Episode 094: Sharing Well in the Spiritual Life

[Music] welcome to godsplaining contemplative preachers contemporary age each week join the dominican friars as they consider all things catholic hello friends and welcome back to godsplaining my name is father patrick mary briscoe and because i beat father jacob bertrand in our virtual arm wrestling competition i'm the host of today's episode that's great i don't know we didn't really argue about that you just said you're not gonna do it yeah it was amenable i didn't have to beat him i like the illusion that there's some competition here that there's you know something to be one to be the host of the show yeah well you win and i'm father jacob richard and i'm the co-host of today's episode well thank you yes um father what's the what's the word on the vocations front how are we doing directing vocations oh we we're done i'm done no no more vocations no more we are done the order 2021 will be the last novitiate class of the order no but in a way we're kind of done um kind of exciting news on on on i guess the vocation front uh this past weekend our provincial um finished accepting men to the novitiate class the application season's over that's why um but we will have 15 men joining our novitiate this summer which is yeah really exciting i'm very pumped about that i think some really excellent men so we'll see how they fare once they try on dominican life in the novitiate so they enter the way it works for us every year is that they enter during some point in july and then they begin their novitiate in august they receive the habit on the feast of st dominic which is august 8th but i think this year um like actually like us like father patrick and myself they'll receive the habit on august 7th in the evening aft after vespers because like our novitiate year uh the eighth falls on a sunday and it's very hard to have all the parishes oh sorry all the masses go in the parish and vestition and all those celebrations so um yeah like it was this will be 11 years yeah for father patrick and father uh gregory father bonaventure and father joseph and we're all classmates so it'll be 11 years this summer since we received the habit um so anyways but uh yeah we'll have 15 men receive the habit in august which is i'm really pumped about really excited for so we're done with this class when i say vocation work is done well we'll pick up with the next class pretty soon so yeah that's that's where we are father yeah that that's amazing news and it just shows the the fidelity of the lord right we are but we're begging him for laborers right to go out to the harvest to hear his god and his goodness and literally answering our prayers i mean it's not because of who we are as dominicans or something really neat that we've managed to do we don't have some kind of brilliant recruiting scheme um no offense you're very good at your job father but but we get vocations because the lord the lord has sent them to us and that's part of the mystery of his love and his grace and what he's calling us to um we're going to see how much the lord loves providence college i mean i hope we've got our outdoor commencement coming up here and i hope that we have good weather uh it looks like it's going to be very nice and sunny so by the time uh people are listening to this episode it will have passed so that's what's on my i'm still in full panic mode you know you're sitting having you know wrapped everything up nicely but i i i have commencement mass i have you know a gathering of 3 000 people out outdoors here as we're uh coming out of the pandemic and everything is changing wildly yeah that's what's on my plate that's crazy that's that well that's good that's really good that they were able to or that you not we have nothing to do with it that you're all able to have commencement because i know last year they didn't have commencement um at all right no nothing wow no it's going to be a great celebration and i'm really looking forward to it and a lot of people have worked really hard and they're going to be parts of it that are going to be very beautiful and very moving i mean you know this this mass that we're coordinating is gonna is gonna be great um and it's gonna be a tremendous grace for the community so yeah well it's good to get back to like normal stuff being human beings again so there you have it but none of those things are what we ended up deciding that we wanted to talk about exclusively on today's episode right today we were father jacob burchen and i wanted to tackle something that we've experienced you know in our extensive experience as priests and ministry um no but as uh as young friars as father jacob berger mentioned we've been living the life for almost 11 years now which is something as young priests it's a trend that we've noticed um in the confessional and uh we we we want to we want to discuss a little bit what it what it means to share the spiritual life um you know so father jacob bertrand had had noted before as we were chatting about this uh this episode before the show you notice over the last 10 years or so it seems that there's been an increase in what people are sharing about their prayer lives or their spiritual lives and we have some unique concerns about that so so father jacob bertrand why why don't you say a little bit more about why we um why we chose this topic yeah and what we're hoping to demonstrate in the episode yeah so i think like all things um there's we want to find um we want to find the mean right the the good thing the virtue is always the mean and as as father patrick was describing um there i've noticed he's noticed um this sort of increased i