Evangelization 101: A Conversation with Leah Libresco Sargeant

welcome everyone to our evening with bishop barron i'm leah sargent i work here at the princeton at the aquinas institute for catholic life i know we've got everyone kind of streaming in through zoom so i'm going to give you a moment to just all remember to click the link for the folks who aren't already here but we're so pleased to have you here tonight so the aquinas institute for catholic life at princeton is the catholic chaplaincy we're a resource for catholic students and we're a resource for any student at princeton who's curious about catholicism or has questions about the faith so without further ado let me pass things off to bishop barron with one of the questions we receive from a student bishop what are the best ways to share the gospel with people who think they've already heard it how can i bring christ to friends who have had some exposure to christianity but have rejected it yeah thanks for that question and leah good to be with you thanks for having me today for this event you know in some ways i think we have to re-radicalize christianity christianity has always been a radical movement here's what i mean at the heart of it is the cross of jesus christ so paul says you know that my one theme is christ and him crucified holding up the cross was central to the whole operation what's the cross mean well here's a crucified criminal here's someone who is rejected by the power structure of his time talk about a marginalized voiceless victim you think of the animal cry of jesus on the cross in mark's gospel before he dies this sort of inarticulate cry well there's so much passion today especially among young people for justice to care for the marginalized to hear the voice of the voiceless to attend to the needs of the oppressed etc well right at the heart of christianity is exactly that kind of figure the crucified jesus done to death by the powers that that were at the time now keep telling the story jesus doesn't remain simply a victim of powerful forces but rather through the power of the holy spirit is raised from the dead which means that god's love is more powerful than anything that's in the world more powerful than even these enormously powerful forces that did him in which is why i think holding up the cross of jesus don't think of it as just a little pious exercise that's a taunt it always has been the very fact that paul who held up that cross so courageously spent a lot of time in jail tells you exactly how the powers that be taken the message of the cross you know one of the earliest forms of we call the kerygma you know the basic proclamation of the faith is you killed him god raised him there's the taunting quality of the cross and so i think those who have a passion for the the poor and the oppressed the marginalized good good welcome to christianity at the very heart of which is this crucified figure but also the declaration of the power of god which is greater than anything that's in the world that's the still radical message of the cross and the message of the kingdom of god and so i think for those who you know they've heard it oh yeah ho-hum christianity i don't know if they've caught how radical this message really is thank you bishop i think the the radicalism of christ's witness is something we see so so clearly in the witness of the early church in people who knew that they were risking death and were proclaiming christ's kingdom but one student had a question about how we approach our lives as christians with such a large space between us and the experience of the early apostles so your next question from a student is how do we emulate the lifestyle of jesus and his followers in a time so technologically socially and culturally different than theirs yeah well of course the point is not to you know go back to the uh social uh setting of the first century and live the way they did it's to emulate jesus is to live in love and compassion and mercy and non-violence radical trust in the divine providence turning one's entire life over to the lord those are all the ways that we still emulate them that's what discipleship is all about so i wouldn't worry so much about imitating the lifestyle of the first century in our very technological age here and now follow those great uh patterns of life that are laid out in the sermon on the mount and of course as thomas aquinas said you want to see the sermon on the mount in action look at the cross go through the eight beatitudes they're all exemplified in christ crucified so that's how you emulate them that's how you follow them is live according to the great pattern of the sermon and the pattern of the cross and that remains as as viable and as uh as i say radical today as it was 2 000 years ago well i think one of the one of the challenges students face when they're trying to figure out what that looks like we live our lives in the shadow of the cross um and through the triumph of christ over death freeing us from bondage to original sin but when we go out to proclaim that gospel you know one student asked how do you explain the fallenness of the world or show its fallenness to a non-christian who has no notion of the fall many of our friends or classmates live a life where they don't understand why a savior would be necessary so how do we start to bridge that gap no that's a good question because you're exactly right the implication you're drawing if if we just have a minor set of problems that we could solve through you know psychological advance or through economic reform or through political revolution and so on then we wouldn't need a savior we'd need you know a teacher maybe we need someone to lead us a bold political reformer but at the heart of christianity is the claim that jesus is so much more than that you know that the um advent hymn that we sing every year oh come on come emmanuel and ran some captive israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the son of god up here well that's the that's the lament of someone