Thank you very much for your attention. And if you want, you can read this article. It's in the Golden Choice. It's a little philosophical, but I thought maybe it might be helpful. Thank you. Go.

[23:14]

Thank you. I'll walk away. We begin with a Hail Mary. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, pray for us. I was just walking up the path and looking at the red trees out there, just beautiful colored trees. As I was sitting here before, I was thinking of the title of an article that was once in America Magazine. It was called Rummaging for God. And it was by a Jesuit by the name of Dennis Ham who is out in Creighton. But he used the image of rummaging and he said it's like you have a drawer and there's a drawer of socks.

[24:26]

And the socks are different colors. Now most of my socks are black, but they're different color black. So sometimes you have to sort of rummage, you know, sort of like check and find the right pair. And he said, that's the way Saint Ignatius thought of prayer as sort of rummaging among the things in our lives, the consolation, beautiful beauty of nature, and even the desolation, that things that bother us, you know, he sort of just Let them come to the surface and let God really take care of them. I mean, put them in God's hands. It's a wonderful article though. It's about the examen. The Jesuits call it the examen. Once a day, going back over the last 24 hours,

[25:29]

the consolations, the peace that's come and letting that surface and even letting the things that bother us but just bringing them up lightly and bringing them before the Lord and setting it all within a context of prayer. So anyway, I was just thinking of that as I was sitting here before. I thought I'd talk today about just a little bit about St. Ignatius of Antioch and then St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas and some of the teachings that they can present to us that might be helpful for us in thinking about our lives and what's involved in our lives. St. Ignatius of Antioch, as father said at mass today, was a martyr very, very early in the church, at the end of the first century.

[26:36]

And he knew St. Polycarp, who sat at the feet of St. John. That's a beautiful, like he knew someone who knew someone who knew Jesus directly. So Saint Ignatius of Antioch, first Bishop of Antioch, wrote these letters. He was arrested and brought to Rome. And as the soldiers brought him to Rome, he wrote a letter to the different churches on the way, a letter to the Church of Ephesus. of various churches on the road to Rome. He has some beautiful things in his writings. And one of the things he talks about is the word out of silence, that the word came out of silence, that the Father spoke a word to us. The Father was the silence, the depths, the infinite abyss of God,

[27:44]

And out of that came the Word. So he was perhaps influenced by Saint John. In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God and the Word was God. So reflection on the Word has become part of our Christian tradition and on speech. on an understanding from which speech comes, from which the word comes forth. St. John using that image of Jesus and the word of God, and the word in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. And the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. And we saw his glory, the glory of the only begotten Son of God. So theologians through the ages have reflected on that, this idea of speech and word and God speaking to us.

[28:54]

And of course, also St. John, the spirit given to us in spirit. And theologians call it the psychological analogy. St. Augustine has a book on the Trinity where he talks about the procession of the word. We understand something and then we can speak it. Hopefully the words we speak come from understanding, from that little glimmer of understanding. And I suppose St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas and my teacher, Father Lonergan, they all spend a lot of time on this reflection on our minds and our spirits as the best image we have of God's inner life, of the procession of the Son from the Father and the procession of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love from the Father and the Son.

[30:10]

And I know my teacher, Father Lonergan, spent a lot of time emphasizing the act of catching on to something. If you catch on to something, then something happens within you. And then you can go and tell your friends about it. You can speak about it. And if you fall in love, something else happens in you, another procession within you. And you meet somebody you love, something happens in your heart. So there's a procession of love within us, procession of knowledge and love within one. It's really quite remarkable who we are as human beings. One of the points I'm gonna make is when we speak to people in the world, it's really helpful to have a sense of who we are and who they are and what goes on in us so that we can know what goes on in them.

[31:31]

We can have a language with which to speak about what our scriptures and our liturgy and the tradition of the church talks about in terms of one God, three persons, equal in majesty. But it's not a blob, it's life, and it's love, and it's knowledge born of love. So, anyway, that's Saint Ignatius of Antioch, part of this wonderful tradition of reflecting on the Trinity and our rootedness of our very being, our own being in the Trinity.

