 Welcome to The Spiritual Masters, a podcast from Tan Books and Tan Direction in which we look at the greatest and holiest writers from Catholic history. Join us as we explore the life and times in which they lived, an overview and study of their greatest works, and how we as Catholics can look to these masters as models for our own holiness on our journey to heaven. Welcome back, Tan fans, and Father Robert Nixon. Thank you for being here again. Thank you, Carter. It's an honor and privilege to be speaking to you today. We continue in our short mini-series on the Spiritual Master of St. Anselm of Canterbury. In last episode, we had really an amazing overview of his life, his biography, his works, how he's a great theologian, but more importantly, a great spiritual master and a devotional writer, and his theology and devotion merged together harmoniously as they all should and as really is the tradition with doctors of the church. They're not just great thinkers, but they're holy people who see that the point of the mind is to help us raise it towards God and to change our daily lives. So we're going to jump in today on one of my favorite works that we now publish with you, the Passion of Christ through the Eyes of Mary. And so we're going to dive deep into this, but if you could all begin as we always do with a prayer seeking the intercession of St. Anselm. Heavenly Father, you have given us your son's passion as the supreme manifestation of your love and mercy. You have given us the Blessed Virgin Mary as the model of all grace, of every virtue, of all human perfection. We ask that through the intercession of St. Anselm, we may contemplate this wondrous passion through the eyes of Mary. We ask that you be with us in all our thoughts and words today through Christ, our Lord. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Father. Now, this book, you know, I get the manuscripts early on, by the way, it's beautifully designed. I'm very proud of that. But I get these manuscripts and I start flipping through it. And I'm always, there's always a surprise in there. There's always a surprise. And it's one of the surprises in this volume is that it's actually, I guess, three different works put together. So we have something definitely from St. Anselm and then something potentially from Bernard of Clairvaux. And then we have something called our Lady's Lament. So why don't you just walk us through the structure of the book and where these different works come from? So these three works are all works from the middle or late medieval period. They're all contemplating the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ through the perspective of Mary. And this was something which became a practice about this time, about the time at which St. Anselm and St. Bernard lived. During that stage, there was an increased attention on the human sufferings of Christ. Not that it had been something which had been forgotten, but I guess had been emphasised a little bit less in the past when there was more emphasis on portraying Christ purely as a heroic or triumphant figure. So various things caused people's hearts to be touched by this reawakened sense of Christ's human suffering and the great mystery of the incarnation. And of course, the Blessed Virgin Mary is such an important figure, both as one who shared closely in the passion of Christ, in his pain, in his agony, and one who participated by her consent, by her maternity in the saving mystery of the incarnation. So this work compiles three pieces, the first of which is written by St. Anselm of Canterbury. It takes the form of a dialogue between St. Anselm and the Blessed Virgin Mary. And in this dialogue, he asks her about the passion of Christ and her experiences and her witnessing of it. And she relates to him. The second work attributed to St. Bernard, but scholars are not really sure if he actually wrote it or not. It begins as a dialogue between St. Bernard and the Blessed Virgin Mary and then continues as a narrative. Which doesn't really bother me. I mean, whether it's actually him or not, would you say that with your experience with his certain works that it's in keeping? Well, very much in keeping with his style, his spirituality, his focus upon the humanity of Christ. You know, and the thing is, of course, Bernardus was a very common name for monks back in those days. So whether it was by Bernard of Clairvaux or another Bernard, no one could be absolutely certain. We should spend some time at some other point in the future on Bernard of Clairvaux. He's becoming quickly, you know, he's going up higher and higher on my list of favorite saints. You know, we publish a biography on him. And I think it's safe to say we're not here to talk about him, but I'll just mention this in passing because I think it's awesome. He is probably the most influential man in the time in his time period that was ever ever, you know, his influence on kings. He settled a dispute among who the real pope was, and he was just this frail, quiet, soft-spoken monk. But kings and popes bowed before him. It's unbelievable. They did. They did quite a phenomenal figure