Guestsplaining 011: Fr. Mark-Mary Ames, CFR on Holiness

[Music] welcome to godsplaining contemplative preachers contemporary age each week join the dominican friars as they consider all things catholic hello and welcome back to god's planning i'm father gregory pine i am joining you from freeburg switzerland and i'm here with father jacob bertrand janczyk co-host howard thanks father jacob bertrand things are great i am in dc like always per usual sitting here uh gearing up for the year vocation stuff it's great humid hot sweaty i don't know if the ac hvac one of the great things about the house is this is nothing to do what we're talking about but i'm going to still complain to you one of the great things about the house of studies is that the hvac units hardly ever work so i'm like sitting in my office sweating dc summer it's beautiful it's great that's me nice and i'm sitting in three and a half feet of snow because that's how switzerland works um perfect [Laughter] also father jacob merchant should be applauded so if you have the opportunity while listening to this episode please applaud because i messed up the internet three times before starting this episode correctly so he has been long suffering and so has another person who is also joining us who is father mark mary ames a franciscan friar of the renewal father mark mary it's pleasure to have you on our show hey guys it's great to be with you and uh go out got the internet worked out as as am i now father mark mary i'm sure many many of our listeners uh know you and have heard the things that you do with ascension presents uh and are very grateful for it so that's awesome thank you but for our listeners who don't know you would you just maybe introduce yourself and who you are where you're from what you do sure yeah i'm a member of the franciscan friars of the renewal uh often known as the cfrs i live out in harlem new york and i live with our new men like our passions so one of our formation houses and then i work within the communications world so i'm the director of communications for the friars originally out from from southern california but been on the northeast more or less for the last 12 years boom now father mark mary you recently wrote a book would you describe for us what it is what it's about and why all of us need 18 copies i was thinking 20 copies but we'll start with 18 and we can work our way up um so i did i did write a book with ascension press called habits for holiness ascension named it essentially named it i wouldn't you know dare put myself as the the master of holiness but there we have it um so here's like for the thing for me where it came from is i think a lot of folks especially you know like parents kind of look at the world and can be really tempted towards discouragement like is should basically should we all just give up is there any chance of me or is there any chance of my family or my children actually being disciples of jesus christ in the midst of this crazy world and uh so so the book it pulls from the tradition of or the sort of the testimony of the cfrs of our of my own community which uh is a reformed community that began in 1987 uh in the south bronx at a time when our neighborhood was known as fort apache just because of like the drugs and the gangs and the crime and all that sort of stuff like this this is the place that um the holy spirit that like decided and inspired uh kind of planted these eight men beginning this new franciscan order and so and so i think like i i like that example and i like beginning with the ford apache analogy or the the image because i think a lot of folks look at the world and it feels like kind of feels like one big four apache one big war zone um but through through the prayer through the fraternity through kind of living liturgically through simplicity through work with the poor through evangelization essentially through discipleship um these initial friars were able to actually grow in holiness in the midst of this environment and i so so the book takes some of these principles some of these practices and uh kind of explains them but also proposes them as a kind of a template for all disciples all christians as a way to to really to follow the lord and grow in holiness no matter what your your environment your context all right in christian conversations there are a lot of words that we use we don't always define them sometimes it's good to take a moment to do so so we're talking about holiness what is holiness i feel like that's an answer for father jacob bertrand no hey just about it just look at me and that that is it is thank you father that's so kind it's really great yeah um because that is that's like if it's like to find something i'm like hey you guys should listen to god split in [Laughter] they know they know words they know where it's good um i mean for for me at least like i think when i'm thinking of like holiness uh it's like allowing the life of god to to be to live within the soul right and to grow within the soul and to grow in this relationship with the lord jesus and conformity um to him first and foremost so that's that's that's kind of so so that's kind of what i'm thinking big picture but but for for the reader for the audience it's just like hey like it's just it's just growing in discipleship and following jesus and um and growing a real intimacy and relationship with the lord so can i ask you to define another term but it is your term or well maybe it was fostered upon you because it's