 Hi everyone, I'm Mary Harrell with Tan Books. Thanks for joining us today at the Tan Roundtable. French Catholic philosopher, Leon Bloy, once said that the only great tragedy in life is to not become a saint. Many Catholics focus on the externals, what we're doing, what we've done, but we often lose sight of just one thing, the interior life. So in today's roundtable, we will discuss the stumbling blocks to a holy interior life and how to overcome them. In addition, we'll discuss some practical things that every Catholic can start doing today to advance in their prayer lives. One thing is certain, to become a saint, you must build up your interior life. Joining us today for our discussion are our guests, Father Luke Mary Fletcher, Father David Miller, and Father Robert Nixon. This is the Tan Roundtable and you can find a new live conversation here every month. We're giving you personal access to our authors and our favorite guests on topics concerning the church and the world today. So back to our speakers, Father Luke Mary Fletcher is a priest for the Franciscan Friars of the renewal. He was ordained in May, 2003, and since then has become a well-known speaker at both the National and Local Faith Conferences, giving even staff retreats to the fine folks over at EWTN. He's also the shrine chaplain for the National Blue Army Shrine of Our Lady of Batima. Father Fletcher, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. Father David Miller grew up in North Carolina. He's one of 12 siblings. He graduated from the Franciscan University at Steubenville. For three years, he just served with a congregation of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, and he was later ordained a priest for the Diocese of Charlotte in 2010. He's currently the pastor of St. Dorothy's in Lincolnton. A warm welcome to you, Father Miller. Thank you very much for having me. Last but not least, Benedictine Father Robert Nixon gave up a career in classical music in 2013 to become a monk in Western Australia, and now lives in Australia's only monastic town, New Norsia. Father Robert is joining us from the Tan headquarters in North Carolina this week as he makes a trip stateside. He's a fellow of Trinity College of Music in London, as well as the London College of Music. Father Nixon has translated all six of the Tan resurrection titles we'll be highlighting today, some of which are being made available for the first time in English due to his wonderful work. Father Nixon, it's great to have you with us. Thanks very much, Barry. It's great to be here. So just a little housekeeping, we will be giving away a bundle of these wonderful books from our Tan resurrection line that I just mentioned, translated by Father Robert here with us today. At the end of our webinar, we'll be announcing our winners. So stay tuned to see if it's you. These are such amazing books as The Crown of the Virgin, one of my personal favorites, The Passion of Christ Through the Eyes of Mary by St. Anselm of Canterbury, The Glories of Heaven, again by St. Anselm, and Meditation on the Holy Angels by St. Aloysius Gonzaga. I went to Gonzaga University. I think it's amazing I'm holding a book in my hands translated by Father Robert from St. Aloysius Gonzaga. That's amazing. Anyway, so stay tuned for the end to make sure to see if you are the winner. At the end of our conversation, we'll also give you a 40% off discount code for any of the books we're going to mention today. So stay tuned for that as well. Before we launch into our discussion about St. Hood and the interior life, we'd always like to kick it off with asking our guests what Tan book you're reading now or your favorite Tan book if you have one. And just what else you're in the middle of? We'd like to hear what everyone's reading. So Father Luke, let's go ahead and begin with you. All right, well, I don't have a copy to show you, but I am reading through a new book you're about to put out that Father translated the Meditation on the Seven Last Words of Christ according to St. Bonaventure. But my all-time favorite Tan book although I've been an avid Tan book reader for years. But to be honest, my absolute favorite one is this one right here. And it's written by Sister Genevieve of the Holy Face also known as Celine Martin. She's the sister of St. Therese Little Flower. And this book is so amazing and good. For years I've read and studied the writings of St. Therese Little Flower and boy, I thought, okay, I understand and I know. And then I came across this book and boy, I realized that there was so much more. I just didn't know. So this Sister, Celine had been in her own words, the first person to be trained in the school of the Little Way. Therese was her novice mistress. And as Therese died very young, Celine or Sister Genevieve of the Holy Face lived to be quite elderly. And all those years, she was the one that the Popes and the Cardinals and different theologians would talk to her to get clarification on certain points of St. Therese's doctrine. And she distills all of that in this book. And I almost feel like I know Tan also publishes The Story of the Soul, which is the autobiography of St. Therese, the primary source. I'd love to see this book published with it together because what she says here complements and clarifies so well and an absolute favorite. My gosh, that's beautiful. What a beautiful idea. I hope our editors are watching. It's a wonderful idea. We'll see if it comes to it. Father Robert, you? Well, one of my great favorite Tan books, which I've read, I only just finished recent, read recently is The St. Galen Mafia. And this book is very illuminating and sheds a lot of light upon the complexities of the times in which we currently live. But I have to say my favorite Tan book and my favorite book in general, apart from sacred scripture, is The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A. Kempis. And he's a wonderful author. I've been talking about Thomas A. Kempis with Conor Gallagher today. And, you know, he's continually a source of inspiration and his great words are a source of such fortitude and wisdom. Excellent, excellent. Auto Miller? Obviously it's hard to choose one, but