 It's been a long, long day. I got a lot to say. It feels like I'm carrying a two-ton weight. I go to see a friend. Hello. I'm Monsignor Patrick Winslow. And I am Father Matthew Cout. And we are speaking from The Rooftop, a podcast brought to you by Tan Books, in which we invite you to join our conversation out here in the open air. Where we look out upon the world around us from the rooftop of the church and share with you what we see. Hi. How you doing? I am great. I am great. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait before you begin. Have you checked to see how accessible we are now? Yeah, it's all over the place. So I saw that we are on Audible. Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of low. Yeah, they did a fantastic job. Yeah, Tan did a fantastic job. He was giving us all these different directories. So we're really easy to find now. No excuses. I've had some great commentary, some great feedback from people. So I appreciate that. And hopefully this is helpful in some small way. Yeah, it makes it a lot easier because last time when people would ask us about them, I mean, we'd have to find a link. It was hard to locate. I couldn't even locate it. So it's a lot easier now. People can just find them on all the different directories. I just thought it was divine providence trying to keep us hidden. Clearly, clearly. Nobody can do that, right? All right. No, so I cut you off. No, no, I've just been thinking. I had this consideration the other day about someone with whom I work on their spiritual life in an interior form. And the person is very good and very holy, but has never suffered. And I just was considering the sentiment that I had as a father would that I don't wish it on you. And yeah, there was part of me oddly enough that began to think to myself, but I sort of do wish it upon you if it's the means by which you're conformed to Christ. And it got me thinking about actually wishing for people on some level to suffer. Obviously, you're not saying that in the proper sense. You don't really wish it or want it. No one could possibly do that and not have someone as an enemy. Right. But at the same time, I got to thinking that if I knew that I could only have B by going through A and B was so much greater than A that it eclipsed it completely, then I would want to go through it. And I'd want someone else to go through it too. For the better. Yeah. And I got to thinking about the fact that we want to be saved so often. It was not my own original line. I heard the line, read the line. I think it was in Newman. We often don't want to be saved from suffering, not saved from sin, through suffering. And that's a really different thing. And it's at the absolute epicenter of the Christian life. So that's a topic we can't exhaust in any way, shape, or form. I'm happy to set it up. All right. I have two thoughts. All right. Go for it. Two thoughts first. First is basically what you're saying is you don't will people to suffer insofar as you are rather willing them to secure the end of suffering. So then if suffering is the only means to that end, you want them to have that end and therefore by logical conclusion, then I want you to suffer because I want you to have that end. I get it. And when Christ says that there is only one way that is the way of the cross, pick up your cross and follow me. Well, that is a way of saying there's only one means. And in order to secure this end, therefore, in order to have that end, I need a will for you to have the means, which is the cross. Right. Absolutely. So that's one thought, right? So I think I'm hearing what you're saying. The other one is when this person says that they've never suffered. Well, the person didn't say it. I just was picking up on their life. Oh, okay. And I realized that the person hasn't been tried at all yet. Yet. Got it. Because I remember that scene from the song of Bernadette. Now, granted, it's a book, it's a movie, but I think it's accurate based upon what is known about Bernadette. And there was this older religious in the community, and the community never, and she was angry and hostile toward Bernadette, which she'd never experienced pain and suffering. And Bernadette, of course, at this point, you've either watched or read how difficult the path was for her. And she had been developing this ailment, I guess, a cancer of her bone or something like that. And she started to have a difficult time walking. And this older nun was thinking that it was her calling attention to herself. And then she says, well, maybe this will, I have something, which she kept saying, I know you're right. I've never suffered. I've never suffered. I've never suffered. And as somebody watching that scene, you're thinking, of course you have. I've watched this whole thing with you. It's filled with challenges and sufferings. And yet she doesn't see it. But then she's like, oh, okay, but I do have physical pain right now. Maybe if I show her that, she says to the older nun, well, maybe this will help you relate to me better if you're looking for suffering. And she exposed her leg. And apparently it was a mess and the woman just broke. You know, the older woman just broke and repented. And she ran to the chapel and she was crying. And she had a major moment of repentance realizing, oh my gosh, she has suffered way more than me. And here am I, you know, resenting her because she gets all this spiritual tension. Yes. Do you remember that? I mean, I do. Well, I remember reading The Life of Saint Bernadette and I was struck