Fr. Benedict Groeschel: Life-long Catholic - The Journey Home (4-9-2007)

welcome to the journey home program my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this weekly program Happy Easter I pray that your family and friends had a very blessed Easter and we're in the midst of that doesn't just stop with Sunday we continue that day-in day-out fact father I haven't eaten cat Chancey induce you yet but i was noticed in the daily office how the same readings are because it's the one day we celebrate the resurrection this is open line first Monday for April and I have a special guest tonight father Benedict Rochelle if you watched EWTN at all you've seen father many times he's with the Franciscan friars of renewal but before I get into our interview tonight I want to remind you that you are an essential part of tonight's program the open line program we try to get more phone calls and emails than in the usual journey home program if you like to give us a call you can do so it 1-800 two two one nine four six Oh outside North America you can call us at 2:05 two seven one two nine eight o or you can send us an e-mail at journey home at ewtn.com father Groeschel it's great to have you here finally finally we get hair took me a long time to make the journey well I know it's uh we've done the program about ten years and I've said this I think on my program but just to make sure I reiterate it you were the first person I ever saw on EWTN back when I was a Presbyterian pastor I flipped through the channels and hid this Catholic Network I had no interested in washing it but I saw this monk and in Presbyterianism we aren't used to seeing monks and there you were with your gray habit and your beard and I almost listened out of humor what's this monk gonna have to say and then I found out wait a second what is he doing preaching the gospel I wasn't expecting that and I've been a fan of yours for ever since then you are great witness and having you on the journey home program is not just because you happen to be here at EWTN this week but because I know that our viewers have been touched by your programs and your books and I know that conversions by God you know the mercy that we're used in the lives of others I know they've been touched by your witness but I my bet is that they didn't expect that I was going to have you on my program to talk about your own conversion well listen let me tell you I'm working on us but people say to me a hello father pray for me I said we'll pray for me for my conversion ha ha ha they start laughing why are they laugh I got I've been working out like the version talk about your lazy adulterer if you would it is interesting I knew that I was going to be a priest when I was 7 years old I remember the day and the hour and it had to do with someone whose name unfortunately has become associated with attacks on the church and even pornography and that's Walt Disney those days Walt Disney's movies when Walt was alive was a good man a good Catholic in those days his films were moral films the good guys did good and the bad guys did bad and I want to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on a first run with my dad and you remember there's a wicked witch in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs she's very convincing and very convincing and I was scared to death and my second grade teacher was a wonderful nun sister Teresa Maria the soul of kindness and every day after school she would leave the convent and go down to a nearby poor Street West Side street and she go into a tenement she always had a box or a tray out of which came steamed on a cold day so I went there it was a barbershop on the first floor and in those days all barbers were Italian this was Giuseppe's and I can still see myself getting up into the chair that little chair the kids sit on and saying what does the sister do who comes here every day Giuseppe said she's a taker of a old lady I said but she's a very sick I said where does she live on top of floor so I went around the back and I went up to fire escape and I got to the top floor pulled over the milk box got up and there was the witch right there looking at me three inches away I jumped off the fire but the milk box ran down the fire escape ran up the street into the church to the altar of the Blessed Mother I can see the blue candles flickering and I'm praying there and I said I wonder why the witch doesn't kill sister Teresa maybe it's because she's kinder and if people were kind into witches maybe they wouldn't be so bad and something said a priest be a priest wasn't a voice I don't want to be a priest I want to be a fire but I gotta be a priest and I came out I looked at the priests house which was a bit full boding walking you know I gotta live in that house I never said a word but in the third grade my next sister cystic on salata gave me a holy card and she wrote on the back all raw Prohm a sister con salata my father said why did she write in Latin pray for me I said I don't know he said ask her but she said because you're going to be a priest and I've never thought all those years of being anything else and when I was 13 years old I read the beautiful poem by Longfellow called the legend beautiful about a monk who's having a vision of Christ and his cell and while he's praying the bell rings to feed the poor and he doesn't know what to do should he go or should he stay should he slight this visit a celestial for a crowd of ragged bestial beggars at the convent gate and so he gets up and he leaves the vision works for hours with the poor comes back and the vision is standing there and Christ says to him if you had stayed I must have fled and that made up my mind that I would be a monk or a friar of an order that worked with the poor and that's what I did when I was 17 I joined the Capetian and I wind at a marvelous time and then officiate monastery