SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome to Catholic in America, a podcast in partnership with OSV News. I'm Jason Atkins. In the cacophony of voices in the culture, there's a lot of debate and discussion about what constitutes authentic Christianity. Despite a growing secularism and what might be called practical atheism, Christianity still shapes the vocabulary of our public discourse, and many politicians, movements, media figures, and organizations try to claim that they are meeting the demands of Christianity, or at least decrying others for not doing so. Similarly, there are shelves of books at the local bookstore under the label Christian Living, offering guidance about what it means to be a Christian. The figure of Jesus still continues to fascinate, and there will always be a market for those who seek him. But most of those Christian self-help books are not worth reading and will rightly be forgotten. A select few, however, can help renew our faith and our commitment to become true followers of Christ, because they help us seek his faith. And they do so by revisiting the scriptures so that we can rediscover anew the gospel stories that have sometimes become all too familiar. In them, however, we find an inexhaustible font of reflection about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus and a follower of the way. One of those books is called The Way of the Disciple, published in 2003 by Ignatius Press. I discovered this book recently and was captivated by it, as this podcast is devoted to offering conversations on topics that help Catholics be better disciples in the America of today. I wanted to speak with the author, who I learned was now a Trappist monk, attempting to live a life that, by design, prefers nothing to the love of Christ. Father Simeon, a Trappist monk, formerly known as Erasmo Leva Maricakis, is gracious enough to join us for an ever-timely conversation about discipleship today and how a monk's meditation upon the scriptures in Lectio Divina can be profitable for us all. Prior to entering St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, Father Simeon obtained his PhD in comparative literature and theology from Emory University and was a professor of literature and theology at the University of San Francisco. He has translated the work of many great theologians for Ignatius Press, including Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. He has also written a massive commentary on the Gospel of Matthew called Fire of Mercy, and is the author of several other books, including The Way of the Disciple, which we're going to be discussing on this show, and Love's Sacred Order. Father Stime of the Trappists, welcome to Catholic in America. It's a blessing to have you on the program.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

It's good to be with you, Jason, this morning.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

You have written a really compelling, captivating book, The Way of the Disciple. It's a book I stumbled upon just recently, and I thought to myself, this is very timely for the challenges we face as a nation, as a people, and fostering discipleship. And that's one of the themes of this show, Catholic in America. And so I had to have you on, and you were gracious to accept. So thank you. In writing the book, it seems you took undertook an ambitious task, first to write a short book, and then to write a short book on discipleship. What compelled you to write this book, The Way of the Disciple?

SPEAKER_02 3:16

It's interesting that you say that it's ambitious to write a short book. There's kind of an irony in there, but you're so right. It's much easier to go on forever rather than try to distill meaning and sense of direction in fewer words that are harder and more compelling words, I guess. The book, to make a long story short, actually, I never sat down to write a book on the way of the disciple. It really was a series of talks. Like many of the things that I've written, they begin with a request to give, oh, a conference maybe to a religious community, sometimes a retreat to college students. This book has been around for a little while. And so it happened on different occasions. And so, and I did not, it's interesting that I did not intend to write a book about discipleship as such. What happened was actually better because as I was invited over the course of maybe two or three years, a while back, to give these talks, obviously religious or retreat talks, I naturally fell into the subject of discipleship. So that after giving out two or three of these talks, I began to discover a pattern. And I said, why am I choosing these talks that can then be threaded together? So it happened, it's kind of counterintuitive. It happened the other way around. So I said, and I was still a layman, I was not a monk at that time, you know. So I said, ah, so I must be interested in discipleship because I gravitate naturally to the passages in the gospel that deal with that. So that's really how it came to be. And then, of course, when you edit it to put all these talks together, you put little concluding and introductory sections to make for some continuity. But you could see that each chapter really stands on its own.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? What is the way? You've highlighted a few things in the opening part of the book. Our solitude with Jesus, his freedom, and the call, our response, the shared life of companionship and the mission to teach and heal. But say a little bit more about in and distill that down for us. What just as we start this discussion here, what in your mind is that way of discipleship?

SPEAKER_02 5:52

Well, look, let's look at those two words more closely. You know, disciple and the way, and way. And so we get disciple and we get discipline from that. And discipline, interestingly, in the gospel context, doesn't have so much to do with disciplining oneself in the sense of following a rigorous method. To follow a discipline is to sit in someone's school or at someone's feet with the willingness to learn. So the first thing that discipleship is about is listening, you see. And listening not only as for a stage of one's life, it so happens that in this school, which St. Benedict calls the school of the Lord's service and the rule, and uh there's no graduation. Someone has said famously, and I think very well, that in every other religion, uh, you know, a disciple always yearns to equal the master and kind of become a master on his own. Well, as the gospel teaches us in Christianity, there's only one master and there's only one teacher. So that paradoxically, the Christian disciple always longs to be more and more deeply a disciple, you see. So we already begin with a series of paradoxes uh uh that are proper to Christianity.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

We can try to imitate him as the title of the famous book goes, but we'll only come so short come so close. But it shouldn't help it shouldn't discourage us in the work.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Not at all. Because in fact, and again, I think unique to Christianity, I don't even like the word imitate very much, even though I know that it is used in the New Testament and in scripture. But sometimes imitation, we get the sense of mimicking from afar, you know, uh, so that we have a great exemplar over there who could be any great person or idea. And then in my little world, I try to approximate that as much as possible. And normally that's as far as imitation goes. Now, if you read a book like The Imitation of Christ famously, and and and and the letters of St. Paul and so forth, there's an element missing there which is very important to kind of uh empower or light up that imitation from the inside, and the word is transformation. In other words, the Christian disciple doesn't try to reflect or reproduce what he sees in Christ. No, that's getting it the wrong way around. Because the disciple always sits at Jesus' feet, so to speak, um through that relationship, and I hope we'll talk a lot more about this. This this through this being with Jesus, through the companionship, that kind of existential being with intensely, which is the Christian way, a transformation begins taking place in oneself by association. It's kind of an osmosis, if you want to use that term. What Jesus is, what the way that Jesus sees the world, the thoughts of God that are communicated to us through the mouth of the Lord aren't just intellectual items or bits of information that we learn and then in some way give back or regurgitate. No, the most important part of discipleship is being penetrated by the word of God, which, as the prophet Isaiah says, you know, like the rain that falls and does not return to the heavens until it has fulfilled the mission that God gave it, well, so to the word of God. It's a seed that is sown within us and that transforms us. So that in fact it's more like becoming another Christ than to imitate Christ from a distance. And that's very, very important. I mean, on the one hand, it seems to be kind of uh a bit uh a bit much, because another Christ? What do you mean? Yes, it is indeed a bit much. On the other hand, it's the greatest humility because it's really saying, on my own I can do nothing. I have nothing to give except what Christ gives me and shares with me. Only insofar as I can communicate to another what Christ has done for me, can I be a disciple.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

And by receiving, yeah, by receiving that, the form, you use the word transformation, the form of the man is changed from the old man to the new man. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

