 Hey, good afternoon everybody, Steve with 10 books coming at you again with father Paul Pearson Oratorian in Canada north at our border father welcome. Good morning. Good afternoon. Thank you very much. Good to be with you Thank you. Thank you. Before we start can you lead us off in a little prayer? Certainly an oratorian tradition is always to pray to the Holy Spirit St. Philip was one of the great saints of the Holy Spirit Yes, we always pray to come with Holy Spirit at the beginning of everything In the father and son the Holy Spirit Amen Come the Holy Spirit and fill the hearts by faithful and kindling them the fire of thy love Send forth thy spirit and they shall be created. That's a reduce your face here face of the earth Let us pray. Oh God who has taught the hearts the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit Grant by the light of the same spirit that we may be truly wise and ever rejoicing as consolation through Christ our Lord Amen In the father son the Holy Spirit. Amen Since you brought up Philip neary followed me or follow a saint neary. Could you go over his joyfulness? Sure Well, I think partially this is personality, but also for him he thought that Really living the Christian life and understanding what the Christian life is about meant that Christians ought to be joyful and that That goes back to the New Testament as well Christians be Identifiable by their joyfulness and for him it wasn't sort of like heartedness There's something deeper than that. There's something that was life was fundamentally hopeful and we were being taken care of by God all the time And if we understand that we really shouldn't be burdened by things And so it isn't just a sort of frivolousness. In fact, he was pretty can be pretty tough on that But he was saying that we really ought to be light like children because we were being taken care of over time and That trust in providence was what made made the difference for him Hey, man now appreciate that. I was just thinking about that going, you know, you brought up Philip He was a jokester. He had a good time. He was serious when he needed to be but it's jokes are sometimes a little hard to take It's see people who are sort of puffed up and he poked them like a balloon So he was a bronze of the joke sometimes it wasn't so funny He was the one for really instilling humility in people Yeah, he really thought that not only do we need to laugh, but we need to be able to laugh at ourselves Because he thought that humility was really the foundation of all virtue and if we couldn't Allow ourselves to be corrected if we couldn't look at ourselves honestly if we couldn't laugh at ourselves Then we weren't gonna make much progress so I remember is Did he get up every morning and say it? Watch out for Philip today or he will abandon you or he'll betray you Yeah, they're there a bunch of different max that are really similar on that. Yeah, you know Hey, I'll make a fool of you today or I'll make fool myself today. I'll make the wound in your side larger He was pretty convinced that you know he could get up to all sorts of mischief if God didn't look after him Well, that now this isn't the topic of this today show. Maybe maybe we'll do that Maybe we'll do a film everyone down the road. Yeah Dante. Yep. The inferno is quarantine. Yeah How who is still a star off with who was that? Who is yeah? What Dante is such an important character in Italian history Italian literature Dante is sort of like the common the combination of influence is something like Chaucer and Shakespeare All in one because he was really one of the first to write in the Italian language He was there in Florence. He's writing around the early 1300s died in 1321 and He composed did many things. He was very involved in politics as well And in fact, he wrote his great work the divine comedy inferno purgatorio or a decent trilogy while he was in exile and never was allowed to go back to his native Florence again and In fact, he's buried in Ravenna and wouldn't even allow his body to go back after afterwards No, you wouldn't let me back when I'm alive. You're not getting any profit off of me when I'm dead The tomb they have in Florence is empty He's not there So he was somebody who was really immersed in the arts and philosophy and theology at this time And he puts it all together in this amazing work the divine comedy which is So rich that all sorts of people have tried to write about it It's interesting in terms of history in terms of the politics in terms of that's church-state relations Theology and so people come at it from all these very technical points of view But what I found to be sort of sad and all of that although he's gotten a lot of attention I think it's sort of distracted from the main point of what he was trying to get across Around this time around 1300. There was a new sort of spirituality which was focusing on everyday people play people That spirituality and holiness wasn't something intended just for people living in monasteries or people who ended up saying mass every day It was for everyday people. So you start having people writing about Pilgrims progress you'll have the Imitation of Christ coming out soon after this don't he's right the beginning of that and he's really writing as a sort of every man Trying to show how you have to How you have to live your life in order to make progress spiritually and that there's a real choice for each one of us And so he intends this work not just as a sort of Tour de force of literature or survey of history. It's more importantly a guide to the spiritual life And that aspect of it. I think has been well neglected Perhaps it's also because a lot of the books to get written get written to be read in secular universities And they know that if they emphasize the spiritual part of it as much as Dante does that it's not gonna sell Well, I think they sort of missed the point a little bit as a result Those works are all very very interesting and very helpful, but in the end they're only at Serving the main point and that's that Dante wants to help us get to heaven And he was