 Thank you, boy, Bob, for that fantastic introduction. Your friendship means so much to me, or at least it did until the response after my talk. But I just want to start because I know that there's a question that has been burning within all of your hearts over the last 48 hours. Because as you remember, Sister Johanna got up here and said that she was one of two Canadians on the Catechetics faculty. When you see the truth is, I am Canadian. Thank you. Hey, Canadians, let's go. Stand up. Come on. Come on, you hosers. Let's go. Come on. Everybody up. Both of you. I thought there was more. I thought there was more Canadians here. All right. Yeah. True North Strong and Free. Go. All right. Great to be here. How's it going, eh? Okay. How about those hockey playoffs? All right. Okay. You know, Capital's fans here? Yeah. Pretty awesome. OV. There you go. So my talk here, the title wasn't long enough, so I decided to add some more verbiage to it. But it's recognizing and responding to the love of Christ during challenging pastoral moments. Actually, it was supposed to say by Eric Westby. But it says with challenging pastoral moments with Eric Westby. Thank you. Yeah. All right. So, let's see if I get this right. Here we go. Oh, come on. Clicker. There we go. I have to introduce you to the family. That's my wife, Nikki, and our five daughters. As Drake McAllister, or Deacon Drake McAllister would say, Blessed am I among women? Or as Bob Rice, don't call him boy wonder, as he would say about our family is that we are the domestic convent. You probably all didn't realize that the domestic convent comes with a court jester. Guess who it is? You have no clue, do you? So anyways, the Franciscan University has been very important for, it's been really important for our five daughters because this is where Nikki and I met. And we went, met way back in January of 1994. It was before Barbara Morgan had shown up. But I actually started in the middle of the school year, and Nikki had been in the Masters in Counseling Program for the semester before that. And so I started in the theology program. The specialization in catechetics hadn't even started yet. And I remember the first time I was there. I didn't know anybody. I went to this party. It was a bunch of graduate students at the residence of one, Nicole Bourne, and they were playing this game called Taboo. You remember Taboo? Okay. Well, actually I really didn't play it that night. I was like a wallflower. I was a little nervous. Just looking at people trying to make some new friends. And eventually I thought, well, that girl who gal, woman who was hosting the party, she looks kind of attractive. So maybe I'll try to get her to notice me. And I remember more than once passing her on campus and trying to do, you're like this and then you're like, you know. And it was like this the whole day. It was before cell phones. So she was like this the whole time. And just like, you know, no recognition at all that I even existed. So finally on a retreat, you know, we got to know each other. And she said, oh yeah, you know, you're kind of a nice guy. You've got a sense of humor. And so, you know, eventually I got the courage to be able to ask her out. And she said, yes, we went to Mass on the first date. It's the last time we've ever been to Mass. No, just kidding. I just want to see your faces. It looked pretty funny. Anyways, so asked her out, started dating. But then I don't know if you, you know, those of you who are married, especially the men, if you experienced this kind of a moment with your, at that time, at that time for me, it was the woman I was dating, but she was to be my bride. We had kind of a point of no return. And it actually happened very close to her. You're probably all thinking, oh, it was in the Port Sienkla. And you were two, you were praying in there. And the lights opened up and God, you know, shown his light on you. And the two of you knew you were for each other forever, right? Wasn't that your moment? No. It was actually at the baseball field. And it was a Saturday night. It was during Defending the Faith Conference. And the students could get in for free. And so decided, well, you know what, Scott Hahn is speaking that night. So let's go and let's catch the talk. And, you know, that'd be great. So as we got here, we were a little bit late. And so we parked way out on the far side of the baseball field. And all the cars were basically parked. You have cars parked, dirt road, chain link fence, baseball field. Okay. And so here we are. We pulled in and in front of us is a pickup truck with the gate down. We eventually found out that the truck was from Ontario. But in the back of the truck was this beautiful German Shepherd. And we get out of the truck and Nicky says, oh, I grew up with German Shepherds. I love German Shepherds. Hey, boy, how are you? How are you? German Shepherd's reaction? Canadian German Shepherd, by the way. Maybe that's why we have so few Canadians here today, because this German Shepherd was like... And the German Shepherd was not on a short leash. Yeah, exactly. You know where this is going. And so German Shepherd jumps out of the back of the truck and pins Nicky up against the chain link fence. Do you remember that moment in Back to the Future when George McFly was pondering for years about punching Biff? Remember that? That was totally my moment. And so the dog... And we found out the dog's name, the Canadian dog's name. I thought I could trust Canadian dogs. The Canadian dog's name was Ozzie. I'm thinking like Ozzie Osborn, right? He's going to devour my girlfriend. And so instantaneously, this is the closest that's ever happened to me in terms of becoming the Incredible Hulk. I had so much rage over me. I wanted to just fight the beast all