I think the one that's stood out to me ever since college was the trustful surrender to the divine providence. Tan prints out this wonderful little copy. You've got it behind you there. And I would say this is kind of my compendium second only to the Bible. And it was very transformative in my own spiritual development. And I recommend it to everyone. I'm currently reading. I don't know if it's Tan though. So you'll have to forgive me, but in Sinu Yezu. So this is the first time reading this for me. It's anyone can read it, but it's especially for priests. And I've just been slowly working through it for some time. It's, there's so much to consume. You know, I don't want to rush it. That's wonderful. That's a beautiful collection. I don't know if I've had a set of guests with such a robust dense collection of books for spiritual reading. That could be the webinar right there, everyone. Read all of those books and you're good. Great. Wonderful. So to start us off on our topic on the interior life, I'd like to begin hearing just a bit from each one of you about your own path to your current vocations. You're all ordained priests, but you're all for different orders. We have a Franciscan friar. We have a Benedictine month, month. We have a diocesan priest. It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it's not you're all here. I'd love to hear how your own prayer and discernment brought to you to where you are now. So Father Robert, would you begin with that? Yeah. So I was raised in a very devout Catholic family and attended Catholic schools and was involved in the church from a young age as a church organist from the age of about 11 and as an altar server in reading ministry and so forth. And I felt that I was called to the service of the church that one day I would be the priest celebrating the mass. And this spoke to me deep in my heart. And I had a really very strong devotion to the Blessed Virgin. I felt always that she would be my guide in my future life, which has indeed proven to be the case. But I had another great passion in my life, which was music. And I loved music and playing music. And it was just something which I felt I needed to do to get out of my system for at least a few years. So when I finished school, my first step wasn't to enter a seminary, but to study music and to follow a career as a professional musician for a number of years. I did that and was involved also in school and university teaching. Then I reached my 33rd year of age and I reflected at this stage, this is as long as Christ lived in his whole mortal life. I thought he saved the world during that time. I thought during this time, I've basically just lived to entertain myself. So I resolved from then on to give the rest of my life to the service of the church. But my first step wasn't to become a Benedictine monk. I didn't actually know any monks. I'd never actually visited a monastery. All I knew of monasteries and monks was what I'd seen in movies and read in books. So it seemed like something very medieval, but kind of exotic and remote. But I did know a lot of diocesan priests. And I knew how great the need for diocesan priests was at that time, especially in my home diocese of Townsville where there's only about half a dozen diocesan priests left. So I went to the diocesan seminary and during that time of study and reflection, I came to see how much I actually loved living in a religious community. And I felt called to go for a retreat to a monastery to see what it was really like. So I eventually went to New Norcia which is on the other side of Australia about five hours flight from where I was. And I instantly fell in love with it. So New Norcia is Australia's only monastic village. It's like a piece of Barcelona in the middle of Outback Australia with these magnificent old buildings, this great heritage, this wonderful library and a wonderful liturgy and so forth. So I felt called to join there. But it wasn't an easy decision because to say goodbye to my home diocese, my hometown, the part of Australia where my family and friends lived was hard. But I knew that God was calling me to do this. And I felt a special affinity with St. Benedict as I came to learn about his life and his approach. So yeah, I became a monk about 10 or 11 years ago. And since then I have found this life, it's a balance between the cultivation of silence and solitude, the contemplation of God, the glorification of God through prayer and study as well as the apostolic dimension of a parish, of leading retreat, so of seeing people for spiritual direction and so forth. So for me, I found that this is really what God has been calling me to. Father Robert, if you don't mind me asking how many months do you live in New Norcia, novices or professors? Look, our community is very small today. We have only six mugs in residence. Oh, wow. In our heyday, we had up to 70. This was in the late 19th century, so 70 mugs, right? Yeah. My goodness. Okay, well, you're enough to hold down the fort, I'm sure, all on your own. So, Father Luke, could you go ahead and share a bit of your story? Sure. Thank you, Father. I enjoyed listening to your story there a little bit. I grew up in a nominally Catholic family in Indiana and went to public schools and kind of wasn't really into church for quite a while till my mom had a big conversion on a Marian Pilgrimage when I was in high school. I was really into jazz and classical guitar. So there's a connection there. And then I had a big conversion myself, my freshman year and ended up at Franciscan University of Steubenville to my undergrad, just like you. And I too just earned a lot of different communities, including the Marines and Immaculate Conception. And as I visited different monasteries and different religious orders, kind of like, I guess you'd say like dating, as I look back, I realized the Lord was clarifying for me little by little the things that I wasn't called to, as I would visit somewhere and I would feel, maybe this isn't quite the right fit. And then in the midst of that, that clarity came of what I was called to. And sure enough, I ran into the Friars of the renewal of my community. They just started a