guess openness with our spirit with the spiritual life and things spiritual relationships with christ over the recent years and at least in my own um in my own life i've noticed earth's come up in a couple places one was from a question that a friend of mine asked about this very topic about like being open and sharing in the spiritual sharing his spiritual life and i thought it was a really excellent question and good conversation that we had and then the the other place is is actually just in what we were talking about a few minutes ago the vocation work um where men seem to be ready and willing to share sort of all things um at first meeting which is kind of like okay you know let's get to know each other a little bit i'll ask the hard questions a little bit later but um so the those couple of situations prompted me to sort of think well what what is it um what is it that is sort of i don't know encouraging or has changed or and maybe you know certainly father patrick and i haven't you know we're not that old um but it was about a decade ago a little over a decade ago when we were applying to the order and um yeah so just noticing some differences there so um i think let's let's um perhaps lay out a few things that might be to and sort of flesh out well what does the sharing look like let's establish some like positive reasons that may be giving may be given for um you know being open with our with our prayer life with uh with our friends and our peers and that's really what i think we're thinking about right father it's not so much sharing in the confessional or sharing in spiritual direction but sharing amongst peers and um and just casual conversations and that sort of thing right um you know from my perspective um you know i've been working on campus for a few years uh off and on in and out of the classroom and now as a as an assistant chaplain in providence college it's part of the charm of of being a young person right young people are young people are eager to talk about their new experiences to process them um they just want to share and that's the best part of um being being able to be a chaplain with them right they're so they're so ready to in involve um you and their lives to invite you into their lives to really digest everything that's going on and they want assistance trying to make sense of how they've encountered the world and how they've encountered god um but that there there is uh there there is a there is a kind of risk here so as father jacob bertrand was saying you know so what so what are what are the positive what are the positive aspects well i mean one comes from scripture itself right so i think that um we can look at um first thessalonians um chapter 5 verse 11. see that father gregory pine i can quote scripture too okay so where it is written therefore encourage one another and build one another up just as you were doing so the scriptures which have a kind of evangelical posture encourage us to um to build each other up to to share about what is happening in our lives so um so can you say a little bit about that father jacob bertrand um you know flesh that out a little bit yeah i think it's it's it's it's a good disposition to have um to have this idea that we belong to something bigger than ourselves in in our relationship with christ right namely the church that we're members of the church that we pursue christ together and that we're encouraged to live a christian life together so yes that is a good thing and that includes talking at times and or perhaps particular ways about our spiritual life about what's going on in our lives about um all sorts of things yeah fine we can just go on and on about that list um so yes that's a good principle to affirm that we're we're not alone in this we're not alone in our pursuit of virtue of holiness we're not alone in our rooting out of sin and all these things so um yes that's that's a good fundamental point to to to set at the beginning i think it's also and these probably go hand in hand pretty closely that it's helpful to and i we all experience this that it's helpful to speak um to people about what's happening in our own lives whether that's spiritual or otherwise to receive feedback encouragement counsel all yes we want to establish that too that there's there's a way in which especially in our prayer life that there there's a sort of avenue or path by which we receive wise counsel and good formation and those sort of things so that's that's the second thing i think so right one that we're journeying together too that we need counsel at times we we need to talk to people to sort of talk through what's going on we're not experts ourselves um and i think a third is kind of lumped here right this this idea of accountability and perhaps this is where um a lot of the desire to share that that a group setting can be accountable um that you know whether it's in developing regular prayer and like showing up to the holy hour you know sometimes it's good just to have somebody do making your weekly holy hour daily holy whatever with you because you know that they're counting on you going and you're counting on them going it's kind of one of the foundations of religious life right that we do this together we're accountable to one another or even like in rooting out of sin or habits you know that you can have a sort of i don't know the phrase an accountability partner i don't really like that but um these things are can it can be good and can be helpful right you know and i you know and i think again you know just to say as we continue to unpack this of course dispositionally there's there's going to be a whole spectrum here you know some people