Dr. Brant Pitre Shares the HEART of the Spiritual Life | A Catholic Discussion

[Music] [Applause] [Music] what method or methods could best improve your prayer life and deepen your spiritual life that's a question we're going to pursue today [Music] there's a lot of advice out there in the world and you can google it you can look for books on spirituality on amazon or on audible and you're going to get a plethora of choices about what spirituality and how to advance in your spiritual life but there is a 3 000 year old tradition in the judeo-christian tradition that gives us time tested and divinely revealed answers towards how we can grow in union with god which is the goal of prayer and joining me today and we're going to be talking about his new book which is a fantastic road map for that 3000 year tradition both looking at scripture and the life of the church and the saints to open up a road map for you to pursue the most effective methods to grow in your prayer life and your spiritual life and joining me to talk about that is the author of this great new book that i'm i'm so excited about introduction to the spiritual life by dr bryant petry he is a distinguished research professor here at the augusta institute and it is a great joy grant to have you back on thanks for inviting me tim it's wonderful to be with you well you know brad when we talk about method people know that there's methods like vocal prayer like a prayer that you memorize like the our father or meditation that we talked about last week and contemplation and uh you know oftentimes people think of other methods that might help them maybe a breathing rhythm maybe you know they think you know yoga in a certain sitting position might help them but there's something a lot deeper and yet a lot more challenging in some ways to grow in union with god and that is the pursuit of the virtues so i love that in the center of your introduction to the spiritual life you spend the heart of this book talking about virtues and their opposing vices so why'd you do that yeah um well the reason i did that is because when i began to study the spiritual classics of the christian tradition one of the things i noticed was that a lot of the saints and mystics were really clear about the fact that the the christian spiritual path the christian spiritual life was not just about this method of prayer or that method of prayer or having this kind of experience in prayer or that kind of experience visions or whatnot but that at the heart of it the saints and the spiritual classics agree that the goal of prayer the goal of meditation the goal of contemplative prayer is growth in virtue by growing closer and closer to jesus christ and in particular the saints will often express that by looking at what the tradition is called the seven capital sins right some sometimes called the seven deadly sins but more precisely the seven capital sins things like pride a disordered love of self or anger or envy or avarice lust greed slutness law as what uh gluttony slaw as well as their opposing virtues things like humility and mercy generosity chastity temperance and uh and diligence right and so as i began to study spiritual classics i began to realize wait a second um this means that walking the path of prayer with jesus is gonna make some demands on me and it's gonna it's he's calling me to grow in virtue and to bear fruit do you think brent just sure i'm struck by two things first off uh is that why in the catechism of the catholic church the fourth pillar on prayer is preceded by the third pillar which is the moral life the life of virtue in other words is the catechism saying that we have to grow in the moral life to be able to grow in the spiritual life a lot of people would have thought let's let's do prayer and that'll follow but it kind of it's it's hard chicken and egg which goes first it is a chicken and egg thing well let me i'll put it this way so think about it this way part three of the catechism is absolutely focused on the more life in christ on growth and virtue but it's ordered around the ten commandments right so and and what the ten commandments are about i have a whole chapter in the book on this are really about how to love god well and how to love our neighbor well right uh and they're wonderful and it's a beautiful it's a it's see the tinker commandments according to moses actually even in the old testament aren't just a set of rules they are a path that leads to life they're the path of life so we have to walk on this path through obedience but although it starts there with the commandments it goes deeper into vices and virtues and the way i show this in the book is from for example many catholics are familiar with the practice of the examination of conscience right where we look at our lives we examine our hearts where we sinned where we where have we fallen and a lot of times people do that according to the ten commandments right so you know the commandments against idolatry and blasphemy adultery things like that murder and if we examine our hearts just according to the ten commandments we can come out looking pretty good right like you might think okay i haven't you know haven't worshipped any cows today i haven't killed anybody how many people said that i didn't kill anybody i didn't commit adultery i must be a saint right well if you if you press deeper into uh not just the commandments but the the capital sins things like anger and envy or gluttony right a disorder desire for pleasure a disorder desire for possessions a disordered love of myself once i start examining my heart according to those seven capital sins oh i i start to realize i've got a lot of growing to do um before we dive into some of that i want to invite our audience if you have questions about the spiritual life and the virtues and the vices and how do you progress in in this spiritual life uh text us your questions we'd love to hear from you so the text line is 720-650-0-100 so just text your question we'd love to have it so no