Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E179: Aquinas, Parenting, and Living Your Best Life w/Fr Gregory Pine

Transcript

E179: Aquinas, Parenting, and Living Your Best Life w/Fr Gregory Pine · The Lila Rose Show

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  I think a lot of people imagine life after the manner of a
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  textbook, and they're just trying to flip to the back, get
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  to the answer key and save themselves some of the pain and
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  suffering of navigating page by page.
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  But it's like navigating page by page.
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  It's the precise way in which human beings are meant to come
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  to their maturity. Give us the sketch Who is Thomas
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  Aquinas? The greatest thing that you can
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  give to your family is your heart.
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  The greatest thing that you can give to your kids is siblings.
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  The greatest thing that you can give to your husband is time.
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  You're a gift and you're a gift to your family.
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  And don't underestimate that you're not just your check.
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  Box Father Gregory Pine, welcome to the podcast.
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  Thanks so much. Thanks for coming out.
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  Hey, it's my joy. You've got on a plane all the
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  way from the East Coast and you're getting on that same
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  plane or a similar plane to go right back today.
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  I woke up at 3:40, I celebrated Mass at 4:00, I drove myself to
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  the airport and arrived at like 517 and here we are.
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  And that was 340 East Coast time.
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  So you've been up since midnight?
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  I suppose so. Did you sleep on the plane?
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  I didn't. I got excited about the virtue
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  of justice and I read and wrote on the plan.
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  Really. That is so fun.
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  And when you say you read about the virtue of justice, you read
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  Thomas Aquinas on justice. So that book is thick, or at
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  least the volume of it that I have.
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  So I brought a a work by Jean Porter, who teaches at Notre
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  Dame and Justice has a Virtue. So that's what I was reading.
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  Amazing. And was he quoting Thomas
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  Aquinas? Yeah, exactly.
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  She was. Yeah.
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  So it was kind of like trying to make sense of justice has a
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  virtue, and specifically like our appeal to rights and where
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  they fit. That is a great topic.
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  It is to explore. It's funny because I was doing a
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  show recently where it's like a debate on abortion.
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  And the question is like, of course every unborn child has
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  the right to life. And it's like, well, where do
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  rights come from is part of the next question.
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  And your average person is not even entertaining that idea.
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  But then the next question is like this idea of justice, like
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  who owes the child what? And like, the law owes the child
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  protection, but then the parents owe the child other stuff.
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  Though there's lots of things to be said, I think, like rights.
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  I mean, it's a contentious question because whatever, in
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  the oldie time, people didn't really speak about rights in the
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  way that we speak about rights as like something that you have
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  and kind of like treatments that you can lay claim to.
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  They spoke about it more as like what's due to an individual,
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  What's owed to an individual? What are the appropriate rate of
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  ways in which to relate and interact?
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  And then how are we as a human community and as individuals
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  bound by that? Whereas nowadays we think about
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  it more as like a kind of discreet thing that I like use
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  in this way or that way or the other way.
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  But like I, I, I like to think specifically through the lens of
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  the virtue of justice. Because I think sometimes when
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  we treat rights, rights talk and just rights in general, after
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  the manner of a thing that I have and can use to arbitrate
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  relationships, it gets like a little weird or a little
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  strange. Whereas when we think about
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  ourselves as human beings, as Christians, as seeking to
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  cultivate virtues, it's a matter of like, how do I relate?
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  Well, not just once or twice, but as a kind of commitment of
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  character. How is it that I become the type
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  of person who relates well, how is it that like I can heal and
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  grow so as to see the world in such a way as to like honor the
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  the relationships that have a claim on my life and better the
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  interactions through which I kind of flit or move?
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  And that gets me excited because it's not just a matter of like
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  getting the answer right. It's a matter of like, becoming
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  a good person. Growing up.
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  Yeah, which I think is infinitely more attractive.
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  Yeah, and also being that's the the sanctification process, but
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  it's like putting real meat around it.
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  Like what does that look like in the day-to-day?
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  Yeah, and it's. So tell me how you will be.
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  Let's just start with tell me how you became a priest and what
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  were. Did you always think you'd be a
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  priest or were you thinking that?
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  No, I'll just write philosophical treatises?
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  Were you always interested in that as?
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  Well, no, no, I was. Well, we can get into that
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  never. But so I think like I was just
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  writing about this today on the plane.
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  I'm going to take a deep breath. You know, like each of us are
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  100% God's love for us, but we're also in a weird way, like
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  100% our parents love for us. And maybe that love looks like
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  normal love and maybe it looks like less than normal love.
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  But I think like, I just gained appreciation for the fact that I
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  am who I am and I do what I do because my parents loved me.
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  And I was thinking about this recently because I, I just like
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  my, my sister was organizing a little 770th birthday basket for
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  my father. And so she was having folks just
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  write little letters of gratitude and of love.
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  And like, in the course of writing the letter to my dad, I
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  was like, my dad's my hero. You know, I love my dad so much.
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  He's just such a good man. So I I mean, in any vocation,
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  it's like we come to an appreciation of that, that like
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  someone loves us and someone trusts us with our life and that
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  makes of the future something promising, you know, like
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  something encouraging. So yeah, my parents loved me and
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  they gave us the faith and for them.
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  Give you the the love for philosophy and theology, no.
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  Not really. I mean, like, not in the sense
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  that my parents are philosophy averse or, like, especially pro
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  Dominican. When I first entertained
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  thoughts of the priesthood, my mother kept asking me if I
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  thought about becoming, like, a diocesan priest because then I
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  could come home for dinners on Sunday.
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  Moms tend to see the domestic good more clearly than sons do.
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  So yeah, I was like, raised in a house in which the faith was
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  something beautiful and wonderful.
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  We, we went on pilgrimage a lot to Majigoria.
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  My parents had a little Catholic bookshop in our town, out of
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  which bookshop they led pilgrimages.
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  And so like, that was just kind of par for the course for us is
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  that to be Christian is to be weird.
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  And that's not something for what you apologize.
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  It's not something that you kind of like.
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  And here I draw a line in the sand.
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  But it's just, it's just what it is, you know?
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  Like you'll, you'll know the truth and the truth will make
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  you weird. Metagoria is incredibly,
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  beautifully weird. Yeah, yeah, it's a weird place
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  and you hear weird stuff about metagoria like on the break.
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  But yeah, I can attribute my ongoing conversion in large part
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  to those, to those pilgrimages and to the way in which my
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  family appropriated it. So like, you'll hear, I give you
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  these 5 stones against your Goliath.
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  So pray with the heart, namely the most Holy Rosary, Fast
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  Wednesdays and Fridays in bread and water, you know, assist at
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  the Holy Mass, read Sacred Scripture and use the Sacrament
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  of Penance once a month. So that was like family culture.
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  Wow, amazing. Yeah, no, it's like, it's
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  really, it's something you're like an 11 year old kid and you
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  see your dad, like, buttering pieces of toast to take with him
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  to work for lunch on Wednesdays and Fridays, and you're like,
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  dude's a boss, you know? So, yeah.
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  Begotten us a sense that, like, God is real, real and then real,
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  and then it's worth everything. Even if, you know, we might put
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  some cinnamon sugar on the aforementioned butter toast, you
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  know it doesn't have to be dread like there's a there are fine
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  shades. Of bread and water.
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  You can throw a couple grams of sugar on there.
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  Exactly. No, no, no harm, no foul.
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  Yeah, exactly. It shouldn't taste like sawdust.
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  Yeah. So I went to Steubenville.
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  My sisters encouraged me not to date my first year.
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  They're like, you're going to encounter all these beautiful
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  Catholic women. So like, just make some good
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  friends first. Or did you go to college?
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  To Steubenville Princess, University of Steubenville.
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  Yeah. And that fresh My freshman year,
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  I went to a lecture on Saint Thomas Aquinas on the nature of
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  love. And like previously, you know, I
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  thought about love and friendship with some modicum of
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  clarity. But like, it was kind of
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  eclectic in the sense that like this smart person says that and
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  this holy person says this and whatever else, you know, blah,
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  blah, blah, so love, ish, whatever.
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  But then it was Eleanor Stump, who teaches at Saint Louis
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  University. She just kind of set forth some
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  very simple things and then gave you resources with which to
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  think about love coherently and well, and it was, it was like
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  devastating. I was like, wow, that
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  corresponds to my experience, and it makes sense of my life in
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  a way that I haven't had to make sense before.
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  What did she what did she say? She was just talking about.
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  Thomas Kleiner say through her. Basically, like love is a coming
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  together of two desires, a desire for the good of the
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  beloved and a desire for union with the beloved.
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  And she was just kind of unriddling or kind of unpuzzling
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  things that I had bound up that ought to have been bound up.
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  Like sometimes we find ourselves thinking like either I'm being
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  generous, altruistic, or I'm being selfish and ugly.
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  And she's like, no, like you want to enjoy communion in the
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  good. Like you want to gather around
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  the good with the beloved because the beloved is good,
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  because you are good and because you are made to partake of the
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  good. It's not like I'm going to deny
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  myself everything so you can have everything.
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  It's like, what kind of weird self abnegation are we dealing
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  with here? You know, it's like we want to
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  be with, like, the whole point of love is to be with, which is
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  why, like, when you have a problem and you bring it to your
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  friend, you're like, I'm not necessarily asking you for
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  solutions so much as I'm asking you to kind of be with me in it.
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  Yeah. So like this idea of the good of
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  the beloved and union with the beloved, it just kind of blew up
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  in my experience. And I became like a little bit
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  of a Saint Thomas quoting brat Saint Thomas has.
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  So my mom, you know, I would work at the store during the
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  summers so as to like, make $7.00 an hour.
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  But she gave me permission to use gift certificates that
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  people hadn't redeemed, provided that those same people had
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  passed away. So I was using dead people's
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  gift certificates to buy myself books at my mother's store.
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  That is hilarious. It is hilarious.
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  So I bought myself a book about Saint Thomas Aquinas.
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  I don't know if you've read any of these books by Louis de Waal.
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  No, I don't think I have. No, like 1940s, fifties, 60s,
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  super charming. But the one about Saint Thomas
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  Aquinas is called The Quiet Light.
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  And it was like the character of his sanctity which impressed me.
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  And I just kind of found myself saying like, I want to know the
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  Lord like that. I want to love the Lord like
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  that. Like I want to be given to the
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  Lord after that manner. Maybe not in that way, but
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  that's what I wanted. And so I started telling people
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  that I wanted to become a Dominican priest and I hadn't
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  met 1 yet. Because he was so because he was
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  childlike. That's what spoke to you.
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  Or he's simple in his love for Jesus.
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  That I mean that I think it was just like, yeah, there's
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  equality to his consecration where I think like a lot of us
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  look at the lives of Saints and we almost envy them in a certain
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  sense. Like we want what they have,
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  even in recognizing that it's not for us.
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  So like you read a book about Saint Francis of Assisi and
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  you're like Bowsers or you like read a book about, yes, St.
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  Therese and you think like that's, you know, cool, but I
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  don't know that that's me. And yet does that mean that I'm
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  not called to be a St. So it's like the first time that
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  the peculiar particular knowing and loving of the Most High God
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  seem to resonate with, like, me, me, me in the sense like, this
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  has a peculiar, a particular claim on my life.
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  Not to say that like, yeah, I'm going to be like Saint Thomas
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  Aquinas in any recognizable way, but like, I want to try to know
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  him and I want to try to love him in this way.
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  Yeah. So then that inspired you to say
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  not just you wanted to be a priest, but you want to be a
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  Dominican priest. And how old were you?
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  I was 19. OK.
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  And then you go to Franciscan University of Steubenville,
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  which is a great feeder for becoming a Dominican priest or
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  Franciscan. But how many Dominicans end up
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  out of Franciscan? At least one.
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  Yeah, one every year or two. I mean, like the environment,
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  they're super like encouraging a vocation in general.
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  And it's not partisan like the Friars.
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  They are super. Yeah.
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  What's the word that I'm looking for?
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  Impartial. Yeah, impartial.
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  So then you leave, you graduate Franciscan, and then you end up
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  becoming going to seminary. Yeah, becoming a novice, so
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  going to the novitiate and then spending the next six years in
• 11:47
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• 12:45
  So do you have a special passion for Thomas Aquinas that just
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  grows and grows and you just can't get enough of enough of
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  him? I think it's like, I don't know,
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  like some people experience this with with artists.
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  It's not so much that like I am especially passionate about
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  Saint Thomas Aquinas, Quas St. Thomas Aquinas, but like Saint
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  Thomas has imparted me, imparted to me a particular way of seeing
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  and then like a particular way of responding to what I see.
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  It's like, I really love the art of Edward Hopper, like early
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  20th century. And I find like existentially
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  devastating. Like he's willing to see things
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  that other people would turn away from because they're just
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  like, they're just too sad, you know?
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  But like, he's willing to look at them and whether he thinks
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  that they can be redeemed or not, he's somewhat even handed
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  in his portrayal, but he's, I think, basically sympathetic to
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  human beings, which not everyone is.
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  So there's a kind of sweetness to the sadness that he's able to
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  capture. And with Saint Thomas, it's
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  like, I mean, it's obviously it's different, but there's a
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  kind of vision that he imparts. Like he's, he believes that God
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  can be known and that God can be loved.
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  Because I think that like, you go to these conferences and
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  people are like, God knows you and God loves you and people are
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  like, cool, That's, that's really awesome.
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  Like that makes all the difference.
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  But like, what do I do with my freedom?
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  Like what do I do with my agency?
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  And how do I experience being loved and how to?
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  How should that change me? Because people hear things like,
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  you know, like surrender or like abandoned or like commit
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  yourself or engage or whatever and they're.
