 By restful waters he leads me. By still waters he brings me. I think that passage from the Psalm is really the heart of contemplative prayer. By restful waters he brings me. To rest in the Lord is the goal, if you will, the purpose and the goal of contemplative prayer. The catechism has beautiful, beautiful passages about what prayer is, what contemplative prayer is, and it's my go-to. It's my go-to. And every time I get into this section on Christian prayer, I find something new. I actually do Lectio Divina with the catechism. That will be next year's or the year after's talk. Lectio Divina with the catechism, a prayerful reading, a prayerful study of what is here. And of course in paragraph 2558, and what I'm going to do is just draw your attention to the catechism, in case it's been a long time since you've meditated on it and prayed it, the jewels that are here, what is prayer? Prayer is the relationship we have with God. The relationship we have, the mystery of prayer requires that the faith will believe, they celebrate, and they live from it, this vital relationship with the living and true God. St. Teresa of Avila, it's a surge of a heart, right? Just a surge of the heart. My heart longs and desires for God. And what is beautiful about this prayer is that it begins with God. So the catechism speaks to us in paragraphs 2652 and following that prayer begins with God's initiative. It's Jesus meeting the woman at the well. If you only knew, if you only knew what I was willing to offer you, this wellspring of prayer, this wellspring of worship, dwelling within, God is already with you. He's already there. He's not someone you have to grasp at. He's not someone you have to seek the high and the low. His presence is already with you. He's thirsting for you. And prayer is your recognition of that thirst, if you will, and responding to that. This thirst, this thirst. We thirst for God because he thirsts for us first. Now I want you just to sit for a moment with that. Are you convinced and convicted to the core of your being? With a great amen, this is true that right now, where you are, wherever you are in your journey, whatever your successes, whatever your failures, whatever your sins, whatever your glories, that the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit right now is thirsting for you. Dare you allow yourself to be pursued in that way? To stop running after him, but to just sit still, to just rest. Allow your soul to experience that surge of the heart, and know from once that comes from God himself. The Catechism speaks about various kinds of prayer, vocal prayer, meditative prayer, the life of prayer. All of those have to do with a recollection of the heart, be it vocal, or meditative, or contemplative. This recollection of the heart. But I would like to add, not that I want to correct the Catechism, but it's okay to write notes in your Catechism that come to you from prayer yourself. There's an aspect that I think is important, and it's actually in there, you just have to find it someplace else, that your life is also an aspect of preparing for contemplative prayer. Your life, how you relate to God in your day to day, how you call upon him, your schedule, what are the times that you leave for God. Your life becomes how you're living with your family, how you're living with your coworkers. So the moral life actually is fed by prayer, but it also feeds your prayer. And Teresa will do a little bit more, I think, with that. But the sense of if there's discontent in my relationship with someone, well, it's no wonder that when I stop, drop, and pray finally in the chapel or stop, drop, and pray at my desk, there's an agitation. Yes? Amen? Okay. I just know my life. I don't know your life, but I do know my life. I do know my life. And so when you get into the sense of contemplative prayer, the catechism has such richness about that. Saint Teresa of Avila, she speaks, contemplative prayer is nothing else in a close sharing between friends, paragraph 2709, close sharing of friends. I'm with him and he's with me. Saint Teresa of Calcutta, one time someone said to her, what do you do in prayer? What do you say to God in prayer? She said, I don't say anything. I listen. And so the interviewer, not satisfied with that response, said, well, what does God say? She says, he says nothing. He listens. And I thought, that's brilliant. It's brilliant. Because in early friendships, we talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, right? You're trying to get to know, talk, talk, talk. But people who you know, and those of you who are married are well aware of this, there are times when you don't need to say anything. Yes, you don't need to say anything. You're just present. And the look of an eye, a stillness of your body communicates, I'm with you. I'm with you. Paragraph 2713 in the Catechism speaks about prayer is the simplest expression, contemplative prayer is the simplest expression. It's a gift of grace. It's a gift of grace, accepted in simplicity and humility. The posture of prayer is not grasping, not forcing. It's a surrender. It's a surrender. Now, I haven't always been a crazy charismatic. Ralph Martin converted me one summer here. And I watched Ralph Martin, who can quote the documents from memory like nobody I know, he and Dr. Shrack. And I thought, these are deep theologians, grounded in tradition. And to watch them in