who's held um for ransom it's someone held captive that was common in the ancient world if you were a traveler and you'd be arrested and you'd you'd be taken away and held for ransom well that means you're helpless you can't save yourself what you're doing is you're crying out that you might be delivered and that's at the heart of christianity there's something that's off in us that's so profound that we can't solve it ourselves now i think leah actually our language of addiction and the 12-step language is very helpful here because you know what's basic to anyone that's gone through a 12-step program is look you can't save yourself if you think you can this thing is going to be a disaster you have to admit you know your powerlessness you have to turn your life over to a higher power well that's very spiritually alert language i think sin has always been recognized as a kind of addiction it's not just like to see a couple minor problems i have i just got to spruce things up around the edges no no sin capital s that we all have in us is a kind of fundamental dysfunction and i think we feel it whenever we sense that we're at war with ourselves look at romans chapter 7 now you know paul says the good that i would do uh-huh that's what i don't do the evil that i would avoid uh-huh that's what i do and see anyone who's ever been caught up in an addiction and i'm sure some people listen to me right now have struggled whether it's to alcohol or to sex or to the internet or whatever it is that's what it's like right i mean i know i know the right thing to do but i don't do it i know the thing to avoid but that's exactly what i do and when you're caught in that you know you can't will yourself out of it and there's a very simple reason by the way because the will is the problem right if if your mind is the problem and your will's a problem you can't think and will your way out of it you'll just kind of exacerbate the problem so oh come on come emmanuel and ransom captive israel that's all of us see we're all meant to to come to terms with our captivity and that opens you to precisely a savior you're quite right and not just a teacher now maybe young people interested in philosophy and theology read kierkegaar that's kierkegaard's point over and over again is that he's not just a teacher if he is then he's like socrates you know and socrates will tell you some basic things and teach you some basic moves and hey you're doing great you're on your own you don't need me but jesus is not like socrates there he's a savior not a teacher and you know also that comes to my mind is the famous line from chesterton you know where he says the only dogma for which there is empirical evidence is the dogma of original sin and i think i mean watch the 11 o'clock news at night or or even better watch what's going on inside of you and you'll see the evidence if you want for what the church means by original sin this deep level dysfunction that we can't solve on our own and that is an enormously important door into christianity i think sometimes when we know we need a savior we're still not quite sure how to recognize him or what he's going to ask of us so thomas is asking about the kind of two wings it can feel like of catholic spirituality a deep river of mercy but also a you know strenuous call in rigorous theology you know how do we kind of navigate these two different parts of our faith and how do we respond when it feels like they're in tension with each other yeah good okay that's that's helpful well in a way they're in a very uh healthy tension with each other and that's okay um you know that god and i love that that phrase the deep river of mercy there's right through the bible and that god is hesed as the old testament word i mean tender mercy and you see it embodied of course in jesus his unconditional love but the love that's exhibited by god in the bible is never a cheap grace to use bonhoeffer's term it's a love that demands a love that awakens a response um so there's the moral demand we don't simply just you know lie back and say oh i'm basking in the mercy of god no the mercy of god is um harsh and dreadful you know as dostoyevsky would have it and it leads ultimately to the cross because that means self-gift you know so i i like that tension on the moral plane between kind of the acceptance of grace but then the great demand of grace uh if i'm catching it right the intellectual side too the more rigorous kind of terrific i'm with joseph ratzinger that you know we're a logos religion the minute you say that the logos became flesh logos of course there are jewish antecedents there but but clearly john is calling upon the greek tradition as well the logos the mind the reason of god which is apparent in the world and the intelligibility of creation is what becomes flesh in jesus and so from the beginning look at from from john and from paul on we have people who are deeply engaged intellectually around the truth of christianity i'm with newman too in saying that one of the signs of a properly evolving christianity is that it theologizes so stubbornly when the church begins saying oh don't worry about you know the life of the mind and oh don't don't fuss with all this intellectual stuff that's a sign of corruption and i'll say it frankly when i was coming of age there was a lot of that in the years just after the council there was a sort of anti-intellectualism that's a sign of corruption that means the church is is not evolving it's devolving so they all belong together don't they the deep river of mercy beautiful and that's displayed on the cross but it calls forth a response of love that is hyper demanding and it invites this powerful reflection on the logos you know the the full intellectual engagement i like that catholicism you know the kind of all-in quality of catholicism the all of the above quality a mysticism a spirituality a deep moral demand a rich intellectual heritage all at the same time as a convert the the both endness of catholicism is sometimes overwhelming um it