 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 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. Greetings. Hello. And happy feast day. I thought we should probably speak at least a little bit, begin by talking about the feast day today. Wait, wait, is this a lesser known saying? Today is one of the great feasts of the Church. And hopefully you're celebrating it with due pomp and circumstance. And hopefully those who bear this name will receive the sort of gifts that they should be afforded. Because today is the feast of St. Matthew. And as it is, of course, it's all about you, my first name. It's always all about you. The name Matthew, of course, means gift of God. So one can give a gift, but it just isn't always necessarily appreciated for its actual value and worth. So I'll just give you the opportunity to make sure that you're... Well, I do see the connections. I see an admitted sinner, diminutive stature. That's the key. Never says that about Matthew. Well, in my mind. Let's see. Resented by the others because... Yes, that's true. Well, resented insofar as the jealousy comes in. I can see why you're picking that up. Totally unfounded jealousy. But I did think to myself this morning when I was praying that the unbelievable lack of information we have about the 12 most important men ever chosen by Jesus. I mean, the fact that we can speculate really where he died, where he was, if he was the one to write the gospel, if he was the one that wrote in Hebrew, or did he write it in Greek, or all the various things that swirl around. He's just one of the apostles. And he's one that's actually more known. We have almost no knowledge of any of the other ones. Obviously, it's very limited. You know, there was an Anglic, I believe it was an Anglic and priest, but he's very Anglic Catholic in many ways. He wrote, I think, one of the best books on Padre Pio. Oh, Ruffin. Ruffin, yeah. He also wrote a book on the 12. And he wanted to assemble what are the things that we believe we know that with some measure of certainty about the 12. And it's a very small book because there isn't a ton. It is, as you say, scarce. But there are some things that we believe that we know. Right. It has come down to us of the ages that has some veracity or outside verifiable first hand sources and things of that nature. So it's a good, it's a good, it's not like an exciting read, but it's a good read in the sense that this is a good resource. Somebody did the work for you to kind of pin down what we think we know. And there's a ton of confusion. People don't really think about when it comes to certain names being used in the gospel when you talk about this Mary and that Mary and which one is this. And it matters because some of them are cousins of Jesus and are these, you know, is a Mary related by marriage into the family, the, you know, say Joseph side on the Mary side. And so when you're trying to put all these relations together, because you're trying to say this apostle comes from this family, there are, we know that there are some type of relations to the family of Christ, whether it's through the Joseph side or whether it's through the Virgin Mary side, and you're trying to pin them down. And so you have to start getting their relations in order and it's tricky. It is tricky. And then you've got the fact that they have oftentimes two names, right? One that would be the classic Hebrew name, one that was a Greek name. And then you have the difficulty of the fact that our lady's name was one of the most common, as was our Lord's, right? And the fact that he even used for himself and his own names that were well known, actually the Italians have a funny, they don't say find a needle in a haystack. Try to find a specific Mary in Rome is impossible because they're all named Mary. But that sort of obscurity on the one hand, they're very well known by anyone who would have been around at the time and follow in Christ. They're the ones that got selected. And then they fall into this utter sort of obscurity. And yet we hold that the particular churches, the apostolic traditions that we have, came from where they went and what they did. From the 12. Right. Yeah. With Matthias replacing Judas. Yeah. Well, I found interesting in reading the prayers of the divine office this morning, particularly the morning prayer were the antiphons for the common of apostles. And the two, the first two antiphons, they speak of love. Right. And the third antiphon refers to friendship. Now, when you, when someone says the apostles, are those the words you think of? Well, love and friendship. You might. Only because you wrote a thesis. When I wrote a thesis on that, I noticed those antiphons. Did you? And it struck me quite acutely that this is how they're referring to the apostles. Because we think about them as the authorities. Right. But Christ is the one who called them friends. And it, and of course, the ending of John's gospel with Peter and Peter, do you love me? And that's how he thought of them. Yeah. And not that they chose him, but he chose them. No, it's, it's true. I'm actually going to find it. And yet in the choosing, in the choosing of them, I was thinking this morning about Paul's, Saint Paul's letter to the Corinthians when he says, I think that we apostles have been placed last in line by Christ. I did never notice that before. But he's, he's looking at his life saying, I think we're placed last in line. And he goes on to say, we're sort of these