are extremely introverted and they have no desire to say anything to anyone some people are extreme extroverts and they they process everything out loud telling and telling everyone nearly everything so so of course as we're talking about as we're talking about this question we have we have both the the kind of natural tendencies that are that are part of our personalities that are part of the psychological makeup of who we are and we have the kinds of virtues that modify those things that allow us to be brought to to further grace and perfection in christian living so so that so recognize too i just want to say to listeners um that there is a bit of a tension here there is some question and this is going to to look different in the life of every person as as they they tried to live this out exactly yeah and i would add to that list of introvert extrovert um i would add new englanders to the third you know kind of right i have no desire to tell you anything about me so mind your business god's frozen chosen oh my gosh i haven't heard that before that was funny this is wholly tangential but i was i was this past weekend i had a wedding up in on like the new jersey new york line of a college friend it was really great to to have that but i was in like the jersey areas like oh yeah this is near home territory this is not you know the charm of the south is not to be found in this in this area i went to a diner for breakfast i was like yeah these are my people this is great so um all right back on topic so we've laid out a few um i think important things to at the outset one one of that one of those things being that like there is a real communal dimension to our life and living and growth in the in the spiritual life in our pursuit of holiness also that we tend towards things dispositionally we might tend to want to share more process externally or not fine that's all great um but so here's here's the sort of hot take that i would that i would put to you our listeners and then we'll talk through this a little bit that even though these things are true um even though these things are good i think that the this disposition and father patrick and i will flesh this out but this disposition to share readily to share openly and immediately with peers whether that's in a small group or in a bible study or whatever sort of parish group i think is ultimately an unhelpful thing i think that sort of just unhindered disposition is an unhelpful thing so let's let's talk about some of the reasons why i think that why father patrick and i have been talking about this um and we can then modif you know qualify it as we go through so i don't think it's wholly unhelpful in the sense that you should never talk about it but uh yeah well let's just walk through some of those some of those reasons what do you think father patrick yeah i think that's good so uh and again like what what why why why are we making this point what is it that we're really after here we have seen a a tendency for people especially people that that become reanimated in their faith to to want to just kind of to lay everything out there and to have it happen as they come so so i'm talking about people that experience things in prayer and treat it like social media or even talk about um the the graces of prayer constantly on social media where where things are being reactive and they're just they're just sort of spilling out all the time um you know this is again if you if you uh hopefully that helps you get it get a kind of sense of how how we've experienced this kind of excessive sharing and and hopefully you'll be able to see the reasons why we would propose that you yourself would be guarded um or or or maybe be more guarded if the this needs to be a a change of practice for you um so to really dive into this um we're going to take our break here and then when we come back we'll unpack our further thoughts [Music] you are listening to god's planning visit us at godsplaining.org to listen to our episodes shop our store and donate to our podcast all gifts go to improving the podcast and bringing the gospel to more listeners thanks for your support well friends welcome back on today's episode of godsplaining as you've been hearing we've been unpacking what it means to share to share well in the spiritual life well we haven't really gotten that far yet we've just been talking about our concerns about it and noting in our own age a kind of excess of sharing them that they could be very off-putting um so so where so where is it that we want that we want to talk about this um uh where should we begin father jacob bertrand in thinking and thinking about how our approach to this question yeah well i think well we in in the christian life uh we've been we begin with christ you know i think that's that's a good place to start um so if we look at christ if we look at how christ interacts with and lives his relationship with the father um two things i think are important to look at one is his is his own prayer how does christ pray and then how does he relate uh after that time of prayer to those around him to the to his apostles his disciples well we know that christ through the the gospels reveal to us and teach us that christ over and over withdrew to be alone with the father he went away and what is more is that he doesn't draw other people into that he goes to the father to be by himself to pray and he doesn't draw other people into that this is an intimate moment an intimate relationship between you know him and and the father and in similar ways then we ought to model that in our own christian life that we you know we we have this time set aside to spend with with god um