EWTN Bookmark - How to Listen when God is Speaking - Doug Keck - 06-12-2011

and welcome once again to EWTN bookmark today our special guest author is our great friend father Mitch Pacwa SJ his new work is how to listen when God is speaking a guide for modern-day Catholics published by the word among us press welcome father Mitch Thank You Fred haha great to have you here to be here it's difficult to get you you're always so busy between doing your two shows for EWTN your two live shows and then of course your radio show as well and you've got so many other things going on with your Ignatius productions even and pilgrimages you you go on you keep pretty busy yes I do so when do you find time to write books at night when I come home from the shows you know that I usually will sit at my computer and write at night when I try to get an hour to done now you've written a fair number of books but some people you know there are priests who have written you know 10 20 books how many books is it for you I think it's six okay six or seven do you like to write books I do it's it's a it's a good thing to do I enjoy using that medium it to me the issue writing a book is to use a medium that's going to be helpful for folks about you know for various topics and reading is one that you people can use differently than then given the talk for instance I had given a some talks on this topic okay but people also wanted it written down so so that was one of the issue was the genesis of this the fact that you gave some talks and saw an opportunity that this could be put into a book right right that does happen many times exactly masters exactly consolidated into a book exactly and and so I gave the talk a few times and saw that it needed expansion and so I wanted to go write a book on it when you go out and give a talk like that let alone writing a book after you give it the first time do you go back and say what worked what didn't work exactly that over a period of time you've honed it exactly exactly because you know one that the first time you give a talk um as a matter of fact who with the talkie was behind this I went to give her a treat and I prepared one topic and I found out that it was the wrong topic so I had to wing it but because of my background in the Society of Jesus the the issue of discernment this is one that is very important in the Spiritual Exercises of st. Ignatius and so I was able to draw on that experience and then after a while hone that talk down and then give it again in both audio form and written form okay now you mentioned the Society of Jesus which you were a member though you obviously stay here at EWTN and write and do the progress for you wtn yeah my provincials mission to be here he made that very clear that this is where he has sent me - okay so when I noticed it in here there's a Timothy P kiseki yes and I notice he had some it's not an imp Ramada what is it in premiere amiibo test what does that mean father qussuk he is my provincial and as such he's my ordinary instead of I'm not under a bishop right so I'm under provincial okay and so he cannot give the imprimatur because he doesn't have that church authority that a bishop has that but he gives us Jesuits the impre-- me protest which means it is able to be printed okay so so he gives the permission to print books and I have to go through the provincial right so if they didn't approve it it couldn't be present be published okay and that's part of being part of this exactly right and obedience is a big part of being in a religious order right that's in fact that's part of the issue here you know with legitimate Authority when legitimate Authority says something that part of discernment is not to disobey - you can use all of the means to you know give your own position to the authority you know you can make a representation for whatever it is that you wanted to do but when they say no then it's important to go along with that no answer somehow God is going to be working through that no answer as well even if you don't understand that at the time even if you don't understand it you have to put faith that that is the right hand right now you say this is a guide for modern-day Catholics so is this a book that wouldn't have been useful for people 30 or 40 years ago or what makes it specific for today I try to address some of the issues that we have in the church today now that the church is going through a variety of changes and you know that many of them are caused by the situation that we have in society at large so we're you know interacting with the the rest of modern world and we've gone through a period in which the the post-world War two atheism and agnosticism have been very important and now we're in a period where the media has taken a role that it never had prior I mean radio was out there before the world war and was important but the rest of the media that the television and the Internet have come into play in new ways so that we trust them for a lot more information and then we would trust say in the church I'm trying to deal with that situation why would modern people who get their news on a 24-hour cycle and why would they who can say I don't even trust the news I want to go to the Internet uh why would they try to discern the will of God when there's so much incoming information so that's one of the the changes about modern-day Catholics that I want to address well you say here why would modern people want to listen to God speaking to them and you say so the decision to listen to God speaking to us is radical and life-changing why I hear things like radical I think of the 60s and the 70s but we're dealing with some of the fallout from that radicalism how is this different radical comes from a word meaning to go to the root erotic is a root and it's radical in the sense that it goes to a root difference between the way you react in the world are you going to act on the basis of what God wants or are you going