was the venerable servant of God for the Solano served massive ahem many time well so I got to know some saints talk if you would about the second conversion I know a lot of Catholics watch the show and they're inspired by converts but they sometimes wonder whether they've ever had a conversion or themselves you know they well I think all Christians need a second conversion sometimes some evangelical Christians say you know I'm I've been converted that's it that's it I've been saved we all need to be converted and that message is in the gospel no place does Christ ever say sit back on your laurels you've been saved you've been converted he constantly is calling the apostles like Peter and the other Saint Paul never says never says that I'm there I don't have to press on you know that I having preached to others could be lost myself so the second conversion is after a person has given up all deliberate sin serious sin and even small sin of you can use that expression they're working to get over the egotism the selfishness the pride the ambition the self-importance the resentments the unkindness that we all have and I don't know whether there's a second conversion ever gets finished I'm a disciple not only of st. Paul but of san agustin and he need he thought we stayed on it till till the end of all lives there's a verse I'd like you to reflect on it's not an easy verse but I think it seems to express what many Catholics might feel and not just Catholics but those who've lost children and and siblings from the faith and it's that verse in Hebrews you know where in Hebrews 6 where it talks about it's impossible and I'm going to quote I'll read that we talked to because I know a lot of people think that way and what was he trying to say to us about first of all the reality the possibility of people turning away it's in chapter 6 verse 4 for it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened who have tasted the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come if they then commit apostasy since they crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold them up to contempt well the way he describes that person that's not simply a convert that's not simply someone who has accepted Christ he is describing someone who has been at it very seriously for a long period of time that has made real progress does a lot of people who would consider themselves good Christians who don't quite fit that a beautiful example of st. Paul I mean as a missile to the Hebrews that description and I tried to take this up in a new book I'm writing on the spiritual life the last stage of the spiritual journey it's called the unitive way and it fits that description I wonder myself if a person in the unitive way is incredible to say this is a person in union with God that they were going to quit the people that I know that get lost along the way were never anywhere near that they were struggling as we all do with mediocrity look at st. Peter and the other apostles they denied Christ but they came back see so there are lots of examples the twelve of the eleven of the Apostles or at least 10 of them are examples of people who were close to Christ knew him in the most intimate way who failed him I don't know who you're talking about and yet they came back so I wouldn't give up praying for anyone st. Teresa of Avila the great mystic used to shock people by telling them that she prayed for the salvation of Judas Iscariot how could you pray for Judas Iscariot he betrayed Christ and Saint Teresa who had been a worldly nun said so did I and I hope that I will be saved so I think we should never give up on anybody and there are in church history interesting examples does a comma light was condemned to be imprisoned in the underground dungeons for practicing black magic can you imagine talk about apostasy the black art codes with the devil and this man was down there in that dungeon and he returned to God was excommunicated but he returned to God and crowds the people used to go down to talk to him and see him and you know they finally the word got out and they they freed him but he wouldn't come up he said I found God in this cell and he stayed there and continued to do his preaching from that horrible that is the most extreme case I know you've written many books on conversion one that I have in my have in my room here is a healing the original wound yes and it's a wonderful book on on the process of conversion you also have spiritual journeys I think was very alas it was your past just exactly right which is more of a psychological perspective on that given your understanding conversion let's say you're talking to non Catholics out there helping them understand the Catholic perspective of the journey of faith of salvation what would you say to that huh how to help them understand the Catholic view of salvation well let's say first of all conversion is a moral thing you have to convert your heart to God and a great many very good non-catholic Christians are converted to God they're deeply and sincerely believers tomorrow I'm going to be speaking at a Southern Baptist Seminary and I'm sure I will be talking to many very real disciples of Christ the conversion into the Catholic Church from another Christian denomination is also an intellectual conversion it's learning things about the very early church and recognizing that the early church is the church that is the Catholic Church today that's more of an intellectual thing you take Cardinal Newman was a saintly man already it was a very good Christian as an Anglican and I think that probably for many people probably yourself the door to coming into full communion with the Church of Christ has been to realize that many of the things said about the Catholic faith are distortions they're untruth Scott Hahn speaks about that he had read this book Roman Catholicism when he finally studied it was a