about to lose that and he was about to lose it all He was really off track and had a sort of conversion experience that brought him back And he wanted everybody to share that conversion that he had So it was basically just almost a biography of his conversion Well in a sense, it's very autobiographical But in another sense he means himself as a sort of an example of everybody because he's gonna go through all the sins and hell and Inferno and he's gonna look at them very very honestly sort of see the corruption of them And you'll be able to tell some of those sins were sins that he had problems with and some of them work since it Work really problems for him So but as you go down through the circles of hell, it's almost like an examination of conscience You're reading some of these saints some of these sinners down there and you think wow. Yeah, that sounds familiar those excuses I've used those before and Sometimes it sounds really painfully personal and I think that it's a sort of examination of conscience as we go down through these different levels to see yeah, that could be me That could be me which it goes back to the humility of Philip You were mentioning the Dante has you have to have humility to actually do the examination of conscience Oh, yeah, and for Dante to do this in public It's very clear when he's has a fault and he just lays it out there for everybody to see There are parts in in purgatory right at the end when he's with Beatrice on at the top of the mountain of purgatory and she humiliates she just Reduces him to a blubbering mass And even the angels are saying oh you're being too hard on the guy come on be nice She says no, no, this is for a reason. She's doing it in order to make him be as sorry as possible for his sins And he lets us see all that and it is very humble The iron sharpens iron type deal. I mean we were kind of soft in the sense now somebody corrects us even a priest And we're about oh, how can they say that about me? We're good the point, but we don't like to take ownership of the situations It's a hard thing to take correction It's a hard thing to admit when we're wrong and I think that's something that that Dante was very familiar with He's a proud man and you see him really Growing in humility throughout the course of the divine comedy But also telling us that we need to do that too and I think in our generation in particular We've gotten so unaccustomed to being able to take Criticism or to admit we're wrong and that's a real problem Because if we're gonna grow we need to be able to take that criticism constructively I remember when I was in university. I was a musician. I played the cello and I was doing master's classes with a fairly famous cellist and He was very nice to a lot of the people and when it came to me he had quite a few corrections and When he came up on stage to talk to me he leaned over to me quietly says I have lots of corrections because you play well Oh You see there's something there that can be fixed and the more you see the more the potential is the more you want to push it and You know each human being has that potential But if we're too squeamish to push Then we're not gonna become what we can be We'll always end up being sort of undeveloped in our potential. Yeah Name you think it all walks of life. So you think of sports. I made coach a good coach is Gonna push you to become better. He's not gonna say hey I remember my JV coach once said never take them always use the word satisfied as a cuss word Never be satisfied of where you're at always try to improve Yeah Yeah, I think there there's I mean certainly as a teacher. I'm sure my students will tell stories about how demanding I can be at times In fact this this whole divine Comedy project started in the seminary. I was really surprised that a new generation of people Hadn't grown up reading in the way that I did Mm-hmm, and I mean I read thousands of books Literally thousands books and for many of them they hadn't read any works of great literature And they found literature to be sort of intimidating and that's not a very good thing If you have to read the Bible and interpret the Bible It's gonna be a problem if you have to preach. Yes. Well, I think the problem just in terms of our humanity It's not just for priests So I said if I'm gonna get them to read scripture well Which they need to do in order to do mental prayer and meditation and preaching then I need to show them how to read So we decided to have a seminar which would just read a book together And we and so I chose Dante's Inferno. I didn't tell him was a poem because that was scary And we read it out loud, and we just stopped every once in a while and talked about it and It's different when you hear things out loud And it's different when you have other people to talk with you about it and so we got to the end of this book and it was really sort of Life-changing for a lot of them and they want immediately wanted to do the next one And they pushed their other students like you got to take this you have to take this and so it became sort of a thing so here at the seminary and Several of the seminaries have been through two of the courses Only I've only done in purgatorio and and Inferno on a regular basis. Pereviso's only happened recently because I only had two years to teach them so I Let's go around It takes a while But really what I'm trying to do in the books is to give Everyday people a chance to sort of eavesdrop on those seminars to read Dante With us and to go line by line and just talk about what it means to figure out how it applies to our life right now in the century how it applies to our spiritual lives and so It's broken down into little bits that anybody can handle. I was like really not just about Dante It's also about learning how to how to how to read and not be afraid of great literature Yeah, I remember on my brother who now a priest when his first year in seminary told me hey I'm reading a book called how to read a book Yeah Yeah, actually read that book is you had to read the book how to read a book. Yeah Yeah, well, it's it's a comment