and that is our time with god whereby god communicates to us um directly as an individual as a person in a personal relationship a personal friendship and we communicate to him individually and personally and in really the most intimate realities of who we are and of of our heart so um i think there there we start there's uh there we start with christ well the other thing here christ's prayer i would also mention christ's revelation so part of prayer is how christ reveals himself to us and father patrick was mentioning that um that often when we kind of when we're taking steps when we're responding to grace and moving more deeply into our faith there's a desire to kind of share that to kind of you know right but remember that our lord and in that our lord reveals himself to us but remember how it is that our lord reveals himself and how it is that he has revealed himself throughout time it's always through into intermediaries right through a sort of hierarchical intermediary so if you look at the old testament you have the priests and the prophets in the new testament you have the apostles and then in you know as the apostles and the church were formed we have the sacraments and the priesthood that all mediate to christ so i think i i bring this up not not to say that we can never have conversations with our peers about the spiritual life and that sort of thing but just to reiterate the fact that as as catholics and as the truth has it that we grow most um uh what intensely in the spiritual life by clinging to that sort of vertical relationship to god the father through the church and through the sacraments not the horizontal relationship we would say through conversation you know and sort of sharing so that might be a little nitpicky but i think it's important to it's a both and but it's it's a proper ordering of the two if that makes sense right yeah so like so let's put some let's have let's add some like direct scenarios right so where do where do we see this in ways that are really difficult well one is when when people desire to speak always about matters that are intimate and complex to the heart and very casual ways such as their sexuality um you know that this is a great temptation in our age to to diagnose and to and to stereotype and to simplify and to reduce all of the questions of heart into facile shifting identities and christians just christians should be very wary of that i think um another uh because i know father jacob richard you'll you'll jump on both of these uh another another temptation i think would be would would be for for people uh faithful christians that that have an overly id idealistic or romantic view of marriage they think that because they are married now that their relationship with god um will always be shared by their spouse even married people have have a relationship together it's true that you get graces by the marriage here and i i'm going to be careful and precise about my language but but marriage does not dissolve the individual identity that the believer has before god even when you are married you have a personal prayer life that is just you and the lord and uh and that is uh that is at the heart of that is what the the heart of what it means to be claimed as a christian to to have always that foundational fundamental personal connection with the lord jesus so so any thoughts father jacob burch on those two those two questions yeah i think the first um jumps out to me in particular especially hearing confessions and that sort of thing that um you know issues of sexuality issues of chastity there's there seems to be and this is one of the things that kind of stands out in my mind is something that you know in in catholic culture we're much more willing not we people are much more willing to share and talk about um in a public way than i don't know our peers might have been and um and i can see that you know there there's there's merit to be able to have a sort of by way of example an accountability partner or these sort of things and i'm i'm not railing against that um but what i do think is important is that the growth in these areas growth um in your relationship with christ rather whether it's with vis-a-vis a particular sin or temptation whether it's just growing in a spiritual life now that there's a new state in life you're now married you're dating you're moving these sort of things it's always the the primary focus and the primary contact for conversation is christ it's christ um and and we have to we have to affirm that because it's christ who mediates grace um another thing i think that uh that's important is to and this uh this i think is always a temptation in the spiritual life and that's that's that the spiritual life our relationship with christ becomes a sort of transactional reality that if i kind of put in then god has to give out you know if i put in the prayer time if i put in the conversation if i'm open about what i am and kind of all these things then then i'll grow in the spiritual life well our relationship with christ is the most intimate and personal personal of all relationships and i usually use this example here if i'm not married obviously but if i were married or let's use like the example of like one of my closest friends if i were to have a very personal conversation with a very close friend that's not something that i would share with other people those details i might say so and so is you know they're they're having a tough time i might share that with other people but i'm not going to share kind of those intimate details of our conversation i think that's that's kind of the model that we have to be after in our in our relationship