really speaks to how much jesus gives us more than we ask for or more than we think is reasonable to ask for that's right that's right in prayer so often we ask for something like although here's what i want you know but that's never all that interesting it's always what christ wants for us and it's always the best but it doesn't seem that way because he's go back to original sin he's always fighting against our tendency toward self-absorption or whatever it is so but what he's got held out for you is always better than whatever you're asking for i've got some people submitting questions anonymously which is an option if you'd rather not come on video to ask yourself or if you suspect you've got a very bad connection and you'd like me to ask for you so i'm going to pull two questions here good uh which are from students who are kind of worried about how to evangelize when they're speaking to people who don't see the demands of catholicism as a gift so i have a student who wants to know how do you start evangelizing someone when the parts of catholicism they may know about the teachings on sexuality or divorce don't feel inviting and especially from another student you know how do we defend catholic belief such as the value of life from conception to natural death and the importance of the family in an environment where these are rejected and it's mainstream to reject them as many students feel is the case on campus yeah it's a good question and it's one that we all wrestle with um when i was over in rome for the youth synod back in 2018 we talked a lot about these things and the image from the scripture that kept coming back to us was the road to emmaus and the feature of jesus at the beginning simply joining two disciples as they walked the wrong way so they're walking away from jerusalem and in mark's gos or luke's gospel that's always to walk the wrong way everything tends toward jerusalem so they're symbolic in a way of a lot of people today who are walking away from the faith walking away from christ but the beautiful thing is he doesn't judge them he doesn't come down to them doesn't correct them he he simply walks with them and and what a lovely touch of course they don't recognize him how often that's true today too that people don't know jesus or he's become like an alien figure but he walks with them and what does he ask them well what what what are you two talking about as you go on your way and so he didn't give a sermon at first is he listened to what they were talking about what's on your mind i think that's a very good evangelical strategy so you sit down with someone you know well what are they talking about what's on their mind what are their questions and the clever evangelist can find a hook in whatever that is whatever the the interest is or the passion is you can find some way to lead that person thereby to christ so i recommend that very strongly walk with them in a in a listening sort of attitude find out what's on their mind what are they listening to musically what plays are they watching what kind of friends they have what are their their interests and passions and then use that as your starting point um i would tend to to recommend don't begin with the church's sexual teaching which for a lot of people is just a block you know i told the bishops um last year when i i spoke to them on evangelizing the unaffiliated i said you know i'd recommend beginning with the church's justice tradition because a lot of young people especially they love that they're passionate about it as i said okay we got a really strong tradition coming up out of isaiah and hosea and ezekiel and the great prophets coming up through jesus himself into the church fathers thomas aquinas the catholic church social teaching tradition we got a lot to say about that good good start with that maybe start with that part of the tradition that young people might find more agreeable but i think above all listen to them and wait what are you talking about as you go on your way excellent well we have a number of questions about kind of addressing the challenges of the present day but elizabeth who's joining us next has a question about how to be prepared for challenges in the future see elizabeth are you with us right now all right elizabeth i'm going to come back to you as our subsequent questioner once you're ready um and i'm going to instead pass on a different question from an anonymous attendee who wants to know how do we approach evangelizing someone who isn't indifferent to the church or kind of just dismisses of the church but has grown up in a faith tradition that actively rejects catholicism as heresy or speaks of the pope as antichrist well i think there are two ways they're kind of in tension with each other but one would be you are you are bound to find some points of contact so no matter what if it's a christian tradition uh there are lots of points of contact you know jesus himself on the cross and the resurrection and um the the demands of the christian ethical life the importance of preaching there's all sorts of things that we'd have in common uh maybe start with those but the the other side the other strategy a bit in tension with it is okay let's start with the top three questions you got or the top three reasons you don't like catholicism and i'm with fulton sheen there i think most likely you're gonna find there's some misunderstanding of what the catholic position really is so it could just be a moment of of clarification like well let me that's actually not what we believe here's what we believe so i think either one of those can work uh if the person's got even a modicum of goodwill you know they're not just hostile to you say okay give me the top three what are the top three reasons you don't like catholicism and let's start talking about that or you know from your side even to say hey here are three things about your tradition that i think are really wonderful and let me tell you why so i think those both could work depending on the person i think it's a good place