One of the brothers said to me that one of the main things he's learning about my talks is how glad he's not in Haiti. But you know, honestly, I honestly wouldn't be all these years there if it weren't beautiful and if the people weren't wonderful. And I mean, all the things that go right, you don't need help with that. You need help with the things that go wrong. And I think that a lot of lessons we learn in life, we don't learn them. We learn them from the easy things and from the affirmations. We learn them from the real hard coming up against things. So I know the stories are tough. The world is tough. But I don't want to give the impression that all of Haiti is that way and that every day we're living these things because the people are beautiful, like I said, and their faith is extraordinary. Father Joseph Gabriel asked me last night what I thought was the relationship between liberation theology and obedience.

[01:06]

And, you know, thinking about that a little bit, I thought it was really a good place to start because, first of all, I'm not really talking about liberation theology, I'm talking about transformation that people are going through as their experience in life widens. This book, which is excellent, brother, by the way, that I started looking at last night, it's your recommendation. But the point is vision, and you're responsible for yours, I'm responsible for mine. That can't be surrendered to anybody. And it's just, you know, what I'm trying to focus on are what are all the things that disturb our vision and what are tried and true methods of finding our equilibrium again and seeing right so that we can decide right. So, I mean, just to give you an example, Oscar Romero, whose example I'm using mostly because you're studying him at your noon hour,

[02:19]

but he was not told under obedience to stop what he was doing or to resign. The Vatican and the Nunciator were very confused by him, but when pressed would say, you're the only one in your shoes, and the confidence to say that is the fact that everything you say and everything that you write and everything that you do is gospel. So he wasn't ordered not to do it. And Mother Teresa, who was another example, whose vision became different than the vision of the Loreto sisters, she wasn't ordered to stay with the Loreto sisters. They both paid the price. for following their own vision closely, even in the face of other discernments which didn't match. I think that's the point. And the fact that both of them are beatified now shows that it's not a question of obedience or disobedience. It's a question of, even in time, the Church confirms that their vision was the right one and lauds them for following it.

[03:30]

This is really interesting. Anyway, our novice master taught us, the minute you see something, you're responsible for it. You will never be free from being responsible for it. Even if it's a dust ball under the bed, you know it's there, pick it up. You know, you're responsible for what you see. And I think that the seeing differently... Mother Teresa was responsible then for what she saw differently. Seeing differently, Oscar Romero was responsible for what he saw differently. And then how that starts to play out in life is what becomes the problem. But the point is, they are... people who are transforming like we all are. I hope I'm different at 60 than I was at 50 and I hope I'm different at 50 than I was at 20. We're transforming.

[04:33]

It's like if our vision is static, it's the same as a static blood pressure. It's death. Our vision cannot be static. And we see more clearly In order not to bury the talents under a rock somewhere, we got to and we get back to, we see clearly so we know what to do with what we have been given in this precise moment in time. You can't do what Oscar Romero did. It was a precise locus at a precise moment in time. This is incarnation, it's precise. The announcement of the birth of Christ was precise. The village where it was, almost the longitude and the latitude, the name of all the people involved with the child will be called. The incarnation is by locus. Well, you're a locus, and I'm a locus. You're in time, I'm in time. And it falls to us by our vision to offer what we see. By an ever-changing and ever-refining vision, it falls to us to offer what we can offer by our vision.

[05:41]

But having said that, let me talk for a minute about liberation theology, because it's a very important point. John Paul was very suspicious of liberation theology, rightly so, because Marxists were infiltrating it, trying to use it as the excuse for class warfare. He was rightly concerned about it. And those Marxists were being fed by Russia and the Soviet Union, whose horrors of which he personally knows. So on the one hand, while he was doing Herculean movements to liberate the Iron Curtain people from the evils of communism, he wasn't about to let floodgates open up where these same people would use the very church in order to promote socialism, Marxism and communism.

[06:45]

And this was his hesitation, and it was a very good one. The premise of liberation theology is very simple. We are culpable for the corporate things that we participate in. We have to examine our corporate action, not just our individual action. We are to blame for our corporate action. Some things that came out of that which are laudatory by the Vatican. Don't call them liberation theology and you're okay. But let me tell you what came out of it. That religious orders in the United States pulled their investments out of companies that were creating nuclear arms. They pulled their investments out of companies that were exploiting peasants in El Salvador. This is social responsibility, which is intimately linked with the Gospel. It never hasn't been. The old word for it was called for works of mercy. But it becomes more than work of mercy in time.

[07:50]

It's trying to change structures that are heaping weeping death on such large multitudes of people. Benedict made as prefect of the congregation for, what do you call that, the doctrine, the doctrine of the faith, he appointed, do you remember the priest's name, the cardinal's name, who is responsible now, it's German, Mueller, okay. Benedict knew full well Mueller is sympathetic to Liberation Theology. Benedict appointed Mueller to the congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, knowing he is sympathetic to Liberation Theology. In September of 2013, Mueller already wrote articles in praise of the worthy aspects of liberation theology.

