Suffering, The Bible Timeline, and The Meaning of Life w/ Jeff Cavins

yeah cause i guess they were bringing jordan peterson around and they had like the people from the university kind of escorting him as well as his guard or whatever and uh they're all kind of done up real nicely and there's bob tattooed and whatever and i guess bob said hey i didn't know the mormon brigade was bringing you around i would have dressed nicer and i guess peterson liked that so they got into a really great chat oh that's great yeah what did you think of the um of the talk the the talk i thought father dave did a great a great job me too of guiding that i thought that that was really really good i'm on the board for the museum of the bible in washington and he that's where he was prior and so he's on this little tour of oh okay you went there you'll let us know when we're live will you i went to the we're live yeah oh we're live okay i'm on the board the catholic board of the bible bible and museum yeah washington yeah so were you there when peterson came through no i knew it wasn't no i was so impressed with father dave because and here's why i've had some time to think about this and it's online is it the video yeah maybe we could link to that um jordan peterson gave a talk at steubenville and then father dave interviewed him and that was the best part about it he was a priest in the best possible sense he didn't try to match his psycho lingo you know he wasn't intimidated by him which would be understandable uh he proclaimed the gospel but not in an annoying preachy way right it was just really terrific yeah that's what i thought too and i i thought um you know that wherever jordan is at in the you know in his journey whatever that father dave i think had an impact on him yeah some level yeah then we all prayed over him at the end oh really yeah cool yeah i got invited to that couldn't come for some reason but i wish i would have you know yeah because he's he's one of those guys that in our culture today stood out for some reason you know that what he's saying and uh and not many people come along like that how long have you been following his work uh maybe three years yeah something like that why is he so impressive i think he's impressive because he's a thinker and he he's really be he's very objective in some ways of looking at yeah and bringing psychology into the the crisis that people are going through now and the questions that people are asking and he's giving particularly young men he's giving them a way to live that's doable and that it will make a difference sorry you know clean your room yes why do i have to clean my room clean it yeah this is it's almost like a sacramentality to it that you clean your room something happens you know i wonder if it's because a lot of us have theological formation as catholics but we have missed the human formation bit yeah and so he's kind of going back to basics which some people scoff at yeah but many of us aren't living and so it's because it's connecting and for some reason you get these these young guys with their harley davidsons or whatever and they listen to him and go hey i know i like that well have you ever read joseph pipper's work uh the abusive language i haven't read that but it's a short essay over the weekend and he says that when we lie or when we flatter that is to say uh tell her tell a falsehood in order to manipulate he says we like we distort reality and then we distort interpersonal relations because and he even argues that when we tell a falsehood we're no longer communicating we're actually depriving the other of the truth that's their share yeah um and i just thought peterson does a great job he seems honest yes and he'll tell you if he doesn't know yeah you know he's i think what's attractive about him is he thinks out loud yeah and people are fascinated with the way he's he's going about it and why do people like that well i think they like it because uh we are so we are so much into like quick social media quick this you know two minutes that two minutes this that when people deep down inside really long to to to rest in something and to to dwell on something to a saver you know and so when he takes on a topic he slows down and he thinks through it and there's something attractive about being able to think through most people say i wouldn't even know where to begin and that's one of the problems is that we don't know where to begin and and so if you don't know where to begin then you don't know where you're going to end up and he he he thinks that way you're kind of being brought along in the journey yeah of of thinking through things and i think another thing that's attractive you know i wrote a book called uh when you suffer a few years ago i was going through some tremendous suffering in my neck and i ended up with a fusion in in my neck but it was in the process of that that i i really learned about the love of god and what jordan's dealing with and has been dealing with with in his life and his daughter and his and his wife is suffering and i think that he is learning like it says in scripture jesus learned through the things he suffered and i think that's true with with jordan the suffering is forcing him to to look at ultimate questions uh which he taught but i think it's very personal now and uh it's like you and i we could we could probably teach on uh suffering anywhere in the world you know look up the catechism bible verses and then get a quote here and there and teach on it but it's like john paul ii said you can't teach suffering in the objective it is a vocation come follow me and it's in the following it's in the offering up your suffering in union with christ or as john paul ii says that he loves you so much he made room in his suffering for you to participate so that you would do what know what love is taste it that's the opportunity and uh it changed my life suffering changed my life i was just reading a story of a soul by therese saint therese who as patrick coffin rightly pointed out ought not to be called little flower but iron will i mean that woman is a warrior but she says i think it's towards the end of the second or third chapter you alone god knew what i suffered um and i thought that's beautiful to say because too often we trivialize our suffering because there's always someone who suffered much worse and so we feel embarrassed maybe to acknowledge that we have indeed suffered right you know she could have rightly said okay maybe i'm i was dealing with a bout of depression but look what all these other people are going through but she had the courage to say you alone god know what i suffered and i think it's important to look back into our lives and not trivialize the suffering the embarrassments we receive the whatever it be neck pain which is a serious thing bloody hell you hurt your neck or back everything else is difficult to do but but i think what do you think about that about sort of just acknowledging the depths that we had suffered without trivializing it in the in the face of other people's perhaps more objective right suffering i think it's how you look at it um you know john paul ii says that there's two types of suffering there's physical which you and i have gone through if you've got a cold anybody with covid you know so you got physical suffering and then you have what he calls moral suffering and the moral suffering is the suffering of the heart it is the betrayal it is the the anxiety of life and the depression or your son dies you know this ache deep deep ache and uh in your heart and he said that most people would rather have physical suffering than moral suffering i'd rather break have a broken leg than a broken heart any day you know and then he says there's two kinds there's there's temporal suffering and then there is what uh what he refers to as uh this this unlimited suffering and that unlimited suffering is to be suffering without god without love without everything that is good and he calls it definitive suffering forever forever and ever and ever you know and as george carlin said you know forever is a long time especially as you get towards the end you know and um and jesus he literally imp you know used physical suffering and moral suffering to deal with that definitive suffering and so when we ask the question what what is the meaning of suffering and everybody asks that uh jesus was in luke 24 walking away from jerusalem or walking behind some guys that were walking away from jerusalem heads hung low depressed and he says hey what were you guys talking about you know and they said are you the only one that didn't figure out what's happening in jerusalem this jesus you know we thought he was messiah and he then began to teach them everything from the old testament as to why the messiah had to suffer he could have taught him anything he zeroed in on suffering and so we find the meaning of our suffering in his suffering and so if you're united with christ you have the opportunity in your physical or moral suffering to unite yourself to jesus and john paul ii talks about this a lot how he came to redeem you and he redeemed even your suffering so your suffering is like heavenly cash and you can as john paul says you can even apply it to loved ones so that the man now a man of god can say well i've got some physical suffering and rather than sitting around and complaining he can actually offer up his suffering in union with christ as john paul says he he opens up a room for you to participate with him so that you'll know him and his love deeper you can stare at the cross all day long and say wow that's so beautiful he loved me and it's like jesus is standing there saying you want a taste of it you want to know what it is come join me pick up your cross and and and come join me and and that answers the deepest question i think about suffering which paul said to the colossians he said in colossians 1 24 he says i rejoice in my suffering for your sake i used to think right there i'm not on the same page as you i rejoice in my suffering for your sake and then he says something really odd he says i fill up in my body that which is lacking in the sufferings of christ begs the question what's lacking you know in the sufferings of christ what could possibly be lacking in the sufferings of christ did jesus ascend to the father and you know a few eons later say oh you know oy vey i miss i only got 98 father i don't know how it happened oh they got 98 of the suffering what are we gonna do you know the holy spirit says well make them do something you know that's not what happened i wanted to be clear but what happened is is that um the question is uh how what is lacking in the sufferings of christ and saint augustine answered the question and john paul ii answered the question and what what augustine said was it's brilliant he said what's lacking in the sufferings of christ is the sufferings of the mystical body of christ and then john paul answered the question in salvificity dolores and the meaning of human suffering which i highly recommend i wish i would have wrote that book that was so good that was so good kudos to the pope um so he says in there he says what's lacking the sufferings of christ nothing but that you might know the love of christ he made room for you to participate and so you have a choice you know do i want to participate or would i want to run away from this my whole life of suffering in the fear of suffering you know it was a bishop fulton sheen said he said the man who fears suffering the most is the man who only dies once at the end of your life that's the guy who fears death the most and he says the way you you prepare for death which is the greatest of fears is you practice for it you die daily you give up your life daily you know you become a a witness a martyr right we know that's where the word comes from for a witness you give up your life for your wife you give up your life for your children you give your life up for for the the sake of his kingdom and when that day comes been here done this wow you know and i love that i i love that and so we're we're equipped if paul had never have written that you know say that bit was omitted though he meant it but never wrote it down yeah how many of us would or who would have ever thought to say something as bold as that i know um what does it mean to unite your sufferings with christ that sounds like one of these theological niceties that i wish i understood maybe i understand it partially but it sounds too ethereal for me i don't know if i understand it no that's a very good question because it most people look at it that way you know they look at the body of christ that way too it's like well it's like a cool metaphor you know we got the head and we're like the body hey that's cool but they that's about as deep as they go you know many times uh what it means to unite your suffering with christ is is that is that you in your suffering have the choice what do i want to do with it i want to squander it which means waste it just focus on myself and my plight you know what's going on with me or do i want to unite myself with jesus offer up this suffering that famous phrase offer it up you know which my mom used to use that and that just simply meant get out of the kitchen i'm i'm cooking you know but but to by an act of the will well i'll give you i'll give you a uh the answer in in real life what happened to me yeah i was about two weeks away from surgery on my neck and i was hurting and i couldn't sleep and i was doing life on the rock on ewtn every week i'd fly you know from minneapolis out there and my wife said to me one morning she said i'm gonna drive you to the airport you don't look good i said okay and if you look at those old shows my left arm is hanging i can't how long ago was this this was 99 2000. okay yeah and my left arm was i couldn't even move my arm i was in pain and on the way to the airport i passed out and i woke up with medics on top of me and trying to get me to breathe right and uh it was uh i couldn't go to the show of course and uh i got back home and one night i woke up at two and i didn't wake up i couldn't sleep you know and i said to my wife i'm just gonna go downstairs i said i just can't take this anymore i don't know what to do and get this i'm teaching at the same time you know i'm at conferences and in my own life right there i'm like how do i do this i know the principle i know what it means to offer up my suffering but how do i do it and you know as catholics that we're looking for likes okay maybe you have to say it in latin you know maybe i got to say it backwards in some council or you know whatever is there a secret potion is there a novena that's going to be the key here and i went downstairs a different colored scapular that i'm not yet aware of or i will invent so i went downstairs i'm sitting on the couch and i'm holding my arm and i'll just i'll just be honest with you i just started to weep i just started to cry and just said god i can't deal with this i just can't deal with this anymore what do i do how do i offer it up and i felt like the lord spoke to me so clearly and he said something to me that a shoe company stole from hello i'm in lit i'm in litigation with him right now and it was just do it huh nike it took it from me and millions so i said just do it and i'm like just do it so i got up went upstairs my my two little girls had bunk bed jackie was down below tony was up above jackie's about eight at the time and my oldest daughter was downstairs and i went over to jackie i knew she wouldn't wake up for anything and i knelt down next to her bed holding my arm i took my hand off and i put my hand right next to her head and i just said i said oh god i offer up my suffering for jackie for jackie and i just fell apart i started just weeping next to her and just said i just said for jackie lord i give up my suffering for her for holiness and for her though your will and her life and uh and matt something happened at that point that i cannot explain other than a joy rose up inside of me that i had never experienced before a wholeness a harmony a shalom a peace rose up inside of me because i realized that for the first time in my life i was loving my daughter the way jesus loved me and i tasted it and i didn't want it to end that's interesting i didn't want it to end so the the question you know how do you do it just do it but see what's interesting about that is you have no choice but to do it like whether you offer it up or don't offer it up you are going to suffer yeah so is is one sort of a begrudging reluctance