on our on our society where we've gotten away from reading But when we get away from reading we get away from Slowly thinking our way through things we tend to think of little snatches like you know little little Sound bites or little things and you know Wikipedia or something like that It's all these tiny little things but not connected not slowly unfolding and there's something about great literature Which allows you to see into the complexities of things especially the complexity to the being human Think of like a great novel and you think about how much a novel teaches you about humanity even if it's fiction and For Don Dante's divine comedy teaches me so much about the human. He's a brilliant psychologist I remember talking to a psychologist friend of mine who said Where did Dante get that stuff about suicide? I said, I don't know. She says because that's very modern This idea that somehow they can only communicate with others by some through their own suffering But they can't put it into words that only their suffering can make everybody understand Then you'll be sorry, then you'll know how much I've gone through. Yeah, and he had all that already in the 13th century 1300s and He's brilliant in figuring out what makes us tick. Yeah, we moderns tend to think of all those guys back then being less educated than us or oh I mean those guys could I mean like Bellarmine and all those guys had the Bible memorized Yeah, you know that he'll blow your mind with what he knows. Yeah, and he's able to figure out He's in in purgatory. Oh, they get out and they're in the southern hemisphere He's able to describe how the constellations are different. He's talking about the southern cross. Yeah, this is 1300 Even there's a moment at the end of inferno when he's climbing down on Satan's legs and There's a moment when they switch around and he feels as though instead of climbing up. He's climbing down He's climbing up. Well, what's happened is he's actually passed the center of the earth and What was down is now up and don't they figure that out and I thought who would have figured that out in 1300? Yeah, it's sometimes you're just at a loss to figure out how he knew so much about science about philosophy and theology and but the really important thing for me is how much he knows about the human nature and How revealing he is to what makes us actually do what we do Why we're so slow to turn around and repent. We hold on to things even when we know they're doing damage to us Now for the ones you're putting together for the course notes This might be a obvious one, but should you be reading the original book? Wow, like right beside the other one? Well, that's my preference, you know that I know that says on the back of the book That reading Dante's not required. Yeah, but it's really preferred Tended to be a sort of companion volume Will you read a few lines of Dante and then you read this book? Yeah, it's supposed to be a companion volume really that's that was my original intention now I've certainly included a lot more spiritual context to allow you to Get your sort of thoughts together spiritually without having to read Dante at the beginning But it's there to get your mind in the right space so that you can read Dante effect It's not really supposed to be a substitute The illustration of the illustration of Dante was it by Thor I got it over there Yeah, Gustav Doré. Yeah. Yeah, is that what would that rank? Would that be one of like you must have this one? Or is there like a definite edition of Dante's Inferno? Well, you know, there are many really really good translations I've He was mainly Anthony Esselin's very fine translation He was kind enough to do the forward to the Inferno volume And I think his is probably one of the great ones and certainly the one ones that's most Catholic But there are there are many really fine ones. I like Anthony Anthony Esselin's Alan Mandelbaum is also very fine Mark Musa is another one that I whose notes are particularly helpful so and But there are just so many that Hollander. I'm a fan of John Sinclair. That's the one the old Oxford University Press one That's what I grew up in We studied in University But it's hard to you know do without Dorothy Sayers Famous novelist who also did a translation or John Charity the American poet who did a translation I even have Henry Longfellow Get a translation of it. Not a very good translation. I don't think but But so there are many many different editions and you you can read any of them because they go line I go line by line by line number. So no matter what translation you have you'll be able to keep track in my commentary But if somebody wants a recommendation, I recommend Anthony Esselin. Why is this even important? Well, I think because for many of us We don't really think about our spiritual life except in so far as we try to avoid sin We don't really think about how we're doing inside And in fact, we live in a world in which people are less happy than I think they've ever been We live in a world that's burdened with so many things. That's anxious And you know, we're safer and we've ever been Our food chain is safe. We're not starving to death, you know, even now in the middle of this lockdown It's not so stressful, I mean, we're fairly safe These sort of things happened all the time in the 1300s in your dog days age No, you would have most children didn't live to be 10 years old We live in a safe time. Why are we so anxious? Well Dante's point is that sin actually does something very destructive to us It twists us up and we become sort of crippled human beings and part of that being crippled is that we end up suffering and so Out of mercy God wants us to rehab He wants us to straighten out that twistedness and it's only once we start rehab. It will get out of pain and so Dante wanted that for people of his day, but I think in our day. We're even more out of touch With the damaging effects of sin than the everyday person was in Dante's day So the message that he was getting Getting out to people that somehow the reason there's pain is because We're messed up and