night and show him his mortal end. But basically what I did was I just got so overwhelmed with adrenaline that I knocked the dog off. And I thought I was actually fighting the dog, but the dog ran out of leash. And Nicky was safe. I was safe, except I looked down. I'm like, Ozzie took a bite out of me. Ozzie took a bite out of me. Oh, my gosh. My knee was bleeding. And so then we had to find Ozzie's owner. Well, the conference was going on. I'm sure, Mark Joseph, I'm sure you could fight. You could have found Ozzie's owner much faster than what happened back in the day here. Because we couldn't find him. And then by the time we came in here and talked to people, they couldn't find the owner, went back. And by the time we went back to our car, Ozzie and owner were gone. Back to the true north strung and free. I got bit by a dog. You know what that means? Rabie shots. Somehow, providentially, we found, I don't know how it happened, because it was so long ago, actually, but we somehow found, tracked down Ozzie's owner in Ontario. And I guess he was a Hamilton Tiger Cat fan. I'm supposed to do a few things. Oh, Canadian football joke. You don't get it. I'm sorry. There was like three people here that were like, oh yeah, that totally makes sense. So we tracked down Ozzie's owner, and this is how long ago it was. We got a fax, basically, of his Rabie shots. So I'm fine. Thank you for asking. I'm fine. Thank you. And it was just great being a student here and being part of the student life. The professors were fantastic. They were more than at Scott Hahn for many classes and got to know Scott and just a great guy, a great support. And he was able to help us to not only study well, but to live the Christian life well. And even he helped to get us in place and in check and make sure that we weren't going too far off the intellectual deep end, that we were taking care of our personal lives. And so one time, actually Bob and I were on the same flag football team. And Bob manned the defensive line. Oh yeah, Bob the Bear Rice. Oh yeah. I mean he may not be 6'8", 280 pounds, but if that flag was close to him, for myself, I was the quarterback of the grad A team. I was the quarterback. And we had the likes on our offensive unit as Pete Murphy as you know from USCCB and Chris Chapman from Diocese of Pittsburgh. There were my wide outs. I remember every pass they dropped, but that's not what I'm here to talk to you about tonight. But anyways, and what I would do to call plays is I basically, I would crunch down in the catcher's position. If I do that tonight, I won't get up for about three hours. So I'm not going to actually do that. But I would pull out a sheet with six plays on the front and six plays on the back. I'm going to show it to the guys and I would say, we're going to do this play. Everybody got it? Three, ready, go. Well, one time I'm down and I pull that sheet out. And low. A voice cried forth from the sidelines, Eric, put away your theology notes. Scott Hahn, it really happened. Yeah. All right. Any other questions? Well again, great to be with you tonight. And as a background, I have a lot of experience in the parishes and diocese and I just wanted to share with you how to deal with difficult moments that arise in your work settings, no matter where you find yourself. But again, my experience is primarily coming from the parish end of things. And so the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to reflect on Romans 5.5, which is our scriptural verse and theme for the conference. And then I'm going to just lay out for you some difficult pastoral situations that we often encounter in the parishes and then offer some strategies, some suggestions for moving forward. So the first thing we'll do by means of prayer is just let's just kind of soak in the scripture verse. I'm going to read it a couple of times and I just invite you to listen to it and then allow it to just soak in your heart. God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. And one more time. God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. So when I first heard that I was giving this talk, Petrarch told me about two years ago, so I've had two years to stress over it, but anyways that's another issue. But when I read the scripture verse, I believe in one of our meetings it was Deacon Drake that came up with this, and I was just meditating on it, and I thought it would be good to just give a little bit of a context to it, so you can see what St. Paul is discussing here. And so within the bigger framework of the passage, he had been talking St. Paul about the virtue, the theological virtue of faith, and he had been arguing to this point in Romans essentially that it's saying that faith is what saves us, not the Old Testament liturgical rituals, not the works of the law. And then what he does in this passage is he pulls in together faith, hope, and love, but in particular I want you to listen to what he's saying about hope. And he says therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace through God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings. Knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. So what I want you just to be aware of is that what St. Paul does in this passage is give us two pathways to the theological virtue of hope, the theological virtue of hope in which Christ, we recognize that Christ is the one who has our future in his hands, right? And there's two pathways. And the first is you see in verse 2, right? Is this contemplation, meditation on this future glory, right? And we think that Christ, we think about how Christ is the victor, right? Christ will bring all things together in the future. But then there's also path number two that can take us to the virtue of hope. And of course it's not