Called into the Depths: Bishop Barron’s Address to the United States Naval Academy

[Applause] well good evening everybody thank you so much for that nice introduction thank you to all the administrators here at the naval academy this really is a high honor for me to be able to speak to all of you and in such a magnificent place it's my first time visiting here and i got the tour this afternoon it was just overwhelmed by the historical quality of this place the beauty of it so thank you everybody thanks for coming too tonight i know during this difficult time to come here tonight and to reflect on some of the deeper things in life so i appreciate your presence very much and am very honored by the invitation to be with you as i was preparing for this talk i thought okay the naval academy how could i not talk about the sea and about sailors it occurred to me the bible has a lot to say about both those things so i want to talk to you tonight about three sailors two from the old testament one from the new and draw some spiritual lessons from them i'll be looking at noah and jonah from the old testament and jesus himself from the new but now to understand these stories at the spiritual level the first thing we have to understand is how biblical people thought of the sea now we might have a somewhat romantic sense of of the sea its beauty and its majesty its mystery and so on but more often than not the biblical authors were frightened of the sea they saw it as something terrifying and not surprisingly given the you know simple quality of the ships that they were they were assailing when ancient people had to travel by sea they usually hug the shore they were reluctant to set out on the open sea think of even look at saint augustine's confessions so around the year you know 400 augustine had to cross between africa and italy twice terrified him both times the sea therefore becomes in the bible very often a symbol of all that's negative all that stands a thwart the purposes of god sin and death and failure fear symbolized by the sea go to the very beginning of the entire bible go to the opening verses of the book of genesis what do you find that in the beginning when god created the heavens and the earth the earth was a formless waste it says and the hebrew term there rather lyrical term is tohu va-bohu and the scholars disagree about precisely what it means but the consensus is something like watery chaos the chaotic waters and then we hear that the spirit of god hovered over the surface of the tohu va bohu and the hebrew word there gives the sense of a mother hen hovering over her brood protectively and encouragingly god will bring order and creation out of the tohu va-bohu out of the primal chaos in some ways everybody the whole drama of the bible is in that opening line force is standing opposed to god but god triumphantly bringing order and harmony and creation out of that chaos think how often the tohu va bohu represents itself throughout the biblical narrative think of the waters of the red sea that have to part to allow the israelites to escape think of jesus walking on the stormy waters of the sea of galilee think of the jordan that has to stop so that israel can cross into the promised land very often the story of the tohu va bohu threatening and god finding a way is in the biblical narrative so here's the question for all of us what do we do when the tohu va bohu threatens what do we do in the face of the primal chaos how do we survive when the storm waters come and now most of this room are pretty young but those of us of a certain age you know the storm waters always come sickness and failure and disease and the death of loved ones my own sin how do we handle this and how do we get on the side of the god who's always drawing creation from chaos so i'm going to look at two of these stories in the old testament that are right on this theme the first one now has to do with undoubtedly the most famous sailor in the bible namely noah you can find the noah story course in chapters 6 through 10 of the book of genesis you can read it easily in one sitting i recommend you do it here's how it starts the lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great upon the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually it's a pretty dire assessment right the story is talking about the tohu va bohu that comes from sin so there is that kind of natural evil i was talking about the sickness and the death of loved ones and so on but here are the stories about the the watery chaos that comes from cruelty and from hatred and from violence and from jealousy and from betrayal what do you do when you feel yourself overwhelmed by these forces well notice how genesis tells us that the wickedness upon the earth has awakened in god a desire to destroy the earth now please don't read this as god falling into a sort of psychological snit no no the bible is talking here about a kind of spiritual physics if this then then what follows from sin is a breaking apart of god's good order [Music] what follows from cruelty and hatred and violence is a breaking down of breaking apart of what god intends god's not arbitrarily punishing we're just noticing a state of affairs see don't think for a minute fellow sinners right we're all sinners in this room don't think for a second that when we are cruel and we're violent and we're hateful that it doesn't have a negative impact all around us oh that's just my little private sin no no no no it has this effect of breaking down god's good order so what do we do or better what does god do because throughout the bible we see that god sends rescue operations so listen but noah found favor in the sight of the lord noah walked with god that's a really important description noah walking with god