in the arena where the scum and the refuse of all. Is it the same where he starts, when he starts talking about the, no, it's a different passage. He starts by, he talks about being a fool for Christ. But yeah, I don't, but I mean, he does, he does have that view that were the last of all, the last of all, and yet they're the ones that are going to be on 12th thrones. We're going to, we are going to know who they are. Well, that's right. You're not going to be able, yeah. So here's, here's the first antiphon from running prayer for the common of apostles. My commandment is this, love one another as I have loved you. And then the second antiphon is there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends, which is the central point of the thesis that, which transitions love to friendship. And then the third antiphon is you are my friends, says the Lord, if you do what I command you, which is the thing I always, always tell you, you're my friend. If you do, yes, you do say that a lot. No, I'm not going to deny that. That is a common theme. If you're going to have any sort of friendship with the Lord, that he demands total obedience. So I was noticing when I was waiting for you to finish up a meeting and I was in the chapel. That only was your brevery in there, which I availed myself of. But you had something sitting there next to it that surprised me. Yes, you can't hide it now. No. He had the summa, the Saint Thomas summa theologian there. Yeah. I noticed that the bookmark was still like on the first question. But nevertheless, you must have cracked that book. Well, I mean, the bookmark is there because it's like fudge. It takes a lot to digest. Yeah, I would have to really, I've been intrigued in this past year more with Saint Thomas as a clarifier of my thinking than ever before. Than ever I had to study him in class or even for that matter in some of our conversations of the past. There has been a desire, some desire with respect to, it's almost as though my mind is now ready for certain distinctions and categories. Whereas I couldn't really put them there before until I was queued up. So I'm really late to the game after 50 years. But it's as though it's ready for certain things, certain foundational things, which as you know, I'm familiar with the concepts and familiar with many things. So it's not as overwhelming. That said, I also know that although he meant it as a catechesis for all that scholars have been trying to wrap their minds around his material for the ages here. So I know that it's not something that you just read and say, oh, I got it. But at the same time, I think a lot is accessible and even having a lot of exposure in the past. But yes, I can't even joke about it because I'm too reverent toward his content at the moment. Well, I was noting it too because I had a very good conversation yesterday with a young man who's just earning a possibility of entering the seminary. And one of the things he was discussing was that his spiritual director told him he's not allowed to just sort of read St. Thomas front to back. He says, you're not ready for that yet. And nor would he be able to necessarily grasp the concepts like any lexicon is difficult figuring out what Thomas means by these words. But beyond that, he was saying that he did begin to read it. And he said it's had an untold, wonderful effect on his mind. Not because he's just now grasped all sorts of new concepts, but because he feels like it's a wash every time he reads it. His brain gets washed and things get put away and put in the right order. I think it's a helpful thing for people if they're going to start reading it, to start where the rubber meets the road for most people, which is in the second part. Because the first part is very metaphysical. It's very dense, very difficult about God. And it's wonderful. But I do think that the second part, which is about man, in man's relation to God, coming forth from God, might be the most helpful for most people simply because it talks, it's the largest treatise ever written on the emotional life, basically, on the passions, as Thomas called them. Because it's something that we all suffer, which is why he called them passions. That these are modifications that happen to us when we wake up in the morning. And every object that we see is something that we're attracted to or have an aversion to. And then every single emotion kind of falls out from that. And you really consider them as bodily modifications based upon an apparent good or evil that we perceive. And I guess when I first started to read that section, like so many things in the faith, I thought to myself, why didn't anyone ever tell me this? I mean, I didn't know what's going on inside of me, but this makes perfect sense. It reminds me of what's up, Fraser. What do you do with good advice? You pass it along so it doesn't get wasted. So it doesn't get wasted. Meaning nobody accepts it. That's true. It's in a much the same way. We have access and resource to so many different resources, so many spiritual and intellectual gems. But it really kind of comes down to, are you ready? Are you willing? Yeah. Do you want? Yeah. It's reminiscent of Jesus asking the paralytic, do you want to be healed? Do you want to be healed? I have no one that can put me in the water, but do you want to be healed? It's not that you can't heal him. It's just you have to be ready. You have to be disposed. You have to, and of course he says he does, and of course he's