necessarily the way we want to go, but St. Paul says, we rejoice in sufferings because sufferings produce endurance, which leads to character. Character produces hope, right? And so essentially what St. Paul is saying there, right? Is that if we go through hard times and we get through them and we go through them again and we get through them, we are going to learn that the sufferings that we go through here on earth, we can get through them no matter how difficult they seem, right? And the reason he says that this is not going to disappoint us, I thought he would have said going into the second part of verse 5, I thought he would have said, and hope does not disappoint us because we know Christ rose from the dead. But that isn't what he said. Instead of pointing exteriorly to something Christ did, what he does, St. Paul, is he points interiorly into us. And as he goes on in Romans, as you know, he talks about baptism. And essentially what he is saying is that hope does not disappoint because now you and I, through baptism, are the temples of the Holy Spirit. God dwells in us. And because God dwells in us, we have an ontological change. That's my big word for the night. Repeat after me, ontological. I have no clue what that means. Can anybody define it for me? No. It's a change in being, right? Your person has changed. And your person has changed in baptism, right? You become a new creature. And among other effects, you're brought into relationship with God. You're part of his family, right? And so that presence lives within us because we're his children. And that presence is there, pulling us through these difficult times. And so as I was meditating on this, the word that stood out for me is the word suffering. And I started to think about difficulties that we have that I've faced, that I've seen others face on the level of parish staffs. But this, of course, could be, this could be, in some respects, anywhere. But I think, of course, about a parish staff or diocesan staff, right? And I think about these difficulties. In part because I'm trying to wrestle with the question, I mean, we get so full of zeal, we get great instruction. And yet, we can go out into the parish with this, this great mission of the church that's been handed on to us. And we get into parish situations. And then all of a sudden, there could be a person or event or something. And all it seems like all of our formation is for naught. We don't get to implement it. And when that's happened to me, that's been a source of suffering, of difficulty. And so I want to name some of those situations. And then hopefully we'll have enough time to see how to go forward. No, I'm kidding. We will see how to go forward with them. So you have situations that are, you know, which we have everywhere. I'm not saying that we have this in our household. But in most places, my wife's right there. I mean, she has to deal with a lot, right? You know that. So but you have situations that where it's, you know, people are, you know, they're friendly. But they're a little annoying, right? A lot of, well, bless his or her heart, you know, he or she likes to really talk a lot. I'm trying to move on to something else. And this person won't stop talking. But that's okay. I'm going to offer that up. This is the easy step. It's going to get fun or after this, right? You know, friendly, but annoying. We all have to deal with it, you know, part and parcel of life. But then you get into situations. Oops. I went too far ahead. Oh, oh, you saw where I was going. Okay. You really don't want to know about situations two through and three. But everybody what what is that over there? Okay, great. All right. Yeah, so let's just I'm going to break situation one down into a B and C. Let's just call this one, one, a now what would one be look like? Situation number two, I would describe as difficult, but workable, difficult, but workable. So these kinds of situations seem to slow down the program growth or the parish growth, but you can persevere through them, right? You know, for example, that you get people that are that are tired, may not necessarily be in the right job. And again, I'm just giving you examples here. I'm not when I give you examples, I'm not trying to point out anybody by name, or any position, you know, or trends, etc. But let's just say, for example, hypothetically speaking, a cranky receptionist. Hi, welcome to the parish. What do you want? Okay. Nothing. I'm fine. Now, by the way, don't don't raise your hand. If I if I tell you a situation, you're like, Oh, yeah, that's totally me. Keep your hand down. Right? You know, but oftentimes we can get into positions with the staff where we're constantly justifying our position. Right. So now tell me again, why do we need to have you here as a full-time youth minister? I mean, could we do it? Do it, you know, with a volunteer youth minister? And you're like, Can you please just go to the Cara Georgetown Cara website and look at the statistics of the number of people not going to Mass on Sunday. But of course, I hold that in. I try to give a little bit more of a justifiable response coming from the mission of the church. But a lot of times we have people, right? They're constantly trying to get us to justify what we're doing, right? And it starts to put us on the defensive. You know, because are they trying to eliminate our position, right? A lot of times it's difficult on para staffs. When you have people in key positions that really don't understand the mission of the church. So they're kind of learning that along the job. A lot of times, I've seen difficulties with, you know, parish, catechetical staff will have a certain job description and expectations on it. And then all of a sudden, somebody will try to add something new to