to start and of course once the conversation begins it's harder to predict where it will go next and we have to wait and consider the person in front of us no quite right and everybody is different and you've got to be kind of light on your feet that's to say like a good tennis player has got to be able to move where the ball goes and if you just have a forehand well the person will just keep throwing to your backhand so i mean you got to be kind of nimble and and able to respond to situations um and that's good that's good practice you know one thing that helps me a lot is remembering that i can pause while evangelizing and say i don't know the answer to that you know i'm going to go in my case check in with a dominican friar and then come back to you because they're the nerds of the catholic church yeah but knowing i don't need to be prepared for everything someone may ask me that's right no that's right that's fair you don't have to be like i'm the answer man or the answer woman i've got everything together and and also the very fact that your your personality might be the most attractive thing to that person that you're building up trust if you're showing that well look i'm a catholic and i'm actually kind of a nice fellow and i'm not browbeating you and i'm i'm not trying to be dismissive and disrespectful okay maybe that inspires in me a sense of trust and that trust is is indispensable you know that's why the internet world is so it's lovely it's wonderful but it's also terrible as someone who uses a lot you know i know this what i mean here is so often our exchanges on the internet because they're disembodied they're impersonal just words appearing on a screen that can be so dysfunctional because everyone just wants to win the argument you know well i mean you can as many have said you can win the argument and totally lose the soul you're after because my job as an evangelist is not to win arguments i mean if i were on jeopardy or something but my my goal is to win souls and i can be the smartest guy in the internet and i can win the argument but totally lose the person i'm talking to so that's super important that all the time you're reaching out and in love you know well it's something i really appreciate about the way you evangelize bishop because you go into these kind of maelstroms of sometimes toxic online places like reddit and twitter and it really takes swimming against the mainstream culture of those spaces to be a christian let alone evangelize so i want to invite miguel uh who has a question to come in because his question is exactly about how we know when we're swimming against culture and when we're part of it bishop mm-hmm thank you so much for being with us virtually on these days um my question was how do we discern when to be contrarian or when to be go against the grain in our modern culture because as you said you know we don't want to just win arguments we want to do a lot more than win arguments um so that means in particular with reference to culture you know what kind of music when we learn what music is good what good how do we dress what books to read uh so learning to embrace the world but also learning to know when to say no and on uh on a second point related to that is is how do we learn when's their appropriate time to speak up or to speak the truth yeah good and it's there's no like quick easy answer to that question it's a a matter of prudential discernment the general principle i go back again to john henry newman is we go out to meet the culture of the way an animal goes out into its environment that's to say uh assimilating what we can from it resisting what we must because if you don't do both those things you'll be dead in very short order right if you don't assimilate anything from the environing culture well then you're you're dead but if you if you are simply resisting the the culture completely you'll also be dead you know so you go out in this kind of canny uh style and the church has always done that at its best it's discerned from the church father's on like what's valuable what's worthwhile in this culture look at the platonism of the church fathers look at all the logos theologies that are arising from a dialogue with the philosophy of the time maybe most famously thomas aquinas in the 13th century uh newman the 19th century dialoguing with locke and hume and many others good good at the same time the church has to resist if there's something in the culture that's inimical to its form of life um and that's been true too and that's why we have martyrs you know from the very beginning at every age the great saints have resisted look at a thomas moore you know who talked about someone that knew how to assimilate the culture and to move creatively with it even rising to a very high point in it but then he also realized no no but what what the king is asking me to do now i i cannot do and then so resisted it to the point of death so i'm speaking more generically there to your point that you're doing both what's the sign well what's inimical to truth and to love has to be resisted so there's something in the culture that's moving you away from love and is moving you toward self-protection isolation um separation and in the bad sense alienation from others uh that's something that needs to be uh resisted what's leading you away from truth and i don't say that in sort of a a glib or trivial way god is the truth which means god is is most fully real what what's false what's unreal what's not the case that's always inimical to god and the things of god and he well know all cultures including our own are often predicated upon lies and distortions and uh half truths and so on well the church has to resist those and and call them out so that's a broad way of talking about it both truth and love or criteria um and you're now bringing all the way down like to your dealings with friends well keep those principles in mind you're you're always that foraging animal you know assimilating and resisting you're sensitive to both truth and