healed. Pick up your bat and go. Do you think that he wanted to be healed? I think that's why I would ask the question. I mean, on some level, that's his livelihood. That's his life now. We get so habituated to our situation and can use our situation whenever the suffering is as something that is uniquely ours, that we in some sense don't even want to get rid of the burden of whatever it is, because it seems impossible that he couldn't get into that water. Well, the other thing is our identities can be wrapped around things, even bad things, and we don't know who we are apart from them, so we can have an undue reliance even on bad things. But I think in that case, my gut says, and I realize we're in the realm of speculation, my gut says that even if at that point he never really wanted to be healed, but maybe it was, which is hard to imagine, somebody who's in a position of paralytic, not wanting to be healed. But that he certainly had the desire at the time in which he was healed, whether it was precipitated by that conversation or not. So, yeah, I think my gut says he always did want to be healed. I do understand how you can get to a point where you start to identify with certain parts of yourself, even broken parts of yourself, so that you can't imagine being yourself apart from that and really start to wonder, which is different. I mean, obviously it can be not just a physical condition or a situation, but it can be something else. Yeah, we spoke that one time on one of these podcasts about growing older, and how difficult it is to let certain activities that have sort of defined you or shaped you or that you enjoy doing to let them go, because you feel as if you're letting yourself go. And then the point about receptivity that's... Well, you are letting yourself go, but that's a side of it. I don't have a choice. I don't have a choice. Someone's taking it from me every single day, it seems like. But back to that point about receptivity, that's one of those great, great lines of the medieval. They had so many little phrases by which they would memorize things and they'd make them rhyme or have alliteration or something because they had to memorize everything. You'd have lots of paper and books rhyming around, you could take with you and certainly no internet. And so they had that principle that you've... You no doubt learned when you studied philosophy that quid quid recipitur ad modem recipienti. It's a recipitur, which is... It's got that lyrical sound to it, but it just means that that which is received is received in the mode of the receiver. So that I have to, for example, on a podcast here, if we want to communicate to the people that are listening, it doesn't do any good to speak Latin necessarily, which is what we just... I just said it. You have to give them in the language that they can receive it in. But that's not just true of a particular language like English or German or Italian, but in any mode is someone... What is the receptive capacity for receiving information that we have, for receiving us, for receiving the gospel, et cetera? And that's different for every person. Without doubt. And there are subjective dispositions that play a part of it. Just because God has revealed, it does not mean that each person is prepared to receive relative to their own will and intellect. Yeah. They're obviously disposed to receive it. They're being communicated in the mode of the receiver, but their will is a part of it. The will is huge. And are you ready or not? Especially when it comes to faith, because faith has much to do with the will, because it's not something... It's not vision. We don't see. We have to accept it on a testimony of another, and the testimony is, of course, God's, and so it has a certitude about it. It's certain, but it's still believing someone else's word. And you can't believe without an act of the will. The will is moving the intellect to adhere to something and to adhere firmly, but it never comes without an act of the will. Do you think, when the apostles just going back to the feast day today, of course, I haven't really gotten... Of course. I haven't exhausted that topic. No, clearly not. Do you think that when the apostles went out, imagine, they had this kind of intuitive infusion the church teaches of the fullness of the faith? And yet, not knowing necessarily, except by supernatural grace and the supernatural prudence and counsel, what to do? So, what are the word ascends? And then they... Pentecost happens and they go out. Imagine Matthew, maybe he's got someone else with him, maybe he's in Ethiopia, the sort of tradition has it. Where does one begin? Could you imagine going out with this information? Someone has risen from the dead and he's God, and God has a son. And then you walk into a foreign land, the language likely you do not speak, even though certainly the language of commerce would have been there, relative to Greek, Latin, etc. So, they could have communicated, but where do you begin? You know, it's a great question, and it's coming in full circle. It's coming back to the Antiphons, I think. You begin with love and friendship. You know, if I'm going to communicate to a people for which I am foreign, and a culture, a language, personal relationships, background history, not known from any other person, any other foreigner coming into the group, how do I bridge those relations in such a way that they would be willing and receptive to hear something so extraordinary, and