 been a long, long day. I got a lot to say. It feels like I'm carrying a two-ton way. I go to see my friend. Hello, I'm Monsignor Patrick Winslow. And I am Father Matthew Cout. And we are speaking from the Rooftop, a podcast brought to you by Tan Books, in which we invite you to join our conversation out here in the open air. Where we look out upon the world around us from the rooftop of the church and share with you what we see. Greetings, Father Winslow. Well, hello. Welcome back to you and to all those who are listening. Well, thank you. I feel adequately welcomed. Good. Now that we have that pleasantry out of the way. I did want to just take one second before we kind of begin a conversation just to thank Tan Books. You know, they have made it so easy for you and I to be able to do this. And we literally have these tiny little devices that we can pop on anywhere we are. Whatever rooftop we happen to be landing on as it were. And then we literally just give them back and they make all that stuff happen. And really, honestly, it sounds like we're in a studio. We're not. We're never in a studio. Oh, no, we're not. We are in a rooftop, practically. We are anywhere we need to be. The third floor of the Passwell Center, looking out over the city of Charlotte at the moment. Hit play, hit record. Yeah. So thanks to them and all their good work in the church and their production. It's fantastic. They make it clear. And all we have to do is just take the time, schedule the time and resume our conversation. I don't think some kudos to us. We just did this not long ago. That's good for us. Pretty good. This is good. Yeah, no, that's bad because that because that's good for us. That's really kind of a bad. But we should do a little more. But anyway, we're working on it. We are attentive to the fact that there are some people out there beside our parents that enjoy listening to us. And besides the kids that are strapped down to a chair, they have to listen to us. That's true. That's true. We are wonderful. If you do this again, you're going to have to listen to from the rooftop of correction for your children. I get it. I get it. So all right. So here's what I was thinking about. Yesterday was the Feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch. Yes. And the gospel passage reflected upon how a seed must fall to the die, a fall to the ground and dies so that it may grow and live. And then there was a further reference from our Lord after that little illusion to the seed about those who love their life will lose it. And those who lose their lives will have eternal life. Right. And it made me start to reflect upon the mystery of the cross. And of course, you know, when we're at Mass, we're focused on the cross of our Lord. The altar is an image of the cross. It's the cross on which our Lord is sacrificed. It's also an image of our Lord himself. And all of these, all of these liturgical elements have illusions, various illusions, but truly the focal point is the sacrifice of Calvary in which our Lord offers himself as the paschal mystery for our salvation and redemption. It's so easy sometimes to gloss over the fact that the cross in its most simplest terms is graphic, hard, painful. When you look at a crucifix, you cannot escape the reality in which man finds himself. Right. And that is confronted with the cross as the means to our happiness. And our Lord says time and time again, did you fact pick up your cross and follow me? The message, the central message of the Christian faith is that there is no salvation apart from the cross. We have a sense that we have to appropriate the cross in our lives. So what then is the cross in our own life? Because I think sometimes we forget the fact that we do have crosses that we have to pick up and follow. And it's easy to just simply say our Lord did it. Like the crosses of an outsource to our Lord, he took care of the bill and I'm good to go. And that's not how this works. I ran over to Golgotha Bank and Mick and said, Exactly. I was like, no, no, no, no. He didn't, you know, yes, he paid the price. However, we have to follow him and we have crosses that we have to bear in life. And I also am aware of the fact that as priests and also any Christian, we try to help people bear the weight of their crosses. We should go on sympathy, especially because we understand the weight of our own crosses. But the one thing we cannot do is to remove them. We can't make crosses disappear. We can't simply say, oh, that's not a cross. Put it down. That's not our prerogative to do. In fact, there is no way to salvation for that person apart from addressing the cross that has been laid upon them or that has come to them. And if we attempt to say, no, that's not a cross, that we are actually impeding salvation for that person. And I remember reading in the Catechism some time ago, and it was a reference to the Antichrist and