and would be frequently summoned from his monastery to do things, you know, to settle wars, to settle, you know, rivalries between different kings and rulers and even on one occasion, as you mentioned, to decide who was really the legitimate pope. Did he start the first crusade? He started, yeah, was the first crusade. I'm not sure which crusade, but he did definitely start a crusade. Yeah. I mean, that's not on my resume. No, no, no. Well, he's got an awesome resume. He does. He does indeed. And, you know, in retrospect, looking at the at the bloodshed and devastation which resulted from those crusades, some people would say wasn't the right thing. But he certainly did live and learn. He did it with the spirit of that. It was the right thing to do for the Christian faith at the time. Yeah. So a wonderful saint and, of course, very important within the history of the Benedictine order. So he lived, he was one of the earliest Cistercian monks and the Cistercians are kind of Benedictine. They're reformed Benedictines. They were trying to to be more faithful to the original model of the rule by incorporating manual labor into the daily life of of monks. And by a certain higher degree of asceticism at the time. Yeah. I'd say that at this point in time, though, the the mainstream Benedictines and the Cistercians where we're very close and we're all part of the same one Benedictine family. Yeah. So yeah. And I could talk about Bernard forever, but we got to move on. And so that's kind of the second part of this book. And then the third part is our lady's lament is our lady's lament, which was written by another Benedictine monk, John Lidgate, who was an English Benedictine. He was living in the 1300s. It was written originally unlike the other two, which were both written originally in Latin in Middle English. So this was a different experience of translating many Middle English text into a kind of contemporary English. And so in the back here, there's little there are very short meditations for every bead on the rosary. There are. So I've included at the end what is called the rosary of the Seven Sorrows of Mary, sometimes called the Servite Rosary. So this rosary consists of of seven sets of seven Hail Mary's with seven Our Fathers accompanying each one. And this includes meditation for every one of those Hail Mary's and also a listing of the various people, the indulgences granted to people who use this rosary by various poems. I mean, this book, this little book that we now publish with you, it's this is like the Swiss Army knife of Mary's passion. I mean, it has a little bit of everything about the passion of Mary, you know, as she accompanies the passion. So it is the Sorrows of Mary and the passion of Christ. So wonderfully presented here. And these works, amazingly, as it might seem, have not been available in modern editions until now. Yeah, it's the first time this is what Tan Resurrection is doing is resurrecting these things that have been lost to history. You know, you're like Father Robert Nixon is like, I guess the Indiana Jones of great lost Catholic works. You know, you know, you are saving these things. And we're doing the easy part, which is just publishing them. But so we're going to jump in now to the text. And I think our listeners will hear exactly why this is such an amazing work. So it begins with the portrayal of Christ and his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. And this is like a dialogue, like, you know, it says Anselm and then Mary and Anselm, Mary, and they're talking back and forth, right? And but on the first page, I read something that blows my mind. Actually, I first read this, I was at mass and it was just like three minutes before mass started. And it kind of kind of distracted me the entire rest of the mass. It was it was an amazing little historical thing that whether it's true, doesn't really matter because it's just a beautiful metaphor. And it says this, Mary says that the Denari, the silver, the 30 pieces of silver that they used to pay Judas when he betrayed Christ in the garden were the same 30 pieces of silver that the Old Testament, Joseph, his older brothers received when they sold him into slavery. And and there's a you have a footnote there about it. But why don't you why don't you tell us about how that 30 pieces of silver by legend, you know, stayed in the treasury and made all the way down to Judas? Yeah, yeah. So so so the story is that when when Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery, they received these 30 silver Denarii and they were then preserved in the temple, you know, both as a historical point of thing and because that they were, you know, there was something slightly sinister about these particular silver Denarii, which supposedly were 10 times the weight and value of a regular Denarii. And these were the same ones, which they offered Judas for this act of betrayal. Oh, man. Yeah, yeah, I think it's a powerful image. You know, whether whether that's true or not, as you mentioned, it's not so important. It's part of a private revelation. So it's a kind of devotional thing. But I think there