different thing the lot of misconceptions and then secondly to understand the early church the very early Fathers of the Church st. Ignatius of Antioch was by one man the successor of Peter as Bishop of Antioch I mean you're back to the time of the Apostles and I heard a distinguished Protestant theologian Robert McAfee Brown say many years ago the more that we look at the early church the more the signs point to Rome what's the great obstacle it's the bad example of Catholics Catholics have not done a good job of being the true church when st. Francis DeSales died he was Bishop of Geneva Switzerland after the Reformation he never got to Geneva and he was very holy man in his book the introduction to the devout life was read by Protestants everywhere even though he was a Catholic bishop and when Francis DeSales died the Protestant people said of all the Catholics will like Francis DeSales there would be any process Protestantism represents a failure of Catholics but not a failure of Catholicism and you know we hope we open our heart to God none of us would be anything but hopeless agnostics or atheists without the grace of God none of us I remember seeing a picture I think it was a painting of st. Francis before the Pope when he was there to receive his approval and the the way the painter had to showed the differences between so Fez is about well the Great Wide is outside presses but st. Catherine of Siena doctor of the church died when she was 32 years old al a woman and a reformer an apostle a laborers and the Pope's were living under the French Kings in Avignon and France and Catherine of Siena wrote two of them letters to get back to Rome they did they promptly died so when Catherine showed up at Avignon the Pope was happy to see her and she came in she made the proper courtesies and he said she said your holiness you stink and he's a young woman how do you know I stink you came here 400 miles away she said I could smell you in Italy and you know what two days later he left for Rome he wasn't going to mess around so you know like everything else the human side of the Catholic Church constantly needs reform and are three great popes of this time john xxiii john paul ii and pope benedict all are calling incessantly for the reform of the Catholic Church yeah well in we've got john xxiii bust here on the set and he has a book of his own his journeys of a soul he goes through his long struggles his self is about a second conversion this whole thing I saw and which led to his own call for renewal one of the areas of confusion between Protestants and Catholics is the place of works in our walk of faith talk about that if you well I think that one is a somewhat phony argument I think it's a semantic argument on st. Paul is writing about works he's walk waiting about the mixed Oz of the Jewish observance a mitzvah is a work of the law so if you grew up in a Catholic Jewish neighborhood like I did you hung around on certain days of the year because if they asked you to do something you get a nice tip because that was a day that Orthodox Jews had to do a mitzvah a good work and these book works call for by the law the observance of dietary laws the prayers and things like that and it was the belief of the people at these brought your salvation and indeed they were signs of faith and the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob but they didn't earn salvation so Saint Paul was militating against that but Saint James is the great antidote to all this you know show me your faith and I'll show you your works Jesus tells us I was hungry and you gave me to eat I was agree and you did not get me to eat with very different conclusions so living faith is what is necessary living faith and what the reformers were protesting about was a superstition in a very weak Catholicism of that time weakened by the Black Death which was the equivalent of an atomic war took one-third of the population of Europe one-half of the clergy two-thirds of the monks and nuns were wiped out the monks and nuns died in such great numbers because they cared to the die and it was in two years one-third of the people from Turkey to Iceland died that's an amazing that terrible that was the 14th century we forget was conceived just that it's probably also fair to say that of the priests that died was often the best the best to die the Franciscan they were the ones that were helping province of Paris founded by Saint Bonaventure was wiped out to the last man every friar was dead probably had a thousand men so it was a terrible calamity and the Middle Ages was falling apart and people who are unprepared and perhaps unworthy at times were in the clergy and there was a lot of superstition and cemani and the Catholics agreed Saint Catherine of Genoa ole a woman started the Reformation and 1490 talked about her st. Catherine of Genoa al a woman in Genoa ran the largest hospital in the world for poor people she deeply affected the Augustinian order and the Augustinian order had a branch like the order I belong to of the Franciscans a reformed branch and one of the members of that reformed branch was Martin Luther publish Talbots was disappear and they were working for the reform of the church people think that Luther got the idea reformed Catherine of Genoa many years before and you in my book on st. Catherine of Genoa I point out that she not only deeply affected both Luther and Calvin but she was the ideal of the American holiness movement in this country in the 19th century holiness unto the Lord and they published four lives of st. Catherine of Genoa before the Catholics it they didn't call her calf out of Genoa they called her Madame Adorno which was her lay name let's see whether we have some emails ready father let's see what they're going to pose for us here's one we've got a lot actually ready this comes from Kristen in Savannah Georgia dear Marcus and father