So that then the next word that we should use is communion, because you see, a disciple is never transmitting information, even if it's the most sublime and truest of doctrine, we do do that. Obviously, we have an intellect, and the face also appeals to our intellect because it is truth. But way beyond that, what we're talking about is transformation by the reception of the word, so that then communicating what one has received, one by doing that, one enters into communion. You see the same root there. You you you you because you commune with Christ, then you commune with whomever, with whoever receives your word, which is not really your word. So this is how the body of Christ is built up through discipleship. Uh you see, one in the other. So it's something very existential, very personal. Um, yes, and in a sense, it it is in the pattern of the Father sending the Son, and then the Son sending the disciples. I mean, in a sense, it's the same thing, because it participates in the mission of Christ, but then he sends disciples out in the way that the Father sent him. And so this this intercommunion is built up on the basis of the living word.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

I love that word communion, and I'm not a linguist as you are. Yes. But if I'm getting my etymologies right, it's literally a sharing of gifts.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

Yes, munus. Yes. Yes, munera. The communicare is to share with others, cum, um the gifts that you have been given. Uh in modern English, we've reduced that to bits of information and communicating like this. But the the original word is really kind of mystical because it means the the uh the disciple gives himself to those to whom he communicates the word, because he's part of the word. The word has taken him over. St. Paul says, the word has overcome me, uh it has grasped me. And then the word uses me as he wishes, so that then it becomes that that intercommunion of uh gifts. The gifts could be sorrows, you know, both sufferings and joys and so forth. But whatever I have, it's not my own, and therefore uh it circulates around the body uh of Christ like a circulatory system, you know. It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Yeah. The the book uses and illustrates discipleship by looking at a number of gospel episodes, but I think but you start the book with talking about this way, this encounter, and what it looks like in the concrete in which we draw from each of those lessons. And I mentioned that those briefly that starts with this, let's just talk about those if we could, Father Simeon. Certainly. You know, the weight of discipleship starts with our solitude with Jesus. Say more about that. What is what does that mean?

SPEAKER_02 14:29

Yes. Uh now um that that the things that you listed there, these kind of five stages, really come from one long sentence uh in Mark chapter three, which is one of the um uh one of the records uh of our Lord calling the disciples to himself. And and so that that that whole thing is the way, um, the way of discipleship. All of those facets, and I will get to them in a minute. But I first want to just on that word way, it so happened that uh today's reading at Mass, this is the Friday of the third week uh of Easter, the first reading from Acts actually uses that word the way in Greek hochodos, uh, in a very peculiar way. Like the disciples, they were persecuted by the authorities because they belonged to the way. It's kind of mysterious language, and uh I think it's very beautiful language because uh course the way means Christianity, the Christian way of life, what Christians do, which is to embody the reality and gospel of the Lord Jesus, communicate in the Eucharist, share all goods together, and so forth. That is the way, which means that unlike those who followed Greek philosophers, which was mostly an intellectual endeavor, the Christian's whole way of life is changed as a result of encountering Jesus in the church. So that entering the church, becoming a member of the church, implied a great deal more than just undergoing baptism and going through a few RCIA classes and so forth. It meant that everything is revolutionized in your life, uh, even to and including the possibility of martyrdom, because uh in many ways one became a social outcast, depending on the place and time and all that. Uh one became a suspect within Roman society as to what one's deepest motivations were, because here's somebody who's taking another way. This is not the way we do things, it's another way, and so one becomes suspect. That's important because what one lives under uh uh necessarily those who live according to the person of Christ are not, I won't say never, but I won't say are not always and not very frequently flow very smoothly with the way of ordinary society. All kinds of things are going to come up, from how you raise children to how you treat the poor, to how you own property, all of these things, which some of us can say, wait a minute, let's have separation of church and religion here. Well, no. Uh I mean uh uh Christianity is revolutionary. To to see things and feel and act like the incarnate Son of God is not going to look different.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Like the Didic, the Didicay says, you know, the Christian he shares his table, but not his wife. Exactly. Which is in the Roman and the ancient world, that was a that was a novel, novel thing in many ways. On both counts. On both counts, absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

On both counts. So so that that's really important for, I mean, we know we live, Christianity has long been the uh established religion, uh, in at least in the Western world, and even to some extent in contemporary society, I mean, we can argue that, but but sort of Christianity is kind of old hat. Uh to many people say, oh yeah, the gospel, yeah, yeah, yeah, charity, etc. But it takes a bit of imagination to imagine what being a Christian in the first and second centuries uh Roman Empire must have been like. And uh, and as I said, one took one's life into one's hands every day when you went out into the street and lived in this way. Not only in the centuries of intense persecution. There weren't persecutions all the time. That's kind of exaggerated. But normally in business dealings and social dealings of any kind and the political life of the state, almost every aspect of life, uh uh the marketplace uh was called into question by the fact that this group operated by different principles. Yeah. So the the way uh, you know, they we we speak nowadays of the the neocatechumenal way, you know, the neo-that's where they got it from the the book of Acts. Uh but then of course it's not just a philosophical uh program or even an evangelical program. Ultimately, what did Jesus say? I am the way, the truth, and the life. So, really, when a Christian says the way of life, at bottom it's referring to the person of the Lord. So to follow the Christian way is to follow the Lord Himself. And and again, that verb follow is the second verb to associate with the idea of discipleship. The disciple is the one who listens to the word of another, and the disciple is the one who follows in the path uh that someone else determines, sometimes for mysterious reasons that one does not understand. So it isn't just follow the leader, you know, to a nice place of fun and games. It's follow me, even if it means get on this boat with me and we're going right into the storm at the sea. You follow Christ into difficulty. So uh that's that's a really important part of the way. It isn't just, you know, uh uh lined with uh with roses and uh sweetness the whole time.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

But put but first it seems we must put ourselves in his presence, and the the gospel passages and that you point out and and pick out are all scenes in which people encounter the Lord and put themselves in his presence, whether it's blind Bartimaeus, whether it's the the woman with the alabaster jar wiping Jesus's feet with her hair and her tears, people who have encountered the Lord and put themselves affirmatively in his presence.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

Yes, and and so the that list there, uh we began talking about the way in connection with Mark III and the calling of the disciples. Those five points are very important because even though they're all taken from that one long sentence in Mark, they really, for me, it's hard to believe that Mark did not intend that to be a kind of a prototype of vocation. Because look at what you have. First of all, Jesus taking a certain number of individuals apart. Just before that text in Mark III, there have been the crowds, multitudes of people milling around Jesus, whom he took out of the city of Capernaum and out into the wilderness. But there's still mobs. But then the whole thing intensifies when out of those mobs he begins going up this mountain and he calls to himself, as the text says, he went up the mountain and called to himself those whom he desired. And they came to him. And he created twelve in order that they might be with him, and in order that they might teach and drive out demons. That is, see, that's the one sentence, and those five steps come from there. Then I try to flesh out in each individual. So you have, first of all, solitude with Jesus, that being taken out of our previous, comfortable in the sense of being used to, context. There is that necessary separation and that shock of finding oneself in a new place where one has never been before, uh, with this teacher whom one trusts but who is mysterious, and you don't know what the next thing is that it's going to come out of his mouth or that he's going to require of you. Um, and also the result, Jason, of that situation, which is a shock to the system, is encountering oneself in solitude with that person in a place where you've never been before. So, in other words, it's a moment of crisis. It sounds very nice to say, let us go apart with Jesus and rest a while and so forth. Yeah, but when you begin asking, and what happens there, it begins with crisis. Because wherever, for human beings, wherever there's a separation from the known, there is going to be a crisis, necessarily, more or less uh intense. So that's it. The first, the being taken apart. And by the way, in Jewish symbolism, the being set apart is always a sign of consecration. You get all throughout the whole Old Testament, you know, the one unblemished sheep that is uh lamb that is taken away from the flock for sacrifice is being consecrated by being set aside. So that's already a sign of the consecration of disciples to another function, another relationship, another state. Uh so the transformation already begins there when you are taken apart from the known and the familiar to uh solitude. And then uh the second point is Christ's freedom. Because freedom of election, that is to say, the moment I feel called or I see that someone else is called, the big human question always is why me or why him? In other words, what's the reason here? And most likely we're going to come up with very pragmatic reasons. Well, he has these qualities that are going to be able to be used for the mission later on, or he has really, you know, very admirable but very worldly reasons. Oh, he he has strived hard, so he re he deserves this reward, and so Jesus is recognizing merit and so forth. Nothing of the kind. The truth of the matter, and what we see in the text, is that it is the mystery of Jesus' freedom, the personal freedom of his will. And it says, he called to himself those whom he desired. The whole mystery lies in the will or the desire of Jesus to elect these particular ones. And we know from the rest of the gospel that all the trouble and you know misunderstandings that they could get into. So we're pretty sure that it isn't because of their talents or innate sanctity.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

