Eastern Catholicism w/ Sr. Natalia

sister natalia brad lovely to have you here it's good to see you again yeah in person do i look different you look different because the last time i saw you you were two-dimensional i know we've met once before um i definitely thought you're gonna say something about my weight or something and i was like you don't do that with women matt um you do look different you lost the beard much to my dismay do you want to tell people what you said um i don't remember it probably was lacking charity though yeah so i don't know if i should say it i don't care if you say it well you said man you've stopped going to byzantine church and you shaved your beard you've become a real pansy i shouldn't have said that but you gave me people i don't remember that i said that yeah it's okay there we go first time i met you i was giving a talk in cleveland i think it was cleveland the seminary and immediately after i was walking out and there was this woman who looked like a muslim you and you were skipping through the snow banks i was just like this woman's amazing yeah that was great but um we already had the mutual connection of father michael yeah so i knew of you though i had never met you so that's right yeah well thanks so much for making the drive down yeah it's really great i have uh one of the other nuns mother gabriella with me so yeah yeah what is a chalk key for those at home um chotki is a prayer rope that we pray the jesus prayer on lord jesus christ son of god have mercy on me a sinner or some variation of that and how often are you tying them is this just something you do when um am i allowed to say what you're tying that one for no oh i don't mean what you're tying it for i mean like it's cool that she's sitting in the corner doing it like do you do this in the car do you do it just yeah yeah often times in the car you sell them right um oh man we do technically i don't know if i want thousands of people to know that though yeah we they do not sell them do not buy them they are horribly they're the worst child i do not want this ever that is so yeah sometimes people will be on the show and they'll be like yeah my email is i'm like oh gosh don't do that why would you do that no yeah ah but yeah it's it's nice to have you um you just got off a pustinia i did yeah tell us did i tell you that you did yeah oh yeah i did yes or no and it came to me in prayer tell me yeah i told you tell us what that is and why you took it and what was that like sure so pustenia is the slavic word for desert um and it um it kind of became popularized i would say became popularized in the united states through catherine doherty um a lay mystic who's just incredible woman but she um she started the uh madonna house yeah and i think mia ontario i believe sure yeah you know things um the so so pustenia meaning desert is is the time that we take to to be alone with the lord in the desert um because the desert isn't meant to be a place um i gave a whole talk on this about it was called um finding hope in the desert i think but it's it's you know people think that to go out into solitude into the desert can be a place of um emptiness but it's actually a place of encounter with the lord like that's where he went um when he when you know fasted for 40 days and um and that's where we can encounter him and there's like there's the verse in hosea i want to say it's hosea ii but it says um i will it's the lord speaking and he says i will allure her i will draw her into the desert um and there i will speak tenderly to her heart and um so yeah so anyways it's it's a time of of being alone with the lord basically so at our monastery we kind of use the word to be both the time away and the place so we have we have these little retreat houses called pustinia um and us us nuns we go once a month we go on pustania each of us for about 48 hours i would like there to exist a religious order whose sole job is to look after families kids while they do this as parents yeah that would be nice that would be nice someone feels cool to start that order we we do have um we do have some couples so we have one that i call it the i won't say their names i don't know if they would want that but i i use their last name and call it the we'll say johnson i call it the johnson trade-off and what they do they live a couple hours away from the monastery but one of them will come on pustenia for 24 hours and then the other one drives up to the monastery with all of the kids the couple and the kids all stay and have dinner with us yeah and then the one who is on pustania takes the kids home and the other one gets a 24 hour posting that's really good and so um so that's pretty cool so you stayed in one of the cabins how many hours did you say um it's typically about it's typically about 48. yeah yeah what's that experience like because i mean you're in a monastery you're already praying a great deal presumably you don't have as much of the distractions that i do and other people do in the world yeah yeah but no um no i'm sure it is i'm sure it's it's less than in the world um it doesn't feel like that at times but there's you know it's it's it's different to it's different to take the intentional time you know um because there's a difference between there's a difference between first of all being alone and being in solitude um i don't i don't feel alone when i'm on paustinia so um but there's also a difference between an interior and an exterior silence and so though though the two obviously complement one another greatly and so there's something about like being very intentional with this time of both interior and exterior silence and being in solitude um that allows for for a different kind of encounter with the lord than we have in our our day-to-day life um but it's also like i'm not i'm not doing i'm stepping away from the work of the monastery and so it's just a lot more time of intentional um intentional prayer we're supposed to try to pray without ceasing right as st paul says but but it's time to do that more intentionally and maybe if you have like something that you want to spend a big chunk of time and prayer about then we have this this chunk of time so so everybody's going to ask is what's it like going from everyday life into the pastinha like what's i'm sure there's like a slowing down period where um you mean like once i get into the pustania there's a slowing down i'm just thinking of my eight-day silent retreat last year right like you show up and they're like here's the chapel here's your bedroom the end you're like well now now what do i do yeah and it takes a while to kind of fall into a more human tempo yeah i think i think it's not it's not it's probably not as i guess that's the difference maybe of having um having like you're saying more distractions in the world i don't feel that transition as much as a nun i don't think there's there might be a little bit of time that i need to kind of slow my brain down or whatever um but but we have enough times of you know we have a few hours a day that are designated as silence and every friday morning we have silence uh we have a pustania morning until noon and so there's silence and we don't even have we don't even have morning prayers of community and things like that and so i think i have enough enough times of silence each day that there's not too much of a transformation drastic transition yeah but you do have to slow your slow your brain down a little bit we have um so the the jesus prayer like i was talking about that we pray on the chaky uh each day at morning prayer and evening prayer at the monastery we start with 15 minutes of the jesus prayer in silence and and that's part of the intention especially vespers um evening prayer also called the spurs by some people um me because of my dumb phone texting you incorrectly yes um so the it's like you've been going all day and you know even as monastics we can we can just get caught up in all of the things that we're doing during the day all of the work and so the the jesus prayer at the beginning of vespers those 15 minutes are really a great time to just kind of calm calm the mind and really try to to enter into um like these deep deeper places within yourself um to to approach vespers with more of that interior silence so um yeah so we do need the spaces to kind of have the transition too i want to talk more about the jesus prayer we touched upon it what chochy means and all that but it'd be cool for those who are watching right now and they're like i've really never heard of this i'd maybe love to be in get into it tell us a bit more about it okay um the so the chalky it kind of looks like um you know a lot of people think that uh it's a rosary that we have on our belt um so this is so that's that's a chalky that i wear my belt that is not one that we made that's one that a friend of mine gave me from ukraine um well done for not saying the ukraine continue thank you one of our sisters is ukrainian so okay um you just toss it across the table yeah that's fine um some of them have a some of them have a tassel on them so uh we don't make them with tassels so if you want a tassel do not order one from chrysler and if you don't want one still don't order from us because we can't handle the amount of um but the the tassel is is meant to dry your tears so as you're praying the jesus prayer there's it's supposed to move your heart with contrition but also simply with with love for the lord so so like i said the the prayer um the the form that i use because it could have more or less words than this is lord jesus christ son of god have mercy on me a sinner and so it's this beautiful it's it's acknowledging um it's acknowledging the identity of jesus it's acknowledging his his divinity um son of god and and it's acknowledging his his mercy and it's acknowledging our sinfulness and so it's got all of that in it um so it's a really powerful prayer it's got the name of jesus so it's a very powerful prayer and the the way i typically pray it um some of the fathers write about praying the jesus prayer with your breathing and that's something that that really they and i recommend you do under the direction of someone so with a spiritual director i wouldn't recommend necessarily just like picking it up and trying it on your own but um and you gotta say why now because that sounds a bit well confusing to people what do you mean i can't do a prayer on my own yeah so um it can be it can be a very intense prayer and it's one if you're if you're trying to especially if you're trying to like tie it in with your breathing then you could just start getting like even unhealthy breathing habits and things like that um but part of the intention of pregnant with your breathing is to um because breathing is something that we just do all the time you know without without thinking about it obviously and so if you if you get in the habit of praying the jesus prayer with your breathing then you're going to start praying the jesus prayer throughout the day um and this this really does happen like i realize that there are times that i'm praying the jesus prayer without even realizing it yeah i can attest to that um my wife had surgery a couple of years back and when she woke up and was still unconscious she was praying the jesus prayer out loud and her doctors told her about that that's amazing that's amazing um so so anyways the when i pray it with my breathing i typically um for for each of the two phrases i breathe in for the first half and out for the second half so i'll breathe in lord jesus christ breathe out son of god okay and then the second part um i particularly like praying it that way because then for the second part i'm breathing in have mercy on me and breathing out a sinner i like that you do that because it really slows the prayer down yeah so it takes me so to to pray 100 knots of the jesus prayer it takes me about 15 minutes typically um and i know this because we have the 15 minutes before mountains and vespers and and i typically get around the chat key one time um so so anyways i like that because in the second half i'm it's i'm very intentionally breathing in his mercy and breathing out my sinfulness and and the second aspect of that is the order of it is i'm breathing in his mercy before i'm breathing out his sinfulness because i think that we have this temptation to to try to to try to kind of like perfect ourselves and get rid of our sin in order to approach god in order to ask him for mercy in order to ask him for forgiveness it's like um i've fixed myself now forgive me for those things i did but actually we need his mercy to even be moved to work on the sin you know like we need his mercy in order to expel the sinfulness and so i really like the order yeah we love him because he loved us first exactly yeah so it gets rid of that kind of self-reliance um it doesn't get rid of the self-lines i'm extremely self-reliant it works on the self-reliance um yeah so good do you ever get kind of bored with the formula and try and come up with ones on your own um i don't get bored with it i will say there's something that i learned from a coptic nun that's been really beautiful for me and that's incorporating incorporating scripture into the jesus prayer at times and so um most especially i'll do this with the psalms so so for instance one of the psalms it says something about um my soul waits for you in silence and so i might pray that's that's one of my favorite forms of the jesus prayer incorporating scripture is lord jesus christ son of god my soul waits for you in silence um yeah so i might do something like that uh that kind of combination but i think really as much as we can sticking to that original form is good because it again it has it has the name of jesus it has the recognition of his divinity his mercy our sinfulness it's got like everything in there yeah yeah yeah that's beautiful so hmm this espresso is really delicious thank you yeah yeah i like the cups too yeah if someone brought these shout out to mike welker and uh cindy welker who brought me four cups for my birthday ah when was your birthday he gave me nothing well i don't know when you're right it was july 16th oh you've never given me anything for my birthday when's your birthday does it matter no because i was still you're not even a good friend you don't even know my birthday when is it april 12th okay is it a feast day of course it's a feast day somewhere in one of the calendars it was pasca last year oh wow yeah i mean yeah 2020. why do you look like a muslim woman that's a good question it's more so that the muslims look like us so um so so this was the the traditional eastern habit um before it was the traditional muslim ware um so you have to ask them yeah why do you look like sister natalia yeah who is sister i'm sure they'd love to hear that question yeah what kind of comments do you get you know i i don't think i don't think as many people mistake us for muslim as you would think um i think part of that is because of the chaki um on our belt people think it's a rosary and so they the rosary is not an eastern tradition so as as you know matt um so it's not a rosary but the but we do have lots and lots of other devotions to the theotokos everybody's shaming you in the comments before before all of the comments about how sister natalia hates mary please know we do love mary very much and we in fact pray to her more than you do shut up oh that feels a bit um that's not what i was going to say that was your those were from your mouth not mine um but are you looking for the shaming comments yeah that's none i think yeah they'll come though don't worry that's right that's why youtube come boxes exist yeah absolutely um so so anyways the i don't think we we don't get it as often as you would think but at the same time i'm sure there are lots of people who think it and simply don't say anything but see even if it doesn't look like a muslim dress right it doesn't look like a stereotypical nun dress right so what kind of things do people say so sometimes sometimes the comment um when people come up to us they say what are you and i'm like a human being what are you a rude human being um so so no we get that a lot what are you um and we also get sometimes the are you um what is the do you and then we usually just say i'm a nun and um sometimes i'll say i'm a catholic nun just to to kind of clarify but the best um the best response i had that barista that i was talking about earlier in in whole foods um she was she was very enchanted by the habit um and anyways she said um once she realized i was a nun she was like she was like that's punk and i was like all right great and that's what it takes to be punk in a day and age where everybody's rebelling against all yeah norms and customs and she said something about she was like yeah i knew an orthodox priest one time and he also wore the black jab i was like yeah black drab that's what i wear yeah so yeah but we do get we get a surprising number of people who um who instantly recognize that we're nuns um and they might they might ask for for clarification but their assumption is that we're a nun yeah and and that can be just really really we we get very few negative reactions once they know that we're nuns uh i think that probably happens a lot more with priests than it does with nuns but um it's overwhelmingly positive but it's it's part of the reason that i that i love that we wear the habit is because i'll have people come up to me in the grocery store or the doctor's office or because we always wear this you know um and even on my home visit when i'm with my parents and stuff i'm wearing the habit and so we'll we'll just get people come up to us in these random places and they say are you a nun and i'll say yes and then they just pour out their hearts and and just like the depths of their heart and um and sometimes they'll share like places of shame or just these places they need prayer or they and and it's it's so humbling because i know it's immediately clear that this isn't this isn't about me right like they have no idea who i am but to them like i'm i'm i'm a bride of christ and so they're speaking to me as a bride of christ as someone who has as far as they know an intimate relationship with the lord and and they're they're entrusting their heart to me and that's very humbling because again i know it has nothing to do with me they don't know they don't know me from from adam um from eve uh and so um so it's a really beautiful thing did you tell me you grew up in colorado i i'm most recently from colorado i've moved over 20 times but most recently i'm from colorado yeah uh my dad was in the navy cool for 20 years my dad was in the navy too yeah um what is it like for your parents the first time you came back dressed like that did were they proud of that did they think it was a bit weird how did your friends and acquaintances react um yeah those are very those are different questions um the my parents my parents are thrilled they're uh i mean they're just super supportive really really beautiful people um my dad's my biggest fan um but he uh they so so they're both really happy with it um they i'm sure it was hard i think i think it wasn't i don't think it was a big transition for them for me wearing the habit um i i'm sure it was hard for my mom um that i had a new name simply because like she's the one who named me this is the name that she gave me you know um so i'm sure that was a little difficult uh but they yeah they're they're just thrilled and they've it's never been it's never been weird for them or