few years earlier there where renewal community in the Bronx. And I never really wanted to go to New York City being in small town Indiana. Big cities make me nervous, but I go to visit. And sure enough, I loved it. I was like, oh no, this is it. This is it. So I graduated, joined the Friars back in 96 and then you're in a religious order for quite a while, good seven to 10 years before you make your final vows. So over those years of living it and discerning and getting beyond just how do I feel today, but having a look on how things have gone over the years and felt a real deep inner conviction that much to my surprise that this is where I fit in God's plan. And so 26 years later, it's still an adventure and it's still a joy. The small town boy out in the big city in his robe. That's quite a change. That's beautiful. Botic Miller, go ahead. So I also grew up in a very Catholic home. My mom's family has been Catholic for generations, but my dad and his family was raised an atheist. Everybody in his family were atheists, but when he was in high school and later on in college, he began looking at religion and eventually found his way more intellectually initially to the Catholic church and became a very staunch Catholic after that. So when he met my mom, they got married, we were raised very Catholic. Obviously I have 11 brothers and sisters. My father always wanted a big family. And when he told my mother on their second date, she said, well, I'm only giving you four. So to this day, she's glad he won and there are 12 of us. But growing up with a great devotion to our lady, I remember seeing my father pray the rosary every day, even on his own, and we would often pray as a family. So I went to Franciscan as well. And while there, even though honestly, Father Luke, you have to believe me, I wanted to be a CFR. The Lord called me to go to the Marians. I was not very happy about that initially, but the Lord can be insistent. So I spent three years with them and then realized that was not my vocation. And I'd say I wandered around a little bit for a few years, unsure exactly in what direction I needed to go to do the Lord's will. I knew I was meant to be a priest. I wanted to be a religious, but I just couldn't see clearly. So I kind of defaulted to the diocesan priesthood in Charlotte, it's my home diocese. And I told them when I joined, I said, look, I know I need to continue my discernment. I don't know where else I should go. So I'm calling you guys. And they're very open, of course. And during that, those years of formation and discernment, I began to realize that this is exactly where the Lord wanted me. So I was ordained in 2010 and then serving in various parishes and now I've been a pastor for about 10 years at St. Dorothy's. So I couldn't be happier. I just love it. You are very beloved there. I know Father Miller. So I think the Lord in his insistence puts you in the right place. I think so. Father Robert, I've read about your community at New Norsia and that you are responsible. I think you've mentioned for coordinating the monk's daily song prayers and liturgies and that you even sometimes find time to write new liturgical compositions. You look after the monastery's famous pipe organ, all amazing work. If you could translate that kind of work into the daily life of a lay person, let's say probably most of the people watching us today are lay people living out lives, having to support families, the kids, all that. How do you translate the work we must do by necessity into making it holy and building that interior life? Yeah, indeed. Indeed. So one of the realities of monastic life today, especially for smaller monasteries, is that most of the monks are called upon to fulfill multiple roles, to multitask. And I think this is a reality also for lay people in the world. I mean, they're mothers, fathers, and often have a range of different works and responsibilities, parish activities, and so forth. So the key, I think, is to keep in mind that ultimately everything we do is done for the service and the glorification of God. You know, and St. Paul exhorts us in one of our letters, work always not as if we're working for a merely human master, but as if we're working for a divine master in the service of God. So I think to say a little prayer, very brief prayer, before we undertake any activity, both to remind ourselves of that and to implore God's assistance and grace. And it's also, I think, a key to being able to do this is to set aside a certain amount of time for holy solitude, literally for doing nothing, but being in the company of God. This might be only five or 10 minutes each day, but it makes such a huge difference, I think, in keeping the right balance. So not to let our tasks master us, but to remain in mastery of everything that we do, making it an offering to God, knowing that God sometimes asks a lot of us, but he will never ask more than we can possibly do. It's beautiful. Father Luke, you and a community as well, what would you add to that about making your daily work holy? Oh, that is the topic, isn't it? Sanctification of our day. So one of the joys of being in a religious community versus some other vocations where you're a little more on your own. So in a community, we have communal prayer. And so we have what we like to describe as almost like a skeleton. So throughout the day, there's moments when the bell rings and we gather in our chapel to pray the rebri. In my community, we pray at the office of readings and morning prayer and midday prayer and evening prayer and night prayer. We have mass and holy hour and rosary, all these things together. And there's space throughout the day, which is a really ancient tradition. I think the early church picked up from the Jewish people. There's some indication that at the temple in Jerusalem, there was kind of a cycle of liturgical life and prayer. And in the midst of that, there's a sanctification of the day. And then the gaps of time in between each of those prayer structure would be like meat on the bone where you're doing ministry or work or chores or all sorts of different things. And I know I'm a Franciscan, my father's a Benedictine, but there is the