That's for sure. Yeah, until the day of Pentecost, it seems they keep getting things wrong. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 26:08

So the big question is how can Christ choose those whom he knows are going to mess up? And some of them mess up very badly. Why did Christ choose Judas Iscariot? Or for that matter, Peter, who betrayed him. He repented, but he betrayed him. Judas didn't repent, and that was his tragedy. But he chose weaklings, people, well, he chose human beings like you and me. That's the great mystery. That's why he came in the first place. So his freedom in choosing, but also I have to say, in that freedom also rests all of our hope. You know, because later on, as life takes its course and we begin having difficulties and having doubts about oneself, it's very good to be able to fall back on that rock certainty. Lord, you are the one who chose me. I trust that you knew what you were doing and that you are going to see me through this because you must have foreseen it. So you see how it can be at the same time a great puzzle and mystery and a great reassurance, I am in charge from the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

We have a savior, it's not us. And it's a great comfort to those of us in ministry, because, like with Pope Francis and his beautiful episcopal model, lowly yet chosen, the reality is that we are called and not someone else into our particular roles and given particular moon or uh to you, again, use a term there. And uh we just have to be faithful. But in his freedom to call us, we also have a freedom to respond. And that's an essential aspect of this here is we have to respond to the call. And you see, in the gospels, I think one of the most compelling things is when Christ encounters someone, there's a movement either towards him or away from him. Right. And he went away because he had many possessions. You know, so there's this call, or even here, your first your first gospel illustration is the Lord fills Peter's nets and he says, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, because I don't want to take on that transformation. Like I don't want to have to change my life when I encounter you. It's like when Graham Green could have met Padre Pio and he said, No, I don't want to meet Padre Pio because I might have to change my life. I mean, that that that episode there. But there's a freedom in our response.

SPEAKER_02 28:37

That's exactly it. I mean, it sounds very humble to say, depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. And in a sense, it is, and there's fear in there and all that. But I think at bases exactly what you're saying, Jason. It's just, oh my God, if if I enter this narrative, what's going to become of me? This is just too crazy for me. So uh and so it's an like an excess of piety, which in fact is trying to keep God at arm's length and saying, don't get any closer to me because I'm not about to change. I don't want to change. And that response is the next step in our journey here. Freedom of election calls forth freedom of response. So this is really important. We Catholics do not believe in predestination, uh, in double predestination, that one is predestined to respond or predestined to deny. That would be, I mean, I can't see how anyone can believe in the gospel and hold that doctrine of double predestination. Because, look, what is God after? And in the end, what is it that God intends? He wants to give us his love, and he wants us to receive his love. And love cannot be either given or received without freedom. It is the one thing that's based on absolute freedom, and that is both our glory as Christians and sometimes our tragedy, because we can say no for the reason. I don't want to change, I don't believe any of this hokey, go away with what you're selling, I just want to go on living as I have been. That's a free freedom of response, which can have which has you know consequences, but that's it's very important. Our little feet have to do the walking, and and the and the text in market says, he called them, um, those whom he wanted, and they came away to him. That's not a throwaway uh verb. In other words, that's the response. They came to him. In other words, they said, Yes, here I am, here we are. Uh uh do to me what you will. Uh uh I am at your disposal, uh, etc. So that's that's very important. And and then the number four step, what comes of that, they're at the mountaintop by now, they have followed what he has called the purpose. Now, this is it's very brief and very simple, but I think not only moving but dramatically so. He all of this has happened in order that they might be with him. Now, we have to give that verb to be, which is the simplest verb. Remember, I remember when I was in eighth grade, and the the English teacher always said to us, avoid the verb to be, because it's it's colorless. It doesn't say anything. All you can say is is, is, is, is, that doesn't paint a picture. You have to, you know, use action verbs. Well, that's true when it comes to literary style. But in fact, in this context, it's the most powerful verb because it refers to the being of a thing. So when it says that he called them in order that they might be with him, oh my goodness, that means that the incarnate Son of God wants to share his very being with the disciples by inviting them to share theirs with him. So we're talking very deeply here, I mean, metaphysically, if you want to use that word, communion and union of being, uh, which means permanence, which means free give and take of love for the duration, sharing one's existence absolutely with another person. It's the kind of thing that you really only think of in the best of marriages, humanly speaking, or in the best of uh, I guess, friendships, or in certain parent-child relationships in which there's a permanence and a depth that nothing else can touch. You might need to use that communion word again. Yes, indeed. Communion, but communion of all goods. In other words, not only when it comes to what we have, but communion and who I am. You know, I pledge, I think that that beautiful old Anglican formula of the marriage formula. Uh I I I I uh what what is it? I the word body is used in there. I I forget what the formula is, but uh it's like pledge my body or something. No, with my body i the worship. That's what it says. Yes, worship in the sense of completely surrender to you. Give my it's almost divine language, very strange in that formula, but it means the totality of the self-giving of the spouses to to one another. So uh sharing everything, that that exclusiveness of of love uh which manifests the fidelity and eternity, eternal permanence of divine love. So that that that's the whole purpose. This is what it has all been. And then significantly the last point, the fifth point, and in order that he might send them to proclaim, to teach, and to heal. You know, notice the proportionality. There are four steps dealing kind of internally with the relationship of the disciple with the teacher. Only the final step is there an external manifestation, uh apparently away from the Lord. He sends them forth to evangelize. But of course, now that they've been penetrated by the being of Christ, as they go forth physically, they really bring Christ with them to whomever they encounter.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

So so they share that gift and then they transmit the gift.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

But by their presence, but by putting their bodies there, by going into the midst uh of uh people. So, yeah. So it's discipleship. You see, at that at this level, I use the word contemplation and contemplative, uh, you know, and I am a contemplative monk, the Trappist Order, but I I one of the things, even before I became a monk, I was really convinced that action and contemplation are two aspects of the relationship with Christ. They are by no means, this is not a dichotomy in which one has to choose the so-called active life versus the contemplative life. I really think that's a great misconception that has led to error. Uh so it it's two modalities of the same relationship, in internally and externally. But this is the way human life goes, isn't it? There's the privacy and intimacy of the heart, which then becomes manifested socially in my relationship with others. Same person. And where does it come last? Because you're not going to have anything worthwhile to give unless you cultivate deeply within yourself the source of all good. So that the mission flows out of you necessarily, but only because of uh a life of intense prayer and even asceticism and so forth that comes up uh as another one of these uh questions. So it's a fruit, it's not the tree itself. Activity is not the main point. The main point is internal growth and then allowing the fruits to grow.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

We've talked a bit about the what of discipleship and the way of discipleship. The gospel passages that you use in the book perhaps say something about the who of discipleship.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 37:03

And it's not necessarily a particular caste of elites or a priestly class or anyone else, but the way of discipleship is open to anyone, whether it be the fisherman, the blind man, the woman caught in adultery, perhaps, um the Samaritan woman, someone not even in the traditional conception of the people. It's the so who is the disciple?