a question for them of like um well why like why can't you wear your normal clothes when you're at home or anything like that like they just are super respectful of it and um yeah so that's been easy and with uh um do you bump into people from school or they used to work with and like oh wow you look very different to me yeah it's pretty shocking for people who knew me when i was in college um no it's it's happened um it's happened a couple times um but but not often i think that um for the most part the people that i see now are the people who knew me when i was discerning so it wasn't really it wasn't totally shocking so beautiful and then i'm sorry i have a thousand questions about your habit but why is mother gabriella wearing a gray thing it's a great question she probably should have been wearing black so um [Laughter] shame we are awesome don't get that vibe at all so no we so so black is the the traditional the traditional habit is what we would um so theoretically we would maybe always be wearing black but we have the the grey habits are for um especially for work um especially if we're like working outside and it's very hot or we're working with bleach or things like that um so so we do have the gray habits that we can wear those are more for like work and play and and the black is for so i guess you thought we were gonna be playing a lot when you're gonna ask how do women play in the monastery what do you get up to oh we have lots of play we'll go we were kayaking mother god really went paddle boarding recently so that's really um but we'll go kayaking we're gonna go hiking we'll go hiking we also have an exercise habit that we can wear um so does it look like sweatpants and a sweater what does your exercise have to look like how is that different it's culottes do you know what coolants are no yeah i know that's that's yeah um it's the it was big in like what time frame of the gabriella what time frame was yeah probably like 50s um but it's like the the pants that go like maybe mid calf but there's like so much material that they kind of look like skirts okay you know what i'm talking about not at all but like super flowy and anyways um that and just like an exercise shirt and then a head covering but it's weird yeah paddle boarding kayaking yeah um i'm so glad you didn't say like hopscotch and checkers oh you know no no please um we do like games though yeah yeah board games like cool board games or old lame ones that have been donated to you um both yeah yeah i one of my one of my favorites is ticket to ride have you played youtube that one's so fun um a friend of mine recently spent uh sent us uh what's it called what's it called i think spot it okay uh and that one's really fun too but yeah no we like games too but um i like climbing trees i like do you have particular trees or just any tree you'll climb you're gonna love my son peter remember peter peter can fly is he gonna can he still fly can he show me he will show you that he'll also show you our bees oh that's which he loves will he climb a tree with me yes a hundred percent great he'll be so excited yeah um i don't know what else we do for for fun for play you know i'm people ask me like what i do for fun and downtime i'm i don't feel boring like i have a joyful life but my my fun is sitting with people and talking it's this um smoking a cigar yeah while i'm sitting talking having a drink of bourbon while i'm sitting and talking that's about it really just sitting and talking i also like to read we're all all of us at the monastery while most of us in the monastery are pretty big readers which which i had watched your interview with father boniface um because i love father bonifas he's a good friend he's so great and he just like he looks at you and his eyes just and you're like oh he just i never gave you permission i know it's um but like with such love yeah much love it's amazing but uh anyways i watched your interview with him and when you asked him like what he reads for fun um what did he say it was like theology books and like textbooks what do you read for fun oh i like elizabeth gouge elizabeth i uh jane eyre is one of my favorite books i really like jane eyre michael o'brien yeah he's great um so i don't know i'm currently reading um amongst other things uh winnie the pooh really yes so i'm reading winnie the pooh in spanish to brush up on my spanish really because so that's really fun um yeah so i'm reading the brothers caramels over again that's so good third time but i'm going through it very slowly you know how the chapter is quite short because they were written for a russian newspaper originally actually so i'll like read one a morning just there's so much in there yeah i did i did a book club on that with a with a couple well now they're both priests at the time it was a priest and they're brothers though so we um it was my my friend's uh father zach maybe and now father drew maybe and so we called the book club um the brothers maybe that's nice yeah because they're biological participants it makes me miss my time in eastern christianity my stint in the byzantine church it really does make me miserable we will always welcome you back thank you so much very kind but we might put you through some acts of penance first yes what would that look like just kidding no shaming comments please we're catholic too and we yeah you said by the way father boniface i said this to him he has the greatest habit the the in the west at least like that black habit is beautiful it must be so much more convenient than the dominican habit trying to eat pasta look what happens seriously and i spill everything do you yeah i can't believe i didn't actually i didn't spill any of this that's espresso you said only black drinks remember so that's what we gave you that's true so you said you liked the interview with father boniface i did yeah actually there was something that you said in it that i wanted to comment on um because you reminded me of um you were talking about you were talking about some something about how when um your marriage helps you to recognize your own failings and your own sin um and that like it's revelatory for you whereas if you if you weren't married you might not see those same things yes um as opposed to like it being able to hide things and it reminded me of one of my one of my favorite parts you know what i should have marked this video if i can remind you of the philippellia i'm doing well that's great you did yeah so good job um you reminded me of the philakalia um something that that i think it's cashen it's either kashner of bagrius um it's totally cassian so he's writing on the eight vices and um and he's i'll tell a joke yeah please that's what i was gonna say so i don't actually have any jokes i told them all with peter it's fine i found it okay good um so he's talking about the eight vices so for some of your listeners might not be familiar with this but um and if you hear you hear in the west about this seven deadly sins so actually where this originated correct me if i'm if you know that i'm wrong on this or whatever but um is that uh one of the eastern fathers one of the desert fathers of vagrancy ivagris the solitary of aggressive ponticous we're talking back mm-hmm yeah the anthrax yeah we read that for i think everyone at the monastery read that for the great fast this last year for lent um wow through the whole thing talking back you read that mm-hmm wow cool so sometimes it feels like a bit of a stretch doesn't it like he's trying to come up with more context i was i was talking about that i was talking about that the other day the other day yeah i was telling people i was like when he some of this scripture so so the the whole concept of the talking back right the whole concept of it is is avagrius um he takes certain temptations or certain thoughts that we'll hear um from from either the devil or from ourselves or from god but typically he's talking about ones that we hear from the devil and um and he uses scripture verses to talk back to those things so to refute them or on the rare occasion that it's a thought from god uh to to to give praise for that to give thanks for that um so uh yeah but some of them i'm just like i that is absolutely i can't imagine that's what that scripture meant um but so they're a bit of a stretch i think honestly though if people want to read that book i think what was most helpful for me in it was simply the way that he articulates the thoughts i'm like i do have that thought intentionally i feel less alone and i never would have been able to articulate it as well that's exactly what i feel not exactly like that it's true yeah i'm like i i bet you are the first person to ever compare avarius to solitary to seinfeld to a yeah no but it's so spot-on he's like when when the spirit of sloth says whatever you can watch another episode of netflix what's the harm that's a direct quote direct quote from the dog but but it's great because it's helpful for confession or for spiritual direction to be able to say this is what i was experiencing like this was so anyways ivagrius the man who wrote this book um he came up with uh the concept of the eight evil thoughts the eight evil thoughts then um cassian who was a disciple of a viograss he took the eight evil thoughts combined two of them combined another two added one that's the seven deadly sins and then he brought that west and then gregory the great kind of like yeah interesting so but cassian learned the of the eight evil thoughts from avarius since he was his disciple so he's writing on the a evil thoughts and on this is an excerpt from his writing on anger so uh bear with me it's kind of a long paragraph but it's really good let's do it and um this is what you reminded me of when you were saying that that um your marriage has been revelatory for you as opposed to to kind of hiding your sin it's helped you to see it he says self-reform and peace are not achieved through the patience which others show us but through our own long-suffering toward our neighbor when we try to escape the struggle for long-suffering by retreating into solitude those unhealed passions we take there with us are merely hidden not erased for unless our passions are first purged solitude and withdrawal from the world not only foster them but also keep them concealed no longer allowing us to perceive what passion it is that enslaves us on the contrary they impose on us an illusion of virtue and persuade us to believe that we have achieved long suffering and humility because there is no one present to provoke us and test us but as soon as something happens which does arouse and challenge us our hidden and previously unnoticed passions immediately break out like uncontrolled horses that have long been kept on exercise and idle dragging their driver all the more violently and wildly to destruction he then he then um oh goes on for a while let's read the whole thing okay audio book okay number one um no seriously okay okay our passions grow fiercer when left idle through lack of contact with other people even that shadow of patience and long suffering which we thought we possessed while we mixed with our brethren is lost in our isolation through not being exercised poisonous creatures that live quietly in their layers in the desert display their fury only when they detect someone approaching and likewise passion-filled men who live quietly not because of their virtuous disposition but because of their solitude spit forth their venom whenever someone approaches and provokes them this is why those seeking perfect gentleness must make every effort to avoid anger not only towards men but also towards animals and even inanimate objects oh that's excellent then please honestly i mean we can pause and comment on it but i mean immediately thought of people who throw the remote control on things like that yeah exactly you give yeah it's almost like there's an acceptable way of lashing out but then when you're with people you lash out in an analogous way right right he says um he says okay yeah there's just one more short paragraph i can remember how when i lived in the desert i became angry when the rushes became angry with the rushes sorry because they were either too thick or too thin or with a piece of wood when i wished to cut it quickly and could not or with a flint when i was in a hurry to light a fire and the spark would not come so all embracing was my anger that it was aroused even against inanimate objects that's beautiful one thing i notice about the saints of the east and i'm sure this is true of western saints i just notice it more in the east is how they talk about their own failures very openly even current ones not just things i've overcome and now i'm great but but but it's interesting because they they talk about what i'm struck by is they talk about it not with a spirit of despair you know it's like there's also a great trust in the mercy of god yes um which i think is a sign of their sanctity you know um so uh because it's it's so easy to to think of our own sin and to fall into despair that's why it's dangerous to to look at our own sin without first putting ourselves in the presence of god you know um and that can be very dangerous but i so i like that a lot because we've talked about this at the monastery because um there can be this assumption that um that the holy thing is to just like be a hermit you know be away from to be away from everything and um but that's that's not necessarily the best thing for us at least for a certain time yes so like so like in our monastery in our typical our role of life um there's you have to be a life-professed nun for for several years i think it's something like 15 years or something like that in order to then become a hermit because it's like if you if you can't actually live in community exactly and um and so i see this i see this in myself this this um this example or this this writing on anger by cassian um every time i got to pustonia so or nearly every time so it's like i go on hostinia i have this radical conversion from some kind of scripture you know and i'm just like i'm sitting there and i'm like i love people yep i love people i am actually like i can go out there and love anyone god puts in my path because i now just i know how to love jesus has taught me um and then i come out of pustinia at complin and i'm like they're late why are they late why is everyone late did anyone consider the fact that i'm here did anyone slip me a note no no one's let me know they're just late and then i'm like i don't love people as you know you're paraphrasing the brothers karamazov since we already mentioned that right the old woman who speaks to father zosima and she says uh i find that the more i love humanity the more i hate my neighbor or something to that effect yeah because humanity isn't late right humanity is inconsiderate humanity doesn't forget to bring their bins like their garbage cans in all week good australia people bloody do yeah exactly but now that that is absolutely wonderful yeah it's uh yeah forgive me if i'm just repeating what i say with father boniface but i do remember yeah prior to having kids especially because when you're married and you don't have kids provided that you and your wife get along well my wife and i are very good friends we'd basically want to do the same thing all the time like we'd hang out we'd go to a movie we'd go to a coffee shop we'd do stuff there was no imposition upon my will as soon as i had children they don't care if you want to sleep they don't care if you'd like to be at mass and have a peaceful experience or pray the holy rosary or something like that they are they're going to make impositions upon your will and it's it's really then that i realized wow there's a lot of anger here there's a lot of stuff that the lord needs to heal and i thank god for that because i'm not sure i mean i'm sure the lord brings it he's going to bring it up in one way or another so how does that how does that work with you i mean i guess because you live in tense community um yeah so so we talk about there's there's this image i don't know where it originated so i don't know if this is an ancient thing or not but um there is there's an image that's used for the monastic life that i love that it's like being in a rock tumbler um so so all of us have these like rough edges and we're just all knocked around and the edges are hitting each other yeah and somehow in doing that it's we're smoothing each other out um but it's like yeah it's just it's it's such a it's such a gift and it's a painful gift but it's like we we talk about how like it's monasticism we we get this purification we're all called to this purification right monastics or otherwise in the in the east there's very much this clear idea of monasticism is a like a sliding scale it's like all people are called to live monasticism to the extent that they can within their vocation within their life and so so we're all called to to incorporate that you know i know a lot of married couples who like really incorporate monasticism into their home in beautiful ways but the um you know like we're praying vespers with your family tonight so that's that's exciting um we set it on a recording now so you have to make sure you have to do it yeah um the so so anyways but it's like in in monasticism we get that purification but in in a much more like intensified way which makes it very intensely painful but also just like the the reward and and the the fruits that we're receiving from it and the joy in which we're living and the the freedom that we find is just incredible you know um can i ask a personal question i'm going to um what is some of the rough edges that you came into the monastery with that you believe the lord has already began to smooth even if you're not sort of oh man yeah maybe we should ask mother gabriella yeah we can we should say that for the end we can just answer for each other because it's it's easy to talk kind of generally about it but everyone's dealing with their own specific thing that just kind of sometimes feels like it's going to beat them it's really going to overcome them speaking specifically about this yeah i'm totally i'm totally open to that i mean anyone who's met me for like more than five minutes would realize these things so it's it's not even very vulnerable um one of the things is uh i have very strong opinions and and i had to learn i mean i'm learning this all the time but um it still isn't totally purified none of the things i'm about to say are but i i'm i'm learning that like maybe my opinion isn't the best one despite how you feel i know it's crazy um or maybe even even if it is objectively the right idea maybe it doesn't have to be expressed so that's crazy and um so that's that's like one of the things is just learning that i don't have to just speak every opinion that comes into my mind um unless i'm being interviewed by matt fradd the but but this would be a very awkward interview if you just chose to fast from speech right exactly um you just have one big monologue um so i could just read from the philip the whole time honestly that would be cool um i have lots of underlines we can just go through and i can just read my my underlines um yeah yeah so so that's one of the things that's that's a huge thing that i honestly don't think a lot of people realize a lot of the time because other sins are sort of more obviously um negative and people react to them negatively you know like if i'm sort of swearing like a sailor or if i'm watching inappropriate things or if i if my hygiene is