this posture of prayer that says, I can only receive and whatever I'm going to say or think or sing to you, Lord, can only come from what you first give me. Amen. Amen. The simplest of receiving in humility and poverty, that word poverty, I think is critical in our understanding of prayer. And I'll steal one more thing from Ralph Martin. I always cite him. Don't be afraid of your poverty. Don't be embarrassed of your poverty. It's hard to pray. I'm struggling with prayer. I can hardly be nice to somebody today. Don't be embarrassed by that because he said, those who are poor are eligible for divine welfare. The poor I am. And the more I recognize that, the greater God's grace and goodness and gift. If you continue in the Catechism, paragraphs 12, 27, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, all of those are so rich to meditate on tomorrow. And I hope you do. But this was a new one for me. I've read it before, but it hit me new today. And if you would let me, I'd love to share it with you. So this is why we, this is why we keep doing divine reading paragraph 27, 11 entering into contemplative prayer. So how do you enter into contemplative prayer is like entering into the Eucharistic liturgy. Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord. It's all I can bring you Lord, gathering up my heart. The heart is recollected and our whole being under the prompting of the Holy Spirit. And we abide in the dwelling of the Lord. We rest there. We let our masks fall and turn our hearts back to the Lord. Contemplative prayer is the place where you can be your most honest self. No games. He already knows what's going on in your soul. He already knows the ups and the downs, the fears and the failures. In contemplative prayer, we let all of that fall. The masks fall and we turn our hearts back to the Lord who loves us. And we hand ourselves over to him as an offering to be purified and transformed. Contemplative prayer is not for saints, it's for sinners who are willing to let themselves be transformed. Amen? Okay, Trisa. Thank you, sister. So as you've heard all of this teaching from Mother Church, I have a question. Is there a difference between saying a prayer and praying? Have a brief conversation with your neighbor. What do you think? Right. It's pretty unanimous, isn't it? Would anyone like to express why you say there is a difference? And thank you so much. There's a handout coming around. Would anyone like to share why you would say there's a difference? So we said you can recite a prayer, but if you have a conversation with the Lord from your heart, there's a difference between just saying the words and then deeply meaning them from your heart. Thank you. Somebody else? Is it okay to do this? I don't want to make them squeak either. So when I was in high school, my class had to learn how to recite Canterbury Tales of the opening to it in the Old English. And we learned all the words and all the pronunciations. And we were able to give them back and forth with the instructor. And we had no idea what was going on and what the opening of the Canterbury Tales was until he explained it to us. So even though we said the words, we knew the words, we pronounced the words properly in form, in context, and in rhythm. It didn't mean anything. Thank you. One more. Well, I do believe there's a difference and there's also a relationship between the two. I would say the difference is contemplative prayer is a pointing of our heart to our Lord and giving our heart to our Lord and is an interior disposition. And an interior place, I would say that saying a prayer is the start of the journey into contemplative prayer and ultimately uniting with it. Thank you. And La Madre, tu y savas la, she does say vocal prayer can be an enormous help. So this is not at all dismissive of the words at all. But as Sister pointed out, as we have this experience in our daily lives, the people that we know best that we are most intimate with, we don't need to fill the silence with words, do we? Whereas if we've just met someone, we're uncomfortable if that silence lasts. Right? So we do say, Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof. But let's not keep him on the threshold. Let's let him come in because he himself told us that that's what he desires. In Mark chapter six verse six, when you pray, go into your inner room and shut the door and pray to your father who is there in secret, John 14 23. If a person loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and we will make our home with him. And John 15 9, as the father has loved me, so I have loved you, abide in my love. So go into your inner room, pray to the father. How do we do that? It's not complicated. Our loving God has given us everything we need. We know he would never assign us a task or give us a mission without giving us the grace to accomplish it. And everything we need in order to become contemplative has been given to us in our baptismal grace. Yes, everything. Just like the mustard seed, just like the yeast in the bread dough, right? Our baptismal grace is God's life given to us meant to transform us. If you're cooking and you mix the flour and the water and the yeast, you can't separate them anymore. There's a big word that describes this. We've been changed. God's life has been given to us and ontological change has happened in us. God's life is ours. St. Paul expresses that so strongly. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, right? We are called to live God's life that was given to us in baptism, to let us transform it, to cooperate, of course. But the initiative is his. The strength is his. The power is his. So you have a handout and thank you so much to the conference team for that. So a little bit of imagination, but you can also take notes on the side that looks like this. In the very center, I'm going to place God because he is, even for someone who's not baptized, right? God is holding us in existence. He's loving us into existence. Creation is here and now. It's not just the Genesis story in the past, right? God is loving us into existence right now. And this is all the stronger when we've received his very life, right? And then a little bit of anthropology, right? As human beings, we have a body which the outer circle, the blue circle, is meant to symbolize. And we have a soul, a spiritual being, right? So you can see on your worksheet, you should have some little lines there to help you, right? And as part of our bodies, we have our five senses. God's gift to us that let us go out into the world. I shouldn't be moving and talking at the same time, sorry. So our senses, taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing, God's gift to us in our stewardship, in our role as stewards of creation to go out into the world to discover it, right? However, you know as well as I do that they are also sources of distractions because they bring back everything that we've discovered and it stays with us, right? And Teresa Vavala even in the deeper, the innermost part of her, of her soul when she was in what she called the Seventh Mansions, she complained of the clickety-clackety of the windmills. In other words, that interior cinema that's always going on, right? So obviously we have other human faculties, right? We have a memory or an imagination. Sometimes the Carmelite doctors use imagination or memory interchangeably. We have obviously our mind, oops, I'm going to have to put the mic down. And the big one, of course, we have our will, right? So our memory or imagination, our mind, our intelligence or our will are part of our human faculties, right? When we're baptized, God gives us the theological virtues. And you're going to say, well, yeah, I know this, faith, hope, and love, but I'm not talking about a paragraph of words to memorize. I'm talking about active powers that are given to us. Theological virtues meaning powers, virtues meaning powers made to touch God, theological because made to touch theos, made to touch God. So this works much better on the blackboard with my freshman because I can press against. So this is the teaching of John of the Cross in particular, that faith is grafted, so to speak, onto our intelligence. That makes sense, right? Because we're called to use our minds to understand, to wonder, and to come to the conclusion that it's reasonable to believe. And to acknowledge that at a certain point, only God can tell him about himself. Only God can reveal the intimacy of who he is, and that's what Jesus did, right? The word became flesh so that he could use human words to reveal the mysteries of God to us. But we need to use our intelligence to get to the point where we reach a need for faith, an understanding that accepting God's revelation, ascending to revelation is beautiful, is reasonable, right? And then hope is grafted onto our memories. This is easy to understand. Why do you expect a birthday present on your birthday? Because haven't we always received birthday presents on our birthdays? Why do the Israelites expect and hope that God will save them? Because they remember the mighty works that God has done, right? We have hope for the future, we have hope for now, we have hope in our poverty, because we know what God has done in the past and what he has promised, right? And then finally, love is grafted on our wills, with our will we make choices, right? Being human is the ability to think and the ability to choose. When I love someone, I choose what's good for that person. That's true love, unfettered love, right? Is choosing the good for that person. And so charity or love is grafted on my will. Now, with baptismal grace anchored in my soul, I have these powers of faith, hope and love, which are actually participation in God's life, because my baptismal grace is participation in God's life. And so I'm going to love God with the love that he's given me, and I'm going to be able to touch God, the Trinity dwelling within me, with his very life. So the relationship that my faith, hope and love make possible and create with God is his life in me going to him, or reciprocity becomes possible. He can truly give himself to us as much as he wants to, because we are connected not just with thoughts or feelings, but with his very life, which is his grace in us. And remember the power of faith in the Gospels, the woman with the hemorrhage. Jesus had not seen her with his eyes, with his human will. He had not decided to cure her, apparently, right? His bodyguards, right? His apostles are protecting him from everyone who's crowding around. And he says, who touched me? Because he felt a power go out of him. And our faith touches the very heart of God. And when we do, he cannot not give himself. Blessed Father Mary Eugene, who founded Notre Dame de Vie, said, when we put our hand