How to be the Spiritual Leader of Your Family w/ Dr. Scott Hahn | Pints with Aquinas Episode #206

today and welcome to pints with Aquinas my goodness gracious do I have an amazing show for you today I spoke with dr. Scott Hahn for about an hour and 40 minutes or thereabout honestly I think this is the most vulnerable interview I've seen him do what a good man and just a lot to share we talked about being as why fathers are the priests of their household how we ought to develop a prayer rule in our homes and with our families how sometimes we can have this idealistic view of how prayer ought to look and that sometimes gets in the way my goodness we talked about so much we talked about how husbands are the head of the family's head of their wives what that means we even every started getting super thela I had to write it down we get super theological we talk about the kind of platonic versus the sort of epicurean views of the body the Christian view of the body even gotten to cremation it's like waking up from a night on the drink like what if we do why did you have that lampshade on your head okay no I was drinking too much and nor am i advocating that you ought to but we just spoke about a lot of stuff and I think you are gonna find this absolutely fast and I think you guys know who dr. Hahn is he's the father Michael scale and professor of biblical theology in the New Evangelization Italy evangelization at the Franciscan University of Steubenville where he's taught since 1990 he's got like 8 billion books out he's a former Presbyterian minister he entered the Catholic Church in 1986 you get it you get it he's fantastic okay hey do you guys know that I created a course to help you overcome photography if you are a man who struggles with pornography or lust in any way I want to tell you right now to go to strive 21 calm this is a 21 day detox from porn course that I created which would put a lot of money into it's very highly produced and it'll help you break free from porn so if you've been struggling with porn you're finally ready to bloody do something about it please check out strive 21 calm each day you get like a five-minute video from me and I guide you sort of sequentially throughout the 21 days we have over 14,000 men in the course at this point who are going through it it's in Spanish as well so you're not this is not just an isolated experience that you have with your laptop this is a community that you're entering into and here are two really cool things number one it's 100% free you don't have to put in your credit card there's no ask for money none of that that's nice right and then secondly you can be as anonymous as you want anonymous as you want if you're not really sure go to strive 21 com strive to one Kampf liquor of use and read what some of the men have been saying like here's just one ready as we began the program I realized that I had a mindset that pornography was an ease a way to ease my stress it was in these times where I felt helpless that I wanted to escape and I'd hit a pornography but as we move through this program and as we progress through Lent you must have done this during Lent I have become increasingly able to fall on God and said and through the prayers through and through prayers in those difficult times he has can you tell that I need glasses it's honestly I'm trying not to read them but use them he has ease my pain and bright and brought me fulfillment okay so people are just saying a lot of great things about this you can go there right now strive 21 com strive to earn a wander come check it out it's really awesome and also hit that subscribe button before you do anything else hit subscribe hit the bell button and that way YouTube will be forced to let you know every time we put out a new show sound good that'd be great you really helped us out too if you liked it leave a like if you loved it subscribe and leave a comment I always love reading the comments here on YouTube I hope you have a good day and hope you can enjoy this interview with dr. Scott Hahn [Music] g'day dr. Han welcome to plants with Aquinas it's good to see you Matt and it's good to hear that you're in good health too you were praying for just really a heavy burden to go through that kind of illness no matter what results of those tests you add I still think there might have been a false negative but yeah we'll see I kind of hope so it seems to me that we're all probably end up getting this at some point anyway but some kind person suggested to EWTN that they share on their Facebook page and that post goodness gracious that got more shares than I have followers it was quite it was so it was quite scary it was lovely the nephron was praying for us we certainly weren't feeling well my wife was admitted to hospital for oxygen problems and things so it was certainly no picnic but where do if you're gonna have something go viral let it be that in the prayers yes ironically how are you doing with with all of this I mean yeah I mean we're doing well in the Han household Steubenville seems to be doing well enough we have we've had a few cases I haven't heard of any deaths Kimberly is on City Council's so I suppose that news would trickle down but in our in our own home it's really been special for the last seven weeks or so I might have told you this but we have to swell we have five sons and one daughter and 19 grandkids but two sons are in the seminars studying for the priesthood for the Diocese of Steubenville Jeremiah and Joseph and of course their semester was cut short they had to come back at the beginning of March and so they've been doing their courses online at Sacred Heart and Detroit but they've been leading us in in prayer we've never done the bravery before as a family I've done I've prayed the office a little bit they of course pray it every day Kimberly had never really done it and so morning or midday afternoon or evening prayer and in addition we get to see the livestream masses and it just really been I mean a strange time for sure but a strangely blessed time for us as a family I were certainly not the Holy Family but I must admit that this has raised us to a whole new level of unity and you know as they were preparing to come back at the beginning of March I told them I just read an article on frat tree Archy in the Old Testament and how prominent brothers are it's not just the father leading things and so I said now that you've all come of age you know I'm going to defer to you to lead us in prayer so instead of just simply imposing the family Rosary upon my youngsters find the most appropriate way to lead us spiritually and Kimberly and I have been so doubly blessed by Jer who was supposed to be ordained of the transitional diaconate like three weeks ago that's been postponed we're not certainly we're not certain when that will happen but Jeremiah and Joseph have just been stepping up their game with us and our 20 year old son David who's back from the University is junior year and yeah we're all busy doing our various things but we all have certain time set aside when we gather for prayer and holy water and just all kinds we sing much more music song piano guitar rock Apollo and all of that so yeah I must I I'm sorry for all of the the tragic and the horrible thing cause it feels like a little mini year of Jubilee I mean it's only been yeah six or seven weeks but a sabbatical time of grace for the Hawn household at least and for did we need it I wonder if that's one of the goods that's coming out of this whole thing that fathers in particular hopefully are beginning to find their role as the priests of the family and are beginning to lead more intentionally their families in prayer definitely you know and even in Scripture you have the model of the royal priest you know where the king is not just a separate office like it was in the tribe of Judah in the house of David and you had the arenites the Levite there really is a sense in which Christ was brought back together both kingship and priesthood so that if the father has a royal responsibility it's primarily discharged through priestly sacrifice and prayer and that's a lesson I I'm still learning for sure I mean after 40 years of marriage you'd think I would have had that down but I feel more like Israel after 40 years I'm finally kind of entering into the Promised Land Kimbrel and I are enjoying fellowship and friendship and fun like I never even knew a married couple could but we still have a long way to go that's for sure for those who may be a little perplexed about that idea of the father being the priest of the household how a Catholics to understand that well I mean you step back and you look at the Old Testament and see that the new doesn't abolish it it fulfills it and in the Old Testament you have this foundational period called the patriarchal period where the patriarchs like Abraham Issac and joy and in Jacob and Joseph to built altars and they offered sacrifice and they pronounced blessings and they prayed and they did things that later on are reserved exclusively for the tribe of Levi and the house of Aaron after the golden calf in Exodus 32 where you have a kind of division of the royal power and the priestly service but you know in as much as Christ is the image of the Father the firstborn I'm especially in love with the book of Hebrews where you have the royal priesthood reunited in Christ who's a priest after the order of Melchizedek the first person to be called priest in the in the Bible was also the king of Salem later renamed Jerusalem and so there is you know grace is healing nature the new testament is fulfilling the old and so instead of just having one particular tribal caste called levi given priestly duties through baptism we really enter into that but through holy matrimony the spouses really enter into that and in a unique way just as jesus is the image of the father so all of us as men in our homes are called to image the father and not just in a kind of nominal static way on the image of the father no image means imaging imitating and so this is what Christ does and most especially not only as he rises to be the king but as he ascends to be the royal high priest so that leadership is sacrifice and sacrifice is service I have not come to be served but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many as a kind of model for all Christians but especially Christian father and so the natural family is supernaturally graced not only through Baptism and Confirmation but also through holy matrimony so that you can see that back in the Old Testament the patriarchal family was also matriarchal and frat tree are chol you know it wasn't a kind of monastic rule and that's what I think God wants to restore ultimately our true family is not human but divine it's not on earth but in heaven but the grace of the Father Son and Holy Spirit I think is meant to transform us into well what Vatican 2 calls the ecclesia doméstica the domestic church that the the Christian family is not strictly natural it already participates in supernatural life and so it is the living cell all of these families about the living cells of the church the local parish is a family of families the diocese too and so fathers have got to step up I mean for too long we have just kind of been relegating religion - well that's a woman's thing you know and no it's not if our faith originates in the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit granted the Holy Spirit overshadows the Blessed Virgin Mary so that the greatest human person who ever existed is appropriately the woman of the Apocalypse you know yeah and I could go on I haven't been in the classroom for like seven years oh I gotta warn you I'm free oh that's fantastic well speaking very practically for a moment when it comes to father's leading their families in prayer I I'm of the opinion that I often say to parents when they're talking about leading their families in prayer that they might have to lower the expectations they have as far as how prayer ought to look with kids I remember after I got married we had a few kids you know you just have this kind of vague idea of how Scott and Kimberly Hahn probably pray with their kids they're all levitating or something meanwhile I'm trying to not strangle my children with the Rosary we're praying and I'm not sure that I make this work and for me it took a while to realize that it's it's kind of more important to do this as a family I want my children to enjoy this time of Prayer don't want to be so strict I don't impose how I think family prayer ought to look upon them such that they end up not wanting to pray at all what would your advice be in that regard well I mean all I can really advise is sort of the lessons that I learned over the years of parenting or six kids and most of those lessons quite frankly were learned but