bad whether that's necessarily a moral ill but it might be if i'm just sitting around the couch all day like i'll very quickly you know have someone push back against that stuff but that's not always the case if you have a sort of charming personality and you're trying to put forth an idea that's good right yeah and so getting to mortify that sin that others may not i mean maybe they do if you live in close proximity with them all the time aren't necessarily pushing back against it's almost like a thankless mortification in a sense does that make sense right like they don't know that i'm holding back on this thing yeah absolutely there's um another another big one for me is that um i oh gosh what was i about to say it's um mortification i don't remember what it was um it'll come any more funny jokes no but um one thing that struck me when i did my eight day last year with the father's uh holy resurrection monastery in wisconsin was just the the just i i was reading teresa of avila's uh what's it called the castle yeah interior castle and just how important humility is like i'm i i would love to do like a little word count on that i'm sure humility is mentioned more than any other word just like basically if you're humble you'll be saved you're not humble so let's work on that kind of thing and those times that you think you're humble as soon as you kind of recognize it you sort of poison it you know yeah and so it's not even like you can come up with a list of things to do to humble yourself because then you may just interiorly congratulate yourself for doing that thing that's going to make you more humble and why not be humble you know cash and um cashin talks about how um when he's talking about the eight evil vices he says that um the one that's the most difficult to combat is um is vainglory um because what does he mean by vainglory as opposed to pride um so oh gosh i knew that you're gonna ask as soon as it came back don't say it yeah i know um it's it's really hard for me to to distinguish between the two um so he um he says the vice of self-esteem vainglory um is difficult to fight against because it has many it has many forms and appears in all our activities in our way of speaking in what we say and in our silences at work in vigils and fasts in prayer and reading and stillness and long suffering but he says um but he says that the the tricky nature of of self-esteem or a vain vainglory is that um when we or maybe he is talking about pride at this point i don't remember but anyways the vainglory and pride are very difficult for me to distinguish between the two but um that yeah the tricky nature of it is it's the it's the one vice that as we defeat it it becomes more of a temptation you know because of exactly what you're saying like if i'm achieving humility yeah then i'm tempted to think look at me i'm so humble um i so yeah um in my mind the way i distinguish between two i don't know if this is totally accurate is that vainglory is more about um how i see myself as amazing pride is more about um making sure others see me as amazing or i might have just flipped this yeah well either way i mean defining what we mean by our terms whether they're accurate technically or not i see the distinction yeah yeah yeah it's it's but that's so those are two that those are the two of the ones that he combined uh have you this sounds like i'm going off topic i'm not have you read all the rings i have yes there's that part at the end where frodo takes the ring for himself right at mount doom and smeagol jumps on him and bites it off and ends up fully interviewed you didn't even give a spoiler alert yeah well if you haven't read the lord of the rings or washed it by now that's on you that's how i feel i just i just read it like two years ago well see if we did this three years ago that would have been very disappointing for you i should have done a spoiler i should have done this i should have done a spoiler but um when frodo is sort of outside of mount doom with sam his immediate reaction isn't like i cannot believe i fell to the power of the ring like how hopeless am i it was immediately like something to the effect of gandalf said we would never see we wouldn't know the end that smeagol still might have a part to play but again there was that gentleness with himself which is real true humility yeah because the times that i fall to a sin and then beat myself up and hate myself i mean that quote that's a quote from saint francis to sales he says like when we do that this comes not really a from a place of love of the lord but of a place of we feel sad to see ourselves so low as if we're shocked that we could possibly fall to that level right we shouldn't be shocked by our own sin one of the most one of the most helpful books i've read um because this is a huge job i i've really struggled um in my life with uh with scrupulosity um particularly in the sense of of overreacting to my own sin also maybe seeing weaknesses as sins but but more so just like overreacting to my own sin um which can oftentimes become the greater sin but one of the one of the books that was most helpful i always like to give book recommendations but the one of the ones that was most helpful to me was um how to profit from your faults by joseph tissot and it's it's it's using the the spirituality of saint francis de sales but one of the one of the parts of it that i liked the most was he he says that we should be most grateful when we're falsely thought to have sinned because then we get all of the positive benefits of having sinned like the humility and the like all of these things and he's like without any of the negative aspects of sin itself and i'm like yeah i'm not there but i know how hard is that but that book's just like amazing but it's so spot on like if if the main thing that concerns me and occupies me is my relationship with the beloved and his opinion of me and me doing his will as opposed to what a thousand people out there in the periphery think about me which really in comparison to what he thinks about me matters nothing and that's that's humility what you just said is he i'm not saying you're humble i don't know if i can speak to that but what you just said is like i think a good definition of humility because too many people think that myself included for a long time think humility is just thinking like i'm a piece of crap um but actually humility is is seeing ourselves in right relationship with god you know um seeing ourselves as he sees us um humility is really just like a recognition of truth of of our littleness not our like despicableness or something so as you're talking i'm thinking of anecdotes to share but now i'm wondering if they're coming from a place of pride which is probably a sign that i'm prideful because i care about being perceived as prideful and i'm sharing that to look humble who the hell knows where i'm at um but there's that quote from c.s lewis he says uh humility isn't thinking less of yourself it's thinking of yourself less which i like a lot yeah yeah yeah i like that a lot too hey how did you get into reading the eastern fathers because um you know after i read way of a pilgrim and got like did the two things everybody does after having read that book chucky billacalia boom um i just found it difficult to enjoy the eastern fathers and even now when i read them i think yeah this is i'm sorry like this is not as good as francis de sales this is not as good as teresa of avila this is not as good as thomas aquinas slap me go i'm not gonna slap you because did you okay okay but you were a western catholic at some point so did you have a transition to sort of uh i so i didn't really um so i i was i was raised roman catholic my whole family left the catholic church when i was in high school and i was really poorly catechized growing up like i don't i don't know if i even really i don't think i knew about the true presence in the eucharist like very poorly catechized um no fault of my pain well maybe some faults of my parents but like really they they also were poorly catechized you know um but then i came back to the catholic church in college and within a year discovered the byzantine right so i didn't really know that much about the the roman rite before becoming byzantine well but maybe there's this though still i mean those authors that i mentioned lived 500 years ago or something not 1 600 years ago so i suppose that's it too there's a big emphasis and thank god there is on the fathers of the church in the east there should be more in the west thomas aquinas massive fan of the fathers um so i suppose maybe that's it like some sometimes reading the father's it just feels like it's not connecting with me and i feel bad about that and i don't know how do i have to pretend that it's connecting with me that's obviously not the answer right did you ever have that or how did you get introduced to the eastern fathers um i i i didn't but i i would say um first of all my piece of advice would be don't do what matt did and don't start with the filipalia um that's probably not the most gentle introduction because what you have to remember is for the philocalia like these are hardcore ascetics um monks who are living just extreme lives in the desert writing for other monks who are living hardcore extreme lives in the desert you know um so so you have to you have to know the context right like that makes sense it's the whole like text without context there's no text at all kind of thing and um that's i'm quoting father sebastian carnazzo on that i think which he probably got it from somewhere else but um anyways so so there's that i would um one of the things that i really loved well i i really like the writings of of origin um which is a little bit awkward because like some of the some of the things that may or may not have been heresy and so on and so forth but um the well some of the things just are heresy but anyways the um there is what what got me i'll say this what got me first into the eastern fathers was probably just like little snippets i'd seen used in other things so one example of this uh have you ever read cantata of love no oh read cantata of love you're not gonna take much how do you spell it no i will i'm writing it down how do you spell it uh cantata c-a-n-t-a-t-a you need to flip your pen yeah what does that mean um song yeah um that makes sense of love who wrote it uh um sorry i'm really putting on the no it's okay blaze armenian is maybe how you say the last name a-r-m-i-n-j-o-n he's maybe a jesuit is he jesuit mother yeah um it's a verse-by-verse reading of the song of songs oh yeah i need to read it now with commentary by uh teresa avila bernard of clervaux um but he's also got a lot in there of like um origen john chrysostom so he's got he's got some like eastern stuff in there as well okay and so so that's one of the things that i think is helpful like i can now read just the desert fathers and love it yeah i can read the ladder of divine ascent by climacus which is so intense and love it because i have the context and because i have the context of all of the things that we sing in the liturgy um every day and things like that uh so as you're kind of living out the spirituality you start to be able to to understand it a little more and apply it a little more but without that or until you're there i think it's helpful to read things in which other people are using the eastern fathers in context and that's what something like this book so okay so cantata of love is there another one you'd recommend um [Music] i'll think of that and i'll maybe come back to it after the intermission or something like that so or we can ask during the information that's a really good point because the the things i just mentioned right francis of desales he's writing to people in the world right uh thomas aquinas is believe it or not at least in the theology writing for beginners maybe even just beginning theology students teresa of avila is different she's writing to us but here's here's another example um there's there's a book a big green book and it's called it's it's fairly expensive so i'm sorry about that but it's called um uh the orthodox do you remember what it's called the the green bible the bible and the holy fathers and what it is is it's got the daily readings for the year the the daily readings in the east are different than in the west but it's got the daily readings for the year but there's also an index in the back so if you wanted to try to find like the daily roman readings you could do that so it's got the daily ratings for the year and with each reading it has um a uh some some sort of excerpt like a homily or something like that by one of the church fathers on that reading so it'll have like it'll have john 6 something and then a homily by saint john chrysostom on john 6. and so so this is another really good one because it's like these are homilies that are being given to the people in the churches you know so so typically it's there's there's one on there that's this uh this homily on saint john chrysostom on friendship that's like i use this as as my um litmus test for friendship now like it's just so beautiful have you ever heard of the canter aurea by thomas aquinas okay so what he does is it's a commentary on the gospels matthew mark luke and john in which he only quotes the church fathers to comment on the verse so none of it's his own and he actually quotes chris system more than any other father there you go yeah so that's it's that's a that that would be i mean the golden tongue yeah yeah exactly this so this that's always what i try to give if i ever go to an ordination i buy that you here's how to do better homilies thomas aquinas giving you the father's commentary have you ever heard of cantina the app no oh yeah that's probably that they pro i mean there's an app in which it steals that that probably is it okay i think it means the golden chain okay so for those who don't know canteen is this app you can download and it's got it's got the whole bible and then you can click on any verse in the bible yeah and it pulls up like a bunch of commentary by eastern fathers i bet you that's based on thomas aquinas's work there you go there you go and they said baby but that felt inappropriate so i went back yeah it's better to call me bae what's up maybe not all right hey you i imagine one of the reasons you took your pastinha was because you're about to make your life professional okay so how long have you been in the monastery and what does it mean to make your life profession um so i've been in the monastery for six years um and the i technically should have made i was gonna make my life profession last may as you know um and but it was delayed because kovid's the worst and the and then it was delayed again and then delayed one more time so this is this is the one it's happening september 26th it's going to be live streamed i'll be there um yeah like at the life profession not live streamed um no i won't be there at the live stream i'll be there there i can't wait i know yeah i'm really excited um i can't wait for my kids to see it my girls i've told my girls that they're welcome to marry a man if they can find one who loves them more than jesus oh if they can't any full length habits fine with me oh that's nice but but mostly they should enter our monastery hey that's why you're here tonight start working on them right now i just see you in the corner like talking to them like hey sister natalia come like handing them pants reading to them in their sleep yeah it's getting creepy you go yeah thanks um the so actually the we um we brewed beer for the for the reception for the life professional that's amazing and we brew beer with a priest friend of ours shout out to father scott goodfellow and so we we do it for uh some of our events but um mother gabriella and i did you bring any beer tonight we didn't no i'm sorry i guess i'll have to come to the bloody life provision i guess you'll have to come maybe not maybe like bloody and like sorry it's an australianism that i still haven't gotten rid of um so anyways one of the brews that we beard one of the beers that we buried nope was uh i haven't even been drinking beer um a belgian triple because those are my favorites and father michael lachlan came up with the name for the beer and it's going to be called triple delayed okay i don't get it because my life profession was delayed oh lovely that's funny right i like it yeah so will you have cool little uh labels um we'll have it in kegs and distribute it from into cups just one giant label for the cake just one giant cake stand that's so beautiful it's so beautiful i love how the east celebrate we can do that in a minute keep going kind of professional so yes um life profession six years have been there um so in our monastery the first stage is one year with up to a year extension so one to two years and then the second stage is three years with up to a year extension so up to four years um so the whole process is anywhere from four to six years um more if you're in a pandemic and so that's how long i've been there what a life profession is um so this is the moment at which um i am agreeing to be at this monastery or to another monastery if my hegimena the abbess um sends me there for the rest of my life so i'm professing to be here for the rest of my life living this life of of penance and asceticism um what i what i really really want to make clear and i think i'm gonna put i'm gonna write a letter to people and put it in the life profession booklet because you know they're like they're early and they're bored and so instead of praying they're gonna like read through the booklet and whatever um so now everyone's gonna feel shamed when they come to the life profession they're reading the booklet but the it'll just say why aren't you praying yeah yeah i'm great at shaming people um so the i'm gonna write this letter because i think that a lot of people they they come and they see a life profession and um and they just see this woman who's giving their whole life to the lord and and that is true that is what's happening right but they see this and they they see this as like this is the epitome of holiness this is a woman of virtue this is a woman who is it's not like i'm real laughing because she will stick her she's like i'm saying it's always virtuous um like this is the epitome of holiness this is a woman who's who's just so virtuous and that um like isn't this beautiful isn't this wonderful isn't this joyful and and some of those things are true to an extent but that's not actually that's not actually like the primary reality of what we're seeing in a life profession so i brought i brought that i just happened to have a life profession service with me um but it's it's it's not like the gold medal that you've received for your that you've perfected you're entering into repentance right exactly so um so at the life profession i at some point just a little bit into it's in the context of divine liturgy um so it'll be a hierarchical divine liturgy so we'll have the best thing of the bishop and then um early on in the liturgy uh i'll go back i'll go to the back with sister petra because she's making her life professional at the same time wonderful we'll go to the back and we'll start the liturgy wearing what we normally wear at liturgy so like this with with our robe and our soft hat we'll go into the back get changed into a white garment um and no shoes no watch not like nothing like that right just the white garment barefoot no veil hair down my hair is down on my knees at this