that requires such an ascent of authority with respect to the divinity of Christ and receiving faith. And it seems to me love and friendship is the start, and it makes sense, because that's how Christ started with them. He took them on as friends and he let them know that this was much higher than being a disciple, that this was a friendship, and that he was loving them. And in that sense, it really is the pattern of evangelizing that is bringing the Evangelium, sorry, Spanish to Latin, the Evangelium, they're bringing the gospel to people. Well, you start there. Yeah, and using that word as all of our listeners, I'm sure know that Greek word, which we use the word evangelical or something of that nature, the gospel, the word gospel in Greek is, it begins with an EU, or an epsilon, which is, in Greek, it means something is good, or the best, the highest. It's just like the Eucharist, it's the highest grace, the highest gift, etc. even though the verbal form means thanksgiving. And why is it good news? I suppose if you're walking into a new town and pursuant to the Antiphons, pursuant to what you're mentioning, to be able to reveal to people that I don't know what sort of God you were worshiping, because they were all worshiping. That's one they had in their favor, is that everyone believed. They were disposed toward divinity. The supernatural. And such good news to realize that I know that you thought he was requiring of you this sacrifice, but he's not. Can you imagine what incredible relief that would be to realize that God is love? I don't actually have to sacrifice my goat, my kid. That's kind of a joke. Or do some sort of strange thing, but he has come to save me and assumed my lowly state to save me. What a transformative thing that would be if you were already believing in God and then you came to find out who the real one was. Whereas now it's for the opposite. Everyone buys that he's love, but the nature of love has been so evacuated of all content and purpose and meaning. Well, I have two thoughts. Let's see if I can remember both of them. So that's right. Now, the first one is the origin of the term evangelium in the Latin context. In that context, in evangelium, this good news was an edict of the Roman emperor. And as an edict of the Roman emperor, because it was assumed in the culture that anything the emperor did was good, then what was communicated was good for everyone. And that's where you get this notion of the secular notion of an evangelium, this gospel, and then it is incorporated or rather taken up in apostolic times in use in those terms, which does attribute to Christ this divine royalty from whom is emanating this genuinely good news because it's coming from you who is the source of all good. The actual king. Yeah. So it really sort of lays a nice secular etymological background for the supernatural reality that it is. So there is that. The other thing is in terms of coming into a town and saying counting the cost, I remember, I think I talked to you about this before, maybe even in one of these, I'm sure I've talked about it before, but maybe even in one of these recorded rooftop sessions. But there was a time when I was watching a documentary on the camel jockeys. I may have mentioned it again previously, but the whole idea was, is I'm watching it, I realize it really is a documentary on human trafficking and that these children being used in that manner, and they were being taken and bought, purchased from their parents who were faced with an untenable position of having to let the whole family die or sell one kid to feed the others. It was just utterly horrible. And I remember thinking, this place needs to hear the gospel. You need to bring the goodness of the gospel and they're going to receive it. And at the time it was early on in my priesthood, my experience with the people in our culture, in our affluent world, even our middle class is affluent compared to the majority of the world. The first question they tend to ask when you come in with a message of the gospel is what is it going to cost me? What do I have to give up? Whereas someone in this other situation where they're facing this horrible position of just keeping their children alive and possibly having to sell one for the sake of the others, the gospel comes in as just nothing but light. They're not going to ask about contraception. They're not going to ask about the demands of chastity. They're not going to ask about the holy days of obligation. They're not going to ask about, do I really need to go to confession? They're asking it. Can I eat meat on Friday? Are you kidding? Exactly. All they're asking, all they would see is light. Light in darkness. And yet you can see what Mother Teresa would call the poverty of affluence. We become so impoverished that the gospel is perceived in the first instance as a set of demands. Yeah, just paying some dues. Yeah, what can I and cannot do, and it's a restriction rather than received as goodness. And that is really, I think, one of the great perversions of the affluence in which we currently live. I remember it was reading, was it Carlos Sarah who was talking about, we have to be very careful about speaking about poverty because we do have religious communities that take vows of poverty. And by that fact, we are actually saying that there's something good to this. That's a good point. Right. And so we was talking about the evangelical councils, which is to say the council's not as a group