in the title so you said you didn't you know ascension chose the title so fine but um habits for holiness the word habits we talk a lot about habits and virtues and those sort of things and it's kind of like i guess dominican thing to talk about when we have nothing else to talk about with former habit do something like that but why i guess um in in like i guess chatting with other catholics especially like young catholics college age catholics um one of the things that i constantly find myself returning to is encouraging them to like persevere and habit forming whether that's just like you know regular prayer whether it's like going to the sacraments regularly these kind of things i don't i guess if you could talk about what habits mean in the context of your book with uh with respect to like growth and holiness um i guess define explain draw us into that a little bit sure yeah great and and i do think the word like habits is very much on people's radar in general um at the time of of my own book coming out like one of the the top sellers on amazon was uh atomic habits um so it's like you know this this is a thing like people i think desire to grow in different areas of their lives and are struggling with it and want some help and some guidance on it just essentially developing these virtues or these habits like these these rightly ordered practices at the service of um in sort of taking the whole world in context serving some goal right and for us for me the use of the word habits and its application in this book it's it's really understanding i think the the human dimension which is at the service of kind of like like it we're following the lord jesus as as human beings and for human beings for uh for growing and virtue and growing in right and right action like we do need to develop these habits and so so one of the understandings of what what my hope was to essentially to to propose and to lay out some strategy which is at the service of the sincerity of people of god um because i know myself personally as as both penitent and confessor like how often do we come across people who who really sincerely desire to to grow in virtue or to leave vice behind and they keep coming back and they have all the sincerity in the world but oftentimes the reason they don't have the the the conversion and the change that they desire is actually it's a strategy question um either they're they're going about it all alone or they're not kind of beginning with the most practical steps so so for me i guess the use of the word habit is it's kind of using right reason good judgment to develop a strategy at the service of the sincerity that so many god's people have in their desire to to grow deeper in their relationship with the lord boom all right so theoretical question so informed by your book but not directly pertinent to say somebody comes to you for spiritual direction or they you know they hear you give a talk and they're like that was great i live in the same city as you is it possible to see you for spiritual direction you say let's go for it um so that person comes and they say my life is a hot mess and i have no regular practices of anything you know god worthy in my life where do i go what would you say are the are the practices on which one ought to focus or where are you going to direct this person are there particular things that you start with are the particular things that you build to where where do you kind of see this playing out yeah great question and and i'll do my best to treat it in in its sense of course as as you guys know um really the specifics of each person is so important that like the the right next best app for each person it's it is a little bit hard to do generally for the sake of this conversation there's really two things maybe i'll call it three things which i really am trying to encourage people to to put into practice um number one is some sort of game plan some sort of vision some sort of like intentional approach to to one's life and i do think that this is is good humanity and i think this is good spirituality as well and if you look at any athlete any sort of person of great sort of success in pretty much any field they're all going to have some sort of plan right um so i do think having some sort of intentional approach to life is probably a good step the the first step i'm gonna really encourage people to is like is hey can we get some prayer time in can we can you schedule in some time uh where you're really gonna be trying each day to prayer to pray and depending on the person's situation it could be five minutes it could be ten minutes we could be going for for twenty something like that but but not just right like i'm gonna try and pray more but okay like when when are you gonna be praying and what are you gonna be doing to just get a specific as possible and then really i i really really really have kind of grown a conviction that uh discipleship it's it's a team sport like um you know it's the the sheep that's kind of off on its own is the one that gets picked off like we really are meant to be making this journey with others and i know myself living religious life my own personal grow like following the lord is is when brothers are with me when other people are in my life like i do so much better than when i'm just left to my own sort of discipline and conviction and so some sort of plan primacy with prayer prayer and then like praying for and pursuing some people to make the journey with yeah one of the um i