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  Like revive, restore, renew, Yeah, all the, all the language,
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  yeah. But like, how do I like, how do
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  I go about doing that? And Saint Thomas is able to
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  like, give you action steps and somewhat crass terms, but he's
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  like your, your highest dignity, your highest calling is to know
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  the Lord and to love the Lord. And it's like supremely worth it
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  because you're not here for the purpose of use.
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  You know, you're here for the purpose of enjoyment, which is
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  to say, like enjoyment of the divine life.
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  And yeah, you're going to have to do a couple of things along
• 14:39
  the way because life is hard. It's difficult.
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  Like, there's no denying that. There's no sense in denying
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  that. But like, you can know him and
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  you can love him, and that's supremely worthy.
• 14:48
  Yeah. Which cool.
• 14:51
  I'm going to guess that everyone listening has heard the name
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  Thomas Aquinas, but who is give us the sketch Who is Thomas
• 14:58
  Aquinas? Yeah, he lived in the 13th
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  century. He was born in 12/25 and he died
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  in 1274. So this would be like the second
• 15:06
  and third generation of the Friars movement.
• 15:08
  So Saint Francis of Assisi, St. Dominic, they were born in the
• 15:11
  1170s and they died in the 12 teens, 20s.
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  So this is next next generation. And he was the son of landed
• 15:21
  nobles, landed Gentry in what is effectively the area around
• 15:24
  Naples. And his parents had some kind of
• 15:28
  social and political designs on his future.
• 15:30
  They wanted him to be the Abbot of Monte Casino, which was a
• 15:33
  influential Benedictine monastery at the time, still
• 15:35
  there, although it's not the same building.
• 15:37
  It's been destroyed like four or five times.
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  And but Saint Thomas was there as a boy Oblate for 10-11 years.
• 15:44
  And then Frederick the second Hohenstaufen came through, made
• 15:47
  it necessary for him to leave. And he went to the University of
• 15:50
  Naples to basically finish college.
• 15:52
  And while he was there, he met the Dominicans.
• 15:54
  And even though they were just like 30 years old, ragtag,
• 15:57
  scrappy, he's like, this is it. This is what evangelical
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  perfection looks like. And so he joined.
• 16:03
  Parents weren't happy, so they arrested him, put him on a house
• 16:06
  arrest at one of their family castles for the period of like
• 16:08
  about a year. But eventually they were lented.
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  And they could do that because he was their son.
• 16:13
  They could do that the. Freedom.
• 16:14
  And they were wealthy. People do whatever they want.
• 16:15
  OK. Yeah, in those days.
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  Yeah, it's like the Wild West, always and everywhere.
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  Especially in Naples. Especially in Naples.
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  It still is that way. So then Saint Thomas just bopped
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  around various cities, university centers of Europe
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  getting formed and then forming others.
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  And he was of service to the church, to the order, to like
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  the world more broadly speaking. And he wrote a lot of things,
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  but he's not known necessarily for like the breadth of writings
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  As for the depth of writings. And at the beginning of the
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  Summa Theologia, which is like his big book of theology, which.
• 16:49
  Was how many pages are we it's. Probably like 2 1/2 times the
• 16:52
  length of the Bible. OK, yeah, word wise, so it's
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  big. But at the beginning he says,
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  yeah, lots of people out there saying lots of things, but
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  they're not necessarily saying it in the most orderly fashion.
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  And they tend to repeat themselves, and they tend to use
• 17:06
  overly complex descriptions. So what I'm going to do is I'm
• 17:10
  going to lay it out as it ought to be learned in the sense like
• 17:13
  the way in which God intended it to be known.
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  And I'm going to pare down some of the unnecessary distinctions
• 17:19
  and some of the like, the kind of wild elaborations and just
• 17:22
  give you the goods so that you, and he's thinking here,
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  especially of Dominican students, can be good preachers,
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  good teachers, good confessors, good friends of those to whom
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  you're sent in service. So St.
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  Saint Thomas, I just love the people of God.
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  If there's one thing to be said of him, it's that he loved God
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  and he loved the people of God. And so he dedicated himself in
• 17:42
  humble service of that, and he just got out of the way so that
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  God can be about his work in him.
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  It's it's amazing the some of theologica.
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  I mean, you have every all these like existential questions about
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  what it is to be human, who God is, virtue, sin, It's all in
• 17:56
  there. But it's in an incredibly like
• 17:59
  easy to grasp format. I mean, AI doesn't even stand a
• 18:02
  chance to him. I mean, there are actually, I
• 18:05
  hear, I've heard there's AI projects to try to format like
• 18:09
  Thomas Aquinas. Have you heard of that?
• 18:11
  I. Haven't.
• 18:12
  No, but so much of our catechism too is from Thomas Aquinas and
• 18:16
  he's this doctor of the church. I mean, they seen as like the
• 18:19
  guy to go to on these theological questions to shed
• 18:23
  light. We have our friend Matt Frad
• 18:26
  pints with Aquinas. Like this is a higher show.
• 18:28
  I mean, he says it's not all about Thomas Aquinas anymore,
• 18:31
  but that was founded with that in mind because he has so much
• 18:34
  to teach. So when you read him, when you
• 18:37
  continually read him or read people who are reading him or
• 18:40
  who have studied him, do you feel like you're continually
• 18:42
  learning more? I do day by day, year by year.
• 18:45
  Yeah. And I think too, like, maybe I
• 18:49
  don't know to what degree or extent your audience is
• 18:51
  interested in Saint Thomas Aquinas.
• 18:53
  And I also find out, I also don't think they need to be
• 18:56
  interested in Saint Thomas Aquinas.
• 18:58
  Why not? So, like, I think that in the
• 19:02
  life of the church, you know, it's a mystical body and the
• 19:04
  hand isn't the foot and the lung isn't like the kidney or
• 19:07
  whatever weird images you want to use.
• 19:10
  But there is an organic unity to it, and there's a kind of
• 19:13
  ecosystematic harmony to it. And I think that we as a church
• 19:17
  need wisdom because we as a church need to know God and to
• 19:22
  love him according to that knowledge.
• 19:23
  So it's like you can't love what you don't know.
• 19:25
  And obviously, like by faith, the Lord is going to supply
• 19:28
  whatever you need, like whatever is necessary to conduct you
• 19:32
  lovingly back to him. So we need never fear that like
• 19:35
  we don't know enough in order to be holy or you don't have to be
• 19:38
  smart to be holy. There's no entry or exam.
• 19:39
  There's like there's no intelligence requirement.
• 19:42
  But like, what we see in Saint Thomas is 1 who's willing to get
• 19:45
  into all the nitty gritty details.
• 19:47
  So like you as a Catholic can know that your claims are
• 19:50
  backstopped by the deepest of truths and that other Catholics
• 19:54
  have gone to those depths before you.
• 19:56
  And you can repose. You can rely upon their wisdom,
• 19:59
  their insight, not because you're like lazy, because you're
• 20:01
  not, you know, like, but because you know how smart you are and
• 20:04
  how smart you are not. And it's not necessarily your
• 20:07
  responsibility to inform yourself on all these particular
• 20:09
  issues because your state of life dictates other
• 20:11
  responsibilities. But you can know.
• 20:15
  That there are reasons and that your faith is reasonable and
• 20:17
  that you were not just like asserting into the void and
• 20:20
  telling people to do things because we want to manipulate
• 20:22
  them and control them. It's because God can be known
• 20:25
  and God can be loved. He reveals himself.
• 20:27
  He communicates his life such that we can partake of it.
• 20:29
  And that like there are teachers, doctors in service of
• 20:32
  that revelation who communicated in a way that's like better or
• 20:37
  more easily understood. So it's like you can, you can
• 20:39
  tap into that whenever you want, you know, and that's, that's a
• 20:42
  gift. That's such a gift for the
• 20:43
  church. So here's a question, because
• 20:45
  what you're saying, you know, there's a lot of people out
• 20:47
  there. I would say that they live their
• 20:49
  lives and they're they're, you know, they're trying to maybe be
• 20:52
  better improve, but there's not a you know, they're they're
• 20:57
  trying to get by is a lot of it. They're trying to get by.
• 20:59
  They're very busy. They're especially if you're
• 21:01
  like, you're a mother, you're very, very busy.
• 21:03
  You're doing a lot of things and but if you take a moment to
• 21:08
  pray, reflect, study, do spiritual reading, even read
• 21:11
  Thomas Aquinas, you might have an insight that is life changing
• 21:16
  or it could be life changing if you applied that insight with
• 21:20
  some sort of consistency, right. And this is of course a story of
• 21:23
  any sort of maturation process is there has to be an
• 21:26
  intentionality that the person who wants to mature needs to put
• 21:29
  into it. But then you can also experience
• 21:31
  a lot of maturation because of just your circumstances and
• 21:34
  rising to the occasion. And it's like you're planning
• 21:36
  and strategizing your own maturation.
• 21:38
  It's kind of happening as you're applying yourself to show up in
• 21:41
  a loving or just way in the day-to-day.
• 21:44
  Right. So I guess I'm getting to here
• 21:46
  is I know a lot of what you do is obviously teach your
• 21:48
  teaching, your faculty. What's the name of your
• 21:52
  Dominican house? Dominican House of Studies have
• 21:54
  dear friends who loved their time at the Dominican House of
• 21:57
  studies and. I met you there like 12 years.
• 21:59
  Ago have we met before there Okay actually when I walked in I
• 22:02
  was like, have I I don't I don't want to embarrass myself be
• 22:04
  like, great to see you again Okay so I was yeah, I showed up
• 22:07
  a lot of people it's like a watering hole for young crazy
• 22:11
  Catholics in DC. They come by and you know they
• 22:14
  they talk to folks and then my husband knows father Dominic.
• 22:18
  It is amazing. He's preaches and speaks like
• 22:22
  you like you do. But yeah, So what, what I I'm
• 22:25
  getting to here is what let's maybe just start with like the
• 22:29
  modern era and the moment we're in, 'cause I think people's
• 22:33
  posture towards maturity is connected to like all the
• 22:36
  influences that we have, of course.
• 22:38
  But yeah. What would Thomas Aquinas say to
• 22:42
  the modern woman? Let's just talk about her for a
• 22:44
  minute. The modern person about how they
• 22:47
  should think about growing and becoming more mature.
• 22:50
  You said at the beginning that's something that you feel deeply
• 22:53
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  to store your vitamins in. That's we Heart nutrition.com.
• 24:18
  So here's an initial thought. I don't know.
• 24:19
  Yeah, again, who your audience is or what they're like.
• 24:22
  I kind of know myself and the people with whom I chat.
• 24:24
  But I think a lot of people are sad on account of the fact that
• 24:28
  they, Yeah, they encounter the world as difficult.
• 24:31
  And it's difficult in various ways, but like, it just tends to
• 24:35
  be somewhat burdensome, you know, like, or it tends to be
• 24:37
  somewhat sad and it tends to take a long time to like achieve
• 24:40
  your goals or to get to the place where you thought you
• 24:42
  ought to be. Saint Thomas has this beautiful
• 24:45
  teaching about the virtue of patience, specifically as
• 24:47
  addressed to the alleviation of our sadnesses.
• 24:50
  There's a way in which like, you know, if it's like you've got
• 24:53
  this failure over here, you've got this difficulty over here,
• 24:55
  you've got this obstacle over here.
• 24:57
  Like they, it tends to accumulate.
• 24:59
  If we can't process, if we can't work through sadness, it
• 25:01
  accumulates. And then it begins to kind of
• 25:04
  shut us down because we experience all of life as
• 25:07
  fearful because it's just not doable.
• 25:11
  Because. Yeah, Life is not because we,
• 25:13
  like don't have the bandwidth for it, we don't have the energy
• 25:15
  for it. We're not able to engage with it
• 25:17
  profitably because all we can see are the various obstacles,
• 25:19
  hindrances, sadnesses, failures, whatever.
• 25:22
  And so it's like by the virtue of patience, we have the
• 25:25
  wherewithal to kind of process sadnesses so that they don't
• 25:28
  accumulate. So that way we can like stand
• 25:30
  upright and actually breathe and then take on whatever new
• 25:34
  challenges as they come on down the line and maybe put into
• 25:37
  practice some of our penances or maybe like actually work towards
• 25:41
  some of our resolutions or whatever else it is.
• 25:43
  But I think about like Saint Thomas is just so sensible when
• 25:46
  it comes to sadness. Like he has this one question in
• 25:49
  again, the aforementioned big book of theology where he talks
• 25:52
  about remedies for sorrow. And it's like, I just find it so
• 25:54
  touching because he says, you know, let's, you know, think
• 25:58
  about the truth for one. And and this kind of gets to
• 26:01
  your point where it's sometimes when you see thing in the proper
• 26:03
  light, it's as if it's been revealed to you in a new way.
• 26:06
  I think about that, especially with the mountains.
• 26:07
  I lived in Switzerland not this past year, but the three years
• 26:10
  previously. And like sometimes the mountains
• 26:13
  in the full light of day, it's almost as if they're
• 26:14
  overexposed, like they're saturated.
• 26:17
  But then in the magic hour, you know, as the sunsets, you see
• 26:20
  them in their full kind of bridal splendor.
• 26:22
  And it's like, it's as if something new has been revealed,
• 26:25
  which has been in front of you the whole time.
• 26:27
  And there are ways in which insights into the faith can kind
• 26:29
  of open our experience up to that.
• 26:31
  Excuse me, open our experience up to, you know, a similar kind
• 26:34
  of insight or deepening of experience.