[32:33]

I thought I'd say something about Saint Augustine also, because he's really this great, psychologist of life, of human life, and of human life in love with God and as the image of God. Great story about his life and his conversion that he tells in the confessions of St. Augustine. I sometimes have teach our students. We have a core curriculum at Seton Hall, and part of the core is the confessions. So most of the students haven't read them at all. And then they read about him being such a wild man, as a young man, and they say, he's a saint? How could he be a saint? I said, well, that's part of the point of it, is he was a saint. And he was like you.

[33:34]

And he was in love with love. He came to Carthage in love with love. And beautiful words that really rang a bell with me when I was in college. And we read some of the confessions you have made us. for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You. You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You." That's really what this retreat and our time together is all about, bringing our restless hearts to the Lord so that we can rest. And he has the whole meditation on heaven and on, you might say, the glimmers of heaven that we get even now as we learn to rest in God.

[34:38]

We're all busy. We're all running around. We all have worries and anxieties, hearts filled with restlessness. And so it's good to come apart and to rest a while with Jesus and just be with that kind of love that enjoys the presence of the other person, not just enjoys being with. One of the things about Augustine was that he read this book when he was 19 years old. He was very intelligent, obviously, and he was a seeker. He became part of different groups and different philosophies. They said at the age of 19, he just came across the book of Cicero's, and it was called the Hortensius.

[35:41]

And it was an exhortation to think, to philosophize. And he said, and the one thing that struck me in that book was, it said, seek the truth. Don't seek this party, or that party, or this philosophy, or that philosophy, seek the truth. He said, and that stayed with me all those years until his conversion at the age of 31. But that desire to get at what's the truth of life, it became part of the Manicheans who had a philosophy that he was a good god, but then there was this other god who was an evil god. He was part of that for a number of years and until in the year 386, in the spring of 386, somebody gave him some books of, he says, the Platonic writers.

[36:54]

So some philosophy books in the line of Plato. And they changed his mind. And he realized he had been trying to imagine everything, even trying to imagine God. But what he got from the Platonists is that the truth goes beyond what you can imagine. The truth transcends the images that we, images, we're always using images, and images are important, images of scripture are important, so forth. But the truth, in some sense, transcends, especially the images that we make that form things in our own image, rather than the truth. So the word veritas, truth, became really important to him and it sort of cut through everything. He still, and so that was a really important intellectual conversion for him, but he still was not, he still had not had a moral and religious conversion.

[38:09]

You know the famous words, of his prayer, he said, I would pray for chastity. He said, Lord, give me chastity, but not today. We'll wait on that for tomorrow. Until he was ready, I guess, God brought him to the point where he was ready, and he was crying. He was in a garden. He was longing for God. He knew, he said, I knew ever since I've read the books of Plato and I knew I had the name of Christ in my heart, that I knew I needed his presence more deeply in my life. And he was with some friends and he went apart from them. He was crying. And then he heard a child in the garden nearby saying, tole leje, tole leje, pick up the book and read.

[39:15]

So he picks up the Bible, it's right there. And he opened the Bible and it's St. Paul to the Romans. I think it's chapter 12. Not in the life of unchastity, but put on the Lord. Jesus Christ, and make no provisions for the flesh. It's beautiful. He said, and the words cut right through my heart. And I stopped crying. And I put the book down, and I was calm. And my friend said, what happened to you? He describes to his friend in Chapter 7 of the Confessions what happened to him. So you can see what's such a beautiful book about the confessions is that he talks about his journey. And he talks about his intellectual journey, because that's important. That was important to him, important to a lot of people in our world.