love all the time does that mean that any time you sense an untruth you say it no not necessarily because that could end up violating the principle of love all right hey you're wrong about that let me tell you why again there's the internet right is you're truthful but you're violating the principle of love now turn that around you can also love in a way that violates the principle of truth oh i just love everybody i make no judgments and i never say anything's wrong that's not right either so you're moving i'd say there in between truth and love all the time and you're making your way as that that candy animal makes his way so i don't know if that helps i'm kind of just trying to put some parameters around your question from the most general to the most specific um but that's what you have to do but there's no clear-cut answer because you've got to discern that prudentially in the particular case i think that really speaks to the importance of having a well-formed conscience and knowing that that's a project of our whole lives you know not something we can just take for granted our next question is from kyle which is really a lot about how we get that kind of formation and are ready like saint thomas moore was to do what's called of us in hard times kyle thank you leah thank you for your excellency hi um yeah i'm wondering um who are some of your biggest role models and influences both when you were entering college and as you were about to leave college and if you have any suggestions for thinkers or lives of the saints to read while we're in these different stages of our life yeah good when i was in high school it was thomas aquinas made the biggest difference in my life um i heard one of the arguments for god's existence when i was a kid i was 14 in freshman high school and even though i was a catholic going to mass i wasn't really all that interested in religion i was interested in baseball at that point in my life but something about that experience of hearing that argument had a huge impact on me and it led me down this path and it's really god's truth to say i've never substantially left that path from the time i was 14 to my present age which i won't tell you but um uh thomas therefore has been one of the touchstones from my life and uh done most of my academic work around aquinas um he's the one i've gone back to most often in my own writing uh most of my work sort of ends up centering around him in some way so acquaintance you know the patron for your institute there is the most important figure for me uh when i was a young man too thomas merton he was not read as much anymore i don't know if you even know that name but merton who had been a um kind of a whirlwind to use an old-fashioned term a man of the world he was a master's degree from colombia in english literature he wanted to be a novelist like hemingway he had traveled the world he was he was kind of a you know very secularized figure and then he um through a long interesting process becomes a catholic and then eventually a trappist monk one of the most intense expressions of the monastic life i read his his uh autobiography called the seven story mountain when i was about 16 and it had a huge impact on me i'm not a trappist as you can well see but merton made more viscerally real to me what i was reading about abstractly in aquinas you know what i'm saying is the ideas in aquinas became very vividly real in this american story so he's a you know older generation than mine certainly but an american young man falling in love with god and i can still vividly remember reading that book for the first time i've reread it i don't know 10 12 times since then so those two figures thomas aquinas from the 13th century thomas merton from the 20th were two big influences another one you know it's because i i saw a man for all seasons when i was probably around that same age for the first time thomas was a touchstone figure for me um you know someone who lived with that kind of integrity and uh it didn't run to the scaffold you know i mean he's someone who who made his way very cageally within the world and and made it to the highest levels of the society of his time but never abandoned his great religious principles and when when push came to shove he said no i'm going to stand with them that to me and he's a layman uh a great model i think for people who are catholic and also want to move in the world so those figures were important to me uh when i was a young man like around you know your age i think it's amazing the role that memoir and even fiction can play in helping us picture not only catholic theology but how it's applied in a catholic life that reading merton's autobiography gives us a sense of what it means to live the faith at the individual level a man for all seasons meant a lot to me and understanding who the martyrs were yeah i'll confess that the first time i read the play was with a group of strangers who when i came in picked me immediately to read cromwell and i felt terrible you're the bad guy this is the villain yeah but our next our next question is from juliana who has really a question about when we're called to be those models just like those memoirs and you know fictional portrayals of the saints are hi bishop baron thank you so much for um speaking to us today my question is um do you suggest that um we lead more by action and wait for others to ask about our faith or should we actively um talk about our faith to those that we want to evangelize like how do we take that first step it depends um it depends on the person and you can read the situation on the ground much better than i ever could you know from a distance because it depends uh like when i was a kid again it wasn't quite being evangelized i was already evangelized but like what awakened me was this this abstract philosophical argument i don't know why i mean i was a smart enough kid i suppose in school but but i wasn't really in a bookish type i was a baseball player but something sang to me in that argument and so i'm always