think i guess examples or not examples one of the things that uh often seems to be an issue in like habit forming in particular is actually forming the habits you know not just saying things like like you were saying this sort of sincerity thing yeah people want to be with the lord but it's a matter of making that transition over to doing things so as to um yeah to make to put yourself in a position in a place where our lord can continue to work on you and draw you in it's like something there is like just literally putting on your calendar like when you're going to pray for us as religious we kind of we have this luxury that like our community does it and we do it with our community but you also have to form community um whether that's you know right in front of you or not so to help build those habits so i guess thinking you mentioned drawing like themes or ideas from your life as a cfr to sort of transfer over i guess transfer over make make real for other people what are i guess what are some uh concrete examples of what you've taken from your life as a cfr and kind of offered as like a tool to form some habit yeah sure um and and to kind of to clarify is i do think that this is something that we're doing and i'm speaking from it from from a franciscan point of view or perspective but really a lot of this this isn't original to us or or or just our own sort of thing right like the dominicans to be doing this uh pretty much christians across the board are going to be doing this um one one of the other things that like really popped for me which i am encouraging people to is you know during this time of this this kind of the whole pandemic season like one of the the big jokes was like i have no idea what day it is like where i am whatever there was there was like a lack of any sort of orientation in in people's lives and because of our prayer life and because of the auraria because of the liturgy and because of some of our practices like that just never that never was a thing for me um and and what i appreciate about that are kind of the value that kind of was brought to the surface which isn't just for religious is is allowing the liturgy and allowing the seasons and the movements of the church um to influence and to speak into your life and and why i think that's so important particularly for like a family context is it just um it like right like the if we leave a vacuum that vacuum's going to be filled and and our meaning and our purpose and our direction and sort of what we celebrate and how we live it's going to be it's going to be sort of guided by secular space but if we can have the gospel and have the church guiding that it's going to it's going to keep us rooted in the deepest truths and mysteries and realities and so for example like a really basic one like i don't want to get crazy on it but it is i think it's a good example is like even for our own kind of uh reflection is like is friday for you like tgif or is friday for you the day that you remember like first and foremost the lord's passion right like it's friday the day in which we we take a little space to meditate upon and and really receive again and sit before the mystery of of this this crazy love that the lord had for us in saving us or is it like okay sweet like end of the week let's party you know and and at the service of keeping us rooted is this little practice like a penitential practice for friday like this is just one way in which we can live liturgically allow i think the values of the church to sink into the real stuff of our life and to keep us rooted in the deepest truths and realities friday nights at the dominican national studies is off so 5 30 p.m is office of readings and vespers six to seven you eat dinner with your 65 closest friends seven to eight you have a holy hour eight to nine usually have a chapter talk from your formator and then from you know like nine till your body breaks down uh you chat with friends in the common room um so it's like you're it's it's 5 27 and you're walking in the chapel and you're thinking yeah the next five hours of my life are structured for me by the lord jesus and my legitimate superiors which is a little bit of a devastating recognition but it also uh it also solves a lot of problems for you insofar as you never have to make plans on friday night yeah all right well we're going to take a quick break and at the end of which we will return to this theme of plan for life instructure so grateful to have father mark mary on the show uh for more stick with us to the second half cheers you are listening to godsplaining visit us at godsplaining.org to listen to our episodes shop our store and donate to our podcast all gifts go to improving the podcast and bringing the gospel to more listeners thanks for your support all right and we're back so thanks so much for listening to this episode of god spending we're here with father mark mary ames from the franciscan friars of the renewal talking a little bit about habits for holiness based on a recent book of father mark mary's so specifically then on this point of having a plan for life i'm wondering okay so you want some structure but it seems like people also want to be spontaneous do you think that structure and spontaneity are intention do you think that you have to give something up in order to embrace this type of structure in your life i don't know you have some thoughts on that yeah the catechism says it i think well speaking about prayer specifically that you're not going