[40:18]

But also the journey of his heart and his soul. So it's a wonderful, And then he went, as the years went on, he went back over his journey and he learned about God by looking at his own story. He learned about the patience of the Lord, goodness of the Lord. It was these beautiful reflections. I was running away from you, but you were, very close to me. I was running away, but you were near me and just behind me. You were just behind my shoulder, as it were. I think Pascal many years later said, many centuries later said, puts the words into God's mouth, you would not seek me if I had not already found you.

[41:23]

So our seeking, our questing, it's God's drawing us, God's attracting us and bringing us to himself. St. Augustine's famous for the doctrine of grace, of God's grace in our lives. And he, gives descriptions of it as people who are initially not at all interested, but then slowly their resistances are broken down. And not only the resistances, but their weakness, and they're strengthened by the grace of God. So he has many things to say about the way God works in our lives to change us and convert us. He has beautiful descriptions of St.

[42:27]

Peter. St. Peter, you know, you know, Lord, if everybody else abandoned you, I'll never abandon you. And of course, then when the pressure's on, little girl in the garden said, you were with him. No, I wasn't, you know. So, but then St. Peter becomes a martyr and gives his life for Christ. There's this doctrine of grace, of God's grace, of God changing us and breaking down our hearts of stone and giving us hearts of flesh. Beautiful imagery from the prophets. breaking down our hearts of stone and giving us hearts of flesh. Oh, beauty ever ancient, ever new, laid by love. So it's beautiful, beautiful story of St.

[43:29]

Augustine and a beautiful teaching from St. Augustine. One thing that's interesting is that He couldn't have told this story if he hadn't had read those books of Plato. The famous writer, biographer of St. Augustine named Peter Brown. And Peter Brown said he couldn't have told his own story if he hadn't had a language with which to tell it. And the language was those writers from the Platonic writers. So some of the cultural words of his own time gave him the means by which to talk about the goodness of God and the greatness of God and the mercy of God and the grace of God in his life. He was able to, Peter Brown says that Augustine gave us the first biography in Western culture.

[44:33]

First person that was able to tell his story and he was able to tell it because he had some words, words out of the culture of his day and he was able to take those words and employ them for the glory of God. So that, you know, I mean I love, in college I read a little bit of Augustine, we had a course from Father Hollywell. It was a Latin course, so I memorized a few of the lines, but I didn't really get it. But anyway, I just want to say that. I'll say a little bit about St. Thomas Aquinas and my own teacher, Father Lonergan, now because they've helped me to understand Augustine's story. You might say, especially the intellectual part, the most important part, obviously, is the religious part and the moral part.

[45:37]

But they, Aquinas, and especially Father Lonergan, who was very rooted in Aquinas, and rooted in Augustine, and rooted in Plato, and rooted in, Cardinal Newman, John Henry Newman, he was able to give me the tools with which to understand the confessions of Saint Augustine and to see what he was doing almost in every page. Right from the beginning of Augustine's confessions, he's praising God. You have made us for yourself, O God. And our hearts are restless till they rest in thee. And what does this mean to rest in you? And he goes on and he uses various images. And he says, each one of these are inadequate. And then he moves on to focus his writing more sharply

[46:42]

It's always a good question of moving from our own little worlds and our own little images to a bigger world. We can spend all day here, just in quiet, just reflecting on a line like that. But what a beautiful thing to come out of, what beautiful words to come out of a man of the fourth century. St. Thomas Aquinas puts a lot of this in a much more theoretical way and technical way and he has a language. And the language was out of Aristotle and the language was out of his time, out of the medieval world. And the Arab philosophers, the Arab and Islamic philosophers had brought that language to Europe. So, as people say, the coin of the realm, the language that was spoken was Aristotle.

[47:49]

He was a biologist. He also thought about the universe, the world, the forms of things. He also has wonderful things to say about how our minds work. But it is a sort of a scientific Account of the world and within that he uses that to talk about the Trinity Same things Augustine talked about and about grace about our human journey About the habits of our hearts The hell God is hit through his grace builds up habits so that we can cooperate with his grace and St. Thomas talks about healing grace. And a lot of this he takes from Augustine. A lot of scholars today are aware that not only was he rooted in Aristotle, but he was rooted in Augustine.