to accept the pain and then the other is to what that's a good way to put it yeah some people become bitter some are better you know yeah and for me it made me better and it became a a tool for me in my discipleship belt where if i face it i know what to do i know what to do i know how to offer it do i what do i seek out suffering no not that way you know but if it's going to come i'm equipped i'm equipped i know what to do i know what to do with it and jesus has given us this i mean what a grace i used to listen to like little flower and some of the saints would say oh lord you love me so much you allow me to suffer and i'm like yeah that's not i'm not there yeah but now i can see that that lord you love me so much that you're letting me taste it i'm not there yet i sometimes i'm there i had a moment the other night i won't go into the details but um i just haven't been accepting my suffering and it's been brutal it's been kind of breaking me i've i've been somewhat insufferable towards my wife and family at times but something happened the other day and it was right when i should have you know broken apart in the negative sense i just felt i said come holy spirit like i really invited the holy spirit and uh something changed it was weird it was like uh like i was trying to fly and then i couldn't and then this uplift of wind just sort of brought me up i'm like what the heck is happening i'm responding to this thing differently it's weird to try to explain what happens when you sense the holy spirit's help yeah because i think what's hard about it is we're so familiar with christian language and the writings of the saints that sometimes you say exactly what they say and you're not sure if you mean it or if you're just regurgitating things but then when you say weird things that don't seem to make sense like this uplift of when what the hell does that mean i don't know but it was i it was palpable that the i was just yeah accepting and it was beautiful it was liberating i felt like i was actually responding positively to the holy spirit's call to to endure this thing right now yeah and you know there's so much in the bible about this too you know that you know peter makes a big deal out of if uh you want to share in his glory you're gonna you have to share in his suffering you know as well and over and over you know he talks about that and jesus is very very clear about if you if you want to become my talmud my disciple then pick up your cross and you're like that's 24 karat no yeah no did you mean pillow yeah yeah pick up your cross and follow me and what they did to me they'll do to you and you and i and this gets back to your question earlier about uh sometimes we say these things and it's like oh that's if they're you know ethereal and but to be the body of christ is to wake up this morning and to literally be the body of christ in other words the spirit of god is in me motivating me moving me to do what not just to go to conferences he's inviting me to do the work of jesus to forgive to love to to heal to comfort to tell the truth to give mercy [Music] the good news the gospel the kerygma and this whether i'm a doctor whether i'm an engineer or a teacher or a homemaker i am a disciple not theoretically not just spiritually i am the body of christ in the world and i am doing what he wants to do hopefully i mean that's the goal right there and once you take on that world view and you you begin to you know to to to do that it changes your whole day you know as a disciple you know the to become a disciple in the first century you know it's one thing i'm really big into this i love this uh wrote a book called the activated disciple to be a disciple who is equipped with suffering uh in 2000 years ago you didn't just go to jesus talk in in capernaum you know and go out there and buy all of his 73 books you you would you would go there and listen but the only way you could become a disciple is for him to invite you that's the only way that you could become a disciple of any rabbi in the first century and so of course he's more than a rabbi he's the son of god and there was there was two formulaic statements that the rabbis would give if they wanted to invite someone to become their disciple the first was in hebrew come follow me that was formulaic you are not the disciple of jesus unless you've had that invitation come follow me uh and and we know of course that he has given us that invitation he said you didn't choose me i chose you right come follow me i'm inviting you to live with me to be with me and the second was from matthew 11 and in verse 28 he says come to me all who are weary and heavy-laden i'll give you rest and then in verse 29 it's a formulaic statement that all rabbis used and that was take my yoke upon you and learn from me and so when a rabbi said take my yoke it meant take on my worldview take on my worldview take on my mission so when you and i woke up this morning we're men on a mission and that is his we're disciples we said yes to we said yes to it and that means that now i will carry out his mission and uh i will i will suffer if need be i'll even die if need be but i will be christ to this world that's an adventure that is so captivating so big that a lot of trivial things start to fall off on the wayside yeah um we had a homily this weekend where the priest made a great point in saying that he worries sometimes that we believe the right things you know abortion's wrong you know but really that's quite easy to believe yeah like once you've come to believe that it just kind of becomes part of the background like nothing's really required of you unless you know maybe you get somebody pregnant or you yourself become pregnant you don't want it like there are many of these things that kind of make us look good like i'm against abortion right or i believe in the eucharist or i believe that the pope is the visible head of the church um and in a sense these things are easy to believe what's bloody difficult is what you're talking about love your wife anticipate her needs like be attentive to your children don't be merely attentive to yourself don't be frantic be calm be at peace this is like a daily thing that's really hard so just like we maybe accuse the left of virtue signaling or group signaling we can do the same thing you know if i do a video about how abortion's wrong but then i go home and i snap at my kids and i i'm i'm all caught up in my head and i don't pray this is virtue signaling you know this this daily mission this daily adventure yeah yeah and it becomes far more um little like the little flower um does god want me to uh does he want me to speak at a conference of 10 000 people or does he want me to love and comfort my wife today you know child sick i have a decision you know to make and so the the walk of being a disciple is in the details of this what the world would consider insignificant because the world is very big into achievement and and uh you know like on the internet uh i want likes and but for you and me uh you and i are created for love and we're not going to settle for likes you know we're created for love and to love deeply and to and to uh to receive love and this takes place in the shadow uh of of the world's you know hollywood lights and so forth and no one sees it you know it's like david's mighty men i don't know if you ever read that um back in the old testament it highlights three of david's mighty men and uh the third one i love i know i just love it the the first one you know he fought and fought over 800 philistines and he he has this tenacity in the face of overwhelming odds and he you can imagine being fighting you're on number 110 you think how about how much more is this going to go in there 230 come on you know 390 come on and all of a sudden he gets up there's 798 it is two more and he does it and he has that tenacity and then um and and then i love the second one this this mighty man of david he fought and he had a bunch of people with him but when the battle was on everybody left him alone and he fought and then when he defeated the philistines then everyone came back yay you know the goods and everything yeah and of course you know we we we know what that's like you know though we're we're the one that in college we had a five of us had to work on a project they all left i did it they came back and got the a you know as well but it's the third one that i love and the third one uh he is it's so beautiful he was given the charge to guard like a bean field yes wow hello you know and so it says you're going to guard a bean fielder [Laughter] and he's like he's like seriously am i going to be fighting people in the bean field no i have a phd you want that there you know and and so this is like your children you have four i have three they're my beanie babies you know that's my bean field this is my bean field and it might and this is tenacity and this is love in the face of a seemingly insignificant assignment but if it's god's bean field this is a pretty big deal you know i mean if john paul ii in his day called up you and says you know matt and lunt you to guard my bean field you're done yeah what flight right you know but you wouldn't have done it for me probably yeah that's right so it's whose bean field is it you know it's god's bean field yay i'm gonna i'm gonna do that so if you look at your family and your wife and your home and uh and that's your bean field i'll guard it i'll make sure nothing gets in here and it's gonna harm these children you know it's on the internet or whatever it might be and uh would i allow mick jagger to spend two hours in my daughter's room no not gonna happen why i'm guarding my bean field uh and so no i'm not gonna allow some things to come into the to the house i wanna be a faithful you know bean field gardener gosh that's so funny yeah it's it's a good way to look at it it is yeah i know that my family matters and the small things really really matters and i do believe that it's doing the small things that brings the greatest joy when you do what you're supposed to do in your vocation there's nothing like loving your wife and your children and at the end of the day that's wow it's like uh the chariots of fire you know god made me a husband and a father and when i do that i feel yeah that's right yeah first time i uh the first time i heard about you i think it was monsignor bill young he was a wonderful priest in texas still lives there in houston and he gave me your bible timeline cds you know it was like whatever 200 cds and a big folder and i was living in ireland at the time and i went back and i got to watch it that was such a blessing people must tell you that all the time yeah it was a big surprise you know and it was a big surprise when i you know i i developed it you know we could you for those who aren't maybe aware of it yet could you tell people what it is too sure the the great adventure bible timeline is a uh a timeline that that shows you how to read the bible as a narrative or as a story one of the biggest problems that we face is that we're told you've got to read the bible you should really read the bible you should meditate on the bible people are like i know i don't want to yes i don't understand it you know where should i start leviticus no and and so out of my own pain in my own frustration when i was 20 23 24 years old i knew most of the stories i had been to bible college and but i didn't know the story and that's what i wanted to know i wanted to be able to stand up and tell the story and the inspiration for it it might i i don't i don't talk about it very much but the inspiration for it was a guitar player by the name of phil kege phil keggie was a christian guitar player who is considered one of the top two or three in the world and he would play that guitar and that fretboard you know his eyes closed just passion playing it and just unbelievable and i looked at that and i actually teared up and i thought wow he knows that fretboard so well and i thought i want to know the bible like that i want to be able to go from the early world all the way up to jesus in the church and back down to the ju you know judges and the conquest and i wanted to be able to know this story in and out so i i developed a a a system where out of all the books in the bible you have 73 books they're not equal they're all inspired but they're not equal what i mean by that is they don't all tell a story some of them are meant to be read in the story so i i chose the 14 books and the 12 periods of salvation history and i laid that down on a on a chart i had 12 periods color-coded mnemonic device for learning and then i have the 14 books to read just read those you'll get the basic story and then i show you where the other 59 fit in and uh so i i created that as 25 years old and it was just for me you know i just you know i didn't i loved it i was very very very visual were you a protestant pastor during this time i was i was and uh of course when i came back to the catholic church i got to put in more books and it grew it grew a little bit but that was the that was the basis of what father mike and i put together for bible and year podcast and that was the the foundation of that and yeah so i when i developed that it's part of that christian imagination you know i read the story i i want to see the story i want to see it and god gave us an imagination you know where what i imagined in my mind was taking all of the individual what i call atomic notes samuel david abraham exodus sacrifice of isaac all these different things and i imagined putting it in order color-coded and to show you what's happening in israel and what's happening in the north and the south and what else is happening in world history that's what i imagined in my mind and that came out of like five years of just study and so when i had this imagination or thinking of how to do this that was the easy part the hard part was all the years of studying and thinking about these things and then all of a sudden it comes together on a mystical fretboard you know and i went home i was getting ready to go into my hebrew class at the university of minnesota and i was of all places i was in a little couple blocks square of the university of minnesota called officially dinky town and it's where bob dylan lived for a year and i was lit i literally parked right next to where bob dylan his apartment was and i was thinking about this and i thought about phil keggie and i was listening to a cd of this old curmudgeon talking about the history of archaeology and i wasn't interested so much in the archaeology what interested me was he told the story and i thought wow and that's when this came and i didn't even go to class that day i i put the car in reverse i went to an art store bought bunch of things i went to a meat market and got a big piece of white paper for a quarter and i went home got all my books and for 48 hours i sat there and i what do you mean for 48. i didn't even go to sleep for 48 hours 48 hours 48 hours and i developed that first timeline in 48 hours and when i was done i got to tell you i went to bed yeah i cried because i was tired but i looked down oh wow this is a story this is it this is lord this is the story you're revealing yourself in words and deeds and i didn't show it to anybody i would roll it up carry it around with me i'd lay it out and study and then i decided i need to shrink it so i went and i had it shrunk to about this big and then i started showing people and they're like whoa had anyone done anything like this prior that you know of no there's timelines but it's so busy and so much that it's like over yeah like i'm already overwhelmed this isn't helping i don't need this i need the simplicity of it and uh so no no i've never seen it before or anything like that um but then when i came into the catholic church my first visit to steubenville was to meet scott really we had talked on the phone and i brought my timeline with me and uh when we got together at his house and and i opened it up and here's with scott his response i opened it up and he went and i'm like i know oh means wow you know and wow is greek for great so so i i he he was like whoa and i and i wanted to create it so that if anyone looked at it they would go wow they would get it they'd get it yeah you know so i had no idea that the rest of my life would be defined by this 48 hours of just had so when um how did you get to know scott were you still protestant and then did you contact him about yeah i was a pastor in dayton ohio and i had been studying for about three or four years the church fathers