all of the mistakes that I made and all the times that I didn't listen to Kimberly but I you know what we did because we homeschooled was to gather as a family for morning prayer and to this day we still do the morning offering the act of consecration together whenever we can and then we we would also then read the at least the gospel for the day that would be read on the mass scribe and then we would also pick up on the Saint for the day we had different books over the years where we would learn about them we also wanted to cultivate something of a mission mindedness in our kids and so we had a an evangelical protestant book called operation of world which goes through our like almost 200 countries that you can pray for each day and you can read about the spiritual condition of the people I think it's gone through three or four editions I would still encourage people to use it I remember we were praying for Burundi when the the massacres occurred in Rwanda as well it was God's providence that we were hearing in the news about the tens of thousands of lives that were lost and to find out that so many of them were Catholics just intensified the prayers of our own kids yeah you know and then we would we always did this we would start by doing we would end by doing extemporaneous prayer it is this still your morning prayer yeah I mean well actually sounds pretty intense yeah it would last about 20 hours or more like 20 minutes okay we would we would do it's temporary Nia's prayer beginning with the youngest and we would encourage or coach but we wouldn't feed him lines and it would often be like you know two and a half broken sentences you know giving thanks or whatever and then we would end with the oldest with mom and then dad and I would gather them in what we call the Holy Family huddle and just say the blessing over them and in the morning like I would do in the evening like I did I was a yoga fall what would one or two so I'm trying to think if people want to kind of implement this is this something you would do say before breakfast did you tell the kids we all do this before we eat so that you stayed true to it or had a good work that was one of my mistakes yes I did stipulate that Kimberly shook her head I didn't realize how right she was and so we had a lot of hangry you know kids and parents yeah you know so we ended up doing it after breakfast when when the flesh was subdued a little bit and so we have it you know but I would say one size doesn't fit all right you know if you can get three minutes that's better than nothing yes and if you can stretch it into four after a month or so or if you start off with ten and you've overdone it learn from your mistake and go back to five minutes you know whatever the traffic will bear you know that's it it's it's doors a couple it's it's more important to be to do this habitually than to have a burst of enthusiasm so we're gonna pray you know three mysteries of the rosary in the morning slip it and only you only last for a couple of days but don't overdo it yeah and I would say also if if you do it for a few days and then for whatever reasons or excuses you miss it for a few days don't give in to feeling defeat you know just pick yourself back up again because we did end up you know whether it was vacation or when I was gone or Kimsey was busy you know we might go a few days without it or we might do it for two days skip a day and then do it for three or whatever but I mean it's just one of those things where you make the resolution and you know there were times where I almost strangled my kids with the rosary you know that makes me it makes me glad to hear I probably shouldn't be glad about that but I'm glad you're human and I should also mention too that I imposed the family rosary for a while in Kimberley you know shook her head and she said dinner decade we so we did an after dinner decade Scott had another number one John Paul called for the year of the Rosary Kimberly kind of initiated what why don't we at least try it as a family and the kids that come of age where it was mostly a positive experience I mean for me the rosary is like my favorite and yes so the kids it's not even in the top ten you know that's because nobody ever imposed it on me now this is this is so terrific it's so important I think that we all be real about this because we can have these idealized views of Prayer and I think sometimes our temperaments come into play here too I tend to be of a melancholic disposition so I'm very idealistic I want prayer to look a certain way to feel a certain way but I think we've got to get over some of that and it's more important to be loving and consistent you mentioned praying with your wife what's that like how and how have you grown in that since you got married yeah I mean prayer with her is so natural we don't have a time that's stipulated on the schedule we usually pray at night we also pray together as a family and know when the kids are gone we often go through the Magnificat together and that sort of thing I would also say that a lesson I learned from Kimberly not only for us as a couple but for us as a family and that is you've got to play with your kids as much as you pray with them or more you know and so tells you my word yeah the importance of throwing a frisbee or a football or a baseball I mean since I have five sons and one daughter you know she never really learned to play catch like they boys have you know but ever since I was a little boy my I had a cannon for an arm and so I try to train up my boys with the football and the baseball and the frisbee but also you know cards I must admit but my my five boys have ended up the three youngest especially they've ended up being gangsters in a way I never was I mean they just loved to play games with each other and draw me in Kimberlin I played moods with them like three nights ago and we had a blast what's the game called it's called moods you can look it up and get in and then play it and it's especially good for us melancholic so I'm at and we'll shine the Hampshire like I tend to do too they play risk and they also buy love in this day and age where so many children are kind of taken in by their screens and isolated from one another I love when kids get into board games because it's just a little excuse to sit across from each other and to enjoy each other for 20 minutes to an hour or more yeah oh my kids will do it for yeah hours sometimes hours a week let me think there was another you know movies also I didn't grow up in a time or a culture where movies were so central obviously by the 80s and 90s when our kids came were born came of age you know suddenly you know movies were much more dominant from Star Wars on but I was in college when the first episode of Star Wars came out and so III I'm the caboose in our family when it comes to you know movie fluency but Joe is so capable of spouting lines that he inadvertently memorized by the hundreds and it's you know it adds a lot to the humor of the dinner table conversation one last thing - this is something we inherited from Kimberly's family never does a dinner go by where we don't eventually end up going around the table and sharing good things my wife is responsible for that now household - yeah and now what's your favorite thing from today one of the three best things that happened yeah it's usually two or three things and you know so far none of us have ever levitated and so we still have a long way to go I yeah I'd like to say I go to confession the weekly everything I became a Catholic enough Kimberly has never suggested that I go too frequently that's good yeah your wife my wife met your wife and my wife immediately was taken by her and my wife tends to be very she is the textbook choleric it's like if we were in a plane and the plane was going down she would push her way to the to the front like let me figure this out I've got to get out of the way and she probably would make it work she's incredible like that and so it's not often that she meets a woman and immediately just wants to sit at her feet and learn but when she encountered Kimberly that was the experience you had and the way you talk of Kimberly that's how I talk about my wife as well if my wife has a hunch about something or if she says we should do something the times I haven't listened they've backfired right you know it took me almost a decade to learn that and in the process I was becoming Catholic and she wasn't she wouldn't and when she did I thought well it's gonna be hunky-dory she'll you know fall in line and follow me and it didn't work that way when we moved to Steubenville we had this really dark wall-to-wall Italian Italian carpeting that was newly put in by the previous owners that we were assured would last there years but it made our our house seem cavernous but I didn't care it would last 30 years and so when she got the idea that we would brighten the home and get other carpeting and rip this one out you know I went ballistic you know and I'm like we can't afford that you know yeah and then I realized I can't afford not to listen to her and I remember the day when I said to her something that seemed like a revelation you know Kimberly I have never gone wrong trust in you and I've never done right distrust in you even when I could prove you were wrong that just made me more wrong and she looked at me and she's like we're on the same team you me figure that out I'm like yeah and why I've never looked back I still have to learn by making mistakes but that was one of the biggest life lessons I ever learned and it was a source of joy back then and still is I think a lot of men you know they they understand that the Scriptures say that the father is supposed to be the head of the household and this this is a true statement right a true the Scriptures teach and and and yet so on one hand we experience how men are portrayed in the media maybe is overbearing or tyrannical and then on the other hand you've got this feminism movement that says no men and women are basically interchangeable how would you suggest that a man take responsibility for his household be the head of the household the priest of the household while at the same time having that humility that you're talking about because I I would imagine one of the reasons that prevented me and maybe prevented you from listening to our wives is visit there's an authority that I ought to have in the household and that my wife even wants me to have even if he's right more than more than I am Wow okay so three thoughts has popped into my mind the you know the preliminary thought before the other three you know is my own pride my own insecurity that makes it so hard for me to lead in a way that is natural for them to follow and so I remember years ago hearing a phrase I forget who used it it might been one of the the narramore brothers Clyde or Bruce who were evangelical Christian psychologist but the phrase was non-anxious leadership oh that's good and I remember when I heard that I I latched onto it to thinking okay even takes me 10 years to attain that that's my goal because leadership came naturally for me because of pride as a man you know but anxious leadership is like the worst of both worlds because when you try to lead anxiously everybody just feels your angst and they don't want to follow you because everything everybody's on edge and so you know if I get to the moment when I'm not anxious well it's easy to fall back into the easy-chair and just not want to lead at that point so it's a combination of non-anxious leadership it seems to me that that is the essence of fatherhood and I saw it in my father law dr. Gerry Kirk was the exemplar oh my you know we used to compare him to like four or five people to Dick Van Dyke to Jimmy Stewart to Ronald Reagan and Fred MacMurray it was just unhittable yes and and he would lead non anxiously and I had learned from him I would also end up feeling crushed with anxiety because I was so unable to do it like he did it so naturally but over the years and through our friendship he just said I'm like strive to emulate the second thought that comes to my mind is from Ephesians 5 where we hear that Christ is the head of the church and so the man is the head of the home I think of pius xi and an encyclical that he wrote caste connealy back in 1930 unchristian marriages on the internet it's one of the most neglected classics of twentieth-century papal teaching it was in direct response to the Lambeth Convention as you might know which the the Anglican suggests justified contraception for the first time under you know extraordinary circumstances of course but you know that becomes a you know that little loophole becomes a something that trucks can drive through but in the response he's not just explaining why the church says it's wrong to you know practice contraception