because in the earlier part of genesis prior to the fall adam is described as walking with god in the garden i see what that means when you let's say you're you're coming up to a friend on the sidewalk and then you start to walk together with him right you sort of fall in step with him if you're walking too fast or too slow you have to adjust so that you can now have a communion or conversation with him so to walk with god is to adjust your rhythms to his is to bring your mind into line with his your will into line with his it's a kind of spiritual choreography and see that's what the saints all have in common they're people who walk with god in rhythm with god so in the midst of the moral tohu va bohu of the world god finds noah who like adam before the fall knows how to walk with the lord and what does he say to noah it applies to everybody in this room listen make yourself an ark of cypress wood make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and out with pitch god is instructing noah in how to build a vehicle that will allow him to walk with the lord even in the midst of the primal chaos see that's the point and that's why it applies to everyone in this room how do we build a vehicle a ship a boat that will enable us to navigate the stormy waters now caused by the by the negativity of life yes but also caused by the negativity of sin around us also caused by our own negativity how do we navigate those waves well we have to build a strong ship notice the pitch on the inside and out lest any of the water gets in this has got to be ship shape what we're making here otherwise we'll be overwhelmed by the tohu va bohu and then beautifully of course noah is invited to bring representatives of all of the animals onto the ark now don't think of this as just a charming story for kids it's making a very important spiritual point when you're connected to god you are connected through god to everything else and everybody else in the universe does that make sense because if if i'm connected to the creator of all things that means i'm created i'm connected to you and to you and to brother son and sister moon as saint francis put it and to all of the animals on the earth that's not a childish romanticism that's just good metaphysics do you see how the tohu va bohu wrecks god's created order causing dissolution division separation but walking with the lord keeps me in connection with god and through god to everything and everybody else so brothers and sisters keep that image in your mind of noah on the ark with the animals that's the vehicle that we have to construct and notice this doesn't happen automatically we have to build the ark as noah did but on that firm deck noah can continue to walk with the lord even as the waves crash around him that's why this is a spiritual program for everybody in this room you know years ago i was a doctoral student in paris and my very favorite place to go when i was in paris was down to the sun right behind notre dame cathedral and i would sit there by the by the river bank with a book and i'd read the book and i'd look up at notre dame and i think that's the loveliest aspect of it now since the terrible fire now what a year and a half ago it's been compromised but that view of notre dame from the back made it look for all the world like a great ship on the il de decite so on the island there in the middle of the sun and then the flying buttresses coming out from the side of notre dame looking like oars propelling this great ship through the ages well see this is not accidental what's this central part of a church called but a nave right from the latin novice meaning ship see where the architect knew that here of course too we're meant to be on a great ship the church is foreshadowed the church father said by the ark of noah why because the church is this place that is filled with the presence of god it's where the word of god is proclaimed it is where the example of the saints are is held up to us it is where we gather as a community around the love of the lord it is a place of prayer of contemplation of cosmic connection indeed i'm not sure if it's true in this place i haven't looked that carefully but in in most of the great gothic churches they're filled with plants and animals and and and the stars and planets because connected to god i'm connected to everything else do you see how the church and notre dame is now is just in my mind right now but this place beautifully symbolizes it the church is the great ship that we sail through the tohu va bohu of a chaotic world and if we don't build the ark we can be overwhelmed now most people in this room you guys are young what 18 through 22 you're young your age cohort right now in our country it's probably not true in this room but generally speaking your age cohort is disaffiliating from religion like crazy so the overall number in our country is now 26 percent that's the whole country says they have no religion but your age cohort say 30 and younger it's now 40 percent that's a statistic everybody that's not simply of sociological interest that's of enormous psychological and theological importance because what that says to me is there are an awful lot of people your age cohort increasingly who are not building an ark oh who needs god you know it's old superstition and prayer and the liturgy and the sacraments and the saints and well you know all that let me just get on with the with the stuff of life because the storms come everybody right and everyone in this room older than 40 knows what i'm talking about right the storms come what do you do what do you do when they come do you have this ship shape vehicle on which you can navigate these waves disaffiliating from religion leaving the confines of the ark ain't the answer now again i'm