is, you know, it's remarkable to think that happens. And it puts into perspective also Judas betrayal. Like we think the way that it's written about here is it was because he was actually filled with avarice that he actually wanted these. And otherwise, we might think, well, 30 pieces of silver doesn't sound like very much. But but when you think about these were pieces of silver, which were 10 times the usual size. Yeah, 300 pieces of silver, you know, or whatever. Yeah, it's just it's a powerful it's a powerful image. And in chapter two on page eight, it talks about the arrest of Christ. And I found this fascinating. So we often hear a reference to the the brethren of Jesus, you know, talking about James and John and and, you know, we, I guess we understand, I guess most of us understand that that the word for brethren is the same as cousin. Yeah. And our church teaches, of course, that that Mary didn't have any other children. But here it says now there were and this is Mary speaking. Now there were two amongst those in the garden who were of very similar appearance, namely James and Jesus. That's right. For this reason, Judas said to the guards that the one that I kiss. Well, that's right. And, you know, people who who hear the the story of the passion often I wondered myself, why did Judas need to just like, didn't they know who Jesus was? Surely they would have known because he was, you know, a public figure. But this kind of explains it. Yeah, it does. That Jesus and James were of almost identical appearance. It also makes a lot of sense of the reason why he was called the brother of Jesus, like the twin of Jesus. Yeah. So, yeah. So that that puts into context the significance of this kiss, why the kiss was needed to betray to identify which one was really Jesus that the Roman soldiers wouldn't have been able to distinguish the two. I love it. I love it. So as we go on, you know, there's there's multiple places here where, you know, we're seeing something, Father, that's not in the Gospels. Right. And readers love this kind of thing. You know, we have a very popular TV series out there now called The Chosen and it's it's about the Apostles, but it's kind of the scenes. It's about the Apostles and Christ, but it's the scenes between the Gospel readings. Oh, and so people enjoy kind of the creative license to say, OK, what might have been happening with Peter, you know, in between the lines of the Gospels. And I kind of feel like this book does that, but it's but it's from a saint. You know, it does. It's from a saint. And you know, as I mentioned before, this is this is private revelation to Saint Edsel. But a lot of these things also were were common beliefs or legends in circulation during the Middle Ages. I think one of the great tragedies in the church scholarship in modern times is there's almost a deliberate attempt on the part of some scholars and translators to write out these kind of details, you know, to think, well, this is not in scripture, so we should leave it out. One of the I think one of the problems with the modern brevery is it leaves out the lives of the saints, saying that some of them are unhistorical or unproven. But I mean, you know, this is this is what gives color and substance. So yeah, I love bringing this kind of stuff to modern readers. I do. I do, too. And so all right. So on page 14 is a great scene here where they're they're hearing. OK, it's time up. Mary Magdalene, Mary's telling Anselm, Mary Magdalene, meanwhile was standing to and fro restlessly, wandering to and fro restlessly, seeking to see or hear what was taking place and striving to gain some knowledge of what was happening inside through the window. So this is a scene. Sorry, I should have said this is where Jesus is. Is he before? Who is he standing before before the high priest? He's before the high priest and per chance she happened to hear Peter's denials of Christ. How great was the sorrow and anxiety which pierced her heart when she heard those dreadful words whereby the man who had been chosen as the leader of the disciple abandoned his beloved master. And then Mary says that she heard it herself like she. So she made eye contact with Peter and you have this this this scene where Peter, who was chosen to lead these these all the apostles, these women heard his denial. They did. And he just they did. They did. So, you know, often one of the things which I often wondered about until I translated this is what were what was Mary doing while Jesus was being questioned. Yeah. Yeah. And the other disciples and Mary Magdalene. And it seems that they were all in close proximity. They were all, you know, trying to to hear and see what was going on. And of course, they did because how else would we know what happened? What transpired? And so it's recorded here in detail and Mary Magdalene's reaction. How she, you know, when she hears these denials that she announces that she will never deny. And and similarly with Mary, the mother of Jesus, you know, and her great anguish and her anxiety and her son is being here, interrogated, is in custody and she's doing her best to hear and see what's