maxim aura at Levorah, prayer and work and how the two compliment and inform each other. And I think that's true for all of us as well. Absolutely. Father Miller, obviously we've said you're a diocesan priest at a very active parish. Lots of families, lots of moms and dads coming. What would you say in your collection of parishioners is the one thing that is keeping people truly, holding them back from becoming a saint and living wholeier lives? Well, I think if we presume, you know, a sacramental life and a prayer life, which I think is fair to assume because if you're not doing that, then nothing else we say is gonna matter. I always think that the one thing that we in general struggle with is perseverance, you know, especially in the midst of suffering, you know, it's those little daily crosses that grind us down and more often than not, you know, in a moment of weakness, we complain, we refuse to carry our cross, you know, we just wanna give up. So I think the common problem I see in my parishioners and of course in myself is perseverance in the midst of the cross or in the midst of suffering. In the New Testament, in many of the letters it's constantly referred to as essential for growth and faith, right, and holiness. So yeah, I'd have to just encourage people to persevere. Father Robert, would you add to that things that you see, keep whole people back from growing in holiness? Yeah, so I think there are quite a number of things which can these days hold people back from holiness. And one of these I think is Father Luke mentioned before the aura at laborer. And I think in our modern world, we see too much laborer and too little aura, too much busyness, people allowing themselves to be completely consumed and occupied with whatever is, you know, is requiring. And the devil actually uses overwork as a way of pulling people's soul back from heavenly things. You know, so our souls actually have a natural tendency towards sanctity because that's what God created us for. That's our natural state. But so many things impede us in this. And I think it could sometimes be this excessive overwork, sometimes even in virtuous works where people over commit themselves and stretch themselves too thin. So the need for this certain amount of holy leisure, and this is something which St. Benedict emphasizes quite a lot in his rule that they need to keep prayer, leisure, recreation, study, and work all in their healthy balance. When these things get out of balance is when the devil can creep in. For sure. Father Luke, the Franciscans of the renewal, you are known for working with some of the poorest of the poor, the destitute, the homeless, the drug addicts, women in crisis pregnancies, just a whole gamut of poverty. How does that work with impoverished groups? For you, your fellow brothers, whether you're a priest or a volunteer with groups like that, whether you're the person handing out canned corn with St. Vincent de Paul or the priest like yourself in the streets with people, how does that help a person truly grow in holiness? Yeah, thank you. I have to try to slim down what I want to say. I've got about 20 bullet points to answer that one. But I think really it comes back to the gospel and it comes back to the reality that our faith, what it means to be a follower of Jesus, a disciple, a devout Catholic. It isn't just a matter of doing devotions or prayers or wearing scapulars or getting to mass on Sunday. It's like an integration to your whole life which includes some sort of work with the poor. I mean, Jesus himself has been highlighted quite a bit by a number of popes, including recently Pope Francis that somehow serving Jesus in the poor isn't just for a couple of people. It's actually essential to the gospel. And that comes in so many different ways. You think of the spiritual works of mercy, the corporal works of mercy. And I'll tell you over these years of living and working and serving the poor, our community had been, our founders have been good friends with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Mother Teresa had been inspired by her and encouraged by her to start this renewal which would have a more intentional focus on living and working with the poor. And as the years have gone on, there's been a really subtle yet profound shift in my own experience in prayer life. I think in the beginning, there's the idea of being in the category of the haves and we're here to help and bless those who are the have nots. And sometimes with people who are drug addicted or mentally ill or in the streets that dynamic, it feels very clear and apparent that very needy and wounded and need a lot of aid. But what ends up happening is you start to realize that you always receive more than you give. And then particularly the relationships and the friendships that maybe they're getting a sandwich but there's a beautiful profound grace that comes to you through them. And so there's kind of this beautiful give and take, this giving and receiving that happens with the Lord's grace where you're serving Jesus, you're trying to find his, what Mother Teresa would call, he's wearing a distressing disguise of the poor and you're looking for his presence so that you can express your love to him by loving his, you know, least of his brothers but then also to allow the Lord to minister to you and speak to you through the encounter with a person who is poor. And being in a place where you realize as it says in the Catechism, we are all beggars before God. Father, what was it like just to go on, continue with that remote, you are from a small town, I think, did you say Indiana from the Midwest? What was it like just the first couple of times that you were out in New York or New Jersey on dirty streets with people who are really seemed quite lost, were you scared at all when you began that kind of ministry? Yes, it was intimidating. It was like, for me, a metaphor would be getting out of the boat to walk on the water. Sure. Oh, this is uncomfortable, you know, like, but it's one of these things where so often the Lord will invite us to get out of our comfort zone to help us to grow, help us to stretch. One of our priests says it really