but he explains this vision of marriage remember reading it before I became a Catholic and he draws from Ephesians 5 and points out how the man has promised in the order of authority as the head but then quoting san agustin he refers to the fact that if the man is the head of the home then the woman the heart of the home that if man has primacy in the order of authority the woman has primacy in the order of love and I'm like huh okay there are two orders that are not in competition nor are they separated from one another because authority is always meant to be not an end in itself but a means to an end and the end is obviously love and so if I wield my authority you know as the king it's to exalt her as the Queen because you know even if I think I'm usually right I might have the right answer but I hardly ever come out saying it at the right in the right way at the right time you know but she always translates my knowledge into wisdom because she knows the kids she knows their heart she knows their strengths and weaknesses so I learned that when I take my authority as the head and I defer to her as the heart she's always capable of not only translating what I'm trying to say which is also able to kind of function as a prophetess and say I think this is what you mean you know and in my pride in my insecurities I know I'm like that's not what I said you know and all of that so again hundreds of times where I make the mistake you begin to really catch on and develop a habit the third and final thought that I have comes from a friend of mine who works with me at the Franciscan University and here at the st. Paul Center dr. John Bergsma a brilliant biblical scholar perhaps the greatest Catholic biblical scholar of this next generation I'm convinced and he's given a talk on a number of occasions in fact he's working on a book right now dealing with marriage that living out the sacrament of matrimony and the way he illustrates this principle of male headship and the woman is the heart is by pointing out how a man is meant to lead a woman in dancing ballroom dancing or whatever classical dancing you might think of because he's clearly the one who is meant to lead but she is the one he intends to showcase so it's not his beauty it's not a narcissist kind of leadership he is leading her so that everyone can see her grace you know and her dignity and charm and you know and so if a man understands that he has headship and authority it's basically to kind of showcase her and so I've also learned this with my own kids when we're not dancing but we're in the kitchen or whatever the more I show respect and honor to her the more my kids just bask in it you know the more affection and respect and good humor the more I defer to her in matters that aren't necessarily you know moral or immoral I just feel as though it just contributes immeasurably exponentially to the harmony and let me just rewind for a moment to put things in a realist tone because yeah we moved here in 90 before I learned that lesson you know I think people were sort of surprised at our neighborhood at and how strained our marriage was visibly the joint house-trained aimed okay you know it was there were a lot of stress lines fault lines because I had become a Catholic an 86 she didn't become one until 90 and I wasn't sure she ever would then when she did I thought well you know happy days are here again but I mean I think our neighbors would have given our marriage about a 50/50 chance you know especially in the summertime what the windows were open I've got a set of pipes you know and I I don't always play happy tunes I had to learn the hard way you know and and now I would say it's the grace of the sacrament it's God's fault that we're so blessed it's her fault as well you know and I'm just again the caboose that is learning mostly by mistakes that I make but I think that's true for a lot of men especially in our culture where you know masculinity is reduced to toxic masculinity or it's a kind of absenteeism that is just easier to kind of avoid any confrontation which means really avoid any direct engagement as husband or father I guys want to say a quick thanks to our second sponsor not strive we did that earlier hello h-e-l-l-o w this is a catholic meditation app to help you find peace and grow in your spiritual journey how offers are permanently free of come on free version of there which includes content that's updated every day as well as a paid subscription option with premium content but by using the promo code Matt Fred one-word you can try it all of the sessions in the app for a full month totally for free take advantage of this special offer visit Hallowed app slash Matt Fred will put a link below and create your account online before downloading the app this is a very slick app and it's a hundred percent Catholic if you're wanting to grow in your prayer life you've been having trouble concentrating while you pray you can't go past hello please check it out h al L o WF / Matt Frank right come on I know how to use this bloody thing ok it's time to get back to my discussion with dr. Scott Hahn or it's a kind of absenteeism that is just easier to kind of avoid any confrontation which means really avoid any direct engagement as husband or father which again is a result of this anxiety I find that when I lose my cool with my wife with my kids it is for that very reason it's because I'm not confident in my ability to lead that I lead with a sort of anxiety that this might not go well and all look stupid or you might not listen to me because who am i that you would listen to me anyway and then far be it for us to speak for women but I it's funny cuz my wife is much more than natural leader than I am as I've already stated and and yet there's a desire that she has that I would lead the family which i think is very interesting that I've never met a stronger woman than my wife but she wants me to lead us in prayer which I like to do thankfully but right I think there's a lot of women out there like that you know when they want their husband to lead they're not saying I want you to kind of dominate or be tyrannic or anything like this but there there is a desire to be led in a submissive way but I don't mean submissive in a pejorative way which i think is how we often use that term today that's right nowa submissive doesn't mean obsequious in fact you know it's like the the Roman centurion I'm a man under authority that doesn't take away his power that's the source of his power and I'd like to think that what I want to do is to release Kimberly you know I had first suggested that she go into City Council now she is a kind of spiritual matriarch in our little city of Steubenville you know and likewise we move down the street you know to have five and a half six acres and she has just transformed this unwalkable backyard that was nothing but then spoilage I've been there it's absolutely beautiful I mean it's like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon it's Ohio and I mean and you recognize that authority is ordered to love and so headship has ordered the heart ship and so you know the truth comes to the head that it has to get translated into the heart I can't ah but think that you know your bride likes my bride so much because who he'll it takes one to know one she is choleric also I am much more melancholic I would also say this too that not all men have been blessed like we are I don't know about your wife but my wife was raised in a home with a very strong relationship with her dad who affirmed her to the clouds and I mean the strength that a woman draws from an affirming father is I mean it is in estimable and you know it's also irreplaceable and so if a woman has felt torn down by her dad or alienated and estranged by his insecurities and stuff I mean it's almost impossible so I don't want to create a false sense you know for men out there or women but I do believe that grace picks up where nature leaves off and God provides us not only with what we need but he makes up for what we lack and that's what the sacrament is for you know matrimony is not a sacrament whereby we try to get God to do what we want he he empowers us to do what he wants and to discover how much better that is for us than whatever we want it and and so I think we have to tap into the sacrament and go to our Abba Father and say help me to be more like you help me to image you like Christ did by laying down his life and to take this from the realm of religious rhetoric and translate into even just one or two practical things that I can do in my domestic church I I point out in one of my books I forget which one you know how in the Eucharistic liturgy we all know our lines you know you know lift up your hearts we lift off to the Lord and all of that but in the domestic liturgy there are a number of lines that we as men I think have to learn like not only I love you but I don't deserve you oh that's good oh yes dear yes dear or you know I am sorry and not I'm sorry that you misunderstood me yet again those full apologies that we weaponize but I'm sorry I hurt you even though I didn't mean to you know this time it doesn't diminish the pain and so please forgive me or how about a date or tell me about your day or thank you for dinner thank you for cleaning up and I'll be glad to is one of the harder lines for me in the domestic liturgy I had big larger that's bet I think I've heard you say that in the talks at some point but I it really struck me like from now on whatever your wife asks you anything just say I'd be glad to and it really does hurt sometimes it's like I am NOT glad to but you're my wife and I love you and so I wish to serve you soon that you know that since I'm glad to yeah it doesn't diminish anything in us that matters and perhaps our ego you know but as persons we are made in the image and likeness of God and that's especially true in our marriage and family life as well yeah this so we've talked a lot about being idealistic you know when it comes to our prayer life maybe our marriage maybe our you know things like this and when we don't see the ideal and we don't meet the ideal whether that be through daily prayer or our marriage or our family it is very easy to become disheartened no doubt many married people whose marriages might look great from the outside think to themselves gosh what if I had a married someone else would have things been better what if what if I didn't have this child who I find sort of difficult and these sorts of things and I imagine we have people listening right now whose husbands aren't the the leader of the household in a way that they should be well they're dealing with some sort of difficulty and maybe they're looking at you scarred and me and I think it what's easy for you it does sound like you guys have some of this down but for me it's it's chaos and I mean what's your kind of suggestion to people so that they don't lose heart in all of this you know if any person is idealizing the relationship between Scott and Kimberly you know it's mostly her and then the rest is God or it's mostly God on the rest of her but I mean if if anybody had to spend a week with me they would you know as a woman they'd go back to their husband and just clutch him and hug him and thanked him profusely and just say bet if I'd taken you for granted I remember when I got engaged to Kimberly the chaplain at gross City College was kind of her own stand said oh yeah they deserve each other well I don't think so then I still don't think so now but I know what he was referring to and that was her intensity in mind people think I'm intense until they meet her I mean they're really it's okay she redefines that kind of energy you know I am intense but I can be neurotically negative she is had the logically positive and my wife too gosh yeah it's so funny there was a time nee-chan admit I've never said this to anybody in a public setting before so forgive me Lord but I remember we were in a Bible study shortly after we got engaged and we were discussing in this group how to discern and discover the will of God and you know I had a bunch of friends who were like you know who does God want me to marry you know what does what courses does God want me to take what parking spot in it drove me nuts because it just seemed to lack any any sect of a common sense and so yeah I made a really really foolish statement that I've paid for many times and I said you know when it comes to the will of God there are options there is freedom you know I suspect that there are 50 women out there in the world that I could probably marry and be happy with and the guy leading the Bible study dr. smarts looked at me and just try to give me this signal like Kimberly didn't believe me yeah take back those words before you take any more oxygen and you know and suddenly I realized