to pray all the time if you don't pray at some particular times and i think that's a good i think that's a good like kind of general principle as approach to sort of generally following the lord and the relation between spontaneity and structure is um right like you can't just for we'll use prayer the prayer life you can't just be like okay i'm just gonna pray spontaneously like whenever i want like okay like that's that's good and we do want times where we're just kind of spontaneously praying praying and it's informal and it's very relation relational and that and that and and the like but i just think if we understand like our humanity like if we're not all so structured if we're not actually like scheduling some time to prayer to pray the reality is that with the busyness of life and all of the distractions and all etc we're going to have a lot more days that go by without any prayer at all than than not but if we if we structure it particularly for the beginning of the day like we're going to get that base we're going to get that conversation going and then hopefully that kind of trickles and overflows into our day into spontaneous prayer and you know um i'm i'm i kind of like sports whatever like you know if you look at to using the analogy of like like a a football player football players are going to have very structured drills that they do over and over and over again and then the game happens right and like it's it's the structured sort of practice and discipline which is at the service of kind of hitting life in the spontaneity and the capacity to react as life comes at you and i do think that that's generally true for the spiritual life that you want to have like you want to have family dinner for example be just some time like you're together but also you want to have times throughout the day where you're also sort of checking in on each other so i think it comes we don't want to we don't want to pit them against each other but but see their complementarity one of the things in just listening to you talk um about like the balance spontaneity structure that kind of thing you um you talk about doing things in a group or together i guess where how important do you think um maybe not how important but like how how how would you recommend kind of building a sense of community of togetherness whether it's on a small scale larger scale because i think one of the things that often um you know one of like the stumbling blocks here for people is that they you know they might have a great community at college and then leave school and they're kind of on their own or they might not have the greatest community at college you know but how do you what are some recommendations for building a sense of community and support in in this path to holiness yeah and i i realized that like when i when i do give talks on this subject that for a lot of people the topic of of community is one of the hardest ones to wrestle with primarily because they just don't really know what it looks like or they don't have it they desire it but it doesn't seem to be in their in their world they're sort of easily accessible so so i do kind of want to just reverence that um that difficulty for many of the listeners uh okay so so probably how do we get up to it i think number one is is understanding it and understanding it's its role in the christian life um and valuing it i just i do think just like hey we really are made to make this journey together i think that's that's probably part one um and then part two is is praying about it i had this is this is one of my like my favorite stories is i didn't real i didn't know about it until like five years later but it's a buddy of mine he was playing baseball at some college and he he was like really struggling with um kind of following the lord and all of his buddies were kind of like just living a different life and he was back home in southern california and we're hanging out and he's just talking about he didn't know whether or not he should go back uh to the university just because he just didn't know if he could have the community and i was like yeah well hey let's just just pray for it you know just see what like ask the lord to send people to to to the school and so we got back and the very first mass was the very first day that focused missionaries were there and so he just like saw this like it's such an answer to his prayer like he saw the folks missionaries connected with them he just he became a focused missionary just married a for focused missionary but it was just like he was open to it and he prayed for it and the lord really like delivered and provided so i do think praying about it um so valuing it praying for it and then intentionally pursuing it like um is probably that those together are gonna serve serve one well yeah i had a philosophy professor in college who talked about the role of a friend is coaxing the good out of the other or one of the roles of a friend obviously we do we perform many things for each other in love in religious life we have this this tradition of fraternal correction that when you see a thing that's keeping someone else from growing in holiness that you would help them address it um maybe based on your experience of that uh with the franciscan friars uh how does that translate for those you know those listeners who are trying to to do to do better in that regard or to be more courageous or to be more generous and their friendships yeah it would be interesting because i imagine that