it was alluding to the fact that the Antichrist and the references in Scripture to Antichrist are not to a single individual historical person, but really to a spirit of the world that says salvation is possible, apart from the cross. And it truly is the spirit of the Antichrist who is going to whisper in the ears of everyone. That's not a cross. That's right. You don't need to lift that. You don't need to approach that. We can relieve you of that burden. And that is a scary thing that happens, I think, all too often in every generation. I think very much in our own. And I get it. There's a temptation of a compassionate person to say, I don't want you to have that cross, but it's not helpful. In fact, it's actually collaborating with an Antichrist spirit to say that you don't need to suffer a cross. And literally it's not compassionate. Yeah. If the word itself means I'm going to suffer with you. Right. It's I don't want you to suffer. So I'll remove that for you. And I'm not good because I'm not going to suffer with you. Right. I'm not going to be good. I'm not going to get under that cross with you. I'm just going to tell you to put it down. It's not a real cross. Yeah. We find this to be the case across the board in those hotbed issues. Yeah. Right. That people have difficulty with the church of teaching on X, Y, or Z. You know, and speak about something very obvious one. But I think everyone is, is can be rightly horrified by is, is the acceptance of abortion. And the mantra, of course, is that I can remove this cross from myself by, by killing innocent child. But the flip side is true, too. If I'm going to have compassion, this is the great work that Mira V is doing. If those of you who don't know, we have a wonderful home here for unwed mothers that we care for them, help them with their college education, etc. to assist them to bring this child to the light. And they're fantastic. The option of adoption is there or to keep the child, etc. But that real compassion is I'm in this with you. Yeah. I'm going to dive into this thing with you, and I'm not going to leave you. And every cross has injustice involved, right? Because, you know, our Lord did not create an unjust world for the rest of us to endure crosses. Rather, we introduced sin, the spirits, the angels. Well, the spirits introduced sin into the equation, into their realm, certainly, then it cascades into our realm. So all of the injustices are cascading out of this gift of freedom from these creatures that God has created. And it creates for these crosses. It creates for crosses that might be biological. If we could have physical ailments, we could be suffering. I mean, it's tragic, especially we see a child suffering from a cancer or a baby born in such a despairing condition. Or, for that matter, just the regular ravages of age, which you and I are becoming more and more familiar with. Well, you're more familiar with it than I am. But, you know, all of those things, they can be crosses that are circumstantial, right? That there are consequences of, you know, one, two, or even ten different injustices that seem to fall us. And then, of course, we have those crosses that are emerging out of our own brokenness. They're deeply rooted within us. And they need to be addressed, and perhaps those are the hardest. And I think those in the end are the ones that we want to deny our crosses at all. But the reality is you can't have the cross, which is the means to salvation, apart from having to suffer in some type of injustice, right? Because that's where this friction is coming from. Am I getting something wrong? No, no, no, I think it's great. I was trying to recall the name of the chapel in Orvieto, the famous chapel. It's Signorelli, I think. And if you walk into the beautiful Duomo in Orvieto, Italy, in Umbria, on the right side, maybe it's to Lazio, I don't know what it is, Umbria or Lazio, I can't remember. On the right side is a chapel, the Signorelli Chapel. And there's all kinds of amazing paintings in there. But one of them is of the Antichrist. And you've seen it before, I'm sure. But what's fascinating about the image is that when you see it for the first time, there are these men that are clearly preaching or doing something. And Christ is with them. And Christ has his hand raised. And you think that it's Christ. But then you look closely at it. The hand that's raised on Christ is actually a hand of someone else underneath his fold raising his hand. And you can't see who it is. So it's the person that looks like Christ. As Scripture says, the Antichrist is the one who denies Christ in the flesh. He looks like him, but he's not him. And how do you know? Because he doesn't have any wounds. He doesn't have any wounds. The denial of Christ in the flesh and that flesh having been sacrificed on the cross. Yeah, I was teaching. And that's the same. Although you get it right, but