it. Like I remember back when I was a youth minister, I guess I got careful when I was, I mean, hypothetically, I knew of a youth minister back back in the day. He's terrible. He was horrible. He was a youth minister . He was asked, would you like to drive the bus as part of your duties here? No, I wouldn't. You know, because we had a pair of school. I'm like, no, I don't want to do that. You run into silos, right? You run into people just kind of working on their own thing, but there's not really collaboration, right? And oftentimes, of course, that there's this rut of complacency, like we've always done it like that. So you come in with new ideas from a Bosco conference and people are like, yeah, that's nice. That's not happening, right? I'm not saying that that has ever happened to anybody here. Right? Sometimes there's a lack of appreciation. And it's kind of at this point, hey, I just noticed this. I knew it was there. I was just seeing if you're just seeing if you're awake. Somebody here's got to stay awake. So you have the situations you should you all should number it like one B, right? Just to make me look good. So you have these situations that are difficult but workable. And depending on the situation and what's going on, trust can start to be hurt, right? And then you've got situation number three. But you're cheered for like a really difficult one because it's difficult and unworkable. Now, I remember 2009 2010, I was working at our diocese and pastoral center, and we had two rounds of layoffs. And I don't know that I've ever seen anything worse. Now, for some reason, I, I passed both of those cuts. It's always because they like Nikki. That's the bottom line here with all of this. You know, they wanted to support her, my wife, I'm talking about. But there was nothing as as gut wrenching as sitting across the table from somebody and telling them your position is done. That's it would be myself and my supervisor and the people that I would supervise. And I remember I would start the conversation off and I would start I would start crying. And then my supervisor would take it over and go from there. You know, obviously, the person across knows what's happening, right. And so that I have seen really take people and send them into a dark place. Because we all know that we're doing ministry and we're doing this work because we have we have love for the Lord. Lord, you brought me into this position. You brought me here to a point of service. And now you're taking it away from me. And it's such a deep punch in the gut. It's hard for people to respond to that. And it's hard not to have their faith impacted negatively by that and intertwined in it. You know, so budget cuts, budget layoffs. You know, sometimes you have difficult but unworkable situations that may not necessarily be bad. For example, a difference in philosophy, maybe there's a new pastor that comes in wants to do it differently than the way you do it. And even though that can be challenging, there's actually at times a silver lining with that, you know, you go and work where you feel called where your gifts are, right. Doesn't mean what the pastor, the new pastor is doing is bad. It just means that it's different. And you may have gifts, you know, you may have gifts and catechesis a good shepherd, and you're doing that. But your pastor wants to use Mary Jo's textbook series. Awesome. Great. But you want to do catechesis a good shepherd, so you're gonna go somewhere else. That happens. And that that's okay. There could be a little sting to it, right? But having these situations, they can be difficult and unworkable. Sometimes it feels okay. And sometimes it really impacts us. Again, because our faith is intertwined with it. Surprise point number four, you had no done no idea this was coming. This is now where it gets really difficult. And it may come from one or two people in particular. But this is these are situations where you find yourself on a parish staff. And it seems like there's one person out there that's trying to throw you under the bus so that you or I can get fired. Right. Maybe they feel threatened by the work that you're doing. Right. Maybe I don't know. It could be a power struggle, could be a power play. You know, somebody is really enjoying making the key decisions. And they want to exercise that. And it's not the pastor, right. I mean, you've seen these these relationships happen at parish life. A lot of people like to, you know, pretend that they have the authority to make decisions. And they make these decisions and they may not necessarily be authorized to do it. And so there can be these intense power grabs. I've had people tell me who've worked out in the I almost said real world. I'm like, no, no, the theologically wrong. The corporate world. I've had people tell me that, yeah, people treated each other better out in the corporate world than they do in the church. Everybody's saying amen to that. I mean, that's that's leave the amens for my last point. Okay, my last point is going to be really uplifting. Right. So say amen there. Amen. The church is a terrible place to work yet. Okay, great. Hallelujah. I've seen gossip, right? The gossip train. I've seen it tear down parishes. Horrible. What it does to people. I've seen people either actively, like directly to the person, try to get them fired, or passively kind of go around and set up situations so that they can get fired. And again, what this does, I mean, it could obviously really impacts negatively impacts parish staff life. Right. But the thing that I'm really concerned about that I want to be making sure that I'm naming is how this impacts our personal faith. And it can be very difficult. Now, why do these things happen? I why do we have these kind of difficulties? It's