SPEAKER_02 37:31

That's a tricky question. That's a very tricky question indeed, because you see, in a way, it uh it brings to the fore the question of different charisms within the church. Um the uh people my age, that is to say, born and raised in the faith before the council, uh, we had certain very um kind of rigid and black and white conceptions of things. And this was one of them. You know, there was the priestly caste, and sort of an addendum to that was the religious, especially nuns or brothers that taught you in school. And then there was everybody else, the great unwashed, you know. And there was just no question, you know, as I was brought up as a Catholic, with extreme reverence for those that everybody considered to be closer to God. Because obviously, being priests or religious, they were called to a degree of, I don't know, uh, initiation or intimacy with God that none of the rest of us were. Now, let's look at that phenomenon for a moment, which I think is very wrong. Uh not because certain distinctions don't need to be made, but but certainly not that distinction. And what that produced was clericalism, you know, with the many, I think, evils that can come from clericalism, and we don't need to rehearse those, but raising human beings to an almost semi-holy caste or something like that, and putting all your trust in that, it's this is part of a phenomenon that psychologists called alienation. In other words, you're you're kind of lauding or revering this class of people there for their holiness, for knowing the truth, for being an intermediary with God. And by the same token, you're excusing yourself from having to make any efforts at all in that direction. So you see, it's at the same time kind of uh uh sycophantic and self-serving. In other words, you distance, it's part of the phenomena that you said myself of Peter. Oh, no, no, Lord, never, never I, never I. I want to stay over here in very ordinary time. I don't want to be separated. Uh yeah. So uh so it's wrong. You see, I think the council made us see that the, you know, in accordance with Paul's doctrine of the body of Christ and its different functions, but one body, one body, you know, in which there is a head and a heart and limbs, and then down to the little toe and so forth, but it's only one body. And any individual member, including the head, only receives meaning from belonging to the totality of the body. So, who is a disciple? Every Christian is a disciple, and who is a Christian? Every potential, potentially every human being. Why? Because Christ is the redeemer of all. Christ came to redeem all. To what? To sharing God's life by communion with Him. And that's what a disciple is. So you see, we we before we get into any distinctions within the church, we have to establish very clearly the human vocation, qua human, is to become a disciple of Christ's and thereby thereby be joined to the life of God. It's what humans were made for, human beings. Without exception. Without exception. Now, I think Baltasar, the theologian, is very helpful when he speaks of the states of different states of Christian life, in which, for instance, he speaks of the Petrine office and the Marian office and the Pauline office in the church, all of them complementary to one another, uh, and all of them contributing to the life of the of the one church. And so uh there are more contemplative forms of life within the church. There is the ordained ministry within the church, and then there's the ministry of the faithful. But you see, nowhere there is discipleship limited to only one of those categories. Discipleship is not a category, it's part of the identity of being a Christian, you see. So we have to shatter that illusion that some people are called to a higher form of life or are given more grace, or or uh it's true that individuals can come to love God more heroically than others, but that's only because of what we do with grace. It isn't because grace is in any way stifling or limiting who I am called to be. I salvation is union with Christ, and that's what a disciple yearn for, yearns for.

SPEAKER_01 43:01

We talked about transformation in Christ. You see the word form in there. We can be formed at his feet as Catholics in many ways. We could do so through the sacraments. Um, we can do so through works of charity and encountering our neighbor and be transformed habitually by acts of love. We can do so in contemplative and meditative prayer.

SPEAKER_02 43:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

You have spent your life immersing yourself in the word, the scriptures. Say a little bit about the importance of encountering Christ and being formed as a disciple by immersing oneself in scripture.

SPEAKER_02 43:41

Yes. Um I like to say, along with many fathers of the church and other people, more contemporary theologians that I admire, that there's an intrinsic unity between the Written word of God in Scripture and the real presence of the Word of God in the Eucharist. I think this is why we speak of a liturgy of the Word and a liturgy of the Eucharist, and together they constitute the Mass. Together they constitute the divine liturgy. Because God, who is our creator, knows of what we are made. Being our creator. He designed us that way. Consequently, the means of salvation by which God draws us back to Himself have to be adequate, have to correspond to who the creature is. And we've used the word communication many times so far. See, so communication and communion. You can see that as the liturgy of the word, liturgy of the Eucharist, are two aspects of the same movement, the same process of increasing union with God. So the spoken and written word that is inspired by the Holy Spirit, we might say, is the first manifestation of the word. Some medieval writers actually speak of the first incarnation of the word in paper. That before the word became flesh, it became paper in a sense, or parchment, if you would. Because the preparation for the fullness of the incarnation has to begin somewhere. And it begins with the history of Israel, which is pierced through and through with the coming of God, his intervention in the history of the Jews in the desert, the salvation in Exodus, and so forth. And then the word of the prophets, you know, the word of the prophet, the word of God came to me, and I, you know, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and so forth. So it is a word that can be perceived humanly, first by listening. We're back to discipleship, listening, and then in the record of the interventions of God as written down by the sacred authors inspired by the Holy Spirit. So you see, all the it's so human, you see. It's so human to preserve the memory of God's interventions by literary records that remind the lazy and forgetful human memory of what God has done, because what God has done when we remember it becomes a promise of what God is still going to do because he is a faithful God. So he's not going to drop the people that he has created and chosen and consecrated to himself, drop them and go away to some other universe or something. No. So this is why the education, the discipline, the learning of the disciple sitting at the feet of God begins with listening to the mysterious words of Scripture. And so, Lexio Divina, you know, the monastic practice of reading the scripture slowly and in a very meditative way, not for study or research or garnering information primarily, but to encounter the living God in his word. Because it is the word of God and it is human language, but you know that the Catholic doctrine of divine inspiration of the writers vitally includes the person of the inspired writer of scripture, the time where he was writing, his personality, his personal experience with life, uh, the loss of a wife, poverty, being rejected by society, being thrown in a cistern. All of these things inspire the sacred writer to talk about God in a very personal way. This is why each one of them is unique. And yet it is the same word of God always being communicated. So in a very incarnate personal way, inviting us to kind of use the word as a window into the encounter with God that we come, we almost become contemporaries of the prophets or of Moses and so forth. We become contemporaries through adoring the same God and listening to the same word. That's how we come to share in the history, in salvation history. It's ours. It's not over there someplace in a book. It's our history, but we need to enter it uh voluntarily and willingly uh uh uh to share in it. Um so, but then you see, for the Eucharistic prayer, we use the word anamnesis, which is the remembrance of the deeds of God that we have just heard about in Scripture, at the moment of consecration and the Eucharistic prayer. All of those previous interventions by God that have been recalled through the reading of Scripture become immediate actuality here in this celebration. You see, and that's the transition from the scriptural word to the word truly present and offered and given in the Eucharist. So you see this, this, this um, it's like, you know, God has this massive conspiracy of love that that that seems to you know home in on us little by little until it touches us exactly where we are. And what happens there? Uh so so that the the the Eucharist in itself is pure presence, but we've been prepared for that pure presence of Christ is by the words that converge in the gift of the Son that summarizes all of previous salvation history. At this moment, in my parish church, on this altar, that's the extraordinary thing about Catholicism. If we don't have that to offer, we have nothing to offer.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