well, it's time to get out of your comfort zone and into the zone of the comforter, the Holy Spirit. It's beautiful. Father Miller, you may not be dealing with as many drug addicts in a parish. I have not a parish share. Sure. But you do have something somewhat difficult for people and that's children, you have many families, you have children coming and going, both the mass, you probably have sacramental prep classes, and that's not everyone's cup of tea is dealing with children. And the very young Catholics. So what do you think is of highest importance for parents to do in childhood, for those parents just coming and going from daily mass with the toddlers and the babies and living in the Narthex for 60 minutes, what should they be doing to focus on, to strive for holding us with those children? How do you form the interior life of a child? Well, the first thing is to have an interior life yourself. I mean, if so many of us, you know, parents don't draw close to the Lord as Father Robert and Father Luke have been saying, you know, through silence, through their own works of charity and prayer, so their own relationship with Christ might not be very deep. So that's what they need to work on first. But in doing so, something that's going to help more than anything with their children is just praying with their children and allowing their children to see them in prayer. I've seen that influence a child more than anything else the parent says or does, just actually spending time with the child in conversation with God, because that's how a child learns to talk to God. And many parents, I'd say the average Catholic, is not necessarily comfortable with their own relationship with God. And so they're not comfortable trying to form a relationship between their children and the Lord. So it's one of the things I try to talk about a lot and give direction and formation. So the general advice I give, and just offer this to any of our viewers, would be if you don't have a deeper personal relationship with the Lord yet, that's fine. That's where you begin, you know, introduce yourself to Jesus, you know, sit down one day alone with the Lord and say, Jesus, it's me. I know we don't talk often, but I know I'm supposed to get to know you better. So you just be very frank and honest with him and be who you are with all of your strengths and weaknesses. And you will see the Lord, you know, meet you, come to you and encounter you where you need him, right? So often we are fearful or because we think we have to get to Jesus. Well, he's the one who already came down to earth. He's already come to us. We just have to avail ourselves to his presence and he'll do the rest. Beautiful. Father Robert, I had a question for you on one of my favorite books that we mentioned before, The Passion of the Christ Through the Eyes of Mary by St. Anselm of Canterbury and other authors. And so this book takes you through a dialogue, as you know, between St. Anselm and the Blessed Mother recalling the details, truly details of her son's crucifixion and death. How valuable do you think it is for a Catholic to read something like this book, to put themselves in the place of the Blessed Mother to see with new eyes the suffering of our Lord and his passion? How does that truly help someone really zoom down the path towards St. Hood? Well, the contemplation of the Passion of Christ and in particular the contemplation of it in the presence of and through the eyes of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It's something which really can set our heart aflame with this love of God, with this compassion. And this compassion is not only for the suffering of Christ, but also for the suffering of Christ present in our fellow man. And as Father Luke talks about the service of the poor, to see in all human suffering the suffering of Christ. To see also in all human suffering the possibility of resurrection, of glory, of redemption. And we can do this no more powerfully than through the perspective of Mary. And for myself in my spiritual life, the great hymn, the starboard Martin Dolorosa has always been one which touched my heart so deeply. And I've always felt this special closeness to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Even at those stages in my life where my faith might have been, you know, wavering a little bit or whatever, there's nothing which could take me away from my love and devotion to her. And through this love and devotion to her to come and look at her son, our Lord Jesus through those same eyes of love. And we have to allow our hearts to be broken for this love of God to be poured out. This is only the way we can become complete is by allowing our hearts to be broken and this love of God both to flow in to us and also to be able to flow out to others. So this work by St. Enson is dialogue with the Blessed Virgin on the Passion of Christ. It really is a very touching and heart-rending work. And my experience of translating it was, you know, I'd have to stop and pray or think about these things deeply before going on any further. So yes, so in union with the Blessed Virgin Mary and of course she is a maternal figure, you know, I've never met a single person whether they're Catholic, whether they're not, whether they're atheists who doesn't have this love, this sense of the wonderful beauty and grace of the Blessed Virgin Mary. So she gives us the eyes and the heart with which to love Jesus. And that in turn gives us the eyes and the heart of compassion with which to look upon the sufferings of our fellow brothers and sisters. And Father, just to stay on the books for a moment. I mean, I've held them up a bit before, but they're just, your work is so beautiful in them. The set is beautiful itself. If you were to tell our viewers today, maybe from any of the Tanner resurrection titles, which do you feel is most accessible today's to today's modern reader that perhaps doesn't have any sort of advanced religious degree or a strong interior life, but would like to launch in to one of these right now to start building on that holy prayer life. One which I would particularly recommend for people who are either not that immersed in the faith or