preaching to the choir here i realize you guys are here in this place but you got to be evangelizers too to your cohort um the bible itself doesn't really go into this but it's easy enough to imagine it and in some of the artistic depictions and the films about noah they explore this theme namely how strange noah must have looked to everyone around him as he was building his ark right so here's these are desert people writing the bible so here's someone in a desert setting and what's he building this giant boat what are you out of your mind so we often seem to this increasingly secularized world so we often seem silly ridiculous what are you doing why are you wasting your time noah knew he had to build that ark to navigate the waves when they come we know the same thing i wonder maybe you guys are too young do you remember the movie um field of dreams do you remember that kevin costner's movie see that movie is very interesting to me and in many ways it's a retelling of the noah's story his ordinary guy right costner's character ray kinsella iowa farmer doing his ordinary work and he hears a voice now think about voices some of the saints i think really did hear a voice but typically that voice is a symbol of attending to a will beyond this world right people that become attuned to the purposes of god you know if you build it he will come right and here's his iowa farmer who becomes convinced i gotta build a baseball diamond in the middle of an iowa cornfield and predictably everyone around him says you're out of your mind you're losing money they're going to take your your farm cut it out sell the field etc but ray remains faithful to the voice and that strange field becomes a mystical conduit to the past to the future and to the purposes of a higher will doesn't it it's a retelling of the noah story it's someone that anomalously builds this thing that doesn't make a lick of sense on worldly terms but in fact becomes the means by which he finds spiritual salvation by which he survives so you get my point i hope how important it is for everybody in this room to build an ark you know god respects our freedom god doesn't just do everything for us build the ark prayer the sacraments the corporal and spiritual works of mercy following the commands of the lord faithfulness to the liturgy all these ways that we build a ship with pitch on the outside and the inside so that when the storms come we survive now just the last thing do you remember how the story of noah ends so the flood waters come he and the animals with them survive but then the waters recede and then noah opens the windows and opens the door and lets the life out in fact noah becomes a new adam doesn't he because the whole human race in terms of this narrative is destroyed and noah becomes the father of the human race he becomes the great life-giver what will allow listen to me now what will allow the spiritual life to endure in our country and our culture only people who have the gumption and the dedication to build an ark so they can preserve something of god's good order not for their own private edification but so that at the propitious moment they can let the life out for the renewal of the world god is always interested in the salvation of the whole world but he might be choosing you and the ark that you build even now so that when that propitious moment arrives you can let out the life that you preserved that's why everybody that wonderful story then that ancient story but too often told in such a way that it just you know beguiles the minds of children no no no this is a story of enormous spiritual significance for our time okay that's my first old testament sailor here's second one jonah jonah by the way is one of the shortest books in the bible most bibles it takes up three pages so in fact the noah story from 6 through 10 of genesis is longer than the whole book of jonah so you can read it in one sitting so do it when you have a chance get open your bible and read it but though it's a very brief story jonah has really punched above its weight over the centuries because it's beguiled the minds of of poets and preachers and artists in fact i don't know if anyone any great fans of american literature but the the great american novel in my judgment melville's moby dick you'll find father mapple's sermon on the book of jonah one of the great sermons in in the literature of the world i think and if you're if you're a youtube follower look up father mapple sermon on youtube and you'll find the great orson welles you guys are too young to remember orson welles but one of the great american actors of the last century and he plays father mapple in the movie moby dick and he delivers from this pulpit that's shaped like the prowl of a ship and he preaches this great sermon on jonah so look that up look that up and that'll get you in the in the mood to hear that story well if noah is about basic spiritual survival jonah is about finding your mission now that's language that should appeal to everybody in this room finding your mission it's basic to the bible everybody in fact in the bible it makes it unique i think in the spiritual literature of the world nobody is ever given an experience of god without being sent find an exception i challenge you anywhere in the bible someone that's given an experience of god and is not sent on mission see god never gives us himself so that we can just uh savor it for our own our own enjoyment no no god appears god breaks into our lives that we might become a vehicle of his presence to others were sent on mission look at abraham jacob joseph moses joshua samuel david isaiah jeremiah peter james john every one of them is sent in fact doesn't paul refer to himself so beautifully i paul a slave of christ jesus he often says