multifaceted. I'm just going to give you a few things. One of the things that I hope that happens from this talk, outside of Bob changing his response. Let's face it, that's, that's the big thing here. One of the things that I hope that happens is that as you walk out of this, that you're conversing with each other, you're talking about this, because there's not going to be a one size fits all answer to this. Partly what I just want to do is I want to name these situations so that that once you name it, you can begin to pray and strategize how to go forward. But a lot of times, you know, people have human issues that they're dealing with. Everybody has the human issue of original sin that they're dealing with and they all, you know, we all struggle with making the right free decisions. So sin is always going to be present there. But one of the things that's very important to know is in a certain sense, how are people wired? How are they wired to react? These are what are called the temperaments. And basically what the temperaments are is internally, they're God given, and they're internally how we react to given situations. So I am putting a plug in right now for my wife's talk tomorrow, which is going to be, I think in the second round of sessions, where she's going to give a talk on the temperaments and what they are and why they're important to know about when we're in ministry, right? So people react out of temperaments and then of course they react out of, you know, their different psychological makeup. They react out of past hurts. They react out of past experience. But a lot of times people on staff, they're responding out of faith issues. And one of the difficulties that I have seen among parish staffs is that many people working in parishes have trouble articulating their faith in Christ. And so if they're asked, well, why are you a follower of Jesus, or why are you a disciple of Jesus, that would be a very intimidating and difficult answer. And I'm not saying that everybody needs to be a theologian and to answer that with, you know, precise quote from the catechism. Well, maybe they should, but I'm at a catechical conference. But I do find it problematic when people who are working at the church, and for me it doesn't really matter what position, everybody working on the staff should be able to articulate why Jesus is important to them and what it means to follow him. Even if it's a 10 second answer. I don't care whether they're in maintenance, at the front desk, wherever, right? That's so important. Because how can we accomplish the mission of the church if we're not able to articulate that? And it doesn't matter what the position is. But people also have formation issues. And here they are working in parish life. And they really don't know the doctrine of the church, right? That's what we call a problem. And it's difficult, and I know people are busy, and they're in busy schedules. But everybody should know the doctrine of the church, right? It's not just for the elite few. Doctorate is meant for everybody. And so one of the struggles in parish staff is that people don't understand what it is the church teaches. And then people working on parish staff oftentimes struggle with ministry formation issues. Meaning they don't understand the mission of the church. And so, for example, this is actually hypothetical. Well, not that hypothetical. There could be a parish manager who has tremendous, right? Tremendous formation in accounting. Do we need good accountants in the church? Absolutely. Especially so they can make sure that the youth ministry budget gets a nice dose of cash at the beginning of the year. Did I just say that out loud? Did I say that? Okay. Anyways. But that formation in accounting has to be subject to Matthew 28, 18 through 20, and the mission of the church. And so if somebody on the finance council doesn't understand the mission of the church, they need that formation. And so many parishes are struggling to make these type of decisions that are needed for the kingdom and they don't understand what's going on. I mean, God bless them. I was in that position, right? All I'm saying is that we need to help everybody who's in a key leadership position to get these basics down, right, to get that. And so this starts to create within the culture of, for example, a parish staff, a lot of difficulties when it comes to moving forward, because it's just one opinion against another against another, and there's difficulty articulating the mission of the church, right? And all of these formation issues that I talked about are important. All right. So how do we move forward? Well, the bottom line to this talk is aren't we victims? So let's protest. Let's protest tomorrow. Just kidding, by the way. It's like, this guy over here was like, really? We're going to protest tomorrow? Yeah, we're going to be on TV. Yeah, this is great. Yeah, finally, church workers for the new evangelization. They marched down downtown, the main downtown road in Steubenville, Ohio. What are those things even accomplished? Never mind. I'm getting off track. Moving forward. Moving forward. How do we go forward? We got to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first. We have to mature ourselves. I, we could talk about this after my talk, but some of the mistakes that I made in ministry in the first three, four, five years, right? Learn from experience. We have to have the mentality of being of service for others and of and even deeper than that of emptying ourselves, right? Like the Lord emptied himself for the sake of others. And to really empty ourselves means that, and I know that this is difficult. I'm not saying I do this, but it means that we're not counting the cost. So you and I cannot play the victim, even if