• 26:38
  And so like at the same times, we'll say like contemplation of
• 26:41
  the truth, the fact that God, God is good, that he's
• 26:44
  Provident, that he loves you, that he will not permit you to
• 26:48
  be tested beyond your strength, that he only allows evil so that
• 26:51
  he can draw forth from it some good.
• 26:53
  Like those are real things that you can just say to the Lord and
• 26:55
  repeat to the Lord as you're like curious about your
• 26:57
  experience and honest with your findings and not trying to paper
• 27:00
  anything over. But like that affords real, real
• 27:02
  consolation. But then he keeps going, he
• 27:04
  says, like the company of friends.
• 27:06
  And as he goes down the line, he gets into things like baths and
• 27:09
  weeping, you know? Taking a bath and having to cry.
• 27:12
  Taking a bath and having to cry, exactly.
• 27:13
  Like it's super sensible and it's just super.
• 27:15
  To deal with the to deal with the the doldrums exactly, Saint
• 27:18
  Thomas Aquinas is giving this advice.
• 27:21
  Yeah, he's saying cry. So know know that God loves you
• 27:24
  and is not going to give you more than you can bear.
• 27:25
  Yep. And then he says, go squat up
• 27:28
  with your friends, hang out with your buddies, and then take a
• 27:30
  bath and. Enjoy some modicum of pleasure
• 27:32
  of. Course the chocolate.
• 27:33
  Well, he says enjoy pleasure. So like go to Chick-fil-A, have
• 27:35
  a bar of chocolate like splurge, you know, because it's not, it's
• 27:38
  like I am consenting to my weakness and thereby like
• 27:42
  slipping towards deeper woundedness.
• 27:43
  It's like you're an embodied spirit.
• 27:46
  You know, you're an insole body, whatever you wanted to say like,
• 27:48
  but you're you, we have an animal nature, right?
• 27:51
  So like we're going to have to experience some pleasure if
• 27:53
  we're going to make our way through this world.
• 27:55
  Because it's not just, you know, it's not just that it can't be
• 27:57
  just that that's insane. Like it's totally nuts.
• 28:01
  For for people to just tough it out.
• 28:03
  Or just tell themselves that the only way through is to tough it
• 28:05
  out. You know, like you.
• 28:07
  This, your life as it is conceived, is not a mistake.
• 28:11
  So I mean, there's a there's a kind of trendy stoicism that's
• 28:15
  being promoted. I mean, I don't know if you've
• 28:17
  heard of Ryan Holiday, but he's like, the obstacle is the way.
• 28:21
  And it's all about actually, if you're really tough and you
• 28:24
  tough it out and you suck it up and you don't eat any chocolate
• 28:27
  for like years and you wake up every morning at 4:00 AM and
• 28:30
  take a cold, do a cold plunge. And but everything else you will
• 28:34
  find deep satisfaction and meaning in life, and you will
• 28:36
  accomplish incredible feats. Yeah.
• 28:39
  So I would say. True or not true?
• 28:41
  Basically, the Stoics are totally, totally, totally,
• 28:44
  totally, totally, totally suspicious of emotion.
• 28:47
  They think basically what emotions represent is a false
• 28:49
  judgement about reality. It's like you value something
• 28:52
  lower more than you value something higher.
• 28:54
  And on the basis of that false valuation, you make a judgement
• 28:57
  which gives rise to an emotion which effectively leads you
• 28:59
  astray. But here's the thing, I don't
• 29:01
  think that's true. Like a classic Stoic line is
• 29:03
  there is a Stoic general whose son was sent into battle, and
• 29:06
  then the envoy came back and said, your son was killed.
• 29:08
  And he said I knew I had given birth to immortal, which is
• 29:12
  nuts. It's totally nuts because like,
• 29:15
  what are you supposed to feel when you lose your son?
• 29:17
  You're supposed to feel sadness because it's a loss.
• 29:20
  You should cry because like, we again, embodied souls, you know,
• 29:24
  it's like we have an animal nature.
• 29:26
  We come in social and political realizations.
• 29:28
  Like this is intended. It's not just like me and my
• 29:31
  sovereign reason making my way through life.
• 29:33
  Now, that being said, are we supposed to indulge our kind of
• 29:36
  lower desires to the expense of our higher desires?
• 29:39
  No, right? So we need to recognize the fact
• 29:41
  that there are different things at stake and we need to approach
• 29:44
  them in like a human fashion, that is to say, cognizant of our
• 29:47
  dignity, upright. It's so Italian.
• 29:50
  I mean, it's just, it just speaks to like the culture that
• 29:52
  Thomas Aquinas came from that this would be, I mean, I'm and,
• 29:56
  and hopefully it's also true. I mean, I'm not saying it's not
• 29:58
  true, it's just Italian, but I think we can learn a lot from
• 30:00
  the Mediterraneans about lifestyle, although we're the
• 30:03
  Stoics on the Mediterranean. Many of them were.
• 30:05
  OK, shit, so I guess it doesn't. Different people at different
• 30:08
  times, yeah. Yeah, they wisened up.
• 30:10
  But I think basically, like the point is that we should embrace
• 30:15
  those goods as is befitting, OK? So like, you should love
• 30:18
  chocolate as much as chocolate should be loved and you should
• 30:21
  love friendship as much as friendship should be loved.
• 30:23
  And you should love the common good of the polity, like God
• 30:26
  Bless America as much as that ought to be loved and you should
• 30:28
  love God, but mostly right. And that ought ultimately give
• 30:32
  order to everything else. So like, for instance, you know,
• 30:37
  mothers with children, your, your children are going to
• 30:39
  choose things which may call them away from the home.
• 30:42
  And like you might say to yourself, like, I know that I
• 30:45
  want them to be formed as like good Christians, as good
• 30:47
  Catholics. But like, maybe they choose a
• 30:48
  good Christian or a good Catholic school that's like 2000
• 30:50
  miles away. That's tough because like what
• 30:52
  about this one that's closer, you know, like, or maybe they're
• 30:55
  going to choose to be religious, which means that you're going to
• 30:57
  see them realistically for like a week each year, depending upon
• 31:00
  the congregation or the order. Maybe they're going to do things
• 31:03
  which will feel bad for you. That's really hard, you know,
• 31:06
  but like as a mother, what can you do?
• 31:08
  Do you resent that? Do you withhold that?
• 31:10
  Yes, right. Do you find yourself at
• 31:12
  loggerheads with God or do you say, I recognize the fact that
• 31:15
  the only way and we in which I can have my kid is to offer him
• 31:18
  to you after the manner that he or she offers him or herself to
• 31:22
  you. You know, it's like, like I was
• 31:24
  talking moms who have sons whose sons are Dominicans.
• 31:27
  And I was like your son's, you know, like, a lot of times
• 31:30
  superiors will tell you like, you haven't lost a son, you've
• 31:32
  gained an order, you've lost a son, right in the ordinary,
• 31:34
  like, and. It's OK to cry about that.
• 31:36
  And it's OK to cry about that. And.
• 31:38
  I'm not, I mean, my son's 5, but he's not even 5 yet.
• 31:40
  But I think about him getting, you know, getting his vocation
• 31:44
  or you know what his vacation is.
• 31:46
  I'd be thrilled if he became a priest.
• 31:48
  That would be amazing. But I do hear some women share,
• 31:51
  like I've heard older women share, like when my found out my
• 31:54
  son was going to be a priest, like it was a hard blow for some
• 31:56
  of some of them. They respond emotionally in a
• 31:58
  different way. And I think that's probably
• 31:59
  normal, the normal range of human emotion about something
• 32:02
  based on their own wounds or their own views of these things.
• 32:05
  But it's not always normal to cry if your son becomes a
• 32:09
  priest. But it can be normal to cries
• 32:10
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  your son becomes a priest, but it can be normal to cry is what
• 33:15
  you're saying. Yeah, it's just like we love a
• 33:17
  lot of things and we love them in different ways, and sometimes
• 33:20
  it's confusing to us how they ought to be loved or in what
• 33:23
  kind of order or hierarchy. But that's the promise of the
• 33:25
  life of virtue. You know, when we love God, it
• 33:28
  doesn't mean that we don't love anything else.
• 33:30
  We love them in him and for him and unto him.
• 33:34
  That's the idea. It's like I still really love my
• 33:36
  family. And when I made my solemn
• 33:38
  profession, I asked God to save my whole family and I wasn't
• 33:42
  bargaining with him. I wasn't saying like I give you
• 33:43
  myself and you know, like they get saved.
• 33:46
  It was like I love you and Ioffer you my whole life and I
• 33:49
  entrust you with it. But like, know that this is
• 33:51
  precious to me. I want this because I love them,
• 33:54
  you know? So like, you can be honest about
• 33:55
  that, right? Which is, which is awesome,
• 33:58
  which is cool, yeah, but it's it's a lot more complicated than
• 34:03
  being a stoic. Yeah.
• 34:05
  So let's go to like we're talking about different virtues.
• 34:09
  We're talking about justice. Earlier you just mentioned,
• 34:11
  well, I mean, you mentioned patience, but there's also
• 34:14
  prudence, which kind of is the sense of ordering, the ordering
• 34:17
  of things, how to weigh things, how to see things.
• 34:21
  There's so many plate ways we could go here, but I want to
• 34:23
  stay with the like, like, like taking Thomas Aquinas's wisdom.
• 34:29
  Kind of what you're saying earlier about, well, not
• 34:31
  everyone's going to read Thomas Aquinas.
• 34:32
  Folks listening to dinner might not personally read Thomas
• 34:34
  Aquinas. And even if you're really sharp
• 34:37
  and you're really into like personal development and, you
• 34:39
  know, growing in virtue, reading Thomas Aquinas might also not be
• 34:42
  the best approach for you. Like maybe it's someone who is
• 34:47
  taking like is influenced by Thomas Aquinas and then can
• 34:49
  write in a format that's more desirable for you or, you know,
• 34:52
  speaks to you more. I was talking with, I think it
• 34:54
  was, was it Father Robert Spitzer who was telling you
• 34:57
  this? But basically, if you're not
• 34:59
  enjoying what you're reading, then don't read it.
• 35:02
  Like don't you don't have to like stick it out on a book.
• 35:04
  And I was like, that's interesting for spiritual
• 35:05
  direction books. You don't have to like stick it
• 35:08
  out on that. Like keep going.
• 35:10
  If you're not, if it's not really speaking to you, which is
• 35:12
  a little bit dangerous advice, I would say because you then you
• 35:15
  can maybe never finish anything if you're not if you're not a
• 35:17
  finisher temperament. But anyways, all this to say,
• 35:21
  what would you say if Thomas Aquinas was alive today and he
• 35:25
  saw especially the state of, let's say, the modern American
• 35:29
  mother and how we operate? And I know you have an American
• 35:32
  mother, but I don't expect you to like expect an all American
• 35:35
  mothers. But I think you kind of get
• 35:36
  what's going on large. You have you have people that
• 35:38
  come to you for advice and stuff.
• 35:39
  What would he say is like? These are some of the top things
• 35:43
  that the modern American mother could learn from Thomas Aquinas.
• 35:48
  Yeah, I'd say, I mean, within the setting of this
• 35:49
  conversation, the best thing to learn is God.
• 35:53
  But as concerns specifically, like the life of virtue as we've
• 35:55
  been approaching it to this point, you can think about,
• 35:57
  like, you know, sometimes we focus on temperance.
• 35:59
  We tend to attribute a lot of importance to the desire for
• 36:03
  food and drink and sexual intercourse.
• 36:04
  So we're trying to cultivate the appropriate virtues of whatever
• 36:07
  like temperance and its various expressions, like sobriety and
• 36:11
  chastity and purity and the other things besides.
• 36:13
  So, like, good. But then we talked a little bit
• 36:16
  about patience, which is part of fortitude or courage.
• 36:20
  I think the Saint Thomas would see the difficulties of modern
• 36:22
  life and think, wow, you know, we need, we need courage now.
• 36:24
  Especially like with the advance and certain technologies and the
• 36:29
  way in which like the Internet is a bot devised by advertising
• 36:33
  agencies and promoted by the algorithm, which is specifically
• 36:37
  ordered to undermine your integrity.
• 36:38
  It's like kind of terrifying. Like, it's against you.
• 36:42
  So he'd be like, OK. And then we talked a little bit
• 36:44
  about justice specifically, like relating.
• 36:47
  Well, I think there's a real risk, especially now, of using
• 36:50
  each other in ways that are inappropriate without
• 36:52
  recognizing it on account of the fact that, like, the culture is
• 36:55
  devolved to such a point that we don't like share or welcome or
• 37:00
  invite so much as like influence and manipulate and control.
• 37:04
  Other people, not just family members, but friends or
• 37:08
  community members or just people we've never met via social
• 37:11
  media. Yeah, or it's like you pick up
• 37:13
  your phone and somebody's calling you and you realize the
• 37:15
  last time that person called you is to ask you for a favor.
• 37:18
  And you say to yourself, I bet you this person is going to ask
• 37:20
  me for a favor. And then lo and behold, this
• 37:23
  person is asking you for a favor.
• 37:24
  Like we've, I feel like we've lost some.
• 37:27
  Maybe this is just me thinking too sanguinely about the past,
• 37:30
  but we've lost. We just don't know how to relate
• 37:32
  well. Well, that could have happened
• 37:34
  like 100 years ago. Like the person's coming by your
• 37:37
  door, knocking on the door. It's like they only knock on my
• 37:38
  door when they want a favor. Yeah.
• 37:40
  But I think are they, I think that we've like lost some of our
• 37:43
  competence as a concerns friendship, like talking to
• 37:46
  college students especially, it's like there's a real crisis
• 37:49
  of friendship, or so it seems to me.