[08:54]

In other words, that it's aimed at trying to change the circumstances which are causing so much unfairness and lack of living for multitudes of the people, always with the caution against Marxism. It's not anathema. The Pope Francis reminded the participants at the first session of the Conference on the Family that there were fistfights at the councils defining the creed. In other words, it never goes smoothly, whether it's liberation theology or the doctrine of the Trinity or the Divine Presence, it never goes smoothly When people are trying to articulate and make sure there are no hidden dangers, a Trojan horse, it doesn't go smoothly, and it didn't go smoothly in Liberation Theology. But it's not anathema either, and the Church at the highest levels has been working very hard to perfect the understanding

[10:04]

of what is our best approach to the reality of poverty which is overwhelming in our world today so much so that Pope Francis recently invited Gutierrez, the founder of liberation theology to private meetings with him in the Vatican and so it's trying to weed out the bad part and keep the good part in order to not lose the obligation to change the circumstances of the poor through social justice is intimately linked with the gospel. That's denied by no one, especially the congregation, for the faith. So, in any case, liberation theology isn't really called that anymore. And I'll tell you why. Because it was a blame game. you get to say to dull pineapple, you've driven all the peasants off their land and now you're making pineapples for Americans that just keep getting heavier and heavier and heavier and sweeter and sweeter and sweeter and more and more diabetic.

[11:18]

And similarly with the beef industry, you've driven all the peasants off the lands in Guatemala to grow beef that's all for export that's going to feed people who are already dying of of coronary episodes from all their grease and beef and fats and everything else. In other words, it became nothing but name-calling. And name-calling is easy to do, as you know. Name the flaw and offer nothing towards solving it. In the really ferocious attacks that people make on Twitter and Tweet, when they respond to people who say something, this has become an object of psychology now. Did you ever read any Twitters or Tweets in response to a New York Times article, for example? They become the most foul, bigoted things you could possibly imagine, and that you're shocked to read on media. It happens because there's a very perverse idea of intelligence in the human beings, and it's one of the things every person has to dominate inside of themselves.

[12:29]

That to feel intelligent, you criticize, you belittle, you critique to feel intelligent. But after that, you have nothing to offer because you're not intelligent. At least you're not intelligent on that issue. And you could be if you sat and thought about it and studied about it and then offer something. Offer something concretely to solve it. But this is a big problem. There are therapy groups formed now to help movie stars and people like that deal with all their bad Twitters, because they can't live without Twitter. But when 30% of the responses are outrageous, it's hard for their egos. And they live on ego. I saw that Benedict used to get 85 terrible responses to every 15 positive responses. For Francis, it's a little bit different. He gets about 70 positive responses to 30 vulnerable ones. But this is the world we live in. People say what they want in public with no responsibility for what they're saying and somehow feel smugly satisfied at how intelligent they are and how productive they are.

[13:40]

Well, liberation theology went a similar way. And it became apparent really fast at the level of the university that more important than liberation is reconciliation and reconstruction, and much more difficult than the name-calling of liberation theology. is reconciliation and reconstruction and in fact in levels of university now the theology is really the theology of reconciliation and reconstruction and Desmond Tutu has held it as one of the best examples of how to try to approach such things so it's all in evolution and it's all in good evolution and evolution is human history even in terms of our own of our own doctrine, but I think the point of the exercise, the point of bringing it up is that the focus for me is not on any of the theology part of it.

[14:51]

The focus is on our equilibrium of vision. in front of a lot of things that are very difficult to understand because that's what we're really supposed to be best at in ourselves and in helping other people is helping people see clearly the vision that God is offering them to their own life and our life in common. I will tell you something very interesting and a little bit related to this though and I want to talk more about this in a later session. It's the concept from Harvard Business School And it's something that's coming out because of all these internet assaults. You know, people get assaulted on Facebook. You know, some woman just puts a picture of a child you just had for his communion in a pretty dress, and then somebody will write in and say, oh, you're making your child an object of vanity and an object of lust and a sex object. It's unbelievable what happens, but it's spawning responses. And part of the response from Harvard Business School

[15:55]

is this, bad is stronger than good, and I want to go into this more at a later session. Bad is stronger than good, and we have to understand that. It doesn't mean bad wins over good, it doesn't mean that, and I'll explain it out later, but bad is stronger than good. And I want to give this example related to how liberation theology in itself is not enough, identifying bad structures and publicizing them, that it's not enough. And listen to this example, it's a very important one. In medicine, and it's as true in psychology and psychiatry, and it's as true in spirituality, we have to pay a lot of attention to undoing the damage that was done in all of those areas spirituality, psychiatry, psychology and physically in the human body a lot of experience to undoing the damage that was done and this also I'll speak more about in another session which is how do we heal ourselves when we stand up for our vision and wind up in a lot of trouble

[17:10]

In medicine, the idea of flashback to when you were in war, flashback to when you were raped, flashback to when you were in that terrible accident, or whatever it was, there's a lot of headway being done on the understanding of these flashbacks. And part of it is related to what we call tracking in pediatrics. And if tracking is done well in pediatrics, it's done well your whole life long. The importance of stimulating a baby and showing him bees and showing him berries and showing the baby goats and showing the baby stars and playing with the baby all the time is all the stimulation makes physical tracks. well-ordered, beautifully-ordered physical tracks inside of the brain that thoughts flew along in the form of electricity, like lightning. It's really important. The child who has no attention and is malnourished, and we have lots of them, you can almost do nothing with them.

[18:16]

The railroad lines haven't been laid in order to start the train. It's really, really difficult. But when it's done, and when it's done well, it continues through life. And I think it was Tom Berry, the echo theologian from the Passionist Order, who told us, if you think that there's no difference between watching a hundred thousand birds take off all at the same time, and the ability to experience wonder inside of yourself, you're wrong. They're interrelated. If you don't understand that it's your experience of mountain that gives you the capacity for the spiritual experience of grandeur, you're really mistaken. It's all tied. So let's go back to this example again. When something terrible happens to you, it's like lightning hits the railroad tracks at exactly that point.

