 Welcome to The Spiritual Masters, a podcast from Tan Books and Tan Direction in which we look at the greatest and holiest writers from Catholic history. Join us as we explore the life and times in which they lived, an overview and study of their greatest works, and how we as Catholics can look to these masters as models for our own holiness on our journey to heaven. Welcome back, Tan fans and our listeners. Father Nixon, thank you for being here again. We've had an amazing little miniseries on this incredible spiritual master, St. Anselm of Canterbury. I think somebody who doesn't get quite enough attention even though he's a doctor of the church. And so in this miniseries, we've covered a lot of ground. We've began in our first episode talking about he's a doctor of the church, his biography, what he did, what he wrote about. We even dove a little into the ontological argument, talking about his other work, why Christ became man. And so that was a flashback to my educational days when I read some more of St. Anselm. But we really emphasize that he's not just a great philosopher and theologian, but he's a spiritual writer and a devotional writer. And then in the second episode, we went through the passion of the Christ through the eyes of Mary. And that was an amazing 30 plus minutes or so going through certain passages of this, talking about how Mary experienced the passion of the Christ and how she communicated this in a mystical experience to St. Anselm. And then our last episode, we talked about the glories of heaven. And we talked about what is this glorified body going to be like? And it's amazing attributes. And so it was just a beautiful couple of series, a couple episodes in this series. And so today we're just kind of recapping. And I want to focus today on how St. Anselm should infuse our minds and hearts and how we should emulate him in 2022 and try to live with him, live with his spirit and how to seek his intercession. But we should begin not with me talking, but with you saying a prayer, invoking his intercession. Almighty God, we ask that we open our hearts to the wisdom of St. Anselm, that he let his fidelity, his love, his charity be our guiding light, which will lead us unfailingly to your own eternal light, who live and reign forever and ever. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Father. So St. Anselm is a spiritual master because he's someone, not just because he's a great writer or great theologian, but because we should emulate him. So what are some of his personal virtues or charisms that you know about that you think we should focus on and try to emulate in our lives? Well, St. Anselm proved himself to be a wonderfully versatile person, to be open to whatever God in the church was calling him to do at any given time. He began his life, his religious life by entering a monastery and was aspiring to have a quite monastic life, but soon found himself called to positions of leadership, firstly of his own monastery and then of the entire English church as Archbishop of Canterbury. He found himself then traveling back and forth from Europe, conducting important business, trying to negotiate for the freedom of the church, for the stability of his own country, England and so forth. So we see someone who is prepared to respond to the calling of the time in whatever way it might be, almost blindly to follow wherever God is leading him and to remain faithful in that and to take everything on board perfectly calmly. You know, that's an important lesson for us today. I mean, a lot of people find themselves in positions where they were not planning on being there and they are. I mean, I'll give you one example. I got 15 kids, Father. I didn't see that coming. I did not sit down and plan that out. And so it happens and so then you're kind of like, well, this was part of God's divine plan. So holiness for me is embracing that and living that in a certain way. And so what I hear you say is that Anselm was somebody who was pushed and pulled by God's divine providence and he accepted it calmly and peacefully. And he accepted it calmly. Yeah. And what's more, he applied all of his God-given talents to the work which he was doing. So he was talented as a scholar, as a pastor, as a speaker, as a writer. And he applied all of these gifts to the glory of God and to the service of the church, which I think each of us is called upon to do, you know, to think, what has God given me and how can I use this for the service of God and His church? If you had to pick one of his many works, that was your favorite, maybe the favorite to read, maybe favorite to meditate on, maybe your favorite to translate. I don't know. But what would you say is one of your favorites? Well, I guess one of my very favorites is the proslogia. And this goes back to my days as a theology student. And I think it would be fair to say it was the first work which I read in Latin completely for the purpose of writing an essay on. So yeah, so it was something I particularly loved. But since that time, I've read his works more broadly and I have to say some of his devotional works, which are not so well known, have impressed me, especially he wrote a wonderful collection of Marian Hymns and poems and wrote also a few lives of different saints, which are which are quite amazing, very curious medieval miracles and so forth, which type of things you don't hear about so often these days, but works which I absolutely