and i i snuck into saint mark's catholic book store incognito and bought some things you know and i was studying and i was thinking oh man i can't go back to the catholic church i left in grand style i yelled at a bishop i can't go back you got to go out that's the way yeah and i did it publicly and uh and i i got in a fight with my dad my dad got in a fight about me going to a protestant he was trying to protect his bean field yes he was he he nailed his beans yeah we just got into a uh it wasn't it wasn't good and that was how he left home when it came back it was tremendous healing between my father and myself but when i um was studying i ended up thinking you know i can't be catholic i would give my dad a lot of pleasure there so i thought i'm gonna become anglican yeah so what i did in becoming anglican as i went to kansas city overland park i still remember it overland park and i met with the bishop of this anglican church to be interviewed and i got interviewed vetted and they said yeah we would like to bring you in as apostles as a priest oh i see yeah yeah in the anglican church yeah and uh i was standing there in the there was a book table and i was ready to go to the airport and i saw this book by thomas howard called evangelical is not enough i thought dang right so i picked it up i looked at the table of contents i thought oh man this is good this is good assuming he's anglican yeah this is so good i bought it on the airplane on the way home i read it was just like wow this is so good and i got to the very end and said i think it was i wrote this book in 1987 i converted to the roman catholic church you know at 89 i'm like no no why did you do that this was such a good book [Laughter] and uh so i really bothered me so i found out where he lived i got his phone number and i called him and he's such a have you ever met him no he's such a prim and probably proper how did you get his number i got his number through a my mentor at gordon conway okay seminary i ask that because have you ever had this experience of just random people finding your number online and calling you yes i find that very uncomfortable yes or at your front door yeah i've had that happen too yeah yeah yeah then the lord sent them well that's good of you because i'm just like i i mean could no i don't like it sorry yeah sorry so i i called him up and he said hello thomas and i'm like uh hello thomas you know if you've got a british accent i mean god speaks in british accents you know i've got to speak people say how do i know if the lord's speaking to me yes it's british if it's australian it's the devil yes oh my son okay that's god so is he english uh sorry well he's just a proper okay yeah yeah more proper than me and so i said uh mr howard call me thomas and so i read your book evangelicals not enough i'm a pastor in dayton ohio i was with you until that last little statement where you became catholic how did that happen and he told me he gave this story and again i i got weepy there i thought this is what's happening to me and uh i said that's what's happening to me he says well i want you to meet a couple of my friends they went through this one is uh marcus grodi the other is scott hahn i wrote their names and number down i put them on my shelf never heard about them and uh so i went back to st mark's bookstore in dayton ohio after a week or two continuing my studies and there i see this book scott hahn thought hey that's the one he was talking about so i bought it and i didn't read it what was the book do you remember rome sweet home okay and i got around to reading it i thought wow this guy's went through everything that i'm going through i like to talk to him so i got his number i called him up and uh says he says scott han and i said yeah scott's jeff in dayton ohio i'm a pastor oh and after five minutes of talking he says he says which i wasn't used to he said jeff i said yeah i just have a funny feeling that you and i are going to be friends for a long time and i said whatever so can we answer the question so i ended up coming over to steubenville and i brought the chart with me and i pretty much made my mind up i was coming into the church had you told your dad at this point no i know were you wrestling with solo scriptura and things like that no no you weren't wrestling no i wasn't i didn't leave the catholic church because of theology i was loved out of the catholic church loved loved i mean that might the protestant groups yeah loved me and they invited me to be part of their their life that's no small thing and to mentor me and the assembly of god yeah and uh at that age love triumphs over theology you know well yeah and even now it ought to in a sense because how do you understand god unless people are showing you him maybe yeah you know i mean i think sometimes we downplay the whole love bit so it's not about love and fellowship and people who love the poor it's about what's true it's like yeah but isn't that supposed to yeah 21 years old um i wasn't here i was here but you should still that's my point i'm trying to figure out as i talk like she should still be there yeah you know yeah it's attractive loving somebody and caring not just attractive but true yeah i have a dear friend who left the catholic church for the assemblies of god and um i don't know maybe we say it too flippantly like it shouldn't be about community and it shouldn't be about how well these people love you it should be about truth and you should be willing to go to the truth even if everybody you meet there's a scoundrel and i don't know do you know what i'm saying i don't know if i do you're not trying to get out no it's very very true when i i have a friend who just uh left as a protestant pastor he's looking at orthodoxy and catholicism he feels drawn intellectually to orthodoxy and in fact is now orthodox but sometimes we'll say things like but i just see how the catholics love each other that can't be nothing it and that was uh that was the word on the early church you know and jesus said by this they will know that you're my disciples if you love one another if you love one another and so the loving becomes a a sign and a message to people out there that there's some authenticity in our in our walk with with the lord and uh you know people are looking for two things today matt they're looking for a brighter future and someone to trust and they're not finding it in politics they're not finding it in hollywood they're not finding it in uh cable news and we have it and when we love it it sends it uh sends a message so i was loved out of the catholic church and i didn't know any theology at that age you know i was i was 18 years old and when i went into a assembly of god church or a non-denom church everyone had a bible smile yeah and they hugged you and i'm like this is what are you guys taking you know and they were they were just so so different and at 18 years old that trumped everything absolutely you know it trumped everything you know there was something about them reading their own bible and and god speaking to them and getting together with each other and and they were different drug addicts were no longer drug addicts uh people who were addicted to whatever it might be were no longer addicted and god did something amazing in their life and at that age you want you want to be on that type of a movement you know so that was that was very very powerful so i ended up in dallas texas and went to school and and then afterwards went into back into school for radio and television so this is after you became came back into the church no no no this was all before and then i was uh ordained and became a pastor and i was a pastor for 12 years then i came back and the bible timeline came with it and amazing and and everything it's a it would be interesting if we had god's vision we could see all the people that have come to the church because of the work of scott hahn because that man is just such a good person every time i feel bad for him sometimes i text him hey i've got another protestant in town let's meet you know but not in a weird way he's not in a way that he's going to beat them into the church but he just he just loves people so well yeah his house is open grand central station yeah and uh yeah he'll go he and kimberly will go down in history as being extraordinary people willing to sit down and to discuss these issues at whatever level you're at and yeah that's a good teacher because when did you come here for the first time to meet him uh that was 90 uh four i think it was almost 20 years later i'm still i'm bringing i'm now bringing people in and you know like like thomas introduced you to scotland yeah yeah yeah it's it's all um kind of a collage you know it's beautiful i love it wow so it's been really good you know and i had no idea that the lord was going to use that bible timeline chart to do what he did and then of course recently the big bible year you know father mike and i put together this idea simple how did that come about how did the podcast come about well he he originally had that uh the idea that he wanted to stretch out i had a three-month program to read through the 14 books and he wanted to do the whole year and he's always a guy that we've been friends for 18 years now we go to israel together and around the world and so we're very good friends we're both minnesota boys and uh he wanted to do the whole years okay wow so we took the the great adventure methodology and then with the help of quite a few people at ascension stretched it out for the entire year and maintained the integrity of we're going to read through this story and we're going to show you the books that belong at different points and so he's going to do that daily deal and then i will come in as the trail guide and before we hit a new period we'll take a 45 minutes to stop and say okay this is where we came from i see this is where we're gonna go this is where people get messed up don't don't get lost here okay so we work together in that way and i think he was uh by october of 2020 he had i think 70 days done and we had like two of the periods that i taught on done and then january 1st rolls around 2021 and i forgot about it i totally forgot yeah that we did that you know it's like okay you know you know you move creative people i think move on to whatever they're going to do so on january 1st i forgot january 2nd our producer called and said you're number one in the country and this is the funny thing is that i forgot about my bible a year and i thought it was my podcast i'm like that's amazing it's a miracle what's the name of your podcast the jeff gavin show okay you know yeah i got the the jeff game show and then on hallow i have a a daily with uh jonathan rooney and yeah he reads the scripture and i do the devotion but she says you're number one and i said well which is bible to hear i said oh so like number one catholic podcast no it's a religion no everything i said no way rogan shapiro says yes i got on there real quick oh my gosh what's happening here it has stayed there for like 17 days and you know newspapers are calling radio tv what's going on here how'd you guys do this and we're like i forgot we did do it and the only conclusion you could come to and father came to it as well and that is you know i mentioned that people are looking for a brighter future and someone to trust and in the middle of covid yeah they were vulnerable you know it's like i don't even know if i'm gonna go back to work and so when god's word went out there and raised up it drew protestants catholics you know and of course father has a tremendous gift and a charisma about him but we both really said nah bible timelines doing well i got the great adventure bible father mike 10 90 this is god you know i mean it's all god you get me you know yes but god is doing something let's stand back and just see what he's doing we're not going to mess with this and and so when did it happen again in january that's right so when the new year hit you saw this happen again number one what kind of stories have you been hearing from people who've stumbled across this portion sure well we've got we've got stories of people who for example a lady who found out she had cancer in the middle of it and she was keeping at a diary every day when she started to listen to bible in a year and it was the bible in a year that changed her life and gave her the strength to go through this cancer and she died and her husband gave the diary to father mike wow and i had one other i had a lot of instances one time it was kind of funny i was getting my teeth cleaned you know and you know how they they they open your mouth you got the bib on yeah and then they start asking you questions they asked questions with their hand in my mouth yeah and the clue he says well what do you do you know i said well i write i do podcasts and uh speak and i take pilgrimages to israel and she goes podcast what's the name of your podcast that's all i got a couple one is uh bible in a year with this uh priest friend of mine from duluth she goes what she goes i'm doing that you know and i'm not catholic but i'm doing it i'm like good it's good it meant good and then one time our garage was robbed you know someone broke into our garage and stole my old my kid fishing equipment it was a bummer so i called the police and they came out they're doing a report and pictures and everything and the guy says what do you do and i said well i do podcasts and write and you know that type of thing is what's your podcast and i said i do a bible in a year with a priest and he goes serious i said yeah i was just listening to it before i got out of the car he said that's great i love this you know so we run into this type of thing all the all the time where god is meeting people where they they are at but you know it but it's just it's a beginning because now we have to do what he you know calls us to do but it certainly has caught the attention of people for that i'm very grateful how have you sought to bring people along as you say it's the beginning i'm sure it kind of caught every body off guard a little bit sure now how do we kind of bring them into the orbit not just so that we can grow our email list but so that we can help them be disciples yeah well one of the things we really encourage people to do is to go and you know go into the great adventure and study and i think you did that back in ireland yeah but you see i'm a sprinter you know what's that line from uh gimli in the lord of the rings movies long distances lost on dwarves so like so if you say like you do do this in do this in a month and i gotta read like 100 pages a day i'm more likely to be able to do that than to sustain something what you're yeah just not good at it yeah i'm kind of like you too and i move on to things you know i'm i'm but my wife has been it's been terrific i mean we homeschool the kids and cameron plays it and they listen to it in the car and they she's loved it so i think the next step is to go deeper into scripture you you bible in a year is a jet engine it's a jet airplane that flew over it in a way a great adventure is let's get in the jeep and drive through it and uh settle down and let's let's start to get the feel of salvation history uh what is god like and um you know what did he do and through what what he said and what he did he starts to reveal who who he is you know and uh and that's what we're encouraging people to do and then to to move into the mode of you know what i'm not just a bible study fan i'm a follower and there's a big difference between a fan and a follower and i'm going to become that disciple that jesus is he's calling me to intimacy and he's he's calling me to to reveal the heart of the of the trinity ah that's where i want to go so you can go from bible in a year to the heart of the trinity and i love what the catechism says you know it says there's two things that are incredibly important that god wants to reveal you know the theology which is the mystery of the trinity and break it down even more it's the heart of my father and then the other thing first is theology the second is the economy of god big fancy word oikonomia which means his plan the father's plan that's what economy meant in the first century was a father's household plan so when you look at getting to know the heart of my father and his plan this becomes the foundation on which to trust and so i think that's where we're going you know with it so um and father mike schmitz is i think the most likeable human being whenever i'm around him i think should i be more likable i