brand i love this because i remember reading the interior castle by teresa vavalov and you know here you have this great mystic and she's going into the into the interior castle and i thought great as we get closer and closer to the center i'm going to learn all kinds of mystical knowledge that i don't know and when she gets to the to the the most interior part of the castle she basically is addressing her sisters and she says look if you want union with christ here's what you have to do and i'm like all right i'm on the edge of my seat what do i have to do and she's like you have to love your sister you have to practice the virtues and so you know the the secret to success in the mystical life is to live the virtuous life that seems to be what the saints are saying isn't it that is exactly right that is exactly right and and and yet tim i i would i'd venture to suggest at least in my own experience we don't hear as much about how to do that how do i avoid pride and grow in humility how do i avoid avarice and grow in generosity how do i avoid lust and grow in chastity right i love that that's the question brent and i love how you tackle that practically because let's just take you you deal with a whole chapter for each of the major seven capital sins and uh let's just take the first one pride and yeah i love how you bring it first you root it in scripture and then you talk about how all right here's what pride is here's what it's not and then you talk about here's the solution that is what's the virtue that's going to heal us from pride so give us some examples from that from that chapter yeah great so pride just to define our terms here is a kind of it's a disordered self-love and a kind of irrational desire for self-exaltation it's where we tend to make ourselves the center of the universe which of course the center of the universe is god but we tend to you know push him off the throne and put ourselves in his place right so if you look the very first uh problem described in scripture in the book of genesis comes from adam and eve genesis 3 their desire to quote be like god but not by imitating him but by disobeying his command not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge so right from the beginning we see adam and eve leave human nature in a in a broken state where we have this inclination to love ourselves more than we love our neighbor and even more than we love god even though that's irrational doesn't make any sense so as i walk through the scriptures this is amazing i saw like for example in the book of proverbs it describes pride not just as you know an undesirable attribute that some people have like we all know arrogant people but actually says in proverbs 16 that everyone who is arrogant is an abomination to the lord i mean that's really serious right so when jesus comes on the scene in the new testament he's going to give this list of vices in mark chapter 7 that he says flow out of the heart of man and that actually defile us so while the pharisees were concerned about being defiled by eating with unwashed hands jesus says no no no it's out of the heart of man that come evil thoughts and then one of the things he lists is pride right this disordered self-love he says that's what defiles us and then he gives a great example of this in the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector right the famous story of the pharisee who goes up to the temple and says you know thank you lord that i'm not like other men you know like these like adulterers and thieves or this tax collector here whereas the tax collector he's in in the back pew he's at the back of the temple and he says he won't even look up and he says lord be merciful to me a sinner now in the greek and you know this tim but i i this really hit me when it says that the pharisee was praying it literally says he stood and prayed to himself cross half it kills me about the translation because that's really important it's really important in other words he's not having so much dialogue with god but with himself exactly just shows you what what pope francis talks about is the problem of so many people in the world is they're turned in on themselves and this is a perfect example isn't it that's exactly and that's what pride is right it's a disordered self-love where we give to ourselves what actually belongs to god even in so far as almost to to pray to ourselves now that might sound terrible but look how many of us let's be honest when we're in our prayer time what do we end up doing monologuing right so we talk talk talk talk talk and when we're done talking prayer is over right we all know somebody who's like that who monologues and they're not really listening to you they're not paying attention to you they're not really talking to you they're just talking to themselves well that's so easy for us to do in our own prayer and what is why do we do that well it's because we're all broken and we're all inclined to that pride to that disordered self-love so what jesus teaches his disciples is rather than to have a prideful attitude that they need to cultivate the virtue of humility and in fact this is the first thing he says in the very first sermon he gives first words out of his mouth blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of god and as i show in the book if you go back to the book of proverbs 29 verse 23 of to be poor in spirit or lowly in spirit is a very jewish way of talking about the virtue of humility humility i love brent that you know i think a lot of people when they think about i'm going to read it about the virtues or the vices they read a treatise that seems to be philosophical and abstract and what you're doing is you're trying to root this into the scriptures and ground it in the word of god and that really is unique at least in contemporary times i mean i know that the the great doctors and church fathers would ground things in scripture but you're really trying to do that intentionally here and i think it makes a big difference yeah what i'm