[19:19]

And any time, any color, any scent, any word brings you anywhere near that memory, in your mind you're right back to that derailed place and you're useless. So, to solve it, there is a medical technique, it's more psychological, which is called eye movement dissociation therapy. It sounds like hypnotism. You move your eyes back and forth, back and forth, while somebody is talking to you, somebody very kind, somebody very benign, who has only one goal. They need to bring you back to that place in your mind. It's a physical place. It's a physical place in your mind. They have to bring you back to that physical place in your mind, which you avoid like the plague, in order to walk you through it once, twice, maybe three times, so that you lay down the lines again at that spot.

[20:25]

It's what it is. And they just encourage you, I'm here with you. That person, that time is long gone, you're safe, I'm here with you. Just tell me about it, with the rhythm, which is so reassuring. The rhythm of the turning of the earth, the rhythm of the tides, the rhythm of the sunrise and sunset, the rhythm of the seasons, it's all built in. Just tell me about it. And the more precise that a person can get, to the details, the closer they get to that place. What was the color of the shirt? What was the look in their eyes? What was the scent of the perfume? The closest that you can get to the detail, the closer you get to that point, and it works. After two or three times, it works. You're nowhere near as disabilitated by the memory. derailed by the memories as they were before.

[21:27]

I only know two people that ever had it. Thank God I haven't needed it yet, but at least I know it's there if something bad happens. But there's two people that I know who have had it, and one is a priest who works in Alaska, remotely, on his own, taking little airplanes to all of his outposts and everything else. And one time when he was at base in his house, this drug addict came into his house at night And in the dark, he heard the noise and he came out. And in the dark, this druggy had taken a bottle of wine, church wine that was on the shelf, and he smashed him over the head with it. And the priest had no idea who it was, what was going on or anything, but he grabbed him to try to contain him. And the two stumbled down his stairs into his garage and belted all the garbage cans In other words, they made enough of a racket so that the only neighbor heard the racket and came, at which time, of course, this guy fled.

[22:39]

Now, the priest, after that, wasn't able to do anything. He wasn't able to be alone. He wasn't able to be in the dark. He wasn't able to sit still very long. He wasn't able. This... was more than a physical trauma, this entered deep into him. And he went through this. And he told me that it was an enormous help to him, that he was able, in time and not a lot of time, to be able to be alone, to be in the dark, to resume his work, to sit quietly in prayer without being terrorized. But he said there was one thing missing. and psychology can't give it, and eye techniques can't give it, and the person in front of you saying, watch my eyes, watch my eyes, can't give it. Until I could forgive that person for their assault on me, I was not cured.

[23:44]

I could work, but I was not cured. He had to come to the place, and like Mother Teresa said, it didn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen overnight. But it's possible, with the help of other people and the spirit within you and your own determination, to get to a higher place. And getting to a higher place is much more important than the technique, because the technique was empty without it, it was only functional without it. And so it is with the liberation theology. When it's missing reconciliation, when it's missing reconstruction, when it's missing everything deepest that is positive, it is itself a communist tool of social analysis. That's all it is. It needs to be infused deeply with spirituality and the teachings of the spiritual world. None of that is what I wanted to talk about this morning, and it's 10.30, but I will move just briefly into what I wanted to talk about, even if I could enlarge it later on in the evening.

[24:56]

Because the only assurance of our freedom For any Christian, but more so somebody who has publicly accepted ministry or is consecrated in religious life, the only assurance that we have of our freedom are our vows. We have no other. It sounds simplistic, but the roots of it are very clear. For the evangelical councils, when we were in formation, We heard various different reasons for why we take the vows. The reasons were always associated with freedom, but they were very different reasons, and I've heard three different ones over the years. I'm sure you've had your own information, your own explanations of the evangelical councils, but I'll tell you what my three were, and I'll tell you of the three what are the best ones, hands down.

[26:08]

So one of the first that we learned was that the Church thrives on the sacrifice, especially of martyrs. And that monasticism started to appear when martyrdom started to disappear. It was kind of a confluent thing. And so the sacrifice of your life where when you lose everything for the faith became replaced by a different kind of sacrifice of your life. Through chastity you renounce any chance of generating another you or anybody else in your life. Through your poverty you give up all the power that comes with wealth and ownership and through obedience you give up your will. So to replace the sacrifice of the martyrs comes along the sacrifice of the religious orders and the religious communities, which is an ongoing witness of giving everything for the kingdom of heaven.

[27:25]

That's a nice explanation. When I say I'm going to tell you my favorite one, it doesn't negate any of the others. It's just for me, it is a richer one, but they all have what they have to offer. The second one, which made a lot more sense in all the experimental years after the Vatican Council, which are the years that most of us were formed in, which, as you know, were enormously chaotic, and all the experiments... I remember in the monastery in Jamaica where we were studying, there were so many experiments with the kind of bread we used at mass, that finally one theologian said, it takes more faith believing it's bread than believing it's the body of Christ. But in any case, in all of those years when everybody was very quick to say that the vocation of the ordinary person was the same as

[28:27]

a nun or a priest. In other words, when it was all like, well, what the hell, you know, it's all one thing, there's no distinctions, that's when this newer formulation of the Evangelical Council made sense to me. And it was basically this, that if you're tied down by your belongings, and if you're tied down by particular relationships with people or marriage. And if you are tied down by all of the possibilities you have in the world of your own deciding, You can't be of best service to the church. Now, I can tell you hands down, if I had a wife, there's no way I would be in Haiti, because my wife would never accept that I'm in Haiti. And if I had a wife and children, I would never want to raise my children in Haiti. Why would I, if I could offer them a much more safer and better environment?