• 37:52
  And they're like, yeah, there's no intermediate states between
• 37:56
  unassociated and romantically involved, or so it seems.
• 38:01
  And I think that because we don't have the saver for the
• 38:04
  feel for that real sharing and communing, we're just like,
• 38:09
  we're just losing a sense of how to relate.
• 38:10
  Well, this is all a prologue. I think Saint Thomas would say
• 38:14
  let's focus on the virtue of prudence.
• 38:16
  Well, you mentioned courage, so now I'm curious.
• 38:19
  You're, you were saying people don't have enough courage, but
• 38:21
  prudence is the way to get courage, would you say or?
• 38:25
  So all the virtues are related and when you grow on one, you
• 38:28
  grow on the other. Same time it says that they grow
• 38:29
  proportionately like the fingers of a hand.
• 38:32
  So you might not like have a kind of equal expression of all
• 38:36
  the virtues in your life. There might be some that come to
• 38:39
  fuller expression based on your temperament, based on your
• 38:42
  constitution, based on whatever your history.
• 38:45
  But, but prudence is the one that's in the driver's seat
• 38:47
  insofar as it's referred in the tradition.
• 38:50
  It's referred to in the tradition as the charioteer of
• 38:53
  the virtues. So like we've got all of these
• 38:55
  appetites, all of these desires for all these different things,
• 38:57
  and they're just kind of going after whatever it is that
• 39:00
  they're made for or ordered to. But it's the responsibility of
• 39:04
  prudence to put order among them and to establish them in a kind
• 39:07
  of meaningful order or to like establish them in a meaningful
• 39:10
  hierarchy. Gregory, speak clearly.
• 39:12
  What am I trying to say? Basically, like prudence is the
• 39:15
  general. So you've got all these
• 39:16
  different military detachments. This would be for a men's
• 39:18
  podcast. Maybe women like the military.
• 39:20
  We have men who listen, it's OK. Do you want to be like put our
• 39:23
  audience in a box or anything? So sorry.
• 39:26
  So you've got the general and he's got his, all his like all
• 39:28
  of his different detachments. So he's got like cavalry and
• 39:30
  he's got armor and he's got infantry and he's got, you know,
• 39:33
  whatever else. And it's, he's the one who's
• 39:36
  competent because he knows the whole field of battle.
• 39:38
  He knows the setting of the campaign.
• 39:40
  He knows how this particular engagement fits within the story
• 39:42
  of the whole. And so he's able to send people.
• 39:45
  But like these guys, they just know their particular craft,
• 39:47
  their particular art, their particular excellence.
• 39:50
  And they're just like kind of one track mind insofar as
• 39:52
  they're just like, get after it boys, blow stuff up, shoot
• 39:55
  people, ride horses in reverse order.
• 39:58
  So, so like it's prudence, which has to have a sense for the
• 40:02
  whole of our human life so that our different appetites can can
• 40:07
  take a human shape. Because it's like I really want
• 40:10
  to. Drink Chick-fil-A peppermint
• 40:12
  milkshakes in a seasonal mood and I really want.
• 40:16
  To are you going to stop by the Chick-fil-A around here before
• 40:19
  you mentioned them several times.
• 40:20
  So Chick-fil-A is just cool. That's should we order it to the
• 40:23
  set? So if you have something to
• 40:24
  drink, do you want a peppermint milkshake?
• 40:26
  No, that's 2. Chicken Nuggets.
• 40:28
  It's not generous at all. It's just a $5 milkshake.
• 40:30
  I. Don't.
• 40:30
  I Don't. I don't look good when I eat, so
• 40:32
  I don't look well. Never mind.
• 40:33
  Keep going here. But OK, so it's like, I really
• 40:37
  like peppermint milkshakes, right?
• 40:39
  I really like friendship. I really like worship, you know,
• 40:42
  like, but I'm usually really like there in different ways.
• 40:45
  And it requires prudence to kind of put order to those things.
• 40:49
  Because like, let's say that I'm scheduled to celebrate the 10:30
• 40:52
  AM Mass at the LA Museon de San Andreas.
• 40:55
  And like, I'm on the way there and I see a Chick-fil-A and I'm
• 40:57
  like, I could preach longer today.
• 41:01
  I could drink peppermint milkshake right now on the way
• 41:02
  into Mass. All I have to do is just preach
• 41:04
  for 18 minutes. And then like I'd cover myself
• 41:07
  because the hour fast would be fine, but like, what am I doing?
• 41:12
  Like I'm just feeding my infinite need of a lower sort.
• 41:14
  And I'm actually displacing like the good of the people of God
• 41:17
  because like, they don't need to hear me talk for 18 minutes.
• 41:19
  They don't need to hear me talk for 8 minutes.
• 41:20
  Like, let's be honest. They do need to hear you talk
• 41:22
  for at least 5 minutes. I've never been told, Father
• 41:25
  Gregory. You preach too short.
• 41:26
  Never once. Not once.
• 41:28
  Really. Yeah, think about the last time
• 41:29
  you thought. When was the last time you give
• 41:31
  an even at homily though? I mean Sundays are always 8 to
• 41:34
  10 and then weekdays are always 3 to 4.
• 41:36
  And and that's still, I feel like it's 8 to 10 homily is a
• 41:39
  little bit on the short end, no? I feel like it should be on the
• 41:42
  little on the short end. But you're not getting that
• 41:45
  feedback. Is what you're saying.
• 41:46
  And people aren't like, yeah, I'm just.
• 41:47
  Well, where are you preaching? It's to your fellow.
• 41:49
  I'm preaching all over. It's not a it's at a parish.
• 41:51
  It's usually it's either at my house or at the sisters or the
• 41:54
  other sisters or sometimes at a parish.
• 41:56
  We pop around a bunch of different parishes in district.
• 41:57
  If you probably preach with more consistency at one parish and it
• 42:00
  was only 8 to 10 minutes, and maybe you get somebody who could
• 42:03
  tell you, hey, you can preach more.
• 42:05
  Thank you. But the basic idea is that like,
• 42:09
  the things that we love, they're not going to organize
• 42:11
  themselves. It takes prudence to do that.
• 42:13
  But then sometimes when we see that we're like, ah, like, how
• 42:15
  am I going to go about doing that?
• 42:16
  Well, because I like, like all these things.
• 42:19
  And if I commit to 1, then it's as if I'm decommitting to
• 42:21
  another. When I choose one thing, I'm
• 42:23
  choosing not another. And like the prospect of.
• 42:26
  Yeah, like limiting myself is kind of terrible.
• 42:29
  And I mean, we have it from the Lord, so we don't need Saint
• 42:32
  Thomas to tell us. But it's like you'll be all
• 42:34
  right, you know, like speaking in the and the voice of the
• 42:37
  Lord. I made you human, which is to
• 42:40
  say I made you limited and I made for your life to take it's
• 42:43
  kind of beautiful and wonderful shape in human form.
• 42:46
  If I wanted you to be any number of things simultaneously, I'd
• 42:49
  have made you something else like an Angel or something.
• 42:52
  But I wanted you to be this person on this trajectory,
• 42:55
  living this life, even if it seems modest, humble, hidden,
• 42:58
  whatever like that. I.
• 43:00
  Love you as you are. Yeah, and.
• 43:02
  As you're being, are becoming. Like you're meant to limit
• 43:05
  yourself. You're meant to just like marry
• 43:08
  one person or join one religious order and you're not going to
• 43:11
  marry the best person. You're not going to join the
• 43:12
  best religious order. Because like if we were to make
• 43:14
  an Excel macro that optimized for excellence of fit and use
• 43:18
  that as a way by which to determine our vocation to be
• 43:20
  totally creepy and like weird and inorganic and inhuman.
• 43:24
  It's like there's a theologian who taught a Duke for a long
• 43:27
  time who has go ahead. Well, I don't want to interrupt.
• 43:30
  I try not to interrupt too much on the I.
• 43:31
  Talk too much. No, you talk great.
• 43:33
  I just, I, I do get some feedback that I interrupt too
• 43:36
  much, but when you're talking, I have like 10 questions that pop
• 43:38
  in my mind. So I'm just trying to be sparing
• 43:39
  with interjecting a question because like I'm like, that's
• 43:42
  interesting. What about this, what I was
• 43:44
  going to say is connected kind of back to the Chick-fil-A and
• 43:47
  you didn't take the Chick-fil-A before you went to preach
• 43:49
  because it's like, why am I doing Chick-fil-A before I
• 43:51
  preach? And then you were saying God
• 43:53
  gives you like all of these options God doesn't have.
• 43:54
  Like it's a master excel sheet that you have to fill out for
• 43:58
  exactly what I'm supposed to do with my life.
• 43:59
  Like God works through our human freedom, our desires, our
• 44:02
  humanity, our weaknesses, even. And that's so freeing and so
• 44:04
  beautiful. OK, great.
• 44:06
  Sure, yes, all true. But then what about this part
• 44:08
  where we actually apply our wisdom, we develop our prudence,
• 44:12
  we go through tough times and figure things out and then we
• 44:15
  like make big decisions and we'd be courageous.
• 44:17
  Like all the stuff of like pioneering our way through life
• 44:20
  with God is at our home. And we're not just like, yeah,
• 44:23
  I'm, I'm content. I'm just going to get the white
• 44:26
  picket fence and just sort of like, I'm a good mom.
• 44:28
  I'm a good dad. I'm going to just do my job.
• 44:32
  Like, where does that fit into what you're describing?
• 44:36
  The the, the, the innate, the innate design in every human
• 44:40
  heart for greatness. So it fits.
• 44:43
  We said temperance, fortitude and or courage, you know,
• 44:46
  different names for the same thing.
• 44:47
  Justice and prudence. That's how we built it up from
• 44:49
  the bottom to the top. If we zoom in on courage, we
• 44:52
  find that there are two movements in courage.
• 44:54
  These are all the virtues. These are these are the cardinal
• 44:56
  virtues. There are a billion other ones,
• 44:57
  but like these are the cardinal virtues on which our moral life
• 44:59
  hinges. Yeah, When it comes to courage,
• 45:01
  there's 2 dimensions, the kind of attack dimension, engage,
• 45:05
  initiative take, and then the indoor dimension, suffer, hunker
• 45:09
  down kind of movement. So you see this especially in
• 45:12
  battlefield courage. You see this especially in the
• 45:14
  courage of the martyrs. Now in the attack dimension,
• 45:18
  they engaged dimension, the initiative take, dimension.
• 45:20
  St. Thomas identifies 2 principal
• 45:22
  parts, one of which is called magnanimity, which just means
• 45:25
  great solidness. So it is virtuous that we would
• 45:29
  want to do great things worthy of great honors precisely
• 45:32
  because they're great, even while we can affirm that
• 45:35
  everything we have, we have from God.
• 45:37
  You know, what do you have that you have not received?
• 45:39
  If, therefore, you have received it, why do you boast as if it
• 45:41
  were your own? We can affirm that in a
• 45:43
  disposition of humility. Nevertheless, we are impelled by
• 45:46
  virtue of the grandeur of our nature and the grandeur of our
• 45:49
  pursuits to do awesome things. Like even St.
• 45:52
  Therese, who is the apostle of littleness, she speaks of doing
• 45:55
  these things with great love. Like there's a grandeur to her
• 45:58
  aspiration, a kind of ambition almost.
• 46:02
  So I think that's, that's totally fitting.
• 46:04
  But but for us, it takes place within the setting of a mystical
• 46:06
  body because God doesn't love you abstractly.
• 46:08
  He doesn't say like, do all kinds of interesting things and
• 46:11
  get back to me. He says, like, I'm going to love
• 46:13
  you in a particular way that empowers you to live a
• 46:15
  particular life. And that's not because like, I
• 46:18
  love you less. It's because I love you weird.
• 46:20
  It's because I love you different, right?
• 46:22
  So like, none of us are ever going to be as holy as the
• 46:24
  Blessed Virgin Mary. So, so we don't set our sights
• 46:27
  on that. We set our sights on actually
• 46:29
  receiving and responding to the graces that God gives us, which
• 46:33
  means that we have to endeavor the work of healing and growing
• 46:35
  seriously because it's like God is going to make known his plans
• 46:39
  in our life through our desires. But we come into this world with
• 46:42
  desires that are bent, with desires that are broken on
• 46:45
  account of the fact that we're falling.
• 46:47
  And if you have a desire to be like the Blessed Mother or Saint
• 46:50
  Joseph, there's beauty in that, but there's also danger, and
• 46:53
  that is what you're saying. Well, there's just like I mean
• 46:55
  to to model your life after the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary
• 46:58
  and Saint Joseph is awesome, but with a recognition that you're
• 47:00
  never going to be as holy as them because God hasn't given
• 47:03
  you that grace. And you're not them.
• 47:05
  You're not them. Yeah.
• 47:06
  You're called to live your life. And so, yeah, I think like,
• 47:10
  concretely speaking, in each of our lives, we're seeking to
• 47:13
  respond to the graces that God actually gives, which means,
• 47:16
  like, there's very little of our life that we choose, but there's
• 47:19
  something sweet about what we do choose.
• 47:21
  So like, I didn't choose, like my parents, I didn't choose
• 47:24
  where I was born. I didn't choose how I was
• 47:25
  raised. I didn't choose the language
• 47:27
  with which I was, you know, originally trained or
• 47:29
  accustomed. I didn't, I didn't choose any of
• 47:31
  these things. So the bounds of my freedom are
• 47:33
  set for me, but my freedom is expressed in ratifying those
• 47:36
  things and saying like, thanks be to God that I was born in
• 47:39
  1988 as the son of Barry and Regina Pine.
• 47:42
  It's like, let's go, you know, like thanks be to God.