trying to do in this book is give a biblical road map to the spiritual life right so this isn't what about brant petry thinks or this or that saying even although we're going to draw in their wisdom this is really about what does the bible teach about growth in virtue and rooting out vice i mean tim i was honestly blown away when i started working on this and in the chapter on the seven capital sins that i realized that for example the book of proverbs deals with every one of the capital sins all seven of them and not just those seven it also deals it teaches the opposing virtues right so scripture doesn't just leave us lamenting the fact that we're sinful and filled with vice it actually gives us specific teachings to help us root those vices out and grow in their opposing virtues true confession when i was originally drafted in the book my wife was reading the chapters originally i just had chapters on each vice and she said this is too heavy you got to give me some hope here right and she suggested that i also look at each virtue as i looked at the vices and it was a brilliance oh that was a fantastic suggestion yeah because it it does help give you some light at the end of the tunnel because we can all see the vices in ourselves if we're honest with ourselves right but the question then becomes what do i do now how do i make progress well turn to the teachings of jesus because he's going to teach you how to be humble merciful generous chaste temperate diligent right all these things are going to flow out of the teachings of jesus especially the parables of jesus that's where he gives us many of his teachings what i love about this and i want to talk about some of the examples of how you use the parables in this but i'm just going to give you an antidote from somebody i talked to yesterday that was was one of the things you you cited in one of these chapters helped them see they knew where their weakness was but they didn't know where to go in terms of the counter to counteract it and it gave them a resolution and they put a quote up from your book on their on their they sit on their uh on their door uh so they would see that all the time and uh so that was i i love that practical element i think that's really important for people you know one of the one of our viewers asked a question are catholics supposed to pursue all the virtues and isn't that overwhelming okay this is a great question so am i supposed to pursue all the virtues or isn't that overwhelming so the answer is yes and no classical answer right yeah on the one hand absolutely yes you're supposed to be pursue all the virtues but you don't have to do it all at the same time this is important right so it's to paraphrase saint paul i can do all things through paul through sorry through paul no i can do all things through christ who strengthens me but not all at the same time so one of the things the saints will frequently do is as you're ex practicing the examination of heart or the examination of conscience and you're looking at yourself and thinking where have i fallen into pride or envy or avarice or lust or gluttony or slav one of the things to do is to try to also pay attention to which of these seven is my predominant fault which is the one which is the one i fall into the most and if you can't figure it out just ask your spouse your children they'll probably they'll probably give you a pretty good idea or if you live with a religious community ask your brothers or your sisters you know people who live with you will often be very aware of your predominant fault and then what the saints will say is focus on that one focus on that one because if you begin to grow in one virtue guess what happens you start to grow in all the other virtues little by little as well because they're all interconnected they're all part of this one tree of the soul i have a whole chapter here on the on the tree of the soul like jesus will compare i love that chapter by the way i thought that was a brilliant chapter brent just love him yeah i i really yeah that one blew me away too because you know jesus says he compares the human soul to a tree he says you a good tree produces good fruit and a bad tree produces bad fruit so if the if the soul is like a tree then the health of one branch can strengthen the health of the other branches likewise the sickness of one branch can affect the whole tree so focusing on one virtue whatever your predominant fault might be and and trying to grow in the oppo i'm sorry focusing on one vice and then trying to grow in the opposing virtue is a basic teaching of the spiritual masters that can help make it seem like wait a second this isn't unattainable i'm going to spend all of lent just focusing on humility or spend all of lent just focusing on generosity or i'll spend a whole year focusing on generosity you do that by the end of that year i bet you you'll also have begun to grow in those other virtues as well you know trudy asks and this fits with what you're saying right now brent uh do most people have pet sins that follow them throughout their life and are we meant really to conquer them yeah this is a great question the answer is yes most people do have pet sins that follow them throughout their life and yes you are meant to conquer them now i would say just as a quick caveat that in this regard it is very important to recognize that there is a distinction here beast always be kept in mind between mortal sin and venial sin right so i in the chapter on the ten commandments i go through what uh the church describes as as moral sins right though you know things like adultery murder blasphemy idolatry according to jesus following those basic laws of the old testament um this is this is the entry way into the spiritual life right so if you're still engaged in habitual acts of adultery or if you're a murderer and you're unrepentant okay you haven't actually even started down the path of discipleship to jesus you got to enter the doorway first right but once you once you put those