EWTN Bookmark - I am with you Always - Doug Keck with Fr. Benedict Groeschel - 07-31-2011

and welcome to a very special edition on location edition of EWTN bookmark with the one and only father Benedict Groeschel we're talking to father Benedict about his wonderful books one of them is I am with you always his magnum opus we'll spend most of the time talking about this book as well as a couple of other books travelers along the way and also praying constantly again it's always wonderful to be with you father Benedict and it's great to have you down here we had the opportunity of taping this obviously during our family celebration some of our wonderful participants are actually in the audience observing this as we speak but it's been so difficult to be able to get to get you down to Birmingham to be on bookmark but you write so much wonderful stuff and our EWTN religious catalogue I can't get enough of your materials and to make them available as these books are as well but this book I know is really really important to you isn't it and that is I am with you always a study of the history and meaning a personal devotion to Jesus Christ and this is the interesting thing for Catholics Orthodox and Protestant Christians why so well first of all I like promises and Orthodox Christians I was always an ecumenical person and I've had many very positive experiences in my life and I've often in particularly in the ecumenical days preached or lectured at Protestant churches and of Orthodox and in in synagogues so I think I gave lectures - at least 150 synagogue that was the big thing you know 20 years ago get somebody from the other side right has that changed is it a good thing that it's changing well unfortunately sadly the ecumenical thing was blocked by a very sad thing and that is abortion the Catholic Church is clearly absolutely opposed to abortion a number of Protestant churches and particularly Orthodox Jews and some Orthodox Christians are equally opposed to abortion but unfortunately sad to say a lot of different denominations reluctantly and sadly allow abortion well let me ask you specifically about this book you've written many many books I am still not quite sure when you find it time to do it but this book you say actually took you more than a decade yeah to do why did it take you so long that was it finding the time to write was it gathering the materials what was well it is a lot of research in this book a lot of research in the history of Christian devotion and unfortunately the word devotion and the meaning devotion back in the last in the 80s and 90s and present devotion was poo poo dope essay you know before that it was a tremendous amount of devotion in the Catholic Church to the Sacred Heart to the Blessed Sacrament to the Blessed Mother st. Joseph st. Francis and somehow or other we got sophisticated and there was a playing down of devotion particularly in Catholic higher education and it was sad years ago I used to go it to Fordham and I was taking courses there things like that is it was a brief and it was a beautiful devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and Fordham chapel and beautiful and it all kind of disappeared so it's I'm hoping and praying the devotion is going to come back right now one of the things you mention right in the beginning you talked about the unique qualities of Christianity and the first one is it's the religion of the God who suffers and died is second most of Christ's followers believe that Jesus Christ risen from the dead is still close to them and then the third one is the one that has to do with the belief in Christ's presence gives rise to Christianity's third unique characteristic personal devotion to Christ now I understand that as a Catholic and I understand because I think of the real presence of our Lord and certainly from the Orthodox perspective but how does that fit in with the Protestant perspective who does where they don't believe in the real presence but you know you hear about devotionals but our devotionals different than devotion well it varies and it varies with Catholics as well devotion is a very clear psychological attitude that Christ is present in some way in a reality individual to the person and these are this is based on the teaching of Christ particularly and the Gospel of st. John and on the eve of the Passion those beautiful passages I will be with you and I will come back and look for you and it was right today before he died so in the very early church there was a growing belief that Christ was there with us now other religions that may be quite serious religions don't have that you don't find that so too strongly in Judas there is another religion popularly does it and that's Buddhism now I don't mean sophisticated Buddhism but if you go to a Buddhist monastery or a Buddhist temple you will see people kneeling before the statue of Buddha and they're moving their lips and they're looking they think Buddha is Leslie and by the way Buddha is not a God he's a holy man but they see him as a presence in their life and that's devotion now in Catholicism it's been very very strong and the church has encouraged private revelations often about devotion so the Sacred Heart one of the most powerful devotions in the Catholic Church the Christ appeared to the devout nuns Saint Margaret Mary with his flaming heart is there and many Protestant people would say what's what's said about you know but and you take a wife like Saint Francis he was deeply deeply devoted to Christ st. Francis gave us the Christmas crib and he played prayed there and when you read the life of st. Francis that night when he got the first Christmas crib it says that he saw the Christ child there now you say this book is about Christian devotion its meaning its importance and many varieties of expression and that's we're talking about but you say strangely there is no generally accepted definition of devotion but then you go on to say when looking for a descriptive definition of Christian devotion I turned to the account of the first recorded prayer to the Ascended Christ the words of st. Stephen what was that I saw mystically I saw the heavens open and Christ standing that's right this is right before Stephen was killed is a marvelous example of devotion right there and remember when Christ had ascended they didn't have all these questions and answers is he going to show up and what happens soon as he come in and he did show up but physically they