by, because I'm fascinated to think about here you have visions of the blessed Virgin Mary and then they end. Yeah. And then you live the rest of your life. How do you do that? How do you do that? Yeah. You know, I think about such a Lucia, you know, how do you live all those years in the convent telling the same story to everyone that wants to come see you. And Bernadette in some degree even worse because it kept her out of the position of being able to speak to people about it. She had to basically stop talking about it. And Lourdes lived on, but she lived in an obscurity and very mistreated. To taste heaven. And then not. By virtue of the contrast alone, living in this world. I remember when St. Catherine of Siena, she died for a couple of days kind of a thing. And who knows what state she was in actually physically, because medically who knows. But when she came back, she was inconsolable for months and she wouldn't talk to anyone because she had to come back. Yeah. Exactly. Well, you know, that's when the children left out of our right. They they want to know when they can go with her. You know, they had no regard for this world after they had the vision. Remember, they had the vision of hell, have an alpurgatory, but they had a vision of heaven and they wanted to go. Absolutely. No regard, you know, which makes you kind of feel bad. You're like, wouldn't you miss your mom, your dad, you know, right, right. So there's a story of a physician. This woman, I think she was in South or Central America. She was vacationing. She was kayaking, I guess, with her husband. She had a couple kids and if I read the book and she had a near death experience, her kayak flipped. She got buried. She was like almost 30 minutes underwater. It was insane, but very cold water, which helped them be able to revive her. But in that time, she will later describe a near death experience and how she has experienced. If I remember correctly of an angel, I've seen the scene of experiencing our Lord and needing to, you know, coming back. And here she has young children and a husband. And as she recounts it, she didn't want to come back. And she makes the point that it wasn't because, again, I'm just trusting her story. I'm not verifying it. I'm whom I'd have verified her tonight. But just in her story, what strikes me with the conversation that we're having here is that she didn't, she loved her husband, loved her children. But what she was experiencing there, there must have been a sense that everything there was going to be okay. And I'm made for this or this fulfills me, right? And it makes, it gives me a certain consolation actually. Again, it's just an experiential thing. No, but it's across the board and with saints that have died and experienced heaven or a taste of heaven, tasted heaven, etc. Thomas, we can't write anymore. It's consistent. It's consistent. And I think that, you know, CS Lewis captures the sentiment when he's, he writes a phenomenal book, which is about his own suffering after his wife died, called A Grief Observe. And it's a book I certainly recommend to anyone who's lost a spouse in particular or a child, because he's just cataloging his emotions, which are bouncing around like a pinball machine. And, you know, angry at this, angry at God, angry, whatever, he goes through a thousand different emotions and just tries to analyze it from the perspective of a strict logician as he is and look at the thing. I dare anyone to sincerely read that and not shed it here. It's absolutely true. It's a fantastic book. But I remember toward the end, he realized that most of his suffering, of course, was for him. It's not, which is legitimate. Like we miss people. It's okay to cry at a funeral. But you're typically not suffering because of the person who has died. It takes a very noble soul to think to themselves, this person is perhaps in purgatory. And I really feel horrible about the pain they might be going through relative to purgatory or whatever, or even worse, obviously, in terms of consideration of hell or something. Usually, we're just lamenting for ourselves. And so he comes to this point in the book where he says that I hadn't looked at things from her perspective as much as I want her to communicate with me. Maybe she's not thinking about me at all. Maybe she's not desirous to come back at all. If all good, even the good that is our marriage, even the good that I am, is found perfectly in God, then she doesn't need me. Right. And it's not a means of insult. It's not. And that's where I think I find those accounts or the one that I just described in a certain way, consoling, because those souls that go before us, I think they're able to see really the brevity of time that, oh, they'll be with me in a moment kind of thing. It's not, I won't be separated from them long. They'll be with me in a moment. I need to stay here. I want to stay here. There's just that sense that everything will be okay. And that is absolutely enviable. Not something to be remorseful over, or for that matter, to be upset that a person in that situation wouldn't be upset because they're missing you. Of course they want you to be a part of their heaven, but at the same time, if it's just but a moment and you're going to follow, even if it's 90 years on this side of eternity, it's still for them but a moment. It's just a blink of an eye. I think the harder thing to wrap your mind around though is that if you're not part of their heaven, they're still not going to be at a loss. That is a harder thing to wrap your