you know the dominican the cfr culture will probably like have different approaches to this it may be it'd be similar but probably a little bit different be interesting to hear sort of the differences i do think that um when i come across this mostly though it is um with sort of young zealous folks who are kind of fear driven where they they see somebody doing something like off and they feel like okay i have to i have to go and address this right now and it has to get fixed right away and if i don't like i like his guilt becomes mine and there is right there is a christian mandate towards correcting the center and all that sort of stuff but we do want to take into i think account like the real situation and have some wisdom because i think fraternal correction it is like uh like pruning a rose bush where it's you know it is necessary it does have to happen for the bush to flourish but if you do it wrong you can just you can kill the whole thing like so you can kill the relationship you can um you can really actually turn somebody off from the church or the gospel like i just remember is like again my own example of like an 18 or 19 year old telling like somebody hey you need to go to confession hey you know like whatever you can't do that you got to go to confession and he didn't go to confession you know i mean um so that didn't work uh versus being in college and just later on after my conversion and really kind of following the lord and doing things like going to confession regularly and one of my roommates who wasn't really practicing it seeing that it was like oh you're going to confession oh i yeah i should probably go too and he went for the first time in a number of years so so there is i think we want to take into account the real situation um we do want to make sure it's coming from a place of actual genuine concern for the other and not primarily like i want to have a i want to appease my own conscience um we want to pray into it and um yeah i think an example right that i look at is um is jesus invitation to uh the rich young man as as like a real model a fraternal correction is where you look upon them and love them and then invite them somewhere higher um so those are those are some initial unorganized thoughts yeah they sound like they overlap similarly with with what we would say about fraternal correction now executing that who know that's a whole another yeah a whole nother ballgame that usually goes poorly and yeah you know you live you learn so what can you do um yeah great one of um i guess another i don't know looking at like i guess this is the uh this sort of like you can always claim the world is going to hell in a handbasket so looking at the world around us and like yeah there's a lot of frustrations in the world there's a lot of frustrations in the church there's a lot of frustrations with trying to live in the church and the world um but there is i guess when you see somebody that is pursuing christ there's often this this i don't know kind of magnetism this kind of joy that radiates and i think people are after that but i'm quickly learned that it can't be fabricated you can't just force yourself to be happy or joyful or sort of find this contentment in peace so um i think you know it is a fruit of pursuing christ joy and happiness but um i guess specifically on joy like what what is um what do you what do you have to say about people like wanting to find that joy of how how is it just kind of pursuing these habits is it doing something else is there kind of like the joy admixture that you have to add into forming habits where where does this sort of like contentment joy happiness kind of thing i guess come in yeah yeah good question father is right um joy ultimate joy christian joy the joy that can remain in the midst of all the trials and sufferings of the world right it's gonna be a fruit of the holy spirit and so again like these these habits alone aren't aren't the answer these habits are at the service of of allowing god to live his life more more authentically through us and the more that god himself is alive alive in us the more that we'll have authentic joy right um and so that that is like it is these these habits at the service of like intimacy receptivity and just kind of radical transformation um into the image and likeness of god so that that is what it is at the service of because life life's hard you know i mean life's really hard for a lot of people and so we don't want to we can't reduce joy to like this sort of unreasonable like optimism or or giddiness or or whatever uh levy toss in the midst of really like grave situations um but it but it's i think um it is the fruit of the holy spirit which which sees that we have a hope um which per doors even beyond death and a hope which um can bring that you know that the lord is responding uh to all things that are happening to bring about good for those who love him so so the more that we can really grow i think in in in allowing the lord to live his life through us growing in faith growing in this that of radical uh virtue of hope i think that the fruit of that will be will be authentic joy so maybe just thinking in terms of the goal or in terms of the end if people are you know motivated to form habits uh which will promote their growth and holiness um how does that i mean to speak somewhat crassly how does that cash out um you know you read a lot of these kind of popular spirituality books and they promise a lot like do these things and you'll be happy