 in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Sayings of light and love from St. John of the Cross, number three, though the path is plain and smooth for people of goodwill, those who walk it will not travel far and will do so only with difficulty. If they do not have good feet, courage and tenacity of spirit, so what is he talking? What is St. John of the Cross talking about here? He's obviously talking about the path, which is the way, the narrow way, he's extremely biblically literate. So much of his work is rooted deeply in the meditation and scripture. So if he's gonna reference a path that's safe to assume that he's referencing the path of the narrow way to Jesus. So this path, which Jesus talks about as narrow and difficult, he's saying is plain and smooth for people of goodwill. So when you're a person of goodwill, which means that you're a person who is legitimately following Jesus, you desire him, you want to be his disciple, and you're acting on that desire, you're a person of goodwill. The difficulty gets less on the road, it's smoother, it's easier, but he says, you have to have certain characteristics to travel far. Okay, what do you mean by that? Well, for John, John has a perception which we share in Apostoli VA that the best understanding of the spiritual life is in the context of this journey from the purgative to the unitive way or a journey from immaturity to maturity or a selfish, mercenary love to complete self-giving love. So he always has this sense of this kind of journey. And so he's saying, you won't travel far, you may be on the path, but you won't travel far, and it will be way more difficult for you if you don't have good feet, courage, tenacity and tenacity. So let's talk about the easier expressions here. What is tenacity? Tenacity is the quality of being very determined, meaning you don't give up easily or at all, really. And that's to make it to heaven, we can't give up, right? So we have to be very tenacious. We need to be very determined and not allow anything to interfere and know no matter what our difficulty is or struggles interior, external, whatever it is, he'll provide a way if we seek him and find those answers. So that's tenacity. Courage is kind of a, you could, it means more than tenacity, but they're in the similar kind of domain of ideas. Courage is the ability to do something that frightens you or the strength in the face of pain or grief or suffering. So you know there's a price to be paid for walking this way. And of course for everyone, for Jesus first, it's crucifixion and then resurrection, but for all of us, he says, you have to take up your cross to follow me. And so we have to have courage and trust and that courage comes from trust in him, trust in him and in the sense of knowing that when we don't have what we need, he will provide it for us to do this, you know? Even if we face martyrdom, we don't worry about martyrdom. Now it's easy to talk about martyrdom if you've never lived it or been threatened by loss of life or your faith, but in terms of an understanding of how it works in the saints, that he will give you sufficient strength and courage if you will do nothing, but stay with him in it in order to make it through. And then the last one that's a little harder, but if you get the whole context of the narrow and difficult way, which is more plain and smooth for people of goodwill, but there's still difficulty. And the last part is you have to have good feet, okay? So what is good feet on a hike mean? You have to be stable. Why do you get to stable stability? I was talking with Stephanie. We actually looked at the Spanish this morning. And for her, she said, when she taught this to the nuns at the retreat recently, she talked about stability in terms of, in the foundational truths of the faith, the paradigm of a saint, I think. Living the paradigm of a saint, I think we would agree is stable, but there's another aspect to having good feet on a trail. And that is you have to be agile and you have to be flexible. So if your feet are stiff and the road turns a little bit, you can end up falling down. So you have to be able to adapt to the train you're on to have good feet, so they're both stable, but they're also, but they're stable in a way that also deals effectively with all the undulations and difficulties. So in order to travel the narrow way, you already have goodwill, or you wouldn't be watching this video, is that we need to have good feet, stable. Living the paradigm of a saint, we don't know what that is. Go take the free mini course in Apostoli VA. If you're already in the community, of course, you know where that's at, or you've read about it, also I write about it in devil in the castle. The second is courage, which is strength to do something that's difficult even when there's some risk and then tenacity, which is being determined. So may all of these, may you have good feet, may you be courageous, and may you be tenacious, and may Jesus Christ be praised now and forever. Amen.