we find ourselves in very difficult situations, right? We can't play the victim. And we always have to recognize that when it comes to working at a parish, we have to constantly improve and never to get complacent with where we're at. I still do RCIA at my parish. And I love RCIA. And I'm still trying to learn how to do it better than I did the year before, right? It doesn't, it doesn't matter what degrees I, I mean, it doesn't matter what degrees I have, but I pursued the degrees because I want to get better. And I still want to get better. And so what I want to impress upon you is the need and the mentality to improve. So when it comes, for example, to things such as intellectual formation, you're in a great place here. But what I don't want for you is that you walk out of here one day saying, Well, I'm all done. I've learned everything I need to know. Somebody who I got my PhD at the Maryvale Institute, and I started when Petrock was there. And my advisor at the time, some of you may remember, she used to come to this conference, Caroline Ferry. But Dr. Ferry would tell me, Eric, we need to be about getting as many degrees as we can, so that we can be articulating this mission of the church as as best we can, right? So we can have the broadest impact. And part of maturing ourselves is moving deeper and deeper into the intellectual life of the church. What I have found with that is that the more that I deepen my intellectual formation, the better I am at articulating the ministry of the church and the mission of the church to my pastor, to staff, etc. to people that I interact with and have things gotten better for me. Yeah. And again, sometimes it's not always easy. But equipping myself there has helped me tremendously. The other thing that I think is important with maturing ourselves is we have to work on our human issues, as I mentioned before, right? Psychological emotional issues. We have to work, of course, on our spiritual life. We have to get more pastoral skills. But what I want to say about all of them is that I think it's crucial that we have mentors. And one of the difficulties that I've seen people have, especially when they have some kind of a crisis working in a parish or a diocese, is that when they retreat into their own shells, when they retreat in their own shells, and they're not talking to other people, they lose that perspective. And it starts to bring on depression and anxiety. And that's something that Petrock and Bill Keimig are so great at emphasizing the need for mentors. So if you can find a spiritual director, have a spiritual director, if you can find somebody who's in ministry that you can learn from, learn from that person, right, whether it's your spouse or somebody else who can give you honest feedback, you know, to say things like you are overreacting in this situation, you need to kind of put it in better perspective, that kind of mentorship, I think it's been crucial to me, I think it's crucial to us, right? But what I want to argue, though, is that I think when we have these difficulties at the parish level, there's something even deeper that we have to remember. And there's something even more important than our parish programs. Not to say that our parish programs are not important, of course they're important, right, because we want to work from the heart of the church, and we want the mission of the church to grow and to succeed. But even if we find ourselves in a situation where potentially we're the only one that understands the mission of the church, and maybe others are giving us a bad time, or, you know, maybe things just aren't growing the way we hoped it would, they would in the parish. There is something we can do. There is a deeper reality that we can know that, wait a minute, we have purpose, and we can accomplish something. And what I want to propose to you, and I'm actually borrowing this from, I guess probably my second favorite saying, okay, so blessed mother. Yes, I brought in a big gun for this, because I want to make sure that you understand clearly what I'm talking about. I brought in a big gun, or maybe as some of you referred to her, a little flower. That's right. And as I was preparing for this talk, I was reading the story of a soul. Remember the first time I read it, it was 25 years ago, I had a hard time because there was so much love in it, and I couldn't understand that. So I don't know what she's talking about here. But slowly but surely, I read it more and more and read it more and more. And as I was preparing for this, I read part of the third manuscript. If you know in story of the soul, it's made of three manuscripts, right, that she wrote, and she wrote each of them out of obedience. And in the third one, she's writing this in particular on love of neighbor. And she's describing what her philosophy is in terms of love of neighbor. But what I want you to realize and recognize as I shared these points with you, is that when she was writing this, her tuberculosis was progressing. And she wasn't quite in her final phase, but she was in her phase where her energy was almost gone. And the last part of that manuscript, if you get a chance to go back and look at it, it just stops. And it just stops because her pencil, she didn't have any energy anymore to write. But here's what I want you to walk away with from that. And again, if you get a chance to read this, please go ahead and do so for yourself. The first thing is she saw Jesus as the source of her love of neighbor. She knew that it was beyond her ability to love neighbor as she should. So she turned to the Lord for that strength. And she was reflecting on how the Lord loved the apostles in spite of all their weaknesses, and how deeply he loved them and cared for them, even though they walked away