to go by what the culture says and those are two very distinct ways of reacting and so that's what I meant by radical hmm now with the idea of listening to God and you talk about how do we learn to listen to God but you also say that if you do he will definitely challenge us his words and actions in the gospel will challenge our instincts to be self-centered or to focus on our own personal pleasure or the acquisition of property and power he will challenge those habits of sin that we to easily rationalize isn't that the reason most people don't want to listen to God because they're afraid that that's happened to them exactly and one of the things that I've noticed no I've observed some of the the themes of modern comedies I contrast the comedies of the 1950s which I will remember sure and I was in the 60s with the modern comedies of the 90s and the the new millennium and the theme of the comedies today is egocentric narcissism that the jokes are on how egocentric the characters are and how they get for caught in the ego centrism and to say whatever and go on with their lives in an egocentric way and one of the that's one of the reasons I wanted to address this question that's also part of the modern world that the if the humor is about egocentrism it means it's touching something that's in the culture there's an element of people saying well I just do what I want and the heck with anybody else including God well if you want to do that then you purely have to get rid of the notion of God or at least figure that God is a projection of your own will and so exact that he just kind of thinks I'm a nice guy and is very happy with what I'm doing in Chapter one you say first things first you talk about three things we need to affirm from the beginning we can talk about what those are but you also say one of the reasons maybe difficulty here God in the modern world is that we often hear people in our secular culture disagree with these basic principles what are they there are a number of basic principles first of all that God exists you know that as you mentioned or already you know do you believe that God exists and that God is knowable and you know that that's a second principle that God knows us and thirdly that God wants us to know him these these are some basic issues in terms of discerning God's will if you don't believe that God exists or you don't believe that you can know God or that God wants you to know him then you're not even going to start on the journey and so this is something very basic and that there's a there's a plan that God has for us this is one of the things that you find out then as God becomes knowable that God has a plan that he wants us to go to heaven and avoid hell and that sounds so basic but it's not in these self-centered comedies they oftentimes will joke that of course they're going to hell but that's where my friends are and the the thing they don't realize is that your friends may well be in hell however you won't be friends anymore you'll hate them and they'll hate you we say there's no camaraderie or someone exactly I don't know a joke the wrong Rodri and friendship and help that they that the demons hate each other and they hate everyone else and there's no love so you know what you think is a camaraderie is not there right and people need to realize that and say I don't want to go and tell I don't want to be that I want to be in heaven that's where God wants me and God wants me infinitely more to be in heaven then even I want to be there well you mentioned the fact in the book you talked about the idea that it's actually a good idea or why it's a good idea to peep for people to think about hell now let alone think about it most people don't believe in it or if they believe in it they don't think any in there right right and this is one of the problems with that narcissistic culture the idea that actions have consequences is diminished a lot of people don't think that their bad behavior has real consequences for them or anybody else and they don't want to deal with the consequences of their behavior those consequences not only affect what I can see around me sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't sometimes I cannot see how my behavior affects other people or at least initially initially you know this right you know it's like the kid is today I tried smoking nothing happened to me I didn't get cancer well that's because you don't get cancer from smoking when you're a kid you get it when you're 50 right and so this is you know one of the example of how people don't see the consequences of their behavior right away well do you think also sometimes with people today it's either the fact that it's not my fault because I didn't mean it to hurt anything exactly so I can't be held accountable because I was raised a certain way or misled but certainly I'm not accountable for years and that's one of the things that I want to get at here it you know when I choose to do behavior it is not my parents fault they may have influenced me by training me poorly and they may have an influence on it because I'm reacting against them that's possible but I'm still the one who made the choice and that's what what the sermon is about the sermon is about saying I make choices and I am responsible before God I've got free will that's one of the basics that we try to get at I've got free will and I can choose to go along with a flow that will lead to my narcissism and egocentrism or I can go against that and try to seek what is it that God wants for my life well you say that you'd fall into two main categories choices that is the first categories is between a moral good versus a moral evil and the second category is a choice between two things that are morally good right for instance one of the basic principles our discernment is that I mentioned if God is knowable as we said at the beginning then one of the things that's knowable is his will about what is right and