with christ um that sure let's talk about you know how life is going and these kind of things but the but the intimate details and workings and movements of our soul are really that they're intimate and personal and um they're not for public kind of consumption if if that makes sense i don't know does that is does that ring a bell so if you're not on board with us yet uh let us tell you more of the dangers here um you know let's let's let's continue to go deeper into darkness before yeah before before we reveal more light okay so so one of the one of the real risks here is if you're talking about all kinds of intimate intimacy and private and personal things about the spiritual life you subject yourself to bad advice that's a great risk dominican friars are are highly trained people part of part of the order's charism is to be good confessors to study virtues carefully over a long matter of time over a series over over a highly refined you know literally over the course of centuries over a highly refined educational process that's why the theology of saint thomas aquinas is so great because that's what it does it systematizes things and it allows us to be steeped in both in the ways of god and of men so as to to be able to to succinctly order christian lives okay if you have not uh gone through a process of preparation like this and you're just sort of thinking the thoughts that that occurred to you after having picked up a bible one time or uh having completed your eighth grade catechesis and you start commenting on the details the intimate details of someone's personal life it's very easy to to proffer bad advice to to to to shape um to shape people's lives poorly to wound you know if we're not being careful here the spiritual life is a very fragile thing um so so i i think this is a big deal um you know that this risk of this risk this risk of being exposed to bad advice a very serious thing yeah i think one of the things that we're told we take a number of courses during our formation on um on spiritual direction and confession one of the things that we're told is that we should wait years after being ordained a priest um before we before we take on spiritual directives in a real serious sense now sometimes that can't happen because you know you might be assigned somewhere where that you just that's just part of your assignment but um you know we're cautioned against taking on spiritual directives because uh we are not experts in the spiritual life you know even after seven years of formation even after a couple years of priesthood we're still not experts in the spiritual life and all the more for for those who have not had that training as father patrick said you know so even the best of intentioned people sometimes have no clue what they're talking about um they may sound good in in and you know those sorts of things but uh i think spiritual expertise and the tradition shows us that it's it's it's living the life for years and being formed by it not simply you know just trying it for a little bit so i think that's that's spot on i think another i think another um danger here is is the one of comparison and pride right i would link those two together absolutely right because as father patrick was saying with one of the examples he was using earlier that like the human person is a complex reality um and often when we're expressing how we feel or what we think about something we're doing it in a very simplified way so not that people are being dishonest or disingenuous but you don't get the full picture of the person all the time and sort of uh in in every setting and then it's very easy to compare you know your growth state and the spiritual life these sort of things to somebody else and we're really not good judges of other people's spiritual life never mind ours it just becomes a distraction a stumbling block or if it's not something that beats us up it's something that puffs us up and and pride that oh i'm doing better you know etc etc when really in the end we again we just kind of don't know and that's not the point of the spiritual life to sort of gauge the point of the spiritual life is to is to be friends with christ not to be focused on kind of where we are in in that vis-a-vis the other another person or or that sort of thing right and we really we really have to be careful and attuned to what another person can can accept um we could think about uh the moment the moment in scriptures where um pearls are thrown before swine right um where someone is just not prepared to understand this or that aspect of the spiritual life well in that case we should stay silent about it we should not subject as saint thomas says the faith to mockery or to misunderstanding we have to make sure that the the foundation is late and that the moment is such that someone will be able to receive what it is that we would like to invite them into um so this is a real this is a this is a real um danger of oversharing men is to reduce the faith you know again to to something that they they can't be fathomed or or comprehended or or that that would be worse subject to ridicule or to mockery yeah so when i was having this conversation with somebody else um that kind of inspired more thoughts on this topic the the kind of last part of our discussion was you know i was asked well father can i talk about the faith at all with my friends can i talk about my spiritual life at all right um right so let's be clear here the answer is yes uh yes we can um let's also be clear that like we should but the the principle here is that we need to exercise a sort of spiritual or emotional custody you know a spiritual or emotional prudence and