going on from the outside. Now, tell us, you know, when he runs up, when Peter runs off, he goes somewhere. Tell us about that. This is very cool. So, you know, we read only in the gospel that he hears the cock crow and then he goes and weeps bitterly. This gives us an extra detail. He goes and conceals himself in this rock. And remains there until after the resurrection. The name of this rock is Galle Cantus, which means in Latin, the the crow of a cock of a rooster. And interestingly enough, there is actually this rock, this Galle Cantus rock, still in existence. And there's a little monastery there. And I never realized that's what the tradition is, that that was the rock where Peter hid himself after the until after the resurrection. Wow. Yeah, that's it's it's that's very cool. It's very cool. Now, in the next chapter, Christ has led to Caiaphas and here Anselm asks Mary an interesting question. In fact, he asks her multiple times through this. He says, did you have any hope, Mary, that Jesus might be liberated from his plight? He's like, did you think at this point that he might get out of this mess? Yeah, it's a very human, normal question to ask. It is. And and she answers like a couple of different times. She definitely did. She was hopeful that Jesus would get out of this. And she says, for I knew that he was eloquent in speech and extremely intelligent, intelligent, I therefore certainly hope that he could defend himself convincingly against any judge. But when he came before his judge, he stood like a gentle lamb before his slaughter, not opening his mouth. I just I think it's a very endearing thing where this mother is saying, my son, not just that he's God, he could snap his finger and solve this. But he's going to talk his way out of this because he can. Yeah. But he doesn't. And she has to witness him being that sacrificial lamb. And it must have been registering with her. Oh, he really is the Lamb of God. Yeah. Yeah. So, of course, you know, Mary understood that that Jesus was destined to suffer for the salvation of the world, but she didn't know the precise occasion when this was going to happen or how it was going to happen or anything. So, of course, she she was still very hopeful that he was going to be liberated. And as you mentioned, she knew that he was such a powerful, eloquent, intelligent speaker. She was she felt that, yeah, he'll he'll speak to the he'll speak and he'll defend himself. Indeed, as he had in the past on several other occasions, he was evidently very convincing. And I think when we think about Christ, this is something we can overlook. He was really the the most effective public speaker of all time. Yeah. Yeah. You know, he spoke to these enormous crowds without the benefit of a microphone and converted people just with a few words. Yeah. Yeah. And he didn't always need the miracles to do it. No. But that's a good segue. The need for miracles to convert people. In chapter six, Jesus has brought before Herod and returned to Pilate. So I'm on page 23. This is interesting. This is where I love this private revelation stuff and the history and the tradition, because we find things I certainly had never thought about, never heard about. And so it says here that Herod implored him to give some display of his marvelous power. So again, this is this is so cool. Actually, let me go back. There's this interesting point where Herod asks Mary again, Mary's telling Anselm this, right? And Herod asks Jesus, are you the one that my father tried to kill when you were a baby? Yeah. How interesting a question. I mean, it makes perfect sense that he would have asked him. Well, that's right. And the story about this prophecy of this king who was to emerge and Herod senior had slaughtered the innocents as a result of that. But certainly the prophecy was still in existence and something which Herod, the Herod who lived at the time of the passion, was aware of it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And so wondering if this emerging leader is the one who has been foretold. And we see the attitude of Herod here as one of great curiosity. You know, he really wants to see a miracle to see if this guy who's got such an immense reputation, to see if he's for real, to witness it for himself. So in trying to entice Jesus to do a miracle, he crowns him. Herod even placed a crown upon his head, earnestly pledging to make him a share of his royal power and equal co-heir to the throne. If only he would perform a miracle for him. That's an amazing thing. And you can't read that and not think about his temptation by Satan in the desert. It is, it is, it is. And you know, I think Herod in this case is thinking, here is the emerging king. Here is the one who has been foretold to be the king of Israel. Which he would know about. I mean, he's got to be educated in the prophecies. Indeed. And you know, he has an immense number of followers. So I think Herod is thinking, if I can make this person a co-ruler with myself, I can protect my own position. Oh, that's awesome. You see, that's a really cool insight because it's not so much that Herod's looking for the king to