I had put both feet into my mouth you know and Kimberly is playfully me reminded me in fact dr. sparks when I saw him last reminded me of that as well I mean it's taken me more than 40 years to realize there aren't five women in the world could have mer I mean one of us would have survived but the other no I think I backed into the will of God you know freely yeah but at the same time you realize that you know it's not like pick a card on the one hand it's not arbitrary but it is something whereby I think God as a father wants us to exercise our wisdom and our freedom you know I don't want to dictate to my six kids you know what they do you know so when it comes to pleasing a father I think exercising our freedom brings greater pleasure to God as a father precisely because we're not slaves and he's not our master and so I think we have to recognize in our relationship to God and each other that there is the freedom of love much more than our culture will ever ever catch along the lines of what you were just talking about there I do think though that this and you correct me if you think I'm wrong that this soulmate notion is more of a pagan notion that it is a Christian one I'm thinking of the symposium where Socrates talks about the two halves you know and maybe it wasn't Socrates but somebody in the discussion and and so we we have this kind of romanticized view of marriage that we're gonna find each other and then we're gonna click and everything's gonna be perfect and nobody finds themself in that situation and it can be easy to start questioning whether you've made the right decision and that's it's important to talk about these things because I think where a lot of people are embarrassed to talk about these things because that they wish they weren't feeling these sorts of things but they are so they need to be addressed Wow you just said something about a minute ago we don't find herself in that situation you know and I think what happens you're right I mean wow first of all you're right I mean this whole phenomenon of looking for a soul mate to me is like a counterfeit bill only it's a high denomination it's like a thousand dollar bill that you're looking for or winning the lottery and and when you don't find it at home you know it's easy to kind of find it somewhere else where you know a woman who doesn't have to really put up with you you know who respects you and so at work or someplace out in the world you know this to me is not only counterfeit it is toxic but it's nearly you versal and so you know I I remember our first year of marriage when I was at seminary and Kennedy was working down at Mount Auburn in Cambridge Massachusetts and she was coming back you know exhausted and I was coming back excited from all of my theological study and she would talk to me about work and then suddenly one day I think she mentioned that she had been reassigned to another part I'm like oh so you won't be working with so-and-so no like who reassigned you and she said well I actually I I put in my request I thought you were really enjoying that particular work and that that co-worker I was perhaps too much oh that's fantastic and fantastic that she so honest that you also want us to bail I know well beautiful and then suddenly I realized the next day that I was in a lecture hall sitting next to a female who wanted to do theological mission work what we call the theological education bikes theological education by extension T and Kimberly was like I'm not ever gonna be open to missionary work I want to be close to my family and so I would talk with I don't remember her name but I just remember you know like there was a connection there and the next day I was relocated on the opposite side of the lecture hall because I realized there was just a little too much sympathy you know did you relocate yourself yes yes I thought if she can't I must yes you know if this happened in our first semester of marriage I know I felt like the biggest jerk on the planet you know I was naive I must admit you know I didn't realize that when you get married you might actually find yourself falling trying to tell female and lost you know for another woman you know it's a lesson that unfortunate life had to learn again and again but I mean it's it's what's caused me to kind of come back not only to confession but also to Kimberly you know and admit to her that my heart is weak you know but you know you are God's gift you know it isn't just the sacrament of matrimony that I'm called to you know st. Josemaria once you know identify the sacrum for each and every male and female you know the sacrament that you are called to has a name and it's Kimberly you're not just called to marriage you were called to her and she is God's beloved daughter and he has entrusted her to you and you're not going to be judged primarily on the last day on the basis of how many books you wrote or talks you gave but how you loved my beloved daughter and stop making excuses for not loving her sacrificially 40 years into this I'm still learning sometimes the hard way this is this idea of soul mate we have finally backed ourselves into a kind of soulmate relationship that I didn't really think was realistic or possible but only after tens of thousands of apologies you know oh and all the rest it's all it takes but it takes all of that yeah this is so I'm so grateful to you Scott and I know there's gonna be so many people who are saying thank God people are being real you've been doing this for a long time you've written a gazillion books you've given a gazillion lectures have you found that over the years you've you've been able to kind of be more real I'm not saying that you weren't I just I'm just I imagined your yeah I mean you're you're quite a you're a household name it takes courage to be vulnerable like this because there's always somebody who wants to misinterpret what you're saying or to twist what you're saying I found that in my own life but I find that people they need to speak about honest things so they don't feel so alone and alienated and isolated and so that they can just like what you were saying I mean I've had experiences like that where I think the deepest desire a man has is to be respected and if you know he's being a jerk at home and he's not getting that respect and he finds it elsewhere it's incredibly attractive and right and unless we can say that out loud and if we don't name it we can't tame it that sort of thing and that's why I think this is this is yeah you know I um I can remember a turning point that occurred in my life in the 90s so much did I I just love stupid Vil I grew up in Pittsburgh a half hour away and we looked down on stupid or like can anything good come out of Nazareth you know but in the late 90s I got a call one evening from a guy who I knew by reputation his name was just Dion Dion DiMucci of Dion and the Belmonts you know Abraham Abraham Abraham Isaac and Jacob but it's Abraham Martin and John yeah so Bruce Springsteen I think was the one who gave you know the introduction when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but Dion called me out of the blue one night and was just an ex Catholic and evangelical and we ended up striking up a conversation the friendship and it's lasted these many years and and the he and Mike a Kalinin our best of buds and all of that but in the first few weeks of our friendship he would share with me the lessons he learned from a 12-step program that he not only has gone through but he is sponsored I suspect over a hundred people you know he said hey you know because here he is famous rock and roll artist calling me you know and he said if I didn't know me I might be impressed I'm like I'm gonna borrow that line for the rest of my life and he's like oh don't worry you know I'm not much Scott but I'm all I think about I'm like there okay you went to for two that's so humbling he's like you know you have no idea how humble I am I'm like okay I'm taking all three lines for my sake you know yeah so there is a Scott Hahn out there there's a persona and if I didn't know me I might be impressed yeah and you know and at the same time I'm not much but I'm all I think about and and when if people ever want to kind of figure out you know how can I become famous like you I think part of the answer has to be first by not wanting it because I didn't I didn't want to become famous the second thing is this though to admit that I don't like the fame but sometimes I don't like it for the wrong reasons you know there are parts of it that I like too much and there are other parts that I don't like because it calls for sacrifice on my part that I don't really feel like sacrificing to anybody else you know but I do think that in becoming Catholic you and I both know the difference between becoming a saint and becoming a celebrity and a celebrity doesn't facilitate sanctity it impedes it you know in if anybody knew that and taught it was st. Gregory the Great who's not only a saint and a doctor of the church but really the doctor of moral theology because you know he becomes Pope and and he just didn't want to have the kind of influence that God obviously one of him to wield but I think that's the attention that's the dynamism that's the balance and you never strike it in a sense of perfect equilibrium you know your kids keep you honest and yet at the same time your kids can end up being a little star-struck by you know being Scott and Kimberly's kid until we realize until we remind them you know I'm not much but I'm all I think about and then they quickly remember the dozens of times where we we convinced them quite easily that we're not Saints you know it's crazy it's it's crazy to think that one day there will be canonized saints who had Twitter feeds which we can look up it's almost like it's easier to idealize people like you know if Saint Anthony of Padua cause really we only know all the nice things he said we don't know about the time he may have lost it at someone or since I'm stupid and just tweeted something I then had to delete that because it was incredibly insensitive I wonder if that's going to kind of humanize or in a proper sense our view of Saints in the future cuz we do tend to I think at times have rosy colored lenses on when it comes to the Saints of the past you know I think that will be true I'm almost certain that it will be but it won't necessarily because of their Twitter feed it will be because they really relativize that kind of social medium I do think that most of us who are on you know Facebook or whatever other social media out there are going to end up in purgatory so if you're watching this 20 years or 50 years later please pray for us yeah yeah it's a trap okay well how many books have you written do you know I honestly don't I yeah somewhere between 40 and 50 closer to 50 I guess nowadays because I I just came out with a new one called hope to die the Christian I'm the same it's the publisher who comes up with it isn't at the title no no I came up with I did yeah I'm in my early 60s now so you just caught me at sea hope that the Christian meaning of death and the resurrection of the body and here is my newly birth book it just arrived last night isn't it's so lovely well give us a look at it because I don't have it I don't want to so sure the closest thing a guy will ever have to you know I made the mistake when I got a book back from tan I said I said to my wife I'm like this is almost better than having a baby and I didn't say that again that was a very bad say but but tell her tell us about this book why you wrote it and how apt the timing is given the coronavirus well you know I honestly didn't have anything to do with the timing obviously um God had a sense of timing in this book like I have never seen before I think back about two years when I was in DC with a good friend Ken bottle and he's the executive director for the st. Paul Center and we were attending this conference the authentic reformed conference and the bishops and all kinds of folks were there and on the way out after the banquet a couple guys stopped me and said would you be willing to consider coming to Manhattan and addressing a small group on the subject of cremation you know and everything in me was just like he got an extra don't laugh when I say no instead I hear these words coming out of my mouth like yeah I'd be very open to that and I'm thinking I only had one glass a half a glass of wine where did that come from and when I got to the air price said that Ken you know why didn't you stop me what was I thinking but I did have this sense that for whatever reason our Lord might want me to do that and it was months away so I kind of put it off and then I remember was on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe December 12th 2018 and just a few days beforehand terror struck him