my husband and I are trying to evangelize more to our non Catholic friends and want to make sure we are using the appropriate version of the Bible so to have the best information and versus what Catholic edition Bible do you recommend especially for evangelize well I would think the best one to evangelize meaning to bring the good news is a Bible if Protestants will accept and that's the standard revised version in the Catholic edition that's that's neutral ground and and the Catholic edition has the seven apocryphal or deuterocanonical books and as I'd use that all right another email this comes from Marc from Georgia Marcus and father Michele I've always wondered why quote when Jesus was on the cross he said quote let this cup pass from me and my God my God why have you forsaken me Jesus obviously knew why he was sent to earth so why does he say words the seemed as if he wants his purpose well he's actually said let this cup pass by at the Last Supper and the church used that those statements very in a very important decision and the very early ages almost all evangelical Protestants accept the teachings of the first six ecumenical councils on Christ that's what the councils were about the Trinity the Incarnation the virgin birth evangelical Protestants and the Protestant reformers never touched the first six councils I will say that they kind of ignored the Marian parts of those eight not originally okay not originally and the followers of the Reformers of so the Reformers never would have denied that Mary was Mother of God ever because they would have ended up as heretics which they didn't want to so the those first six councils and the six council through third Constantinople proclaimed that Christ had two wills a divine will and a human well the people who denied it were call monopolize and these two wills could not contradict each other but they could be in contrast so at the Last Supper not my will but you'll will be done this is the human side of Christ speaking and on the cross why have you forsaken me although that is in fact a quotation from the twenty first saw that's the way the song begins so our Lord Jesus Christ was truly a man he experienced things truly as a man and truly is a god do you understand that well no you don't understand nobody understand completely impossible to understand so would you point out a problem that's existed throughout history of the church and that is that often we find truths that are difficult to put together and maybe a character is characterization of it is that often as Catholics we seem to be much more comfortable with the both and whereas our Protestant brothers and sisters get caught up in the either-or yes it has been said to be a Catholic you've got to be able to chew gum and walk at the same time you have to live with one God in three persons with one Christ and two natures with human freedom and original sin we have a lot of things like that and those things are called mysteries and the mysteries of faith a mystery according to Albert Einstein who loved religious mystery particularly loved the Eucharist loved to talk about the Eucharist Albert Einstein said a mystery is a reality whose existence we can perceive but whose inner workings are beyond our comprehension and he said a person who does not look at the world with a sense of awe and Wonder might as well be dead that's Einstein so mystery is there a religious mystery is extremely important otherwise we are pretending to understand God all the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God how incomprehensible are his judgments how unsearchable his ways who has known the mind of the Lord and sadly many of those battles especially during the Reformation were about trying to define aspects of the mystery yes that are really beyond us the sad one was the Eucharist because the church comes from the Eucharist when Christ says to the apostles do this in memory of me that's the beginning of the church Pope Benedict has pointed this out beautifully in his most recent letter the sacrament of love that's the difference between the Catholic and Orthodox notions of the church which are very very similar and the Protestant notion of the church Protestant church is a collection of people who truly and honestly believe that Christ has become their personal Savior and they come together to pray to do good things to do missionary work and and and and that's why it's better to call it a church community where Catholics and Orthodox mean what Christ founded long ago this is my church why don't we take a break and we'll come back and a moment gotta number phone calls and emails for your father so back just a moment you welcome back to the journey home our guest tonight is father Benedict Rochelle the Franciscan friars of renewal got lots of emails before I go to the emails not like a question for you about the monastic life when I was a Protestant I did not understand the place of monastic life in in the church and the importance of the monastic life even the mystery of you have st. Terez being called the patron saint of missions yes well part of it goes to the very very early church where within the second century there were Christians going and living alone in the desert or in communities the first monks st. Pat coleus were ex GIS and the Roman army the Roman legions and they were 2nd 3rd century and they took christ as their model a life of poverty chastity and obedience and saint benedict was the great monk of the west really organized it and the monks of the west kept civilization going for six or seven hundred years during what are called somewhat murat mysteriously the dark ages and almost everybody here has profited in their life by many things that they owed to the monks including the preservation of the scriptures right yes because they were the only people good right and then the idea of total dedication and next