love. How would you recommend that somebody kind of get in touch with Saint Anselm? You know, I would not say go read about the ontological art. No, we might have to write you know, what I would what I would recommend is the glories of heaven is a very good place to start with Saint Anselm because it is very encouraging, uplifting. And at the same time, it's a very logically thought out work, you know, so he mixes this this mysticism with with human reason, working out the various attributes of the glorified bodies and souls of heaven. So yeah, it's quite a short work, but but very powerful. As we talked about in the last episode, I mean, I find I think it's the perfect place to get people started with Anselm. I mean, it might be the perfect place to get people started with any spiritual life. Well, it is. And I have to say the the the presentation of this book that Ted has put together really, really suits the subject. Oh, thanks. It's absolutely beautiful. Yeah, it's beautiful and it's small. It's not intimidating. The language is eloquent, eloquent, but not it's not it's not it's not complicated. You know, it's very beautiful, but it's not overly simplistic. I mean, it's it's really, really well translated and nicely designed. But it all started with Anselm. But I think the reason that it's a great primer for anybody in the spiritual life, yeah, is because it starts with the end in mind like this is why we're doing everything. I mean, the stuff that it says in this little book is why a Quinas wrote the Summa Theologica. It's why you know, Jesuit martyrs go out into the jungles and try to convert the native people. It's it's it's why Peter got crucified upside down. Yeah, it's it's it's why all the apostles, except for John, got martyred and John got dipped in boiling oil. You know, so I mean, it's why everything is why we do what we do. And so it's there's not many works out there that highlight the whole purpose of everything that we're trying to do. And I feel like this does it wonderfully. It does. It does indeed. And you know, to keep our hearts fixed on that final goal. I think so so often in our religious life, we can be distracted by the by the lesser goals by the passing goals by church practice, tradition, liturgy and so forth by moral teaching and so forth. But the ultimate goal, which puts it all in context is this desire for heaven. And this puts it reminds us of the importance of everything else puts everything else at its proper perspective. I got a sense that if Anselm was alive today, he'd be tremendously successful, you know, whatever he did. I mean, I don't know if he'd be, you know, a cardinal or a great theologian or just a humble pastor. But I got the sense if he was walking around the day, you and I would say but that is like one of the most amazing people we've ever met. I just I think as a human, he was just probably extremely impressive, even though humble and probably understated. Yes, indeed. And we read in his biography about how he would keep very late hours to complete this work. And you think of all the things he did in his life. And it's almost as if he was more than one person to be able to achieve this. And it was all underpinned by his Benedictine monasticism, by his commitment to to regularity of life, to prayer, to enclosure and so forth, as much as he possibly could in the midst of his very demanding career. So, you know, when we were wrapping up many podcasts on Thomas the campus, we talked about how he's a great a great person to go to go to seek intercession from on the subject of silence and solitude in our busy loud, fast paced life. Yeah. And it seems like perhaps our conversation has revealed that Anselm is a guy we can, the stay at home mom, the busy executive, the blue collar worker, whoever it is in whatever state of life, they can appeal to St. Anselm and his intercession to embrace the station of your life and to accept God's will for you in whatever way that is, whatever God's put in front of you, ask St. Anselm's assistance to embrace that peacefully and calmly and joyfully. Is that a fair statement? I think very much so, Cody. You've put it very well. Well, I pray that our customers do that. I think they can come to tanbooks.com and check out some of these incredible works that you've translated. And I hope we can do a lot more with St. Anselm. And I think it's my job to kind of be an evangelist of these spiritual masters. And you know, St. Anselm's got a special place in my heart. And I think it's really because of the glories of heaven book. I mean, that's that was a very special thing. I mean, the passion of Christ to the eyes of Mary, very fun to read, very powerful. I love it. I love it. I love it. But the most motivating thing for me to change my daily life is focusing on the end goal and seeing what what God made Connor to be is is explained very well in this little book. So with that, I thank you very much, Father, for your translation work, for being here with us today, and explaining St. Anselm for us. And we'll pray for you. And I ask that you pray for us. We certainly will, Connor. Thank you. God bless you. God bless, Father. Thank you. This has been an episode of the Spiritual Masters, a podcast from Tan Books and Tan Direction. To follow the show, learn about more inspiring holy men and women, and to get special offers exclusive to Spiritual Masters listeners, sign up at spiritualmasterspodcast.com. And thanks for listening.