[29:31]

So this is a way of describing the freedom of the vows, which is very practical. And if you're on the move, like in religious life, and need to change on a dime sometimes, as we all are, this is a very practical way of living. But the third way, in fact, I learned from the Benedictines in Cuernavaca, Mexico, when I was in Mexico. And those were also wild years, if you remember Ilan Illich and the bishop of Cuernavaca, Sergio Mendez, they called him the Red Bishop of Cuernavaca. and he was at the forefront of all the mariachi masses. I mean, it was a wild time. But in any case, the Benedictines in Cuernavaca, when I was on retreat there and discussing this, they said, the evangelical councils go very simply and purely to the first letter of John, chapter 2, verse 15 to 17.

[30:36]

And this is what it is. Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, which is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, it is of the world, and it will pass as the world passes. whereas whoever does the will of the Father abides forever." It's that simple. God the Father, the Spirit of the Father, cannot be in us. The Greek word is epithemia. If we have epithemia of the sarx, we're completely preoccupied for flesh and body. If we have epithemia of thalmus, it's what it is in Greek. In other words, we're so covetous and desirous with our eyes constantly and so busy with our senses that we can't even focus, we can't even be centered.

[31:47]

And the word in Greek for the pride for the pride of life is a beautiful word. Pseudo-autonomia. False independence. Because if our independence is completely false, even if God takes the breath right now, we're gone, we have nothing. Pseudo-autonomia. This is pride. Dependence is not pride. Your independence in the structure of your dependent relationships is the proper dependence. Pseudo-autonomia, this illusion that it's just you doing everything, this is the cry that it's just you, there's no God, there's no state, there's no church, there's no family, it's just you and what you want, when you want, how you want it, this is the epidemic of our age, this pseudo-autonomia.

[32:48]

But we'll talk more about this also, to derive all the strengths from it tonight. But the point is, to move on now in the discussion, the dangers to our vision are not being cleaned. And the dangers of not being cleaned are the spirit can't be regarded. And the danger of the spirit not being within us is that we are condemned to our own eyesight rather than vision that comes to us very uniquely to each one of us from God. So we'll take that point up in the evening session. You remember from the Summa Theologica that a real fascinating way to analyze something is to give, he always gave the counterpoint first and then gave the point, argued for the point.

[33:49]

But considering both sides of it brings you to, you know, to a deeper understanding. And having said that, For sure, when I say just authoritatively that the spirit can't work in you unless you're perfectly clean, it's contradicted by the following examples from the scripture. the conversion of Nebuchadnezzar, of the prison keeper, of the Gerasene demoniac, I almost said Genesee demoniac, by the way, but Gerasene demoniac, the centurion, the Samaritan at the well, King Manasseh, and the good thief. And it's contradicted outside the scriptures, at least by St. Augustine. And of course, St. Paul is another biggie. Now, this is quite a collection of people because some of them, the spirit got through, although they're stark raving mad, like the demoniac. Some of them were good people, but they didn't get it, like the woman at the well, and she got it.

[34:55]

And some of them were full turnarounds from bad life, like Saul. So, you know, the point is when we consider things, I mean, we have to consider things with words, but it's real life. that is the real teacher, and it's good to take the words in a way that real life is the helpful guide. So having said that, I really like this. This is a good way even for myself to see things more clearly. I want to look at the evangelical councils not as straitjackets, that if we're not getting all of them right all the time, we're useless and the spirit can't do anything, but they for sure have to be the predispositions. And I want to give a few examples of that, and then we'll look at the evangelical councils and that idea. And the examples are very fascinating. People who come to a very poor place, like Haiti, and I always want to say Haiti is quite representative of about 80% of the world.

[36:05]

But people come to a very poor place, like Haiti, and they say, the poor people seem so happy. Now, it's not an illusion, and also you should not draw the wrong conclusions from that. So let me tell you why it's the case, and it's related to physiology. In medicine, for anybody who is holistic, who has not made an investment in Prozac, and now wants to diagnose everybody with Prozac and get them on it, But somebody who is free to be holistic in their medical care understands the concept of the physiology of excellence. So physiology of excellence in very broad terms would mean for you, unlike for anybody else, just for you, there's a certain amount of food that you should eat every day, no more and no less,

[37:17]

that will really keep you fine-tuned like a guitar string. There's a certain amount of sleep that you need, no more and no less, to keep you really fine-pitched. There's a certain amount of rest and free time that you need every day to keep yourself in equilibrium and balance. And on and on and on. And this is the physiology that will guarantee your health. And when you're acting against that, because you don't even know what yours is, And you know it by trying and feeling things out. I love milk, but I know I'll have gas for four hours after I drink it. I'm drinking a gallon of it before I go home because I miss it and I love it. But I'm going to put up with that, but I know it's against my physiology of excellence. And I can just say, fortunately, I don't have a roommate so I can get away with it.

[38:19]

But in global strokes, the physiology of excellence is your body. Your body has precise needs that you cannot copy from anybody else. They're your needs. And when you follow that, you are in a guarantee of the best health. Now, let's go a little bit further on it because it's a really important example. There is a physiology of hunger. which is very good for you. And there's a physiology of silence, which is very good for you. This almost goes towards the physiology of spirituality. But let me give you an example, and it's a really good one. When you eat a big meal, the food sits in your stomach and in your intestines, And in order to be able to digest it, which is the purpose of eating, all of your blood has to come out of your head, out of your legs, out of your main muscles, and go down there and sit there in order to surround and absorb all these nutrients and then pass them all around.