meeting of people, but council is in advice or guidance in following the pattern of Christ, poverty, chastity, and obedience. Like he lived that way and therefore others who've come to follow closer to his likeness establishes religious communities where they take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. So he was saying, we need to really talk about the type of poverty that we're trying to eradicate in society is really what we call destitution. He said, we need to fight that. But people relinquishing themselves of a fair amount of affluence and wealth for the benefit of others or for the straight-up benefit of themselves is not bad. In fact, we say in religious life, that's a good thing because they're unencumbered. And the gospel is not ever really met with what is it going to cost me. It's seen as just nothing but pure goodness. When you pay it up front, it doesn't matter. Then you're just receiving the benefits. Exactly. You're all in, right? Anyway, I know that was a kind of a loss. No, no. But it's important distinction. I mean, we can't talk about poverty in religious life and say that that's a good that they do embrace and then turn around and talk about eradicating poverty. That's a really good distinction. But I don't think I've read or have considered before. Because you think about it in terms of sometimes if you encounter someone who is poor, for example, or is asking you for help or assistance, and you don't necessarily find them to be persons of great charity, necessarily, right? At the same time, I think one of your lines, which I think is true, is that when you have a lot of scams, obviously they go on relative to the persons that present themselves as poor. But when they actually are poor, you almost always experience them as humble. Because life has humbled them. They're almost ashamed to ask. Right. And yet in Rome, it was interesting living there because there are some who just choose to live that way for lack of a better explanation. I mean, that's what they would say. It's like, I want to live here this way. I want to be on the streets. It's a job. Almost as a job. But then they would get caustic with anyone that didn't assist them. And you were really, you were costed every time you went by. And so I had lots of opportunities to speak with some of these people over great lengths of time living there. And it was sort of really fascinating to listen to their story and what it did. So in other words, it doesn't do the job itself, just being poor, right? There has to be that sort of volitional aspect to it even then. To be unencumbered. You can be resentful of being poor. You can be angry. You can be hopeless. You can be unencumbered. And then that will to say, I want to, the old medieval axiom was follow the naked Christ. I want to be unencumbered. I want to be free to be able to serve him. But you know, yeah, I think of the shackles that so many of our desires put us in. And certainly comforts in their tempting. I mean, there's not too few priests that really like cars. Or there's not too few priests that really like this or that. I mean, we're in this secular priest. We're all in the same boat here. So we totally get it, right? We totally understand. And then we use the excuse we did not take about poverty. Right, exactly. Which Mother Teresa tried to warn, diocesan priests about and be very, very careful there. Just because she was trying to help priests not being comforted and therefore lose the type of freedom that they really ought to have. So it's there is a difference. Again, destitution is something we should all be fighting against. People people dying, people suffering because they go without, you know, imbalances that social imbalances that lead to destitution. This is just not tenable. It's not proper. It's not not proper on a natural level. And it's definitely not proper on a supernatural level. So that said, there is a lane of a chosen simplicity, poverty, of unencumberance, that Christ lived. I think it would be interesting to talk maybe at a different podcast about the vows. So the persons that would necessarily listen to a podcast or from the rooftop kind of a thing. Oftentimes, you know, there are families and married couples and or widows, widowers, etc. And yet the vows do, the evangelical councils do permeate Christian existence and they're not simply reserved for those who are particularly in the religious life. That is to say that was considered classically the life of perfection. In other words, I do this because I want to imitate Christ in every possible way. And yet everyone has to on some level. So that might be a good idea to use it as a future topic. Certainly. And I would just also throw out there is a potential future topic. But of course, what are the chances of you and I remembering? None. But that for people who find themselves not desiring, but find themselves in financial situations where it's hard to make ends meet where you feel some constraints of impoverishment that they would be able to use that for spiritual benefit and good is a wealth that others don't have. And that goes into that larger topic and theme that actually I had in the back of my mind of kind of bringing up for a conversation, but you really took it into the whole same Matthew direction, which I'm about to loop it all back around. This general idea that people have, oh, all right. I'm now going to respond to my faith. I now have to, you know, I'm queued up. I'm ready. I really want to