do lost chris to jesus a slave of christ jesus called by the will of the father sent as an apostle and apostelene in greek just means to sin doesn't it see how paul he's not he's not given an experience of god for his own sake he's given an experience of god so that he might then be sent as a letter to post a letter as related to that apostelene so that's the biblical view okay now listen to it in terms of the prophet jonah here's how the book opens now the word of the lord came to jonah son of amitai saying go at once to nineveh that great city and cry out against it okay like noah like isaiah jeremiah all the prophets like like ray kinsella in the movie he hears a higher voice so again listen we hear all kinds of voices right of of our parents and our and our superiors and of the popular culture and and and voices telling us what to do and where to go and that's fine we should abide by these voices but a spiritual person hears a higher voice the voice of god now god can speak through those other voices too and can be in communion with them that's true it's not a competition necessarily but the voice of god is a higher voice and that's the one you got to listen to that's the one to tune into you know when jesus talks about he's a shepherd and the sheep and the sheep know his voice see that's the discerning spiritual person is amid the cacophony of voices in the world and worldly voices talking about wealth and power and privilege and position and influence and fame okay okay they can be all right those things but there's a higher voice you begin to discern jonah heard it jonah heard it here's one way i think everyone to sum up the spiritual life do you follow the ego drama or the theodrama what's the ego drama that's the drama that i'm writing i'm producing i'm directing and above all i'm starring in it my ego drama it's my projects my plans what i want to do what i envision do you follow that one or do you follow the theo drama what's that that's the drama that god is writing that god is producing that god is directing and indeed he's got a role for you absolutely but it's god's drama not yours see that's the meaning of jonah heard a higher voice the voice of the director of the theo drama that's the voice we gotta listen to i love this from john henry newman recently canonized just about a year ago the church canonized john henry newman god has created me to do him some definite service he's committed some work to me which he has not committed to another i have my mission that's it that's that's a biblical mentality there why was i created i in all my particularity i with my particular set of gifts and interests it's not for my edification i've been given a mission now and to find the mission is to find the pearl of great price is to find the treasure buried in the field and what did jesus say when you found those things sell everything you've got and buy that treasure buy that pearl that's all that matters knowing what your mission is knowing your role in the theo drama okay so jonah heard the voice he's got his mission jonah go to nineveh and proclaim repentance now tough mission uh-huh nineveh the capital of assyria an ancient implacable full of israel a long way from where jonah was so joan i want you to get up from your own country i want you to walk a long way essentially behind enemy lines i want you to go into the capital city of this enemy empire and i want you alone to declare repentance tough assignment i bet you guys kind of like tough assignments don't you deep down thomas aquinas speaks of the virtue of magnanimity magna nimitas in his latin i've always loved that magna anima in latin means big soul right magna anima it's opposed by the way to pucillinity a pucilla anima is a little tiny soul god's not interested in little souls god's not interested in mediocrity spiritually speaking god wants great souls you know it's interesting um the great mohandas gandhi right the political and spiritual founder of modern india had a title and he's known by that title mahatma gandhi sounds like magna anima isn't it because sanskrit stands behind a lot of latin mahatma the great souled gandhi magna anima big soul where's the big soul come from thomas aquinas says when you take on some great spiritual project well good god gave jonah a really tough challenging demanding spiritual project and said off you go what he said to jonah was jonah go east by land and jonah went west by sea so there's there's the fulcrum of that story is it set up for perfect spiritual heroism you heard the voice you got your mission you're being invited to be a great soul and jonah went the other way he books passage on a ship to tarshish now the scholars are again somewhat in disagreement about this what tarshish means but the consensus seems to be tarshish was a area or a city at the southern tip of spain so with the pillars of hercules right the confluence of the mediterranean and the atlantic for biblical people that meant the end of the world jonah go east by land and innovate no i'm going to go west by sea as far as i possibly can away from the press of god the drama here is will this man accept his mission or not and as the story opens the answer is no jonah is running from his mission so he books passage with several others and they set out toward tarshish and what happens the tohu va bohu comes back right we hear that this great storm kicks up now again don't read this as somehow divine you know god falling into a snit spiritual physics the resistance of your mission causes storms to break out causes the tohu va bohu to come back listen now causing trouble for you yes indeed and for those around you the lord hurled the great wind upon the sea and such a mighty storm came up upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up