in water, it gets wet. When we put our hand in fire, it gets burned. When we touch God with faith, hope and love, he gives himself. That's who he is. But remember, because there's another part of our baptismal grace, all those distractions, right? Our loving Father knows us better than we know ourselves. And he gave us some more help. He gave us, except there he is, should expect him to be not where I expect him. He also gave us the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And I'm going to put them, the beak of the dove, which you're going to have to draw in yourselves, right at the juncture between the human faculties and the soul, the spiritual part, because that's where things break down. Now I have to back up a little bit. In the Catechism 1830, it says that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are receptive capacities that allow God to influence us directly in our action and in our prayer. 1830. And then you skip to 1831 and you have the list of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that were used to memorizing, right? Yes, 1830. So I'm putting in my own words, but our receptive capacities that allow the Holy Spirit to intervene directly in our action and in our prayer. All right. And then 1831 is the list that we're used to, okay? So that can be a little confusing because the word gifts is being used for two different perspectives here. What the Carmelite doctors identify, and John of the Cross calls them the caverns of the soul, that place where we just long forgot to come, right? Those are what he calls the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And that's where, and it's not about levitation, and it's not about visions, it's about a normal development of our baptismal grace where the Holy Spirit can use us as his instruments and can sustain our prayer in his presence. He helps us with the distractions. He gives us a grace of recollection. This may make you laugh, but one of the experiences of the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the Holy Spirit that I'm trying to get used to is when I have an opportunity to share like this, a couple of days beforehand, I'm always sure that I shouldn't be doing it, that I can't do it, that I'll forget something that, and I've learned to take that as a good sign. Why? Because he's getting me out of the way. I can't count on my memory. I can't count on my strength. I can't stand on anything. I have to count on him. And that again is that faith that's allowing him to act because he'll never force us, right? He loves us too much to force us. We need to make those acts that are within our power of faith, hope and love, to allow him into our lives, into our prayer. The CCC says, this is 2712. I've forgotten whether sister quoted it. Contemplative prayer is the prayer of the child of God, of the forgiven sinner who agrees with faith, who agrees to welcome the love with which he is loved, right? You can think about Saint Paul too. The spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought. But the spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings. So during silent prayer, waiting for the gift of God's contemplative prayer, we place ourselves in God's presence. We try to make contact with the theological virtues. And when we realize we've been distracted, we just humbly come back and renew that act of faith, hope and love. We yearn for his visit. We give him the joy of loving us. We give him the joy of loving us. And on the back of the handout, you have a little prayer to help remind you of those steps, all right? Sister. Thank you, Trisa. So I want to conclude with just some critical points before we take questions from you. So fostering contemplative prayer, what we did at the beginning was to try to set the stage that God is already seeking you to let you know that this is the ordinary path. God wants to have this deep, profound, intimate relationship with you. That is what contemplative prayer is. Trisa showed you really practically what's going on. And you can see that it's God's work from start to finish. She showed that to you. Again, there's no grasping for God. He's already given you the power and the presence. And yet we do have a responsibility and a role in deepening this relationship, fostering this relationship, fostering contemplative prayer. So one of those is the physical, what Father Donald Hagerty speaks about, of getting rid of the psychic clutter. If you have not discovered Father Donald Hagerty, you're overdue. I think he is our contemporary John of the Cross. He's a Dossus and Priest. I've read his three books. I've heard him speak. He writes in the Magnificat. He's got a series of books on contemplation, contemplative hunger, contemplative provocation, and the third one just escaped me. But he's quite grounded. And as Father Dubey did for us years ago, he speaks about contemplative prayer being the ordinary fulfillment of your baptismal graces. Donald Hagerty, H-A-G-G-E-R-T-Y, and I got no commission on that. But I did tell him that I'm preaching his stuff. So getting rid of psychic clutter, and Joseph Pieper wrote about that as well, the sources that help you, okay? So one thing of getting rid of the psychic clutter is what we intentionally want to offer you tomorrow and it's silence. It's a silent day, right? You don't have to be anywhere. You don't have to go anywhere. You don't have to do anything. Last