I think each of these stories, the gospel stories that you've included in this very fine book, talk about and underscore that importance of presence and God's presence in our lives. Um you know, uh we didn't that you didn't include the story of Zacchaeus, but he's coming to our house today. Zacchaeus, please come down. I'm going to your house today. He is really dwelling with that with uh within us. Um you titled the chapter about the woman with the alabaster jar of ointment, the wastefulness of love, you know, just being present with him and uh just letting him transform us. Say, can you just go into one of these stories and just unpack the way in which it really illustrates discipleship for us in a compelling way?

SPEAKER_02 51:48

Yes. Um I hesitate between let's see, shall it be Bartimaeus or should it be the Samaritan woman? Um they're just they're they're all so great. And the thing is, they're all so different from one another. Um let's take the Samaritan woman, because I mean she's extraordinary. And and and and and that that long narrative that that we hear about, what is it, the fourth Sunday of Lent or something, uh uh is extraordinary. It's an extraordinary story because it just goes one step at a time, and you know, she has she's a sinner, and everybody knows it. So she has to go get water at the well at noontime when it's so hot and impossible that nobody else comes at that time. So she's an outcast from society, and she's condemned, she's ostracized, she she's condemned. And what is extraordinary at the very beginning of that encounter is that Jesus, whom she eventually proclaims as the Messiah and the Savior for which Israel is awaiting, he comes to her in similar conditions. He's coming down from Galilee and going through Samaria up to Jerusalem, and it says there, you know, he's come a long way on foot, and he is tired, he is exhausted, which is the reason why he went to the well, you know. So, and then so it seems to be this casual encounter, but it's very important that the encounter occurs out of the need of each, out of the weakness, thirst, and need of each to restore himself. And it turns out that she is restored and he is restored by the by the mutual meeting and the sparks of love that fly there. So that you're the story works at two on two registers. There's the register of the literal things that are happening, you know, the noonday sun, the well, the pitcher, the exhaustion, and it works very well at that literal level, but you feel that just underneath the surface, there is this mystery transpiring in which what is that mystery? It's that the incarnate God in Christ comes to meet us to save us by taking on our very condition on himself. So that he asks her for a drink. Just you're asking me for a drink, don't you know, etc.? But that asking for a drink, he's truly, and he's not playing games. He's manifesting thirst and exhaustion, and I have to draw a line between that asking her for a drink to the cross, where he says, I thirst. The condition of God on earth among us is thirst, physical thirst, and thirst for our love. You know, the the response that we were talking about, the his freedom in coming to us as incarnate human beings, eliciting, hopefully, you know, God, in a sense, putting himself at risk. He's taking a chance that we're going to say no. But this is a very happy occasion where out of the need of both, she corresponds little by little as she allows his words to penetrate her. And you can see it would take a long time to show the evolution in the dialogue of the progressive, I guess, scales falling from her eyes or something, until she says, you know, it is I who am speaking to you, Christ says to her. And then there's this epiphanic moment of recognition. But it's only happened because God condescended to enter our condition and not as make-believe, but truly putting on our weakness, which is the only place where he could encounter this woman. He he knew who she was. And then something happens which is extraordinary. When they talk about the husbands, you see. Yeah, that's true. You don't you don't have a husband. Yeah, you've had five, and the one that you're living with now is not your husband. Do you remember what happens then? She puts down the picture that she had brought to carry the literal water back. She puts it there. I I just love that gesture. That abandoned pitcher says everything because it means her life has been turned inside out. She has other another purpose now. Her thirst has been met in another way, and she runs into town to tell the very people who have ostracized her, I've encountered the Messiah, I found the Messiah. How does she know that? Because he has told me everything I ever did. That's extraordinary. Because we usually associate sin with shame, and rightly so. But oh happy fault of Adam, in the case of the woman too, oh happy sin of this woman, that became the occasion for the Savior to come to her. And there's an explosive joy, you might say, on that woman's part, that as he looks into her soul and she has nothing left to hide, that gives her her freedom. And and and uh and and she it says, and she runs back into town because she can't wait to tell everybody about her experience. But it's been an experience of the recognition of sin, but within enclosed by love. You see, that's the thing. If we are loved, we can throw everything else away, all of our cares. And she feels totally embraced by the love of Christ, precisely because he knows her heart and still loves her. It's just it's an absolute jewel uh of teaching, of the sacraments, of the mystical life, of discipleship.

SPEAKER_01 58:37

It's all there, you know. She's been giving the been given the living water and transformed. And the story corresponds exactly to that line in Mark. That first, that solitude with Jesus, his freedom in the call, he is not bound by the human categories in which we put people. He is allowed to call her. Her response, unlike Peter initially, depart. She doesn't say department from me from my sinful woman. But don't you ask more questions? Right. That coming forward and you know, rather than the rich young man, she moves toward Christ, he moved away. The fellowship through love that you were talking about being together, and then she embraces the mission to teach and heal at the end is beautiful. She does. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 59:25

Exactly. She goes and she doesn't care. These people are the ones who've been persecuting her, and yet she becomes, she becomes their evangelist as a result of her experience of conversion and transformation. And it all happens like that in three minutes. It's extraordinary. You know, the total transformation. And when you said about the freedom of Jesus, that's exactly the important side of, you know, when she says, don't you know that, you know, you Jews have nothing to do with us Samaritans and so forth? That's that's stressing Jesus' freedom in making this overture to her because it's so surprising. In other words, he's taking literally liberties with the Jewish tradition and bursting through this barrier of custom and mutual recrimination and loss of purity. We have nothing to do with you, lest we, because the Samaritans were only sort of half Jews, they weren't really quite orthodox, and so uh uh a real Jew would become contaminated by their quasi-paganism and so forth. And and and Jesus has this freedom of altering all of that simply by by his presence. Uh no, it it it's just extraordinary.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:38

Yeah. I want to turn to the one aspect of discipleship that I think is undervalued, but perhaps becoming more appreciated again today, which is monasticism. And you are a Trappist monk.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:52

Uh what is a what is a monk, first of all? I think maybe we just shouldn't assume that. And you know, amidst all the charisms and roles and responsibilities, what is a what does a monk do? What's the point of being a monk?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:07