things behind you in your life through the grace of repentance right and you begin to move forward you there are still going to be venial sins and these vices these inclinations device that are going to be part of your battle that you have to to accomplish and so although in this life as the saints will say um it's almost impossible for us to be free especially of involuntary venial sins faults and things that we slip in through either through weakness or through temperament or through ignorance we do need to do battle against deliberate venial sin against deliberate vices and that's where the seven capital sins and the seven opposing virtues come in because they help us to become aware of what those venial sins are and then they also give us strategies for how to cultivate the virtues that oppose them right do you think that when people go to confession once they start to have the habit of going to confession every two weeks or every month that they'll people will say well i keep confessing the same thing is that a is that a clue towards what the predominant fault might be yeah that's i'm sure any priest out there would would verify that yeah so if you're continuing to confess the same sin over and over again well then in in the book check out that chapter on that particular vice read it pray with it and then with your spiritual director or a spiritual companion or a spouse or friend who who's also journeying that path come up with some practical strategies to focus your energy against fighting that particular sin and trying to grow in the opposing virtue it's really important this is so crucial don't just try to root out the vice don't leave an empty space in the heart but try to fill that with virtue can i give you just one example so the the saints will talk about uh and i have a chapter on on lust right which is a very prevalent sin in our in our day and time especially with the the pornographic culture that we that we live in these days and since ancient times the the saints will tell they would give advice to christians trying to overcome that sin and say okay there are some specific things you can do for example practice fasting this helps you to grow and sell control of the desires of the body but you know what else they said regular meditation on scripture helps you not just to root out evil thoughts and evil or lustful thoughts and lose muscle desires from your mind and heart but to fill the mind and to fill the heart with the purity of god's word with the beauty of god's word as a way of filling up the soul and strengthening it so that it learns to desire what is pure and good and beautiful rather than what is lustful or what is you know earthly in in this way and in fact psalm 119 how can a young man keep its way pure he said it says i have laid up your word in my heart so you know chastity can help one of the basic teachings of the saints meditation on scripture can help you grow in chastity i think that's so important brent and i think you use these kinds of examples just pulling from our rich tradition where people like okay if i struggle with lost all right then lectio divina this practice of meditation is is a solution towards that and then you know you also mentioned in the book fasting and i think you have a great quote from st basil the great about how fasting if you if you learn to fast and regulate with food you can conquer all these other vices and i think that i think of the penitentials from the even the irish penitentials from the 5th century 6th century are already saying that as as a penance for people who go against chastity to give up meat like if you committed adultery you weren't allowed to have meat in your diet for one to three years um right and that wasn't them just being mean right that was the recognizing that if i want to be able to conquer a disorder desire for this kind of pleasure of the flesh it's helpful for me to practice conquering that desire for another pleasure of the flesh that they all go together they're related to one another so that's their spiritual wisdom in that that i think in modern times we might have lost and we need to recover i think that's right i think that we've lost the sense that penance is therapeutic as you just outlined it's it's really to help heal the weakness of our will and uh and to strengthen it well you know one of the things brian what's up what's one of the the virtues and vices that you you delved into in your research for this book that really surprised you you got a whole different angle on something that uh that really was like wow people don't know this about this virtue or this vice yeah no that's that's a great question uh uh okay you want me to be honest it was it was the chapter on sorrow [Music] so if you look at this spiritual tradition there is a debate some spiritual writers will talk about seven capital sins and others will talk about eight all right uh going back to jesus's parable about the seven evil spirits or is it seven or is it eight you know there's an ambiguity there and so there was a the chapter there's a chapter here on the sin of sorrow and i was like wait i thought sorrow's just an emotion but if you look at scripture paul will clearly talk about two kinds of sorrow godly sorrow that leads to repentance but then he also mentions this thing called worldly sorrow that leads to death and i thought what is that and so i began to study and this is the kind of sorrow that you see for example job's wife exhibit in the book of job where when she experiences suffering or tragedy her reaction to that is not to go deeper into prayer but to say you know tell job curse god and die right it's it's it's a hatred of god that flows out of suffering it's an irrational response to suffering so as i began to study this really struck me that the book of proverbs is really clear that there's a kind of sorrow that breaks our spirit that dries up the bone that harms our hearts and jesus himself you know talks about um in the gospel the gospel readers tell us that when jesus