like I don't know what to do and so I went to our lady what would you have me say and you know in the next day or two some thoughts came together that really came they they came from outside of myself and so when I went to New York and I made this presentation it was intimidating it was a small group at a banquet table I didn't have a lectern and I am addressing chaplains I'm addressing priests and theologians and ethicists and I basically begin by saying look I don't want to open up a new front in the culture war you know contraception abortion the definition of marriage now cremation instead I want to propose that we look at how we care for the dead our own beloved dead and others including ourselves and to do it in relation to what Christ has done in assuming our bodies and you know assuming our human nature in experiencing suffering and death and resurrecting that body and promising to resurrect ours and so theologians have a technical term for in Latin its convenience eeeh it's an argument from fitting us and why because God didn't have to create the world and once he did you know he didn't have to plan for our Redemption and once we fell he didn't have to written once he decided to redeem us anyway he didn't have to become a human suffer and die so why does God do all of the things that he chooses to do it's not arbitrary it's not strictly in this by necessity it's a fitting us once you discover who God is from all eternity the Father Son and Holy Spirit you realize that the inner law of divine life is life-giving love and so who God is is revealed in what God does when the father sends the son to give us the spirit so theologians learned early on that none of this is necessary all of this is from the divine freedom of love so what we discover is that what God did was the most fitting it was so appropriate given who God is and this is the way we basically argue for the Trinity and the the hypostatic union of the two nature's in Christ and for whatever he does in his own Paschal mystery but when a sound immed unn is turning that around and applying it to the Christian life to the Christian moral principles and so we tend to kind of fall back upon the natural moral law or the Ten Commandments or whatever the church has authoritative lis dictated you know which is right and good but really not sufficient because so much of what Christ teaches about how to live in a certain sense is an echo of the mystery of how he lived you know that he exercises his divine supremacy by becoming a servant you know and not counting equality with God a thing to be grasped but instead empties himself becoming a servant obedient unto death even death on the cross you know not just obeying the 613 statutes of the Mosaic law but obeying the will of God even unto death on a cross therefore God has exalted him and given him the name above every name so that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow every tongue confess you know and we tend to think that what Christ did morally was to kind of obey this arbitrary standard imposed upon him by the Father and it's like our kids holding their breath as we go through a tunnel on our way to our vacation you know for thirty years he held his divine breath and endured this while he was concealing his divine identity his divine dignity when in fact what Paul is saying in Philippians two in the Christ hymn is that Christ wasn't concealing his divinity he was revealing it he wasn't you know he was he was revealing it and at the same time concealing it but what is supreme in God we tend to reduce to the fact that he's God were not so he can dominate and always win and have his way with us whereas that would make supremacy in God almost dependent upon dominating creatures what is supreme in God is what is supreme in God from all eternity apart from creation and what is that life-giving love the father doesn't lord it over the son he lavishes his life as a gift of love and that's what it means to eternally father the son that's why the son is co eternal he's not younger is smaller than the father because he is eternally begotten he's God from God light from light etc and so how do you manifest that in human history how do you manifest that in human nature that's the Incarnation that's the Paschal mystery and so it isn't God the Father simply rewarding Jesus for going above and beyond it really is God showing us that what is supreme in God is love more than power and a love that is life-giving not just warm fuzzy feelings and a life-giving love that isn't done giving just by healing and teaching and raising others from the dead but laying down his life so that death for Jesus for the first time in human history is not the loss of life it's the gift of life it is an act of love death is turned into a prayer the prayer is turned into a sacrifice that sacrifice becomes the liturgy of the New Covenant we call the Eucharist because on Holy Thursday he sets this love into motion by laying his life down before anybody can take it so he's not really losing his life on Friday if he laid it down on Thursday he's not the victim of Roman violence at Calvary he's the victim of divine love and so if the Eucharist transforms the execution into the supreme sacrifice and if Easter Sunday turns that sacrifice into the Blessed Sacrament that we all celebrate in the Holy Sacrifice of the mass what is the most fitting response to Jesus assuming mortal human nature in suffering and dying out of love rising raising that up and not just resuscitating his own corpse but through the power of the Holy Spirit making his sacred humanity not only divinized for himself but divin izing to us so that that humanity becomes communicable it becomes edible and that isn't something unforeseen that isn't Plan B the Eucharist is plan a it isn't just a farewell supper if if we're living the Paschal mystery and receiving Christ's body blood soul divinity if the Eucharist is the sacrament of his resurrection because the real presence is the body that is raised and ascended like okay how do we go out and live that well by keeping the 10 commandments by fulfilling the natural moral law well wait time out you know how do we live how do we suffer how do we die how do we treat the bodies of our loved ones and even those that nobody loves if Christ assumed mortal flesh for our sake he didn't get anything out of this whole proposition that didn't already have he was God to begin with so why go to all of the trouble if it's not to get something you were lacking it's too obviously impart to us all that we're lacking to share his glory with us and it's like okay then living the Christian life is reflecting the Paschal mystery and it's like the ten commandments it's the natural moral law on steroids I mean you take it to the next level and this is sort of like it's too good to be true unless it's the truth of the gospel and in a certain sense it seems to be you know it's not hard it's just humanly impossible I mean the only way you could possibly even approximate it is by a supernatural grace that you know it's like calling us to do something would make us prefer the 613 commandments that we find the law of Moses unless God gives us the power in the holy spirit to fulfill his life death and resurrection then suddenly okay if you're gonna command us to do this and at the same time empower us to do this this is exactly what Aquinas calls the new law in the Prima Secunda of the Summa you know by the time you get to the treatise on grace around question 106 you're like wait the new law isn't easier than the old law you don't look at the Beatitudes and the CERN the mountain say oh wow at least you don't have to keep the Ten Commandments I haven't come to abolish the law I've come to fulfill it you know and so suddenly the new law is requiring more of us but it's giving much much more to us and so it's like okay God deal oh you have just struck a bargain that you know the early church fathers love to speak of as this what comércio admirable a this admirable exchange this gate this I mean it's it's like too much good news but it's the tape it's the gospel this is a very different talk to what I would have given if somebody had have asked me to give a talk on cremation let's let's bring this back what does that have to do with cremation for slow people like myself yeah well I mean I I must admit I have given the talk to you in slow motion I I got through that in about fourteen minutes okay but a lot of them were trained theologians so they knew exactly what I meant by an from fitting this they also recognize that it's seldom applied to morality and to questions of you know moral dispute and so I I applied it to cremation and I I basically said you know that Christ didn't give us any Commandments about burying the dead he didn't have to because as a Jew you know you can see in the first six books of the Old Testament three of them end with Jacob and Joseph and Moses and Joshua giving explicit Commandments about or instructions about where I want to be buried and it's not because God can't resurrect the body if it happens that will have been buried in Egypt but it's because the patriarchs want to impart as fathers to their offspring a living faith that there is going to be a resurrection at the end of all of this and in the book of Tobit you see this and in second Maccabees 7 the the mother is telling her youngest child about before he's it going to be you know tortured to death you know and so if Christ is picking up where the Old Testament leaves off and the teachings of Christ are being you know assimilated by the early believers then no wonder the pagan practices of ancient Rome that usually involved cremation are just simply throwing a body in the courts over the wall of the city gradually it's transformed into animation this this form of burial that was there for the believers but even the unbelievers and apart from any explicit commandment coming from the lips of Christ you just look at the early Christians and realize okay they treat the sick and the dying the way Jesus did and it's sort of like the imitatio Christi but it's not just imitating Christ on our own power it's a participant Co Christi that were united to him were participating in his own life and so in the first three or four centuries the Roman Empire completely adopts this entire new set of burial practices like they ended up adopting the Hippocratic oath from medicine how did it how did it differ from their practices how did the Christians treat the dead in a way that was different well I mean you can see it in the case of the martyrs for example with the martyrdom of Polycarp you know in a 203 in the the Colosseum there the arena in Carthage perpetual and Felicity go to their martyrdom you know as expected mothers who have just given birth you know in prison they go with a joy their bodies are revered and this is true for per se Dee's and others you know and so it's like without any book being written without any papal encyclical being promulgated there is just this if this is what God has done for us in Christ this is what we got to do in a response to him for each other and so the respect the reverence that is shown to the body with the recognition that this body is going to be resurrected we're not just gonna get a new body you know Jesus says I make all things new not I make new things you know you're not gonna get a new body 2.0 you're gonna get your own body and it's gonna be transfigured so that it's going to be a resurrected body that is immeasurably more glorious it is so imperishable as Paul tells of the Corinthians in chapter 15 it is raised imperishable it is sown with corruption will be raised in corrupt but it's going to be you know like a seed that falls into the earth and dies and then bears this fruit and I mean if you're reciting the Creed and you get to the 11th article I believe in the resurrection of the body you know the word in the original Greek was not soma body it was Sark's flesh and Agustin admits that of all the articles this is the one that is met with the most in comprehension the most opposition because you've got to be kidding me God is going to resurrect the body this flesh yeah look at Christ and realize what difference this makes it's like it makes all the difference in the world and I mean it's like do the math even if it takes you know a year for all the dominoes to fall I think the early believers just almost by a supernatural instinct recognized that the most fitting response to what Christ has done and what he promises to do for us is for us to do that for one another to show that respect to regard the body as sacred to recognize that that life is sacred but there's life and then there is life there's life that's human there's life that is divine but they're not distinguished to separate because that divine life is united to us