• 47:45
  Because it's like, why this, why that, Why the other thing?
• 47:47
  It's like we could resent the fact or we could look at other
• 47:49
  possibilities and esteem them better by comparison.
• 47:52
  But like, who cares? This is how God is loving me.
• 47:54
  These are the only graces to which I can respond.
• 47:58
  So that's the first step of the posture of any kind of
• 48:02
  improvement in one's life, would you say or a a a great first
• 48:07
  step is having that added that it's like a worldview.
• 48:09
  It's an attitude. It's a mighty call it mindset.
• 48:11
  It's a mindset of I am only only I am given this particular life
• 48:15
  at this particular time in history in this particular body
• 48:19
  with the particular parents I had the good and the bad and the
• 48:21
  ugly and the Lord is going to meet me in this.
• 48:24
  And I'm also the desires I have are particularly given or at
• 48:28
  least permitted to act on or to direct a certain way.
• 48:34
  I think the the desire piece is obviously a little bit of a
• 48:37
  landmine like how to how to how to prudent, prudently guide your
• 48:42
  one's desires, respond to 1's desires, not ignore one's
• 48:45
  desires, but direct one's desires.
• 48:47
  I think some people find this may be easier than others, but.
• 48:51
  Yeah, So three small little virtues, abandoned, and then
• 48:57
  curiosity and honesty. So abandoned.
• 48:59
  Like I think a good image or a good paradigm is just to simply
• 49:02
  say, like God deals the hand insofar as he gives you a
• 49:05
  certain nature and he gives you a certain grace, and then we're
• 49:08
  responsible for playing that hand.
• 49:10
  We might look at the hand and think like, woof, I wish I had
• 49:13
  another hand, but moving on, you know, like what?
• 49:17
  If part of playing the hand though is to change the hand.
• 49:19
  I mean, there are certain things that are adaptable, there are
• 49:21
  certain things that are changeable.
• 49:23
  And I think that that requires a, a kind of reflectiveness from
• 49:26
  us because we can get accustomed to certain things in our life
• 49:28
  and treat them as if they were fixtures.
• 49:31
  And it may be necessary to address those things.
• 49:33
  I, I, I can sense to that. But at no point am I going to be
• 49:36
  the son of other parents, you know, like my temperament, my
• 49:40
  constitution are largely set. I am the son of Irish and
• 49:44
  Italian immigrants. I'm going to cry easily and be
• 49:47
  ashamed immediately. It's just like there are things
• 49:50
  that happen like subconsciously or you know.
• 49:54
  Not short fuse is what you're saying?
• 49:57
  I I tend angry, yeah, but I tend more sad than anything else.
• 50:00
  Yeah. It's just I'm living my life.
• 50:02
  But like, there's a sweetness to knowing the fact that even
• 50:05
  there, like, that's where, that's where the Lord has chosen
• 50:07
  to meet me. He doesn't say like, OK, here
• 50:09
  are the terms of your Christian existence.
• 50:11
  What I want you to do is deny the fact that you're sad and
• 50:14
  pretend like you're happy so that the people around you can,
• 50:17
  like, find you more tolerable. That's not what's asked of me.
• 50:20
  He says, OK, here we are. What are we doing here?
• 50:24
  You know? And he's like, all right, let's
• 50:25
  cultivate the virtues of patience.
• 50:26
  Let's cultivate the virtues of perseverance.
• 50:29
  Let's live a beautiful life even in the setting of sadness.
• 50:31
  And like, I can sweeten the sadness.
• 50:33
  I can be present to you in the sadness.
• 50:34
  And I can use the sadness as the specific setting in which your
• 50:38
  life gets rocked, like your life gets redeemed because it's and
• 50:42
  and this is like whatever curiosity and honesty.
• 50:44
  I think a lot of us think that being Christian means like being
• 50:46
  charitable, which means thinking that everyone's nice and then
• 50:49
  treating them accordingly. Or being really cheerful.
• 50:51
  Of them or being really cheerful, which I mean like
• 50:54
  there's some people who have different temperaments who tend
• 50:56
  to be more whatever sanguine or flegmatic and cheers.
• 50:58
  That's awesome. Like I'm glad that there are
• 50:59
  different temperaments in the mystical body.
• 51:01
  I'm not inclined that way. What I'm not?
• 51:05
  Inclined that way I. Just don't see it.
• 51:07
  But I think like what it, what it means to be charitable is to
• 51:09
  like, to actually look at your experience, you know, to be
• 51:11
  curious about your experience and see what's up and then be
• 51:14
  honest with your findings. And then ask God for the grace
• 51:17
  to live it well and to love well like and, and and to heal and to
• 51:21
  grow and to come to a deeper appreciation of like what he's
• 51:24
  doing and where he's going because.
• 51:26
  That's very East Coast. Yeah, maybe.
• 51:28
  More than West Coast, like being super honest about how you're
• 51:31
  feeling, like the New York girl, yeah, sucks.
• 51:33
  You know, like or whatever, Like New Yorkers say in California,
• 51:35
  you're like, yeah, it's great. So it's, I mean, there's a temp,
• 51:39
  there's a temperament to some degree even of your geographic
• 51:42
  location, like in your culture that you're around that kind of
• 51:46
  tells you. But what you're saying, which is
• 51:47
  very beautiful, which is God wants you to be sincere,
• 51:51
  obviously. And he gave you the temperament
• 51:53
  he gave you, which you can kind of evolve it and adjust it, but
• 51:57
  you got to be real with it. I think so, yeah.
• 52:00
  Is that is that what you're saying?
• 52:01
  Am I? I mean, it's like.
• 52:02
  Carrying the whole thing, yeah. Like a concrete example would be
• 52:05
  forgiveness. Like a lot of times we think
• 52:07
  forgiveness means like, like we have to not feel angry at
• 52:11
  another person. And I don't think that's what
• 52:13
  forgiveness is. I think forgiveness is being
• 52:15
  like, oh, oh, something happened here.
• 52:18
  I'm upset about it. And I, I'm not inclined to
• 52:21
  pardon this person. I'd like to nurse this so that I
• 52:24
  can use this as leverage, right? So that I can play up my victim
• 52:27
  status and then kind of pat myself on the back when it comes
• 52:30
  time to later down the road. It's like, OK, so like know
• 52:33
  that, but then what's the next step is to ask God like for
• 52:36
  healing, for growth, like Lord, I choose to forgive conscious of
• 52:39
  the fact that I can't do so except by your grace.
• 52:42
  So I call upon your grace. You know this is.
• 52:43
  Great parenting advice. I mean this is like every day
• 52:46
  with as a parent it's like choose.
• 52:48
  Yeah. No, I thought that I'm resent.
• 52:50
  You don't get resentful. Well, you can get resentful of
• 52:52
  your kids. Actually, that is very possible.
• 52:54
  But like the the like there's so many moments of parenting, I
• 52:58
  think, especially when you have young children where it's just
• 53:00
  like, this does not make sense. This is and there and there's a
• 53:04
  natural sense of anger. But the common wisdom today is
• 53:06
  like with kids, you're not allowed to get angry.
• 53:08
  Like you don't, you don't, you should not get angry with gentle
• 53:10
  parenting. Like you want to be very careful
• 53:12
  with how you present and stuff. So obviously within what you're
• 53:16
  describing is true, but some of this has to happen interior in
• 53:19
  your interior. You can't.
• 53:20
  I mean, what would you say to that?
• 53:23
  I mean, you had, did you have an Italian mother?
• 53:24
  I do, yeah. How did that?
• 53:26
  How did that go? Because that they're much more
• 53:29
  open with their emotions to where I'm going with this.
• 53:31
  I would say like including with their kids.
• 53:32
  Here's here's a little like kind of related point, which I think
• 53:35
  may illumine the concept. So like attachment theory this
• 53:40
  like John Bolby, Mary Ainsworth, this psychological theory that
• 53:44
  like, what really matters is that you have a secure
• 53:45
  attachment to your primary caregiver.
• 53:48
  The, the alternative is an insecure attachment.
• 53:50
  And it depends upon like whether that primary caregiver is like
• 53:53
  consistently bad or inconsistently bad.
• 53:56
  It can manifest as like avoidance or ambivalence
• 53:59
  insecure attachment. But the basic idea is like a
• 54:01
  child needs to know that that primary caregiver is there and
• 54:05
  that typically she loves and trusts.
• 54:08
  So you got like a base of exploration, a safe haven,
• 54:10
  somebody to whom you can return, you can make like little, you
• 54:13
  know, adventures and stuff like that.
• 54:16
  So I think that, like, what you communicate to your children as
• 54:19
  a mother is that I love you and I trust you and that if you hurt
• 54:23
  yourself, I'll patch you up. And there's nothing that you can
• 54:26
  do. There is nothing that you can do
• 54:29
  which will make me not love you. Like my love is not weak.
• 54:32
  My love is not volatile. My love is not fragile.
• 54:35
  My love is here. It is always here.
• 54:38
  And then against that backdrop, or like on that foundation, then
• 54:42
  you can express some kind of modicum of emotion, but never in
• 54:46
  so intense a fashion that it might call that fundamental
• 54:48
  commitment into question. And I think that like how you do
• 54:51
  that as a parent is by living that relationship with God, like
• 54:55
  you are not at risk of losing the love of God.
• 54:58
  It's it's his love is strong, you know, like his love is ever
• 55:00
  present. And so like by by living that
• 55:03
  relationship with God in secure fashion, you have the resources,
• 55:07
  you have the wherewithal to then give that, impart that to your
• 55:10
  children. So I think like, but like, yeah,
• 55:12
  my mom's nuts, but like, I never doubted.
• 55:14
  But she would yell, but you wouldn't know she loved you.
• 55:17
  Exactly, she wouldn't yell so much as like she usually
• 55:19
  expressed herself in terms of disappointment.
• 55:21
  So she tended sad more than I mean, we all my whole family
• 55:23
  tend sad, but like, you know, like you'd break a glass in the
• 55:28
  kitchen and she'd be like really disappointed.
• 55:30
  And so my sisters have swung the other direction and they're
• 55:32
  like, it's just, it's just a glass.
• 55:34
  You know, it's no big deal. EBay like eBay really freed my
• 55:37
  mom up honestly because like everything for.
• 55:39
  Her was a. Well, yeah, for like, she like,
• 55:41
  thought of all losses as kind of irretrievable because like, a
• 55:44
  lot of more like heirlooms or like grandma's or whatever else
• 55:47
  is, you know? So like she felt that and she
• 55:49
  was honest about how she felt that, but also like, yeah, she
• 55:52
  communicated her love in a way that was really thick, in a way
• 55:55
  that was, yeah, undeniably present.
• 55:56
  And my dad, my dad too, he does it in a very different way.
• 56:00
  But I remember from a super young age, he's like, but you
• 56:03
  know that I love you. It's like I do.
• 56:04
  He's like a literal a lot a lot. We just had my grandpa's
• 56:08
  funeral. He was 99, so he lived a long
• 56:10
  life. But he was the the the children
• 56:12
  who spoke, including my mother, were saying that he would, I
• 56:15
  mean, he was Italian. He was a first generation
• 56:17
  Italian immigrant from Italy. And he was very passionate,
• 56:22
  very, very intense person. But he would, yeah, he would
• 56:26
  chastise and sort of cajole and just sort of like, you know,
• 56:30
  like that. But he just, that was the way he
• 56:32
  loved and that's how he knew love and he would passionately
• 56:36
  like, what are you talking? What do you mean?
• 56:37
  What do you mean? But then he would like be like,
• 56:38
  you're the best. You are the number one, like
• 56:41
  this sort of like intensity to him.
• 56:43
  And so yes, he would, he would bark, but they weren't like
• 56:46
  afraid of the bark so much because they knew that at the
• 56:49
  end of the day, he, he loved them.
• 56:50
  Like they saw that they felt that love.
• 56:52
  And I'm not defending yelling at your kids, but I think what
• 56:55
  you're saying is at the end of the day, like it comes back to
• 56:57
  the sense of identity that you have with God, the parent, to
• 57:00
  know that they're loved unconditionally and they can go
• 57:03
  and they're safe with God. And then they need to have that.
• 57:06
  They need to present that to their kids with that, with
• 57:09
  whatever kind of emotionalism that their emotions that they're
• 57:13
  navigating, whether they tense, sad or mad or whatever it is,
• 57:15
  they have to kind of keep that in check.
• 57:17
  I mean, they have to be virtuous.
• 57:18
  Yeah, they have to be virtuous. That is to say, like their
• 57:21
  emotions have to be integrated, you know, so they can't lead
• 57:24
  emotion. They need to lead, trust in God,
• 57:27
  reasonable discourse, but not in such a way as to like patronize
• 57:30
  your kids or condescend to your kids.
• 57:32
  Like, you know, you talk with your kids like the people whom
• 57:34
  you want them to be. It doesn't mean you talk to them
• 57:36
  like grown-ups when they're three, but like.
• 57:38
  It's all yelling bad. I don't know.
• 57:40
  OK, yeah. I mean like what?
• 57:42
  But Tom was a client to say. I don't, I don't know.
• 57:45
  So like, I think it's, you know, we're all on the way and I don't
• 57:49
  think that we can expect of ourselves a level of integration
• 57:51
  that we don't have at present. But that doesn't mean that we
• 57:54
  give ourselves permission to be ugly.
• 57:56
  But I think especially there's a real toxicity to anger.
• 57:59
  And I think that we need to find healthy ways in which to express
• 58:02
  anger. So like, whatever, some number
• 58:05
  of weeks ago, I was slighted by a person and it made me angry.
• 58:09
  And so I went to the Chapel and I just kind of cut loose.