maybe their interest is not as strong as what it could be is the glories of heaven by Saint Anselm of Canterbury. This is quite a short book. Now Saint Anselm is known primarily as a great theologian and philosopher, but he was also a wonderful devotional writer. And in this book, he does something which is I guess pretty unusual. He describes in detail what it's going to be like in heaven. And this is something which you don't often find at all in our Catholic literature. Of course, getting to heaven is in union with God is the ultimate goal of our journey. But, you know, we often don't think about it. We often don't think in much detail about what it's going to be like. We just say it's all infinitely beyond us and leave it at that. But this book so beautifully describes it very wonderful. It's a wonderful exhortation to the practice of the faith by inflaming the desire for this celestial homeland. And this is something which Saint Benedict of our own Holy Father talks about in his rule that we should always be filled with heavenly longing. And this book will certainly awaken that flame of heavenly longing within the hearts of anyone who reads it. Well, certainly there are so many wonderful spiritual writers to choose from, church fathers up into modern day writers. Father Luke, you deal with people who run the gamut, ages and where they are in life. Do you have a certain writer that you recommend to, let's say someone in their 20s versus to someone in their 50s or 60s? Do you have people that you recommend for someone to advance their spiritual life based on the different generation or age they're falling in? Yeah, thank you. You know, as Father Nixon was talking, I was thinking, what a debt of gratitude we owed at 10 bucks and fathered for your translations. It's like you had kind of rediscovering and making accessible to English language audiences. And just classics and it's, yeah, it's wonderful. To answer your question, Mary, you know, it depends on the topic and different topics. There's, I think all of us priests, we have like, here's the go-to book for this topic or that topic or, you know, and it seems like in many of the topics that people are struggling with, there seems to be just such a plethora of really wonderful materials out there that are kind of, people seem to have become a specialist in this topic or that topic or this area or that area that, whether it be questions regarding all sorts of different human conundrums. You know, there's so many different authors that you could point people towards. One of which, which I'll mention is St. Teresa Littleflower, a doctor of the church, and she seems to be so accessible and she comes across as somewhat simple, but there's actually an amazing depth and profundity to her teaching and it seems to be accessible and helpful to so many people from so many different backgrounds. We're gonna go ahead and take a question from our viewing audience right now. So exciting. We'd like to each have you answer, Teresa who's asking, do you have any suggestions for overcoming feelings of unworthiness of someone trying to start down a spiritual path but feeling unworthy in doing so due to perhaps childhood trauma and how do you forgive yourself from sins in your past that you've already confessed? You moved beyond the confessional but you still have trouble letting those go and feeling like you're unworthy to even begin this monumental task of building your interior life. Father Miller, would you begin? Yes, so this is a very common problem that I would say I deal with on a weekly basis with parishioners or Catholics just visiting St. Dorothy's and needing some advice and direction. The first thing's first in regards to forgiving oneself for past sins, I always remind the person or I ask the person, have you gone to confession? If they've gone to confession then I tell them, did the Lord forgive you? And they always say, oh yes, Father gave me absolution, the Lord forgave me. And I said, so it's quite arrogant of you to assume that God who's perfect and just in all things has deemed it able to forgive you and somehow you're refusing to forgive yourself. So do you think you're a better judge than God? Do you think you're better judging your own soul than the Lord is? He's already forgiven you. What are you worried about? So if that kind of a temptation is actually rooted in our pride that we don't trust the Lord's judgment even when he's merciful, right? We think we can judge ourselves better than he can. And so it's something that the individual has to repent of and then learn to focus more upon his mercy, his forgiveness as opposed to, their own thoughts or feelings or judgments which are secondary. In regards to the healing of past traumas and wounds. So one of my backgrounds is psychology and I've done a lot of work in this area. And what I've discovered is the reason these memories still plague us is because more often than not we prevent our Lord and our Lady from entering into those memories. Usually with past trauma, there's a lot of shame associated with it and guilt. And when there's shame and guilt we can imagine like a little child when you catch them doing something bad they'll cover their face and say, don't look at me. Right? It's their shame that wants them to hide. Well, even as adults that shame can lead us to hide from Christ to hide from the blessed mother. And the only way for our Lord to heal those memories is if we allow him in. So I usually lead people through three stages of meditation to help them to allow the Lord in. And I'll just go over real quick so all of our viewers can hear it. So the first thing is you have to be able to remember what happened to you. If you're not there yet you need some counseling and you're able to at least remember what happened. Once you do that I always recommend this in the presence of the priest or your counselor or in front of the Blessed Sacrament that's ideal. You have to allow Jesus to visibly be present in your memory as you're reliving it. Even though it's painful and difficult. He doesn't say anything and he doesn't do anything but he just stands there in a corner he's outside the window looking in when he sees