be more devout in my life. And they look for these outside efforts. I'll get involved with this. I'll get involved with that. I'll get involved. Nothing wrong with all that. That can be great. Right. But the modes of service, everything you need is right in front of you. Yeah. Everything, all of that straw like Rumpel Silsken. You can turn to gold. It is the substance of your life. Every relationship broken, not unbroken dysfunctional, not dysfunctional. Every permutation of your heart. Every mood of sadness and inclination towards selfishness and self-absorption. The resentments that build up because of our- We should have seen the way he looked at me when he said that. Gosh, it's pretty deep in him. And profoundly misunderstood concepts of justice, and particularly justice applied to situations where we don't even really have all the information. I mean, all of that, all of that, is where you're meant to sow the seeds of the gospel. And we bypass it to go to this thing or that thing at church. And it's all of those things that you're bypassing, ought to be directing you back to that very staff. And it's sitting there right there. That's where it all happens. It's one of the reasons why you and I have said over the arc of time that the church is really built up in profound ways through the confessional. Because it's people looking at that stuff and helping them harness their love of God and love of neighbor and sense of own vocation, helping them deal with that harder stuff where the bigger things happen or they lead to larger consequences and effect in life. And that leads to greater light in the world and less darkness. And so I think you would agree with me, and having chatted over the course of years, that that's where the real stuff happens. It's, again, go ahead, do the Bible studies, do the catechical stuff, get involved, do all these sorts of things. Methods of service, absolutely. But you can't do that in lieu of. You can't escape the interior life. There's a primacy to that stuff in the interior. Absolutely. You have to work with that. That's your real fodder for sanctity. That's where you turn strong. Which is why we don't want to work there. It's harder. It's a lot harder. It's a lot harder to evangelize your world than it is to evangelize everyone else's. And in some level, that's the reason that they really just take these vows, right? Is that you can't run away from it. You can't run away from it into some sort of consumerism. You can't run away from it by doing whatever your capricious will wants to do at the moment because you have to be obedient. And then, of course, you can't run away with it, away from it in the incredible vicissitudes of relationships because you're taking about chastity. You're not focused on just someone else's problems or your relationship with them, etc. I am naked before God and I have to look at this thing. That being said, obviously, that's the state of perfection. It's not the perfection. So the person who's in religious life has to still engage it. In some level, it sets up the mechanism by which they have to engage the very fodder you're speaking about. At the same time, it's interesting listening to confessions of religious over the years and things I'm sure you have too. And what they struggle with in the beginning. I remember one wonderful missionary charity told me, he said, Father, we take of our poverty and another vow to serve, always be available to serve the poorest, the poor. But we're all really greedy about getting the first water to wash with. We're all exceptionally avaricious over which blue sweater we're going to wear. It's just we're going to be ourselves in there. It's just it makes us deal with it. Which I thought was really beautiful and humble of her to say. Absolutely. But even those people have like say, vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, or those people make commitments to celibacy. They do, as you say, they do become naked and vulnerable, so to speak, to those in that community, to the friendships that they have. They have the ability to see reflected in those others themselves as they are. Kind of exposed and with all the parts that we don't really want to see. And they serve that. They really do serve that purpose. I would say that you and I over the arc of time, we've served in our best possible, all of our best efforts to help see each other, to help us see ourselves as we really are. And there is a vulnerability. And boy, that vulnerability, it's just it's humiliating. It's hard. It requires trust, especially, you know, evoking the help of another and confidence. People get this instantaneously with the sacrament of the confessional. They get that confidentiality. They don't always get, you know, the wisest priest to be able to deal with the most complex situations. But they do get all those things instantaneously and sacramentally. The grace is going to operate and work through. But relative to, like I say, the stuff that's there for your life, to work through, even those mirrors of other people, those vulnerable relationships that force us to reckon with things, they're all there. I guess I could sort of close out this discussion from my part by saying that when you were speaking, it struck me that both in a religious life, as well as in just normal everyday human family life, you meet those characters that have refused for so long to see themselves. And the penalty for that, almost like a contrapaso of Dante's hell, the