could see him and from that very time with the apostles and the Blessed Virgin that Christ would be there in the church and I would say 20 or 30 years ago Catholics were much more aware of the presence of Christ in their life it's unfortunately it has somewhat died off and we get a lot of people spending a lot of theological discussions and theological point points and this one versus that one what you are very blessed I work with the poor people I love poor people and they have devotion not just Catholics the if I could go in to a little storefront black church down in Harlem mm-hm the sweet Lord Jesus is dead and after you talk about it the sweet Lord you well do you tend to think as well I mean I think about EWTN I think about Mother Angelica yeah one of the things besides you know I was the devotion to the real presence and general devotionals I mean a lot of that was kept alive in a lot of ways I'm area we're Amon away by EWTN and Mother Angelica oh yes Mother Angelica is a magnificent magnificent example of a very intelligent very perceptive person who had a deep devotional life and does I'm hoping to see mother in a couple of days and she's well enough I talked to her I she talks with her eyes right and I'm sure EWTN and the sisters and the Friars are deeply deeply committed to devotion right and I think there's at least anecdotal evidence that's out there that you know where the vocations come out of parishes and diocese it's really where a Eucharistic Adoration lotion yes Lily been played up and unfortunately the devotion to the Eucharist was played down shot and the totally rejected that and sorry to say among the many different branches of the Franciscan Order which is founded by Saint Francis the most devotional person you could imagine that kind of was played down and to me it's ridiculous well you say we can define Christian devotion as a powerful awareness of or longing for Christ's presence and then you say accompanied by a trustful surrender to him of our personal needs so there's there's two components there well and as particularly in mature devotion anybody who writes about devotion says that the important step of the individual is trusting in God and that's very very much an important part and not too many years ago there was a very strong belief of trusting in Christ trusting in God and the great book abandonment to divine providence by Father dake Assad great Jesuit that was a very important part and you know it was a great devotion in the Catholic Church after the Second World War it it was a very after the war there was a real religious revival I suspect in the other churches as well but in the Catholic Church very very much what was that because of the great suffering that people from the war and also that fear mm-hmm you know we were sitting over here waiting for the bombs right at 4:00 when I was a kid without a cover right yeah we're having everyone go every three rounds three times a week and and you would see movies render so we really were thinking about it now you said doing the research for this volume has been a constant source of delight and amazement then you go on to say the history of Christianity is not a trip to the Land of Oz is integral part of the struggle of human existence Christians fail sin do stupid things they fight and kill others and kill each other on a personal level those who try to follow him sometimes go off the path yeah why is it important for us to understand that well I don't want to mention there's a couple of devout religious movements not Catholic give the impression that all will be well all will be well and I don't find this realistic it's a battle and the Christian life is as st. Paul says fight the good fight and you gotta fight yourself your own fears your own cupidity your own sinful attachments it's bonum chair Tom and Jerry Tom and Jerry barber names here Tommy fight the good fight charity and latinus of fight and back even ten years ago it was an awful lot of I would say whipped cream all over the place and it disappointed people they all thought everything was going to be Patriots and it did become Patriot yellow and soft so a little too mushy a little to nothing to hold on to well you know one of the things that strike me obviously with this this book your magnum opus it's a big book and so people would might look at it and say oh my lord I love for the benek but I like those kind of little books he writes you know those seem easier to me but you actually I guess addressed that but you actually put suggestions on how to read this book was that your idea or was that the publishers no that was mine okay what you do is you look through carefully the index in the contents maybe read the introduction and you pick out the parts that may be meaningful to you let me see the bogie sure please it the things that would be particularly to people for instance there's a history of devotion from the Apostles to the Middle Ages and then on to modern times so for instance the spiritual renewal of France certain people the Protestant renewal in England and in America so the different faith groups might focus on different chapters in the early right and the the Protestantism did a profound influence religiously on the world we Catholics we arrived in large numbers only after the Civil War and particularly after the depression and very large compass but the early Protestants were they had been Anglicans and the Anglican Church really failed them there was no anglican bishop and the 13 call they didn't want to encourage them so there was no Anglican bishops and you had to wait for Anglican clergy to come over well they went on and they went on their own and there were a couple of Anglican bishops who didn't fit into the whole system they were up in Scotland and they came over and started ordaining Anglican clergy in this country in the meantime the the Protestants Presbyterians the Methodists later the Baptist each one of them and each one of those started their own kind of devotion and if you go around and have the opportunity to visit different Protestant churches you'll see very different devotion I always love to tell people to go to the african-american churches they have very very beautiful devotion and interestingly enough Hispanic people who have drifted out of the Catholic Church there there were all Catholic and they but often in their devotion is very very cat still Catholic and you're not away now one of the areas which you talked