we're not going to start stop hurting until we start getting our act together It's not just about obeying the rules It's about being free No, yeah, I had I had some joint problems and I had to go to rehab rehab specialist told me right away She says you're gonna hate me at the end of the hour This first few times is gonna hurt a lot And I said, okay, that's fine. I said I I understand and I don't blame you She's but you have to remember the reason we're doing this is so that you can be pain-free And so that you can retain regain your freedom of motion And that's true in the spiritual life too. Our goal here is not to squeeze suffering out of you God doesn't need that He's only doing this because somehow things we go through whether that's the sufferings in this life or the sufferings in purgatory Are the sufferings of rehab? Not the sufferings of torture Remember things was about fun. It was a sermon I have on or a sermon I've heard before of a Father talks about the stone of my Michelangelo sees a stone He has to inflict pain on it to get this beauty out and if that stone was Jell-O and start squiggie around I don't want this. I don't know how would it look like? And that's us we we don't want this we'll try to squiggle out and get rid of that cross Let me take another one and that one's heavier or uglier Versus what God wants us Yeah, and I think that the whole idea of being formed whether that's being formed just as everyday people being formed into holiness Or seminarians being formed as priests or religious being formed It's not an entirely comfortable process Yeah, like you said with physical therapy. I was a trainer. I remember people yet a personal trainer people would tell me you must be destroyed But if you want your goal, you got to go through the you got to go through the fire Yeah, it's true and we have and Christ took himself told us that we have to be willing to die in order to live and St. Paul talks about it as an athlete preparing for the contest Many people in the spiritual History have talked about the spiritual combat minds will scoopily probably the most famous right but the idea that somehow We have to be willing to fight for this and that it's gonna hurt and you're gonna it's gonna take some courage You know, you're gonna have to be willing to take it And that sometimes it'll be hard Say there's somebody watching and they're hearing and they're agreeing with everything you're saying but they go I don't have the courage. What's some good out ways that build it. Well, I think what you way I always start with myself is to look at the Suffering that my sins are causing right now. I Really dislike conflict Disliked it from the beginning But you know avoiding things like that gets you in trouble And I look back and think oh, you know how much trouble I've got myself into you know, how awkward it's been Do you really want to go through that all over again? You have to get to a place where you're sort of sick and tired of the mess So that you're sort of desperate enough to do it Yeah If your knee gets bad enough you're willing to have a replacement I Remember one doctor saying to a friend of mine Says I know I don't think I'm really ready ready for surgery says that must be because your knee doesn't hurt bad enough yet And it hurts bad enough you'll want it. Yes. Yeah. Well, you can't walk anymore. Yeah, you go for it Exactly exactly and you know, I'd rather it not get to that level with people spiritually I don't want them to become that level of crippled before they're willing to accept rehab Yeah What are some Good books there's a prerequisite to get to Dante or she's just dive into Dante, you know I would I think it's there's no problem with coming into Dante fresh Okay, I've had English as a second language students straight from high school I've had scientists who've never read a book of literature Who've read Dante? If they can do it Anybody can Yeah, there's no movies on that day if there are they're weird video games and Yes, I don't read Dan Brown. That's that's new. Yeah, it's good for starting a fire. It's yeah That's true. I read the first few pages of it and as a medieval I'm trained as a medievalist It drives me crazy. Yeah, I bet I'm sure Yeah, I can't read stuff like that. So I think really he intends it as a all you need to bring is your own experience and if you just bring in an willingness to go through it with and a willingness to Bring your own experience to the discussion. There's no way you're not going to get something out of it and read him not like You would a regular book just Yeah, take your time with it solely, you know, he's each of the books is broken down into 33 Chapters what he calls canto songs and there's an introductory one So total the trilogy three of 33 plus an introductory hundred cantos So it's already broken down a lot and then I've broken down each of the cantos in three or four even five sections and Given a little introductory spiritual talk about that and then go through that section one of those sections is enough for you to read it one sitting and Really, I think that sometimes we try we read spiritual books too fast, right? We need to Chew on it and digest it St. Philip used to say that when you're doing spiritual reading you should only read until something grabs your attention Then you should stop And you should let yourself just think about yourself react to What difference does that make and don't go on? It's like not biting off more food until you finish chewing Yeah, so I think we read too quickly when we're reading spiritually How and again there might be a softball. How do you know when you're reading too fast? Well, I think when when you just you stop noticing you start really interacting with the material just sort of Observing it rather than interacting with it and To tell you the truth. I think that most people actually read not just too long. They actually read too quickly This is why in class I make my students read out loud I'm really trying to make them hear the words When I read literature, I tend to read it make sounds in my head I sometimes I actually