point my only chance to see it only chance yeah yeah so don't mess it up okay hair down to your knees at this point that's crazy how do you even hold it back it's doesn't matter a vocation crisis um every day so the and then we actually at the first profession delay i think i cried and i think i cried because it meant my hair was gonna have to keep growing not so much because anyways so we we walk down the aisle and as we're walking down the aisle um we make three prostrations and then at the last prostration we we remain prostrate and then um the bishop ends up he he says some things and then he takes our hand and and helps us arise and uh what's interesting though is as we're walking down the aisle first of all we're not singing like here comes the bride and we're not singing we're not even singing um oh virgin pure which is one of the uh i don't know if you know the chimney i think so [Music] we're we're not singing this um what we're seeing is the troparian of the prodigal son because we're we're saying um the and the choparian of the prodigal son is haste open wide your fatherly arms to me for i have lived like the prodigal prodigal common misconception does not mean one who's returned right prodigal means reckless or or lavish like we call him the prodigal son because of his recklessness and lavishness not because he returned so i've lived like the prodigal i've lived a reckless life oh savior do not despise my impoverished heart the heart that gazes upon the fathomless wealth of your mercy for i cry out to you o lord with repentance father i have sinned against heaven and before you that's what we're singing as we walk down the aisle and and we make these prostrations and in the east so so people often ask uh why don't we traditionally in the in the eastern liturgy we don't kneel during the consecration and and you know this is especially for a roman catholic who's coming to a divine liturgy for the first time this is very bothersome and and it's very understandably bothersome because it can seem like we we don't have the reverence or something that you might um that you might expect but the reason we don't kneel is because kneeling was actually well anyways i won't get into that but in the in the east um in the west kneeling is a sign of humility so you kneel during the consecration out of humility this totally makes sense in the east kneeling is a sign of penance and the divine liturgy or the mass is not meant to be penitential it's meant to be a celebration and so so there's no kneeling allowed during the divine liturgy in the east the sign of of humility is a bowing so we we do a profound bow we touch the ground during the consecration um so so anyways the fact that we're prostrating here if kneeling is a sign of penance in the east prostrating is like extreme penance in the east and so so as we're going down we're going down in in repentance and then um and it says it says in the service um after this this prostration the last frustration she does not rise immediately but remains prostrate praying silently to the lord that her sins be forgiven and that she may be received into the ranks of the penitent and this is what you were saying right that like i'm this is i'm asking to enter into this life of penance um so i'm i'm asking to to be a penitent you know one of the monks at holy resurrection uh the um that you were talking about earlier he came and gave a retreat at our monastery one time and he said he said when you make those prostrations at your life profession your prayers should be lord i need this life of recovery i need this life of healing and so so anyways i just like to be very clear for people like beautiful to think of them here because i'm a sinner like i'm not here because i'm a saint i'm here because i want to be a saint um and so so anyways i was i was praying with this on my life profession and i was like you know what though i so i think that it is absolutely true that it's a joyful celebration and there's there's so much rejoicing there but but i think that the reason it's so joyful is because we know that there's more rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner than 99 righteous right and so like that's why this is joyful because i'm saying lord i've lived this life of recklessness and and i want to remain reckless to some extent but i want it to be a reckless love for you not a reckless life of sin and so like a conversion of recklessness of sorts so yeah so yeah that's beautiful so you want to become a prodigal in that you you know you uh you become reckless in your repentance yeah exactly so yeah so that's what a life profession is but it's so there's a lot of symbolism um of baptism so like the white garment the three prostrations are symbolic of the three dunks at baptism so in the east um to be very clear about our sacramental theology we do not believe you can be baptized more than once you are baptized once however in the east a life profession is seen as the closest you can get to a second baptism so there's a lot of baptismal imagery and there's a lot of prodigal son imagery so um at one point the so the bishop um helps to clothe us with all of the new garments and things like that we get we get new everything we get new sandals new um new veil new all of that stuff so um new chad key we get a 300 not chock key instead of uh is that what you have mother she has a 300 knot um does that not hit the floor uh they loop it up several times yeah um and sometimes put it in the pocket um so the the bishop actually kneels this is one of the most moving parts of the ceremony for me but the bishop kneels down and he puts the sandals on our feet which is which is very much prodigal sun imagery uh we will get a wedding ring which is something that our monastery in particular does but the bishop will put the just a gold band and it says i see xc on it um uh and then on the inside we each have a verse that we we put inside a scripture verse can i ask what yours is or is it mine is song of songs four seven you are all beautiful my beloved there is no blemish in you uh and which was a verse that i had already picked out because it was just on my heart but then really the the profundity of why it was on my heart became very clear on my retreat with father boniface so um it really like became enlightened uh later after i had chosen and it was very beautiful um but uh anyway so the bishop will put the ring on our finger and who will cut your hair and what is it a symbol of also the bishop um so actually that's a one of the one of the one of our favorite lines of the service um and by favorite i mean we always have to try not to chuckle but it says um it says free her of all carnal desire and irrational notions so that just as she will lose the senseless hairs in taunture she may also lay aside all senseless designs and actions so anyways it's a it's a sign of um just so senseless it's a sign of dying to the world and the like the things that we um do for the world you know especially because um like i mean it's i'm adding this to it i guess because it's the same in a male's monastic taunter like um monks and nuns especially in the east like everything's the same um we don't have beards but abunda moses likes to say that these are our nun beards but the um so anyways especially for a woman like the hair is very much you know her glory and so to just say like done with that that senseless so where does he cut it off it's not just a little bit it's he looks right so he does he does like a little clip little snips in the side of the cross um and then yeah he'll lop it off at the the shoulders and i am hallelujah oh man must make summer summer's easier it must be very everything everything easier yeah shampoo oh my goodness conditioner brushing it i had to so i was running late this morning i like i like go to mother gabriella's cell and i was like i'm gonna be like 10 minutes late my hair had a lot more knots than i realized and it's just it's horrible but oh my goodness well that sounds so beautiful and i'm so excited to be there i'm really excited that you're coming yeah what will it mean for you i mean practically there's obviously um you know committing yourself to the lord and and what are you committing yourself to the monastery or to your your mother uh your the head mother what's her name peggy manner mother theodore are you committing your life to her or to the monastery because you said if the hegemony sends you elsewhere you would obey that so um one other quick thing that i didn't think to mention about but i thought of it when you asked some of the girl about her ring um in the east the tradition is that every nun at her life profession receives the title mother so at my life profession i'll start being called mother natalia uh so so symbolic of our spiritual motherhood of the the fruitfulness of this union with christ so in the east uh as as you experienced our holy resurrection all of the all of the monks at their life profession are called father even if they're a brother exactly so so father anthony is um is not a priest or deacon he's uh but he's a life-professed monk so um yeah so the so i'll be mother natalia um does your life look different after that practically so there there's not much there's not much practical difference because in the in the east it's also monasticism is very much like the apprenticeship model so um i was i was explaining this to uh someone from eastern europe who uh english is his second language and um and as i was trying to say that i was like do you know what apprentice means and and he said um he was like no and i was like and and i'm like trying to think of how to explain this and i was like well you know in days of old and then i'm like did i say days of old um and then i said how they would have clock makers and i'm like really clock makers is the example yeah so anyways but it's very much the apprenticeship model so um so it's like when you enter the monastery basically from day one you're living the life of a nun um so you have like you're given all the obediences you're on the same schedule you're all of those things you know um and which is a really beautiful beautiful way to to discern it you know um so um so not much changes practically the the only things would be i mean there are certain things just that are in canon law about like votes on the council and things like that but um the the biggest thing would be that spiritual direction is very much a if you want to use the the western term charism like that's very much a charism in the east and so life-professed life-professed nuns um at that point are allowed to give spiritual direction and because again where we become spiritual mothers um so that's that's probably the biggest practical difference um i can't really think of any other practical differences so have you ever read um imitation of christ thomas at campus yeah i've i've read some of it not the whole thing i believe and this isn't new wisdom we're kind of talking about it already but he speaks of how everybody wants to be something that they're not in order to attain holiness so the married man thinks if only he could be a priest he could devote time to prayer and the priest thinks if only he were a monk or maybe even a husband you know then he could raise good family in this culture of house but right if he's a monk then he could really devote more time to prayer and not have to worry about church councils and church rep repairs but then the monk thinks if only i were a hermit and you're sitting here and i'm like man if only the church wasn't so sexist i would love to join your monastery that's a joke but you know it sounds so beautiful and i'll be honest and this there's a part as you were speaking there was a party that's like man if my if my wife ever passes away like i would love to become a monk but even that is i mean that's very much that's very eastern actually but even that is a reaching for something as if this isn't where the lord has placed me for my own sanctification right now there's still a reaching out as if holiness will be had over there yeah it can't be had here with the little annoyances i'm expected to put up with in my own sins yeah no no you know something that i was very moved by is um so uh i don't mean this as a plug but i guess this is a plug um you know father michael lachlan obviously yeah um so he's my spiritual father he's been my spiritual father for about 10 years at this point almost 11 years actually and um so he and i have a podcast together what god is not and i can talk about the name of that later if you want but um but the there you know i've talked a lot on the podcast about this uh this sliding scale um aspect of monasticism that i talked about in the east of of how we're all called to live monasticism to some degree in our life i've also shared on the podcast several several parts of our tipicon again our role of life at the monastery and um and sometimes i'll like share something from the typical and share how i think this applies to people in the world um but the articon there is we have a link to it a a pdf it's on our website means rule of life so it's um it's uh so in the east um we don't have the same concept traditionally we don't have the same concept of orders that you have in the west like we don't have dominicans bazillion sorry dominicans benedictines things like that um we do have um we do have like like bishop milan our the bishop of our eparchy of parma he's um he's a jesuit and he's byzantine so there's like there are byzantine priests within the jesuits byzantine priests within the dominicans so on and so forth but um but we don't have like the same concept of byzantine orders yes so what would happen is each each monastery um would develop their own typical their own rule of life and um they're they're pretty similar they have kind of the same like they're they're mostly based off of um like pacomius and basil um so they're pretty similar but but they're particular to each monastery ours has a lot of emphasis on um spousal relationship with christ because we're christ the bridegroom monastery i don't know if we even said that yeah but our monastery is christ the bridegroom monastery um and emphasis on um we really feel a great pull in our monastery to to pray and work towards um reunification between east and west so there's some emphasis in that in our in our typical and um we also feel a great pull to like prayer for priests um and so so there's some of that but anyways um we have a link to this our tipicon on our website christ the bridegroom.org and so so anyways one of our podcast listeners you know he he reached out he sent an email and he's just like so um i've read through your typicon it's very beautiful and we're like applying certain aspects of it to our family and he's like um there's this paragraph this paragraph in this paragraph and and what do you think and what's your advice on on how we can better incorporate this and i just was like so moved by this you know i'm like this is someone who is a married man and he's loving the lord and his family is loving the lord and they're wanting to incorporate this into their family life and um and and to be holy as married people and holy as a family and and that's just like that's what we need and that's beautiful you know which speaking of the the typical um i just remembered you'd ask the question about whether i'm i'm promising to stay with this hegimena or with this monastery so our monastery um we want to always be smaller like like family size large sisters as a max um we would probably never have more than like 15 or 20 at our monastery so we won't have like hundreds you know like some monasteries so so once we have i don't know 10 or 12 nuns or something like that right now there are seven of us once we have maybe 10 or 12 uh mother the whoever the heggy mana is at that time would take two probably probably like three of them to go start a new monastery so after after this podcast when you get eight more applicants and you're bursting at the seams we had a lot of people reach out after my last interview you're welcome man what did i say to you i said you need to be giving me a kickback for this yeah and you said something snarky like shut up yeah that was it that was probably it so another nun would be selected to be the hegemena to start another monastery at that point if you grow beyond 15 possibly well yeah so um so so i so theoretically i could be one of the three who sent to start this new monastery beautiful yeah i see so that's why it's um the service says do you promise to stay this monastery or that to which you are sent under holy obedience it's for situations so if you were sent to another monastery you would then be under obedience to that agreement yes and and so um so if we once we once we start a new monastery though this is what i mean by we don't have the concept of orders it wouldn't be another monastery and like christ the bridegroom monastery is the mother house it would be totally independent totally autonomous they would need to write their own typical and i mean there would be very much a connection and constant communication and and visiting and all of that but it would be governing yeah so under the authority of whatever the bishop of whatever eparchy they were in and so on and so forth yeah that's that's really beautiful um do you and this other sister who will soon be mother both of you making your life profession have the two of you like talked about like your fears your maybe any apprehension yeah about this yeah does it feel like a big deal like when you like when i got married it was a big deal i was like oh this is it you know turning back now yeah it it it doesn't feel but then we didn't have a six year preparation exactly yeah and also um it felt it felt like a really big deal last may um but at that point by the time the time it had come around you know like i was committed i had made my decision um and after the like year and a half of kind of the prolonged it's that's all kind of you know i've just gotten used to the idea yeah so it's like i said my big yes a year and a half ago i just happened to not quite say it publicly yet yes um so it it doesn't but at first it did very much feel like a big deal and and that's emphasized in the service like the the bishop is saying you know several times he says be sure you realize the nature of these promises which you have made and he says he says give god fitting answers to these questions fearful and yet joyful and so there's the whole the whole profession service has this beautiful tension between an acknowledgement of i'm sinful and i am undeserving of of this opportunity and i'm not actually going to be able to to fully live out these things that i'm saying i'm going to live out um and that's terrifying and there's this great weight and this acknowledgement of my sinfulness and there's the tension between that and god's immense mercy and the trust in his love and the trust that he's going to help me up when i fall and and all of that so there's like this beautiful tension throughout the whole service what what uh what do you see uh in young women who are discerning becoming a religious um maybe some of the pitfalls they fall into uh some things that they need to be i don't know maybe maybe the way they discern is problematic or i i i like for example the reason i ask that is i i talk to young men who are discerning the priesthood and it seems like they're only discerning uh and that's all they do and there's never a decision made or speaking for myself i remember when i was discerning the priesthood