guess i should crap i don't know how to do this yes oh my god yeah yeah yeah has it been weird uh this is a maybe too personal question but i don't think so has it been weird to have father mike schmitz become the face of something you created was there a pride issue there that you had to overcome that is such a good question no one's asked me that it's cause it's a scary question because i would imagine since you're human the answer's got to be maybe a little that is you might be a saint so that is such a a a question uh no i struggle with nothing next question um that is a good question i'll answer it i'll answer it completely transparent um yes there is a transition to where you created something with 40 years of your life and you built it and you are identified with it the great adventure the bible the multi languages all of that and then father mike comes in and is perfect joel yeah yes yes yeah i have to go places now and i speak and i say okay i know you're discouraged father's not here it's me okay when i when i subbed for mother angelica i had my show on thursday and if she was sick or gone i would do her show on tuesday and wednesday people were outraged oh my gosh i walk into the studio and there's like 100 people in there and i i knew what was going to happen i would walk in and you'd hear oh thanks so you've been preparing for this yeah like death so so um that father mike came in and of course he's just a gem of a guy um loves the lord he's got gifts and everything and we're we are actually very good friends and it explodes at that point and there is at that beginning sort of a hey uh me too you know i this is the and then the lord shows you no i'm building on this i'm doing something that maybe you didn't see take your hands off let me do this and that's where the freedom comes and so the honest answer is yeah at the beginning it was like whoa you know and he was everywhere everywhere and then you settled back into you know what it was a pleasure to be a part of that and praise god and thank god for what he's doing and then you enter this incredible peace you know so it's not this big struggle or anything but you asked about the beginning and it was like a little but i would imagine that if people aren't aware of that like maybe we're so deluded that we would like to think we struggle with nothing and that we are perfect so that we don't even look at that ouch like does get looked over i'm not saying you felt that way but but only in recognizing it can we then surrender it and find the piece from it yeah yeah no your question was so insightful because nobody's asked me that question but i'm i think a lot of people are wondering about that you know and so the answer now is no at the beginning this is i gotta adjust to this you know and that's gonna be true of everybody in public life to some degree i'm even thinking like dr han who's taught all these students who may have surpassed him in areas like i'm just throwing out a name i don't know if this is true or not but brent petra for example maybe he's become expert on something that he's really taken a lot from scott and then developed but i think you're right there it was with scott because so much of scott is in others you know his um theology uh for some even the way he teaches you know they that's mentorship and he does that in spades and that's good but you do have to let go of uh that well some people will say to me they'll hear one of my teachings and they'll say oh i really love that when you talked about you know radical individualism in today's culture and uh i am the way i am the truth i you know and uh and they they will say i'm going to use that but i'll make sure i tell people that it was yours and i'm like no no no no just use it yeah just use make it yours you know and i think that's the difference between being magnanimous which we all endeavored to be as magnanimous rather than pusillars that's right only you and i know those that's thrust that says we're educated well i mean i did this when i started speaking i would just sound exactly like jason everett oh really yeah like he's inflection how did you deal with the accent it was difficult but hey there guys it's baseball no no i used my burger but it's like yeah to your point where i don't know like it's i think this is what probably everybody struggles with you look at people you admire you know that you've also been given a gift to do something similar and so you just naturally imitate it and it's not though until you can actually start to really be yourself that i think the lord can use you you're right otherwise you're just like you're just like a cheaper jason everett hi that's what i was doing in the beginning you know well i was billy graham at 25. yeah you know i thought who do i want to be and this is the question i think that you're creative yeah i'm creative we're teachers we're speakers writers and so at one one point or another you have to ask uh what am i gonna what am i like you know and rather than just being you it's like maybe i should become this or that and you start to act like something else and then you realize i got to keep this up now it's much better to be me so at 25 i was i was a pastor at 25 and i'd get up there you know god loves you and god has a plan for your life people like who are you you don't sound like that at all yeah i want you to repent yeah yeah people like give it up jeff just be you well christophanic you're aware of him are you yeah he's he gave me the best advice he said just go up there and be big goofy matt fradd and and it's great advice just just be yourself yeah but not too much no but that is good yeah yeah it's um there is a natural tendency to want to become something else and that's that goes against something that i i i struggle with with at large and that is that um i don't want to become a brand i don't want to brand i want to just be a disciple of jesus let it let it fall where it may you know but i don't want to uh i don't want to consciously have to try to be something that i think will attract people i think if i'm just me and a lot of what happens happens i mean lewis talks about that in regards to friendship he says as long as we're concerned about impressing others we never will yeah it's only when you stop thinking about yourself that you might end up being impressive to others yeah and then that someone would be able to say i went and heard matt fradd and uh you know what he is the same up there as he was down down there and that's the authenticity you know that we we not only need out there but inside we desire we desire otherwise i have to be several selves at the same time yeah and i don't want to be several selves i want to be just the disciple whether good or bad or popular or not popular you know just be yeah father mark's like that when you meet him off stage when you're in the back green room with him i mean i think to be fair i mean i don't know i i know there's been certain scandals among catholic speakers or clergy or what have you but for the most part i'm just so impressed with the people who are involved in different apostolates out there yeah it's a it's a definitely a very fruitful period that we're in right now you know when when scott came into the catholic church and i came into the catholic church there wasn't really this happening it really wasn't much at all there was a few apologetic conferences you know in catholic answers yeah but over the last uh 25 years blew up you know when i was here in steubenville this is a kind of an interesting point when i was here at steubenville i was here you had and none of us were employed except for curtis martin he was with cuff i think so all of us here in steubenville yet scott you had marcus grodi you had curtis martin tim gray you had um uh ted's three edward out there ted three uh you had sister john dominic you had jason everett uh i i was there all of us were there and we were friends and we would just get together in homes around here and and we'd have just a a grand time sitting around talking theology and so forth uh no competition no uh zero-sum pie just guys loving one another and then there was this explosion yeah that took place and you've got augustine institute you've got focus you have jason you have um uh so the sister john dominic with the the sisters of ann arbor you know the dominican the dominican sisters and you have marcus grodi and and we all still remain friends but there was an explosion from steubenville there was an explosion that took place and i think that to be honest about the reason for it i think there's three people that are responsible or at least part of the recipe one is certainly scott the other is father michael scanlon and the third is john paul the second it came together and there was a it ignited a passion that is out there now being fruitful you know in the world what would your advice be to because i i'm thinking like maybe 15 years ago if you asked a lot of people who go to catholic schools like franciscan you know what do you want to do maybe 20 years ago people would say like i want to be a youth minister not knowing what they were saying um but but now like i worry that we're like well i want to have a podcast yeah maybe i shouldn't worry about that but that just seems like that's that's a place where you can reach the most people perhaps yeah and even make a living from yeah does that concern you at all uh what what pitfalls should we look out for as we oh you got good questions you should have a podcast and i noticed we didn't have a pint but yeah let it slide i'll get shayla to run out and get us see how long that's a very good question i like your questions um what was it i'm kidding well and i'm asking i'm asking for myself right yes yes and me too yeah i would say um that it's a blessing and a curse because anybody can have a show anybody that's a blessing in 10 minutes go online come up with a thumbnail from canva exactly just and yeah you've been there the number one question i get from like graduates of franciscan university or gusting institute in other places they'll say dear jeff i know you're busy but yeah i just wanted to ask you i really feel that the lord has called me to do what you're doing how did you do it uh-huh well they're looking for a recipe there isn't a recipe to do it i said well right back well the first thing is you got to wet your bed until eighth grade okay this is what yes i'm telling you this is how it all came about you gotta have a great beard yeah yeah i'll do this and you gotta feel really really bad about yourself you know you guys struggle with acne in high school are you with me so far okay and then and then finally come to the end of your rope and you give your life to god it's bordering on depression anxiety and are you with me still no i didn't want any of that so i told them okay look what what what do you think god is calling you too and they'll say i i feel like the lord is calling me to to write okay right about what i don't know i just feel he's calling me to write are you writing no but i feel like he's calling me to write okay let's go back to the beginning here and i really encourage people find a niche that you're passionate about don't look at this as a job you know find a niche that you're passionate about and it might be something that it doesn't look big or whatever but you're passionate about it give your life over this start studying find out who else is in it start to communicate link with with others uh speak right there teach your gift will make room for itself you know scripture says it'll make room for itself and so if you start to do that then that's the beginning and i use the example of there was a guy that was crazy about making wooden boats nobody knew him just a guy he likes making wooden boats in the garage so he started a podcast hi i'm so-and-so i'm the wood wood boat making guy and uh and i had like 35 listeners but those 35 all loved making wooden boats so he kept it up 100 150 320 it just started to grow then the manufacturers of all the parts that make boats got in touch and said can i come on your podcast yes i can't believe it i've used your materials that's really good so we'd start to interview these thousand two thousand seventeen thousand before you know it the guy had something like uh seven hundred thousand people were connected and he was the guy that all he did was worked in the garage and the podcast had nothing special no great opening no great clothes hey i'm the wooden boat guy and so he became the go-to guy because he followed that passion and i think that for people starting out um we don't make it about don't make it about you make it about the lord and to be magnanimous don't worry about competition you know one thing that will kill people like us that are in this is envy yes uh jealousy is i want what matt fradd has i'd like to have that no that could be sinful or not sinful envy is i don't want matt to have that and if matt is successful it makes me sad it makes me sad this is called envy and it's a deadly sin it will take your joy away when you compare yourself to other people and that's what i was saying earlier is that i'm created for love i'm not settling for likes i'm created for love and i'm going to go i'm going to go there let the likes take care of themselves but people's people particularly who are creative struggle with this you know write a book on uh 10 ways to be a christian and they put it out there and 72 people bought it and that guy over here 10 ways to be a christian in america and he puts out there and he sells a million and you're and this guy here it makes him sad that's called envy yeah and if you have a husband who's envious of something at work and a wife who's envious of her sister then you bring them get together in the home and they're both somewhere else and they're sad rather than joyful and happy and it's the church backwards you know jesus said the scripture says rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn and the enemy comes in and says rejoice with those who mourn and mourn with those who rejoice and there's a good way to check this out yeah that is look at your sister's christmas letter donnie just graduated from harvard melinda is now accepted into the mit science program bobby was elected congressman and little little uh little paul won the pinewood derby in cub scouts and you're like i hate her you know because larry still has that fungus they can't take care of you know joey's prison yeah and uh and my youngest just uh had a baby out of wedlock i hate my sister and so you read her letter and what is it what happens it's like and and this has been actually validated with people who won the lottery they won the lottery and all their siblings became extremely sad he's like because they have all that now and i don't and they become envious it's a poison it'll destroy a ministry how do you repent of it you repent of it by focusing on what god has given you because if you remember that story in the bible where the guy comes in at nine in the morning and he makes ten bucks for the day the other guy comes in at noon he makes ten bucks for the day three o'clock ten bucks for the day five o'clock you know ten minutes to five ten bucks for the ten minutes so the people who got there in the morning are like you come to the the owner like what gives what gives i work nine nine o'clock i've been here all day i got ten bucks that guy which y'all let me tell you some stories about that guy you gave him ten bucks too and the guy says are you envious of my goodness no no are you envious you have a problem with my generosity so when people struggle with envy i would argue that it goes back to their relationship with god and it's not secure and it's it's um do you love them more than me you know and are you bothered by my generosity or do you rejoice in my generosity i gave you what i told you i would give you and so i think that the way you deal with it is you have to go deep into the relationship with god and to rejoice in what you have and to be a grateful person lord i am grateful for all you have given me and when you have a heart of gratitude and you are comfortable and secure in your love for god and god's love for you these things are um are not that important and if you can rejoice with your sister that won the lottery uh you're going to be a better man you know thanks for sharing that that actually like that that actually like sean sean shown a light we're in america now sure yeah some envy that i've been experiencing so just i'm just gonna bear it all here i was i was online and i saw like yet