resistant to people saying oh well we know arguments and all that that don't use those and no no it worked in my case i don't know if you know the name william lane craig the um evangelical philosopher who has debated the great atheist very uh effectively i had an interesting conversation with him a couple years ago and he said the same thing that when he was a young man it was arguments for god's existence that really woke him up and that he too felt a resistance to those who say oh you know don't talk about academic things because it depends on the person you know now in other cases not at all the cases people wouldn't respond at all to that approach and it's much more as you say your your lifestyle your witness uh the the way you live your life that can have a huge impact i'll tell you a story i've always loved uh there was a man that i taught when i was a professor at wonderland seminary outside chicago and he was an older vocation he came to us like when he was in his late 40s or early 50s even and he had a successful career and but at midlife i think he was he was divorced and he was kind of drifting and had sort of lost his way he had plenty of money and all that success in the worldly sense but he was just kind of drifting well one day he's walking past the entrance to holy name cathedral which is right in downtown chicago the big catholic cathedral and out in front after mass was this little priest i knew him very well he's died since named bobby mclaughlin father mclaughlin who was the pastor and he was this little irish sort of uh fireball you know just full of joy and life and humor and jokes and and depth as well he was a smart man well anyway this this man is walking by he hadn't been in a church for years i think he was born and raised catholic but he had left a long time ago and he sees father mclaughlin and he walked up to him didn't know him from adam walked up and he said what you got i want and father mclaughlin said okay let's have coffee and so later that week they sat down and had coffee and that was the beginning of his journey that led him to the seminary and eventually to the priesthood now i tell that perhaps tiresome story just to illustrate it wasn't arguments it wasn't answering questions it was he just saw something in in father mclaughlin that he thought was so compelling and so alive and he said i want that you know so that can be very effective evangelization um the evangelist has got to have a lot of tricks in the back you know i mean you got to be able to do a lot of different things depending on the person you're dealing with um but i think to your point that the witness of your life can be a number one i think the secret trick is that the first step of being a good evangelist is being a saint and then everything else is more to get you to that point right but right there's an attractive theologians too as balthazar said the best knowers of the faith are the ones who practice it most clearly and we next have a question from katie who has a question about um how evangelization is different from other kinds of conflicts or arguments we might be in okay go ahead katie hi bishop baron so i was listening to your uh word on fire podcast with brandon vaught recently about the creating atheist book yeah um and first of all i really appreciated your rants about it it just validated everything that i was feeling um because both of you made a point that there was something very manipulative about his approach and the question that came to mind for me was how is that approach different from what evangelization like true evangelization is trying to do how is it different yeah and to be fair you know i i am no great student of that street evangel or street epistemology brandon sort of brought me into that book and we talked about it but i wouldn't claim to have great you know grasp of it but i would say that in the measure that you ever become manipulative you're now a bad evangelist you know if you're trying to coerce people or trick them or manipulate them or play mind games then you're not evangelizing effectively just by definition now it doesn't mean you can't intellectualize and you can't declare what you think is true but by definition a manipulative evangelization is what the pope often calls proselytizing um it's an it's a word that's not used it often but he uses it a lot and i think all he means by it is bad evangelization evangelizing in a sort of brow beating or as you say manipulative way that's not respecting the person at all i think again witness with your life and lead with the questions that people have what are you talking about as you go on your way think jesus in the road to emmaus what are you talking about what's on your mind tell me you know i'm curious and um whatever you tell me will lead to christ that's a basic intuition of any evangelist even if you say hey what i'm talking about is how miserable my life is watch every single billy graham sermon basically has the structure of your life is kind of miserable isn't it well and you've tried this and this and this and this and that well i got the one thing that'll work so you know if someone's talking about their own misery that's that's the way into the gospel someone's talking about uh their career aspirations that's that's a way in someone's talking about sports you know or something beautiful that's a way in so i think that's the that's the overall method is um listen walk with them um but the minute you become manipulative you're you're ipso facto a bad evangelizer i think that's a great distinction to draw and one of the things that really stands out what's different about speaking the truth about christianity versus being a spin doctor or just trying to win um is that right evangelists are actually in a much more dependent position of radical trust of saying tell me about yourself i trust that something and that leads to christ because i know he made you rather than i have all the answers at the start of this conversation and i have control over it the whole time yeah