to our Lord the most popular Christian among Christians and non-christians is st. Francis was a friar friars are monks who work in the midst of the world they're not solitary or in the wilderness and so there's dominican Carmelite Franciscan friars many different orders and branches and twigs my community is a twig and you know st. Francis put it very succinctly the rule in life of this order is the observance of the holy gospel so it gives you an opportunity to lead a life of total dedication I've been a monk a friar almost 60 years 55 7 years and I own nothing I have no finances of my own I've never paid taxes because I've never had an income a month on taxable and uncivil was probably a lot of people out there this week which is me working on well you if you don't have in it everything I ever earned has gone to the cause of the gospel and quite legally you know let's take this first caller Carol from Texas hello Carol what's your question tonight hi um I was just wondering hello we lost you here Carol hey yeah yeah what's your question um I'm just wondering what father feels like his prayer life how it's changed since his accident in what ways has that changed for him Thank You Carol well when I woke up in the hospital after three weeks and the young priest who saved my life by not letting the doctors give up is here in the audience tonight for the Lynch when I woke up I said to myself I couldn't move I this arm didn't move at all I couldn't speak I had a respirator couldn't eat have a drop of water for nine weeks I said at least I can pray so I started to say the Rosary and I said 15 rosaries a day at the Divine Mercy chaplet of this see something you can do and it helped me focus my mind and I would say if there's anything that has happened that I notice my prayer is more silent in some ways I feel like I actually sort of did die I got a second start you know they said I'd never live and I lived they said I'd never think and I think said I'd never walk and I walked they said I'd never dance but I never danced anyway so it didn't make any difference and and I have no fear of death I've been there and back I don't remember anything but I have a feeling to whatever God wants me to do I'll try to do when you get up in the morning and you feel the pain and you know you're going to be handicapped for the rest of the day it's a little depressing gotta take a deeper as I say well let's do with what we can do and I would say I could not wish now that the accident had not happened because many Grace's came from it and so many wonderful people of all religions and denominations sent me emails of their prayers including three Jehovah Witnesses so more Birds Buddha said those everybody's I'm I'm terribly grateful to them and I pray for all the people every day who prayed for me I know you could always speak of it but especially now you can certainly speak of that old theology offer it up right offer it up what else was there to do you know that's something the good nuns taught us oh we were kids things are going bad offer it up the great theology of redemptive suffering let's take this looks like somebody from your backyard John in the Bronx writes dear father Benedict or did Marcus what advice would you give to a man who is a homosexual and is having difficulty with celibacy is there a saint who can turn he can turn to for inspiration and help sincerely John in the Bronx well John is a very interesting question years ago Cardinal cook the saintly Archbishop of New York asked me all thirty years ago to try to get an organization going for Catholics homosexual orientation trying to lead a chaste life and I was too busy so I got father John who's been on EWTN wonderful wonderful priest 86 years old dragging himself all over the world with courage as a wonderful organization it's in is in the phone directory in New York and it's in many cities of very very fine Catholic people who are homosexually oriented while leading chase life and there are a number of evangelical protestant organizations part of a umbrella group called Exodus and I'll be at the courage conference this summer and I think that people do better when they stay together and support each other now is there a saint who struggle with homosexual ideas and attractions we don't know but I would feel certain that there is now there's something I have to say John that's important homosexuality was invented the end of the 19th century as a thing I am a homosexual people say it was never seen that way before it was seen as tendencies as a orientation that was off but not as a substance now Freud who was an atheist and a materialist and others of his time saw it as it was this thing and I don't agree with them at all person says to me I'm a homosexual I would say oh I thought you were a person I thought you're a person let's start with that and God made persons it's a cross it's a difficulty I anyone who struggles with this deserves our encouragement if they fail people fail in other ways heterosexuals fail all over the place look at the mess the media is it you know sin is by no means confined to the gay scene and unfortunately in this country and it is corrupt culture anti culture people are seen only as sexual objects would you say then that one of the key problems here not just with this particular view of homosexuality as well as aberrant heterosexuality is a poor formation of conscience absolutely or no formation of gotchas or an anti formation of conscience which I blame the media for I see the greatest danger to the United States from the media which come to us together as a reptile you know it's not even a wild beast and with apologies to iguanas and the the media entices young people media stations directed directly at young people with constant sexual excitement and often homosexual orientation and I want to tell you folks we just passed the last step down because I