from him, even though they denied him. And so she was reflecting on that. And she recognized that in order to be able to love like that, she didn't have the power to do that, she needed his grace. She needed, like we heard in Romans 5, 5, she needed the love of God to be poured out within her. And so she knew she had to stay united to Jesus through her prayer, through going to Mass, through adoration. But she also knew that this was going to be connected to how she treated her sisters. And so two things with that. First, she trained herself how to look at them properly. She didn't judge their intentions. She wasn't surprised at their failures. She was edified when they did the smallest of virtues. She controlled her thoughts. That's something that I need to ponder. I need to control my thoughts about the people that work in my parish. And she directed those thoughts to charity. And in presuming good intentions, right, she never, she allowed herself not to speculate negatively about somebody else. And so in her thoughts, she guarded those, right? As precious thoughts, keeping them well intended about others. And then she watched how she treated others, what kind of, what her actions were to others. And so she wanted to manifest her love for her fellow sisters in doing good works, in smiling when there was disagreement on the table, in avoiding vain arguments. Because she realized that if she found herself in a vain argument, not that this would ever happen in a parish, if she was in a vain argument, she knew that that would steal her peace. So she wanted to guard her peace in the Lord. And she didn't look to defend herself in trivial matters. She looked at herself as humble and weak, always in need of improvement, always in need of the Lord's graces. She didn't look at others, though at, I was going to say at the parish, at the convent, right? She didn't look at others in the convent as enemies. But she did say, you know, in Carmel, in her convent, we don't have enemies, but there are feelings. I thought it was funny, actually. I thought it was, I'm like, I get that. I understand. Have you seen what the domestic convent where I come from? I understand that. I'm like, Saint Therese, you are a genius. No, I'm not inferring anything, by the way. She's right over here. She's like, what are you talking about me? I'll be talking to you later, kid. Okay, so Saint Therese felt that there weren't enemies in the convent. But what about when you and I are faced with really difficult situations where it feels like somebody's trying to take us down? Well, this, of course, is where we go back to the Lord in Matthew chapter five, verses 43 and 44, where the Lord says that we must love our enemies. We must love them. And I don't believe that that was hyperbole. I believe it was a direct challenge to all of us, right? Not to put conditions on that, but to love enemies. But I do think we have to be wise in how we love those that are trying to do harm to us. In other words, I think that we have to qualify that type of love with certain parameters. Again, reiterating what Saint Therese said, I think if we find ourselves in difficult situations, we have to keep our intentions pure. Meaning that we want not only the best for ourselves, but even the best for the person that's that's causing us grief. So we have to keep our intentions pure. I do think that we must be guarded in difficult situations where we know somebody is looking to entrap us. So we must be guarded. And don't take it on my word. Keep reading Romans chapter 16. Because Saint Paul says in Romans 16 verse 17, I appeal to your brethren to take note of those who create dissensions and difficulties in opposition to the doctrine which you have been taught. Avoid them. I'm going with Saint Paul on that one, by the way. I think, yeah, avoid them. But we also know we can't completely avoid them. So what do we do? We engage when necessary. Absolutely. And we do so. Remembering the words of Saint Therese with a cheerful demeanor. And when we interact, we interact cordially, right? We hold ourselves to the highest standard possible in terms of how to treat people. Even if we're getting attacked over it. So we work positively and generously. And if somebody asks for something from us, we give it to them. We go the extra mile if we can. But we also have to know that even with those who are treating us like we're their enemies and that we're having deep conflict with, there are times when we have to go on the offensive and confront. This is what Pope Francis says in Godete at exultate number 119. He's talking about the life of holiness. And he says, this life of holiness does not mean walking around with eyes lowered, not saying a word and fleeing the company of others at times precisely because someone is free of selfishness. He or she can dare to disagree gently to demand justice or to defend the weak before the powerful. Even if it may harm his or her reputation. We don't count the cost. But we do so speaking the truth. Doing so gently, but clearly. Right. And so if somebody is questioning the purpose of our program, by all means, we reflect on the mission of the church and we respond back to them with what the Holy Fathers, what the Magisterium has been giving to us about whatever particular catechetical ministry it is we find ourselves. And so if we're getting push and difficulties in the area of why do you have a youth program? We have to stand up for that. We can't let that go without a response. But always we temper our response to charity. Right. And we ask and we try to do so in a win win mentality. Oftentimes, and I want to say something about this, because I know many of you, actually, I don't know this, but I'm guessing that there could be a few of you saying, I'm having a