encounters that rich young man it says he went away sad because he had many possessions right so jesus was asking him to suffer to give up his possessions but he was so attached to them that the sadness that overcame him at the thought of losing that the the pleasures of this life or the his possessions it actually led him to turn away and abandon following jesus and so for me recognizing just in my own life too as i've i've real i've gone through sorrows and had sufferings realize that suffering can be a temptation to turn away from god to kind of fall into a sadness that isn't healthy but is spiritually damaging or deadly and so the virtue that the saints will counter that ungodly sorrow with is the virtue of patience willingness to suffer even when we don't understand even we can't see out of the darkness that willingness to suffer and and and grieve to be sure great job grieved right he tore his clothes he put ashes on his head he mourned but it didn't make him stop praying yeah you know you mentioned patience there and i think it's so powerful and potent and i love what you described about you know that in the new testament especially in the latter half of the new testament in a book like the book of revelation or in some of the later epistles hupamone this idea of patient endurance is one of the most important virtues that keeps being held up to the christians what is uniquely christian about that virtue yeah well it's uniquely christian about that virtue it's not like a stoic stiff upper lip like i'm just going to i'm going to suck it up i'm going to take it right and endure no no hoopomone the patient endurance of christianity is a willingness to accept my own participation in the mystery of the cross right it's a redemptive suffering where i allow myself to be conformed to christ crucified not for the sake of the pain itself but because through the love of the cross suffering is transformed and it's made redemptive it has the power to change hearts to change souls to change my own and the power to to participate in the salvation that christ brings to the world so yeah no tim you're absolutely right and i just for me this chapter was important i wrote this in the middle of the pandemic right the covet shutdowns and one of the things i've noticed is there's a kind of malaise that's settled not only just national but almost globally like this sorrow the sadness this fear that's flowing out of the suffering and we as christians of course we need to grieve grief is godly jesus himself wept at lazarus's death right right right he said in the garden of gethsemane i sold sorrowful even unto death but what does he do with his sorrow he gets on his knees he prays and he says father not my will but thine be done right so that willingness to abandon ourselves to divine providence in the mystery of the cross in patience in patient endurance and suffering that's a virtue that's a christian virtue that we need to hear more about because we need it in our day and our time i think more than ever we do absolutely and that's why i i just can't recommend this book enough to our audience if you're you know here we are at the beginning of a new year and uh this is a great introduction to the spiritual life it gives you a road map and even if you've practiced the spiritual life as brent said what's fresh about this reading this introduction to the spiritual life is it takes it back to its biblical roots with a focus on jesus christ and you know taking these great methods whether it's you know vocal prayer meditation contemplation lecture divinia alms giving fasting prayer or looking at pride lust sloth all these different challenges that we face in how to live well right all these are taken back to christ bran in your book and i really love how you do that and i really want to recommend uh for people to get this book and uh it's not too late to start your new year's resolution if you if you haven't done a resolution or or if you chose one that like i'm just going to lose weight well choose something a little bit more ambitious spiritually because that's what god wants for you and uh get this book you can get it at catholic.market and we have the book there so you can get this book by brian petrie uh introduction to the spiritual life and you can get it at catholic.market and you know uh bran i i just want to thank you for joining us and for sharing this great work it's it's really important service thank you tim for having me i really appreciate the opportunity i hope that will be a blessing to everybody as they try to make you know progress on the spiritual path that jesus gave us yeah no there's nothing more exciting than doing to begin that journey and so this is a great road map for you on your spiritual journey to draw ever closer to christ that's the great invitation we all have as christians and next week we're going to have dr ben akers it'll be a question and answer session we get so many great questions that we collect those and then we take certain sessions where we just dedicated to your questions and so i'll have dr ben akers on next week and that'll be a joy to have you join us for that and a special thanks to everyone who's in our mission circle you know for giving just ten dollars or more a month you can become a mission partner with us here at the augusta student help us get the good news out to many many souls help support our faculty like dr brandt petrie and dr ben akers and help us with our work so thank you for supporting us and may the lord bless and keep you all take care [Music] you

Channel: Augustine Institute | The Catholic Faith Explained

Views: 48,133

Keywords: eucharist, Catholic eucharist, transubstantiation, catholic sacrament, 7 sacraments, augustine institute, formed catholic, ignatius press, lighthouse catholic media, lighthouse talks, Dr. Tim Gray, Dr. Brant Pitre, Chris Stefanick, holy communion, catholic church, Catholic Faith

Id: FyBuYU7g6lc

Length: 31min 18sec (1878 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 21 2022