• 58:11
  And I said, like, this is what I think about it.
• 58:12
  And it wasn't like the kindest of things to Jesus.
• 58:16
  You told Jesus, Yeah, not like accusing him of anything, but
• 58:18
  just like, saying like, this is how I feel about that person.
• 58:21
  But I don't want to feel this way because I feel myself losing
• 58:23
  a hold on myself, you know? Like this idea of like self
• 58:25
  possession I think is super important because if like, you
• 58:28
  find that in your expression of emotion you cease to be in
• 58:31
  control, then that's 'cause for concern.
• 58:34
  But like, sometimes we get so overwrought about control that
• 58:38
  we end up being like, OK children, you know?
• 58:40
  It's just like, it's like, weird.
• 58:41
  Just be honest. But like, Chesterson refers in
• 58:44
  this little poem to the innocence of anger and surprise.
• 58:47
  I think that like we can model a certain innocence of emotion to
• 58:51
  children to like a younger generation and say, like, this
• 58:53
  is how I feel, you know, I don't, I don't want you to think
• 58:56
  for a second that that's like that imperils our relationship,
• 58:59
  you know? It's like, I feel angry, and
• 59:01
  it's OK to feel angry, but we don't allow our anger to cause
• 59:04
  us to do something hurtful to someone else, including saying
• 59:07
  unkind things to them, right? So it's really a matter of like,
• 59:10
  the emotion in itself is not bad.
• 59:13
  The emotion tells us something about our circumstances, our own
• 59:16
  disposition, what we're experiencing.
• 59:18
  But it's like, what do you then do with those emotions?
• 59:20
  And that's, of course, a question of prudence and then
• 59:22
  also a question of fortitude, right?
• 59:25
  It's the ability to control oneself.
• 59:28
  And in the case of anger, specifically meekness, which is
• 59:32
  a not often commented virtue, but like, yeah, another example,
• 59:36
  just a couple of weeks ago, somebody did something that
• 59:37
  offended me of a different, of a different sort, and I was angry
• 59:40
  about it. And like, you know, in religious
• 59:42
  life, we talk often about fraternal correction.
• 59:44
  And the idea is basically like, does this matter?
• 59:47
  Can this person change and can I communicate it in love?
• 59:51
  And my experience is like when I, when I think about it a while
• 59:53
  and when I feel through it a while, it doesn't necessarily
• 59:55
  get better. It just gets different.
• 59:57
  And also when you present that to somebody after having
• 1:00:00
  pondered it for many days, it's like, hey, man, we're friends.
• 1:00:03
  Like you can think through it with me, you know, like, and,
• 1:00:06
  and sometimes when somebody presents you with a deep concern
• 1:00:08
  that they've been nursing for a while, it's, it almost feels
• 1:00:10
  like a betrayal, like you've been thinking about this outside
• 1:00:13
  our friendship. I'd say the like, whatever you
• 1:00:15
  can do, what you can do. It's just.
• 1:00:16
  That's interesting. Or you didn't know that they
• 1:00:18
  felt this way for months or even years.
• 1:00:20
  And then you're like, what the heck?
• 1:00:21
  Would you just tell me? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:00:23
  So I think that there can be like a kind of innocence just
• 1:00:25
  saying like you did this thing and it hurt me and like if you
• 1:00:29
  want to be forgiven, I forgive you.
• 1:00:30
  I just like, I mean, I do forgive you because it's
• 1:00:31
  irrespective of whether whatever you know, like you do try not to
• 1:00:34
  say it in a way that's like overhanded or heavy-handed.
• 1:00:38
  But yeah, I think that there there, there has to be in so far
• 1:00:41
  as there can be a kind of simplicity to an emotional
• 1:00:43
  response. Once we start like, putting it
• 1:00:45
  through all these processes, it doesn't necessarily get bitter,
• 1:00:48
  it just gets different. How does that connect to this
• 1:00:52
  freedom stuff we're talking about?
• 1:00:54
  And like, you know, Thomas Aquinas's advice for the modern
• 1:00:57
  man. But I, I think, yeah, the
• 1:00:59
  knowing what to do with your emotion is pretty important.
• 1:01:03
  But also, I think you're saying something earlier about like
• 1:01:05
  emotion, like the emotions that you're having, teaching you
• 1:01:07
  something about where like having that cure use or
• 1:01:10
  curiosity, having the curiosity about even your emotional state.
• 1:01:13
  So yes, you need to have the the prudence and the strength to
• 1:01:16
  direct your emotion, but you also need to like manage
• 1:01:19
  yourself from kind of the high level.
• 1:01:21
  Like if I am putting myself in situations where I'm constantly
• 1:01:24
  feeling frustrated, as an example, or this is this thing
• 1:01:27
  is constantly making me sad. You know, the modern person.
• 1:01:30
  I was literally just in a meeting recently and this person
• 1:01:35
  was talking about a friend of theirs who it was like a
• 1:01:39
  extended family member actually, who ended up divorcing their
• 1:01:41
  husband because basically he made her sad.
• 1:01:45
  Like there was no abuse. There was no like they felt like
• 1:01:48
  just, you know, separation. And he made me feel sad.
• 1:01:50
  I didn't like being around him. So she threw away the marriage,
• 1:01:53
  right. And, you know, you could say,
• 1:01:56
  like a lot of modern people, like, I feel sad.
• 1:01:58
  This makes me happy. This makes me sad.
• 1:01:59
  This makes me whatever. And therefore I'm going to
• 1:02:02
  makes, you know, redirect myself, quit the job, you know,
• 1:02:06
  quit the marriage, quit the friendship.
• 1:02:07
  A lot of people are quitting their parents.
• 1:02:10
  You know, they're like, they're toxic.
• 1:02:11
  I'm not going to talk to your parents.
• 1:02:14
  What would Thomas Aquinas say to all of that?
• 1:02:16
  Short answer, I don't know. Long answer, the next 2 1/2
• 1:02:19
  minutes. Yeah.
• 1:02:21
  I think that like if we treat ourselves as autonomous
• 1:02:26
  individuals, we end up falsifying our experience of
• 1:02:29
  life because we're not autonomous individuals, right?
• 1:02:32
  We're we're members of communities, you know, like
• 1:02:34
  we're members of families, we're members of polities, whatever,
• 1:02:38
  you know, like municipalities, nations, countries.
• 1:02:40
  We're members of churches and those all have a claim on us.
• 1:02:44
  And like, we can't just deny that because we think and feel
• 1:02:47
  bad about it at a particular moment.
• 1:02:50
  So the question isn't so much a matter of like getting rid of
• 1:02:53
  what we deemed to be toxic relationships, irrespective of
• 1:02:56
  whether or not they are, but it's like it's about adjusting
• 1:02:58
  to reality, right? So like, what is objectively the
• 1:03:02
  case needs to be reflected subjectively in me.
• 1:03:06
  I need to conform myself to what is because I can't live a lie.
• 1:03:10
  I can't live because the only way in which I'm going to like,
• 1:03:13
  live well is if I live in the truth because only the truth has
• 1:03:15
  grace. So I think that like in the case
• 1:03:19
  of a marriage, you know, there may be reasons for separation.
• 1:03:21
  Certainly the church foresees reasons for separation.
• 1:03:25
  But there, I mean, like, if it's a real bond, you know, if the
• 1:03:27
  consent was furnished to a marriage intending fidelity and
• 1:03:32
  fruitfulness and permanence, then you're always married, you
• 1:03:35
  know? And it's a matter of like,
• 1:03:38
  making it such that our thinking and our feeling can come along
• 1:03:41
  and be adequate to what's actually at stake, like the
• 1:03:44
  reality itself, rather than just kind of thinking and feeling our
• 1:03:47
  way through, I don't know, like a maze of just changes and
• 1:03:52
  whatever else is. So, Gregory, be clear.
• 1:03:55
  What am I trying to say? Well, I asked you a very, very
• 1:03:58
  broad question and you gave yourself 2 1/2 minutes.
• 1:04:02
  So it's not an easy thing to answer because you could go 10
• 1:04:06
  directions with it. I think like we all need
• 1:04:11
  somebody to tell us at a certain point, like not everyone becomes
• 1:04:14
  an astronaut. That's true.
• 1:04:17
  You know, it's like not all dreams come true and like, your
• 1:04:21
  life might not be what you imagined it would be.
• 1:04:25
  And that's, that's brutal. But, like, the point isn't to
• 1:04:29
  banish the difficulty or to flee from the trial.
• 1:04:34
  And the point is to, like, embrace your life as it is.
• 1:04:37
  So there's this French author of the early 20th century who says
• 1:04:40
  modern man is haunted by the fear that real life is
• 1:04:43
  elsewhere. It's like, if I could just, you
• 1:04:45
  know, round the bend, turn the corner, find it out.
• 1:04:47
  It's like. If I could just join a different
• 1:04:49
  parish and move out of state, get a different job, get a
• 1:04:51
  different spouse, date someone different, not be single, be
• 1:04:54
  married, not be married, not have to deal with this, not have
• 1:04:57
  the child that I just conceived, whatever it is.
• 1:05:00
  And, and it's very, it's very easy to be that way in today's
• 1:05:03
  world because we're have this sort of this fake reality of we
• 1:05:06
  have endless possibilities. And then there's like social
• 1:05:08
  media and the Internet telling us like endless possibilities.
• 1:05:12
  And so it's easy to think that where I can just I could, I
• 1:05:15
  could, I could, or I should, I should, I should instead of
• 1:05:18
  being in the here and now. So I think real life isn't,
• 1:05:22
  yeah, it's not found by going over or under or around or
• 1:05:26
  behind. It's by going through and we
• 1:05:30
  have the assurance, I mean for believers like we have the
• 1:05:32
  assurance that God's there because Christ has taken our
• 1:05:35
  nature and he's lived our life. So he's filled his cup with our
• 1:05:39
  sorrows and he's trained it to the dregs.
• 1:05:41
  And he didn't like say I'm going to get rid of your sufferings.
• 1:05:43
  He said I'm going to meet you in your sufferings.
• 1:05:45
  I'm going to invest your sufferings with purpose, with
• 1:05:48
  meaning, because they can be conjoined to mine, because they
• 1:05:50
  can find a home in mine. And like a lot of people hear
• 1:05:52
  that and they're like overly facile Christian preaching that
• 1:05:55
  in no wise reflects a sensitivity to my actual state.
• 1:05:57
  It's like, I understand. Like, I get that.
• 1:06:00
  Like, I totally get that. But you got a whole life to try.
• 1:06:05
  You've got a whole life to try, which is in many cases, a long
• 1:06:08
  time. I think about that often.
• 1:06:11
  It's like, yeah, a lot of us just want to skip steps.
• 1:06:15
  But like, the beauty of it is through the steps, even if it's
• 1:06:18
  like at the time or at during the taking of the actual steps
• 1:06:21
  themselves, it doesn't seem too terribly beautiful.
• 1:06:23
  But yeah, I just have a, a certainty, a confidence that the
• 1:06:28
  Lord will meet us there. He has promised to meet us
• 1:06:29
  there, but available through faith, through hope, through
• 1:06:32
  charity, that is to say, as testifying, as giving himself as
• 1:06:36
  meeting us, but not necessarily as making it feel that way.
• 1:06:40
  Like physically, emotionally, psychologically.
• 1:06:42
  Are we going to have assurance that we register it as such?
• 1:06:44
  Like maybe not, but that's the point of belief.
• 1:06:48
  It's like, Lord, I believe, I confess that you are who you say
• 1:06:51
  you are and that you meet me in my trials.
• 1:06:53
  I hope, I trust that you are faithful to your promises
• 1:06:57
  because you are omnipotent and you are merciful and I'm yours.
• 1:07:01
  I love that you love because that's the whole point.
• 1:07:04
  The point is to be with and I want to be with you at the
• 1:07:06
  center, which is to say with you because you are the center and
• 1:07:10
  you'll make sense of whatever else, you know, like is to take
• 1:07:14
  place in the course of my life. But like, it's prized with
• 1:07:16
  purpose. It's full with meaning, you
• 1:07:18
  know, Because. Because it's yours, because
• 1:07:20
  you're there. What else do you think Thomas
• 1:07:23
  Aquinas would tell mothers today?
• 1:07:25
  The modern mother. Yeah, he'd say.
• 1:07:28
  Nap with your kids. Nap with your kids.
• 1:07:31
  Yeah, not in the sense of in the same bed, but at the same time
• 1:07:34
  because like I. Might be in the same bed that's
• 1:07:36
  not in the same. Bed, that's fine too.
• 1:07:37
  You do whatever you want. But like, I think like a lot of
• 1:07:39
  moms, your mom's shoulder so much responsibility and like
• 1:07:44
  moms feel themselves constantly behind, you know, because it's
• 1:07:47
  like when everyone else is playing in the backyard, like
• 1:07:51
  you're preparing a meal. When everyone else is napping,
• 1:07:53
  you're folding the laundry when everyone else is going to bed,
• 1:07:56
  you're balancing the checkbook. It's like you have an endless
• 1:07:58
  series of tasks and you're never going to get ahead of them
• 1:08:02
  because a lot of them recurred intervals and a lot of them pile
• 1:08:04
  up irrespective of whether or not you're tending to them like
• 1:08:07
  super well or just well. But I think that like, yeah, the
• 1:08:11
  sweetness of your life comes and enjoying it with those whom the
• 1:08:14
  Lord has has given you, with your husbands and with your
• 1:08:17
  children. And it's like, you might have a
• 1:08:19
  messy home and you might invite father over, but like father
• 1:08:22
  needs to see a messy home, you know, like, or you might have an
• 1:08:25
  unkempt garden or you might have uncut grass or you might have
• 1:08:28
  like a crack sidewalk or you might have whatever.