[48:57]

And of course, in the scriptures, in the tradition of the church, in the liturgy. So, just basically that. Maybe just one thing on grace that St. Thomas talks about healing grace. We need gratia sanans, but also elevating grace, gratia elevans that brings us to a world beyond our natural world. Father Lonergan says that St. Thomas gave us the doctrine of the supernatural. And if you have the supernatural, you also have the natural. So to understand St. Thomas, he gives you a picture of the natural world, less than which is sin or evil, and more than which is supernature, grace,

[50:11]

God's gift. So he gives you a theory of the natural world. The world is either fallen or it is being redeemed by God, in fact. But in order to think about it clearly, you have to have, St. Thomas said, you need to think about our natural lives and what goes into our natural lives. So Aristotle helped him in that. And he was able to talk about the beginnings of grace, how God's grace works in us, and grace works on nature to make us who we are, to make us who we were created to be, besides making us sons and daughters of the Father. and co-heirs with Christ to the kingdom of God, brought into the riches of God's own life, the supernatural vision that we have.

[51:20]

But he's also able to tell how our very humanness is being healed. So I'll just last little distinction from St. Thomas, but he talks about Operative grace, grace that grabs us when we didn't expect it, didn't pray for it. St. Paul on his horse, knocked off his horse, and we hear about that sudden conversion. God's operative grace, God working there. But then St. Paul had to go up, stand up and walk into the city and went into the desert for several years and learn to cooperate with God's grace, so cooperative grace. So anyway, so many distinctions that are so helpful for us in thinking about our own spiritual lives.

[52:25]

I mentioned last night Cardinal Newman saying, talking about ourselves, I am what I am or I am nothing. If I don't use myself, I have no other self to use. And my first obedience is to the laws of my own being. So importance of our rootedness in the way God has created us. In the creation that we are, just as the beautiful creation of the trees and the colors in this autumn season, he's created us beautiful also. And wants us to be beautiful and is calling us to be ourselves. And a dimension of that is we're part of the glory of God.

[53:38]

I remember Father Lonergan ending one of his talks to seminarians one time and saying, just remember, we're doing everything for the glory of God. And remember that you're part of that glory. You're an aspect of the glory of God, your very being. And I think what God's grace would do in us is to bring out our humanness, our ability to love, to be compassionate, to form community, to be patient with one another, to put up with the evils of life and the world for the greater glory of God. converting us, changing us for his greater glory. And looking back at the saints, you see the dimensions of that conversion, sometimes intellectual, sometimes making decisions to do this rather than to do that, sometimes falling in love, basically, not just with other people, but with

[55:00]

with Almighty God, religious conversion. And all of that going on through our psychology, through our resistances and through the subconscious, through the things that pop into our heads suddenly and unexpectedly, believing that our prayers God's worth in us is doing this great work of bringing all things together in Christ. In the article that I gave you, I have a quote from St. Paul. I thought I'd read that. this morning. Creation, and this is from Romans 9, of course, creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.

[56:04]

Beautiful creation we see here. Creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for the adoption, for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. Likewise, the spirit helps us in our weaknesses, and our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought. But that very spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words." Such a beautiful, beautiful reading. Sighs too deep for words that come when we sit in quiet here and spend some time in silence.

[57:11]

and letting the word come out of the silence and the spirit, the spirit that works deep within our hearts and within our bodies. Our bodies are longing for redemption. I thought I'd just say one last thing about my own teacher, Pabla Lonergan. As I mentioned, he used modern science as a way of theologizing. Probably more than any other modern theologian, he used the language of our world, just as Quinus used Aristotle, Augustine used Plato. The language our world speaks, especially where I am at the university, but I imagine where you speak, where you live in one way or another, science says it's what people, you know, what's the latest research?