then the mariners were afraid and each cried to his god for the men knew that he jonah was fleeing from the presence of the lord because he had told them so resisting your mission causes storms in your own life and causes trouble for those around you if the saint is someone who's meant to be a vehicle of god's grace to those around him the resistance to mission has the opposite effect that's the point here now i love this too his great credit jonah realized and this is to his great credit and it's why in many ways he's saved he he gets it i'm the cause of all this trouble listen pick me up throw me into the sea then the sea will quiet down for you for i know it's because of me that this great storm has come upon you okay good jonah understands the dynamics so they throw him into the sea and the storm calms down and then what we all know from the story of jonah up comes the great fish that swallows him up what happens now when you're resisting your mission storms will come yep but see god god is always after us he's not just going to let things go and by the way he's the lord of the whole universe if god's the creator and sustainer of all things god's the lord of heaven and earth and the sea and all that they contain as the bible says and so god sends the great fish that swallows up jonah now what does it mean spiritually think of the fish now which is which is acting at the prompting of god as a swallowing up jonah's willful resistance so it's his will talk about ego drama no i'm going to do what i want i'm going to go where i want to go i want to go to tarshish away from you lord so god has to swallow up jonah's will he has to confine him he's got to wrap him up out of hatred no no no out of vengeance no no no it's a curative process jonah's will is being constrained that it might in time become obedient to god's will you know it's lovely find it in the book of jonah one of the most beautiful prayers jonah utters from the belly of the fish de profundus clamavite dominates the latin from the depths i've called out to you lord imagine in the beautiful narrative of that story i mean to be stuck inside the a fish in this completely constrained state everything in you is held back but to his great credit jonah prays out of that condition now listen to me in so many stories of the great saints and the great mystics and the great spiritual masters you'll find exactly this moment almost all of them had to go through a testing and a trial in the bible look at the moses before moses is ready for his great work of liberation he has to spend all that time in the desert as a simple shepherd think of joseph right as a kid he's full of himself and full of his own ego and his own plans he has to be sent down into the pit sold into slavery sent to prison joseph has to go through many years of being swallowed up his will constrained so jonah but then beautifully the fish carries him back to shore vomits him out exactly where god wants him to be here's something to think about when you're going through a difficult time in your life i mean a time of great anxiety or depression self-doubt fear we all know what that's like how do we read that do we read it simply as dumb suffering this thing is just dumbly and purpose purpose without purpose apt to me or do i read it as god constraining my will setting a limit to the ego drama that he might ready me for the theo drama that's jonah now coming on the land and then the story ends marvelously as jonah comes to nineveh he didn't want to go he fled from it he was terrified of the prospect but he makes his way now through the great city and he's proclaiming repentance and by god he becomes the greatest preacher of repentance in the history of the preaching of repentance listen and the people of nineveh believe god they proclaim to fast everyone great and small put on sackcloth when the news reached the king of nineveh he rose from his throne removed his robe covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes this is the king of this great rival empire the king repents and things got so intense and here the bible is a very funny book but we read it in such solemn tones typically that we missed the humor things got so intense that even the animals repented human beings and animals shall be covered in sackcloth and they shall cry mightily to god brothers and sisters what power we unleash when we cooperate with the purposes of god that's the point noah's about spiritual survival what do we have to do to make sure that the tohu va bohu doesn't overwhelm us just build an ark build an ark but now secondly when you hear the higher voice don't run to tarshish don't resist it it causes trouble for you and everybody around you rather allow god to swallow up your will and bring you where he wants you to be and then you will find what did jesus say increasing 30 60 and 100 fold you'll find that you will light a fire upon the earth you'll find that things we realize you never dream possible if you surrender your powers to the purposes of god you know just a last thought on jonah i can't help but think of nineveh the great city this great enemy city as perhaps evocative of today's society so marked by secularism and we might think well you know what good could i possibly do as a as a preacher of the gospel as a proclaimer of god to this hyper secularized society don't you believe it but rather cooperate with the call from that higher voice and even the great city of nineveh can come to repentance okay i'm going to do one last little sailor i know i'm going a little bit too long those are two from the old testament i'll do this very briefly from the new because i think the greatest sailor in the new testament is jesus himself the story that's told in all four gospels in slightly different ways but