another catholic podcast it's doing this thing which i stole from joe rogan so it's not my thing exactly but there was a twinge of oh this is interesting like everybody's doing this thing now so sh you know lord i repent of that but here's a good way to repent of it showcase it um there's i think it's a latin phrase a jerry contra or when you act against the temptation so here's now everyone's going to know who i felt envious of i'll share it i'll share that thing and tell everybody to watch it like that is that what i'm doing here no i'm kidding i don't have your show okay that's not super challenging yeah no but that is a beautiful thing like you if you feel envious celebrate that person and publicly praise praise them you know that's what i was just i was you and i think a lot of like that's what i'm just gonna i'm just gonna actually say that and that is that if i really struggled let's say i struggled with i'm going to start up a show and i got a table two sure mics the 35 people working around us which people don't see that's right beautiful bookshelf people in the balcony if we uh you have that and i'm thinking well i'd like to start up a show like that and my goal is to have a show like matt fradd that's not the goal i should be looking at here the goal is what does god want me to to do and if my struggle is with matt fradd or my struggle is with scott or whoever yeah it is to lean into it and to say matt i really respect what you're doing you're doing a phenomenal job and i get on my hey if you have not heard of matt fratt yeah you've got to listen to that to that podcast because he's ripping it he's doing a an incredible job when you do that and you become magnanimous you become giving it changes you and that's what you were talking about there's lean into it don't let this thing eat you because you're in the wrong game this this is not what the winning is all about amen yeah and uh and creative people struggle with it and everyone who says they don't i'm like liar no that's right that's kind of what i meant earlier when i was saying that self-awareness is key you're free then yeah i heard somebody once say and i've stolen it since here's another quote of mine uh the the good borrow the great steal i've said that um no uh what was it gonna say good borrow great steal stealing things from other people gosh it doesn't matter i forget there's some quotes you stole not about stealing what's that you stole a quote did i steal a quote i forget it'll come back or it won't do people could people see your face when you talk now do you make that happen this is neil everybody hi [Laughter] i didn't know where people were here what's going on one out of the 50 people up in the balcony that's the second time we've made that joke i like that there's like a swarm of suits around us yeah i think we should just pretend i gotta i have a um uh my my regular podcast the jeff games show i've got one episode and it's 10 things i want to tell to catholic entrepreneurs oh i need to listen to that and i went through ten things of don't do this you know ten things can if neil would have googled that could he share that below sure ten things you would share with catholic catholic young catholic entrepreneurs that's great good and uh um because i know it looks like i have a great beard this is all show this is a community play i'm tevye this is all colored i really i'm very young but i being at the age that i'm at which is over 30 i i feel i have something to give to young catholic entrepreneurs and if i can be transparent and to and to say look i made mistakes and i had my eye on the wrong thing here and you don't do that you know and remember this and this and your family you know billy graham was interviewed and he said if you had it all to do over again what would you do differently he said less on the road more with my family yeah at that at that age so to be able to tell young people the traps and so forth and the biggest one i mentioned on there is envy if my mind is constantly on matt fratt i will never be me and i will never get around to what god has called me to do and if i can rejoice in your success and you can rejoice in my success we have a wonderful bond that is powerful to minister out there you know in in the world um i would say to young people do not look at this as a job but look at it as a mission and if you can make a living off of it praise god that's a wonderful thing to be able to do what you love to be able to make a living that's that's new it wasn't that way 25 years ago you know and stay in your wheelhouse there now i i like that point about focusing on something you're passionate about because i think the temptation too often is to be like i'm going to speak about everything let's try to throw out the biggest net possible but yeah but um sometimes you can end up being as interesting as dentist art or like hotel adverts on the back of an elevator that no one has ever looked at or care about they're so they're not offensive but they're not interesting so i think uh i i agree with your point there like if you're passionate about this thing and that actually reminds me of that line from uh wild at heart uh what's his name uh who wrote wild at heart john eldridge uh he says don't ask what does the world need ask what makes me come alive and then go do that because what the world needs is people who've come fully alive yeah and for me it was that 48 hour period at at 25. that's amazing that was that was uh i wasn't thinking of what do people need out there what do i need you know because i want to be able to stand up and i want to be able to play that fret board and i want to make songs i want to do all kinds of beautiful things from the word of god and so that's what was created was the bible timeline and then it went to to to go along with your example there then it went to what do they need well you know what they needed it too you know and uh i really want to ask um you you have this giant piece of paper with the bible title and laid out on it why are we both looking at our phones what just happened uh neil's talking it feels offensive no no no don't be able to did you ever worry people were gonna think you were crazy like walking around with your giant uh i can't imagine like before you found anyone that's what you were thinking you've totally lost his interest thanks a lot no i know i i just wanted to tell someone beyond this that i thought i'll feel bad if i miss him so tell them be honest what does that mean don't be on this what's that what just happened i'm having lunch with someone oh later and i just want to make sure that everything's cool you know that he might have sent me something sorry that's all editable no it's all live you know this is live you did i tell you it was live didn't tell me that yeah but but did you ever like worry that people were gonna think you were crazy walking around with your big giant bible timeline yes yes i i did you know my i remember one time i when i was 18 and i had this powerful conversion experience and i went out and bought a bible saying now he's going through his no i'm see i'm doing work here i'm looking at questions am i interrupting something matt no just kidding you know i i uh my i remember it was one of my relatives i carried my bible to a restaurant and she said why do you have to carry that bible everywhere your wife said that no my mom so why do you have to carry that bible everywhere it's kind of embarrassing you know and i said wow i just can't get enough of it i can't get enough of it and uh so when i yes the answer is yes neil because when i i used a method of learning real early on that is called the zettelkaston method zettelkasten by nicholas lumen a german social scientist what he did is he he he wrote 60 books 180 articles or something and everything he read he got from his index cards he had an entire indexing system where every idea that he liked he wrote down on a card and on the back of it he linked it to other cards because he didn't have the computer system and so when he would come across something he would write it down and he would add it to his he had his system so he had stacks of these index cards he was brilliant and i wanted to do that so i was i had all these stacks of cards wow and then i would link them in this zettelkasten method and um my people around me thought it was a little different you know it's like it's like a laboratory you know how would you link physical cards what does that mean on the back i would write down uh the the cards that this card is linked to and every card had a number kind of like a tag in an audience yes yes and so i could pick up an idea and i could turn around and think wow that links to card number 1623 and number 722 with this i i grab those bring them together whoa something else is coming out of this and that's the imagination and thinking and this is something that i feel so strongly about today as long as we're talking about that that one of the things i am concerned with is that there's a lot of us that are putting out material teaching ideas all good but i'm afraid that there might be a generation of knowledge hoarders and what i mean by that is that they buy the books they go to the conference they're on the they're on the conference online with the 94 teachers uh and they they they're just they they love it it's like i love this stuff but it just sits there and they continue to hoard more and more but then if you ask questions about it they're not able to articulate what they liked and so what i'm encouraging people to do is you know what you like what matt fratt said you like that you wrote it down live with it a little bit just take a day or so think about it meditate on that and then what i do with my ideas is i write out your idea for a sixth grader and then i think i i know it i know it because have you ever been talking to someone like scott or whatever and you say oh yeah i gave this talk over in toledo and i i um i uh referenced you in the talk what would you reference um i can't remember right now but it was good and what i did was i read a quote i didn't even assimilate it why did i give it on to them you know so i think that taking these atomic ideas these atomic notes and then what does that mean atomic you've said that a few times atomic notes the atomic note is the is the smallest particle yeah it's the idea it's the nugget it's the nugget that's what caught me was that that insight uh father mike schmitz and i just developed what's called an insight journal where we write down the insights that we we love and i take that insight and i don't want that to go away i only use that in my life not just for a teaching i want to live that so then what i do is i ruminate i let it marinate in my thinking i think through it you know we were talking earlier about jordan peterson why do people like him well i think because he thinks he thinks and you and i can think about something and make it our own and then when you stand up to talk or someone asks a question you're able to say well let me tell you you know matt fradd mentioned something on a show about two years ago that really caught my attention he was talking about and i'm giving him what i rem what i regurgitated there and uh i think that that's really really uh powerful the way we take notes needs adjustment the way we take in data and knowledge needs adjustment we're watch constantly tick tock tick tock instagram so forth all of this all of this and and then we're starting to do that with the truth and it's not finding good soil it's not finding good soil slow down with the truth let it sink into indeed it's like we're bulimic we're just that's a good way to throw it back out but not actually yeah digesting yeah so say that say again what did i say you want me to tell you what you just said no i'm just kidding if i can take what you said if i say it seven times it's mine but it's a trick but you know what i'm saying about the um well i'd love to know more what you mean about note taking because i'm reading nick mckee and ethics right now and i'm just loving it but i'm so afraid that 90 is falling out of my head so i i this mine is gonna you're gonna teach me something here right so i'll underline what i find important i'll write a c on the column of where i feel like aristotle's making the point here's the conclusion of the point so i have little things like that but help me help me take better yeah that's a good example so you're reading aristotle and you underlined a paragraph that was what caught you so what you do is you lift it from there and you bring it into your world and what i do is i create in my computer and my mac i create uh a text file it's the lowest common denominator denominator you type out what you've read the thing yes i'll type out that quote on interesting i'd be doing that all day though if i hadn't on the text well but this these are the things i want to keep i say you got to make a decision yeah at some point is this really what's the gold that you so everything that i collect some people collect stamps some people collect cars i collect ideas but i want those ideas to be superb life transforming ideas and i want to connect those with each other to make something beautiful that i can live give us an idea of two atomic thoughts that maybe you didn't think would initially connect but you ended up connecting them okay so um so i i connected one thought when i of uh a letter that vincent van gogh wrote to his brother theo about his struggle to get his father's love and that he wanted he wanted his father's love and acceptance and so he went into theology most people don't know this neil neil doesn't even know this not even near but what what vincent did is he entered the school to study theology because his father was a calvinist reformed preacher he wanted to be like his father so he studied but he was awkward and they ended up giving him a position in belgium in the boronage in the coal mines he went in there he sold everything he had gave it to the poor lived on straw and preached the gospel in the coal mines he loved it that was what he wanted to do he said i want to love and be loved deeply this is still vincent vincent van gogh and he is i want to love and be loved deeply i want truth and my my what i wrote about this was that had he been catholic he'd be a saint today but his father came to visit him the calvinist very permanent proper you know i'm sorry it's almost an australian accent he was very prim and proper and he came to visit him in the coal mines you know what he said no he said this this you should be ashamed look at you what are you doing vincent you're supposed to be the example he said but father i just want to love them i want to preach the gospel no this is this is horrible and something happened in his relationship with his father that he moved away from the faith and he turned to literature which was emil zola the french novelist and then theo his brother said you know what you should do you should draw you're good at drawing you started to draw so you should paint he started to paint and his brother visited the impressionists monet monet pissarro renoir um degas gogan all these guys he said they have color you should you should use color vincent so he gave him all these paints and he started to paint well okay so the first thought is the atomic note was his his note to his brother that paragraph where he said i just want my relationship with my father then later he painted a picture of his little home and there was a wicker chair a wicker chair and in that wicker chair there was a smoking pipe a pipe vincent smoked a pipe but he took up he painted the pipe on the wicker chair most of the people at the salon in paris would say what an idiot you're supposed to paint beautiful women in landscapes and cathedrals and a pipe on a wicker chair well that is an atomic note because he said in a later note this is as close as i can get to father who smoked a pipe this is a portrait of dad when i put the two together it was like that was an atomic idea that that simple painting and what he said to theo bringing him together and then realizing this guy expressed his love in a painting in the smallest thing in his father's life which was the pipe so those are two things that i would bring bring together i may have something about re read something about the the um the love of david for bathsheba it was improper at first and then look at another reading somewhere about his son and taking advantage of his half-sister and i have these two atomic notes and i just realized hey there's a connection here well david's