• 1:08:31
  It's like, who gives a RIP? Who gives a RIP?
• 1:08:35
  The greatest thing that you can give to your family is your
• 1:08:37
  heart, like your love. The greatest thing that you can
• 1:08:39
  give to your kids is siblings. The greatest thing that you can
• 1:08:41
  give to your husband is time. You know, like there's I mean
• 1:08:45
  your gift and your gift to your family.
• 1:08:47
  And don't underestimate that you're not just here to check
• 1:08:49
  boxes. You're not just here to get test
• 1:08:51
  done. Your dignity suggests, I mean,
• 1:08:54
  it shouts that there's more to life.
• 1:08:56
  So I think a lot of women are tempted in that direction, but
• 1:08:58
  it's like. Having it all be perfect all the
• 1:09:01
  time. I'm feeling stressed out when
• 1:09:03
  it's not or like they're failing when it's not.
• 1:09:06
  Yes, I do think that is true for a lot of women today.
• 1:09:10
  What would Thomas Aquinas say though, if there's someone who's
• 1:09:14
  not putting enough attention into the home?
• 1:09:17
  Because I think that's another thing.
• 1:09:18
  And we talked about this on the show too.
• 1:09:19
  It's like the woman that is very, and sometimes they're not
• 1:09:24
  even mothers, so it doesn't really apply.
• 1:09:25
  But the career woman, the woman is really focused on
• 1:09:28
  externality. She's not as much available to
• 1:09:32
  her own children, her own family, and it's not necessarily
• 1:09:35
  seen and even her view as a bad thing.
• 1:09:37
  This is just what she does. This is how she this is how she
• 1:09:39
  helps the family as she shows up and she just focuses on her work
• 1:09:43
  or whatever it whatever it might be.
• 1:09:46
  Yeah, I'd say. Or do you think that's more just
• 1:09:48
  a complaint that we have about modern women, but that's not
• 1:09:51
  actually what's happening? I don't know.
• 1:09:52
  I mean like I have two sisters. The one is at home with her kids
• 1:09:56
  and she homeschools. The other, you know, worked for
• 1:09:59
  20 years at a BIG4 accounting firm.
• 1:10:01
  She just changed jobs. But they both have 5 kids and
• 1:10:04
  they're both living their lives in beautiful fashion.
• 1:10:07
  They're both making it work and in pretty cool ways.
• 1:10:10
  I think it's like what I would say, you know, irrespective of
• 1:10:14
  the setting I'd tell of a woman, I'd tell to a woman like the
• 1:10:17
  Lord doesn't want your heart divided.
• 1:10:20
  And it's like if you find your heart drifting towards the home
• 1:10:24
  and you don't need the income, you know, like let it drift, you
• 1:10:28
  know, and follow after it. You're not like betraying women
• 1:10:33
  as a result, you know, like you're not proving yourself
• 1:10:36
  retrograde. You're not like complicit in
• 1:10:40
  mistreatment of future generations of up and coming
• 1:10:43
  entrepreneurial types. Like it's OK.
• 1:10:45
  Like, you don't have to see it against the backdrop of ultimate
• 1:10:48
  consequence because there are a lot of goods to take and we see
• 1:10:51
  them in different ways, you know?
• 1:10:52
  But like, obviously if you've put a lot of time into it and
• 1:10:57
  you've invested a lot of yourself in it, like it's going
• 1:10:59
  to be hard to distance yourself. But like, yeah, the Lord doesn't
• 1:11:02
  wash your heart divided. And they're going to be ways in
• 1:11:04
  which, like, you know, here we are in the flesh, working our
• 1:11:06
  way through life. There's going to be some modicum
• 1:11:08
  of division. Like, I wish that I could like,
• 1:11:12
  like, read literature, you know, like I used to be able to read
• 1:11:15
  literature with some frequency. But it's like, you know when
• 1:11:18
  your work day ends at X o'clock and you go to bed at like X + 1
• 1:11:20
  you. Don't have time, you're saying?
• 1:11:21
  Yeah, exactly. But I make choices and I abide
• 1:11:25
  by those choices. And I'm like, I want to be able
• 1:11:28
  to be happy with my choices. You know, like not just merely
• 1:11:31
  resigned to my choices, but like, abandoned to the Lord in
• 1:11:33
  the midst of my choices. And I think that can be said for
• 1:11:36
  everyone, but especially women who find themselves in a kind of
• 1:11:38
  spot of division. So the, the, the, the desire to
• 1:11:41
  read literature, let's say the the woman who has the kids and
• 1:11:43
  the work, and she loves her work, but she feels her heart,
• 1:11:45
  as you say, drifting back to the home.
• 1:11:47
  It's not, it's not a matter of OK, you don't.
• 1:11:51
  Of course, you might still have desire for your work, or you
• 1:11:53
  have desire for literature, but that doesn't mean you have to
• 1:11:56
  pursue that desire just because you have it.
• 1:11:59
  Yeah. I mean, again, to go back to
• 1:12:00
  like an earlier point, there's a hierarchy of goods.
• 1:12:02
  There's things that are better. There are things that are, I
• 1:12:04
  mean, worse is too harsh of a term, but things that are good
• 1:12:07
  and things that are good are, you know, and like to know that
• 1:12:10
  and then to interiorize that, that's like the kind of drama,
• 1:12:12
  that's the excitement of human life.
• 1:12:15
  So it's like, yeah, you might still want to work, but you
• 1:12:17
  might want to be with your kids more.
• 1:12:19
  And that's OK. You know, you can like, you can
• 1:12:22
  trust that. You can follow that.
• 1:12:25
  I mean, provided that it's possible.
• 1:12:26
  We touched on it earlier, like you were talking about the
• 1:12:29
  different at least the cardinal virtues and you know, in pursuit
• 1:12:33
  of 1 virtue, the rest develop often it's a spiritual director
• 1:12:37
  told me years ago, it's like virtue is a handkerchief.
• 1:12:39
  You left one corner and the rest follows, which is really cool
• 1:12:42
  because you, you only have a human person have the ability to
• 1:12:44
  focus on one thing at a time typically, or like really make
• 1:12:47
  one big commitment per day as opposed as it in terms of like
• 1:12:50
  an area to grow in. It's not good to have too many
• 1:12:53
  because it's easy to get too many wrong then just do well
• 1:12:55
  with one. What would you say?
• 1:12:58
  What what advice would you give for mothers and parents to be
• 1:13:02
  able to teach their children about virtue?
• 1:13:06
  Are there things that you think the same?
• 1:13:09
  Again, what would Saint Thomas Aquinas say for?
• 1:13:11
  And again, I know a lot of this is what you you model the virtue
• 1:13:14
  yourself and the children learn from that, but what are some
• 1:13:17
  practical things you would recommend?
• 1:13:18
  Yeah, so like when it comes to temperance, the goal is not to
• 1:13:23
  be overwhelmed by sense pleasures.
• 1:13:25
  When it comes to fortitude or courage, the point is not to
• 1:13:28
  give way before difficulty. When it comes to justice, it's
• 1:13:31
  basically to think of the other in your relationships and
• 1:13:34
  interactions. And when it comes to prudence,
• 1:13:37
  it's like your freedom is a gift and you should render it as a
• 1:13:40
  gift. So I think there are simple ways
• 1:13:42
  that mothers teach that to children.
• 1:13:45
  Like justice is a very clear one.
• 1:13:47
  Sharing is an act of justice. Saying thank you is an act of
• 1:13:50
  justice. Basically, thinking of other
• 1:13:52
  people when you're accustomed as a child to think kind of only of
• 1:13:55
  yourself is an act of justice or virtues related to justice, of
• 1:14:00
  gratitude and liberality and things like that.
• 1:14:04
  So I think that it's like a mother or father's
• 1:14:06
  responsibility to direct the gaze of the child to the other
• 1:14:10
  and to help the child to empathize or to sympathize with
• 1:14:13
  the other, which can be difficult, you know?
• 1:14:15
  But like, didactics are not a bad way to go about.
• 1:14:18
  It's like, what did you do? I did this.
• 1:14:20
  How do you think that made your sister feel?
• 1:14:21
  I think it probably made her feel like this.
• 1:14:24
  Why did you do it? It's like, I mean, no, no kid
• 1:14:26
  has a good explanation for a bad action because there is no good
• 1:14:29
  explanation for a bad action. But that kid can say, like, I
• 1:14:31
  wanted to play with the toy. It's like, OK, well, here we
• 1:14:34
  are. And you're not playing with the
• 1:14:35
  toy because instead we're having this painful conversation, you
• 1:14:39
  know? And that's justice.
• 1:14:40
  Yeah, exactly. FYIII.
• 1:14:42
  Don't know that you need to like name them.
• 1:14:43
  Yeah, maybe when they're a little as they get older, yeah.
• 1:14:46
  Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:14:47
  Probably. Earlier, earlier, probably age
• 1:14:48
  of age of reason, right? They can Start learning to name
• 1:14:52
  the virtue, but I think there's a lot of power in naming Naming
• 1:14:54
  it like this. Is the virtue you're learning
• 1:14:56
  right now. Is the virtue of justice like
• 1:14:58
  what is owed to the person? Yeah, Or like, you know, you can
• 1:15:02
  have. I, I think, like, moms teach
• 1:15:04
  their kids about difficulty when they teach them about sweets,
• 1:15:07
  you know, so it's like, it's 4:00.
• 1:15:09
  Mom can have a snack. It's like, well, if you have a
• 1:15:11
  snack, then you can't have dessert.
• 1:15:13
  It's like the kid realizes dessert is better than the
• 1:15:15
  snack. He likes the dessert more than
• 1:15:16
  he likes the snack. But he's going to have to endure
• 1:15:19
  the trial of one hour of waiting.
• 1:15:21
  Is he willing to do that? You know, you can train a child
• 1:15:23
  for that. But then you have to be
• 1:15:24
  consistent. That's fortitude to teach.
• 1:15:26
  Yeah. To teach them fortitude.
• 1:15:27
  You yourself have to be courageous.
• 1:15:31
  Meaning you forgo your own snack.
• 1:15:32
  No, no, no, no, in the sense that, like, we just give in to
• 1:15:34
  kids often enough because it's just like, too difficult to bear
• 1:15:37
  the burden of their whining. That's definitely one I I'm
• 1:15:40
  trying to work on right now. Yeah.
• 1:15:42
  And and I think that there should be some.
• 1:15:43
  And also your empathy gets hijacked a little bit.
• 1:15:45
  Not that they're intentionally manipulating you, because they
• 1:15:47
  don't intentionally manipulate little kids.
• 1:15:48
  It's not intentional. Of course not.
• 1:15:50
  But you're just like, they're crying.
• 1:15:52
  They're crying. And yeah, they're crying for
• 1:15:54
  something that they shouldn't have necessarily.
• 1:15:56
  It's not necessarily an innately bad thing, but like the dessert
• 1:15:58
  or whatever it is. Or they were, they had a bad
• 1:16:01
  day, their brother hit them, I don't know.
• 1:16:02
  And you're just feel bad for them.
• 1:16:04
  But part of your own fortitude is to give them fortitude by
• 1:16:08
  saying it doesn't like no, you cannot have it.
• 1:16:12
  And I think every once in a while, you kind of, you sweeten
• 1:16:14
  the deal or you loosen your rules to communicate them
• 1:16:17
  something of the indulgence of mercy, you know, like, it can't.
• 1:16:20
  Like, if Mom is seen as inflexible, it's almost robotic,
• 1:16:23
  you know, it's almost inhuman. But nevertheless, Mom's
• 1:16:25
  consistent, you know, Like, and I can make sense of what Mom
• 1:16:28
  does, right, because she's consistent.
• 1:16:30
  And in making sense of what Mom does, I can make sense of life,
• 1:16:34
  you know, because she's the most reasonable human with whom I
• 1:16:35
  deal. So.
• 1:16:37
  Yeah. How does one teach a child
• 1:16:39
  prudence? Yeah.
• 1:16:40
  So like I think that you have to teach your child to be
• 1:16:43
  farseeing, which is really hard, especially when they're little
• 1:16:47
  little, but you have to help your child to make connections
• 1:16:50
  between choices and their effects.
• 1:16:53
  So it's like what is prudence for?
• 1:16:54
  It's for living your life. It's for living your life well,
• 1:16:57
  you know, and freely. But you need to be able to like
• 1:17:00
  give them choices, layout choices and then help them to
• 1:17:04
  evaluate the merits of A&B and then abide by their choices and
• 1:17:09
  appreciate what kind of comes down the line.
• 1:17:11
  So the point isn't to say like your job is to optimize or to
• 1:17:14
  maximize because like life's not that, right?
• 1:17:16
  But like, you know, do you want to hang out with your friend or
• 1:17:20
  like go to this party? You know, thinking of like a 13
• 1:17:23
  year old who already invited a friend over, but then
• 1:17:26
  subsequently received an invitation to a cooler party.
• 1:17:28
  It's like, do you want to spend time with this person with whom
• 1:17:31
  you've been friends for five years?
• 1:17:32
  Or do you want to go to a party with the cool kids?
• 1:17:35
  You know, it's like, you know, you're free.
• 1:17:37
  I, I understand wanting to go to the party with the cool kids.
• 1:17:39
  Like we all want to be cool kids.
• 1:17:41
  That's you don't have to apologize for that.
• 1:17:43
  You don't have to feel silly about that.
• 1:17:44
  But like, are you going to get an invitation for your friend to
• 1:17:46
  come along, you know, or are you going to like leave him out and
• 1:17:50
  drive? Because that's a, there's a word
• 1:17:52
  for that. It's called betrayal.