the story of jesus calming the storm at sea now we're used to it by now the storm at sea the tohu va bohu right the disciples are in a boat whenever you've got the disciples in a boat in the new testament it's a symbol of the church so here's the church making its way through the stormy waters of space and time they're terrified but jesus is asleep in the boat what does that mean it means that christ who is the coming together of divinity in humanity christ who is divinity come into our humanity is the place where we can find peace even in the midst of the worst storms no storm can shake my inmost calm while to that rock i'm clinging says the hymn find that place in you where christ is dwelling find that place of peace as you make your way through the stormy waters of your own life learn how to find that place where christ is sleeping peacefully within you so build an ark accept your mission don't resist it find the place of peace christ sleeping in the boat and god bless you all thanks for listening tonight you're excellently midshipman second class matthew pickard 25th company my question is how do we even start a conversation about god or about the truths of the catholic faith in a cultural tobu va bohu that seems to view the two subjects as entirely taboo yeah you know what's interesting to me i do a lot of work on the internet and i don't find it difficult at all to start talking about god because people are really interested i did one of these um reddit ama you know what that is the ask me anything and all i did i said i'm a catholic bishop who likes to talk to atheists and non-believers and it was the first time i did it i was the third most popular uh reddit of the year the second time i was the second most popular and not because they knew me but that i was willing to talk about god and a lot of it was negative of course and critical but so what it gave me a little traction so i think young people actually are quite interested in the things of god and that maybe we should just sort of get over our reticence one simple response is begin with their questions right uh that's what i did that day on reddit i just said what's on your mind what interests you and man did i hear a lot of questions so start with that but have confidence that people really are interested in the things of god thank you sir you're welcome thanks good evening your excellency my name is paul rauner i'm a second class midshipman i recently watched the social dilemma which is a documentary on netflix it's about how society is dealing with the impact of social media and my question is as follows in a world where technology and social media are becoming ever more prominent in people's lives to the point where wholesome social interaction is being replaced and distorted by superficial engagements how do we find the right balance yeah good it's a question about the social media and the use of it and also that film was very good i thought it's showing how we're often the victims of forces way beyond ourselves we're being manipulated through the social media i get all of that i deal with the negativity of it a lot and the sort of vitriolic quality of much social media the fact that you can fire off some cruel hateful remark without ever really confronting the person you're dealing with there's all of that but i i think we shouldn't give up because of that i still think it's a vehicle that we can use for the propagation of the gospel and i've got so much evidence of that that it has done a lot of good i think we have to be disciplined as we use it so that goes for all of us that use social media that we don't fall into the trap of you know battling and fighting and vitriol um return to argument you know i've urged people for years to learn again how to have an argument about religion in public the problem is we think the two options are either violence you know direct violence or verbal violence or some kind of bland toleration but in between those two i think is a space for real argument and i think you can have that on social media if if you're disciplined enough to do it so you have to put up with a lot and i think you've got to be careful i've urged people actually to use it less and i say that as someone who uses it for my ministry but i think we should all use it less and then use it in a very disciplined way quick answer to a complex question thank you you're welcome your excellency midshipman second class hall can you speak to justice and [Music] how to choose like what is just like whether that is forgiveness whether that is taking action i couldn't hear it exactly because you talk just more directly into the microphone about justice you asked yes does that mean just how to choose what is just does that mean forgiveness does that mean taking action like how how do we decide well i mean justice in the classic definition is rendering to each is due you know so it's a it's shy of pure charity charity goes beyond justice but justice is a prerequisite you know it's setting things right i think in the bible god's anger for example don't read it emotionally it's god's desire to set things right and that can look rather violent sometimes but as a parent wants to set things right among uh her children so god and so we as as servants of god should be about that business rendering to each as do but then love goes beyond justice love is something more radical than justice you know but i think that's a good starting point certainly for the spiritual life and for catholic social teaching the heart of it is the dignity of the individual and so rendering to each his do well that's what's due to you is extraordinary respect because of your inherent dignity that's a good starting point please go ahead your excellency michim and sun class potter carry 25th