about although going through the centuries between the Orthodox and the Protestant and Catholic one of the thing I wanted to jump to because we only have so much time is you talk about Catholics in the twentieth century and these two jumped out of me and you paired them together and there's a reason for that and you Archbishop Fulton J Sheen and Terence Cardinal cook you say these two men were both auxiliaries bishops - Cardinal Spellman of New York it would be difficult to find two clerics who had more in common in terms of devotion to Christ but will were completely different in so many other ways yes psychologically with very different persons Bishop Sheen very gifted speaker sharp person kicked around unfortunately to say and yet he was a devotional preacher I mean I remember as a boy listening we used to Sunday afternoon on the TEL radio for Bishop Sheen and Wow on the other hand Cardinal cook was not a eloquent preacher at all but he was very much beloved by people in New York because he had such a gentle devotional life and he was very I remember when Cardinal Koch was dying the whole city went into mourning not about just the Catholics everybody daya Cardinal cooks funeral was a remarkable event mm-hmm we say Terence Cardinal cook who suffered from ill health for much of his life and from terminal metastasis cancer for his last nine years believed a priest must be a servant listener victim and friend and you talk about devotion to Christ was the center of his life and he didn't tell people actually he was as sick as he was right doctor dude he was dying no he was dying was terminally ill at least five or six years if not longer yet had cancer for 19 years and the last several years it was metastasized and he got a lot of trade treating treatment but he never told anybody until he could not get out of bed and you were very close to him but you also point out that unlike Bishop Sheen Cardinal cooks most obvious fault was a dislike of controversy yes he did not like conflict and it was it was his personality he did like in New York you know they all loved to argue except Terry cook and he was the most New Yorker of the ball board of the our lab grew up in the Bronx but he could anybody would come to have a fight with Cardinal cook they never got what right one of the things that struck me though in reading about you know you look about what happened with Bishop Sheen went through you know and we talked about some of the others show about Mother Teresa and the others to the centuries it always seems to be suffering seems to be somehow central to all of this do you ever wonder whether that scares people away they're they're afraid of embracing the course because they don't want to take on the suffering well it is certainly one of the principal teachings of Christianity here is a religion whose founder and leading figure is a person who died in crucifixion so now if you look for instance Buddhism and I'm a great respect the picture the image of Buddha is smiling a little at the heavy and open could use a couple of lose a couple of pounds yeah the no Christianity is the religion of the cross and when all is said and done it's very realistic right let me ask me we're just talking about I am with you always to about devotion one of the other books you recently come out with his travelers along the way the men and women who shaped my life since you're talking about we're talking about Cardinal cook who I think is also featured in here and some others like Solanas Casey mother Teresa and also father Eugene Hamilton which we know about from the the priest but you also mentioned this name I'm not familiar with on page 97 a certain Mother Angelica oh yes Mother Angelica she's in there so you got her mean you say I've always thought that Mother Angelica arrived on the scene precisely at the right moment she did indeed she got right there and amazing the bishops had tried to start a television network with a good deal of money and they couldn't do it what Bishop said to me you know we tried to start a network and we couldn't do it and this little old lady did it you know we say it is suffering transformed into prayer and I believe it plays a large part in causing EWTN to continue to be the incredible experience it is millions of people of yes and immense numbers of people they have their own sufferings in my and many of these people are not Catholics the program itself the the station is very Catholic but lots of people who are not Catholic some are not even Christians right but they well the truth is the truth the truth transcends and Mother Angelica was espousing the truth in fact you talk about one of the times just experience we've all had have been their mother's ability to talk go on television and talk in a spiritual sense for now without anything in front of her just incredible evil communication skills and something else Mother Angelica was known for is praying constantly bringing faith to your life which is one of the touch on this book just before we win now you talked about the fact in here that I was sent a surprise you said that when I was young I must confess I got myself at some trouble by trying to take the words of st. Paul just too seriously well maybe not seriously enough but too literally yeah so I became scrupulous you know no not too many people are scrupulous anymore but it was not unusual in those days for a teenager was a devout free teenager a boy or a girl they might be worried about sin and they would be often you know almost self-defeating and God bless the spiritual directors and especially in those days good Jesuits were very clear about that well unfortunately they are clearly telling me we are just out of time so it was a pleasure we covered a lot hopefully god bless your fault I'm late to see my being with the one and only father Benedict Groeschel especial on location here at the EWTN family celebration talking about three of his books praying constantly bringing your faith to life of course travelers along the way the men and women who shaped my life and his big work is magnum opus it's I am with you always a study of the history and meaning of personal devotion to Jesus Christ for Catholics Orthodox and Protestant Christians all available of course through the EWTN religious catalogue thank you so much for joining us

Channel: EWTN

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Length: 27min 50sec (1670 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 01 2011