am told that on the college campuses now bisexuality is the big thing the homosexuals are being left as Puritans in the background and people are having boyfriends and girlfriends at the same time this means that they experience a terrible lack of identity and this may solve the whole problem you know why because it may bring this country to repentance if somebody told me in 50 years this country was very very religious very repentant and very puritanical I would not be surprised because remember the Wild West is the Bible Belt you know all those guys going out there with the loans that are the charge on a recorder with a Bible Belt with it where that Wild West was so we may be heading to a gigantic religious conversion one of my views of that is that god there's two great Commandments right love Lord your God with your heart mind soul and strength and your neighbor as yourself and God would not call us to do something that we couldn't do by grace and we all have a desire within us to love God but people who aren't formed right go off after other kinds of God we all have within us a desire to love one another it's in their men two men woman a woman but our conscience are so poorly formed that we don't understand that drive and so what ends up is that that we end up saying that that attraction is wrong as opposed to helping us understand what it really meant so we end up with it's a distortion of reality masculine friendship friendship between men Narus is the beginning of the world but it is distorted by this intrusion of libidinous sexuality into it so in the old days in psychology if you had any friendships with people of the same sex you were homosexual it's insane I have to say doctor we have a whole new psychology now the site positive psychology or the psychology of virtue started in the University of Pennsylvania dr. Beck dr. Seligman and others they're saying that mental health comes from virtue the practice of virtue and they identify virtues as core qualities with that are identified by moral philosophers and religious figures as good and their list is Plato Aristotle the Old Testament the New Testament confucius san agustin and st. thomas aquinas which sounds like sounds our schools ought to be forming conscience --is yes going to these I mean as we are basically saying they're finally getting around University of Pennsylvania's do Bennet's and a lot of gavotte yharnam is this take this emails comes from Brian in New York dear Marcus and father Michelle father go show I often wonder why some people have faith and even among people of faith there seems to be different levels of faith does Christ call people to different levels of faith and conversion or is a response from the person's heart I would appreciate your insight as a psychologist in a priest my guess is it is a bit of both that a person can receive a beautiful beginnings of a gift of faith the seeds of faith and they may not care for them as Christ says the parable of the sower some of the seeds fall among the briars and on the rock another person may not receive much of a gift of faith but they may respond to it very well and this is why we have hope for the salvation of those who are not Christians you know other sheep I have that are not of this fold them also must I bring and there will be one fold and one Shepherd and it says in John that when our Lord speaks of being lifted up for the salvation of the world John 11 or 12 if I be lifted up I will draw all things to myself he said these words indicating the kind of death he was to die in order to bring together the scattered children of God so I have great hope and each person has to respond to the gift that they've been given and I'm busy worrying about myself the email Phil from Louisville father Marcus since God's will is done what is the purpose of Prayer can prayer really change the course of things well we know from the parables that our Lord is very clear that we should pray to change the course of things the parable of the important neighbor the parable of the unjust judge and the widow who's driving him crazy ask and you shall receive so our Lord tells us to ask the divine will is utterly mysterious to us when people think that say okay I accept the Divine Will do you think they know what they're talking about God has no past he has no future st. Agustin says to God through your today pass all tomorrow's and become all yesterday's but to you neither tomorrow nor yesterday have any meaning for all things simply are so you can get yourself entangled in great troubles like positive predestination and things like that trying to understand how we have some freedom but God knows all things it's better sometimes to leave it alone because human pride will lead us to try to understand God what about what's your words of encouragement to very sincere people who want to do the will of God but you can't seem to figure it out for their own life we all find ourselves in that position and I say stop pray and listen people don't listen when they pray says in Scripture be still and know that I am God stop and pray and we're afraid to do that because we're afraid we might hear something we don't want to hear and if it seems suddenly that we ought to do something that we don't want to do that very well may be the will of God 20 years ago I was praying about the situation and religious life and I was very very displeased by the skepticism worldliness and worldly attitudes that had crept in because I knew Saints and religious life I knew father Saul honest and suddenly it seemed that we would just leave our beloved order and start a reform movement the lasting in the world I ever wanted to do and that made me suspicious that it might be what we were supposed to do and I had no assurance it was the right thing I thought maybe we'll fail and I knew what I would do I couldn't go back I would ask to be a priest in