head around. It's much more difficult, but we're not made for a particular person. And it doesn't belie the incredible desire of the community of saints to actually intercede. They do care. They labor, and yet they're not diminished. That's a hard thing to consider. You can say the same about God's desire. In the sense that he desires or predestines all of us for the sin, but at the same time, it doesn't diminish the kingdom of God. Hell doesn't have the tyranny over heaven in that sense. Now, going back to what you said a second ago, relative to the comparison, this is the difficulty is that, A, we don't have any true idea about heaven, just as we don't have any true, perfect idea about God by definition, because God is infinite and my thoughts are finite, et cetera. And so I can't weigh things on that scale. In spite of your own estimation of heaven. You think they have infinite value. Well, I just threw it out there because that's where everyone else is. You can think they have infinite value. I'm happy. But isn't it true if we're throwing it on the scales, and I've got infinite goodness, which I've never directly experienced. I've only experienced particular goods, really. And partial participation in God himself. So I can't put that on the scale and weigh something else. And so these people had this vantage point, both in terms of time versus eternity, but partial goods versus to infinite good. That may sound just abstract and philosophical, but it's not. Look at St. Peter. He just had the, all he had was the image of Christ glorified in his humanity. He didn't even see divinity. And he forgot about his wife and children and said, let's just build three tents and I'll stay here forever. Well, that's right. And it's the thing he talks about at the end of his life. I was on that mountain. I saw that in the light of Tabor and your famous words. And so Paul does speak about a momentary light affliction. And here's a guy that's catalogued all of his sufferings. He's had a few. Shipwrecked, scourged, a gazillion times, left for dead, hungry, thirsty, cold, etc., etc. Who's got more sufferings than Paul? Then of course he gets his head chopped off. And he calls it a momentary light affliction in comparison to the weight of glory that awaits. And I like that comparison because I think sometimes if you set up the traditional argument about, as Lewis does beautifully in his book, The Problem of Pain or any number of philosophers, theologians will do, the difficulty is always this. The argument against God relative to suffering is that if God is all good and all powerful, then there should not be any evil because either he's not all good and so doesn't mind there being suffering or he's not all powerful and can't do anything about it. And so how do you prove that he is both all good and all powerful and there's existence of suffering? And I think one of the ways you have to deal with it is not just to say it's a real world. That's true. It's a real world. And there's real consequences with having bodies. Bodies, they bang into each other. They have problems. Things are hard or they're soft or whatever. They're real dangers out there relative to human suffering based upon real choices. At the same time, we talk about freedom. God can't intervene because we're free, etc., etc. And I think those arguments are fantastic. And I think Lewis does a great job about them. But I do think that with the vantage point of Christianity, you have something that's even a bit more profound, which is that he chooses this method. Like he didn't have to choose the cross to save us. It wasn't inevitable that he could only choose this method by which to save us. He chose to live his life in the nadir of the human experience of suffering. And then he invites you back into it. It's a wonderful line. I forget the name of the priest in the book that Christ desires to live out different aspects of his creation in his mystical body, the members of his mystical body. And you can see that with different saints or keresons or whatever else. But everyone has to participate in laboring for another person by virtue of their suffering that makes it meritorious. And that kind of drama and a capacity to labor for the good of another through suffering, that makes some suffering so meaningful. And in some, I don't want to say desirable, but the saints do desire it. Like we just read in St. Rosalina there today. Right. And St. John of the Cross. And they're always saying, if you knew the advantages you gained by suffering, you would only seek that and not anything else. Sure. I know you're there already. That's where you live. You live. Well, I mean, I'm so used to paying the price. I'm not even acquainted with the currency anymore. And just so everyone knows, nadir means the lowest point. Oh, sorry, sorry. You're a welcome people. I'm always translating for Father Couth to ordinary ears, regular ears, us regular folk. But you happen to know what the words mean. Because I've spoken to you over so long. I've had to bust out the dictionary that was so. So all right. So to have this perspective ultimately requires a long view, right? I mean, this is requiring the ability to see far beyond our present circumstances, ultimately to see into eternity and to import what we see in eternity and that reality make a present in the moment. And we talked about this and I talked about this with you relative to the supernatural gift of hope and how it has that capacity of bringing into the present moment. But you know, as a practical