follow. He's probably trying to protect his own reputation by kind of, he wants to use Christ's reputation to protect himself. And this is something which happened on a few occasions in the Roman Empire where there'd be a rival and so there would be appointed co-emperor. So the idea was to make Jesus a partner in his own rule. And Jesus is just like not having anything to do with this. He's like, I'm not playing this game. You don't understand it completely that his kingdom is not of this world. So it don't work, right? And Herod's pissed off about this. And so the Mary explains to Anselm on the next page, he says, and on that very day, Herod and Pilate, who had hitherto been enemies, became firm friends. I mean, that's just, it's the story. It's just the story of what happens in feuds. And so Herod and Pilate now, hey, they're buddy, buddy from here on out. Well, that's right. And one thing she mentions is that Herod also hoped to spare him after this interview, that he had this kind of sense that this is someone who, his great dignity, worth and everything that he doesn't want to condemn him. And so for this reason, sense him to Pilate as his kind of own way of washing his hands of the matter. Yeah, absolutely. So they were both kind of washing their hands of it. They both had a sense, I don't think we should kill this guy, but they also lacked the... They lacked the moral fortitude to stand up to the crowd. Yeah, exactly, exactly. All right, so it's just incredible. I'm just kind of flipping through here. One, another sentence that really struck me, father, I'm paragraph, I'm sorry, chapter seven, we've moved on to the crowning, the scorching and crowning with thorns. Mary is quite descriptive here and she's explaining on page 27 how Jesus was such a good-looking man. He was so attractive to people, but after the scorching and after the crowning of thorns, she says, he looked as if he was horribly deformed and stupefied, like one consumed by leprosy. Like his skin had been so destroyed that he looked like he had leprosy. It's just a description I've never heard before. Yeah, yeah, and you can imagine how shocking that would have been for any mother to see their beloved son in such a state. Yeah, absolutely. So on chapter 10, the crucifixion, page 35, Mary says here, Anselm, I shall tell you, what I have to relate is profoundly lamentable and of infinite bitterness, and none of the evangelists have recorded these dreadful things on the sacred pages of their holy books. So she's going to be telling us stuff that the event... Indeed, I mean, the Gospels each say that he was crucified. They don't give any details about how exactly what happened and what that involves. And so she gives a little bit interesting context. So Calvary, which we just think of as like uphill with a cross on it, a wretched and deplorable place where carcasses of dogs and the corpus of beggars and lepers are discarded. And they stripped my son of all his clothing, leaving him completely exposed. Now, this is an interesting point I wanted to mention. I have often thought that part of the horror of the crucifixion was the shame of being stripped on naked. I mean, why in the world would the Roman guards allow a guy who they're crucifying to maintain some level of modesty or whatever? So this is a beautiful notion to me, leaving him completely exposed. I myself, we're talking about Mary now saying this. I myself, as I looked on, felt barely alive, so weakened was I with horror and shock. Nevertheless, I took the veil which I wore on my head and wrapped it around his waist to provide him with some covering for the sake of modesty. That's a beautiful notion. First of all, women shouldn't have been exposing their hair, so she was probably doing something that was risky anyway, for herself, but she took this veil off and wrapped it around his waist. It was a very motherly, a very tender thing to do for her son. It is, it is, it is, yeah. And I think that makes sense too, because we always see Jesus crucified. He has that cloth around his joints. And that's very ancient tradition. So I think that this is very unbelievable and understandable. Yes, yes, beautiful. That chapter concludes with something I just, this is interesting. She says that the cross was raised up, it was of such a height that I was not able to touch his feet. That's a very different picture than I've seen on TV. Yeah, we normally imagine it not being so tall, but, you know, yeah, and that it was very, very high. And I think that makes sense, you know, because it was designed to be very visible. Very visible for everybody in town. Yeah, so it was like an enormous thing. And, you know, I think this is actually consistent with what we hear about the cross in St. Helita's discovery of it. Oh, yeah. That's a great size. Yeah, it was huge, it was huge. Constantine's mother, who went to the Holy Land to find the cross. So another interesting point here, she says when he was crucified, lying on the ground, they nailed him down, he didn't actually bleed a lot because the nails were so large that it was still filling the wounds. But then when they raised it up and