i would sort of i would priest hop as it were like i would get super into this one religious order and then i'd check out this other one and i would never really kind of make a decision um what are you seeing as you chat with young women um that is one of the things um exactly what you just described but i would say the the piece of advice you can speak to that more though i will yeah yeah so so i do i see the the people who are just like they're kind of there seems to be this paralysis of not wanting to take the next step of not wanting to maybe visit the monastery or if not wanting to do an extended visit or not wanting to do an observer ship which is what we call the the first stage of kind of serious discernment in our monastery where you come for a three to six week visit um or they're not willing to take this step to enter or something like that but the the piece of advice that i usually give to people and this is something that that really father michael uh my again my spiritual father that he helped me along with because i was i was struggling with that that kind of paralyzing fear uh because we're just we're just so afraid of commitment in our society and i think it's because we're so surrounded by broken commitment that we we don't even trust in ourselves to be able to commit yep that makes sense and and we see how much the broken commitments damage and and we even subconsciously just don't want to cause that damage and you know so um so the advice that i usually give to people is don't be afraid to take this step because um and there's there is one other big thing that i want to talk about but don't be afraid to take this step because to to come visit the monastery is not a commitment to be there forever to come on observership is not a commitment to be there forever we've had multiple people come on observership who then didn't enter the monastery and we are friends with them and we love them and you know um one of them in particular i'm very close to actually i'm very close with still um and then um to enter the monastery is not a commitment to be a nun for the rest of your life you know it's not even a commitment to be a nun it's not commitment to being tortured you know it's like it's all part of the discernment and and what i what i tell people is if you're if you're with under the guidance absolutely under the guidance of a spiritual director and under the guidance of the superior of the community and the community itself which is the other thing i'm going to talk about in a second um if you're if you're wondering if you're feeling any pull towards this like try it because if this is something i really needed to hear myself if i go to the monastery for six months or a year in fact even if at this point i discerned out i will not feel like it was wasted time you know and i think that can especially be a temptation for women because we have biological clocks and it's like if i'm supposed to get married i don't want to waste time discerning a monastic life when i really should find my husband asap so that we can start having kids and um which by the way is just like a very utilitarian way of looking at marriage but um but anyways there is um if i if you go to the monastery and you end up after two years discerning out you are going to be so much better of a wife and so much better of a mother for having spent that two years learning how to pray learning how to live in community learning how to love the lord above all else because if you're married you still need to love the lord above your husband and above your children and it's just like it's just the the the time there is so formative that it's not wasted time and so i think that's probably one of the biggest fears for people is they don't want to pursue this and waste their time and so that's a fear that i try to allay but the other thing that i'll say that i think is is very prevalent in our society is people think that um their discernment is just that it's their discernment and so if i think i'm called to the monastery then i'm called to the monastery and um that's uh just not all-encompassing um because it's a discernment on the part of the community it's a dis very much and you have no interest in forcing people who will be bad nuns in against that would just make your life more miserable exactly yeah and their life and their life um yeah it's like and that's that's something that honestly um i mean our community has problems all communities have problems just like every family has problems but one of the things that i most appreciate about our community about mother theodora the hegimena is that she she has she's never from the beginning she's never been concerned about the numbers right so for her it's never been like she's never chased after anyone um she's never pressured anyone in fact she like probably should have pressured me a little bit more um but but maybe she was right because god got me there but um you know she's just very much like god's will i want god's will because we all know at our monastery that if if we don't want god's will we're not going to be happier for it the discerner is not going to be happier for it um yeah like i i at the end of my observership um again that three to six week visit uh everyone else i think everyone else who's entered the monastery um either during their observership or immediately after applied to the monastery um i didn't for like a year or something like that because i at the end of my observership i was like i'm not ready and i i don't think i can uh i probably talked about this a little bit last time but i i don't think i can i can't imagine a happy and holy marriage for myself and i don't want to do this if i think it's the only way i can be holy i want to do it if i think it's the way god wants me to be holy and um but not if i think it's the only way i can be holy because that's not do you know i had the exact opposite experience when i was living in brisbane i couldn't imagine myself as a successful husband and father in everything that entailed and it was my men's group at the time who pointed that out so i was very much discerning see the friars of the renewal and very much excited about that and looking into that i just thought like every aspect of fatherhood and husband dude you know i'd be a bad father a bad provider a bad lover like everything i would suck at that's i was convinced of that and it was it was not a good reason to become a priest right and and so that's why that's where i felt at the end of my observership i was like i can't imagine a happy and holy marriage for myself um and so i was like if i enter the monastery right now it's gonna be because i'm i'm running away from an unholy marriage um and and we we should not discern things because we're running away from um another good you know it should be because we feel we're called to a greater good or a different code and so so at the end of my observership i tell mother um you know i don't think i can apply right now i think like i i need to further discern marriage and she was like great go do that date if you need to and you know what whatever you need to do and i'm like okay so i leave i dated a guy oh wow um and um and then eventually obviously we broke up we did break up and uh so um so yeah mother's just been you know she's just like go you know god's will be done and and father michael also was very supportive you know he's like uh whatever god wants and um and she just she has this great trust and and confidence in um like if god wants this it'll happen i'm also not sure what the uh incentive would be for the mother or the father of a particular monastery to wish to grow unnecessarily i don't even know what the advantage in that would be like having someone come and live with you who ought not to be there would be like me just saying hey you wanna come live with my family and just you can have a spare room and just live with us forever yeah why would i do that you know i i felt called to it and we discerned it as well right i would imagine i i obviously don't have any firsthand experience of that because this is my only community and like i said that's not a struggle in our particular community but i would imagine um part of it is just even in the monastery um we get attitudes of the world that just seep in and and one of those attitudes is like more nuns it looks better yeah um and and so i would imagine i i hope that this is the case that superiors who do that superiors who who press for more nuns um or who press for certain people to enter who probably don't have a call to monasticism i would hope that they're doing it not because they see they don't have a call and are pressing it anyways i would hope they're doing it because they they they want these numbers and so they've kind of like self-deceived into thinking this person has a call you know it's more like it's more like they maybe get the intuition that this person isn't supposed to be here but they kind of like push that aside and convince themselves so i would hope that when they do it they've convinced themselves this person when i was discerning the priesthood back when i was 17 in australia it did feel like at least to me and maybe i was misreading it but it felt like some of the religious orders i had contacted were like please god save that dying community and that's not attractive exactly it'd be like me meeting an old woman who's like please let me have children i'm like 40 and this can't go on forever please marry me like ah first of all you're 23 years older than me which is weird so you also just to all your listeners called 40 year old women old i don't know well older than me i was 17 at the time that's why i said 24 years old 3 24 years old yeah like it's just not attractive like to be begged into something it's not attractive in religious life it's it's not attractive in kind of romantic life yeah but we so anyway the point i think just quickly the point you were making is so important that people realize it's like you might discern this and but you're not the only one in this process absolutely you have other beautiful holy women who are discerning as well and so you can also trust in that yes absolutely so yeah so it's like if you if you um yeah you know it's just not like that's all i have to say when you when you join the monastery because i when i stayed with those fathers up in wisconsin my initial thought was i'm gonna like pray with them the whole time like every time they pray i'm gonna do it no it's like eight hours that's ridiculous overboard yeah at our monastery from the day you enter you attend all the same prayers way too much i'm just joking i'm only being a smarter a smart aleck ah see how that noise slipped um but yeah like so i always do like an hour in the morning hour in the evening but i said i can't do eight hours of this stuff was there how did you drive me crazy well i'm gonna keep doing it because this is for your sanctification sister um and the sanctification of everyone that's right um yeah so was it any kind of um did you get you had to get used to it kind of thing or um because let me tell people how much you pray as as a community sure so we pray um we have we have spousal prayers in the morning um which is what we call uh because at our monastery the the spousal relationship is is so significant that's what we call our cell rule which is the rule of prayer that's given to you by your spiritual mother or spiritual father that you pray in your um in your cell um well not tech and sometimes we'll like pray it outside or whatever but anyways um so that's an hour maybe an hour and a half um what is do you mind if i ask what that consists of is that is that very specific to each individual it's very specific to each individual but it's typically some combination of silence jesus prayer scripture maybe spiritual reading that's really cool and so so we have that individually um outside of the great fast we then have mountains or morning prayer um starting with the jesus prayer 15 minutes of that um that's about an hour and a half in the morning and then we have another from 6 30 to 8 and then at noon we have uh we have noon we play one of the hours first third sixth or ninth and that lasts about 30 minutes um and then we have vespers or evening prayer from 4 45 until about 5 45 or 6. and then we have compliment or night prayer from 9 to 9 30. and um so those are the times of communal prayer uh and then we also have like i mentioned earlier we have pasted mornings on fridays until noon and that's time of just prayer and silence but um and then during lent it's all of those things but they're all just longer um but so we have during during lunch or the great fast it's probably another hour hour and a half so it didn't take you much getting used to um not so much i don't i don't want to sound like you i can imagine you're going in with enthusiasm right you want to fully commit to this law yeah and also i um you know we each have different draws to the monastery and um like just just naturally we each have different calls on our heart and and i really really i love liturgical prayer so that was one of the draws for me so there are other things that were a lot harder for me to transition to but the liturgical prayer was not so hard like i always wanted more of that at our parish and um yeah so i really like that i mean don't get me wrong there are certainly days that i'm like i'm tired i don't want to get up and go to matins uh it mostly happens with compliment like by the end of the day i'm just done and i'm like i don't want to pray to compliment i don't want to pray tonight um what do you do when you do you ever travel on your own probably to see your folks yeah for home visit and keep to that structure we have different um we have kind of an abbreviated no definitely not that structure but we have abbreviated we we um basically more or less we pray morning prayer and evening prayer mountains and vespers but abbreviated forms um and then also our spousal prayers our cell rule so awesome well here's what we're going to do we're going to take a quick break great when we come back i want to ask you about your excellent podcast with father michael what god is not and then we're going to take some questions from our patrons great cool all right i want to say thank you to ethos logos investments for supporting this show el investments.net pints i guess when i was a bit younger i thought that investing was something that only rich people did or old people did or rich old people did i didn't realize it was something that i should be looking into as well and when i began looking into it i realized i don't want to invest in companies that are doing immoral things and that's where ethos logos investments comes in they were founded to work with individuals and institutions within the united states that seek to infuse their morals into their investment portfolio with portfolios that adhere to the us conference of catholic bishops responsible investing guidelines you can be sure that you aren't profiting from intrinsic evils like abortion embryonic stem cell research pornography or human trafficking please go check them out ethos logos investments is what they're called el investments dotnet slash pints there's a link in the description below el investments.net slash pints for employers they offer socially responsible and catholic 401k and 403b options as well so yeah go check them out el investments.net pints securities offered through securities america inc member finra sipik ethos logos investments and securities america are separate entities advisory services offered through securities america advisors incorporated yes the second group i want to thank is hello hello h-a-l-l-o-w dot com slash mattfradd hallow.com hello is a fantastic app that will help you to pray and meditate it's not like new age mindfulness apps that lead into wrong ways of thinking this is a hundred percent catholic and it's super sophisticated if you go to hallow.com and sign up there you'll get a few months for free before deciding if you want to pay a minimal amount every month to have access to their entire app now you can download the app right now and you'll get access to certain things for free so be sure to check that out if you just want to you know play around with it and see what they have to offer but if you want access to everything that they have like sleep stories and bible studies and all sorts of beautiful things like that you you have to pay a certain amount every month to get access to that if you want access to everything for a few months just go to hello.com slash mattfraddhallow.com and sign up there thanks [Music] and we're back how long did it get to in the two minute countdown before you switched it back 40 seconds why did we have to do that extra two minute countdown because i had to go to the bathroom you know that why would you ask me that girl because i want to do embarrassment it's the shaming i told you i'm really good at you all right sister but so before we get to these uh questions i want to ask you about your what god is not podcast which i think you've been doing for every year now yeah and it has one of the greatest um logos logos thanks yeah um so um the it's called what god is not because it's a it's a reference to what's called apophatic theology which you're familiar with so in the in the east um there's this emphasis on apathetic theology which is is means that we're talking about um what is not so we say god is ineffable he's inconceivable he's all of the he's he's sinless he's all of these things that he's not and um the reason we do this is because the the other way of speaking is called cataphatic theology talking about what god what god is um so scientists would be familiar with this if you think about cations and anions and so uh the um the reason we have the emphasis on talking about what god is not is because our language is so limited that anytime we say something that he is there's something lacking right just like whenever we make any sort of analogy uh there's always an analogy specifically referring to god there's there's always some way in which it fails yeah there's always a dissimilarity this is this is thomas aquinas oh this could be a negative i don't really know him yeah i love him i don't know if i would you uh no you won't listen i don't know if i've ever shared with you my one experience of of thomas aquinas you know i say i don't like thomas aquinas i really love the hillbilly thomas um yeah if there are any hillbilly thomas listening if the sympatheologie is anything it's not um so uh so anyways the summa actually this is my thomas aquinas story um i uh he helped me to realize um what a good heretic i'd be so so one of the one of the sisters i've never i had never read uh aquinas because i was always just like i have no background in philosophy or theology my background is in engineering physics and so i'm like i he's just way over my head i wouldn't be able to understand anything and then one day one of the sisters she's taking a class and so she's reading from the summa and she's like she's like listen to this part and she reads it out loud and i'm listening and i'm like i get it i totally get it like i actually understand it's not over my head and i'm like i'm totally that's on point i get it and she was like that's the heresy that he's refuting and i'm like oh that's awkward um so i would i would surely just accidentally be a heretic i you can't accidentally be a heretic i would accidentally proclaim you can be a material heretic okay most of us probably all christians