that's the same too, right? So we who must follow him, we have to have wounds ourselves. That's right. In the sense that we surrender and we sacrifice ourselves in an act of surrender in a pattern, in a manner of our Lord. Obviously we do it. Kicking, screaming, crying, denying. True. And all the many things that we do is fallen people. But in the end, there's only one way. Yeah. But you were saying you were exactly like Christ. Well, a number of things. I mean, one is that he doesn't just say to carry, right? But that sort of embrace of it. Whatever the thing is that you have, you pick that thing up. Yeah. You draw that thing to yourself. This was sort of manifested in that movie, The Passion, where Christ sort of lovingly caresses the cross. Yes. Like he wants it. Not because it's an instrument of pain, but because it's a pathway. To means. As he said, for the sake of the joy that laid before him, he endured the cross. And so you're handed this thing, whatever ailments you have, whatever psychological, physical, difficulty, whatever family problem you've got, internal conflicts, struggles with temptation, certain sins, et cetera. The beauty of the church's teaching on sin is that it just says, aha, that's this. That means that's your cross. You know what it is. And you've got to embrace it. Not embracing it, engaging it. Right. But on the contrary to say, I'm going to suffer this. And just like all the statuary that we have in the iconography of the church, the saints are always holding the instruments of their passion. But that became the thing that was almost like a trophy that they're holding up in the dome of the church. Whether it's Lucy with her eyes or the saints with it, Lawrence with his gridiron or whatever else. He suffered something and that became glorified. And it's not just the instruments of martyrdom. It's the thing that's hurting you on the inside. Right. I mean, you manifestly see the injustice. I mean, it's unjust that somebody takes her eyes out or burns you on a gridiron or crucifies you. You see the manifest of justice, but you're seen as love and faith conquering. Love, faith, faith, hope and love conquering in all of it. You know, but we live in a day and age where the spirit of the Antichrist is very loud. Yes. Or the voice of it. Because how often do you hear, oh, the outcome on, get over that. That's not a sin. It's 2020. Right. Get out of here. Exactly. That's a great argument. It's a sin that removed one year changed. That's right. All is different because of one year. So the difficulty is raising children, raising a family, leading a flock, a parish, a diocese, a church. When you have so many voices that take on the voice of the Antichrist telling you day in and day out, give in to your women. These are crosses. Well, you don't need to suffer them. You don't need to suffer them. If you went the way of the world, there would be no cross. That's right. And it gets couched. And you can see how easily as compassion, as you were mentioning earlier, because obviously nobody wants to see another one suffer. I don't want to see Jesus on a cross. Yeah. I don't want to see a saint martyred. That's horrific. And of course we should all recoil at the idea. But the reality is there are injustices that arrive at our doorstep or sometimes deeply embedded within us. And when we can, when they, when we meet them, when we encounter them, it's either we surrender to them in the sense that we don't pick them up as crosses, rather we ourselves are ultimately becoming puppets of them, of whatever these things are in our life. Or we embrace the cross, as you were saying, and the pattern of our Lord even should we fall time and time and time again. But we seek to say, we seek that which our Lord is leading us through. But what we can't do is ignore its reality. Yeah. Either you just say, either you say, there's no need to embrace a cross. Do your own thing. But whatever that thing is, it's always going to be in front of you. Or you say, this is a cross. And I need to embrace it. And the only way I can move forward is to follow the pattern of our Lord and to embrace the cross. Am I making, am I being encoded? It does, yeah. In the words you're using, are interesting, right? I mean, in some sense you can say that some of the vehement and vociferous behavior of everyone who has denied sin and the cross, what are they attempting to do? But to make everyone else embrace their choice. Right. Yeah. They're thrusting that upon us to say, you must embrace and celebrate my choice. Right. And our job, as St. Paul said, I preach Jesus Christ and him crucified. Which sounds like a, sounds like a dour gospel, right? But look at it, maybe another way to frame it would be this. I was asked once, you know, classically, we live in the South and so you have Catholics will wear crucifixes and you have Christians that will wear crosses. And so a