son did to his sister what his father did to bathsheba he took advantage of her and no one called him out on it except the prophet and the son has learned from the father so i got these two when i bring them together i see something that is a lesson for today see what i mean so those are two atomic ideas and so all of mine all of my notes are text files i have thousands of them and i can even show you here but i but i use a a program called obsidian okay like the stone obsidian yep and it's free and what obsidian does is it allows you to put those text files into its ecosystem and then you can start to link you've got a document on transubstantiation you can link it to atomic notes to things you've heard from matt fratt scott hahn pope john paul ii and they are linked and it's the linking that is the power and as you grow over the years more is linked and you you start to see things you didn't see when you were 25 because you did something with the knowledge you didn't just say oh that was really cool well tell me more well as i read the book 20 years ago you took from that book that which you saw was was powerful insightful and it's in your ecosystem now did you did you find a difference to how you learned when you would write them on index cards versus what you would write on the computer was one more effective than the other as far as yes the computer by far is that right because i could do searches i could say okay i want to do a search on um love all of my documents and quotes would come up and i would hit one of them and then it and then it demonstrates uh it demonstrates what's called a graph but does this not just end up exporting parts of your brain onto a machine that you then need to be relying on the machine for uh you would be relying on the machine um as a tool but the goal that's a good question the goal is that these truths would be here yeah that i took the time to learn them and i took the time to make it mine so what so what so that i would live it and then the more you do this you know jesus said uh i'm going away and i and i get a kick out of it because he says i'm going away it's to your advantage like what i've been walking with you for three years and now you're going away and it's to my advantage he says i'm sending the helper he'll lead you and guide you into all truth well the holy spirit has to have something to work with here and so if i'm constantly focusing on truth and beauty and trying to learn about god and creation and the holy spirit can use that to lead and guide me into truth so hopefully the second brain i call it a second brain is is reflective of what i think about you know and when i'm dead and gone if you want to go in and look and you say that's what he was thinking about yeah so you can see they they create a graph this this particular wonder if we'd be at a this is if you hold it up for that camera we'll see if we can uh see if we can zoom in on it or see it in the middle there could you do it to the one point yeah that one's gonna work best can you see it there or should i hold it up you'd hold it up more like that yeah i have to refocus it's okay yeah it might be too small to you see the graph yeah i see it yeah those are obsidian people can check that out absolutely you know yeah if you um if you hold it up later that was one of the thoughts the valley of dauphin what's that if you hold it up by your head they'll be able to see it it's just okay it's focused right by your head so all right here's my brain because i just think that's really cool put it next to your other brand can you see the resemblance of that one you see the resemblance yeah that's what's going on inside that's why i'm so messed up somebody help me so though in there is the bible timeline in there are the sermons i gave when i was twenty-five years old um doing this forever yeah in the in there are the quotes of john paul ii all 150 that just turned my world upside down and there is aquinas in there is the um marriage all topics quotes einstein aristotle um so did you have to take this from the cards and then manually insert it obviously over time do you still have the cards no that'd be good i know that'd be that would be cool that would be cool but uh the i guess the point is you and i are about truth okay absolutely let's not um be just addicted like tick-tock of going through truths yeah let's let's truth is to be this to marinate and to enjoy and this reminds me of thomas a campus it may have been his first or second chapter where he said you know if if you knew the sayings of all of the philosophers by heart what would that profit you without compunction or something like that i forget but and then he contrasts the sayings of christ with all the sayings of the saints and says that it's infinitely more superior the point being if i if a man lives his entire life meditating on the scriptures and i've got a million books that i bought from amazon and i dabble in them he's far better off right yeah yeah and i use my phone you know you probably have done this where you're you're hearing a talk or you're you're at a theater or something like that or you heard on the radio or something and and you think oh wow that caught me that caught me and what i'll do is sometimes i'll i gotta use the restroom and i'll go there and i i say it yeah into my phone which goes automatically into my second brain and then when i'm alone and can look at it because i got a whole section of of seeds that i heard that i have to ruminate over i have to marinate and i'm not going to let them go and there's a lot of them and um i have to uh i have to make it make it mine but i captured it yeah i captured it i i find that just this last week i've been delving into the ethics and i've been reiterating this to my kids and like trying to get them excited about it you know the sixth grade level yeah exactly and but it is interesting that when you teach or when you re-articulate something that is what impresses it upon you which is why i suppose if you teach a particular class then you've kind of you know that in deeper way yeah things you just read casually yeah well that's why father mike and i developed this insight journal you know with ascension is because is it out yet yeah it's doing very very well and it's it's set up for you to collect the gold the insights and uh so i have an insight journal for myself and that is that is the gold of this it's like this is these are the the thoughts that have become so foundational and instrumental in my life that if i'm dead and gone and i gave it to you to say that was the goal that's what motivated him or that that's what you know got him going and so i have three grandchildren and i have one journal for each of my grandchildren and i'm writing down all the time to a dominic into francesco into fiona dominic i just thinking of you today and i want you to know dadada about theology of the body and so forth whatever it might be and oh if you ever look up in the archives there's a guy called matt fratt he's got a really cool show you know but i i'm writing these and then and my plan is and i've got some tickets to the ball game we went to in the back and how much i love him and it has a place for prayer for him it has a place of uh favorite saints gosh that's wonderful um and it has a life verses you know to get a hold of this dominic and when he's 18 if i'm still here i will hand it to him and say dominic i have been loving you and praying for you for the last 18 years this is what i wanted to share with you that sounds like something i'd get excited about for a day and then forget about it for keeping it going yeah you're right it it it takes tenacity and there are times where you just don't write anything for a period of time so my wife had a blessing journal that she kept for a while where she i like his his honesty by the way yeah i just yeah but she would she would write down little things throughout the day you know like uh very simple things just thank you lord for this and she would just write them down but i think what helped her maintain it is is it wasn't like i got to do 10 a day it was just whenever it comes out that's what i think of it i pick it up and that's what i do that's a beautiful way to overcome it because i've had a month for nothing yeah but do i want to hear it when i hear it uh bing bing bing bing you know that's that's for francesco so i want to get to some questions from our supporters on locals and patreon should you just stand up and leave me whenever you need to go to your lunch date or let me just look on that real quick real quick see that's the nice thing about live your life yeah it's great this is great while you do that let me tell people about hello yeah hallow.com frat if you click that link in the description below you can get hello the full app for three months so you can try it out before you even pay a cent and you can decide during that three months whether or not you want to keep going i love it i actually use it right now they're releasing a story of a soul and it's over 21 days and i've been listening to it every single day and i've been brought to tears by it it's a powerful app very well put together i would highly recommend you check it out if you don't yet have it h-a-l-l-o-w dot com slash matt one day i'm gonna remember this slash matt fred slash matt frank click the link in the description below and uh you can hear a bunch of people talk about a bunch of things that will be a bunch of greatness yes that is true do you help with jonathan rumi's uh hello yeah there's something or do you record also for hello yes uh there's a devotion a daily devotion that i'm doing with uh jonathan rooney plays uh jesus on the chosen he's a wonderful guy great actor great brother uh he gives the gospel of the day and then i give a devotion it's beautiful a five-minute devotion every day and so um every day you know i get ahead of myself a little bit but every day it's like the gospel reading and then that's where this comes in my second brain because if i'm thinking about something i want to know what i was thinking about before about that and yeah i look at it go oh that's a great gosh i can't i can't believe that quote of john paul i would ever remember yet yeah yeah yeah and they're you know like you know cha-ching i love it you know every day's every day is uh it's an exploration of of just truth and beauty all around me and it and that's so much better than tick tock yeah check it out hello.com matt brad all right we've got some questions here i haven't read them ahead of time so we'll just see what's going on rosemary dempsey says when i was in grade school being taught how to think was a primary aspect of our education today the art of thinking is lost the virtue of docility opens up to learning the virtue of knowledge is gathered the gathering the information we then move on to the virtue of understanding and grasping the information and then we discern the legitimacy of the information and it warrants consuming it into our memory etc she should have been on the show yeah let's have a she says do you believe such a program should be returned to our society i suppose she means that maybe today we're not being taught to think but just to regurgitate things yeah i think she has a very good point i i really do yeah you know we're taught in school it's actually a very poor system and that is that i'm gonna sit in school i'm gonna sit down with a piece of paper or my laptop or a pen and the professor comes in and says hello class we are in science 101 and we're going to start off with uh the amoeba he goes up to the board and what's everyone doing they're trying to write as much as they can of everything that they are that everything that they're hearing and so when they write everything that they're hearing they are taking energy away from listening and trying to think and so they write everything down as much as they can at the end of the lecture they got four pages and the only time they're going to go back to it is for the test so they're going to get tested on this can and it's just an exercise in can you remember this for seven days that's it yeah and and and and that's it and then when it's done it's done and i think that the way we should be listening is if we're listening deeply to what is being said making a few little quick notes listening to it and uh trying to figure out what is being said here and that's what i need to capture is what's being said and uh and and so we we do this the same thing as we did in high school we're doing it at conferences we're writing down as much as we possibly can the only difference is we don't even get a test it just goes into a notebook or or something and so what i would encourage people to do is she was mentioning is think to think god gave you this this mind um and it you know the to the ephesians in chapter 3 and verse 20 says that god can do far greater than anything that you can think or imagine this is why talking with your children around the table about important things is helpful it is very i sat down with my daughter avila yesterday and i said how do you know this isn't your hand or is it and she said well i already i already have two i'm like okay well maybe you have three maybe this is it how do you know it's not i can't feel it well you can't feel other parts of your body internal how do you know you know we just had sure i'm weird no i like that i'm like you i love that that type of thing but she's exactly right in school today there should be a premium put on thinking you know yeah i just thought if someone could look through the window be like okay that's what homeschooling is yeah we're good we don't but they'd be wrong all right kathleen says can you please post pictures of your john paul the second motorcycle like a close-up detail pick we won't be able to see that through that oh i thought you were going to pull that up do you have a jump or the second motorcycle i yeah i am sharing it with a priest in canada [Music] what happened was if i shot it can i see it though i want to see oh yeah i see what you mean i don't know if it'll it'll if you send it to matt we can put it you can yes yes send it to me i will do that there's um i can even put it up after the fact on youtube but if you slack it to me man i can try to well while i'm finding here look you want to know how i got it yes okay are you able to talk and look at the same time let's see go uh yeah no what happened was i uh i i've been i love motorcycles you know from the time that i was a kid and um orange county chopper built it it's oh that's cool it's a tribute bike to how do you go you know what go ahead and go back and forth you'll see other pictures and different oh my gosh isn't this something the gas tank is uh is john paul ii we're going to put this up after the fact because we're not going to be able to see it right now but i'll put it in the community section on youtube okay let's go check out the image oh people this is golden for you um well i went to buffalo uh no rochester new york and i was gonna speak there and a deacon picked me up and he heard that i was a long distance rider and i'm a member of what's called the iron butt association which means that you wrote a thousand miles proved in 24 hours wow and i thought i would say that to you because that's what i'm proud of that's very impressive uh i i went there he picks me up his name was deacon money okay he picks me up and says i got some before i take you to the hotel i got someone to show you and i said okay so he took me to this ministry called heart as nails yeah and i walked in there and there's this lady standing behind something that's draped with a cloth he said i said what are we doing here and she takes this off and there is the chopper there's the bike and went wow and it turned out that they had built the bike for some purpose that didn't turn out and she heard about me and she said i wanted to make this available to you for evangelization for a small fee yeah a very small compared to what it was worth it was worth about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars or something and she is very small and she said i know you use it for evangelization it's amazing oh my gosh and when people see the pictures online you're going to put up neil it is staggering uh on the tank is john paul ii uh on the back is totus tuis on the front be not afraid his uh um emblem is on one side the his papal cross on the other a hidden bullet on the bike and uh it's amazing so anyway i got it and now um there's a priest in calgary father mary is a polish priest who's fanatic about