and uh i'm not saying that i'm wildly unhappy but i'm i'm not saying also that those things will have delivered by the time i finish them uh because life remains like you said difficult so we don't want to over promise or we don't want to make it sound as if the gospel is just i don't know the key to flippancy so so if i form habits for holiness what can i hope for like what's the object of my hope or what's the goal towards which i'm striving sure i'm gonna i'm gonna give a two-part answer to that um one kind of is more of like what's the hope of if you will habits for holiness then kind of a different a different kind of broader broader response to it right for for me like habits for holiness what i'm what i'm trying to do is this it's like okay you want to be the next st teresa of avila or john of the cross whatever sweet if you're gonna be this great mystic you're you have to pray and and if but but if you don't have like a plan for your prayer like you're not gonna pray and so it's like step one to becoming john of the cross is like can you please just schedule some time for prayer particularly if we can get some time in the morning right because it's like we re we read about the saints we read about john paul the great we read about mother teresa or saint teres saint faustina whatever it is he's like okay sweet i love that they all had they all had structured lives of prayer like can we we're i don't want you to you don't need to be john paul ii tomorrow but can you pray like five minutes in the morning can you can we do that like that's that's what happens for holiness really it's like getting at something that basic um okay so to have a different answer um you know i do i do think that maybe what i don't want to get too edgy here i don't know but like um i don't know if happiness is totally like what we need to be pursuing so much insofar as we do live in a fallen world that we refer to as the valley of tears right and um i look at i look at the beatitudes right like this this um blessed are the poor and spirit blessed etc it's like i don't think the lord promises happiness on this side of eternity but he does promise us blessedness um which is again the life of god alive within us um and being deeply rooted in the promise of the father that no matter what life is giving us that he is with us and that he's bringing about good in it um so i do think that like there's gonna be variety of different stages of happiness and joy and whatnot but it's still expectation management it's still a spawn a fallen world um but we are promised i believe um blessedness and the eternal blessedness the eternal happiness of um you know being with and seeing god as he is i think gk chesterton wrote something to the effect of happiness can't so much be pursued as it can ensue i think sometimes when we get caught up with searching for happiness it slips through our fingers because you know it's it's just like that right whereas when we pursue something meaningful when we pursue something real then we often find that happiness comes in its wake which is a great gift but we've got the whole of our lives to uh to see that through and then some all right um father mark marys thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us it's been a delight um and it's been yeah just a real joy to hear about the book especially if you have uh maybe a final thought or ways that people can find the book ways that people can access other things that you do with the friars and with ascension would you just give us a word about that sure yeah so it's ascensionpress.com forward slash holiness is where you can get the book um no pressure no competition they could also join us in uh the friars podcast poco poco podcast um i only know i only said knowing that i was just uh recently recommending god's planning to a potential dominican down in lafayette the other day or laughing yet but uh yeah i'm really really grateful for you guys and um really grateful for what you're doing here i know i tuned in regularly especially the way that you're treating some of um the modern things that are happening some of the current events in the church i really appreciate you guys as a a wise and authentic voice and sons of the church and all that so thanks guys hey thank you cheers um all right well thanks so much listeners for having tuned in uh we appreciate you and we appreciate your efforts at liking sharing and getting the word out thanks especially too to those who donate on patreon who have made a lot of this possible and made a lot of this better um so other things coming up are more guest blending episodes you'll be able to see them now every two weeks more live splitting episodes again every two weeks so look for those on mondays and fridays respectively and you're in our prayers please pray for us and we'll catch you next time on god splitting thanks for listening to god's planning a work of the dominican friars of the province of saint joseph follow us on facebook twitter and instagram leave a review on your podcast app and visit us at godsplaining.org [Music]

Channel: Godsplaining Podcast

Views: 900

Rating: 4.9591837 out of 5

Keywords: catholic, dominican friars, theology, philosophy, religion, faith, order of preachers, godsplaining, seekers, Truth, preaching, questions, searching, prayer, meditation, #habits, #success, Fr. Gregory Pine, Fr. Mark-Mary, CFR, vocations, OPeast

Id: AzXp_RdpOeA

Length: 32min 9sec (1929 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 20 2021