it went up, then his body, the gravity of his body, the weight of his body, boom, went down on the spikes. That, and once he was raised up because of the weight of his suspended body, all of his wounds burst open, blood flowed forth and copious torrents from his hands and feet. At that time, this is a powerful image. I mean, this is, I think it is, and I've never seen a movie depict this. She says, at the time, I was wearing a kind of white sheet as was the custom for religious women, which covered my head and my entire body. And as I stood at the foot of the cross, this pure white garment became saturated with the streams of crimson blood, which gushed from his precious body. Indeed. Some powerful stuff right there, you know? So the book goes on. It briefly talks about the last words of Christ, which we're gonna talk about at another point in Bonaventure, because you've done a translation on the original seven last words of Christ by St. Bonaventure. So we're gonna, that's a whole nother conversation. But she does touch on a few of those last words that Christ spoke from the cross. But I wanted to zoom in on one thing. On page 42, the very last line on that page, and again, we're gonna talk about this at some point when we talk about Bonaventure. This is powerful. She does mention that he said, it is consummated. Now, we often hear in our translations, the N-A-B-R-E translation and the RSV, it is finished, it is ended. But the Dewey Reems, which is translation and my favorite translation, it is consummated. So I just thought it was worth talking about how that particular translation, which is much more literal from the Latin Vulgate, then it is finished and finished and consummated are two very different concepts. It is, it is. So you use that translation. And so I just thought here just a minute or two on what this means to you, it is consummated. So consummated implies the fulfillment of this great mission, of this great work. And it also implies a union. We often use, I guess, the most common usage of the word consummated today is in relation to marriage. You have to consummate your marriage. That this kind of is not a finish, but a drawing to completion, which in a way is a glorious beginning. So I think, yeah, this translation, it is consummated. And I hadn't realized, I always assumed that was the same translation as in the Dewey Reems, as in the King James version, as in the Wycliffe version. But I checked out all these older versions as well because there are lots of English translations, which far precede the King James and everything. And yeah, it seems it's unique to the Dewey Reems, which I think is to its great credit. It is. It's because St. Jerome, a doctor of the church, understood the significance of this word. And I think the other translators perhaps did not. Yeah. I mean, it's his word. I mean, he's choosing, well, it's the Latin Bulgate, I guess, but I mean, was the King James coming from the Latin Bulgate? It was. It was. But for some odd reason, the English translators aren't. Changed it to it is finished or it is done. Yeah. But there are a few inexplicable things in the King James where they seem deliberately to change the meaning of the Latin words. It's interesting. It's such a much more complete word because it's the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies and it's the completion of Christ's relationship with the church. Yeah. So everything is good to go from here on. It's almost like not an ending. It's almost a beginning. It is, it is, it is, yeah. So it's a consummation of the glory of God's mission and the consummation of this mystical union between Christ and the church and between divide nature and human nature. Yeah. I think Jerome was pretty clear that it was supposed to be consummation. I don't know why people mess with that. But nonetheless, one thing that I'll just mention here, this was a very cool scene in page 44. Sheet Mary says, after this, he bowed his head. So this is after he said it's consummated, he's died. And he says he bowed his head, gave up his spirit. Then the veil of the temple was torn into from the top and the bottom. We know that. The earth shook and the stones were torn apart. This was particularly the case with the large boulder upon which the cross itself stood. It was rent apart in such a way as to leave an opening large enough to insert a hand into. So like the whole, the ground just breaks. Tombs also opened up and many of the bodies of the saints who rested within rose from the dead. Following the resurrection of my son, many of these saints went out from their tombs and entered the holy city where they were seen by many of them. That is, that's a crazy scene. It is, it is. And in fact, the resurrection of the other dead from their tombs is something which is mentioned only very briefly in the Gospel of Matthew. But if you think about it, that's a completely amazing thing that must have been really, I guess, something which anyone who was present at the time must have been overawed by these things which were going on, the eclipse of the sun, these rocks splitting open, tombs opening up, yeah. So another