in water through baptism it is you know magnified through the Holy Eucharist and so this body of my mother's not only bore me you know but got baptized likewise Kimberly I mean we've just got to see bodies as more than disposable cartons more than boxes that contain great contents you know we're not we're not angels go ahead go ahead yeah I'm not sure if you looked into this or not but how how do you the way Christians treated the body after death how is that different to say the plate inist hsihu sort of didn't have the best view of the body or at least thought of it something like a you know a machine you know was that was that born out in how they treated the dead you know let's step back and look at things since this is pints with Aquinas in light of st. Thomas of teaching because you know what Plato didn't understand is what we have by revelation I mean you could have others for this by reason you know but reason after sin is weak so man is a peculiar creature st. Thomas Aquinas describes human nature as being a composite of contrary elements and what does he mean well the soul is a spiritual substance but that by nature is immortal unlike the the souls of vegetables plants or animals on the other hand the body is a physical substance that is made of matter and so it is naturally mortal so you have man but you know kind of between a betwixt we're like the Angels because we have the soul as a spiritual substance whereby we can know what is true we can contemplate the truth we can recognize through the will what is good and choose it and thereby enter into interpersonal relations of communion but we have bodies that have passions that have appetites that have emotions that have you know we're hungry were tired whatever and so there is this composite substance and the body is mortal it's even apart from sin a - points out that our bodies like animal bodies would have died until and unless God gave a sanctifying grace the preternatural result of which is that our bodies are rendered preternaturally immortal or immortal if we continue to live you know by faith hope and love then a body which is naturally mortal would somehow be raised to participate in something that is immortal well we never found out that that what that was like because our parents our first parents fell and so you know we have to look at that mystery as well but I think what we have is something so different than Plato Plato is wrong but for the right reasons he distinguishes the body from the soul but he is wrong because he sees the body as a kind of wealth there's a pun in the Greek the body is the semaa of the soma that is it's the prison of the BI so the soul is imprisoned in the body the word for body is soma the word for prison is sama and so the soul is liberated when the body dies and so you know the the soul can be you know the body shed like a snake multi out you know but that is wrong but at the same time it's wrong for the right reason because we're not materialists we're not at the Kurian we're not here mists we distinguish body and soul but not to separate or oppose we distinguish to unite because the the body is a part of human nature the lower part the soul is an essential part of human nature the higher part but we're not just souls trapped in bodies temporarily we're embodied Souls and the body is in a certain sense st. Thomas doesn't say this but I think we can adapt what he does say to say this the body in a sense is a sacrament of the person yeah because a sacrament not one of the seven sacraments but a sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible reality and so the body is a visible sign of the invisible reality of my soul of my very person who so when I'm moving my hands and moving my my vocal cords and speaking it isn't just my body acting physically it is my soul using the body to express what is on my heart and in my mind and you're getting it and so communion among humans is different than among angels and so what God does in making our nature thusly is also what God does in redeeming our nature thusly and I think we have to recognize that you know we don't worship matter like the pagans did you know as who was at the last of the father's mmm Oh a senior moment again but you know we we we worship the god of matter who has assumed matter and uses matter to redeem us not just spiritually but also physically and this is something that plainness and even Aristotelian couldn't imagine because even though Aristotle emphasizes matter in the physical body more in his own holomorphic formula and even though aquinas you know adapts that there is a sense in which if Aristotle heard Thomas is teaching about the Incarnation he'd scratch his head and say no way you know if he heard Thomas is teaching drawn from st. Paul about the resurrection of the body he'd say timeout you know you're not just kind of adapting Aristotelian terms and categories you're transubstantiated or you're subverting them you know and so the mystery of faith goes beyond reason but it doesn't go against it and it goes beyond matter but it never disposes of matter it really is a set of sacred mysteries you know that in some ways I think our opponents understand better than we do because you know apart from the grace of Revelation you know people rightly said how in the world do you believe that because it yeah at a natural level it's unbelievable not because it's absurd or contra kind of victory but it goes so far beyond the limited powers of reason never against but I mean I think if we recognized how precious these sacred mysteries are we would say thank God that we believed it isn't like oh how come these Catholics don't believe in the real presence 70 percent it's like how come the 30 percent do oh god get through to us you know maybe he can use us to get through to the 70 percent and everybody else as well this what you just said they reminded me of a quote that I love from Anthony esel and I quote him in my book on pornography he says we sense that the human body is a precious thing worthy of our reverence it is not a tool not an object of consumption like a steak or a keg of beer not an not an animate provider of pleasure it is the outward expression of a profound mystery that of another human being and and it reminded as we were kind of talking about you know Platonism or it's kind of Epicureanism if you if you swing one way or the other it seems to kind of give us license to do with our bodies what we want if if if I am if my body is not me then what I do with it doesn't affect me or if all I am is my body then I'm just an animal and whatever I do with it's okay anyway where is the Christian understanding really kind of elevates and shows the dignity of the of the body and once you start to get that you start to see why things like pornography is so abhorrent yeah that's right you know this mystery is planted very early in the the Bible and st. Thomas sees it in the span of just 10 verses there in Genesis 2 you have the mystery so in like an acorn that takes you know ages to become sort of the oak tree of the Catholic faith but in Genesis 2 verse 7 God breathed in the man's nostrils the breath of life and so man became a living being and the word for life is not by us which we share with the animals it's in the Greek Zooey it's life you know and so the first breath that man draws is not just oxygen like he shares with the animals it's the breath of God it's the Spirit of God so he has life that is natural human physical but he's also he has life that is divine eternal and supernatural so that when you read 10 verses later in Genesis 2:17 you can eat from all of the trees except this forbidden fruit the day you eat of it you will surely die it's a solemn pledge from God and so one chapter later they eat but they don't die physically so you're tempted to say well it must have been God issuing an idle threat or walking it back or whatever but no it's a solemn pledge the day you eat it you'll surely die well what is the mystery here well there his life that's human but there's life that is divine and so there is death that is human we all know what that is it's a bullet to the brain or perhaps a snake bite would do but how does divine life die well the only way you can experience spiritual death is by giving consent to mortal sin what we read in 1st John 5:17 as the sin unto Thanatos it's the same greek word used in Genesis 2:17 the day you eat of it you will surely die the death interesting and so what our first parents did with the divine life that they were given was to forfeit it they committed an act of spiritual suicide the day they ate of it they surely died but the life that they lost was inhuman but divine and so the death that they died wasn't metaphorical but metaphysically it was a darker and deeper death than if the serpent had bit them or if a bullet had entered their brains you know and so when we speak of the original sin that our first parents committed it's a mortal sin and the day they did it they died and so when we speak of the original sin that we contract you know as a Calvinist I believe that we were born depraved I don't believe that anymore I don't think that's faithful to Scripture but what the Catholic Church teaches is faithful to Scripture because we are born deprived of divine life we contract original sin which means we get human life human nature from our parents all the way back to Adam and Eve but it's human life utterly devoid of divine life we have been deprived of that supernatural life even if your parents happen to be canonized able Saints like Saint Torres they still had to have her baptized they're not in baptism you get that divine life back Paul speaks of original sin in Romans 5:12 through 21 and immediately he speaks of how Christ overcomes it in Romans 6 the opening verses say that you who have been baptized have basically come to share in his death and resurrection and why because well when we are baptized as an infant or as an adult we are resurrected to divine life and that resurrection is more than a metaphor it is more real than what Lazarus experienced after four days because all Jesus did was to restore his natural human bodily life but what Christ does through baptism is to restore the supernatural divine eternal life that our first parents forfeited that our own natural parents weren't capable of conveying by sexual means so the goal of the Christian is not merely to follow the Ten Commandments it's it's divinization right it's cooperating with with theosis which we don't talk a lot about these days but this is yeah what you're getting at I think yeah it seems like it's you know theosis divinization deification I mean talk about delusions of divine grandeur get off of you know but I think if we see in 2nd Peter 1:4 that we have been made partakers of the divine nature we can see that the inner logic is nothing based upon human and attainment you know what we can't do is to ascend to the divinity but what we can't do God can do by descending to humanity and when he assumes what is ours human nature he does so for the purpose of imparting what is his divine nature he doesn't just want to heal us of the illness of sin or perfect us in what Ron are called harmonization no grace heals and perfects nature but ultimately the goal is Graziella Vons and grace elevates human nature so that we participate in divine nature and thereby discover the inner logic of the Easter eggs all tetes you know almost Easter Vigil but we might have watched it on live streaming you know the necessary fault the the Felix culpa the happy fault of Adam is we end up better off in Christ the new Adam than we would have been in the first Adam if our first father hadn't sinned we would have accrued his righteousness would have accrued to us but it would have been finite and human and just where is what Christ gives to us is an immeasurably greater share in a righteousness that is his own as the son of God that he imparts precisely through his human nature yeah what you just said there make sense of Augustine's Felix culpa right mmm yeah we've been raised above what we would have had otherwise yeah I know I'm squeezing a notion through a funnel as I said earlier I haven't been in the classroom for almost two months so what you're refer their paying for you oh I'm sure they're loving it well we touched upon just quickly we touched upon cremation but there's probably some Christians and Catholics and Protestants out there who are like well wait what is the Christian view on that is that something we can do does the church promote it allow it and then so answer that and an answer also like is it really reasonable to suggest that God can give us back our own bodies if they are either burnt enough almost nothing or deteriorate over time in our coffins Matt I appreciate how concrete and practical in this esoterica and