read out loud, but I I want to hear it in my head The different characters have different voices, you know, I want you you need to slow things down And as I said just read until something strikes you and then allow yourself to Ponder on that for a bit That sounds like that does couple things one builds your imagination to your memory. Yeah Yeah, well, certainly, I think the imagination is something that we sort of lost track of Having things be visualized for us Is doesn't do nearly the same thing to our brain You know, you need to picture it for yourself Not just because your picturing it is gonna be better than Cecil B. DeMille's picturing of the Ten Commandments He's pretty good at it And sometimes it can be helpful to see other person's picturing of it, you know, it's you picturing It's not as real to you When I picture when I read a book I Picture the character He has a particular face as people are voiced when I see a movie or TV adaptation of the book Sometimes think yeah And that character is real to me because I've stored away all these images It's almost like my own history. I've started away as something I could picture I can hear and When your imagination works like that your emotions react to your imagination If your imagination doesn't work your emotions don't work very fully. And so you're not really Interacting as a full in a full personal way with the text So it's only when you when you're emotionally involved like that That I think that you're that you're willing to take it personally in a good sense. I remember we had a drastic part I don't know if it's still in her or not the Yay thick and I just opened it up one time and I read a couple chapters and went wow, I saw the movie But I got host The book is way better. Oh Yeah, oh, yeah, they always have to condense things to make a movie And that's that's sort of unfortunate and anyway The movie keeps going When you probably need to pause Yeah, something happens and you go and at that moment you need to stop It's not there for entertainment. We're here to try to learn to read in a spiritual way This is equally true of reading scripture when people tell me they read a chapter a day I say, oh, I could never do that Said you couldn't read a chapter today. Oh, come on. You're educated. No, no, you read a verse And there's like six things to think about You know and if you really think about it It's too much to be able to run ahead and do a whole chapter I feel as though I've just sort of like run through a store without ever stopping and looking at anything That I can I can I can't even fathom how the sanctuaries available to talk about reading or Meditating for an hour on the words our father Yeah Well, if you as you get used to it as you begin to Slow yourself down and read more carefully like this. You'll see that that happens. It's it's Because it's not all just talk talk talk talk talk in your head Remember it's about imagination and then an emotional reaction and you know, let's say that you read a text a text like When the the disciples are there with Peter after our words resurrection been reading about these things in Easter time and So Peter do you really love me and he asked him three times Three times matching up to the three denials that he made, right? They were this in front of everybody Well as he's doing that Think for a moment How does Peter feel? Not only is he Embarrassed that he was such a coward that he gave in not under torture, but under the questioning of a milkmaid in the dark That's heroic But now he's being corrected for in front of all the other apostles and he's supposed to be the boss Yeah, yeah think of the humiliation of that and I think when you stop and think about that you think, you know, how often have I not been willing To take correction in public How often about have I let embarrassment let me hide from the truth? And as you begin to react to that you think why am I reacting to the text that way? Well, that tells me something about me. Doesn't it? Your emotional reactions are going to be different from mine and that's because your history is different from mine and so that emotional reaction tells me that there's something there in you that Needs to come to the surface and Now I need to say to myself. Okay, if that's true, what do I need to do? How do I need to live my life in order to live the truth of this text? And that's why meditation takes time because it's not just about thinking It's about reacting and seeing what it's telling me about me and then resolving to do something about it No, that's great. No, that's perfect How long should somebody? Read that to say Dante Mm-hmm Should they try? Five minutes on just a couple verses one was one of the 33 or Go until the I would say that you know I've sort of I've tried to design it in in my commentary to be able to take one section And right the editors have done such a beautiful job of laying it out each section is starts with a box that's highlighted and It talks about just a spiritual point in general without making any reference to Dante just to get your head on the right channel and then it goes through a section of Dante and You'll get to another section of the box that give talks about another topic just read one of those topics So it's maybe like a fourth of a canta quarter of a can't it might just be less than a page and that usually is plenty and Don't rush ahead There's there's probably half a year's spiritual reading in my book That works. Yeah, I have I will self-dignize myself with ADD So I try to read one book a chapter and then go to another book and another book Instead of trying to devolve all one together try to get like a history in a bit x spiritual reading as well It's different if it there's a it's a murder mystery You're trying to yeah, no different if it's a murder mystery You're trying to follow the plot of something tracking on the killer That's that's a different thing But here you're really trying to to digest and that takes time There we go. Sorry the thing froze up on us. Okay Okay, uh, sorry about that folks. It's OBS send your hate mail to them. It