Christian asked me, you know, why do you insist on keeping him on that cross? And I didn't even think about it. My simple answer was because that's where I live. Right. That's where I have to live. I'm not in a glorified state. Right. And it got me thinking, there's this wonderful passage where the Sumer Contra Gentiles book four, and he's talking about God becoming man, whether it's fitting to have the incarnation. And he says, just such a beautiful paragraph, you wouldn't think St. Thomas would say this like this, but he says, how do you induce anyone to love you? First of all, man is in need of being induced to love God, the God whom he cannot see. How do you induce anyone to love you? And Thomas has different sort of motives of love. One of them is beauty. It just captures us for a moment. Another one is likeness or similitude. And he says that in order to induce us to love him, God took on human nature. So he looks like us who were made to look like him. That is beautiful. And then he goes further in his commentary on Mark's Gospel, why is it the centurion at the cross the one that says, surely this was the Son of God? Like why when he's suffering the most mutilated, mangled body on the cross, why does that manifest that he's the Son of God? Right. Because no one else can love like that. And so, Thomas doesn't quite say this, but kind of a gloss to say that he who knew no sin became sin. So not only did he take on the likeness of us in terms of human nature, but he took on the likeness of our sin. So like that's what you look like and I'm taking it to myself. That's real compassion. Right. I'm going to look like you actually look. You're fastened and tied down to dead things. You're stuck. I'm going to do that. So that every time you and I attempt to identify with Jesus and to embrace that cross, I'm simply saying, I want to participate in this. I want to look like you who look like me. That's a real motive of love. So that I can become God. Yeah. Right. So that these wounds can be healed in the way that they're healed in the resurrected form. Yeah. Which is they're transformed. They don't disappear. It's one of the reasons that we typically have crosses that are gold. It's an odd sort of oxymoron, right? You've got the most ugly thing, the crucifixion, and then it's gilded. Right. As if to say, there's hope on the other side of this. Exactly. And you know, and this is the whole, this is at the center of the mission of the life of the church. Yeah. The church authentically cannot do anything else than to acknowledge the cross is the means of salvation, the cross of Christ, but also the crosses that we must pick up and follow after him. We are not in the business of trying to tell people or getting, they're speaking to categories of people and saying, no, these aren't real crosses. And that's not a real cross. You know what? That's not a real cross. You don't have to suffer that. You don't have to suffer this. That's a gift. Yeah. What is a gift? It's like, no, actually, you do. Yeah. And again, they're all different. But we have to be able to speak clearly. Okay. We know the path of righteousness. We can articulate that. You look to the Ten Commandments. You look at, you look to the Gospels and we have our moral content and we say, okay, this is the path. And when we are inclined to do things contrary to that path, we know that somewhere deep, deeply embedded in us is a cross we're going to have to manage. There's no other way. You just, you just don't make, you can't make those things disappear. They have to at least be addressed in such a way. You say, right, Lord, I see, I see the path of righteousness before me. I understand how you come into yourself. I understand that we are all broken. I understand that we don't measure up. I understand that. You're a savior. And I need a savior. And these are crosses that I'm going to have to deal with. And the way in which I deal with them is to try to carry them with him. Yeah. And he's in there. He says that his, you know, his, his burden, his easy and his burden aside. Yeah. The yoke. Yeah. That double yoke. Because that's just it. And we're only ever really assignment. Right. Whatever we're bearing, whatever we're carrying, he already did that. Yeah. And he's doing that. He's just asking that you participate in that. And in some sense, again, this is going back to something St. Thomas said that I love. It's more in keeping with the dignity of the human creature to make him a partaker in his own salvation. Isn't that true? It is. If you could do something to get yourself out of the mess to undo your own sinfulness and what have you, to be a real participant in that, you would. Like if you could do, have any way, shape, reform to make up for something that you did. Think about whatever the worst sin is you think you've ever done and who you hurt. Like if you could take it back, you would. If you