difficult situation with my pastor. And that that's often the elephant in the room. And I want to say a couple of things about this. I think one of the things that I love about being here at Franciscan University is how much we love our priests. I most Nikki will tell you, most of my best friends in Phoenix are priests. I wrote a dissertation on the role of the priest and catechesis. I love priests. But at times, there could be tension. There can be difficulties. So I'll share a couple of things with you on that. In my experience, and hopefully this this is your experience. The pastors has not been the enemy. But at times communication can be hard. It could be difficult. And I know that pastors have a lot on their plate. You know, we love our pastor. We know everybody wants his attention. You know, we see at the end of mass, right, when people are greeting them, right? How everybody wants everybody wants to give him a suggestion and something to do. And it gets overwhelming for him. So if your pastor is hard to pin down, don't take it personally. But but pray for him and look for an opportunity to try to communicate with him. And I don't know what that's going to look like for you. All I'm saying is, don't stop trying. Don't allow yourself to get to the point to say, I can't figure him out. I'm done with him. I'm just going to do things my way. Don't allow yourself to get to that point. Don't allow yourself to put a wall up. Try to engage him. However he can, maybe it's an email, a text in the hall conversations. You know what I'm talking about, right? When, you know, he's going somewhere and you just got over two minutes, but you've got to get something in front of him, right? Work with what he'll give you, right? Affirm him. Thank him for his ministry. And do all you can to be obedient. But also remember too that obedience itself is not a blank check to do whatever, you know, the pastor asks, even though I know that last line on the job description says, and whatever other duties the pastor assigns to you. I know that. I'm familiar with that. But even that obedience has to be tempered by reason. So if you're asked to work 21 days in a row, you can't do, I can't do that. I'm going to be in the hospital sick, right? If he's going to ask me to drive the bus, I can't do that. There's other people that are more gifted to that and they have the desire to do that. I don't have to do that. The other thing that you have to do, depending on your situation, and I want you to know that this is okay if you're in this situation. It's okay to have an exit strategy if it's not working out. Doesn't mean you hate your pastor. It doesn't mean you hate the church or the parish or whatever. But there can be times when you see that it's not going to work out. And if you're a lay person, I'm not going to speak for religious life. If you're a lay person, you have that freedom to make a choice to go somewhere else. And that's okay. It's, I think, really important for us as lay people to be working for pastors that we not only love because they're priests, but we identify with their philosophy and mission and what they're trying to do. And I think it's okay to do that. I'll say this because I know I'm looking at these numbers really do turn red here. And these numbers are accurate. So I've gone over it. So I've got to say just a couple of things in terms of wrapping up. You know, first, if your faith is shaken, know because of Romans 5, 5 that the Holy Spirit is present within you. The Lord hasn't stopped leading you. But we read in Romans 8, chapter 26, likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought. But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with size too deep for words, so that when you and I are going through a deep, difficult time, the Holy Spirit is there. The Holy Spirit is there working on us, bringing us through this suffering because it is leading to endurance and character and hope, which doesn't disappoint because God's love is within us. So if you find yourself in that position where your faith is shaken, remember that the Holy Spirit is there. We must keep our eyes in those situations on our crucified Lord. And remember that for Him it was difficult. Yes, suffering is part of it. Maybe your parish program is not growing the way you want it to do. And you're involved in a suffering. Meditate on the Lord and His crucifixion. And then the last thing is to get counsel. Again, don't try to do this alone. Don't try to do it alone. Get people to help you. Get talking. Get it out. Don't be the lone ranger. So to conclude, I just want you to one more time listen to the words of St. Paul. And as you listen to these words, remember that no matter how difficult the situation is in which you find yourself, that the Lord is there. He's not abandoning you, even if you may be in what feels like a worst case scenario. Don't allow anyone or any situation to take away your faith from Christ. And don't ever doubt that the Lord is absent from you. Because St. Paul says God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, which has been given to us. I was going to say that poured out or poured into, it has different translations. It means not only to pour, but it also has this sense in the Greek of rushing headlong. Do you remember in Lord of the Rings when the water had, you know, was rushing and there was these horses, like water horse deals in the water? Like that's what I'm thinking of when I think of rushing headlong, that the Holy Spirit has been, has been poured out to us, rushing headlong into us in a super abundant way, over pouring into us. That's the presence of the Holy Spirit that is in us. And so we remember God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, which has been given to us. Thank you.