does it all the time It's the purgatory I have to live in Yes, well accepting what happens is part of that exactly exactly so, um What would be step two for somebody that read Dante, what would they go from there? Oh, you know, I think that first of all, I've read Dante dozens of times Um, I go back and read it every year with my seminarians and it's always a fresh experience for me And because my my own life has gone in a slightly different direction. I noticed new aspects of it go Oh That's interesting I never picked that up before And um, so I think you you can certainly do that But I think but once you've been through the divine comedy trilogy First of all go through it a few times because it's it's rich enough to do that But then I think you're ready to go back and try to read other books that are like this spend time reading scripture, but read it in the same way only read the section of the gospel That's set aside for today for mass, for example And only read as far until something hits you and then make yourself stop So try to use that pattern of reading. It might be that you're going to read spiritual writings like the spiritual combat by scoopily or the imitation of christ Jones the campus It might be that you're reading something by john of the cross trees of avila Um There are a lot of books that I'm particularly fond of I really like um the spiritual letters of francis to sales I think they're just absolutely charming. Um, and when I need an uplift, I just read those Such a wonderfully warm and fatherly figure. Um, so A lot of that depends on the personality It's hard to recommend spiritual reading to somebody because it's uh, I don't know Some things that I find particularly moving up people might not Um, it's the wonderful thing about the divine comedy. I think is it's so diverse That it's going to get you in on one level or another Because even if Dante sins aren't your sins you have other ones That goes back to all the spirituality to caramelize spirituality dominican benedicton redemptorists Well, I think they all follow a similar pattern Trying to engage personally and that using of imagination happens in various ways some people can be more visual I tend to be slightly more psychological Other people put themselves back in time other people bring their christ up to the present time It's all fairly minor variances of one pattern I imagine things and I allow myself to react And then I use those reactions as a way of diagnosing what's going on in me and I make resolutions So you're probably probably saying tell people to take notes while they're reading it Well, you know, don't be afraid to I won't be offended if you scribble in my book Um, don't get your new book That's fine. Now not my personal book you buy your own and get it Yeah, I think you you will find that Making yourself stop and take notes make underlining things putting stars to go back to Um, those are all that's important things You're you're you're finding something that's nourishing And you might be able to go back and get nourishment from it over and over again Yeah, you don't just like find your favorite recipe and have it once Yeah, why don't you find that thing you make it over and over again? Or just read one book and just do it and that's it you put it down You never pick it up again. You sit in the corner of your room Well, yeah You know, there are some books that are like that But I think that a good spiritual book becomes almost like a spiritual friend And some and you go back over it and you see new things to it Um, I've reread the spiritual letters of frances to say oh, I don't know how many times Um, or the abandonment of divine providence. I don't peer to go sad. That's another one of my favorites Um Spiritual combat by scoopily There are some that just sort of catch me And I go back to them and because my life has changed me My reading of it changes over the years too And So, yeah, there's some one-time books. I tend to get those from the library and not own them But there are other books that I find myself going back to over and over again And those are the ones I wear out Well, that goes the question of wait, what's your top five books? You already named them Yeah, I I have a shelf in my office just over here that I leave for the seminarians. I say, you know, this is not Mandated for you, but I just leave them there so that you can sort of Come in and check them out and if you like them Get them for yourself. I guess I'm kind of on that besides the bible the imitation of christ What would be somebody's you must read this? Is there one, you know, I think a lot of it depends a lot on the personalities I mean when I was first a Catholic I'm a convert. Um, when I was first a Catholic, I remember going through the The Alphonse de la Guarie's book the passion death of christ my first length that was it. I was like, oh my goodness, it's both my mind Well, after doing that a couple times, it didn't really do the same thing for me And I needed to go on to something else. So I think it's it's quite personal And different things work at different times of our lives Um, one thing I do think that we don't do nearly enough of and that is a universal appeal our lives at the saints Yes, I think really good lives at the saints are a blessing Yeah, I love um Evelyn was by Edmund campion That's just a great book. He's also his book book Helena by the mother of Constantine. Yes very great I love the books of louis de wall Whole series of books written in the 40s and 50s um That I think are a really wonderful um Yeah, chesterton's life of uh, francis de seo's clients one of your old uh Priests told me about this book. I never heard of it till they did a thing a saint's first saint's first sinners by gudier Oh, yeah Yeah, it's a saint philip used to say we if you want to become holy you need to read books that begin with the letter s Yes, saint bonaventure saint philip. Hey thomas. Yeah, and I think that the lives of the saints Are holiness in a personal form And when you read it that way you sort of imagine it as being possible for us I think finding saints