beautiful thing that kind of goes through this book, and I didn't realize it until I got about halfway through, but I realized that at many occasions she refers to the prophecy of Simeon about the sword piercing her heart. And it turns out she says it seven times. She does, she does. And in fact, in each of these works there's reference to that sword of sorrow which Simeon had predicted. And in each time it's seven. So the tradition of the seven sorrows of Mary was one which this extends back to this time. Another thing that I had never heard of, which I hope is true, because it's just incredible, page 52, Father. This is when, this is really the pietà, like when the body of Christ is taken down from the cross. And it says, all the disciples came and mourned deeply over the death of their master, but then it came about that the body of my deceased son was miraculously restored. What immense consolation it brought to me and all his disciples. In this glorified body there were no wounds or scars to be seen except for the five scars of the sacred wounds of his crucifixion. And these five wounds are destined to remain visible on his body until the final day of judgment. But apart from these, his body appeared entirely healthy as if he had never undergone the ordeal of his passion. Yeah, this is amazing, isn't it? And you know, we're told that when Christ appears in his resurrected form, he still bears the wounds. But to think all the other wounds, all the other injuries which he was suffered were miraculously healed. And I guess, you know, it was a divine body. So by its nature, it couldn't be in this wretched state after death. And she mentions how much consolation she gets from this fact that he is. She got a lot of consolation, but then they have to put him in the tomb. And it's like, and she doesn't want to do it. No, no, I mean, this is something which appears in all three narratives that she really doesn't want him to be taken from her embrace. They almost have to forcibly take him from there. John, who's now the caregiver for her, Mary says to Anselm, John knew I had to let go. John basically forced her to go back home. They had to pry his body out of her hands. Essentially, that's what happens. But isn't that what would happen with any mother? Like, you know, your kid dies in the hospital. You have to pry the mother away, you know? We shouldn't be surprised that was the case, but it's a beautiful revelation that he had. Very heartbreaking to think of what that was like for her. So, you know, this book, remarkable, I could go on and on, but we kind of skimmed the, kind of skimmed the surface of Anselm's revelations from the Blessed Mother. It gave me so much insight into the passion that I had never had before. I mean, I just, I love this and to our listeners, I mean, if you heard anything that was interesting, trust me, it's every paragraph is interesting. We're just skimming the surface. So, I mean, Father, any kind of last thoughts on your experience working on this or any advice to our potential readers of what they can get out of this tremendous work for their own spiritual formation? Yeah, you know, I really think this would be, is a tremendous work for people to read who are wanting to meditate upon the passion of Christ, you know, and the Gospels are great for that, of course, but this provides so much more detail, so many heart-rending details, as we've just discussed a few of them, but there are many more which we haven't talked about. And what's more, this is not just anyone imagining these things. This is one of the great doctors and saints of the church, St. Anselm of Canterbury, which he experienced in this wonderful vision. And you know, it's such a privilege for me to bring this otherwise lost and neglected work to light. And so kind of work where there are references to it in other books, they say, oh, well, there's the, you know, St. Anselm's dialogue, but there's none of the actual details. So until now, it's been almost under a cloak of oblivion. So thanks to, Connor, thanks to Ted Books. It's a privilege to be able to bring this to contemporary readers. It's been a privilege. And our next episode, we're gonna talk about St. Anselm's other amazing work, the glories of heaven, the supernatural gifts that await body and soul in paradise. And we're gonna be talking about what our glorified body is able to do in heaven. So I'm really excited about getting to that. But thank you, Father, for all your work, for translating this. Again, I've said it many times, you're not just a translator, but you're a poet. And you put your own passion into the translation as it comes out beautiful. This is a work of art and a spiritual work that you're doing for the church and all of our customers. So I'm very grateful. Thank you for being here and God bless you. Thank you, Connor, God bless. This has been an episode of The Spiritual Masters, a podcast from Ted Books and Ted Direction. To follow the show, learn about more inspiring, holy men and women, and to get special offers exclusive to Spiritual Masters listeners, sign up at spiritualmasterspodcast.com. And thanks for listening.