speculation okay so those are two great questions let's let's address those okay so first of all cremation what is the church's teaching you know I think we should recognize that cremation was strictly prohibited by the church you know back in the 1870s and the reason why is because we found ourselves after the French Revolution in a post-christian culture that was not only revolutionary but also explicitly anti-catholic and so you see the Masons the Bolsheviks and others weaponizing burial praxis by basically introducing cremation as a way of subverting or undermining the faith of Catholics not necessarily but arguing against the Articles of the Creed because I think they recognized pedagogically how humans learn more is caught than taught and so we learn a lot by cultural assimilation so if you can change the culture you can change the way people think without even thinking about it and so you know the church in ER in our Canada law basically outlawed cremation because it was explicitly and emphatically anti-catholic well you know in the 60s Pope Paul the sixth changed that after 77 years because people were now practicing cremation without any anti-christian intentionality without any anti-catholic consciousness and so there was permission granted in the 60s and 70s especially the 70s but it was only and always permission that is it was an accommodation to the weakness of the formation of many many Catholics and whether we should have done it or not is another question but the fact is the church has permitted it now for the last several decades but has never approved it and I strongly suspect will never approve it and so the church accommodates yourself to a culture that is becoming increasingly secularized and post-christian but at the same time the church will never teach that it's it's a matter of indifference the church will never approve of cremation and again you can say though there are pros and cons to that but I I think what we have to recognize is this that there is a certain logic to it that if somebody's body was burned in a building you know a 911 or whatever it isn't well a burned body can't be resurrected or if a body is lost at sea and eaten by sharks Oh what does a poor dealer do on the last day no the God who brought creation into being out of nothing can bring a new creation into being out of nothing but at the same time can resurrect what was there and this is the miracle that Christ has released were affected you know so what I to summarize you know the church permits cremation it doesn't approve of it but even there there are certain standards so that the cremains can't just be kind of tossed out at sea or sprinkled in the backyard that what is most fitting and again what is called for by the church's teaching is for the cremains to be placed in holy ground a cemetery not on the you know not on the shelf as it were and so even still if you're going to cremate you know and I think right now about 52% of Catholics you know are cremating I was just talking to the director of this Catholic Cemetery Association he gave me that statistic earlier this morning and it just shows what a catechetical breakdown there's been and what a cultural tsunami has overtaken us but there are still norms that apply to the cremains as they're called I might also just kind of say as a footnote that you know I almost ended up attaching an appendix to my book hope to die but decided not to because when you go on YouTube and you look at what cremation involves you kind of think it's a neat and tidy process of just burning the body you know to ashes when in fact you know the body is put into a wooden box and so the ashes are a mixture of the flesh and the wood but the the fire however hot it gets isn't hot enough to to burn the bones to ash and so much of what cremation involves is a kind of really it's it's a pulverizing of the bones you know I don't know how to say this but you know it's sort of like it's like sausage you know I like sausage until you find out how it's made yeah and then you're like okay I want to go a few weeks without it and cremation is a barbaric treatment of the the body and I think that's what we have to kind of unlearn now on the second matter you know what is the nature of the resurrected bodies that we end up and I I must have confess I haven't looked at the time until now and I realize this man right for me you go when you need to go but I'm loving all of this okay well I think we've lost everybody but you know that's a rife in mine so you know the teaching of Scripture in first Corinthians 15 is pretty clear san agustin took it to the next level but nobody synthesized it as masterfully as st. Thomas Aquinas it's in that section of the Terra Ceia pars that is often called the supplemental to give it's drawn from the material that he wrote long before he died when he wrote the scriptum on Lombard sentences and so it's a little anachronistic he might have adapted it you know later in life but what you have there is something of a consensus that everybody gets their body back and Paul and Jesus speaks this way in John five that there's a resurrection unto life and glory but there's also a resurrection unto death and judgment and so you know there are three conditions that all bodies will share according to st. Thomas first of all there's the condition of identity that you're gonna get your body back not just one that looks like it it's also going to have the same quality so that if you were a man then you are gonna be a man now you'll get a male body back or a female body back and then the third condition is this integrity that if you had your amputated or if you lost your leg you know in a in a in a battle or something you're gonna get your whole body back integral body you know and so that's the those are the three conditions shared by all resurrected bodies in the end but then st. Thomas goes on to identify these four properties of those bodies that are resurrected under glory those four properties are first impassibility second subtlety third agility and the fourth is clarity and these are not terms that have much meaning for us today and so I can briefly summarize what I shake Aquinas is getting at but I don't want to pretend to be an expert on Thomas I'm a I'm at oldest to be sure and happened for a longer time that I've been a Catholic but I'm sort of an amateur or a peeping tom estat Ralph Mack and let me put it I would say this that the impossibility points of the obvious fact that our bodies will no longer be capable of suffering much less dying anymore and so our bodies are going to be raised indestructible our bodies are going to be raised impassable and it's a it's a kind of negative property because we won't have to suffer and die we won't be able to contract illness but it really is a sign that points to the more positive properties so the first of those three more positive properties is agility no I'm sorry it's subtlety so subtlety what is that well the opposite of subtlety is sort of what we experience now when our souls are weighed down by our bodies you know when I want to stay up I can't because I'm tired or I want to keep working but I can't because I am hungry you know and so the souls are kind of dragged along by our bodies on this side of things but now what we see in our resurrected body is a body that is completely responsive of the soul you know so now if I want to go from Steubenville down to see you in Georgia you know gotta find a flight and you know on airlines that still flies and so I've got to get my body in a motion but you know the the subtlety is such that if I want to go to Georgia in a resurrected body I've just got to think of Georgia and the peaches and then suddenly I'll be transported there without all of the gravity and such and so subtlety is a property that is going to make our our bodies utterly subject and completely responsive to the holy impulses of the soul okay and that agility kind of flows from that because agility is a mobility you know so that the the lowest saint in heaven who gets the weakest resurrected body of them all is going to be more agile than the greatest Olympic athlete in all of history the bodies are going to be capable of a kind of mobility that is unimaginable for us on this side of the veil and so the last property is this idea of clarity and I think this is one that is really beautiful but somewhat Oh elusive because what clarity means is you know right now I just said you know you know which is a verbal crutch you know and when you're seeing me through zoom or Skype or whatever this happens to be you know there's an opaqueness and and if we were together in person there's an opacity you know so that sometimes I'm smiling but I'm feeling sad other happens I I look glum but I'm really happy you know the body is meant to be a sacrament of the soul of a person but it isn't always a clear window and so what we're gonna have at the end is clarinets correct so that I'm gonna be able to look at Kimberly's body and see her soul and see her heart and then my kids as well and others and so the clarity is going to conduce to a kind of communication the likes of which nobody could imagine so that kind of clarity in communicating our hearts is going to lead to a communion that is going to participate in the life of the Father the Son the Holy Spirit as well as the Holy Family of Jesus Mary and Joseph you know and so in the chapter on a ray of hope to die I doubt how deficient sometimes we are when it comes to the beatific vision and we're gonna know the divine essence through Christ that's awesome we're gonna contemplate and come to know God as God knows himself as he has enabled us to do all of that is true but it sort of implies a staring contest that we're all gonna be staring at God you know and they don't break and look at the other person stare get out quick quit looking at me stare at God you know obviously it's more than that it will be content will be a contemplative gaze upon God but in as much as God is not an egomaniac but God is a loving father then what we're going to be discovering in the divine essence in the beatific vision is that God's fatherly vision is not just of me and of you individually but of us in ur personally I like nothing more than getting all of my kids together now that they're grown-ups especially and then with the 19 grandkids I mean this is like a big thick slice of heaven and doesn't sit back and listen to them share their stories and recognize that his story and her story are really all part of our family that's part of one story you know and when you're on a plane and you meet somebody in your life you've got common friends or you went to the same high score two years ago I met a guy who is not only sharing the same birthday at October 28 1957 but he was born in Pittsburgh the same hospital as me you know we were roommates down the hall you know and when you discover all of these common things that you share it's like wow you know what a coincidence well you discover that history is just a series of all of these stories that share all of these coincidences that we don't know and none of them are purely coincidental all of them are providential and God the Father is going to be so pleased when it gives us each like 10,000 years to share our story and a billion years it will take for all of us to share our stories and although some are gonna realize wow not only is that an exciting story to see how God took this underdog you know and brought them back you know but it's like wow everyone's story is all part of this masters this is what God the Father scripted we're gonna need at least 10 billion years just for for the first run and you know if time flies when you're having fun time will just scoot by but we'll run out we're gonna want to see it again you know we're gonna want to hear it again and after trillions of years the first minute of eternity will pass and we'll realize that God is a father beyond anything we could imagine that the love of the Trinity that spilled out under the Holy Family has now become ours but it is us it's who we are forever with our bodies and you know just as Jesus barrels you know bears in his flesh the nail marks and the spear so all of the scars will glow with me ie so that we'll see the sacrifices that each other made and we'll realize this is why we are who we are forever and I just think that heaven you know this might sound like the spicy-hot religious rhetoric of a convert you know who's overly zealous when we get to heaven the first minute will pass by you'll look back on this pints with Aquinas episode and realize Scott's words fell so far short of the glory they were almost falsifiable you know it's so much more than we realize this reminds me of Peter crisis line which you've no doubt heard asking you know will there be sex in heaven is like a child