who have something similar to you Can be very moving Oh, yeah, very much. I remember when my dad when when he was alive. We were playing ball. He would always tell us to read I was a basketball player larry bear was my guy Small of me. I'd why I remember tim harway's cross. So I memorized how to do it Those were you know, watch the mvps to become better in what you're doing Same thing for religion. You the saints are the hall of famers Yeah, and I think two generations ago on my parents generation Um people would have studied those in school Reading time in catholic school would have been the lives of the saints But nowadays people don't really know those stories If I just bring up the life of a saint the hamling people saying oh, you should talk more about that I don't know anything about those things. So, yeah, that's They're there are history And They're the people that we're hoping to spend eternity with And we should start studying up on them because they're going to be our next-door neighbors god will Yeah Or if we want their help Yeah, well they're they're so inspiring And I think the the strange thing is that they're way more involved in my life Then I am in theirs. Yes, they're more interested in me than I am in them. Yes One of the great things about gante He's his life got way off track And he starts off the divine comedy in the inferno lost in a dark woods He doesn't even know how he got lost He's trying to get his way out of this dark woods and there were three beasts who stopped it His his pride is in anger. He is his lust and his greed And he realizes he can't do it All of a sudden this man appears It's the ancient poet Virgil and he's been sent by three ladies from heaven You see The blessed virgin Mary noticed that Dante was off track She's a good mom and she said, you know, hey, he's not figuring this out in his own and he's not getting out of this without help So the blessed virgin called Lucy who was one of Dante's special patrons. Thank Lucy. You need to do something about this Well, Lucy knew that there was this nice lady Beatrice who was one of Dante's And so the three of them got together made a plan They were going to do what we would now call an intervention and they were going to say we're putting you through hell This is the only way it's the only way we're taking you on a guided tour of the afterlife And all of that was actually arranged by heaven It was an intervention of the saints And to think that Without my noticing it The saints are and Got himself and the angels my guardian angel or intervening on my behalf all the time And I think I need it would be to notice that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, give me a little hat to very so often Go through like clueless Every once in a while you get a little glimpse of Wow, that was providence. Yes. I talk a lot about providence as we already discussed And I'll I have a class on which it's basically all about providence and afterwards my seminarians are coming to my office to say This just happens Isn't it providential and I'll go Yeah I go, oh, come on. You had to be more excited than that. I said, you know Everything that happens is problems. The only exciting thing is that finally You notice You can notice all the time it's all there. Yeah Dante wasn't taking his spiritual life seriously The blessed virgin mary was taking his spiritual life more seriously than he was They love us more than we love ourselves That's the mystery of it all. Yeah, they're doing that for each of us too Yeah, he's like he's nobody special in that case, you know Yeah, they're intervening for you if you look back in your own life You're seeing moments where you could have gotten This way and somebody sort of shoved you back the other way I'm certainly as a convert. I'm you know, so aware of that I think you know, why me instead of somebody else who was so much nicer and naturally more virtuous I mean you think of the conversion of alfons Raspard Yeah Okay For for the listeners who probably don't even know can you can you go ahead and talk about him just for a minute? well, I mean he It was somebody who was not a believer and in fact decidedly not a believer. He's really atheistic and was converted by experience of the blessed sacraments and The miraculous medal as well. Yeah miraculous medal and He had no intention of of becoming a Christian and he was told to wear this medal and he did and soon he just he Felt conspired against he was he was being picked on and that's really the experience of of conversion Is that you're being cornered? Yeah, you're being picked on They call what they call god the hunter. No, it was a yeah Uh, he he hunts you down like like a bloodhound. Um, you don't go looking for him He comes looking for you. It's like the good shepherd. It goes in search of the one sheep. What's the sheep who pounds the shepherd? In that we just had good shepherd Sunday. Yes, you're doing it Um, I always think of the shepherd going in search of the sheep and then I grew up in farm country in Illinois And uh, can you go looking for a lost animal and you find it? It doesn't run into your arms It tries to escape from you You're trying to find it and you have to corner it. You have to capture it And I think there's something very similar in the spiritual life. God doesn't come looking for us and we go Thank you. I'm coming We try to escape. I think about my two-year-old sometimes about that. Yeah Yeah, you know, he's trying to help and you're trying to get away. Yeah Yeah Yeah, it takes the sleeper hold now and then Just let go before the tap comes Yeah, um What should they expect in the next two books coming out from you? Well inferno has been so much about Seeing the the destructive power of sin seeing how the all these different sins can drag you down How they could destroy your life Well, that's really a an argument for beginning the spiritual life for committing to something Purgatory is such a different atmosphere Purgatory is really for committed people People who are already on with the project but who need a push To get moving because what purgatory is