company my question is is how can we bring our strange catholic friends back to the church when the church's teachings are often counter to popular culture yeah good it's about the counter cultural quality of now you're talking about catholic teaching you know often with people especially your age it's the church's sexual teaching that's such a stumbling block and i've recommended actually to the bishops of our country is maybe we shouldn't start with the church's sexual teaching what a lot of young people are really passionate about are the questions of justice especially social justice fine start with that perhaps begin with that aspect of the church's moral life now it leads to and is related to the church's teaching on sexuality absolutely but maybe don't begin with it and then more broadly speaking you might not begin with morality think of the three great transcendentals right the true the good and the beautiful our culture is often reactive to both truth claims and goodness claims right like i know the truth and let me tell you about it and i know what's good and let me show you what you should do but the beautiful i've suggested might be a more um effective approach is just show the beauty of the faith and that's in its art to be sure in its music like listening to the organ recital before the talks i mean that that's an evangelical experience being in a place like this to read a great church is evangelical to look at the beauty of mother teresa's sisters in their work so all you're doing there is you're saying look let me just show you something now inelectably because the transcendentals are are intrinsically related they'll lead to each other the beautiful will lead to the true and the good you know so it might be wise not to start with ethics especially sexual ethics but start maybe with beauty start with the saints and then take it by by steps from there thank you bishop you're welcome good evening your excellency and thank you for joining us here tonight i am midshipman first class anthony perry 20th company now with the low numbers of priests in the united states many young men who are active in their faith are expected to join the priesthood when i alter served with my brother at home in massachusetts actually um yumo and shimobi dick and i'm from new bedford so that was a cool moment for me um the running joke with the older parishioners was that i would be the bishop and then my brother would be the pope sure and so is this expectation the best way to encourage more priests and if not how should those efforts be directed thank you bishop yeah that's good i get i get that um i mean priesthood's a very specific calling and um but i see what you mean that in today's society if a young man shows an interest in his faith oh you'll be a priest obviously well maybe that's a function of our hyper-secularized society but let's say in my father's time in his generation i think it was much more typical that that a young man would be a church-goer would pray it was just normal part of life where i think you're probably right in suggesting today that's so unusual you must be you must be a papal candidate you know uh i would hope we could recover something of my father's generation where it wouldn't be seen as something so unusual that a young man would be a person of faith because i think that's what the building of the ark is all about right is that that young people should even now and not not just priest candidates but but everybody is building a spiritual uh a place of of safety you know now within that the call to the priesthood that i felt as a as a young kid mysteriously and i spent much most of my life dealing with seminarians and it's a it's still a great mystery where that call comes from it's that's the jonas story is certain people hear this voice i don't know why and go to nineveh what nineveh so the priest who can be like that like what do you want me to do uh but that's a specialized calling within a basic spiritual stance but i i see your point in some ways it's it's a it's a sad commentary on the way secularism has invaded our consciousness that the slightest interest in spiritual things means you should want to be a priest uh no it should be just a normal healthy part of life you know um i don't know i don't know if that's really addressing your question but i think it's an interesting observation you make thank you guys you're welcome your excellency midshipman third class joseph deal what advice would you offer to someone who is a protestant and firm in their faith in god but feels called to the eucharist and possibly joining the catholic church so someone who's protestant but might feel a call toward catholicism and yes sir yeah i would quote there a mentor to me who was cardinal francis george of chicago died about five years ago but he used to say he was he was a great man for the ecumenical conversation he loved to dialogue with with uh protestants but he would say the catholic church has all the gifts that christ wants his people to have and he meant that as a generous comment namely that in the other protestant or the other christian churches you have a lot of the gifts that christ wants his people to have but he as a catholic bishop was saying i think the catholic church has all the gifts that christ wants them to have furthermore he said it doesn't mean that some of those gifts aren't better exercised in non-catholic churches so for example i mean how much i've learned in my life i'll humbly say it about about preaching about the scripture from protestant theologians and preachers so i would humbly admit that and celebrate that so uh the catholic church has all the gifts you know the scripture the liturgy the sacraments the eucharist the mass the pope apostolic authority et cetera et