what happened. What you did, what happened to you doesn't matter what it is. Once you find some semblance of peace with our Lord's presence because he was there, he's everywhere. Then you allow him to speak if Jesus was there what would he have said to you or to the person that hurt you? What would he have said what truth would he have spoken? You already know this for the most part and you just have to allow him to say it in the memory. And it can take days and sometimes weeks of quiet meditation until you can get comfortable with our Lord's presence and then with our Lord speaking. Once our Lord can speak and you're comfortable with that in reliving the memory then what you do is you actually allow him to act allow him to change your memory. I had a beautiful soul who had a very traumatic experience where someone threatened her life when she was a little girl. And in the final stages of the healing Jesus ran up, grabbed her out of the hands of the person who was going to threaten her and said, don't touch my daughter and he carried her off to safety. And she said once she saw that in her memory all of the pain went away and it had no hold over her anymore. And it's just this view of I've seen that many times with my parishioners and with others. Wow. Wow, exceptionally powerful. My goodness, thank you for sharing that Father. Father Robert would you like to add to that on feelings of unworthyness? Yeah, look, what Father Miller has spoken about about the efficacy of sacramental confession that people often, you know, feel unworthy. They feel impaired by sins which have actually been sacramentally forgiven by God through the ministry of the church. And that really frees a person from sin. Feelings of unworthiness and so forth. In a sense, every human being is infinitely unworthy of the graces of God, even the very greatest saint. But in another sense, every human being is made with the image and likeness of God and has this dignity of being a divine son or daughter. What I would say is feelings of unworthiness come from looking too closely at yourself. If you can imagine, if you looked at yourself very, very closely in a mirror, you got to see all kinds of, you know, imperfections, faults and so forth. The answer is don't look too closely at yourself. Look, look instead at the glories of heaven. Look instead at, you know, one book I would recommend is The Crown of the Virgin. And this book is a meditation upon the splendor, the beauty, the glory of the queen of heaven. This is what we should be looking at, not ourselves. If we look at ourselves, if we look at our own lives, often we'll find, you know, a disaster or at least a bit of a disaster. We look instead at the kingdom of heaven, we look at Jesus, we look at Mary and we find it's all beauty, peace, tranquility, power and so forth. This is what we're aspiring. Like a person driving a car, looks at what's coming ahead. They're not looking at what they've passed by. And all of that stuff, sins, traumas of the past, you know, let go. It's only our looking at them, our thinking about them, our fixation on them, which makes us hang on to it. So allow ourselves to forgive, allow ourselves to be forgiven and just to let go. Beautiful. Father Luke, you must see this so frequently. That was speaking of people who have trauma or deal with people in public situations. So your thoughts on this. Oh yeah. Well, a couple of things. First of all, just to note that in some cases when we use like a term like childhood trauma or whatever, there is no shame in getting professional psychological help. And it is amazing how in the science of psychology, so many things have been learned about the brain and the way it processes memories. And a lot of people focusing in on trauma in particular and even scrupulosity sometimes could be more psychological than anything else. And there's no shame, particularly if you can find somebody who's really solidly Catholic and Christian, blending the, you know, staying authentic to the faith, but also insights from modern psychology. There's no shame in that at all. And then two spiritual things I would advise, one of which would be the devotion and writings of the divine mercy from St. Faustina. We have a funny joke in our friaries. If you see a brother bringing her diary to the Holy hour, you'd be like, oh bro, you having a bad day, you know? But it's just that promise of mercy and grace that Jesus gives to that devotion has been so healing and encouraging to people who struggle. And then the other thing is praying with gospel passages where Jesus encounters sinners. And whether it be the woman at the well, whether it be the famous parable, the prodigal son and Luke 15, or there's so many of these stories where Jesus has encounters with people who were sinful. And then the way he treats them with such great love and mercy to do like a lexiodivina or healing prayer with some of these stories from the gospels. I have a hunch that that might be part of the reason why the early church wanted to write them down and preserve them. Because in praying with those stories, we can receive a lot of grace. And then wonderful answers, very good. Thank you for that question, Teresa. Another question coming in from Meredith from our chat. This is appropriate since we just celebrated All Saints Day. How can we incorporate the saints, especially our patron saints to build and strengthen our interior lives? Great question, Meredith. Father Miller, would you like to start? Oh, sure. So I think we have to start treating the saints more like real people. I know they are real people, but real people who are actually in our lives, they're just invisible. It's the same way we need to think of our guardian angels. This person who's been with us our whole life since conception and yet they're just invisible. We need to start acting like they're really there, talking like they're really there and celebrating their feast days. So at home, when it's my birthday, it's a special day and the family celebrates it. So if I am supposed to have a special patroness or patron saint, then I need to act like their day is important. Get them a card. Even if you just put it on your table, get