about is as it's Dante says in the very beginning. I've come to find my freedom I've come to be free I want to be free. There are a lot of things that stop me from being as free and as happy as I could be All of us could be way happier than we are right now And the only thing standing in our way is our own habits If I became holier I would be happier And so it seems to be in my best interest to get down to business And that's what purgatory is about inspiring us to start in the process of becoming free and happier Nobody should have to twist our arm to do that But that's what it's really about and so he goes through this the seven deadly sins Which is the different terraces of the You might remember Thomas Merton seven story mountain That's Mount purgatory So he goes through each of the seven deadly sins And we begin to see how those sins Really cramp our style how they get in the way of of our our happiness here This is not about the damage we're doing to the world. It's not the damage you're doing to us Then finally in paradise we begin to look at heaven and to see the glory of the saints and the glory of god in a new way It's just always been a strange thing for me as a New Catholic Well, I'm new anymore, but when I was a new Catholic I always thought it was strange that Catholics didn't think more about heaven It's supposed to be our goal, but it seems as though we were just trying to escape hell But if you think about what heaven is you really ought to want it. Yes There's a great story that I sometimes tell about one of my parishioners when I was first decreased Actually, I was just before I was a priest. I was a deacon. I was sent to the hospital to take communion to this lovely deity and As I got there the doctor says I need you to Are you friendly with her? I said, oh, yeah, I know her quite well. It's just um, she has no family Okay, um She doesn't know this but she's dying And we need you to tell her I'm just starting couldn't you Ask somebody experienced but It turned out I needed to tell her I told her and she started crying a little bit And I tried to say something consoling as not as bad as you think or it won't be so bad, you know And she looks at me as though I just lost my mind She says I wanted to go to heaven ever since I made my first communion I thought I'd have to wait longer And I was so shocked by this reaction. I walked back to the hospital. It's about six blocks from here just stunned Thinking we can know Every christian ought to think that way. Yes You know if god sent us a message saying I'll beam you up right now. Would you like to come? You shouldn't say well, how about the day after tomorrow? You ought to be eager for for it now But I think there isn't for heaven But the third volume is called yours uh Yeah, the Sort of wet the app To make us want to be back Certainly That's what he said Can't wait to be back here Yeah, the I remember I think it's tre- and tress of avila again. She talked about how She couldn't wait. I mean she was she would cry because she couldn't go to heaven that day Yeah Yeah Do you the same sort of thing? um one of my favorites Antioch might I be with christ St. Paul does the same thing He's Gone for me life is This game was it was a pio that someone said I hope you live for a hundred more years and he turns around goes What did I do to you? Yeah Once we have that one once we have a little Didn't it how did you It becomes very different Don't hold on at all cost But this life has a new because entryway to heaven something temporary Oh, it's something that Importance not because it's Because it's the entrance exam. Yes Yeah Yeah, hey perspective change Yeah, it's the modern mindset. We want to be here. We want to be happy here. Why aren't we happy here? As you said you're not as happy Where are you going to find that true happiness? Is a place we don't want to go right now that's right uh For most people It's the sort of consolation pride. Yeah, if I have to die At least I gave it to go someplace nice But if I have to choose between Most people Yeah, what are some final thoughts for people? On this on the on Dante I'm heaven in general saints No, I think I think that it should be We have to go back and rethink our lives from A christian perspective the world is set the agenda too well We live in a world which is all about this world. We become worldly secular And I think As a result christianity Doesn't Bring us true to us as it did a couple generations ago So we need to go back to the basics We're christians because we hope in heaven We're christians who think about an eternal destiny This life is important because it's going to decide our eternal destiny. I put before you life and death choose life That's the important thing and I think we need to sort of readjust that perspective because otherwise we're going to gradually fade away We see it happening and amongst Catholics around the world They don't take the faith as seriously because they don't really see it in the light of eternity Dante wants us to look at our life in the light of eternity Certainly that was what our words preaching was about you know You're on the edge of eternity act like it Get your act to live this life as though it were the entrance exam for eternity Yeah, I think it was saint seppurian talked about those that uh Didn't believe there was an afterlife, but then acted and he called them basically lunatics no Yeah So we're sort of living half in half out And I think there's something very uncomfortable about that And I think dante is a wonderful way of re-addressing that balance Of rebalancing things and making us sort of see our our life in this eternal perspective and it makes our life so much more dignified So much more valuable every moment becomes filled with the promise of eternity And that brings back what we first started with joy, right? That does Yeah Oh father, appreciate it. Uh, can we get a blessing before you go? Certainly may the blessing of almighty god the father and the son and the holy spirit to send upon you and remain with you forever Amen. Thank you father. Appreciate it. You're welcome