are formal heresy is when you but i just mean that like i i could i could say heresy without being a heretic because you only hear a kick yeah no absolutely doing it i do it in most episodes committing heresy quite regularly awesome in fact i think there was one person one time i did a pint of aquinas episode and i referred to the two persons of christ or something like that that's nothing and uh but i said it was such like confidence such confidence that people were like crap i guess i had no idea and then so it was cool so in the next episode i was like heresy alert heresy alert speaking about humility oh yeah that was good so yeah no what what god is next so yeah well god is not so it's it's a podcast that i do with um with my spiritual father father michael lachlan and uh you know one of the one of the comments that we got so so it's a very conversational podcast just like just like what we're doing right now you know um well not so it's not like interview form but it's just uh we take turns picking topics and it's uh he's he's an eastern catholic priest and so it's um a byzantine podcast but um so there's like that that byzantine spirituality there the emphasis on the mystery but most of our listeners are roman catholic but the it's it's beautiful because there's so much in it that like people are just seeing a glimpse into our relationship as spiritual father and spiritual daughter and that's one of the things that i've that we've gotten the most positive feedback about is people are like it's so beautiful to see this celibate love and this this chaste love and to be able to experience that and and witness that and um someone recently pointed out they were like you know what's so great about your podcast is it's the only podcast i know of this is what the person said it's the only podcast i know of um catholic podcast that's um a man and a woman who aren't married uh interesting and i'm like huh like there's you know there are priests who have podcasts together they're religious women religious men who have podcasts husband and wife husband and wife um but yeah that's really interesting yeah and so it's just been it's been a really beautiful experience so and we just we talk about a wide variety of things i mean father michael did a whole a whole series on the divine liturgy um it was like a seven part series or something like that i joked that it was never going to end it was going to be like part 12 a the great on men and um you hear you snoring in the background seriously and uh so anyways he actually people really liked that that series though so he did a whole series on on the divine liturgy um but we've talked about um uh i don't know i did i did an episode on um called no safety net that which which was just about um loving the lord single-heartedly and and just really going all in and things like that um and yeah it's a great thing wherever podcasts are found right spotify itunes what god is yeah all of the things yeah it's called what god is not and it's on all the major spotify apple podcasts um we have a youtube channel oh that's right so do you guys video it as well um we don't do video right now so it's just the whatever the little squiggly lines you know what i'm talking we have questions from patrons big thanks to everybody who supports spines with aquinas christopher west is in the chat um love you christopher hi christopher we love you is that it hey he didn't have a question he was just like what's up all right so this is funny because this patrons name is your boy eb he says one thing i have come to see is that roman catholics sometimes think byzantine catholics are weird not wrong and have weird traditions and theology that are foreign to them what are some theology or traditions of the byzantine church do you all right we could do the distinction if you want do you think roman catholics have misunderstandings about that they should understand and why you believe and do such traditions and theology god bless you natalia yeah that's just like opening it up like opening up the space for me to just clarify these things that people might that's great maybe choose one or two yeah sure um this is probably a ton well one of the greatest things one of the biggest things that i already touched on um is that people get some some people get really upset that praying the rosary is not an eastern tradition and and i say it's not an eastern tradition i know plenty of byzantine catholics who pray the rosary and find great fruit in that and that's beautiful um but uh but it's not like a tradition that developed in the east um because uh but but we do have like i said lots of other um you have something similar you have something similar to the rosary i forget the eastern saints name but it's that hail mary theotokos yeah so it's like 50 yeah um the rejoicing virgin i think is the yeah um but we have we have this one of my one of my favorite services is um an akathist um which akathist just means without sitting yeah um so it just means you stand the whole time um so the the akathis to the mother of god we have ocathists uh we have these services without sitting to to various saints and stuff but the akathis to the mother of god is this beautiful beautiful service and the whole thing is just singing and about different images of mary so freaking much yeah i would make my kids like we'd like dad's going to do the akathist and they kind of get excited because i would let them like lay on the couch and put blankets over them and then daddy would chant and swing incense around for like a half hour so we have um one of my favorite lines of it from it is um we talk about about the theotokos which means god bearer that's what we call mary um the where maidenhood meets motherhood that's one of my favorite lines from it but we talk about about mary being um the the bush that burned but was not consumed and um you know we have all of these images from her um of her from from the old testament of like the ark and um the mountain and uh out of which the stone was hewn and and things like that we gotta look it up at some point and we're gonna read through some of them because it's like a great poetry it's amazing um so that's that's one of them is that we don't play the rosie but we do have lots of other um devotions to the theotokos and and in the in the liturgy we like basically we almost never have hymns without ending them with something to marry like at vespers we have this set of hymns called the stakira and this set of hymns called the apostica and at the end of them we always have uh some hymn to the theotokos so we love mary very much that would be one thing you'd want to clarify to people just because we don't have your exact same devotions doesn't mean we don't have other devotions right um and one of the other things is uh that's not a tradition in the east is uh adoration so that's something that that really can can kind of uh stir up some distrust from from roman catholics uh but what i'll say is um something that one of the other nuns pointed out that i found very very beautiful it like reveals um the profound ways in which god works in the church um like in different ways and different traditions at different times and it's that um part to my understanding part of the reason adoration developed in the west it was a response to people doubting the true presence in the eucharist and like there was this these heresies that were developing right where people weren't believing in the true presence in the eucharist and that's when um adoration started uh becoming a thing and um and and that same heresy never really developed in the east and that's not because we're like these awesome people who never have heresy but we had different heresies and so um the big heresy matt what's the big heresy in the east the uh icons being banned yeah iconoclasm yeah so this was people thinking that so so in the east we um we have lots and lots of icons and we kiss them all the time and uh the i was just thinking of a story from the holy land but it's it's fine um the in the east so the the big heresy was that people people started believing that these icons um that to kiss them was actually idol worship that's fine and um readers had to get in protestantism which is probably when you saw like a full-throated response from the west so um right and so in the east one of the um this is this is the the thing that that this one of the other sisters in the monastery noticed that i think is really profound um one of the miracles that you hear about happening in the west is eucharistic miracles right like hosts that um that bleed right and things like that um i've never heard well anyways so so that's like one of the big miracles that happens in the west in the east the miracles that you're had that you hear about are weeping icons miraculous icons so it's like god speaks to the wounds of of each side of the church each person in the church in like very distinct ways um so so anyways we didn't have that particular heresy and adoration didn't develop in the east but um that's not because we don't believe in the worship of the eucharist or or in the eucharist itself or the true presence but it's just not a tradition that developed so do you what do you think i mean do you enjoy when you get to go to say like a catholic western catholic conference and they have adoration do you kind of appreciate it is something somewhat exotic that you get to partake in um sure i mean when i'm yeah when i'm when i'm at when i'm in adoration um i um i mean i typically just pray with my eyes closed i don't i don't typically like gaze upon the host or something well so why can't you just appreciate it and see this bloody gorgeous without it having to be something you naturally just like i mean western catholics see the chotky right or they see the icons they're like oh my gosh this is amazing yeah and they can recognize it as part of the eastern heritage without having to necessarily adopt it or to insist that their particular church sure well so so but but what i'm saying is in adoration like i can appreciate that we're here in the presence of the lord in his very real presence um and i can enter into that more fully by closing in my closing my eyes and resting in his presence i don't need to gaze upon um like to gaze upon the eucharist does not remind me of his presence any more than simply closing my eyes and resting in the presence cool i could i could keep asking questions but i'm afraid it would seem combative sorry you tell me if you want me to or not i mean you can i don't care i'm not afraid of it yeah another it's stupid i'm not afraid of you but um yeah i don't know i don't i don't like what you just said that's fine i don't like it so let me finish um i i get i i get i i feel i see what you're saying i mean there's something particular to how one chooses to pray and someone might even see gazing upon the monstrance and all this it's somewhat distracting and that's fine but it just seems to me that if this is truly the body blood soul and divinity of jesus christ without having to have without having to feel the need to adopt this practice why not see it as something incredibly beautiful and praiseworthy and then choose to gaze upon the eucharist why is it just a particular preference that you have or do you think it's because you're an eastern catholic you're like i don't really get it so i'm going to shut my eyes and it's i may as well be before an icon um yeah i think it's i think it's probably a particular preference but i i think it's also um i i think it's also is just coming from from the eastern spirituality of you know what we're like how we were talking earlier about um i can i can more um i can more easily read and accept the teachings of some of the the desert fathers because i'm so immersed in the spirituality of like we're constantly singing these hymns at vespers and matins that's putting me in the right context to read them and and um yeah and in the same way like i'm not immersed in the spirituality that's putting me in the context for gazing upon the host i feel i feel nothing i feel absolutely nothing nothing wrong no hesitation with other people gazing upon the eucharist um so it's not like i'm sitting there and i'm like why are they even like looking at it you know um it's just like um there's there's nothing that i don't find that it adds to my experience of the presence of the lord to look at the host me see if we can come up with an analogy which might help us understand this would it be like a western catholic coming to your profession say and they see people venerating the icons and to them it's like it kind of looks a bit weird like their skin kind of looks green their eyes and nose look strange i'm really glad people are into it i just this is not how i'm this isn't helping me pray right now yeah is it kind of like that so i see the mirror in it it's just not part of my yeah absolutely um and and i think that it's a i think that it's a beautiful tradition um it's just not the tradition that i'm immersed in and so it's it's um might be harder for me to enter into so i can appreciate that tradition while entering into my own tradition yep okay that's good uh nathan alex says hi sister can you talk about why monasticism is so heavily emphasized in the east and any advice on single-lay people trying to incorporate more monastic habits between singleness and marriage so um one uh one thing i'll say is that like as to why it's so emphasized in the east is um because it's held up as the life of perfection so we're all striving for perfection for holiness and so this is the life that we hold up as the ideal of that um because it's the life of like we talked about earlier it's the life of repentance and um and of striving for that but it's also called um the monastic life like at the end of the service of a monastic profession uh each person goes up to venerate the hand cross of the the newly professed nun and they venerate the hand cross and they say they say what is your name mother and you answer mother natalia and they say may you be saved in the angelic ranks um which one of the this is actually very very cool so one of the one of the views in um eastern christianity i think i read this in mountain of silence by kyriakos marquitas have you read this book some of it um so uh the pseudo father maximus um he like that's not his real name is what i mean he um but in the book he's called father maximus um he's a real monk they just use a pseudonym but he um he's talking about how there's this view in the east that um the the the angels who fell from heaven this is not dogma this is just one of the theories the angels who fell from heaven were um of one rank of angels because we have different ranks of angels right there's the cherubim the seraphim the archangel so on and so forth um and that the monastics um are called to replace that rank of angels i love that and it's it's so beautiful and and i don't mean that to be very very clear i don't mean that in the sense of when we die we are angels because that is as we were talking of earlier heresy um we don't become pure spirit you know we have um body and soul in heaven just like but um there's actually there's something um in i don't remember what this is but i remember marking something in the ladder of divine ascent that's about monasticism um i marked it as monasticism for the married life um so i'm going to read it monasticism for those who are married i have no recollection of what it says disclaimer really so how do you know where it is [Music] i don't know where it is i just have a memory of like i had written in the marginal lovely handwriting thank you i had written you didn't draw that did you i did how is that so neat do you use a ruler i didn't have ocd okay personal questions um i do i do use i didn't use a ruler for that i just drew it but i do you know what i'm talking about a little bit just a little bit of it but i do use my ruler when i underline incredible okay all right so this is this is from the ladder of divine ascent and this is one of those ones that um i would not necessarily just like read without guidance from someone because it's very intense and again it's like written especially because the first step is a band in the world i'm like screwed so um so i have no recollection of what the text actually just says i just wrote in the margin monasticism for those who are married some people living carelessly in the world have asked me we have wives and are beset with social cares and how can we lead the solitary life i replied to them do all the good you can so this is the response of how do you live monasticism do all the good you can do not speak evil of anyone do not steal from anyone do not lie to anyone do not be arrogant towards anyone do not hate anyone do not be absent from the divine services be compassionate to the needy do not offend anyone do not wreck another man's domestic happiness and be content with what your own wives can give you if you behave in this way you will not be far from the kingdom of heaven that is beautiful right and this is coming from that and put it on white this is from coming from climacus who like as you read this you just think that he thinks that everyone in the world has to be a monk or they can't go to heaven um and this is a clear statement of like he says no like you do these things and and like you're going to be okay um but but i would also just repeat what i said earlier of i would recommend you go on um our monasteries website christopher.org and and look at the link to to our tipicon our rule of life and um and really don't just don't just read it but pray with it like when i when i came on my observership at the monastery and i prayed with with the tibicon each day like really brought each section to prayer my my heart was burning like it's a beautiful beautiful document um and so pray with that and and ask the lord like don't just don't just jump to your own extreme conclusions don't just make your own decisions but really ask the lord um lord in what ways can i apply this to my family um how are you calling me to live a monasticism within my family and to what extent because you also have to consider you have to consider your your spouse and your kids you know um like you can't just be imposing things on them that are going to make them miserable and and so that's the other thing i would do is i would i would encourage you to like um maybe start as a family learning more about monasticism and discern together like don't just force these things on your family to that point there is a french priest named jacques philippe he wrote a little book called searching for a maintaining piece familiar yes fantastic we love him very much in our mind one of the things he says that often after our conversion the problem isn't that we want the wrong thing at this point we want the right thing say the sanctification of our families he said the problem for us now is we want the right thing in the wrong way and i try to remember that as i rally my kids together to pray the rosary i have a melancholic disposition and i think by nature tend to be more idealistic and find myself somewhat defeated when i think we're not reaching that ideal as a family and in the beginning this actually caused me quite a lot of frustration because my kids weren't like levitating or kneeling on glass like i demanded they do broken glass why is why is the three-year-old not able to just sit in silence for 27 minutes exactly so but what i found now is if i seriously lower my expectations we can pray the holy rosary every night together