[58:22]

What's the latest research in healthcare? So in the university where I am, they talk about critical thinking. It'll drive you crazy. We talk about it so much. And I always say, well, let's have some critical thinking about critical thinking. And Lonergan has helped me in that. And a lot of the faculty respondents said, that's what we need. Assessment. Everything's assessment. How do you make good judgment? Cardinal Newman wrote a book called The Grammar of Ascent, which is how do you make good judgment? And Father Lonergan read Newman's, that book, five times as a young man. So that must have been something in the book to read it five times, because it's a pretty tough little book, you know. But it's how we make judgments. How do the scientists make good judgments? There are a lot of probabilities heading in this direction, have a lot of evidence.

[59:25]

You talk about evidence-based science. Are we making a good probable judgment that this is the best way to treat this patient? I remember a young girl in a class saying they misdiagnosed the patient to the nursing student. Well, the point is the truth is pretty important. Getting the best judgment is pretty important. And this process of critical thinking and good assessment and good evaluation and good implementation, is it a reflection? Do the scriptures and the tradition tell us it's a reflection of the mind of God? Well, of the emergence of the Word and the procession of this Holy Spirit. Saint John says, the spirit will well up within you.

[60:31]

So Father Wannergan talks about the levels of our consciousness. A level, the first level of data. You know what you touch and what you see. And then a level of hypothesis. So you come up with insights. Hey, how does this, how did the data fit together? Until you come up with an understanding and an hypothesis, a word. And then you check it out, you verify it. The scientific method always involves process of verification. Getting the best hypothesis you can about how things fit together. And then implementation. It ultimately has to be, have practicality and have meaning in the world. And then you repeat the method.

[61:35]

And so he talks about a generalized empirical method, the very method of our minds. It's what Augustine talked about, it's what Aquinas talked about in his own way. Newman, there is a structure to our being. And you can see it in every one of the sciences, the structure of data, hypothesis, verification, implementation, and it repeats itself. And it's driven by this quest that we have. The first section of that article was about the quest that we have to And it's the quest that leads us to be attentive, to ask questions, to check it out and verify it, and to try to implement it as well as we can.

[62:41]

So there's a quest going on, and of course, beyond it all, there's the question, who's the mind behind our mind? and behind what we discover in the world, the beauties of physics and biology and chemistry, the levels of being of the universe. So the drive for meaning and the drive for the one who means the world and means us, the love that is beyond As Dante says, the love that moves the stars, the earth, and the heavenly bodies and the stars, the moon and sun and the stars. So anyway, I'll end there. And I wrote down a few questions that might be helpful if they are.

[63:48]

First of all, what are my questions? What are the questions that I have? You know, it might be, why does Susie give me a hard time? Her name isn't Susie. But why am I having such a hard time in this relationship or that? What am I looking for? What am I seeking? Now, what do I want? To be myself. How has the Lord made me? How has he shaped me and made me? And what gifts has he given me? And what is he saying to me? What am I looking for? Last night, someone, one of you asked me about that word being.

[64:50]

And it's a big word, and it's a fancy philosophical word, and it can be off-putting. And I honestly say myself, gee, that's a big, cold, philosophical word. The way Father Lonergan talks about it sometimes, it's the X. You know, in geometry or in mathematics, you'll have an X. And it's naming the unknown. It's a way of naming the unknown. So x equals 7 minus 8. So what is x? Anybody good in mathematics? Minus 1. But that's how we work. We name the unknown. So maybe what we're doing on a retreat is we're, what is the being, what is the big X? that involves, that we're searching for.

[65:55]

And what's the evidence for, what do we know already if you know that one number is eight and the other number is, one number is seven, the other number is minus eight? What do we know about the X that our hearts are longing for? That love, faithfulness, the God of the universe, and this rich universe that we're part of, this wonderful universe that we're part of. So thank you very much, and I'll try to walk away without hanging myself.

[66:36]

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