[39:39]

So, you're a digester. And when you're a digester, Oh, you want to yawn because you don't have any blood up here, and you want to lay down because you don't have any blood here, and you just want to lay on the couch and watch television. And when you're watching television, you're watching someone else's life. It's not about you anymore. Forget your life. You're a big lump on a couch. You're watching somebody else's life, and you know darn well the life you're watching isn't even a real one. Now, the trouble is, in a consumer society, you never stop filling your stomach. And when you never stop filling your stomach, you never stop digesting. And when you never stop digesting, you don't have the full range of blood spinning around in your nervous system and in your brain.

[40:42]

In other words, you are never a hunter. You're a digester. We live in a world that does nothing but consume. As a matter of fact, all marketing is to try to get you to consume and consume more and consume more and consume this and consume that and consume the other, never stopping. And even consuming with the eyes, constantly now, you go into a bar and there's ten televisions, consuming with the ears constantly, but we're taught to consume. And the whole economy is driven on it, and if you stop consuming it, and everybody else does, the economy is going to crash. That's what it's built on. So the marketing is all to trick you to do it. But let's stick with the example of the stomach, because it's the important one. When you're living somnambulant, you know, half asleep, and you rather watch everybody else live than live your own life, you sink into meaninglessness and depression.

[41:53]

You don't know why you're there. There's nothing enlivening you. You don't know why you're there. And it's hard to get out of that. Now, why does every major religion, and when I say that, it's to reinforce the wisdom of it. It's not just Christianity. Why does every major religion encourage fasting and denying yourself of sleep? Not all the time, not every day, but periods of it. It's for a very simple reason. You're looking for something in life. You're looking for an answer. You're trying to understand. You're looking for a sign of what you're supposed to do. Well, the sign is going to keep going over your head if all the blood is down in your belly. You're never going to see it. And you don't have the blood in your legs even to go looking for it. You're out of the cycle. So what happens with the poor people, and I'm telling you this is exactly it, their bellies are never empty.

[42:56]

They can't even find clean water to drink. So look at what happens then. They live as hunters. Their minds are always hugely alert, looking for any sign, anything that will help them. They have plenty of energy. They're not couch potatoes. The consumer digester is thirsty, and you say, here's some water, and they say, Perrier? I'm not drinking Perrier. You start disdaining the very things that you take in. They're nothing to you. You disdain them. What, a red one? I don't want a red one. Who told you I wanted a red one? It's what happens. You start disdaining the things that are sustaining you. It's not that way for the poor person. Pulling a cart like a mule, loaded with cinder block for a dollar a day, thirsty as can be, sweat pouring out of them, their bare feet on the hot asphalt, they're as thirsty as can be, don't have any money to buy a drink.

[44:05]

They see an empty can of paint on the road that has some of last night's rain in it, and they say, my God, Providence is amazing. I'm thirsty as can be and here's water. It's how it is. When you live in need, you're grateful for what you get. When you live in need, you know you can be in the grave in 10 minutes. And the world is provident. Life is provident. You keep finding so that you're still here the next day. It's not the way people typically live in the developed world of plenty. It's not it at all. You're a hunter. And it's not just finding some water and being grateful for it. It's being grateful in general for what life is. And so the people are spontaneous. The people are playful. The children, even in these myriads of garbage heaps, are children.

[45:07]

They look for little pieces of plastic bags and some broken sticks and they make kites and find enough pieces of string to tie them together to launch a kite in the air and laugh their heads off that they have these kites going. It's so not what we see in our young people because they're jaded. And they're being robbed. They're being robbed of spiritual living, which has a physiological base to it. When people are seeking, they go on retreat. They deliberately fast. They deliberately do vigils to heighten themselves so that they don't miss the sign when it comes. And this is how it is. So the point is to compare a readiness with what you find. Can a revelation come to a couch potato? Yes. Do they never hunt? No. It's not true that they never hunt.

[46:08]

But there's a disposition and you can't but not see it in the poor people. Does it glorify poverty? No. Does it teach us that the ancient teachers and our faith are right when they say less is more? Yes. It's a full confirmation of it. Does it mean human beings who have enough to eat can control themselves so that they deliberately only take what they need? No. It doesn't happen. And the poor people surrounded by plenty will do exactly as we do, surrounded by plenty. Your community is exceptional, but most communities, all the members are fighting with, you know, the main problem of our country is what do they call it, morose obesity, morose. Here we're dealing with severe malnutrition all the time and just 900 miles away in Miami it's the opposite problem that doctors are facing.

[47:12]

I'm saying that because even religious people can't voluntarily follow this. It's not easy because we're human beings. So it's not to glorify poverty but it is to say Less is more, and in moderation, we are much more predisposed to receive the gifts and to see things than when we're absolutely stuffed and sleeping. It's the way it is. All right, let's take another example. This one, for me, is more fascinating still. And... Let's tie it to the Feast of the Holy Spirit, which we just celebrated. All right. If you are full of the Holy Spirit, you're in a lot of danger. It's high voltage. You're in a lot of danger for two reasons.

[48:15]

You're taken to the very edge. either in visions, or dreams, or talking in tongues, or ideas that nobody else can understand, or up against all the big powers for which you're trying to defend, but the Spirit will take you to an edge. It's easy to fall off, and a lot of people do. The second thing is, you are burdened with responsibility when you are filled with the Spirit. You're responsible. This is a really difficult combination, so much so that in our Christian tradition and also in our ancestry, the Judaic tradition, we highly mistrust mystics and Pentecostals and the Jewish people highly mistrust Kabbalah and the mystical traditions. Because even ourselves, when we see somebody en-thu, that means full of God, the word literally means en-theos, full of God.