the deep south and ask for an african-american parish as I get along perfectly with african-american people I'd be too happy and the and it did work we have a hundred and thirty members the average age is 32 and if I dropped that it'll go down to 29 and it was supposed to be Gaza because we couldn't do it the other day that's a profession of our young brothers I said to father Andrew was the other old man I said you know it's a work of God we could not have done it when you wrote a wonderful book on that the reform of the renewal ten fifteen year late years later now 20 years one years later from that book on the reform of the renewal yes is what you said in that book still happening in the church different no I'm coming out with a new book of what we called reform now and because I think we have missed the boat very badly but the jp2 generation the young people from 18 to 35 not all of them but a representative group and you see them in the other denominations as well they're clamoring for something to get them out of this cesspool that American culture has fallen into let's take this email from Paul New York dear father G and Marcus was Judas predestined to betray Jesus and if the answer is no than if he didn't betray him how would the eastern message have turned out getting easy questions for today again you're into that mysterious area of the Divine Will and there are places where it sounds like he was predestined in those places that sound where he was free surely he had some freedom and he certainly once he did it had the freedom to repent and but the church has never said that he is lost the church is canonized thousands of people and said that they were Saints but they've never canonized a sinner and said he was in hell let's take our next email or Maura Kaiser writes good evening I truly enjoy your show Marcus heartfelt thanks for your work father Benedict can you talk a moment about what your recommendations are for someone who is looking for spiritual direction where and how should one begin well years ago when there were lots of priests do a lots of spiritual directors around and occasionally religious sisters or even lay people are trained as spiritual directors that's not as unusual as you think but people need training and there aren't very many places to train people and we have one in New York or Center the spiritual development but that's rare and so I think most people realistically have to get group spiritual direction from reading and from what we're doing right now all my books are meant to be spiritual direction I know right any book that's not meant to be spiritual direction I never give a talk or program that's not meant to be spiritual direction to help somebody else on their journey to God I had no interest in doing other things and you can get a lot of spiritual direction by just listening I wanted again all of your books that I've read I've really appreciated your wonderful little synopsis of Augustine oh yeah wonderful good book but also the book I think I mentioned early in a program healing the original wound I think is a wonderful synopsis of the journey that takes you from sin and helps you understand the place of Christ's Redemption it's a wonderful book I recommend any of you who are watching if you get one more email in quickly this comes from David from Arizona I asked my develop mother why she is not Catholic she said is because so much of Catholicism dress ritual and pop looks pharisaical how does one respond to this especially when the contrast between the poverty of Jesus st. Francis and in historic wealth of the church is so difficult to reconcile well first of all you ought to talk about the historic poverty of the church you know people think the Catholic Church has just gone on almost all the Catholic property in Europe was confiscated in the nineteenth century you see the great Cathedral stayin aboard in the Catholic Church Notre Dame in Paris those because they don't belong together aboard the French government the actually the Trinity Church in New York which is an Episcopal Church value of its property exceeds the value of the Vatican I did always have a wall street it used to be the parish feels that's what I'm told about a Trinity Church so now the Catholics used to go went to the pump I'm sorry to say and I have seen it become a heck of a lot less pompous in my years as an altar boy and I think if you swatch the Pope on television he is the servant of the servants of God this elderly man looking forward for a quiet retirement of writing books is there and he's totally and absolutely given to his apostille father I know you wouldn't say this but I want to remind the audience of your wonderful program on Sunday night 7:00 p.m. your live program make sure you tune in to that and before we close tonight could we have your blessing O Lord in your goodness and mercy bless us all bless everyone listening and their families and friends especially those who have weak faith on no fate send you a Holy Spirit upon us in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen goblets thank you very much father Benedict and I wanted this for all of us watching thank you for your constant witness to us and your model for us your writing and your speaking you're always an inspiration not just saying that I mean you really are we were all praying for you and we still do and thank you very much for your presence on our program encouragement thank you for joining us on the journey home I hope this work this program has been an encouragement to you god bless you before you being with you again next week you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 94,964

Rating: 4.8240471 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television, Benedict Groeschel (Organization Founder)

Id: aaPt8J0SFWo

Length: 56min 26sec (3386 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 02 2015