wrong in our narcissistic culture people don't want to hear that something is evil as a matter of fact this is one of the things that goes on in a lot of schools one of one of my guests on dr. ray guarendi short had said been on this program is right he is talking about how in the modern school system you don't say that was bad you say that was not acceptable because you focus on the ego it's not acceptable to me so you should not do it whereas God is willing to say quite clearly this is good this is evil and this is a matter of fact that choice you see in Deuteronomy chapter 30 choose life and good or death and evil and going against God's Ten Commandments as in for instance or going against Christ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount for the for instance and other moral sections of the New Testament and Old Testament is itself a bad and so before one can even start to discern God's will one has to be willing to say I want to avoid what God calls bad and do what God calls good that's a basic choice and avoid evil choose good this is basic secondly you then have choices that are two goods for instance when I was a young man I had a choice I could be a priest I could be a Jesuit a Jesuit priest I could be a DA system priest I could be a judgment brother I could be married all of which are good there's nothing wrong with any one of those how do I know which one of those I should choose and which one does God want me to choose that's where the issue of discernment comes in and we try to give principles for helping people to discern the will of God let me ask you about that cuz later in the book you talk about in two different sections one you talk about what was a bigger obstacle for you being a Jesuit was it teaching at a high school or going to see gone with the wind one I would put it this way going because there's a story in there that I went to see gone with the wind with a girl I was dating before I joined the Jesuits and I was swept up by the feelings that all these marriages were so beautiful and I actually turned toward her to propose marriage and I stopped myself and said you better think about this a little bit more you know I had that much self-awareness and and thought about it and I was in the process of applying to the judges but I had not heard back from them yet okay so in one sense I was tempted to follow my feelings without reflecting on what was the deeper feeling now where was the real peace at one was an excitement there was an excitement about all these marriages because it was so beautiful it was a relief me release of the gone with the wind that came out in the 68 and you know I guess it was an anniversary release or something and the that feeling that emotion was something that was easy to sweep 100 way and into a decision is that what a lot of people do today exactly exactly and have done throughout the century that's not new that's not modern that's that's human because we we find up there's a peace with that and that's one of the things that you know about discernment you're looking for what is going to give peace but what's going to get the more lasting peace and as I I went back and thought about that and it that may give me a mount of peace but as I thought about it I mean I'd wanted to be a priest since I was 8 and that was a deeper more lasting peace something that had been for 10 years of my life at that point 10 11 years of my life all and so I really had to rethink that and follow what gave me deeper peace right whereas when I went to the high school to teach that was the one time I thought about leaving the Jesuits but it's not because I found something I wanted to do better it's because I was miserable I was very unhappy teaching high school I didn't particularly like doing the discipline that you have to do in a high school I didn't know how to relate well to high school students I wanted to teach college and this was a difficult experience because I had no clue but what I was doing and there I felt a real desolation now both of these are good examples of how the various movements of desolation and consolation work and as I reflected on that experience of desolation while I was teaching high school I remembered one event in particular when I was a novice we made a 30 day retreat in silence and during that 30 day retreat I found one of the most profound experiences of God's peace at the choice of being a Jesuit priest and I had to remember that experience and say I can't let this experience of desolation undo the peace that I felt when I made my election to be a Jesuit and so that was a more real experience of peace than was my experience of desolation secondly Saint Ignatius Loyola and I give the sum of the rules for the surprise in chapter 3 the movements in our souls right because these we have to take pay attention to both the external and the internal movement what's going on externally what's going on internally and internally st. Ignatius gives us one of the rules for discernment that you never change a decision Radha that you had made when you were in a state of peace right don't change that decision when you feel desolation right I thought that really struck me yeah that that's that's one of the really basic rules just because you're unhappy that's no reason to change a decision you made when you were at a deep sense of peace that's the last time you should ever make a decision about peace right and that's in fact in the chapter on page chapter 3 58 and 59 which actually I pulled that question about your own situation writing at the high school now one of the things you've also done in this book is you've actually broken it up into multiple chapters obviously but you actually put like reflection questions at the end of each chapter is that because you see this as a can be used for a study group or is it exact personal that this it can be used both ways an individual can take a look at some of those study questions and use that