you know quite right but it's just a little scary leaving that much room for the holy spirit when you're talking about something important no and you're right that's why the internet too it's easier space i'm sitting on the you know my computer keyboard and i can rattle off some argument i can't see the person's face i can't see their reaction i don't know anything about their life and that's why that can lead to proselytizing in the bad way but when you're one-on-one with somebody and you see how they're reacting and and their body language and you hear about their life well you're not going to be offering little glib you know responses i do have a follow-up question then just when you are on the internet and you don't have that kind of access and you feel less like you're talking to someone person to person how do you know when it's worth it to engage or are there anything you can do to be better able to recognize that person's full dignity as a child of god even when they're just you know a little avatar that's not even their real face right and i wrestle all the time with it i've been doing it for now for 20 years and i i still wrestle with it a lot one little trick i do is i guess it's right to call it a trick is um i always address someone as friend friend comma and it's just a signal to me really more than to the person like okay i'm trying to say no that i i know you're a person you're not just words on the screen um it's it's trying to signal to me and i hope to the other person that what i want is some kind of personal you know contact i think maybe it's easier to know when it's gone bad you can tell when okay this conversation is now dysfunctional because we're basically yelling at each other or we're basically trying to one-up each other uh it i think it becomes very clear and it's it's marvelous isn't it when you can sense no this person really wants to know this person really is curious and they're they're they've been interested in something you said and they want to know more or they've got an honest question there's all of that which is great and then there's the other side which again maya culpa we all fall into it which is i'm here trying to win an argument i'm trying to show you how smart i am and by the way you really hurt my feelings with that last comment and so when it reaches that point it's like all right all right stop you know it's probably better this point to stop like yeah i'll tell you something again under the rubric of maya culpa that i've done is if you go back i don't do it a lot but if you go back to let's say a video from years ago and you look at an exchange that i've had with somebody and i might have thought like oh boy that was really good that's really clever boy i really won that one and then you read it and you think oh my gosh i sound so patronizing or i sound so condescending or so mr know-it-all you know well i always take those as kind of the holy spirit reminding me of like okay you know you're not as clever as you think you are and and this is not a forum for showing off so that's a good thing for anyone involved in the internet side of it to be aware of i think yeah you know i i feel like the real challenge is to do these things for god and not yeah for us um and paul i think you have a question that's really about how we carry that over um to all parts of our life are you with us to ask it hi yeah right here uh hello bishop aaron great to be able to speak with you today um so i had a question about specifically saint jose maria escriva talks a lot about this idea of unity of life about orienting kind of all of your life and every aspect toward god and specifically the ways that sanctification of work can kind of act in that in that regard and i was just wondering specifically for for me and for other students listening how you could give us some advice about how to sanctify our work and then just in general how to specifically in in the student life to really orient everything toward god yeah it's a great principle uh from escriva and i've called it you know finding the center and i get that from merton too and lots of mystical people that god has to be the the organizing principle of your life and i've used the rose window a lot as the image for that if christ is the center then the rest of your life is organized in these kind of beautiful harmonic patterns around that center so all the elements of the rows are the different aspects of you inside and outside the things you do the your relationships your entertainment life your private life your public life that all of it is meant to be centered finally on christ does does everything belong to him well it's a good point of um of examination of conscience and maybe use that rose window image so think of your life you know all its aspects everything i just went through and everything else all your friendships do they they belong to him are they under the aegis of his love are they leading you to a deeper rapport with him what you're reading is it serving that purpose your entertainment would you be comfortable if jesus were sitting right next to you when you're seeking whatever entertainment you're seeking your friendships would you be comfortable inviting him around the same table with you you know so your work okay i don't know what you're working on your work now as a student i suppose um is it ordered to his love and to his truth is it serving his purposes ultimately let's say you're studying i don't know what you're studying but you know business okay fine you know money making and whatever your business interest is but is all that directed finally to his purposes i've had the privilege of knowing some some marvelous business leaders in my life who are deeply christian have made lots of money and have found a way to to devote it to the church in beautiful ways good whatever your work is doesn't belong to him so do the rose window exercise is this think of of maybe get a on your on your computer get an image of like the north rose at notre dame one of these beautiful