in what we share with one another um you know in the same way we can think of this sort of hierarchy that you know the way in which we talk about ourselves to um to a casual acquaintance is very different than the way in which we share talk with a close friend or a spouse or a priest in the confessional or a priest in spiritual direction and even different than the way in which we talk with christ there are levels of intimacy that we share with people that have a proper ordering and i think i think i don't know maybe this is an effect of social media and those sorts of things of just sharing every aspect of our life online and that we feel more ready to share but i i guess i would say you know it might be worth kind of examining the way in which um we share in various circles about our relationship with christ and what is it that is actually you know we're a movement of christ that belongs to our heart and and these sort of things that doesn't need to be just proclaimed even in the best of circles even in the most you know holy of of circles of friends and peers and that sort of thing i think again um you know that father jacob burch and i are talking about talking about catholic circles especially catholic circles of young people um and i think here we need to understand that um that a little bit more reverence of these things is a good idea to to to revere to revere um the ways that god is at work in our lives and to respond before those movements um piously is a virtuous thing and we need we need to not be afraid we need to not be afraid of um of the kind of respect and deference that these movements of grace are due in our lives and be because um there there can be moments in ways that free freely promulgating them uh cheapens the the work of god um and uh and that again you know if we are careless about the the effects of of of his healing or or his grace in our lives and that that we that we can um that that we can um injure others and and cause you know again uh like i was talking about a kind of ridicule and misunderstanding of the faith yeah i think that's right i hear i think often of of our lady that she kept you know she lives with obviously she lived with christ um but that she kept you know the scriptures revealed to us that she kept all of these things in her heart um and i don't think that in any way implies obviously not uh that she never spoke about the way in which christ um affected her changed her move to her i mean this is why we know things about christ infancy because mary shared them you know but so the first i think this position not not to be one of publicizing but one of of of you know intimate friendship with our lord and and treasuring the way in which he's working and guiding and moving um as you know as a great gift that's shared between god and you which is such an incredible reality that god wants to know you and be with be with you and you um you know in a in a sort of the sound may sound weird but kind of like a one-on-one kind of relationship that's that's the primary referent so um yeah so i think by way of um you know kind of summaries summarizing my thoughts maybe i already have but i will again that that i don't think father patrick and i neither of us think or would want to imply that you know that we should pull away or kind of you know hide away the things of our faith and spiritual life but consider the ways in which we share how that affects us and how that also affects affects others that we are that we're with yeah well said well summarized um so you know again by by way of conclusion the the three great virtues that we've worked to offer here are the to practice a certain level of spiritual and emotional custody um to to be willing to be a bit more reserved that is to be prudent about what we share and when and with whom and finally to to work to understand and embrace a reverence before god and sacred things including the ways that the the ways that he's operative in our lives um so i think that's a wrap for this episode huh any fine i'd say so i have nothing else to share there it is no that's we've shared enough today yeah perfect good all right done uh to those of you that support the podcast on patreon thank you we're very grateful you make it possible for us to continue to slowly improve the quality of our work um there's uh various new merch available in the shop if you haven't checked that out please do including our pentecost offering um that is the new pentecost uh additions to the shop uh finally um please pray for those uh those people who will attend the summer retreat with us um at immaculate conception seminary in huntington new york um we're really looking forward to that and we're looking forward to future godspeeding events so please um please like and share the podcast invite people to the things you see us doing as we propose them and stay tuned for more future good works big promise there vague you know like yeah we're doing stuff get on board with us great okay well thank you all for listening god bless thanks for listening to god's planning a work of the dominican friars of the province of saint joseph follow us on facebook twitter and instagram leave a review on your podcast app and visit us at godsplaining.org you

Channel: Godsplaining Podcast

Views: 776

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: catholic, dominican friars, theology, philosophy, religion, faith, order of preachers, godsplaining, seekers, Truth, preaching, questions, searching, prayer, meditation, #vocations, #washingtondc, #spirituallife, #sharing, #catholicchurch, catholic priest

Id: 1Z39S87tyTA

Length: 34min 23sec (2063 seconds)

Published: Thu May 20 2021