[49:22]

When we see somebody so spirited, we're afraid of them. We don't know what to make of them. Because we don't know how to discern, is their edge madness? Is their edge a danger to all of us? It's not easy. The point being, to receive the Holy Spirit is high voltage and heavy responsibility. And we better really know what we're doing when we're praying to be filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Now, having said that, the only sin that our Lord says is absolutely not pardonable ever. And he says that. It's not pardonable either in this life or the life to come. The only sin is the sin against the Holy Spirit. There's a third danger related to the Holy Spirit.

[50:24]

Every other sin is forgivable. And when he says, in this life or the life to come, it means we still have another chance in purgatory to make our contritions for our sins and to be forgiven. There is no unforgivable sin except one, and it's the sin against the Holy Spirit. So what do our smart people think that means? And it's really important to us. to get it. Our Lord pronounces that in this context. He drives out a demon from somebody, and the Pharisees say, you drove out that devil by the prince of devils. Okay, this really irks him. And this is when he makes that statement. You cannot confuse the work of God with the work of the devil.

[51:30]

The Old Testament already says it, woe to the one who calls evil good and good evil, but to call the source of goodness a demon, woe, woe to you to call the source of goodness a demon. Now, none of us are likely to do that, and yet the sin applies to us, and we have to be careful of it in a different sense. It's important to tie this story to Moses' liberation of the people of Israel, because if Jesus said to them, tell me by what authority you drive out devils, what does that tell you? They also drive out devils. but they do it by magic and they do it by other ways, but they also drive out devils. They don't say to him, we never heard of this, somebody driving out devils. They also drive out devils.

[52:31]

They said, you're driving out devils by the power of the evil one. If you remember in the story, Everything that Aaron did when he was told by Moses, who was told by God, it was this chain. God tells Moses to tell Aaron, and Aaron does it. So he says, throw down your staff. He does, and it becomes a serpent. And then Pharaoh calls his magicians, and he said, can you do this? And they say, sure. And they throw down their staffs, and it becomes a serpent. And then Aaron's serpent runs over and eats theirs. So it keeps going. I think the next one was the river of blood, and the magicians turned the river into blood. The next was the frogs, and the magicians turned the river into frogs. And then God changed his modus operandi. The next one was going to apply only to Egyptians and not to Israelis.

[53:38]

This was a huge difference, and that was the Gnats. And while the magicians could summon forth Gnats, they could not distinguish the Gnats so that they only attack the Israelis and not the Egyptians. And finally the magician said, finally the magician said, He does this by the finger of God. And that is what flipped Pharaoh into finally saying, I better let them go out into the desert to have their prayers. He wasn't ready to say, get out of here. But he said, now I'll give you permission to go to the desert and have your prayers. So this story is a parallel to that. Jesus acts, they act. They accuse him of doing it by the devil, and he says to them, I do this by the finger of God, and let me see you do it by the finger of God.

[54:40]

And finally they're so frustrated that they want to kill him. But practically speaking, practically for you and I, what does it mean, what does it mean, the sin against the Holy Spirit, It means you denigrate the Holy Spirit, not by calling him names, and not by saying you're really saint then, but by not allowing the Spirit to govern your life. Because it means the whole purpose and meaning of your life is over, and what you're supposed to offer to the human family, to God's glory, is never offered. It means you buried the talents rather than investing them in fish or sheep or something so that there's a return. It's what it means. You have sold out. You prefer to spend your life on a couch eating rather than being who you are to the glory of God and allowing yourself to be spent by the Spirit within you.

[55:43]

Very interestingly, parallel to the Feast of Pentecost, there were two articles in the New York Times, really fascinating, and they apply. The first one is about a famous mathematician whose name is John Nash, whose mathematics influenced the economy tremendously, who crawled out of schizophrenia by sheer will, and a lot of other help, and became such a brilliant mathematician that he won the Nobel Prize. And he was in the newspaper that day because he had just come from Stockholm for another prize with his wife, and he was killed in an accident in the taxi that was taking him from Kennedy Airport to his New Jersey home. The point is, even with artists, even with brilliant intellectual people, The gift of brilliance brings you really close to the edge.

[56:52]

It comes with the territory. He fought from worse. He fought from over the edge into being a Nobel laureate. Now, simultaneously, there was another article just as fascinating. You know what the name of it was? It really is rocket science. Did you read it? Yes, and here is the point of the article. Everybody says, Newton was sitting under the tree, and the apple fell, and all of a sudden he was able to enunciate what gravity is. Or there's Mozart, you know, or Beethoven, you know, just bending over to pick something up, and all of a sudden the whole Fifth Symphony comes to him, and he rushes and writes it all down. And on and on and on in science where there are so many things where all of a sudden, in serendipity, the mathematician sees the formula and has said, Einstein said that, for example, you know, where did the theory of relativity come?

[58:01]

He said, I was asleep and I saw this blackboard and this hand took chalk and this hand started writing E equals MC squared. This is over and over in music, in poetry, in art, in intellectual endeavors, in science. It's over and over again. And the point of the article was This would not have happened to Einstein if he hadn't spent his whole life trying to figure this out. This wouldn't have happened to Beethoven if he wasn't learning his harmonies and melodies and minors and majors and scales over and over again. It wouldn't have happened to any of these mathematicians if they weren't studying math since they were six years old. In other words, the rush of the solution as a gift from Providence was not just gratuitous to somebody with no preparation at all. It was on top of preparation.