year some of you, and I'll just call her out, Debbie just camped in front of the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel, just went in the front, sat on the floor, and just sat there. I told her if she does it again, I'll bring her lunch. Just to be still physically, to be still. I'll go back to this image of the wellspring, the wellspring. When we sit still in silence, it allows that that interior stream and spring to bubble up. A stirred pot never bubbles. And so you have to, you have to. I mean, Petrach said it last night, God can catch you as you're running, but there's nothing like when you have set aside time and space to say, Lord, I'm all yours. I'm all yours. So being still, being quiet. And then sources that help feed your memory, the word of God, right? When your intellect is engaged in truth, it helps to deal with distractions that come. So taking your catechism to prayer, I'm always preaching a dogmatic spirituality. So Teresa's Carmelite, non Dominican, but we're both dogmatic. Did you see where she pulled that out of? Our sources for this presentation are the catechism. Dogmatic spirituality. The more that I engage my mind in chewing on truth, it purifies my memory of just garbage. And so again, as I'm trying to enter into a time of prayer, contemplative prayer, I make sure that I have the sources to sharpen my intellect to go back to be rooted in faith that's been revealed. The liturgy is a great source for forming myself. Okay, so being very attentive, reading the scriptures beforehand, so that when I come to mass, I'm attentive, I'm ready, I'm disposed to receive that divine encounter. Teresa spoke about the theological virtues, the divine indwelling. God is already at work in you. Amen. Amen. You must claim that. And you must live from that inside out. You already have faith. The spirit is already allowing your intellect to touch God. It's the only way you're going to touch him is in that virtue of faith. You already have hope. You already have charity. It's already there. And so it does take a little imagination sometimes to go in and speak to the Lord. We have simple prayers for acts of faith, hope and love. They're beautiful. But we sang it this morning, the after community after community and song. Do you remember what Bob and the girls were singing? I believe. I adore. I hope and I love you. I believe. I adore. I hope and I love you. Prayer and contemplative prayer is not a warm, fuzzy feeling. You might get a consolation. You might not. And the thing about speaking to adults is you know the ups and downs. You just repeat the truth. I believe. I adore. I hope and I love you. So in paragraph 2710 of the catechism on contemplative prayer, the church says this to us. The choice of the time and duration of prayer arises from a determined will, a determined will that reveals the secrets of the heart, a determined will. One makes time for God. This is not a secret. And it's no game that God's playing. You are the woman at the well, the man at the well, wherever you are in your life. And God goes out of his way to come to you. That's what Jesus did in Samaria. He went the long way to her, that divine appointment. And he says to you as he says to her, if you only knew, if you only knew how much God is wanting, desiring with a passionate desire for you to know the depth of his love in his presence, to have that divine encounter. If you were convinced of that, convicted of it, if you knew it's why you were created for that union, you would make time for him. You would stop being a moving target. You would make those appointments. I'm here, Lord. I'm here because you love me and you want me to know that love and you want to release within me grace upon grace upon grace, power upon power upon power that I would be for you and for the world, your tabernacle. And so here I am. I have carved out this time to set everything aside that you would have your will and your purpose in me. It's a lie of Satan. And I'm convicted. It's the greatest lie he says to us. God doesn't really want to bother with you. So why bother with him? Because if Satan can keep us distracted and disoriented, then his victory is gained. You don't have to be a great DRA. You don't have to be a great Catechus. You don't have to write the next book. You don't have to do any of that. You have been created for one thing alone. It is for this union with God. Invest in that relationship and you will change the world. Sometimes when I get busy, I know that's hard for you to believe. I live in a convent that has Jesus in the chapel. He's right there and we leave the doors open. So every time I'm walking around, I can just say, hello, Lord. And sometimes outside of my assigned time for prayer, I let myself get distracted. And finally, I drop at the end of the day and I'm like, oh, sorry about that. And one time as I was in my busyness, Martha, Martha, I heard the Lord say, can't you just sit with me for a little bit? And it was a pleading call from his heart. Can't you just sit here for a bit? I just want to spend time with you. I really want to be with you. So dear friends, I want to encourage you tomorrow. Maybe it's not all day. Maybe it's not all three hours of adoration. But you have come. You have been called by God. Turn your phone off. You've already come all this way. Indulge yourself and the Lord and spend some time with him. Spend some time with him. Let's pray. In the name of the Father and of the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. And I invite you just to go within. Just take the journey within. Speak to the Lord who's within you and listen for his voice. And what does he say? I am here. I love you. I have always loved you. And I always will. All glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is now never shall be world without end. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Alrighty. We have a little time for questions, but I want to ask you just one thing. Okay. And this is not feedback for any kind of, but if you were moved interiorly, like if your heart was stirred and moved by this presentation, raise your hand and it's okay if it wasn't. Okay. So what you just encountered, what you just encountered is what I call contemplative preaching because I'm not going to be able to do that talk next year because we're going to the Eucharist of Congress, but next year we were going to do a talk on contemplative preaching. But since I was inspired and I said, you just saw it. You just saw it. What did she do? Right. You got an intellectual presentation. Did you not? You learned something, didn't you about the theological virtues, but you didn't just get information. Did you? That's called contemplative preaching that when truth is handed on, it's handed on from the spirit in the spirit through the spirit so that what's touching your mind in truth is stirring your soul to desire God more. Amen. Thank you. She's my favorite non-Dominican. All right. If you have a question, go ahead and go to the center and Teresa come up and we'll try to answer whatever we can. And if you need to go, go ahead. All right. So hi. I work as a therapist. I do a lot of healing of memory, but I was really moved by conviction and energizing conviction and resting and conviction in regards to the contemplative life and healing in general. So I was wondering if you could just speak more about that. Yes. And so I've also worked with people with healing of memory actually, and so that might be what's coming out in that. And so conviction is, and you know, our motto, Dominicans is truth. Very tossing. So memory can also lodge a lie because especially for children, their experience is taken in, but they don't possess a reason, a developed reason that knows how to interpret the experience. Do you understand? And so what happens in the memory is I have an experience, but it's attached to a false logic that then continues to spin out of control. And so memory, the critical thing with memory is truth and going on and on about truth and that conviction of what's playing in your memory, that, okay, that's playing in your memory, but is that true? And so that's why sacred study is so critical to what the work you're doing. And I did that here on the campus when I lived here for some time with the young women. We got a doctrine catechism study going and I'm like, you girls just need more doctrine. That's your problem. Can you get less emotion, more intellect? Just one little footnote. The Carmelite doctors, so Teresa of Avalon, John of the Cross, Teresa of the Child Jesus, they're pretty clear that in the process of transformation as the mustard seed grows, as the yeast, that there is a purification of the memory as well. Thank goodness, right? So yeah, and you know, sometimes these, the distractions can be a trampoline to jump into God's arms. And if we use it that way, if it becomes a trigger for an act of faith, hope and love, if the source of it is outside of our self, if Satan is after us that way, he'll stop because he's not getting what he wanted. Thank you, Teresa. Don't go too far. Go ahead. I'm hoping I can get this out. So I teach RCIA, director of RCIA, and we got a lot of obviously Protestants coming in. And a lot of them have read books like The Cosmic Christ or something like that where they're praying and they're in contemplative prayer, but the truth is missing, I think. And so can you expand more on, like, Christ is the mediator, right, between God and man, not the Spirit and not God the Father. So there's that physical aspect. And you talked about going to adoration where you're physically present and the liturgy where you're consuming physically Christ, which is all over that board. Where it's not like this nebulous blob of spirituality that, you know, and because what I see, I don't know if anybody's read that book, but it comes up all the time in RCIA, and it was written by a Catholic, The Cosmic Christ, is there's these elements of truth, but it's like this invisible spiritual communion through the Holy Spirit. And Christ, there's heresy in it. Christ was just this guy. So that's part one of my question is, I think the distinction in the trinity of Christ's role with contemplative prayer and the Holy Spirit. And then the second question, again, goes to the physical aspect. We have a mother, like a real mother who was immaculately conceived and her part in contemplative prayer for us. There's two questions there. I haven't read The Cosmic Christ. I mean, Deschardin wrote about the, oh, Richard Moore, okay, okay. Yes. Well, that's, so sometimes people get catchy phrases and want to try to run on that. Deschardin talked about The Cosmic Christ. My understanding of that was just the sense of the all in all, really, that God has created all things and he's redeeming all