first learning about sex from her parents asking well when I do have sex one day will I be able to eat candy and the parent and the parent says yeah the parent says our darling you won't want to that's gonna be so much better than you'd think no I think the happiest vacation we ever had at a family reunion will look like and feel like a garbage can in comparison to the lowest pleasures of the lowest st. will have forever and ever and again that isn't hyperbole that's understatement if what we say and profess is true that I believe in God the Father Almighty this is what an all-loving Almighty father is all about and again the the mysteries of faith exceed anything the stock market might ever achieve if it rebounds and then some I mean we put all of our hopes in the natural when in fact the supernatural just blows it away that's why I'm so glad you've written this book I think if you were to ask the average Catholic when's the last time you heard a homily on say heaven or hell the afterlife in general what it'll be like I think most of us would say I don't really remember its it seems like sometimes we can fall into the trap that our homilies are like self-help tips how to live your best life how to be the best you when Christianity is about so much more than that and I think this book will be a great contribution to that oh I hope so I do I mean it's the first time I ever wrote a book for my own purpose in my own time and then discover that God kind of overrode this you know I spent most of 2019 working on this with Emily Stimpson a dear friend a former student then a really gifted author on her in her own right and and it was so much fun to edit this you know to get back to the page proofs at the end of the year and spend January so in the back of the printer and then all of a sudden this crisis arose the coronavirus crisis and it was it's leap year so on February 29th I remember calling up the printer and just saying stop the presses I've never had this before I'm like but I want to rewrite that last chapter in light of what everybody's going through I know in five or ten years we'll be out of it and then the new normal but for now it just is I mean I just had a sense of divine timing yep and so I shared about what it was like for us as a family to go through 9/11 because in a certain sense this is like 9/11 in slow motion you know over days and weeks and months now and so I basically described in the at last chapter that evening of 9/11 when my daughter after family prayer looked at me and said dad my name is shir she was 12 she's like are we gonna die and I'm like wow okay and I looked at her I said definitely not today you know yes he's like okay you have to explain that I'm like okay we're gonna die but probably not today let me remind you the mortality rate you know is a hundred percent none of us we're gonna get here alive but I said I want to remind you that the immortality rate is also a hundred percent that everybody ever lived and then died still lives in one state or another a state of grace anticipating glory or a state of disgrace and so it really matters the most is are we ready to face death because that will be the hour that matters the most of all you know it's just like okay well thanks you know I said the blood saying they went to bed and I went down to the I went down to the parish in downtown Steubenville into the Eucharistic Chapel in the basement and fortunately for me I had that hour alone because this was the evening of 9/11 and when I when I knelt down I kind of let her rip I just I poured out my heart like why would you let this happen this is the darkest day of my life this is the darkest day of all of our lives you thought you could have stopped it you know but after I kind of vented my spleen and poured out my heart you know a few minutes of silence and then suddenly I realized who I'm talking to what I'm looking at is the monstrance the Holy Eucharist and I realized okay 9/11 however bad it was wasn't really the darkest day in history Good Friday was yeah you know and I heard from my mom when life gives you lemons make lemonade but I mean looking at the Holy Eucharist and remembering Good Friday I realized that they called it good because you know they were torturing you slandering you crucifying you and you were doing more than making lemonade I mean you were saving the human race you were redeeming the very vicious perpetrators who were driving the nails and thrusting the spear and falsely accusing you they're torturing you while you are redeeming them the single greatest sin the human race has ever committed the single greatest crime in all of history turned into the single greatest font of grace and mercy the the source of the salvation of the human race and here it is in the Holy Eucharist and so I can trust you to make the best out of the worst you know that you can take our weakness and reveal your strength you know and and suddenly I realized Good Friday is our reminder and the Holy Eucharist is sort of what Easter Sunday is all about the Eucharist is the sacrament of his resurrection and therefore of ours when he said he eats my flesh and drinks my blood I will raise him up on the last day this was the point that when I eat ordinary food I assimilated to my body don't want to receive the Eucharist he assimilates us to his body his resurrected body so that the Eucharist becomes the instrument whereby were not only divinized but ultimately our mortal flesh will share his own immortal glory about an hour later I'm like I'm still unhappy that 9/11 happened but I'm not going to be untrusting you know you are going to do great things well as we wrap up Scott please tell people maybe why they should get a copy of this book and where they should get it from well you know you can get it from the st. Paul Center which I was gonna ask you to tell us about that - I'm on the website right now while we're talking and I have to say it's so nice to see incredibly beautiful Catholic content it's I sometimes joke that it think this is so beautiful you doubt that it's Catholic right which is funny since that was our goal and we yeah we've seen our Lord assembled a team of 25 to 30 coworkers that are the most creative the most energetic the most positive the most fun to work with I couldn't even imagine I almost feel wonder sometimes in my I'm allowed to have this much fun but 20 years ago Kimberly I wanted to kind of we wanted to figure out a way to leave a legacy to read scripture from the heart of the church biblical literacy for laypeople biblical fluency for our clergy and our educators and so we established the st. Paul Center for biblical theology as a lay apostolate but never in our wildest dreams that we imagined something that has well come true so st. Paul center.com which in the last seven weeks has become what is affectionately nicknamed the quarantined Catholic hub I've been showing everybody right now as you're talking they can see it on the screen I'm scrolling through it and everyone can see it yeah well I used to publish my books with Doubleday or Random House and now I'm publishing all of our books through the st. Paul Center through a May estrade which was started some 20 years ago with the help of Tim gray and Curtis Martin these former students who've become close friends and co-workers and so hope to die is the book and as you said the Christian meaning of death and the resurrection of the body the last book that I published came out almost exactly two years ago the society the sacrament of matrimony in the restoration of the social order also through a master ode they do simply the most beautiful covers books and I am just so proud and pleased to publish with the team here but I must admit that of all my books I look back on Rome sweet home 25 years ago the Lambs supper actually was 28 years ago the Lambs supper was almost exactly 20 years ago and there is a trajectory because in so many ways you have the egg corn the sapling and now this book represents the full flowering of the vision of the Lambs suffered that discover that the mass is heaven on earth the fulfillment of John's visions in the book of Revelation but then to see that in the Eucharist we have the sacrament of Christ resurrected body I mean it's the same body that was in the Upper Room on Thursday the same body was hanging on the cross on Friday the one that was buried in the tomb on Saturday but it's not in its mortal condition it is resurrected for the purpose of becoming communicable edible it is deifying us gradually you know and so to discover all of this is like the full flowering of the lamb supper that the sacred mysteries that made us Catholic that we described in the in the book Rome sweet home it's like too good to be true but it's just it's taken to the next level and so I hope s if it's also an easy breathe deep you know it's not a difficult read it's not overly theological I really hope it instills hope now I'm in this section I'm showing people right now under your audio courses and resources I'm seeing these different audio courses the Gospel of Mark feasts of faith the splendor of the church and these audio courses that you've created yep yeah a lot of them fall and part of the vision that we never really put onto a banner is this that you might like some twenty years ago I wanted to assemble a team that all would embrace what I affectionately call biblical tome ISM because Thomas Aquinas did not describe himself as a systematic theologian you and I did a show a couple of years that's right I remember talked about how biblical theology for Saint Thomas isn't a kind of you know what is it biblical or is it theological is it exegesis or is it you know proof text and no biblical theology would have been like a redundancy not an oxymoron yeah and so he was the Magister he was the the master of the sacred page that was his job description and I I believe that the only safe way to really read scripture coherently is through the perennial philosophy embodied in st. Thomas Aquinas and the point to him to show that what he did on a daily basis was not teach philosophy or even systematic theology what he did everyday in the classroom was to open up sacred doctrine in terms of the sacred page he would do nothing but lecture from sacred scripture and this is how scripture comes alive like vatican ii reminds us the study of the sacred page is as it were the soul of sacred theology and so you know I am so happy not only to share pints with Aquinas with you but I can't wait to get our resurrected bodies back so that you and I can share maybe a thousand years of pints with Aquinas this aspect that's fantastic hey I hope you enjoyed that chat we've got more which I want to show you I just had a powerful post show wrap up video with dr. Scott Hahn in which I asked him what it's like being a Catholic in a church that feels increasingly divided where it feels like we have people who are pulling us to the left or the right to use these sort of political terms how does one stay sane in the church today in a time of such anxiety not just without the you know out of the church but within the church as well his answers were absolutely amazing we always do this post show wrap-up videos at the end of these discussions and they're only available to my patrons so I want to invite you and ask you to please consider becoming a patron by going to patreon.com slash Matt Fred when you do I give you a ton of free things in return you get signed books a beautiful beer stein that looks like this this is absolutely amazing expensive as expensive as it looks you get that I'll send that to your door you can be part of a private video chat with me community forum we have different courses that we do we're just doing a course right now on an introduction to the great works of Western literature - seven part video series with a professor who's actually engaging with my patrons in the comment section after each of his video lectures we're doing one on the Reformation soon hopefully we've done one on Flannery O'Connor before we've done a whole course on Dante's Divine Comedy you get a bunch of free content we're continually cranking out content just for patrons you get all of this stuff all you do is get a patreon.com slash mat frat and in doing that you're gonna support the show support the website support all the work that we're doing and you'll get to watch that post show wrap-up video that I just did with Scott Han so I hope you'll enjoy that thank you for watching before you go if you haven't already click subscribe in that Bell button and as I say YouTube that way we'll be forced to let you know whenever we put out a new video thanks for being here

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

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Length: 107min 15sec (6435 seconds)

Published: Mon May 18 2020