could reverse course and just stop it and say, I want to heal that. I want to make that new and Christ as you can. Right. Actually. What I'm talking about is I was this way when I did it. I am this way now where I regret it. Yep. But something happened between points A and B. Yep. It's a transformation, the process of conversion. Yep. And it's only attained by embracing the cross. Embracing the cross. The cross isn't just this, you know, white knuckle this thing. Right. It's actually changing. It's changing you. It's transforming you. That's it. And you are becoming who God intends to be. Yeah. The moment that you have not just the regret of I got caught, the regret of the punishment, the regret of whatever, but I regret the actual act and I wish I could undo it. I regret who I was. I regret who I was. And then you can actually begin to spend a life undoing it, not just in terms of that particular act, but changing in you and then helping to change the person that's next to you and say, I have compassion on you. I know what it's like to suffer this. I'm going to get in there with you. And as you said in the video we had, it was a classic Winslow. Oh, no. We were talking about some of the theological laboratory. Uh-huh. We track with them real life problems with real people. And because we can't have a guy that gets up in the priest and says, I can't handle this. I love it when you said that. They caught you on camera for that because it was so you. Like, yeah, because people's lives are messy. Yeah. That's what a priest does is he says to Jesus Christ, I'm going to make a response. I'm going to make a return for the gifts that you've given me. I'm going to do this with you. I'm going to place my life at the service of helping people carry their crosses. Because the way of the cross is not only the means by which we reach the promise that our Lord has secured for us, but the way the cross changes us. So that we can be... Yeah. It's not like you get through the American Ninja Obstacle Course and you get the prize. Exactly. The course is the thing that alters you. Yeah. That's what I love. You know, I've been reading St. Thomas a lot, reflecting upon him. What I'm really appreciating and loving all the more is that his moral position isn't about just following a law. Right. It really is about becoming. It's becoming good, which is what we want and we crave how you become with the grace of God. Good. And it sounds so strange to hear that because all we ever really think about in the modern age is a moral law by which we must follow and do. It's the obstacle course. Okay, we got to do this. I got to do that. I got to do this. I got to do that. And it's, you know, if I do these things, then I get to the other side. Yeah. Well, no. And you know, there are people who are good at doing all those things. I know. And they're nowhere near the other side because they are that change. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it looks right, but at the same time, it's just not right because you have to change in any event. You know, I have the wonderful sisters that we have, the daughters of the Virgin Mother. Is this one of your final thing before we go? I can do that as a final thing, you know, when we were forming the daughters, these sisters help us at the seminary to help them parishes. They were formed as a response to a request from the then congregation of clergy to have women consecrate their lives to the sanctifying of the priesthood. This was after the scandals of Boston, et cetera. And so this group was formed out of that request. But I remember speaking with Sister Maraphiel trying to form the statutes and things of that nature and hone the charism down to specific statements. And one of the things we spoke about was I said, you know, priests don't need you to take away their crosses, the very thing. The worst thing you can do for a priest is to make his life cross-free. Right. Because then you've kicked him out of where he's supposed to live. And you've taken away his means of salvation. His means of salvation, yeah. I said, so on the contrary, your job is to encourage him to carry it. So don't provide a soft pillow for his head, but rather block the exit if he wants to run. Right. Or like Veronica, bring a cloth. Bring a cloth. You can bring a cloth. Yeah. For him to keep going. That's right. Like the way the crosses a bit like, you know, those races you see people doing, people handing water. Yeah, exactly. That's a better image. It's a better image. But if he wants to turn around and run for the exit. Right. You block the exit. You just say no. Yeah. Father, that's not for you. Well, before we go. Yes. I have embarked on a new endeavor. As you know, I play the violin and play it poorly. But I love it. Which isn't true. I love the violin. And now we have such a musical house. We have a seminarian who was basically a professional