You know, uh uh that that that calls to mind uh a talk that one of our brothers here gave to us within the community uh a long time ago, because the abbot had asked some to talk to the community of what is it that attracts people to come here to become a monk and to stay? What is it? And this brother, I'll never forget it, he gave these wonderful two or three talks over a two or three week period, I think it was two weeks. Um, in answering that question, he answered it in a really very non-pious and surprising way. Uh uh He says, We come here and we stay because we want to meet the void at the center. To meet the void at the center. Now, you see what I mean by unusual response. What on earth does that mean? I think he was trying to be a little bit uh what uh uh provocative. That's the word, to call us out of our conventional language and all of that. But as he developed it, and the more I thought of it, I said yes. You see, to seek for the void at the center means to try to go beyond the conventions, not only of society and what is reputed to be the good life and the fulfilled life and all that, but even in some sense, the conventions of the church, insofar as sometimes we can become a little too um self-satisfied in the way that we define our Christianity. You know, what is a good Catholic? What is a good Christian? Well, it's a person who does works of charity, who frequents the sacraments, who goes to Mass on Sunday, who tries to pray a little bit and read a little bit of scripture. Uh and you know, obviously those things are true. And but there's there's another monk story from the desert that says, what is lacking there? All those things are good. Well, what's lacking, the monk says, why not just become all fire? You know, so there's a difference between defining either monasticism or Christian life by an agenda. You see, where you name these different observances, activities, and I do this and I do that. You know, the bucket list of the Christian. You know, that bucket list can be 300 items long, or in the case of the Jews, 613 commandments. It can be a very good, holy, and so-forth list. But if there isn't the spark of the spirit that sets it all on fire, you wonder what's the good of those observances. So, the void at the center means to try to go beyond one's own ego, one's own private definitions of who God is and what God is, above all, beyond what I take for granted to be God's way of working in my life or in the life of the world, and become very silent and very empty within oneself to make room for the coming of the true God. The true God that I cannot define, that I cannot embrace and grasp, that I cannot anticipate. You know, this echoes here of what we were saying before about, you know, leaving the known, going into the unknown. That's basically what the monk does. The monk, I mean, why do we leave cities? Why do we live out here in the middle of the country? Why is there an enclosure and so forth? All of those are aids. I mean, heaven help us if those things become ends in themselves and we begin sacralizing the sacred this and the sacred that and our sacred schedule and all that. No, no, no. Those are means to create an empty space at the center that only God can fill by coming to us when he wants, how he wants, and by surprising us by the manner of presence and by the manner of his communicating with us and what he asks of us. So among someone who is willing to uh who is willing to be surprised by God continually and in every way. That's one way of saying who a monk is. And so to do that, you have to let go of all sorts of things and sit back and wait. I mean, in a sense, no advent is a very monastic period because it's the period of waiting for the coming of Christ. And it's not easy to wait. It's not easy to wait in silence. So it's a way of life created around that sense of a living God who is always going to surprise us in every way, in every way, and sometimes in ways that we do not want. Even as a monk, that doesn't mean that we go on any kind of automatic pilot, and now I'm receptive to anything and everything. No. Human nature remains alive and well, and sometimes kicking, kicking back and saying, no, not this. I don't want you to come to me in this way. Well, I thought you said that this is why you came here and this is why you left everything else behind to concentrate on the one thing necessary and so forth. So that's what I can say.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:13

Well, monks typically embrace aesthetical practices. The word itself comes from the desert fathers and the desert monks. And it seems to speak to that reality that you just mentioned, which is entering that space and clearing the clearing things out so that God can come in and God can be encountered in that space. But aesthetical practices are not just for monks. What in what ways does the disciple discipline him or herself by aesthetical practices and how are those aids in deepening that encounter and growing in fellowship with Christ?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:53

Well, let's be very concrete here, Jason, by giving examples. So let's talk about, let's say, fasting and silence, uh, which are two of the main outstanding uh ascetical practices of the monks. Why do we fast? Again, I can remember when I was a very young person, and fasting was still very much in fashion before the conciliar reforms, that the common understanding, which was really kind of weird when you think of it, is that God likes it when you do hard things for him. So fasting is hard, not eating your favorite foods is hard. Therefore, somehow or other that makes God happy. I never got it. I went along with it because this is what you were expected to do, but I said, that's kind of weird. And if you pursue that and say, well, what kind of a God is it who's happy when you're doing hard things? Well, obviously, the that point of view, even though it's not 100% incorrect, I think is kind of far from. We first need to center these things. Why fasting? Well, can't you see the connection between fasting and creating that empty space, you know, which what we can do to prepare the ground for God is sort of clear the ground. So what we can do is in a sense negative preparatory work by doing less of what we used to do before, whatever that was, whether it's watching television or drinking too much or eating too much or talking too much. You see, it's pulling back on that, but not because it's hard and my hardship makes God happy, but because I'm changing my way of relating to God and to the world by decreasing the seeking of pleasure and the seeking of the affirmation of the ego by trying to pull back, at least to some degree with that. And what that does is create like an open invitation to God to come, I am waiting for you. Look, I've cleaned my house, I've I've created a space where I would like to welcome you. So you see, there's because there's a correspondence between the human body uh and the soul by fasting from you know literal food. This communicates something to our psyche and to our soul that puts us in a different frame of mind. And it should be like an open invitation to God, please come to me. I I've tried to do what I can to clear the way in my heart for you. So that's that's the only meaning of asceticism. By the way, the the Greek word comes from athletic competitions, so that asches is like the training that people do for their bodies in a gymnasium. So gymnastic asches is lifting weights or you know, doing steps or whatever people do. This is transferred to the spiritual realm and it becomes spiritual practice, but which begins with the body. But again, it's training. It's it's simple, it's preparatory. This is why when you objectify something like fasting and oh, he must be holy because he fasts so much. Wrong. You see, that that's that's getting it exactly wrong. Because then it becomes an end in itself and it becomes like a like a gold medal reward. No, it's always interpersonal. It always refers to the quality of my heart's relationship with God, and something similar with silence. We will not be able to listen to the words of God as long as I'm printing out, as long as I'm verbalizing, I cannot at the same time take in. So the practice of silence, and that, as you can see from my performance here, the practice of silence hasn't always been easy for me. Because I like communication and I like manifesting my thoughts. And so I confess to you that this has been one of one of my struggles in being a monk is okay, time now, even for you to shut up. In other words, listen. Don't talk about listening. Listen. And to do that, you need to stop talking. So again, it seems to be negative, it seems to be less, but it's actually more. Because you feel your soul kind of blossoming into the space that silence creates, and it's really a new way of being in the world, which actually can be extremely satisfying and rewarding from the point of view to you can see nature, you could study clouds or flowers better if you have the ability to perceive, take in what is before you, which you won't have as long as stuff is just going out of you all the time. It's that's the wrong direction. It should be coming this way, you know. So it's all a preparation for receptivity, in other words. That's all asceticism ever is.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:39

So much of monastic life, especially for those communities that follow the rule of Saint Benedict, is the praying of the Psalms, the liturgy, the Opus Day. Oh, yes. What the psalms, I think, are, like you said, they use the term mysterious, but they're both instructional, but in many ways comfort. In what ways are the psalms, should the psalms be a touch point or a touchstone for the disciple today?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:06