measure, I remember going through an exercise when I was younger, just trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life when I was in my college years. So there was an important question that I kind of stumbled upon to help me sort this out. So I want to play it out with you. All right. So let's go back to not Father Couth, but Matthew Couth for you had a sense that you were entering the seminary. So let's go back to that young man, 17, 18 years old in that range. And let me ask you, what are you going to do with your life? Now, what give me like one scenario coming right out of high school? That's a great question. And if I may just preface the answer by saying, this is part of what I've been thinking about relative to the sort of the narrative of one's story is that the story that I would have chosen, A would not have encountered, would not have engaged in suffering, right? That willfully. No one sets up their story like I'd like to suffer this way, this way and this way. You try to avoid it. Yeah, we try to avoid it. And yet, as I'm looking back through the narrative of my life with God as the principal author, wanting to have avoided those moments of suffering would have been the absolute worst thing for me and how so many amazing things happen to me. And things I actually like to talk about. It's almost like if you were out on a fishing expedition or something with someone and there was a huge storm and you got wet and it was crazy and you hated the moment, but you remember it with such sort of, for lack of a better term, glory. The fruit of it. We did this. We got through this together. And it did something to my character. And you're grateful for that. Absolutely. It's not the means, but the end. So before I was headed into seminary. Yes, because people listening want to know your answer. It's not that interesting. Just give me, let's do this with me. So right out of high school, give me one scenario. What are you going to do? I was going to go to the Naval Academy. Okay. Then what? Right. Oh, yeah. Keep going. The Epoi, the St. Philippe Epoi. Then I was, I had the girl that I was going to marry. And then what? And then I was going to be a naval aviator, probably because I watched Tupkan too. And then what? And then I was going to finish my tour of duty for five years after. Were there kids involved? The family? Oh, absolutely. The usual, the usual family, et cetera, et cetera. And then what? And then I would probably find myself with two homes, one vacation home, whatever else. Of course, of course you would. And then what? And that's the thing. As I got to that, and I'm like, really? Yeah. Where does this go? This was a tactic that St. Philippe Neuer used to use. He'd say, Epoi, and then, and then, and then. And I was stuck there when I was 17, 18 years old. And it rocked me to my core. Because I had all those things planned out. And then I just kept asking that question. Yeah. And then what? And then, and I did it. And I did this exercise. I remember it was, I was in college. I was anywhere between 19 and 21 in that range. And I was doing this exercise just trying to determine my major, for heaven's sake. You know, what am I going to land on for my major? You always pick one, but you change it around. And I was thinking about it relative to a career path. But I was intuitively bright enough to recognize, well, the career is part of a larger picture, right? What is that larger picture? Well, that's my life. Where is it going? Right? Right. I want it to fit. I don't want to have a, you know, life aspirations that lead me this way and a career path that leads me in another way, right? I mean, if I hate the ocean and I, but I'm interested in oceanography, I'm hardly going to choose a career path in oceanography because I don't want to live by the ocean. But if I love the ocean and I choose, you know, some sort of desert study, I mean, that's not going to work so well. So I intuitively knew that I was ferrity now. And you love sin, so you thought priesthood's going to work. Well, that was going to be perfect. Well, any path I took was going to be piqueter to that one. But, you know, I thought to myself, you know, all right, well, okay, I can choose this major. And then what? And then I did the same thing that you did. I came up with pretty typical paths. And then what? And then what? And then ultimately I always ended up my death bed. And no matter what scenario I chose, there was one constant. Death. I died. Yeah. And then I said, well, okay, what about that? What about when I take my last breath? Then what? And that led me down an intellectual exercise and an exercise of faith that I wasn't anticipating because this was all intended to really kind of ferret out a career path. It wasn't intended to get into the larger landscape or larger horizon of my life. Right, right, right. But it did. And it did so very quickly. And it's amazing how practical of a question of, and then what, leads you to what you would consider to be the biggest, perhaps the largest question of life. It's meaning, it's purpose. What happens when we take our last breath? Is there a God? And so I was able to very quickly say, I believe in God through and through. I just do. I can't not. I simply do. And I was able to then say, well, about that moment, no matter what path I take, I know it ends there. I know that I'll take my last breath and I know that I will have an encounter with God. Right. And I just entertained the idea of, well, how might that affect the path I choose? Would that affect the