things, bringing all things back to him, and that's from Scripture. So anyone who gets into kind of a nirvana thing, that's what we're trying to deal with. This is not a nirvana. It's not an ethereal feeling. God has revealed his face to me. I can meditate on that through Scripture and the catechism, and I can encounter him truly in the Eucharist. And so you're right, taking them to an incarnational dimension. It's a good thing to be incarnational. God became flesh and dwelt among us. So I do think that even Protestants who come to our faith, they need that final purification because they have done away with that which is incarnational. That's kind of what the Protestant, that's what happened to them. And so drawing them back more and more to that. So the best response to that is to listen to what they're saying, okay, and to ask them, I mean my first thing, because I'm a converted catechist, what is it that's appealing to you about that? And listen, so where are they into this cosmic Christ? And then to begin to move them into the beauty of the incarnation. So Saint Dominic, when he was preaching, that was a heresy that he was dealing with. It's probably just come back and being repackaged that the body is evil and the flesh is evil. And so Dominic was preaching the rosary and preaching the sacraments to deal with that. God became flesh. This is our gift, the condescension. And so just stay the course with that. God became flesh and dwelt among us. The rosary is a good thing to preach as well for that because we're meditating on that incarnation. I don't know if that helped. Yeah. Just keep bringing them back to the catechism, keep bringing them back to the scripture. God became flesh. Keep bringing them back to the Eucharist, ground them in the sacraments. Use the story of Christ healing the blind man with spit and mud. I love that. It's my favorite parable. Spit and mud. I want to circle, did you want to say something? I want to circle back to that discussion you had about memory and the memories that children learn. I worked with highly traumatized adults, many of whom victims of abuse and whatnot. And it's become clear to me that through their experience, two things are clear. One is they believe things about themselves in the world and others that simply isn't true. They come to believe things. And it's also my experience in working with people who are people of faith. I bring a faith lens to working with them that those parts of them that believe those things have the illusion of existing outside of God's love. And for some reason that those parts are not accessible. They can't allow those parts to be accessed by God's love. And the healing that becomes necessary is actually that. It's bringing our Lord's love into those broken parts so that they can have a different experience and unlearn the things that they erroneously learned about themselves in the world, that they aren't loveable, that they aren't wanted. Like all of the ways which God loves us, which they don't know. So I just wanted to sort of frame that. Is that, yeah. Did I lose my mic? Okay. The question is a little outside of the contemplative prayer conversation, but it's a very important one. And I'd like to talk to you a little bit about that personally. But let me just go here. Okay. Because people who have been traumatized and I'm not an expert in this. I know my own life and I know people that I have prayed with. And so this is the gift what Trice was trying to show us, is that the spirit can do what even the intellect can't unravel. Yes. You with me? So in the ministry of the church, there are people who do things like theophistic prayer, which is a prayer of light that lead people to a place of their trauma. And then the spirit enters into that experience and heals. And so that's not something that you can talk someone into. Because the logic, the lie, it's just a difficulty of the brokenness of our fallen nature. And so when the spirit comes in to our memory, he's filling a ravine that has been dug out through trauma and it's his presence I have found. It's his actual presence in that experience and that trauma and that memory that brings someone to healing. I completely agree. And that can take years and years and years as you know. Yeah, I can. I wanted to read a poem. Is that okay? Yes, sir. It's called Agape. Resting gently in knowing truth fills our being alone yet never lonely. Love fills space and time. Poured out yet never emptied. Grace filled, we come home. Having faith, we will be caught. Trusting, we let go. Falling into love's embrace. I'd love a copy of that. I really would. Dear friends, I know we have some more questions. Well, Teresa can stay. I'm expected at the bookstore right now. I'm going to go do book signing. I'm so excited my first time ever. But I'm going to have to excuse myself if you don't mind because I know people are going to be expecting me there and we'll be around. Teresa is open for I think direction and she'll just make herself available. But I do have to just excuse everyone and then if you want to ask a question personally, you can come on up. Okay. Thank you so much for your attention. We've got some more talks today on contemplative life, contemplative study, entering the Sabbath rest of Sister Mary Madeleine. We'll do a talk on discernment of spirits, which tangent with this presentation and then God bless you. Thanks so much.