You know, so many things have been said about the psalms. And we normally think of psalms as the praise of God inspired by the Holy Spirit, so it's the highest kind of praise, and that's true. But there's something broader that I would like to say about the psalms, which when you become very familiar with the Psalter, the collection of 150 Psalms, it becomes more and more obvious to you, and that is that the Psalms, all you know, if you take them in their totality, cover and express and acknowledge nearly every human emotion, reaction, uh, and even in a sense, thought that is possible to human beings. In a sense, in a sense, the human spirit anticipates the whole of human experience in the text of the Psalms. Because there's a great deal more than simply praise, straightforward praise of God in the Psalms. There is anger, there is despair. I mean, the words of the Lord on the cross, my God, my God, why have you why have you forsaken me? That comes from the Psalms, of course, you know. So why is that important? Because it's the acknowledgement by God of every state of being human. We speak of being redeemed. But before God can redeem us, not only who we are, but what we are experiencing, whether it's happy or sad or catastrophic or ecstatic, everything needs to be comprehended in our experience and raised to God. If you want to say the psalm, the psalms give us permission to bring everything into our prayer before God, even things that we might consider to be unseemly, uh not appropriate for a Christian. It's an amazing thing. The Psalms allow us to be angry in the presence of God. Now, what one does with that anger is another question, but it says human beings will be angry and they will seek revenge. Well, whoa, you become aware of that in the presence of God, and it is likely that those emotions will be transformed. And we badly need to be healed in that way through the prayer by emoting whatever the emotion is in the presence of God. That's just one example of why this Psalms are important.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:06

How has living in a monastery? You were a professor of uh languages at the University of San Francisco, but not and not but you've become a monk.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:14

Uh how has living inside the monastery uh transformed your view of what the world is like outside the monastery?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:22

Oh, wow. You're coming from left field there. I wasn't expecting that question.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:29

Throw a few curveballs in there every now and then.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:32

Exactly. Exactly. Uh well, let's see. You know, I'd have to say that at first the transition was really quite difficult, even though I wanted this life very much. But practically speaking, you know, I entered the monastery, Jason, at age 56, and was ordained a priest at 66, if you would. So what can you expect from such a creature?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:02

You know, uh and the ability to habits form by the time you get to 56.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:08

Yeah. And, you know, as we say in Spanish, what once the tree grows crooked, you try to straighten it out when it's older, and all you do is break it, you know. Uh so that it's an interesting question. It was very hard. So let's just say, with regard to this question of silence, for instance, that um, no, by the end of we have a two-year novitiate, and sometimes I say that by the end of that novitiate, I didn't have a tongue left. Because during what we call repetitions, which are the classes that we meet with the novice master and so forth, I disagreed with so many things, and I was so opinionated and so used to, as a professor, to always expressing my opinion that I had to bite my tongue over and over again. So by the end of the novish, my tongue wasn't worth much. So that was the first part of the experience, and that was real, but it was necessary because I remember one day distinctly, one day distinctly, um I had this really nice, we were sitting in the chapter room where the whole community gathers on Sunday and listens to the abbot. And so we sit on both sides, kind of around like this. And I looked around, and I remembered my days at the university, where I was always, you know, at the podium giving assignments, asking questions, uh, giving grades and this and that. And all of a sudden I found myself sitting at the periphery, you know, just one seat among, at that time, there were almost 80 monks in this community. One of eighty sitting my little place over there. And you know, at that moment, it was as if this great weight had been taken off my shoulders, and I really felt I get to just be myself and be quiet and still at my place and kind of rejoice in being a member of something a lot bigger than myself. It was, I guess I had learned something that I needed to learn, which was you don't have to be in charge all the time, even of your own life. It's good to sit back and let God, through the community and through this way of life, um lead you. I mean, we're back to following. You know, I can really say to you, honestly, I hadn't thought of this before. I became a disciple by becoming a monk. I don't think I was before. I talked about discipleship and I wrote the book before I became a monk, but but that was it. I was preaching about discipleship. When I got here, all of a sudden I said, now I have to become what I've been preaching about all my life. And and it was a real challenge. But at the end, it brought me great peace and almost like a discovery of a deeper identity that I hadn't known before in myself. I'm actually one who can be quiet in a corner and be happy, and just observing what else is going on in the world and receiving, as opposed to always having to give in the sense of maybe that controlling sense of giving that you are in charge. I'm not talking about interior giving, which is another question. So it's made a big difference in my life, you know. Learning humility, learning silence, um, learning not to be ambitious. I mean, in the monastery, there are no promotions. It may be the most difficult part of monastic life that once you've lived 24, you're once you've lived your 20 first 24 hours here, if you stay, that's going to be the same life for the rest of your life. What you did during those 24 hours, give or take, a few things. That's very difficult for some people. Because we live in American society by promotion, advancement. The next, what's the next goal? The next goal, the next it's very hard not to live with goals. Our next goal is eternal life, which is kind of out there. So indeed, you know? So it's very liberating, but very demanding, a mental switch to live without immediate goals and where you can show your achievement and you can show the result of your uh effort. And no, no, no, no, no. Nobody's interested in that. And you're going, no one is? How come? I thought, you know, I thought that was what life was about was achieving and being recognized for one's achievements. Nope. Nope. There is another way. There's the way of of interiority and companionship with, you know, that companionship with Christ of the disciple today. And what whenever any brother hears, you know, those information, I'm dealing with some of them, novices and so forth, and sometimes they come to me with doubts. I don't know if I really have a vocation, this and that. I'm really having a hard time. This is really getting on my nerves. I don't know if I'll be able to do that. I always have one question. I I listen to all of it, but then I ask a question. Did you encounter the Lord Jesus here today in some strong way? Did that happen? Normally they say, Yes. I said, be at peace, brother. If that happened, despite all these other things, you're making huge progress. Sometimes they don't believe me.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:48

But it's true. It's true. Well said, living in Christ in the present moment, which is, I think, a good segue to my next question, which is uh what are the impediments to discipleship today? Which is another way of saying what do you think are the great spiritual crises of our age? And it whether it's ambition, advancement, the pace of things, not being able to sit with one's own thoughts in solitude, in silence, all these things. But if you could just sum it up, maybe what do you what do you think are the impediments to discipleship that keep people from that encounter with the Lord?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:29

When you just said many true ones, and you remind me, you know, Pascal says that if if everyone was able to stay by him or herself doing nothing in a quiet room for 15 minutes, 15 minutes only, not every day, just 15 minutes ever, there wouldn't be any more wars. I mean, that's his extreme way uh of and he's he was living in the 17th century. I mean, if you accelerate to our world and the pace of things and our global vision and the fact, you know, scrolling through Google to see what the latest is happening in Iran here and there, it it it it's I I really think that hypercommunication is one of the great impediments to discipleship. Hyper communication. Why do I say that? Because through the media, the devices that we have, we we learn of everything instantaneously, and yet we know nothing. Uh I I see uh you know I have grandchildren and I I see my grandchildren scrolling, uh, the inability to live without the phone in their hand, and I always ask myself, what what sorts of minds and hearts are those phones shaping? Because they're definitely shaping people, uh minds into habits of being that are directly anti-contemplative. They they almost exclude the possibility of silence and finding. I'm not even talking about mysticism, I'm talking about a person finding the center of their life in themselves. God is not out there, God is here. And if I cannot stay at home, so to speak, if if I don't like, you know, this sounds funny, but if I don't like my own company, if I don't have the internal resources to find life interesting just by myself sitting in a room, reading a book or looking at flowers or sitting at the beach, if I cannot do that, I'm really in bad shape because I'm a ghost of myself. I'm not really living. Uh my mind is filled with images of other lives, and sometimes somehow I locate real life as being out there somewhere. And there's a desperation, there's there's almost like a panic that sometimes takes a hold of young people if they haven't heard if they don't know exactly what friend so-and-so is doing at this moment. So they're tracking one another. Did you get to the next corner? What's happening now? Look out the window, tell me. So it's like this vicarious living through the means of communication that empty us out of all identity and meaning to ourselves. We have to have meaning as a creature of God and as who I am uniquely, not by comparison to everything else happening in the world. So I think that is a huge obstacle to discipleship because I'm too scattered, too scattered, like like Martha, you know, doing maybe good things. But just going around like this uh centrifugal energy, things going out from me, nothing coming in, and nothing cherished in the heart. So that that's a huge obstacle to the modern way of being by being hooked up to things.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:19