biking that i bike with he has it now and he's using it in high schools and he'll go and bring it in and the kids are like whoa and he stands and he teaches all about john paul ii and what he taught about our lady and suffering and so forth just using the bike that's really cool yeah that's neat so i'll give you all those pictures uh alyssa enriquez says what does the bible have to say about same-sex romance it's clear that homosexuality at least acts are sinful but is being romantic without being physical with a person of the same sex damnable that's what she says sounds like a good question for matt that's so simple matt could answer it as i used to say that's so simple scott could answer that but i'll do it um yeah well that's such a big topic we know that and i think what she's saying is that okay yeah we know that acting on homosexual desires is sin and she's saying are we getting pretty close with a romantic relationship with someone um it's not my wheelhouse but i would i would i would say that uh that yes it is it can be dangerous very dangerous because if i am married to my wife but i'm emotionally very close to another woman out there that's a problem that is a problem because i'm giving something of myself a way that is uh improper and one step away from what would you say oh uh so i don't know um that's a good question so i i can't tell if she's making that distinction between say homosexual desire and homosexual acts obviously to experience temptation to something that's uh inordinate or uh inappropriate isn't itself sinful uh but uh you know i like your analogy like if i encountered a woman who i got to know and could tell that there was something there and then i fed it you know through going out of my way to meet with her talk with her whatever but didn't act on it yeah exactly that would clearly be inappropriate and so i think trying to yeah feed a desire but keep it at an arm's length is uh seems to be inappropriate it's problematic yeah drew says with so many concerns about the leadership of our shepherds how should we communicate these concerns and what would that look like well that's a good question because there's a lot of people you know that are are are concerned i think that uh for for most of us we don't have access to some of the leaders you know in the church we just don't simply don't have access but we do have access locally to leadership in the in the church and i i've always encouraged people and they say well i've got a problem with this i got a problem with that to first of all pray you know pray and pray for that person and if you get an opportunity to to express that you know in a letter or you get a chance to talk to him do so if you feel convicted about that but ultimately it's not people like me that are in charge of those things i can certainly have input but i have enough on my plate to take care of you know in in my life uh with a family and uh and and my and my job and i think that there are a lot of people who are out of their wheelhouse out of bounds when they take it upon themselves to be the correctors you know of the of the church so it's a it's about my pay scale but i can certainly pray and and uh i have to think that way about righteous anger you know too often we point to christ's righteous anger in the temple right to justify our own anger which so often goes off the rails yes we're not the second person and there is a righteous anger an unrighteous anger righteous anger is that when something happens that causes you to to be angry you know the church teaches us that that is a flag and a possible opportunity to bring about change and so the for example one lady her daughter was killed by a drunk driver she went to the uh the the penal stage of you know the penalty for this and the guy got about three months in the local jail she was outraged angry now she could have went out and got a gun and said i'll bring justice she could have done hired someone you know but she didn't she started to go to all the courts around the country to see how they were sentencing the drunk drivers she was outraged what did she do she started mothers against drunk driving she took it as my anger is a flag and an opportunity to do something to bring about the good and the restoration but a lot of times we become angry and it's just plain selfishness and uh that's where you have to deal with it yourself and you have to put that put that aside but anger in itself can be a flag that something needs to change it motivates us to make a correction yeah my point only is that we are flawed and we are riddled with concupiscence and so we can sometimes seek to justify our sinful anger by pointing to a righteous example of anger and likewise maybe we can point to someone some saint who stood up and told the pope this and that and we can use that to justify maybe our inappropriate way of doing it yeah that's a good point and yeah i think that's really good that's a difficult thing to discern you know i don't want to be on the wrong side of that although maybe i have gotta have mercy um kyle whittington says jeff when you were in st louis you talked a lot of smack about the blues how are you feeling now what okay i like i like hockey and the minnesota wild were in the first round of the playoffs with the saint louis blues and we lost and so now the blues are going to go on and i did talk smack in st louis and uh i i repent of my smackness and i will be back next year [Music] ryan hopkins says with the success of the bible in the year podcast has there been any discussion about the possibility of doing a catechism in a year podcast yes there is typical american capitalism we're going to milk this quran in here everything to the ground no yeah we're that's what i can say is that we are we are discussing the possibility of that and that's all i can say and uh my three lawyers are behind me in the other room stacy b says jeff i love you you're saying get a bible get away and get with god i was wondering if you ever have to struggle with keeping this up and how do you make sure you carve out time in your busy schedule great question this is the best question show on the internet right here that's an ad i want to do for you you want good questions thank you stacy um yeah okay i'll tell you how i did it um i'm married and i have three girls they're all grown up my wife is uh is an angel she is i love her so much you know and so what we do is at the beginning of the day we developed a routine we developed a routine that we stuck with and we have done this for a long long time now and that is i get up and this is the key to it carving out she said it very well you got 24 hours and people say i just don't have time you have 24 hours and you're either going to spend it with hannity or what you should be doing if you say i don't have any time i could listen to ben shapiro for an hour a day but i can't go i know i know so i wrote out a chart uh i wrote out a chart and i'll give it to you if you want to give it to your thank you and that is i showed how how long it takes to read each book of the bible and then i can compare it to i can read ephesians and colossians for one hannity that is terrific i can if i if i give up the evening news this week i can read romans in hebrews that's terrific so i'm trying to shame psalms i'll tell you what programs to give up you know awareness so what we do is i get up in the morning every day it's like this i get up in the morning what time i get up at about six in the morning i immediately get fully dressed i walk downstairs i make tea we drink green tea and i make up a big pot of green tea put two cups out like this i put it over on the table when it's done i bring out two bibles my wife's and mine set them down and i sit down and i start to drink the tea and look out the window this is every day and then she comes down the steps in 10 minutes and she walks over and i say uh said i'll say to her um and boca tov in hebrew is good morning say boker toes poker and she sits down we're both sort of at that half conscious state yeah and uh drink a little bit of tea and we talk to each other for about a half an hour and then we grab the bibles and we read the gospel for the day and we do lectio divina together and drink our tea and mark brew up a little bit more and and we're able to pray about our life and grandchildren and we share with each other what the word is saying to them today and i know most people can't do this but we do it every day for about an hour to an hour and a half every day and that's how i start my day and i and if i if i couldn't start my day that way and i was home there would be something wrong and not once have either one of us use that as a weapon when we were mad at each other not once what do you mean well you know how sometimes when you get mad at your it's your wife or you're disgusted with something or you're angry you didn't get your way or whatever burnt the steak last night whatever and um yes and so the way we show that as mature men of god is we become silent yeah you know you know what would you jesus would jesus do yeah totally so we you could sit down and you just like and nothing's said or if i wanted to really let her know that she's wrong and needs to change i wouldn't show up that could be a weapon that's weaponized weaponizing that time i'm weaponizing her intimacy yeah and showing her don't ever do that again yeah because it'll cost you this we've never done that so i'll sit down and she'll sit down and eventually god will straighten her out you know yeah so he's gonna give him time give them time give god a chance so i will sit down and um eventually you know it leads to you know what i'm i'm sorry i really am i'm sorry and it's happened you know you know a few times in our in our life and uh i'm just joking i just say that to because it's such a dry sense of humor there's no difference in your intonation or spacing of words when you make jokes you just you gotta be quick i like it okay so no in all seriousness we do we sit down and um and uh most of the days it's just a good morning and then we start to talk about the scriptures and my wife comes up with amazing things and they become atomic notes and she's like bloody hell jeff put the computer away yeah i just want to pray with you and we we we've done this for a long time and um it's how i begin my day so to answer the question carve out something a tradition something that you could do and just do it even if you feel like i don't know if i can maintain it yes i think uh one of the biggest obstacles to people reading scripture on a regular basis and this is perhaps because i think this because it's my biggest obstacle is that i have this idea that bible reading ought to feel a certain way right like i'm going to be levitating or something and then when that doesn't happen i feel like i'm failing at it and i don't like failing so i don't continue to do the thing that i'm failing at because i don't like that feeling yeah that's a good point and i think some people feel like that i think it's the way we word it okay let me explain that i think it's the way we word it and what we say is um um i gotta i i listened to the language i got to have my prayer time now i need to have my prayer time prayer time is this it's like going to the gym you know i need to do my reps and i don't want to do my reps but well if you look at it like that i have to pray if you said to me jeff can you stay overnight tonight and stay in steubenville for another for another day and i say matt i have to go home and spend time with the covenant partner you think what yeah i need to spend time with my covenant partner i think boy that's dry yeah i get to you know so it's a relationship i like that i'm a disciple it is a real relationship i talk out loud all the time to the lord because it's real i'm in the car driving and when i pray it's not all it's not all mental you know it's i talk out loud to the lord it's this is real this is a real relationship you know if i went home and for for a whole week i never said anything to emily at the end of the week she'd say honey yeah why don't you tell me you love me i did i said it over and over in my mind all week oh why don't you say it oh you want me to say it oh okay i suppose i could do that i've been loving you in my mind i told you i was you know how happy i am with you and what a beautiful relationship we have talk about it you know and and that is that's something that is really important in this carving out in this intimacy with the lord you know make it real learn learn a praise language and that's when you read the bible you're learning that in psalms how to praise the lord one time i was leading up you'll love this i was leading up a weekend retreat for men and we were up north in minnesota and we got we got knocked in you know there by a snowstorm locked in rather and we were supposed to come back sunday couldn't even get cars out of there we had used up all of our ammunition for our fun in games all the beef jerky was eaten and it was just no food left and it was all of us sitting there no and i said well you know what we could do guys because mother's day was right around the corner i said let's just go around the room here and i want you to tell the group they're all married tell the group uh a little bit about your wife and why you love her so the first guy stands up you know he says uh yeah [Music] pig what can you say about peg she's uh quite a woman quite a woman well you know and finally he comes out he says you know i i love that woman she's an amazing kindness and he starts crying next guy stands up yeah joyce nah she's uh they broke the mold after her you know and uh she's and one after another starts crying as they're saying why they love their wives did you make fun of them no no you didn't oh i thought i missed where the trajectory so they went around and they came back home and their wives were like you need to do another one of these and our church grew that's amazing the number of people grew and these women were like what did you guys do up there and all they did was they expressed their love which they never did straight to their wife they didn't look her in the eye and say i love you so much because of this this this and that changed their relationship and so doing that with the lord and talking with the lord in a real way has a way of changing the relationship my my biggest prayer matt is lord may i never lose touch of our relationship during the day may may be aware of it all day long that i am yours and brother lawrence right practicing the presence of practice yes yes that's very good yeah yeah even washing the dishes what's that even washing the dishes as he did yeah christopher vander something sorry christopher says what was it like working with such juggernauts of catholic media like father mike and matt fratt of course how dare you father we've talked about father mike maybe he missed that part but no it's uh what is it like to work with it's a privilege you know it's um uh it's a privilege it's inspiration i learn uh when i you can always learn you know and [Music] one of the things i've learned from you is that your strength over the years came out of raw transparency raw transparency at the beginning of your ministry of what you struggle with in your life and you made yourself vulnerable and it's when you make yourself vulnerable that people are like i identify with that guy and if they identify with that guy they can learn from that guy instead of being the all put together you know individual jason everett like myself what a jerk ryan pong says how has the success of bible in a year affected you what fruits and struggles have you seen from this amazing ministry yeah uh the the fruits are just incredible and you know they're gigantic in terms of what's happened in people's uh lives uh all the way from anybody that's out there that nobody knows to hollywood actors and actresses that are saying i do this i you know i love it i'm reading it politicians i do uh i do a monthly study for the house of representatives in washington via zoom and all of them you know like bible in a year just my wife is going crazy and you know the way the kids love it we talk about it at breakfast so it's everywhere you know it's ubiquitous and that's that's great um what was the other part of that well i guess how has it affected has affected you how does it affect me it's affected me you know in the way of uh humility humbling to see what the lord can do with small things that were were small for me you know something i did started with and others are taking care of it