you know like if i'm okay that my daughter's like not even fingering the beads and is just kind of coloring on something or doesn't seem to be paying attention at all but if i am and i can do it with great charity and great gentleness and great joy like sort of joy like kind of even funny um in this funny moments when parents and kids get together to pray for 20 minutes you know then that's beautiful that's so beautiful it's so beautiful to have a family get together and pray imperfectly but to pray and and i think that there's also something very empowering about allowing your spouse but but especially your children to enter into that discernment like i was saying you know like um you know i mean guide the discernment as as particularly you know the if there's a father figure like the man as the spiritual head of the household like guide that discernment for them um but allow them to be part of that you know like share with them what monasticism is or or like read this paragraph on your own of the typical and and try to like put it into words that your child can understand and then talk with them about it and be like um like nate how do you think that we can apply this as a family like what's one thing that you think that we could do and like guide them in that because don't let them pick something extreme because then they're going to be discouraged when it fails but if they can pick some reason i shouldn't choose something that's extreme right because i'll end up discouraged right but if they if they if if you're able to guide them to like something that's actually doable for your family then i think that they'll be more able and willing to do that if if they're the ones who like came up with this idea you know yeah that's nice yeah that's nice total side note i had a priest come up to me last night i was at a wedding and i went to the reception afterwards and this priest comes up to me he's like your son amazing confession i have with him i cannot tell you what he said because of internal form that's my american accent um but yeah my son's sick my six-year-old superman peter um who of course was received chrismation i've not met him in the byzantine church oh yeah and he said like it was outstanding i'm like oh my god it's so cool so just thought i'd brag on my sound there yeah humble brag uh patron amazing i love you thank you claire welton says sister natalia as a sister who i assume took a vow of poverty what have you learned about detachment from earthly things and what advice do you have for lay people who still have to live in the world yet are also called to detachment that's a really good question um did you take a vow of poverty we don't technically take vows at all in the east um but we um but we do like at the life profession the bishop asks um like are you do you promise to live this life of poverty and and i say yes you know with god's help and um so um you know you know what's interesting is i don't find i'm sure this is is different for for everybody but i would say that one of the things that you need to do is really um again bring to prayer because i don't i don't know your interior life um clear but but but bring to prayer the question for the lord of where do my attachments lie because i think that's the first step of figuring um figuring out how to be detached because um i don't i don't really struggle with with material attachment and that's not because um of any virtue on my part it's because my attachments lie in other places you know um so most particularly i'm i'm really attached to relationships um and one of the things that i was broken of in not broken of totally um still being broken of in coming to the monastery was a the realization that i'm i'm attached to my my time you know um and which is which is one of the beauties of monasticism is you very quickly realize that your time is not your time um you know i did i did a whole episode on our podcast called um whose time is it anyway it's a very clever title yeah um and the so so i say you very quickly realize as a monastic that your time is not your own and i say that that's a gift and the reason it's a gift is because the truth of it is in the world your time is also not your own but it's easier to fool yourself into thinking it is you know like you can have more control over your time so you can think that it's your time um but really all time is is is god's time that he gives to us to use in certain ways and so the gift as a monastic is you figure that out real quick um but but anyway so my attachments relationships time um the monastery is kind of the monastic life is kind of built to break those attachments um in the world you have a little bit more of um you have to take the responsibility upon yourself just have kids they'll damage every good thing you've wanted to maintain right um so i would say pay attention um so again prayerfully discern that but also pay attention to um which things uh upset you you know like if you um if you're in the middle of something and someone suddenly knocks on the door and you're like pretty angry about it um or frustrated or whatever maybe you're attached to your own time or you're attached to your productivity or you're attached to so like pay attention to the movements really enlightening because we often think of what are you attached to is immediately physical objects right um and so once you realize the attachment i would say just just um pray about again ask the lord don't make these decisions on your own but but ways um to really um tangibly combat those things um and in the sense of if if you do realize you're attached to your own time really really try to jump at the opportunities when someone else needs something you know like if you're at the office and you're working on something and you notice that someone is like flustered by the things they're trying to do you can in all your right as an employee you can just stay focused on your work but if you know that you're attached to your own time and you're attached to your productivity maybe stop your work and go offer to help this other person or something like that so so try to try to discern the ways to like actively combat those attachments yeah because we can yeah we can get attached to things we perceive to be good and all things being equal they are like a good schedule like i need a good schedule so i can be more efficient and get done what i have to get done um but yeah you can be attached to that as well i had to drop my kids off today at school and i the the gas tank was on empty and i was frustrated about that because i had to get filled up which meant i had to spend another 10-15 minutes in the car um and i was conscious of that at the time like i'm getting frustrated interesting yeah we'll look at that later jesus derek cummins and i got to say this this i know him do you derek's amazing i bet you do know him here's why here's what's cool about derek he probably doesn't mind they're going to share the story but if he does sorry how do i know derek was a protestant youth pastor who left protestantism because he he believed it to be false or at least not entirely true this is who you were talking about earlier i don't know but he's now has been discerning between eastern catholicism and orthodoxy okay and i believe he's in an orthodox church beautiful guy beautiful guy i would never say that to his face um or you know i think you just did he says this have you had many experiences with eastern orthodoxy such as clergy laity and essex that have been positive that's ex that's interesting oh maybe because he's saying because you're an eastern catholic yeah so okay uh as one who is living in the eastern christian tradition have they accepted you as one of them what's that what's that been like for you first of all um so i'm gonna i'm i'll answer the question have i had many that have been positive and and the answer is yes um and so you don't hang out with a lot of youtube orthodox people i mean i didn't say that i've not had many that have been negative um but i have had many also that have been positive um one example of this just from yesterday um we got an rsvp from um we have five coptic orthodoxy nuns coming to the life profession um there's this this um community of coptic orthodox nuns that um that we've spent some time with um on a few occasions and they're just so beautiful and uh actually their their priest and his wife are probably also um coming to the profession so seven coptic orthodox um there are there's um one one of my most beautiful experiences of this was um mother and i mother theodore and i went to uh to another state for their the i think 50th anniversary of their parish and the celebration of byzantine catholic parish and there at the reception um we meet these two orthodox priests who have formed this really good relationship with the byzantine parish and so they're there and um they you know they're talking with mother and i and they're like please come come to her come to our liturgy tomorrow this this reception was on a saturday night they had had liturgy at the byzantine parish before the reception and um so that was the the sunday obligation for us because to go to an orthodox liturgy would not fulfill our some sunday obligation so we're like we've already been to liturgy like we can go to the orthodox church tomorrow so we go to their parish and these and and the parish is so welcoming and this is one of the most beautiful things we um typically there are exceptions to this but typically as a catholic roman or byzantine you aren't able to receive communion in an orthodox parish again there are exceptions but but typically so mother and i um are in the front pew at this parish and the um if you've never been to a byzantine liturgy what happens with the the communion bread it's leavened bread um that's consecrated into the body of christ and then it's placed inside the chalice with the blood but but it's the center part of the loaf that becomes the body of christ so the edges of the loaf are first cut off and so they're blessed but they don't become the body of christ and then usually it's called the antideron at least in the slavic word and then so after liturgy those those pieces of the edges the blessed bread are distributed and anyone catholic or otherwise or orthodox or otherwise or whatever can receive them because they're just blessed they're not the body of christ um so we're at this liturgy before communion the the priest um motions to one of the altar servers up in the sanctuary and the altar server comes over the priest whispers to him the altar server goes he gets the sans hidron in the middle of the liturgy before communion and then a little um a little glass with wine not the blood of christ just wine and the server brings it out to the front pew up to mother and i and and allows us to have this antideron this blessed this blessed bread and blessed wine not the body and blood of christ um so that we can receive this in some sort of communion with all those who are about to receive the body and blood of christ so he went as far as he thought he could extend and then and then both and then the that priest um he's come to visit the monastery both priests actually have come to visit the monastery and and things like that and so so i've definitely had positive experiences um so yeah and i i really believe that that reunification of east and west i really believe it's going to be through through grassroots movements like that you know it's going to be like those kinds of relationships i won't really um build the reunification i spoke to the fathers at uh holy resurrection and he said something that stuck with me he said we see ourselves as you know what part of the body of christ are we as scabs on the body of christ and what he meant by that because that sounds kind of gross is um a sign for deeper healing that needs to take place between east and west which i thought was really a cool beautiful way of putting yeah i like that a lot when one of the other nuns describes it and i think this is also a very beautiful analogy as it feels like as byzantine catholics we can sometimes feel like the children of divorced parents um and so we have uh allegiance to both right yeah to rome and to the traditions of the east exactly but the one of the times that i i really felt this uh this this chasm the most acutely and it was the most painfully was when we were in the holy land um we did the we went we went to the hoist sepulcher for for an all-night vigil and so if you if you're if you're in the holy land you can go to the holy sepulcher you can sign up they have um i think maybe 15 slots per group of people or something like that and it's like 15 slots for the catholics 15 for the orthodox 15 for the armenians and maybe that's it and um i'm just looking over to mother gabriella for confirmation and so but but if you go you have to stay in all night because they don't open the doors um unless there happens to be liturgy in the middle of the night and then they um they don't um you're not allowed to sleep while you're in there and so if you fall asleep all year and they'll like come and wake you up and so so some of us uh some of us nuns signed up for this as well as a couple people from the group pilgrimage group that we were with and we signed up obviously for the catholic section so the time comes um at the beginning of the night where those who are staying for the vigil um are like put into the groups at the entrance of the sepulcher and so they have the catholics the orthodox and the armenians um and there was like argument like they were like because we look orthodox but we are catholic um and then and then we really really felt this because when um that morning there was a catholic mass inside the tomb and so um you know i'm talking with one of the monks to ask him like can we go to this mass and he says no it's only for the catholics and and i said we we are catholic and he said to go to the mass you have to be catholic and i said we are catholic and i said we're byzantine catholic and he was like and he looks at me and he says you can ask the priest and i was like great who's the priest and he was like he only speaks italian in spanish while smiling smug yeah what a joke and i'm like well i speak enough spanish that i can ask him and so like i go talk to the priest and i explain that we're um byzantinos and um bisantinas because we're um and uh and he's like absolutely you can come to us and so we're able to that's a cool story because you often hear from byzantine catholics about sort of prejudice from orthodox you don't often hear about it the other way around so that's an interesting example yeah uh uh quick question why aren't you why are you catholic why aren't you orthodox now we can i want to get to like asking do you consider yourself and that's that's the second part of this question you consider yourself orthodox immunity with rome but i want to ask you just kind of directly why aren't you orthodox why are you catholic other than just sort of circumstantial in other words like i ran into the monastery they seem really cool um i mean i mean very very simply it's um to to remain in communion with rome to remain under the pope that's the simplest answer of it okay and then his question is do you consider yourself orthodox in union with rome or catholic who prefers the eastern expressions that's a good question um you know i don't really i don't want to label it in any way because there are so many prejudices that go um so i'll just say that i i yeah yeah maddie herbert i think i know maddie marty hebert yeah hebert i love her she's in stephenville yes she's lovely i've met her a couple of times while here i met her out in l.a a couple times she says hello sister natalia if you could give one piece of practical advice for women to sign their vacation what would it be praying for you and your soon to occur life profession now you've spoken about this oh terrific you've spoken about this earlier in the show but maybe you want to say something else practical advice for women to certainly vocation and would you be offended if i poured myself some whiskey no okay um my my practical advice would be um yeah i think it would be the thing that i i talked about before of don't be afraid to take steps because no step is is a total commitment and it's not wasted time but but the other thing i would say is um is be in contact with communities that was that was really really important to me i the the first time that i wanted to discern um discern religious life i um i went on a self-imposed dating fast right and i'm sure i talked about this a little bit last time but i um i wasn't like praying about my vocation i wasn't um visiting any communities i wasn't talking to any any communities i was simply not dating so i was like not doing this really fun thing that i love to do and i'm like filling that space with nothing not with jesus not with nuns not with anything right um and um that very quickly failed uh because i met a guy and i was like i like men i'm clearly not called to be a nun uh and so i just like ended the dating fast early and so so the second time i decided to discern um you know i was like i'm not gonna date until i actually visit a community and um and part of that's like i'm just a very experiential person and so i really need to experience things so so i would encourage you to actually be in touch with the community and go visit them um that's good yeah and don't keep it theoretical exactly yeah it's almost like the equivalent of just take her out on a date you're not committing that kind of thing yeah here's a good question it's it's about a well it's about two three sentences so bear with me here it comes from becca davis thanks for being a patron becker it's a great question she says i've heard father mike schmitz say that an important component of discerning your vocation is what you want i deeply want to be married and raise a family but i don't know if that is a vestige of my protestant upbringing or not you've often spoken about your desire for a family in previous interviews so how did you determine that what you wanted and what god wanted were not aligned what would you say to someone trying to discern between the two excellent questions yeah that's a fantastic question um i i would say i would say first of all can you read that first census again the one that has father mike schmitz in it uh yeah she heard father mike schmidt at least she thinks it was father mike schmidt say that an important component of discerning your vocation is what you want got it so um i think something to notice there is that uh he says that it's an important component it's not the only component and so i think that's that's really significant um because god uses everything within us to direct us towards him right like he gave us desires and um we ourselves or the devil can pervert those desires or can misdirect those desires but but we have good desires within us from the lord and so that's why they can guide us in our discernment um but i would say um the the correction the correction that i would give to becca it was becca um yes um the the correction i would give is that i wouldn't say that what i wanted was misaligned with what god wanted what i would say is i didn't fully realize what i wanted um and and also that i i could choose to leave the monastery and to be married and still go to heaven yes that was a really really important um realization for me on my pre-tantra retreat before i got the habit in my new name i had to realize that even though i fully believed god was calling