But as the Gospels say, Mary chose the better part from her sister. That's that's my final question for you, Father Simeon, and this has been a tremendous, edifying conversation. So thank you. You have had the blessing of translating some of the great spiritual writers and theologians of our age, Anzers von Balthazar, but also Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. And I've read some of your translations of his milestones book, for example. But my favorite speech of uh Pope Benedict's was to the French institutes of culture at the College of the Bernadens in Paris. We talked about the monks uh of the 12th century. They didn't set out to build a culture, they set out to seek God. But the byproduct of that was creating a culture of learning, a culture of the word, transforming the economies and laying the foundations of the economies of Europe. Do you see in this new digital industrial revolution that Pope Leo is talking about, perhaps a way in which monasticism, a renewed monasticism, people encountering God and seeking monasticism might help renew uh this age of dis of overconnection, of hyper-communication, as you're saying, that it seems to me that monasticism is exactly what we need right for the moment. Is it is it possible that monasticism, far from being irrelevant, is in fact the most relevant thing that we need today?

SPEAKER_02 1:29:44

Well, obviously, as a punk I would like to say yes, absolutely. Uh even though, you know, I don't know in a historical sense what is going to happen, and God in his providence can do whatever God wants. You know, God is the Lord of history. History doesn't happen blindly, you know, one darn thing after another, as somebody said. No, that's that's individual human actions, but how God uses the actions and thoughts and intentions of people, of human beings, in order to construct the fiber of history, that's a totally different question. God can turn the worst, it's all over the scripture. This is one of the things in scripture that the great catastrophes, the exile in Babylon, the ruination of the Tower of Babel, uh all of these things that happened to the Jews practically to the point of extinction become a part of salvation history as God weaves them back with his providence and his love to give it a meaning that in fact enhances rather than diminishes. So that's really important. Now, closer to home, I think it depends on how faithful we monks are to what it means to be a monk, as we discussed earlier. Um it seems to me, my experience here, we have a retreat house and we take turns giving conferences to our retreatants. And it's amazing to see the obviously somebody who comes on a retreat has already has a special motivation to prayer and so forth. But many of these persons speak to me specifically about having to leave the cell phone at home as a real temptation to bring it. Well, what if something happens and there's an emergency? Well, they'll call on a regular line, they know what the number is. They make a tremendous effort to leave the phone at home, not even bring it because they're they're afraid they might turn it on while they're while they're here. There's reception everywhere, obviously. So you see, and then they say, you know, we we so envy what you have here all the time. Well, that's a kind of a romantic thought, and and I'm quick to tell them some of the things that happened here to kind of disenchant them a little bit. People need to be disenchanted because it's no good to set up monks on some kind of pedestal that isn't real. But I said, I can share with you why we're living this life and how then, step by step, through effort, through renunciation, through a lot of prayer, through a lot of love of God, yes, you can grow in the way of discipleship. It doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen without sacrifices. So I think that what Rotzinger referred to in the early history of the church and monastic contribution is no one makes a project out of frontal, you know, a specific project to renew civilization. I mean, you know why? That would be a kind of Promethean endeavor, you know, bound to fail from the word go. The only thing that we Christian human beings can do is try to be faithful disciples. Because it's through faithful discipleship or like the discipleship of a monk, that it's a specific way of life. If we're faithful to that every day in my life locally, and if as a community we're doing that, God can use that community and those individuals, if you want, as a divine show and tell to society, to show what is possible when one is willing to change courses in the direction of listening, waiting, virtuous living, non-ambitious existence in the world, that all that can contribute to creating a space in our world where God can work. And those monks of old when you think of agriculture, architecture, bookmaking, you know, in the in the early days, obviously copying books and the scriptoria uh of of the monasteries, and every industry, the smithy where the the blacksmiths were would design you know iron works or all of that was done for one thing. You think any of those people said we're renewing civilization here? No, they were doing everything as well as they could for the glory of God because to do something well, whether at prayer or at work or at reading the scripture, if you do it with all of your heart and with all of your presence, you're doing it for God. And then God gets to use that gift of self that you're making to Him in whatever way He wants. If He wants to renew civilization, well and good. And uh but we we can't tell what's going to be used for or how civilization is to be renewed. All we can do is offer ourselves and be faithful. You know, faithful building stones that the then that the divine architect can put together in whatever way he sees fit.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:37

Building stones connected to the cornerstone. That's it. Father Simeon, this has been a really edifying and a beautiful conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you for your witness, thank you for your writings, and especially thank you for joining us on Catholic in America. The book is The Way of the Disciple. It'll be linked on our show page. But again, know of our listeners and my prayers for you, and please keep all of us in your prayers as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:59

Thank you for your interest and your questions, Jason.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:02

Thank you very much. God bless you. Thanks so much. I'm very grateful for that rich conversation with a true spiritual master. Father Simeon shows the power of being able to immerse oneself deep in scripture and praying the Psalms and how it can really enrich one's encounter with the Lord. I'm struck by his statement that he only learned to become a disciple after he became a monk. And that was after he had written some of his great books, including The Way of the Disciple. We need not be discouraged by that, as we can all incorporate the reading of scripture and meditation into our daily routine. What's necessary first, though, is to become a gardener of one's own soul and weed out those thoughts and distractions that prevent us from listening for the voice of the Lord as he comes to us in prayer and spiritual reading. To be a disciple, one not need become a monk or nun, but one should be comfortable being alone with one's thoughts and in silence, so we can discern what it is to walk the way of the disciple today and in our own circumstances. Often many of us fall into the trap of being a Martha when we need sometimes a little bit more of the Mary, for that is, as our Lord tells us, is the better part. Being alone with the Lord is indeed necessary if we are to live up to the beautiful call of St. John Henry Newman in his famous prayer about being a link in a chain. I'm going to quote just a bit of that prayer for you now. He says, God has created me to do some him some definite service. He has committed some work to me, which he has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told in the next. I'm a link in the chain, a bond of connection between persons. End quote. That's a beautiful prayer from St. John Henry Newman. But if we want to live that call of service, if we want to encounter the Lord, we must follow his way and in his footsteps to heed that call, and to do so, we must listen to him in prayer. As described in Father Simeon's fine book, The Way of the Disciple, the Gospels help us to see what it is to hear that call and respond with generosity. Thanks for listening to this episode of Catholic in America. I have hope you have found it edifying and encouraging and a way to deepen your own prayer life so that you hear the call the disciple. Thanks again for listening, and God bless you and your family. Take care.