path that I choose? And I thought to myself, of course it does. You know, if I choose a very awful life, well, that's not the way I want to meet God. But if I choose a good life, well, that is how I want. So that actually became my first concern. And all of this just to try to figure out a major in a career path. And then it was so easy to see in that simple exercise how that bigger picture, that eternal horizon, which is ever present and unavoidable, and will be for anyone of us tomorrow at one day soon, actually affects your present. And this is where we get to the, I think, a connection to the topic of suffering. Because if you look at suffering and you say, this is interminable, then you're certainly not seeing that larger picture, that larger horizon. It's not interminable. It actually is going to terminate. Yeah, ideally in a way that makes you better when you see God. Because if that suffering is becomes redemptive, if that suffering involves our self-offering to God and to neighbor, it has the effect of transforming us and changing us as painful as it is in these growing pains, the process of purgation for us in this life, but brings us to that moment of what we cross and that eternal horizon. I mean, that's, that matters. And the connection between what you're talking about in terms of the value of suffering toward that end and that simple question of, and then what, they actually do come together pretty neatly and tidally. Well, and I think that part of the difficulty that we have is the simple reality that we are more able to avoid suffering than ever before. I mean, imagine having an obsessed tooth 100 years ago. Imagine having a broken patella tendon 100 years ago, 200 years ago, whatever. I mean, you were constantly living to some degree with pain and with suffering before anesthesia, before narcotics or whatever. And it was ever present for people. I think that the fact that the saints all lived at lives where the majority of young persons died either at birth or close upon, I mean, they lived with death. They lived with suffering. And it was a constant clarion call that, A, it's not interminable, but also this life isn't my only step here. It's a real drama and a real narrative, a real story and to some degree, in some sense, analogously, a real game that I'm playing. I'm a real actor. And I got one shot on this field. And it's a line that I once read in a book. This incredible individual was, he was a, became a priest. And his rival in school when he was young at an English college was the best athlete, the best orator, the best redarition, the most magnanimous, the one that was Gregorius. And he was the leader of leaders and was struck down in his youth. This was the priest when he was young, realized that his, his idol in school that he always wanted to be better than or at least match up to was dying. And he thought, how strange that after all of this prowess, incredible feats of strength and all things he did in his first five, six, seven years in her majesty's service, et cetera. There he is, prone on the deathbed. And, and so he went to go see him. He said something to the effect of, I can't believe that it's, that's come to this, you who were always so strong. And, and he said, come to this. He says, Petro, this is, this is the very point. This is my greatest moment in the game. All of that before was for this moment, the vantage point that I have on my deathbed and struggling with, with giving myself over to God is what all those practices were about. It's like, it made me strong for this moment. This is my shining moment. Well, it's really a great way to look at it. So the priest reflected. He goes, even in death, he beat me. And he's the priest. He was consoling me and he even beat me in that. I'm the priest. You know, you, you bring up a good point. I know we're kind of winding toward the end here, but you make a really good point about how the modern era mitigates suffering. But that's physical suffering. And I think the more it sounds strange, it's just an idea, a thought. But the more capable we have become in mitigating physical suffering and in turn mitigating labor, just basic labor. No, I see we've done with this. I totally agree with you. We actually don't mitigate against suffering. We just push it to the realm of the interior and psychological. Absolutely. Because there's a lot of psychological torture that I think is somewhat new. I think in part because in the times past, people didn't have the luxury of basking in their own mind to this degree when you simply have to wake up every day and make sure that you have a roof over your head, food, water, some measure of cleanliness, protect the children, that kind of thing. Yet you just can't. And I'm not talking about clinical issues where there's a biological and biochemical issue. I'm just talking about wallowing and self kind of suffering. And I think there's a lot of that. Getting stuck inside. Getting stuck inside. And I just think it's in a certain way, we just moved it away from the body to the mind. But it didn't go away. It just transformed or transmuted into another realm. And I think we're there. And I think that's why we have such a therapeutic age. Yes, I think so too. Because I think that that's where a lot of the suffering is being had. Well, as a link to before we go, we just started our new year. We have the new class that has entered. And now the returning classes have come back and we're into our semester. But those first couple of weeks are sort of potent for the new