[59:04]

So by these two examples, I think the point is this. For sure we don't control the Spirit of God. For sure we don't. But there are ways of living physically and there are ways of living spiritually, and there are ways of keeping ourselves empty and undetached, which make the likelihood of us receiving the messages that Providence is always trying to give us, much more likely when we are predisposed. This is a long list of people who weren't predisposed at all. God's grace is a gift and the visitation of the Holy Spirit is a gift. But for sure, most people who get somewhere in life, like Mother Teresa said after the sisters asked her, her answer was, this didn't happen overnight.

[60:06]

So it's really good to put it in that context. It makes it a lot more real. And now I want to go back to the point of that, if you just give me a second. Let me put it in its place, because then I'm finished for tonight, and tomorrow I want to talk about something completely different, which is to go back to that idea of bad being worse than good, or bad being stronger than good, and develop that out, because that has to do with how we right ourselves after being wounded. All right, so for my own sake, since I feel like I'm rambling a lot, and probably for yours too, I just want to go over how we got to this point and why we're going to the next. The point is we're given the inner gift of faith through our baptism and we dedicate ourselves more intensely to it through our religious consecration and for some of us also through our ordination.

[61:13]

We don't want to lose it. We want it to grow brighter and brighter inside of ourselves and to transform us and we want to be able to offer this to the world in all of these mystical ways, changing the world through our prayer, and in a lot of practical ways of being able to give good advice to each other, and being able to give good advice to people who seek advice and help from us. There are problems with keeping it burning. And one of the first problems is original sin. And one of the second problems is all of the sins that we add on top of the original sin. These cloud our vision and make us lose sight of this light and everything that the light teaches us. And because of this cloudy way of seeing, this murky way of seeing, we have to devote ourselves constantly to discernment, which is constantly focusing our inner vision, seeing more, seeing brighter, and seeing in the dark when there's nothing but darkness in our lives.

[62:37]

This takes a lot of humility. This takes a lot of detachment. It takes a lot of self-honesty. It takes a lot of self-disclosure. It takes a lot of prayer. And it can become very troublesome because our own discernment can become confused by a counter-discernment of somebody else who's in our orbit. And when that happens, The only chance we have, since we can't discern for somebody else, or often not even challenge their discernment, as to their freedom in discerning, the only thing that we can do, as always, is make sure that we're freest in our discernment. Okay, we're never angels, we're never fully free, but for example, if in whatever the issue is, I see how free I am in terms of the evangelical councils, how free am I in terms of my detachments physically in this issue,

[63:45]

my detachments for control, authority, domination in this issue. my freedom for obedience, for poverty, my freedom from attachment, authority, and power, my freedom from wanting to dominate rather than here, and my freedom from my own physical well-being. How free am I in these matters while I'm seeing what I'm seeing? That is the minimum that we can do. And so the point of this talk today is, in order to be free, we have to be as close as we can to the spirit of freedom, which is this epithemia, this staying away from this rigorous attachment to flesh, rigorous attachment to everything the eye can see and want, and this rigorous attachment to our own trumped-up self-importance.

[64:50]

It's the only way. And yes, for sure, spirit is a gift, but the way of trying to live so that the spirit can come and abide has to do with a certain physiology and a certain mental outlook and following tons of advice from desert fathers and mothers and tons of wise people ever since, of simple things like less is more, the greatest is the smallest, the most insignificant is the most significant, when you do it for the least you do it for God himself, but entering completely into this mentality is what predisposes us It brings us as close as we can to be sure that what we're seeing is right. And when you add to that, I'm checking this against my three ways of knowing, my mind, which will lie to me, my heart, which won't, and my gut, which won't, then we're pretty sure of where we stand in terms of our discernment.

[65:54]

So tomorrow I'll start talking about the wounds, because it's not just the poor vision that are our danger, it's the wounds also that are dangerous. So tomorrow I'll start talking about the wounds, And this idea of bad being stronger than good because we also have to know how to get and keep our balance from getting wounded. None of us are dispensed from getting wounded as we go through life. So thank you. Yes, brother? You know, the Holy Spirit comes with everyone. You are also part of that going overboard. I mean, where do you know, how do you know the Holy Spirit?

[66:55]

How do you know all of these things are God? Maybe that's meant for you. Knowing is exactly discernment and becoming really good and really skilled in discernment. The Desert Fathers and Mothers excelled in it. People went to see them from everywhere because they knew how to help you to see very clearly, because often they could see you coming and see very clearly what the issue is. And this is what they say about it, and you probably know this better than I do, but this is what they say about it. In our complexity, because we're very complex, I give you an example. I'm angry, and I'm ashamed that I'm angry. And I want to deny that I'm ashamed that I'm angry. It's a chain. We're very complex. And in discernment, you come to recognize, for example, I feel this way,

[68:02]

And feeling this way feels right to me, as opposed to I feel this way and there's something really wrong with me that I'm feeling this way. It's like what I was saying, wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. The wisdom is the instinct. Everybody has this, and probably if people weren't spending so much time playing Nintendo, you know, and on all these contraptions, young people would learn a lot about their innards. It's just forgotten art because nobody pays any attention to anything inside. It just doesn't exist. But the recuperation of discernment is to try to help people recuperate all their inner instincts and inner senses. But discernment is, you become very good in yourself at knowing I feel like I'm going crazy, but something good is going to come out of this. It's not breaking down, it's breaking through.