penalty for that is they no longer see, period, you know, the petrified persons that get stuck in a mode and they will just live that out the rest of their life. Whereas what you're speaking about is that sort of, that interior youthfulness and organic growth that I am not done, I must see. So back to the healing of our blessed Lord, it's like that the blind man, when he asks him, what would you have me do for you? And he just says, Woot-vee-damn, that I might see. That's a really good prayer in terms of self-knowledge. What is the fodder that I have to work on now? And where, Lord, are you leading me? So, you know, I think you had said, at some point in the past, about the Dominican approach toward spiritual direction, that it really is in the context of friendships, you know, where everyone's kind of running around, I don't know what words you're about, but I think that this is coming from you. And, you know, rather than everyone running around, it's how I need to find a spiritual director in you. But first of all, there are not enough priests in the world to provide particular spiritual direction for everybody. I mean, we do this primarily through our parochial life, confessions and homilies and the occasional need where you have to meet with a priest. But the friendship, an informed, faithful friendship, I mean, so much of the interior life is built through that type of work. The having these friendships that are predicated on these spiritual foundations, this is where so much work is done in this spiritual direction, spiritual life. And then, as I mentioned, I bring it all the way back around to the same Matthew and come full circle. And I think is that we ask the question, why would this group, foreign to this apostle, receive this man, and we mentioned the antiphons, love and friendship, but we kind of fell into the poverty because he lived differently. Yes. He was unencumbered. He wasn't doing what everyone else was doing. Right. You know, we miss that. Why are you happy and you have nothing? Yeah. Why are you pursuing nothing that we're pursuing? Where are your riches? Yeah. And why did you come from a far off country to speak to us? Right. Like, why? And then, of course, then the greatest of poverty is of not just losing your money, but losing your body. Like the martyrdom, the witness of martyrdom with these guys. Yeah. The good is of friendship, of love. Yeah. And a total poverty. Great to have a man then to lay down his life, right? Yeah. There you go. Wow. It's almost like we planned that. So I think we went longer today because you were too busy last week to meet to do a podcast. It's been a busy one. At least you came to my office this time. I did. So it made it a little easier for me. We're on the Chansey rooftop. Yes, that's true. But I should say a little shout out. So before we go. Yeah. In fact, this is my, before we go, too. Oh, this is your before we go. We do this jointly. Okay. Well, from my vantage point, before we go, I want to give a shout out to some, a couple that just was a delight to meet. They came to the seminary and it was, it happened, I won't give their names, but it happened because she had written to me an email saying that how inspiring or hope-filled she found various talks that we've given to be. The listening to me assisted them. And she suffered you. Well, that's the funny thing was she said that she would listen to me. It's ironic that she'd return to me and not to you. But that's fine. Let me just say, because my point of gratitude is that she brought me a gift basket of candy. She did because she listens very astutely to what is being said in these talks. And she brought Father Winslow a big basket of Halloween candy. Fantastic. I am thrilled. And she sewed us some wool sort of mittens. They're really, they're really quite cool. Because in case we're on the rooftop and it gets cold, her hands will stay warm. Very sweet. I've tried them on, they're quite nice. And she sort of laced them with a little bit of silver lining as we say. No, we honestly, thank you so much. It was really sweet and precious. Those little signs of affection, they warm the heart more than the hands. Amen. So, and the candy is leading me to the dentist this afternoon. In truth. In truth. I will not be reporting on how that appointment goes. Let's just say my dentist sees me a lot. But that's part of my, that's part of the lawsuit. I'm having a class action lawsuit against my father for genetic betrayal. Like, I get, I easily get cavities. Genetic betrayal. Yep. I mean, the only difference is- He sees me doing just fine. Yeah, I'll, he can give you a very good inheritance. Oh, let me tell you. First of all, I look too much like him. That is a betrayal. But it's a class action because I'm, I'm enjoying my, my, my siblings. And as they get older and they're facing this, you know, seeing medical, you know, similar medical problems and whatever. It's really kind of all pointing to him. He is to blame. He is to blame. So, the only difference is we just, you know, what you say, what, what, what, what is the benefit of suing him now? Is to get his money while he's alive and watch, watch us use it as opposed to- Which is driving me crazy. Absolutely. Oh, he's a wonderful man. God bless you all. Great to be with you. And thank you so much for those gifts. That was really sweet. Thank you. Bye bye. 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 tanbooks.com. And we'll see you again next time, From the Rooftop.