to reflect on his or her own private life but a group of people now one of the problems that we have is there are not enough spiritual directors right no priests tend to be overwhelmed that this we know that there aren't that many of us and this a lot of work to do and people are very frustrated that there aren't more spiritual directors but there's only 24 hours a day and only seven days a week and so this is something that's very difficult for priests to do and nuns have the same problem you know they have their regular work to do plus try to disparage the direction so this is one of those things where a group of people can help each other with spiritual direction and reflecting on some of these questions might be way for a group to do a study on discernment and then form a group that helps one another whispers a direction I think that that can work in a number circumstances also I'm I have a strong sense that a lot of times married couples do spiritual direction for each other if a couple is prayerful together and as individuals then they can help each other with discernment this book would be a great help for married couples to learn how to discern what it is they should do as a family and as individuals within the family it chapter for preparing our hearts you say the experience of desolation is not unusual people ignored offend or even embrace those sinful aspects of their lives that separate them from God then you want to say God does not want a person to feel comfortable with acts of violence adultery lust stealing jealousy or on any other degradation of the human person and so you're saying God likes us to feel guilty yes he does when we're guilty and this is one of the things that goes strongly against some of the mood of the culture there was a time when people wanted you to feel shame and guilt when this is when the society had an agreed set of morals then everybody would click their tongues at bad behavior and this would be a normal thing today we have a relativistic culture where you can't say that your right is my right or your wrong as my wrong I've got my values you've got your values and we can't discuss it well one of the things that we have to keep in mind is God does have an opinion about whether you're right or wrong and he is going to be correct in that that determination of right and wrong and he wants us to experience guilt when we're guilty now it's important to distinguish that from false guilt there's an emotional guilt that people feel sometimes it's confusing regret know when you feel a certain amount of regret for a sin you've already confessed and you don't know how to get over the regret there are other issues that have to be addressed there for instance one of the things that some people need to do is make it do actually reparation and that their guilt feeling has nothing to do with the fact of their actual guilt because their guilt has been forgiven and they should have a sense of peace but they may need to do an act of reparation I think of an example of a person who came to me for counseling after having had an abortion and in that that the person that the woman wanted to kill somebody in order to go to jail because she felt guilty she was and I said this is not a healthy way to deal with your guilt feelings a much better way would be to go to this hospital in Chicago that dealt with crack babies these babies needed to be held and confident as they come off of the crack addiction that they were born with well that will help do reparation for you did you'll be helping babies and this will make up for it and I guaranteed that a guilt would go away now on page 147 under a larger plan I'm thinking about this in relation to you you talk about a really harrowing experience where you were basically held up by a drug gang and your friend was killed in front of you right and you had nightmares after that which was any of that guilt I'm sure that an element that there are two elements going on after I saw my friend killed one was fright because they did come looking for me okay so it wasn't it wasn't your neurosis they can't they there was another guy there they came and they shot him and they were looking for me so you know I I had to leave Chicago and go to another city so there was there was just you know real fright you know going on and then the second thing was survivor's guilt you know that why did I survive and my friend Jimmy didn't you know this this is one of the things that you know you don't understand and and I had to learn to do with you know and realize that it ultimately the way I dealt with it is that there was a mystery involved in this and apparently I still had things that God wanted me to do right but it also puts you kind of on a detour through the New Age movement so it actually got off course it did is met this is one of the things just because something is bad doesn't end can help you that doesn't mean that helps you right away and because I started reading Carl Jung I talked about that in my first book Catholics in a new age I started reading Carl Jung in order to understand my dreams better and I ended up getting into New Age ideas because Jung was very new agey before was well we are going to go into the next stage if we let this go any longer thank you so much father man all right that a time pleasure to have you here on the program and of course on EWTN speaking with the one and only father Mitch Pacwa SJ author of how to listen when God is speaking a guide for modern-day Catholics published by the word among us press available through the ewtn religious catalogue you should check this book out join us next time right here on EWTN spoke Oh

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Keywords: EWTN, Bookmark, How, to, Listen, when, God, is, Speaking, Doug, Keck, 06, 12, 2011, Catholic

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Length: 28min 40sec (1720 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 13 2011