[69:04]

Or you might say, wow, I really feel weird and I'm really worried about this. This really doesn't seem right to me. But it's another sense and it's there, it's just clouded over completely. And it's never recommended that everybody just discern themselves forever. It's recommended that you have somebody, all the great people have had somebody that they're writing letters to all the time. Somebody else who knows themselves real well and knows you well enough that this fits or this doesn't fit. You know what I mean? And can help you to discern by saying, you say it feels right, to me it doesn't look right. I'm sorry, it doesn't. Maybe you better think about it again and I'll tell you why it doesn't look right. You see? That's, it's the only way. It's dealing with fire, it's high voltage. So it has to be with people who understand fire and high voltage. Please do. said that there is a clock that went down.

[70:20]

That every day for nine years he thought that way. So, even Hawaii's desert father didn't get that for nine years he played the same game spiritually and sat up and down, up and down, up and down. In the classroom he would be kind of like, hey, how do you know? And where are those lines from? That's the first part of the question. The second part of the question is, as I had heard what you had talked about, what we were talking about, as far as blasphemy and similes do, up to the point of the gnats, the same way, growing up. But from there, the sin was... It was the fact that you recognize God, you recognize the Spirit, you recognize who is behind the force, and yet still you deny the presence. That's the sin of apostasy.

[71:21]

Following the confusions could be the sin of apostasy, following, we talked about that before, those types of things. So now, not only you are saying it's the couch potato, which I get what you're saying, Even though I don't understand how the Catholic faith, because I know so many of them, would never recognize that. And that's kind of unfair. That they would never recognize that in themselves because they're caught up and trapped in this world that they're born into. This indentured slavery that everyone's born into. They don't know any different. I don't get this new way of thinking because of all kinds of And the first time I ever heard it was a month ago, when we wrote our book. And the only reason why I wrote that book is because I get so curious sometimes by these things I'm reading. And it never even dawned on me, when I was thinking about monastic life, that that would even be an issue.

[72:28]

The fact that I don't get to choose what we read. Yes, but for the first one, it's similar to the Mother Teresa thing. It wasn't overnight. It's looking, [...] how long did Einstein work at that before it finally came to him? How can I say? The timing is not the blessing that it worked or didn't work. It's the struggle that brings the blessing. So it's just not cut and dry that way. I mean, it just isn't cut and dry that way. But to be constantly working at it and honest with yourself and other people, honest with you so that you're seeking, That's how things get worked out. My God, we were talking today with a visitor from Syracuse and father was giving this, oh, really sad example of this child who was killed in Erie some years ago.

[73:39]

And, you know, the healing and the resolution of some of those things seems impossible, period, like you almost have to live with it forever, that you can never be freed of it. It's not timing that gives the guarantee. It's the constant dedication to working at it, which is why it's not rocket science, but when the grace comes and the sisters say, how were you able to do that? That's what she said. It wasn't rocket, this was rocket science. It didn't just come to me. I was prepared. So you can only keep working at it. For the second part, I'm not sure though what that question was. That was the difference in the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, the definition of blasphemy, the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, the definition of blasphemy, the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, the definition of blasphemy, [...] the definition

[74:46]

And by the way, the denial, when you knew in your head that it came from God and you decided to not acknowledge that or not give that credence, that is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit because you've been enlightened and you choose to lower your hand back. So the sin of apostasy is following a different view. Now this whole new thing So was it Moral Heiser or was it the war that had said basically the same thing? About preventing the Holy Spirit from working in real life. In your example it was the couch potato. So that is the sin of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit and what you were saying, not allowing the Torah to work. So my question was, why is there a difference between the two? I see three different parts of your question.

[76:03]

So one of them would be the discussion of what is the sin against the Holy Spirit, because even if we drop that completely from this whole talk, more the point of the talk was the danger of spirited people the burden of spirited people, and how with John Nash and with all these, Beethoven and these, there is a, you put yourself in a predisposition to be a receiver, you know, and that's mainly the point that I was making. I went further in making the denial of all of that, the sin against the Holy Spirit, because you've wasted your life.

[77:09]

But the question though is, what is mortal sin? Because yes, you have to know what you're doing and deliberately want to do it. You can look at the same thing in different dimensions and have a different name for it, and there can be a poem about a rose, and a photograph of a rose, and a painting of a rose, and a dance about a rose, but it's still you're looking at different dimensions of the same thing, and in my understanding, a denial of the Holy Spirit is somehow related to this rejection and sin. How culpable somebody is, that's what they try to figure out in their confession, if they're aware enough to bring it to a confession. And for sure, we know how God judges. It's very clear to us that God judges a sin as deadly when we fully know and choose it. And that doesn't happen a lot, frankly. So those are those two points.

[78:14]

I mean, it would be a really fun and interesting discussion to try to parse out more. What does it mean exactly, the sin of the Holy Spirit? But the example I gave stands even without that. But the other part is not knowing and culpability. I mean, for the couch potatoes, it's not a matter of judging them. It's a matter of, isn't it a pity that they're taking their lives? Isn't it a pity their children are taking their lives? Isn't it a pity that every once in a while one of them gets up and goes to a shopping mall and blows everybody's head off? Or into a school in Newtown, Connecticut? In other words, it's not good for us. And waking people up is the job of religious people, of whatever faith. It's our job. It's the job of the prophets to be shouting, wake up, the end is near, can't you see it? What else does it take for you to see it? It's our job. to pity the condition and to try to wake people up to accept something else and to pay the price for what they're accepting because there's a price to it.

[79:23]

And that's another problem. People don't like sacrifice very much anymore and people have to be encouraged to pay the price for the things that are valuable. Really? Sure. Yes, and it's ancient. It is. It's ancient wisdom and it's dormant, unfortunately. It's so important to wake that up.

[80:06]

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