roses and then as you look at each medallion in it just think of a different part of your life um what's not nailed down and now we're all sinners we talk about original sin original sin is a is a it's destroying the harmony of that window and making it kind of a mess and a cacophony right what's not nailed down in your life what doesn't belong to him completely remember cs lewis's image i think it's lewis about the house i've always liked that is yet the house with all the rooms in the house um and christ oh yeah you know once a week he comes into the parlor and we sit down and we visit and then i'm glad that he leaves you know because i want the whole house to myself and the point is like jesus to zacchaeus you know zacchaeus i'm coming to your house today i'm moving in and i'm moving into every room right well that's making him the lord jesus christ dominus right he's meant to dominate the whole of your life well does he and we're all sinners so the answer is no to some degree for all of us but that's the goal is invite him into every room in your house make sure everything in the rose window is linked to him it's a very intimidating uh a part of prayer i think because there's always that moment where it's easy to ask for god's will to be done in our life until we look at the lives of the saints and think oh but but please not as it was you know in saint catherine of siena's life her life was very intimidating you know yeah that how do we how do we have the courage to ask for the full measure of what god wants for us that's the whole point of the exercises of ignatius isn't it is to reach that point and having done the exercise a couple times the eight day retreat you there's a moment that you're meant to come to where you make that move and i found it exceptionally hard both times namely that even the things that i am most afraid of lord give those to me if it's your will right to come to that point and be able to say it is is spectacularly difficult you know uh because that really makes it pointed is okay what am i most afraid of all right one two three lord give those to me if it's your will for me um that's radical stuff that's where the saints live and uh you know good it's like well there's michael jordan and tiger woods and we see these you know tremendous examples of this perfection well the saints are like that in the spiritual order and you pray that you might move into that space i think the litany of humility is one of those you know scary but good prayers also for the full measure of what we want from god wanting what he wants for us we're nearing the end of our time so i'm going to do a little housekeeping and then give you one last question okay that went fast now bishop for one final question i want to ask for the princeton students uh almost everyone is not on campus this semester everyone's separated uh the school felt it wasn't safe to bring people back so what is one way that people can work on the project of evangelization at a time when they're not even sure they're getting to see their friends in person what you know i would do during this time is don't worry so much about how do i reach out and make contact that'll come i mean please god this thing will be over i hope relatively soon what i would do is cultivate your own spiritual life um i've tried to see this time as a as a gift and it has been for me in many ways it's been a odd sort of blessing but to all of you um do a holy hour every day or if if you can't handle that a holy half hour um spend time i don't know if you have the blood sacrament on uh is it reserved there leah where you are or where is it we we haven't reserved in the chapel but we're not allowed into the chapel all right so happily the local parish has been allowing us to hold mass and adoration there well yeah so go we're there or wherever you find the blessed sacrament and spend that half hour that hour in prayer the time will come when you reach out again directly but i think take advantage of this time of deeper interiority i'll mention thomas merton again someone asked him what's the best thing i can do to improve my prayer life and he said take the time it's simple and good and true it seems to me so take the time to be with the lord and pray and study and cultivate your relationship with him in the silence of this time and then it's like a the seed will burst forth you know in time but um take advantage of this odd moment that nobody you know seven months ago was expecting and uh see what the lord is is um uh calling you to do but i say deep in your prayer life thank you so much for that and for joining us tonight oh my pleasure thank you would you lead us in a final prayer and blessing yeah i'd be happy to let's pray in the name of the father and of the son of the holy spirit gracious lord giver of all good things we thank you for this time together lord phil everybody who's part of this call with the spirit of of evangelization fill us with the spirit of your son that will lead us out to the world with his challenging and uh at times taunting and uplifting word father give us grace and give us courage and give us prudence in the work that we do i make all these prayers in jesus name he who is lord forever and ever the lord be with you with your spirit and may the blessing of almighty god the father and the son and the holy spirit come down upon all of you and remain with you forever and ever amen thank you so much one more time for joining us and you know i really hope that we see just an incredible harvest uh at the end of this period from the way we've all been scattered to do work we didn't know we were called to amen thanks leah thank you and thank you all of our attendees for joining us god bless you all thanks for watching if you enjoyed that video i encourage you to share it and be sure to subscribe to my youtube channel

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

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Length: 52min 11sec (3131 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020