a kick that day. There's any number of things that you can do to celebrate them just on a practical level as a Catholic or as in your family. And that is going to lead more than anything to a deeper relationship with them. Just the practical interactions that you would normally have with any other person in your life, just make the saints part of that. Wonderful. Father Robert, same question to you, but also did you feel like you grew closer to the saints in translating these books and coming into such close contact with their writing and translating their little literal words for other people to be able to read? Yes, very, very much so. And the saints are such an important part of the Catholic spirituality. What I like to do each day is look at the Actus Sanctorum for each day. And this was a tremendous compilation put together over a period of 300 or 400 years by the Jesuits. And every day there are listed between 20 and 50 saints as well as details of their lives and writings. And to read at least one of these lives. And every day I discover a new saint and read a fascinating new story. I think it's a great idea for Catholics to get a book which has, and I know Ted puts out some of these, which has like daily lives of saints to immerse ourselves in the lives of these saints because they're often so exciting. They read like novels, you know? And the lives of the saints during the Middle Ages were really the equivalent of novels because there were no like, you know, detective stories or whatever. But people read the lives of these saints for inspiration and for edification. We shouldn't confine our reading just to scripture because, you know, most Catholics after a few years why they basically know all the stories of how they ended and so forth. But the lives of the saints offer us such wonderful things. And to make like notes of the saints who appeal to us, who could be our particular patrons either because we've got something in common with them or they're in the same kind of situation or they have some virtue or property which we admire so much. So yes, to admire all these saints and to find out about them, which is a fairly easy thing to do these days. Luckily. Absolutely. Father Luke? I was gonna say dress like them, but it's religious, we do that already. Halloween is the one night, friars don't like to go out. It's people with a great costume and you're like, this is not a costume. Oh, but you know, there's one thing to look like a person like on the outside, but to look like them on the inside. You know, like reading about them, praying to them, maybe having a holy card or a picture and then also pinpointing what were the things for which they got canonized, things they were known for and then to imitate them. You know, I know there's all sorts of different beautiful customs and traditions connected to different saints in the way that they model following Jesus. I think of the words of St. Paul, imitate me as I follow Christ. You know, we need examples. We need people who remind us that the living of this faith is possible no matter who you are, no matter what your state in life, no matter what difficulties or imperfections you might be facing. There are saints who they're there to encourage us and to show us that it is possible, really wonderful. I'll just conclude by stating, I have to apologize. We have adoration here at the shrine. And as we've been talking, I got a message that the adorer is sick and can't come in. I have to duck out to go cover adoration as we have divine mercy at three and then adoration going throughout. So as I'm leaving now and I apologize, I will be praying and interceding for all of you who are watching and for you, Mary and Father Nixon and Father Miller. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Father Luke. I mean, that's a doozy. I mean, thank you, Father, for being part of this and thank you for taking our Pro Pro Petitions and needs to the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Thank you. Within five minutes, I'll be praying for all of you with the presence of our Lord. God bless you. What a blessing. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Father. God bless you, Luke. Thanks, Father. We'll take that as our own cue to wrap up, I suppose. I feel like we should probably go to adoration to the three of us. I mean, can't let Father Luke top us in holiness. I do have confessions in a little bit. Oh, well, okay. So Father Robert, are you going to lunch or something or do you have something holy to go to? Yeah, but a little bit more work to get through here at Ted headquarters today. Very good. Okay, well, duty calls. So thank you for everyone joining us today for this Tan around table. Again, all of the beautiful books we discussed today, these are available at tanbooks.com at the Tan Resurrection tab. We have a winner, Gerardo Rodriguez. Congratulations to you, Gerardo. You are the winner of a set of these beautiful Tan Resurrection books. If you are not Gerardo, don't worry. You have a 40% off code, tantalk40 at our website, add any of these wonderful titles to your cart, check out with tantalk40. Look at 40% off. They would make amazing gifts as well for the coming Christmas season. Any questions, please email us at talks at tanbooks.com. We will see you not next month, but actually next week, one week from today. We have a rescheduled round table with Father Chad Rippercher and other guests for the Errors of Protestantism. That is going to be a great one. That is next Thursday, November 17th at 2 p.m. Eastern. Make sure to join us for that incredible discussion. Father Miller, before we go, would you please give us your blessing? The Lord be with you. And with your spirit. And with your spirit. May Almighty God bless you. May he turn his face toward you and give you peace. He who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Father Robert for joining us for making this trip state-side. So you could participate in this with us. Love hearing from you today from Father Miller from you as well. God bless to all of our viewers. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next week. Thank you. Thank you, Barry. Thank you, Father Miller.