• 1:17:55
  And it's not cool, you know, because at the end of the day,
• 1:17:57
  you might find yourself. You need loyalty.
• 1:17:59
  Yeah, yeah. Like, you need loyalty to have
• 1:18:01
  real friendships, like, and at the end of the day, you're going
• 1:18:03
  to want to live your life with people who don't cancel, who
• 1:18:05
  don't flake, you know, because like, that's the real substance.
• 1:18:08
  That's the real like point. Even if it seems not as good for
• 1:18:13
  you in the short term, for whatever reason you were
• 1:18:15
  mentioning the sweets early. I think that was actually more
• 1:18:17
  temperance than fortitude, like delaying this the, you know, the
• 1:18:21
  treat for whatever later. What, what I think of fortitude,
• 1:18:25
  I think of a strong will and the decisiveness to follow through
• 1:18:29
  on your whatever your commitment was.
• 1:18:32
  But it also connects to courage. And so how would you, what would
• 1:18:37
  Thomas Kleiner say through you to teach courage to children?
• 1:18:43
  Yeah. You can think like Saint Thomas
• 1:18:44
  will talk about how there are two vices opposed to, we said
• 1:18:47
  there are basically 2 dimensions of courage, the attack
• 1:18:50
  dimension, the indoor dimension, the attack dimension, we've got
• 1:18:52
  magnanimity and magnificence. The indoor dimension, we've got
• 1:18:54
  patience and perseverance doesn't matter.
• 1:18:57
  You can set that aside, but like perseverance, which sees kind of
• 1:19:00
  whatever it is through to the end.
• 1:19:02
  He says there are vices opposed to it by excess and by defect.
• 1:19:06
  So by defect, it's like if you give way, there's a certain
• 1:19:08
  softness of spirit. So anytime something proves
• 1:19:10
  difficult, you just give up. Not good.
• 1:19:12
  But then on the other hand, there's what he calls
• 1:19:14
  pertinacity, or we might just call stubbornness, where it's
• 1:19:17
  like you're too fixed on the thing and you can't actually see
• 1:19:20
  that it might not be good to be too fixed on the thing because
• 1:19:22
  the thing might not be good for you.
• 1:19:24
  Like you might have to change your course of action.
• 1:19:26
  You might have to adapt and I think that you might have a
• 1:19:30
  strong willed kid who is pertinacious, you know, who is
• 1:19:32
  stubborn, who is obstinate. And in order to educate that
• 1:19:36
  person, it it rarely works just to go directly against because
• 1:19:40
  that that puts you in constant tension or in constant conflict
• 1:19:43
  with the child. You need to be able to enunciate
• 1:19:45
  for the child what the goods at stake are.
• 1:19:48
  You know, like I'm not torturing you, I'm not tantalizing you,
• 1:19:52
  I'm just educating you. And if you keep at this, you're
• 1:19:56
  going to ruin your life, you know, like in this limited
• 1:19:58
  sense. So maybe not speak about it in
• 1:19:59
  such drastic terms, but it's like, yeah, you could keep doing
• 1:20:02
  this, but like. To appeal to their reason and
• 1:20:05
  walk talk them through it. I mean, there's this idea with
• 1:20:08
  virtue, like your greatest strengths can also be your
• 1:20:12
  greatest weaknesses. So the person that has this
• 1:20:15
  fortitude, they might also have this stubbornness and this
• 1:20:19
  inability to, you know, if they don't have good prudence, they
• 1:20:23
  are, you know, they kind of persevere in the wrong thing for
• 1:20:25
  far too long. You know, where they're going to
• 1:20:27
  go, like be the bomb thrower like this like courageous act of
• 1:20:31
  like all out. And then they do something crazy
• 1:20:33
  or whatever it is, right? How would you wreck?
• 1:20:37
  How do you recommend? And this can be self management
• 1:20:39
  too, but we're talking about kids like evaluating once a
• 1:20:43
  child's different temperament, they're the way that they're
• 1:20:46
  naturally wired. And then do you focus on the
• 1:20:49
  virtue they're best at most naturally or would you recommend
• 1:20:53
  actually focusing on the virtue that they maybe are least suited
• 1:20:58
  towards temperamentally? Yeah.
• 1:20:59
  I think as a mother, I mean, like, you have the distinct
• 1:21:02
  privilege of teaching your children everything.
• 1:21:05
  So I mean, you can focus, but you also don't have to choose in
• 1:21:08
  the sense that like. Depends on the day it.
• 1:21:10
  Depends on the day and it also depends on the situation.
• 1:21:12
  And a kid, maybe 2. And I think that like, in a lot
• 1:21:14
  of ways, like a child, a child needs, I mean, you know, it's
• 1:21:17
  better than I do, but like a child needs so much love, just
• 1:21:20
  like so much love and so much trust and often enough, like
• 1:21:23
  correction or criticism, it like doesn't play that well.
• 1:21:28
  I find that, like, those mothers are best basically loving their
• 1:21:31
  children. I mean, adjusting for
• 1:21:33
  temperament and constitution. You're going to go about it in
• 1:21:35
  different ways. But like, you're kind of coaxing
• 1:21:37
  the good out of your kid. And you're seeing things in your
• 1:21:39
  kid. Yeah.
• 1:21:40
  You're seeing things in your kid that your kid can't see in
• 1:21:42
  himself or herself. And you're like, bring those to
• 1:21:45
  the attention of the child to say, like, look, you have a
• 1:21:48
  certain ability of spirit. Like, that's awesome.
• 1:21:50
  Like, get after it. Be about that work.
• 1:21:52
  Like, I can see you striving. I can see you driving, and it's
• 1:21:55
  within reach. But you're going to have to
• 1:21:56
  apply yourself, you know? So I think it's like a mother.
• 1:21:59
  Edith Stein talks about this in the collected essays on woman,
• 1:22:03
  where she says it's it's especially true of the vocation
• 1:22:06
  of a mother to pull forth or to call forth vocations of those
• 1:22:09
  entrusted to her care. And even at like the end of her
• 1:22:12
  life, she was taken from the monastery and act to the
• 1:22:16
  Vesterborg transit camp. And yeah, like, the people there
• 1:22:20
  knew they were going to Auschwitz.
• 1:22:21
  They knew they were going to die.
• 1:22:23
  And like a lot of mothers had kind of abandoned their children
• 1:22:25
  in their hysteria. And is she?
• 1:22:28
  Right about that. She doesn't put the the capo
• 1:22:31
  basically of Westerbork wrote about it.
• 1:22:33
  He wrote about her behavior while she was there.
• 1:22:35
  Basically like that she was taking care of the children of
• 1:22:38
  these women. And she wrote.
• 1:22:41
  She wrote back to her mother's superior and said, like the
• 1:22:43
  prayer, it's glorious. Like she was in her element
• 1:22:47
  because she recognized like the very thing for which she was
• 1:22:49
  made, you know, which was to. So you're saying when she was
• 1:22:52
  captured by the Gestapo and she was going to be killed
• 1:22:55
  ultimately this is a St. St.
• 1:22:57
  Edith Stein But she was actually, and she was she was
• 1:23:01
  actually taking care of kids whose mothers had just walked
• 1:23:05
  off or. Basically, like lost their
• 1:23:07
  minds. They were still there in the
• 1:23:08
  transit camp, but they were incapable at the time.
• 1:23:09
  Like they were unable to tend to their children because they were
• 1:23:12
  so hysterical with grief. And so like, yeah, it's, it's,
• 1:23:16
  it's in wild. But like, she had that.
• 1:23:19
  I mean, she saw that and she wrote about that, but she had
• 1:23:21
  that in her, You know, it's like, yeah, you.
• 1:23:26
  Yeah, I just love her so much. Yeah.
• 1:23:29
  So Saint Teresa, Benedict of the Cross, pray for us.
• 1:23:31
  Yes, pray for us leaving her as like the final note in the
• 1:23:35
  conversation about Thomas Aquinas and motherhood.
• 1:23:37
  That's a that's a good one right there.
• 1:23:39
  She, I mean, I'm always, I'm always overwhelmed with awe and
• 1:23:43
  also just some a sense of fearfulness, even of the witness
• 1:23:46
  of the martyrs, because it's just so incredible that they had
• 1:23:50
  like she had the, because that self possession and the, and the
• 1:23:54
  trust she had the grace. It's just grace.
• 1:23:55
  We'll say it's the grace to be able to minister to a child in a
• 1:23:59
  concentration camp. That's his mother is checked out
• 1:24:02
  because she's so overwrought with grief.
• 1:24:04
  I mean, that's that's kind of an insane.
• 1:24:07
  It is, yeah. But it's also like a grace that
• 1:24:09
  she had been praying for, a grace that she had been living
• 1:24:11
  in accord with throughout her whole life.
• 1:24:13
  Yeah. Because like, she was, you know,
• 1:24:15
  she had suffered during her life.
• 1:24:17
  I mean, like, she was a very intelligent woman.
• 1:24:19
  She was one of the best students of Edmund Husserl.
• 1:24:21
  But because she was a woman, she was often mistreated like in the
• 1:24:24
  like, well, in the in the academic context of her day.
• 1:24:28
  And you know, she eventually took a teaching post, I think at
• 1:24:32
  well, whatever at a school run by religious.
• 1:24:34
  She became a Carmelite. She published all manner of
• 1:24:38
  beautiful things and insightful things on a variety of topics.
• 1:24:42
  But like, she had lived courageously throughout the
• 1:24:44
  whole of her life and she lived courageously at the end.
• 1:24:48
  Like when they came to the monastery and act her, her blood
• 1:24:51
  sister was there with her. And she was obviously scared at
• 1:24:55
  the prospect. And she said, come, let us go
• 1:24:56
  and die for our people. And like, she passed through her
• 1:25:00
  hometown on the train on the way to Auschwitz.
• 1:25:03
  And there was somebody on the platform whom she recognized.
• 1:25:06
  And so she, like, called out the window and said, tell them I'm
• 1:25:08
  going to the East, which like, yeah.
• 1:25:11
  And the Christian imagination is, I mean, it's that's where
• 1:25:14
  paradise is. That's where Christ comes from.
• 1:25:16
  Like in glory. That's the horizon of our hope.
• 1:25:20
  So it's like, you see in her, the virtues come together in,
• 1:25:23
  like, most marvelous fashion. But it was something for which
• 1:25:25
  she was striving and straining, not just as the fruit of her own
• 1:25:28
  efforts, but like, as a kind of ongoing act of supplication.
• 1:25:32
  Like she wanted the Lord, and she wanted those virtues which
• 1:25:34
  made her fit for the Lord, worthy of the Lord, able to,
• 1:25:36
  like, love the Lord better. And you see, like in most.
• 1:25:40
  Yeah. Yeah, she's the best.
• 1:25:43
  She's the best and Saint Thomas Aquinas is the best, and Saint
• 1:25:46
  Dominic's amazing too. Tell us about the platform that
• 1:25:51
  you are we've been sharing about to help everyday people blessed
• 1:25:58
  by the wisdom of Saint Thomas Aquinas there.
• 1:26:00
  You go, yeah, If you'd like to learn about not just like about
• 1:26:03
  Saint Thomas Aquinas, but about the Lord through the lens that
• 1:26:07
  Saint Thomas kind of puts on things or adopted before the
• 1:26:10
  Most High God. We have a little website
• 1:26:12
  calledaquinas1o1.com. And there are short videos with
• 1:26:16
  Dominicans describing the teaching of Saint Thomas, but
• 1:26:19
  like describing the Most High God.
• 1:26:20
  And and there's sweet little animations and accompanying
• 1:26:23
  readings. It's a type of thing which takes
• 1:26:25
  you by the hand and leads you into the church's tradition.
• 1:26:28
  So if you feel like kind of overwhelmed by it or even
• 1:26:31
  intimidated by it, it's the type of thing where you can take baby
• 1:26:33
  steps and then come to a determination of what's for you
• 1:26:36
  and what's not for you, so. Thomas Aquinas, it's.
• 1:26:39
  Aquinas 101 dot. Comaquinas101.com That's it, and
• 1:26:42
  it's for the everyday person. Basically, yeah.
• 1:26:45
  So the first video on here is Welcome to Aquinas One.
• 1:26:48
  What is Aquinas 101 then the five ways.
• 1:26:52
  Yeah, but there's. Like a sweet little series there
• 1:26:53
  about virtue, actually. Amazing, there's.
• 1:26:55
  Probably like 2025 videos about you.
• 1:26:57
  Think everyone would be benefited?
• 1:26:59
  Not everyone, I don't think that I mean.
• 1:27:01
  Definitely everyone. When it comes to
• 1:27:03
  recommendations, I only like recommend the Gospel of John As
• 1:27:05
  for definitely for everyone. Can everyone be benefited by
• 1:27:08
  studying the virtues? I think so, yeah.
• 1:27:10
  Yeah. In one way, shape or form.
• 1:27:12
  And you might find that it's not for you.
• 1:27:13
  Yeah. No judgement.
• 1:27:14
  You know, like no judge. You're gonna love it, guys.
• 1:27:16
  Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm a low key promoter, so.
• 1:27:20
  You're very low key. I don't know.
• 1:27:22
  Promoter's a strong word. Father Gregory Pine, thanks for
• 1:27:26
  joining the podcast, it's been awesome.
• 1:27:27
  Thanks for having. Me great to talk with you and.
• 1:27:29
  With you as well. A huge thank you to our partner.
• 1:27:32
  EWTNEWTN is the largest religious network, reaching
• 1:27:36
  millions of people with the truth of the faith,
• 1:27:39
  entertainment and news. Check them out at ewtn.com.