clarinet player and floutist. I think it's how you say it. I don't know. We have Father Becker with us now who plays the cello and Sister Agnes is learning the cello and Sister Mariefield plays both the harp and the violin. And so the other day they found a woman to teach us, coach us on how to do quartets. No. And You can do Christmas? Maybe. But the other day I want Christmas and quartet stuff. The other day we did a quartet on a Corelli piece and I couldn't believe it. I've never played with with one person but to play with three others. Oh. And Well, isn't a quartet four? It's four, yeah. So me and three others. Oh, I see. Yeah. So to have to listen to the other persons and coordinate that you hit a sweet spot if you're getting it right where you I almost stopped playing. I did stop playing once because I want to listen to it. Yeah. I couldn't believe what was happening because I'm not that good and they're not that good. Did you have someone with us? We had someone with us who was good. But was it with somebody directing you? No, but you can with a quartet you don't really need to you can sense your Conductors came when when pieces got so complicated with so many different instruments the quartets are enough you can hear each other. Yeah. But it was a wild experience. All right, my request is I want a few pieces. A few pieces of Christmas music. I do. Okay. I really, really do. I think Silent Night Christmas Parts in 2023. Let's do it. I mean I can provide the words in my head. All I need are the strings. The strings. You got it. You come to the party? Absolutely. Yeah. And I will bring my instrument. Oh, the kazoo or? No. Spoons. Spoons. My spoons for the for the bowls of ice cream. The bowls of ice cream. They make a lovely sound. A very encouraging one. Oh, all right. Before we go. Well, I'm going to be headed off here. Spend a few days with my parents and some friends. So, I got a little vacation time ahead of me. I'm looking forward to that. And I, I'm just really grateful. I think that we oftentimes don't maybe appreciate our vacations as we should. Yeah. And I think I'm arriving to a stage in life where I really do appreciate them. I mean, I'm not saying people don't enjoy their time off or things like that, but I don't know. I feel like I've done a lot of vacation throughout my years over. 50 years of life. And, uh, you know, sometimes it's a lot of more work than reward. And, you know, sometimes you go in it with high expectations and you don't get the same out of it as you would hope. Yeah. But at this point, I guess what I'm saying is I've learned how to maybe approach a vacation. Okay. Which is where the expectations are low, but they're appropriately aimed. And it's it ties into a prayer life. It ties into a spiritual life. It ties into, you know, all of these things. So you're escaping the regular routine. You're doing something different and interesting to fun. But at the same time, it's not a break from the things that are important. It is a continuous flow with those things that are important. And I think that that's where I think, you know, many times in the past, I've had a lot of mistakes with vacations. It's just, you think of it as sort of an exit. Right. But you deep down you realize, I'm not supposed to be exiting. Sensation of activity and an exit. And, you know, it's like, I'm not supposed to be exiting these things. You know, these, you know, I'm not supposed to just get my prayers in, right? The minimum or things like that. I'm actually supposed to have these things with me because they make my vacation vacation better, right? And your vocation better as you were. Well, that's true. And your vocation better. You know, like, for example, we've had these experiences that we've traveled. Yeah. And we've spent a fair amount of time focused on time to pray at churches and pray together. We have these crazy things happen. Those are the best vacations. And we say, you know what? God has us on a planet like we surrender. Yeah. And most amazing things happen. We won't get into it now because it's the before we go. But that said, it's like that, you know, there's a way to vacation well. It's not about setting high expectations. It's not about creating the idyllic thing. But there's certain parts of you that need to always be with you even on vacation. Let's put a bookmark there. Yeah. It might be that something I'm talking about. All right, good. We'll come back. Oh, it's a teaser. It's a teaser. Cliffhanger. All right, very good then. God bless you all. Ciao. Thanks for listening to this episode of From the Roof Shop. For updates about new episodes, special guests, and exclusive deals for From the Roof Top listeners, sign up at rooftoppodcast.com. And remember, for more great ways to deepen your faith, check out all the spiritual resources available at 10books.com. And we'll see you again next time From the Roof Top.