me to this i could say no and he would still love me and and i could still be holy um but it wouldn't make my life easier and there would be other times that i would be asked to say yes in different ways yeah and so um but but i want to go back to that statement that i said of of i didn't fully realize what i wanted because i think that um when our desires or what we want are indicative in our discernment part of that is i think we need to to really prayerfully look at with a spiritual director um particularly if you're discerning vocation you need a spiritual director with our spiritual director and in prayer we need to look at the roots of those desires like what is it that i desire in marriage because maybe it's not marriage itself maybe it's these other things in marriage that god wants to fulfill through the monastic life you know um so i think i think that's part of it as well um is um i i realize and i've said this before but i think that one of the things that i've come back to again and again and again is a homily that father michael gave um long before i entered the monastery but he said he believes that we all have a natural call to marriage but that some have a supernatural call to celibacy so it's not it's not that the way the way i speak of it usually is a call to celibacy it's not it's not like i'm not gonna be able to articulate this well but it's not like it replaces the call to marriage it's that it um transcends it it transcends the call to marriage and so um so it's like the the ache that's there for marriage can make my monasticism more fruitful you know um and that's lovely yeah and so so so the last thing i would say um although if you think i haven't fully answered it matt please say so but the last thing i would say is that when you're looking at what you want as you're in prayer and as you're having different experiences like either if you're if you're dating and discerning marriage with someone or you're at a you're at a monastery and you're discerning monasticism like as you're having these different experiences or as you're praying about these different things um pay attention to for for me the big the the key indicators were joy and peace because these are fruits of the holy spirit and the the joy and the peace can be really indicative of those deeper desires the ones that we're not necessarily seeing for ourselves because as humans we're just incredibly skilled at self-deception um yeah and and and the the the the recognition of the joy and the peace those need to come through building um through building a prayer life to really working on the relationship with god because joy and peace are not the same as happiness and um and like a lack of external um external troubles or something like that you know it's a deeper thing than that so um and this might sound a little um surfacy but it might be important to kind of circle this wagon again uh the way it's not as if the way you know you're called to be a nun is if you have no desire for a sexual relationship or children truth and we talked about that last time and and i don't know if you want to kind of point that out again because i mean i mean i'll just say yes yeah that's true right in fact if you had no desire for those things that might be a serious red flag correct i mean you said earlier that you're afraid to get married because you thought it could only be miserable right yeah yeah and it's i mean and that's part of um you know we have we have i would say most if not all religious communities now including our monastery um have discerners do a psychological evaluation before they answer and and part of that is to look for the things like is this person going to try to kill me in my sleep uh but part of it is also to to just be like is this person discerning monasticism because um they had this like horrible relationship with their dad and so they're afraid of men or so you know it's like there there is some of that because because it's not for your good or for our good if you're if you're entering into celibacy for for the wrong reasons or for running away again but no nor is the requirement to join the monastery a lack of syria well a lack of woundedness right as if yeah only if you've had a good relationship with your father and have a perfect feeling yeah absolutely yeah to go back to like monasticism is meant to be a life of healing and a life of recovery and all of that like we're all very very wounded um but but yeah it's that my my desire my desire for a husband really helps me i've seen the ways in which it has made my spousal relationship with christ so much more fruitful and and my desire for children i have a deep desire for children and and that's made it um so much easier for me to open myself to motherhood to all of the people that the lord puts in my life you know and it gives me this great freedom to love so many more as my children than i would have been able to do one thing i love is when i get the occasional text from you out of the blue saying the lord just placed you and your family on my heart and i want you to know i'm playing praying for you that stays i just feel so loved by that thank you i can't wait to call your mother um katarina erimondi says what sorts of insights can you give about relating to christ as your bridegroom husband how has belonging to christ the bridegroom monastery affected the way you relate to the lord in your daily life and prayer hmm yeah that's really good question as well um one thing i would say if if if you if you've reached a certain level of maturity in your prayer and i think you would realize this quickly if you if you tried it and it didn't go so well um is i would recommend praying with the song of songs um so uh reading that book that book that i mentioned earlier cantata of love um and i'm gonna follow up and make sure you read it yeah please do that i'm going to buy it i will immediately okay like right now okay yeah neil can you get on that um so seriously um the the um but we at our monastery um after compline this is only something our monastery does it's not at the um it's not part of the the service but after compline each night we pray um we chant antiphonally a chapter of the song of songs and so that's something that's really helped me to to enter into this this spousal relationship with the lord but part of it also has been um you know and christopher who you know commented the hi to us earlier today um he talks a lot about this uh this receptivity that we need to have with the lord of opening ourselves to him and that's a way in which we're we're all called to be to see christ as bridegroom so like that's something i'll say is that we're all called to see christ as bridegroom men and women and and this isn't some you know this isn't you know we had someone like we had someone comment on uh like our facebook page or something like that one time that was like these people are clearly not orthodox which we're not but like they're they this is not something against the orthodox this is something against this person who had a very like a misconception of orthodoxy because she's like they're clearly not orthodox because they keep talking about christ as their bridegroom and that's very this like new roman thing and what and i'm like we have ancient eastern services about christ the bridegroom like we have during holy week we have a morning prayer um like byzantine catholic and orthodox so again this woman just didn't understand orthodoxy but um during during holy week um the first few mornings we have a service called bridegroom mountains in which we have the bridegroom trophar which we sing at our monastery every night at complin and because it's like our patronal our patronal hymn but uh but yeah it's like there there's so much there's so much out there so much writing uh on christ the bridegroom um by east and west and another great book is um wounded by love by porfirious elder por furious and it's it's incredible um i first encountered it from that orthodox priest who i met at that uh anniversary's reception but um wounded by love is a really good book to read that that helps you um and again it's written by it's written by monk and it really helps you to to kind of to just fall in love with with jesus so that's beautiful i've never ever had the problem of seeing christ as my bridegroom it's been a great i know many men who have no it's been a grace for me it's the song of songs is is the book i'd like read to me as i'm dying it is what speaks to me more than anything else in fact i'll sometimes swap out the words of the jesus prayer with i am my beloved and he is i am my beloved and he is mine we have um at our monastery that's that's in our typical is that as um as a nun in our monasteries dying um the other nuns keep vigil at her death but until she dies chanting um the song of songs and the psalms sorry the song of songs and songs yeah you know here just to bring this back to aquinas again he um is said to have he died at a cistercian monastery on his way to a particular church council and while he was dying the cistercians asked him to narrate a commentary on the song of songs um you need to close that door no if you want is it too hot i open that because it might be a bit hot you can you can throw it shut go on do it now we don't know if that's apocryphal or not but we don't have the text but it is interesting i believe it was saint john of the cross who asked that the song of songs be read as he was dying and it is just glorious i'm just going to scandalize people and push my sleeves up a little bit because it's kind of hot yeah i know um yeah beautiful stuff this is this is lovely look what else have we got here gary myers who's a patron that's the australian newscaster voice welcome back to the nightly news crazy covert laws in australia gary myers says sister natalia i have a friend who is a deacon in the episcopal church and has an issue with the perceived lack of women in leadership within the catholic church can you explain your view on the role of women in leadership within the church sure yeah i i think that i i won't even speak to it very much what i'll do is point you to someone who i think speaks very beautifully of it which is saint john paul the second so uh you know i had someone i had someone to reach out um i had someone to reach out through through my podcast who was um upset about something that i had said um about not being supportive of women priests and um and you know i think that part of part of the sadness in our society is that we don't recognize the difference between the roles of men and women um and like like we call saint mary magdalene the equal to the apostles right but we don't call her an apostle like but she was an equal um it's not like she's a lesser um but she has a different role and um and and i think that part of the part of the problem with with um when women are trying to take up the role of men in doing so they're neglecting some of the roles that they could be taking up as women um so i think that the the roles of leadership for women within the church lie in different areas um and i'll say that one of the things that i think our church is greatly lacking right now is the role of spiritual mothers and um and this is something spiritual motherhood is something that all that all women are called to not not just nuns who are life professing or called mother um and so i think that there are ways within parishes that women can step up to be to be spiritual mothers and to really um like reach into the places of their of their femininity um that allow them to like reach certain groups within the parish um that are not the same as as being deacons or priests or something like that um and the yeah i just like there there are very particular reasons that priests need to be men um and again saint john paul ii speaks to this very well so he has a document on the the reason i point to him in particular is because jp2 has this document um that i brought to a priest who um he was he was preaching in his homily um you know i'll just i'll just tell the story about the um this is the one that upsets someone who wrote into the podcast but i was i was at a mass one time and um the priest and his homily seemed to me to be advocating for women priests and i was really upset by this because i was thinking of i was thinking of my mom because my mom has this just really really beautiful childlike faith like she has a kind of faith that i aspire to um and because of this she will take what a priest or a nun says as gospel truth you know because she should be able to like you know that should be the case and so i'm i'm thinking of her as as he's preaching this homily and i'm thinking if there's someone in this congregation like my mom they're going to think this is now what the church teaches yes and so um so i was very upset and um and i i leave the church i mean i stayed for for the rest of mass but i i leave the church afterwards and i'm like i'm gonna write to the bishop because that's not okay and then i was like no don't write to the bishop go talk to the priest because if you have a problem with your brother go to your brother right so um so i schedule an appointment with this priest and and i approach him like with in a rare in a moment of grace because i am not a meek person at all i approach him with meekness and gentleness and i said um you know i received what you said in your homily as this and i might have been misinterpreting and so on and so forth and he's like you didn't misinterpret that's exactly what i was saying and i was like okay well um like you can't say that and he's like i'm a priest this is where i want non meek sister natalia to come out and be like shame on you and throw a glass of water on his face um yeah i didn't do that but um but he's i um he says like well i'm i'm a priest but i'm still entitled to my own opinion and i was like that's true but if that opinion is in contradiction to church teaching you can't preach it from the pulpit like he promised obedience um and he was like well i believe rome is in flux about this this was when pope francis was was first pope um and i was like well um rome's not in flux about this like jp2 wrote this this document that's only like two pages about ordination of women and the whole document basically just says never yeah and um i said but even if rome is in flux um as of right now this is the church teaching and um like you're in obedience to that and he's like okay well agree to disagree and i was like okay he's like no shut the door you sit down so then i left and um and i'm gonna be daydreaming about this guy so then i left and then i wrote the bishop um because i was like yeah my brother did it right so um but did you get a response um oh yes yes he responded and he was like he responded very quickly and he was like this won't happen again um and i won't say what diocese it was obviously but um but anyways so so the reason i like to use st john paul the second for this is because he wrote this document and at the same time like saint john paul ii wrote the dignity of women and he like more than i'm not going to say more than any other pope because i don't know lots of the popes but more than any of the other popes that i know he like extensively promoted um the role of women in the church and the dignity of women so i would i would recommend read this church this this document that he wrote about um ordination of women and read what he wrote on the dignity of women um and and you'll just see like um the difference of the the roles of women and men in the priest that's beautiful good for you for having the courage to do that that that actually does that takes courage to approach a priest and do that as you did and not just write to the bishop i would also recommend that people check out a talk by peter craft called why only the boys can be their daddies i believe that's what it's called it's an excellent talk concert on on mail order nation all right sister soon to be mother i think we're pretty much wrapping up here great anything else you want to touch upon point people to tell them where to buy shot keys from who's that chalky oh you can't tell me yeah we're not talking about that um i do want to let people know that right after this interview ends mother gabriela and sister natalia uh we are going to do a private video just for my patrons so if you are a patron uh please be sure to check that out i think it'd be really cool if you would just ask mother gabriella about her own discernment and how she became a nun i would be really interested in that if you're okay with that so if you are a patron or if you want to become a patron be sure to check that out we'll make sure we upload that i know the story so i can ask all the leading questions ah i can't wait to hear it yeah any anything else you wanna um i mean i don't think so this is your thing any well like what do you what do you have to do to get prepared for uh final final profession lifelong i'm sorry i keep saying finally lifelong profession yeah um so we want a pre-profession retreat uh have you done that yet i i did yeah i went out to um it was everything you would expect a pre-professional retreat to be i had no expectations um in the sense of like lots of things went horribly wrong um so it started out my first morning there is um a story that i promised to tell you later um in which uh one of the most embarrassing things of my life happened um and then uh i started also having this um mysterious case of what i later realized were hives um which lasted for four weeks and we're still fighting that um and they only come at night and they cover like 70 to 80 percent of my body how random horrible is that what hives do um here's the cool thing uh we just i had a doctor appointment last week and um and they realized what it is that we still don't know the cause it's um it's autoimmune and the way that they realized this so it's not like an allergic reaction um but the way that they realized this is um they drew my you know how they do like scratch tests for allergies so they drew my blood put it through a centrifuge to pull a serum out and then um did a scratch test on me with the serum and i reacted to my own blood wow yeah i'm like a straight ass that's not cool i know if you're reacting next my own blood it's horrible anyway so that started that started i think my wife among other things has autoimmune as well um and then i also um got like a running injury and and came home on crutches and so old hairy legs is up to his old tricks exactly trying to take you out before a lifelong profession oh yeah um i can't wait to learn what that was yeah you're not old hairy legs just in case that was satan old hairy legs yeah um so anyways it was it was really beautiful i um i i spent the whole retreat um praying with uh with the the life profession service and um just like very intentionally praying with each piece of it and it was it was amazing so so yeah there's there's that and then um yeah and then uh like extra retreat days each month that things like that so yeah i am glad you exist you are a blessing to me and my family and i cannot wait to call you and treat you as my mother yes all right thanks cheers neil cheers mother we're about to do a video for the patrons stick around thanks

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 83,827

Keywords: aquinas, catholicism, catholic, pints with aquinas, matt fradd, theology, debate, religion, st. thomas aquinas, thomas aquinas, philosophy

Id: cN9IK73DMbQ

Length: 162min 49sec (9769 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 07 2021