guys, experiencing something crazy new at a new seminary, at a new life and all that sort of thing. And of course, they get stuck in their heads because they've also never been quiet this long or been in prayer this long, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the first things I tell them, in addition to the fact that we have mandatory recreation every day where you have to get outside and sweat and do things and what have you, is that make your body help you. Don't try to solve all the problems with your intellect. When you're stuck inside and your affective filter is too high and too full, and you can't make your way through the emotions of the moment, just go get a shovel and dig. If you can dig something for someone else even better in terms of service. But let your body assist you to get out of it. Get out of it, yeah. To draw out of it. We are coming close to the end. I think we need to wrap this up, because I'm really rather blushing and embarrassed after the story you told about me and exercising all my prowess in life and coming to that moment where you're telling me. I mean, I can't, I have to keep it. You know, I tried to say the guy was the priest. I mean, I haven't died yet, but still. I know. It's true. It was a close call, but it was still, but the story's all the same. It was thinly veiled, you know. Yeah, I mean, people know it was me. They all have figured it out. But, you know, I try not to best you all the time. Thank you. I appreciate that. So, all right. Give me hope of catching up someday. So before we go, have you thought about anything? Well, I was just making the connection. The guys, what's fascinating to me is every single time we start this, a new year, and you get these sort of wide-eyed, almost deer and headlights sort of look among the guys, because they don't know what to expect and what they're getting into. They want to follow Christ, but they don't necessarily know what that entails or whatever else. And so what you find is that so much of them is attempting to not lose something that they think is essential to their character or their former life, whatever else. And part of the suffering that they go through in the beginning is a bit mental, but it's also just, you have to lose something to gain something. And so much of our life is thinking that we grow from virtue to virtue to virtue, whatever else. But as St. Therese once said, you actually have to lose a lot to gain. And it's a simple point, but suffering helps us do that. I have to lose things to place myself into the hands of God. It's a bit of a heavy thing before we go. Yes, it is. But nevertheless, it's the connection is to pray for these new seven Aryans before we go. Well, that's a good thing. Yeah. Kind of to pray for them. They're great. They're very inspiring. I guess on that vein, since we're in something or more in the serious notes before we go, I'll avoid the trivial to preserve my dignity. Too late. Well, I remember when our friend of ours, Father Paul in Poland, came out and he told a story about a pastor back in Poland during the time of the Nazi occupation and then the Russians and the conflict between the Russians. Just all of the pain and the agony, but there was a priest there who sacrificed, a parish priest who sacrificed his life for his congregation. And I think it was his home parish or it was a neighboring parish, but it kind of close to home. It was a very moving story, but he made a point. It's a point that always stuck with me and it's a point that has been made at the ages, and that is that faith begets faith. When we see faith, it begets faith. And when you bring up these seminarians, what's so beautiful about it is that you see them and you see how the gaze of God has caught their eye and their soul and their attention and they're responding in faith. And that act and that movement and just giving God that space, the time in the life to sort out if this is what he's asking of them. That itself is such a profound witness that it begets faith. It begets faith in us. And I think that that's something that people need really to reflect upon. Just simply by living your own faith, whether you realize it or not, that you're inspiring faith in others and it does not amount to proselytizing or evangelical programs, not that those are bad, but just quite honestly, the day in, the day out, the living, people pick up on it, whether you see it or not, and it has a really good effect. Absolutely. Faith begets faith, but a beautiful thing. Yeah, we should say to our listeners too that one of the most common things that we hear when we speak to men about their vocation, two most important things are always they served at Holy Mass and someone in the parish, usually a woman that they saw was a person of faith. Some woman that praised all the time in church walked up with them and said, you'd make a good priest. So we should never forget that because they watch people and they say, well, she's got a lot of faith or he's got a lot of faith. When that person says to them, you have the makings of a good priest. That's, I hear that all the time. And that's something. Yeah, so we'll have a great week. All right, you too. Thanks for listening to this episode of From the Rooftop. For updates about new episodes, special guests and exclusive deals for From the Rooftop listeners, sign up at rooftoppodcast.com. And remember, for more great ways to deepen your faith, check out all the spiritual resources available at 10books.com. And we'll see you again next time From the Rooftop.