cetera the blessed mother all the gifts christ wants his people to have that might be a way of maybe drawing someone who's showing an interest in catholicism thank you good evening excellency good evening jim fourth class moore 30th company uh when i told my mom i was selected to ask you this question i think she was a little bit more excited than i was we were keeping up with you over rom in washington while we were on lockdown so it's awesome to see you here my question for you is we talk a lot about stoicism here the united states naval academy yeah do you think stoicism is applicable to religious life yeah the question is about stoicism and i was kind of intrigued to hear that that is part of your philosophical study to read the stoics and that some of them have had an impact on military figures which isn't surprising to me and you know there is a there is a connection between the classical stoic authors and some christian spiritual writers and i think the point of contact would be that attitude of detachment right so the in the great spiritual masters both east and west you find that attitude the eastern fathers call it apathea right not apathy in the negative sense but it's a detachment from the things of this world to be free for the higher calling in the west someone like ignatius of loyola the founder of the jesuits talks about indifferencia right indifference and it doesn't mean i don't mean that negatively but it's i'm indifferent to whether i have a long life or a short life whether i'm rich or poor whether i'm sick or healthy as long as it serves your purpose and so there's certain i think affinity with the stoic sort of you know acceptance and and detachment from the things that both lure and threaten me within my immediate environment and to become attached to a higher moral purpose now we would say i would say as a christian it's the voice of god but i need to practice detachment if i'm going to be able to fulfill my mission you know so i think there is an interesting link there they're not identical but there's an interesting point of contact and our spiritual masters saw that thank you you're welcome please go ahead excellency midshipman fourth class jansen first company was there a time in your life where you had a spiritual renaissance like for me i went on a mission trip once over the summer to jamaica and on that mission trip my religion truly started to make sense and i really understood what god's plan was so was there a time like that for you would you like a spiritual awakening or spiritual clarity when yes yeah yeah i think so you know and i i would tie it in my own case to the the call to the priesthood so i grew up in a you know a devout catholic family going to mass on sunday but um i didn't want to be a priest when i was like 12 or 13 years old i wanted to be a baseball player but then it was actually in my case through saint thomas aquinas when i was a high school student and hearing one of his arguments for god's existence had a huge impact on me and it gave me a sense of the reality of god that i've never lost and and it's it's simply the case to say that i've been on the path ever since that i was set on when i was about 14. so that to me was like a spiritual awakening but another one when i read thomas merton for the first time i don't know if you guys know that name but one of the great spiritual writers of the last century in his book called the seven story mountain it's about his own spiritual awakening and it's about someone falling in love with god as merton goes from being a very worldly figure to being a trappist monk he went about as far into the religious thing as you can go and uh that book had a had a galvanizing effect on me when i was a young guy and there are others i could name too but yeah there are moments when you know the curtain is pulled back uh when the light comes on when you hear the voice i mean pick your metaphor because these are all metaphors for the same experience of something higher opening up you know and i think that happens and what the bible's interested in once you you crack the code is what's that like what's the texture of that experience and what do you do in light of it so like now read the bible under the rubric of all the ways you can resist that experience all the ways like jonah that you can run from it that you can you can make excuses you can hide from it you can resist it you can attack it think of jacob wrestling with the angel what's that but a beautiful symbol of you know you're wrestling with god you get it but you don't get it and so i think the bible's all about those experiences in a way and then it it rings the changes on how we react to those experiences so yeah and answer your question i have had things like that thank you bishop you're welcome bishop we are truly humbled we're grateful we're privileged we're honored to have you come this evening to the naval academy we give thanks for you but more importantly we give thanks for the one you so effectively point to so thank you this is your first visit to a department of defense installation uh but we certainly prayed as not your last visit to the archdiocese of military services however so that our west point brethren always remember that you came here first we do have a few gifts for you so if you can step down bishop oh good okay within the bag we do have some midshipman prayer cards which is his historical prayer written here at the naval academy also some challenge coins for you but there's a piece of clothing in there i want you to pull out okay is this the right way go navy huh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

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Length: 66min 26sec (3986 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 28 2021