when you look at bible in a year you have to remember that yeah it was a 25 year old who made that bible timeline chart out of a hunger for the word of god and and it just sort of grew over the years there were many years where nothing happened to it was sitting on my desk and once i came back into the catholic church a lot of people touched it at ascension press a whole team helped in all that the graphics and everything the camera man and uh and so when i was done teaching it they continued to work and do their part and i was onto something else so it became an expression of a big team and then of course father mike um part of that so i have learned that we're the body of christ and that we have a role to play in it and we're not the thing we all work on the thing which is the the good news and it's the kingdom of god do you often find there's a stereotype that catholics aren't really into the bible have you heard from a lot of protestants who are just shocked this is a catholic thing yes and there's been several of these podcasts with protestants where they are stumped right how did that happen did you hey joe did you hear the number one podcast is two catholic guys and just reading the bible how did that happen you know so yeah there and it's also been a place a time of bringing us together to say yeah we love the bible this is what we're about yeah and they're um i think that they i remember you said something in one of your original teaching series that struck me and i've never forgotten it's an atomic thought maybe you said um what often happens is you know january 1st comes around we go buy a new bible because the old one's broken and we get really excited about it for a few days and then we put it aside and we pick up some nice devotional yes and the devotional might be great but your point was problem is the church hasn't commanded you to read devotional the but the church has commodities yeah yeah what he said is you get all excited and you're going to read the bible this time in a year so when do you start january 1st you got to start then because you start some other time who knows where you're going to end you know so you start on the first you get a new bible because the old one didn't work you get a notebook you get a pen not just any pen but you get a watermelon you have a pen that expresses your deep thoughts because these will be read and by a people for ages uh so you get all that and then you start january 1st genesis and you get into february reading exodus and in march you quit because you are in leviticus and you lost the story and when people lose the story yeah they give up and that's what our teens do today when they lose the the narrative threat of their life they can give up and that's part of what suicide you know is about is that my story is over right and i can't make sense out of my life and i didn't think it would end this way and and what they didn't realize was that they put a period where god put a comma and and that the story goes on and so what um what we did is we told people don't read don't read it right now um leviticus let's just keep on enjoy the story we'll come back we'll show you where that belongs and that's exodus the golden calf incident but um yeah that's we we talked about that i'm surprised that so many people remember those analogies you know of uh but maybe they experienced them you know they read they said i'm gonna read it and then they gave up and then they started to read well it's nice to realize you're not that special like when somebody points out the story of buying a bible and giving up like oh i see yeah so i'm not peculiar i'm just human yes yeah you are and what people were in need of is how to do it and that was i think the the magic of the timeline so yeah it was showing them how to do how you can actually achieve this we didn't bring this up but if people want to take the bible in a whatever not the great adventure what do they do where do they go and can we link this neil yeah you can go to ascensionpress.com and then once you register you have access to about 75 different studies that i've done and father mike's done and and uh um andrew swafford and others have done uh marcelino d'ambrosio 103. so once you're in that ecosystem you can order any study there with you order the books and then you can go through it on your own or with within your church and where you stop you pick up the next day it knows where you're at in it it's kind of smart they've done it's way over my head you know these guys are brilliant what they put together how long does it take folks to get through it well there's two ways to go through the whole bible the the quick way is eight half-hour sessions called unlocking the mystery of the bible yep and i did that at a big opera hall and it was really kind of big and it was fun and then uh the other one is um the great adventure bible timeline that's 24 one-hour talks all the way through the first one i don't know if i can do that [Music] start with the first one yeah and uh yeah so those are two whatever happened to mark hart's t3 bible they just thanks for bringing that up and it's doing really well and then there's a junior high one too and there's another one you got kids we have a brand new one called pbs for toddlers yes it's for grade school okay and it's called pbs or gps that makes sense because gps god um god's plan in salvation gps and it is amazing they've we put together with a group of women who are educators and uh and you can use it in a school or home and it is phenomenal it has a teacher's workbook it has a student's workbook and we're we're really uh through this is great some people could do this if they were homeschooling until you walk about it yeah yeah so we've got all the way from the phone from kids that can't read with a book to all the way to the big 24-hour you know and then the highest one is where you just read the vulgate yes exactly and that's yes and i do have a series on discovering um the meaning and explanation of the trinity and that one is 1700 cds yeah yeah we don't have cds any city i know that's my problem not my problem this is the only way you can consume this if it means enough go to a secondhand store or antique shop um what's your favorite i'll tell you my favorite translation you tell me if i'm wrong too i just cannot quit the king james version you like it i love it it's got the deuteronomy yes cambridge press one yeah yeah you know yeah when it comes to that you know there's two that we typically use we use the uh rsv catholic edition catechism uses it great adventure bible is the rsv uh uh ca the catechetical uh edition uh enough said about that that's the one you should use but then there's also the new american bible which is in the mass and it sounds different it sounds a little bit different you know those are the two that there was some sort of weird thing that happened with esv which we may not go into but it was they were publishing it for catholics at some point and then i guess do you know what happened yeah it's kind of i don't know where it exactly is at now but i know that the protestant version of the esv with a they call it the apocrypha is available with cambridge but there are uh like you say you like the king james i don't think there's anything wrong with reading a beautiful yeah translation of the of the and i find the dual rams awkward when i read it some of the i just i can't people would just read the dual rams like it's the same thing right i don't use it very really much at all at all i use the rsv catholic edition because i you know we're all on the same page there but if you saw my library matt it would blow your mind because i have i have dozens of what are called premium bibles of every translation and it is goat skin it's it's uh it's done in in the netherlands in french paper it is amazing and i love the i love the the quality bibles there and who knows what we're going to see in the future here with a great adventure i like what uh carl keating said uh he gave gave a whole article you know writing about which translation etc and he basically said which translation should you use the one you'll read the one you'll read yeah get people into scripture yeah and no way the way we're handling it is that it's very cr it's very important to study the bible in the heart of the church and so the the translation is less important than i think the heart of the church and understanding that because today on here i got dozens of translations i can go to any second just to find out how did you translate that word but again i don't want studying the bible to become tik-tok totally i want to are you happy with what ascension did with your bible essentially or how they put it together yeah yeah we're talking about some new cool things you know at some point maybe but i'm not a big fan of the rubbery cover feel yeah it's kind of got that faux leather feel which i don't like yeah i brought you one just to trash essentia's bible no it's a beautiful bible yeah i just wish it were more like ignatius's what we will see maybe oh it might be better in the meantime i would like it to get better i can't say anything because i like the interior but i don't i don't like how it's yeah is what i would say to you yeah do not judge it but more could be coming you it could be because i'm sure that's one possibility you've heard it first on the mad friendship a couple of the lawyers are waving you down they're from the balcony i should what shut up all right that's exciting yeah we'll see you know but um the point is that protestants having the best bibles esv goat skin leather black thing it's gorgeous i'm with you but the question is will catholics purchase that do you know when i first started the great adventure mike schmitz will see to it that they do make it happen make it happen yeah i think sorry so yes and no no but i agree with you and i was going to say is uh they told me at the beginning when i brought the great adventure idea in the 24 week study i brought it to three publishers you know what they said no you know why three reasons uh it's too long catholics don't study the bible at this depth and they won't pay for it that's what they told me okay three of them and it was matt pinto that saw at a conference i gave it a conference in philadelphia where i do the bible timeline in a day he was sitting out there you know matt yeah and and matt was i was just writing notes after note after note after note after note i'm thinking man he's really getting into the bible yeah like 25 pages of notes on how this thing can change the world god bless that was him he's such a great dude that was his mind and so he said jeff okay we got to do this we got to do this and so it was partnering with matt that really or is it that yeah is it both is it i think it's both we only had four hands trying to be cool you know my daughters are tired of me trying to be cool her friends come over you know and i'd say hey what's up come and look at my motorbike yeah and look at i put on makeup tv wait what makeup but for television i wore makeup oh life on the rock so i'm glad you uh fleshed that story out it really got weird well i would embarrass my daughters when their friends would come over i said look what kind of foundation do you guys use my daughter's like dad shut up just dab i use origin i remember my dad would get offended when my uh because he'd walk around in his underwear just like all day which is good for him it's his castle i remember my sister and my dad could you please like when my friends come around just like please have a shirt on bloody hell emma you get offended by i bought this house that's right those are my windows if people want to look through them it's at their own discretion that's cool but but uh cool cool cool cool but generally you're happy with the bible but at least the the the outlay how they yeah it's like anything else that's first round that's uh they're i'm sure there's going to be 2.03 you probably couldn't keep up with selling them oh we were so we were underwater when we had no idea yeah everything boom gone reprint reprint and it was it was a little frustrating to be honest with you because i like the pages the feel of the pages yeah yeah well you and i are a lot alike you see what he likes i just wonder if ascension was thinking of promoting this episode and rather like actually a segment of the that's right yeah for your information uh no that you're right um there are different kinds of paper and um i would say this i would say this we'll see we'll see i'm excited there are different kinds of paper and uh i this india paper um the best paper in the world is french milled i could talk to you literally matt about 15 points of what makes a premium bible literally i mean i'm a student of this and i think that we're in the catholic uh world we're getting to that point where you just might see it at some point here isn't that amazing because probably for maybe a decade or more you've been frustrated that catholic's going to have better bibles than protestants and what you did all those years ago in 48 hours may be the impetus for why catholic's going to have even better bibles and prophecies we didn't have a good bible like the great adventure assaulting then we got it now we had talk show hosts complaining about the cover and the crash that didn't feel right you know uh wait i've got to get this out here just in case ascension or some any press is watching i've always wanted a bible because it's there's the books of the bible right so what if you had each of the books of the bible as its own book and then you just could you know that's a thing right it is a thing but it's not a big seller esv does it i love it there's a little black kind of a moleskin that's what they kind of look like big mole skin yeah that's why the inside journal is like a moleskin is it i don't know yes i just told you earlier what the inside inside journal is a journal write down the insights of father mike and i oh okay i wasn't listening to that point is that it's just vodka i mean water it's clear people can't tell idiots but okay yeah and then i've also seen this new group obviously protestants because it's beautiful is they've printed them in magazines i love that there's also we're just going to force feed people who are totally uninterested in reading what if we did this then they'll read it we'll send someone over to you and he will read it to you against your will but there's another one out there that is is kind of interesting and um i can't remember the name of it now um and what did you say it's a bible you open up the bible and it's got like little qr codes in it and you put your phone over it and then also some commentary comes up about that and that's where i do you know what we did we did a a a study oh supposed to be eating with my friends we should really wrap this up in three hours we're just having too much fun i can come back after lunch i'll just i'll stall while you're off i'll read the book leviticus this is what we did we had this guy that does these pollings and studies research for medtronic and all these other big places and he was going to do one i think it was for one of the major catholic ministries and i talked to him and i said look i got a hypothesis and that is this that millennials when it comes to studying god's word or when it comes to doing lectio divina and so forth if they had a choice between this yeah and a beautiful bible totally a beautiful bible they will take the beautiful bible and he said you really think so i said yeah i know so i said they'll use this to look something up quick yeah but when it comes to living in it absolutely it's going to be the paper it's going to be paper and you know recently the uh paper companies and stationery are going through the roof because you know why get this you're not going to believe this but you can google it people are learning to write no oh yeah like with a pen a pen i'm telling you it's happening and it's i never thought this would happen they're actually laying ink on paper i'm like oh dude that is really backward yeah and they're liking it let's see that's got to stop i know that's another show but i said to him i said do the research you can word it the way you want i'll bet you they'll say that and he got back to me about five months later and he said you're not going to believe this it's close to 99 they want the paper yeah totally because you don't want your bible next to tick tock you don't i had this conversation with a friend we were sitting out in the back porch and she was over for a couple of days visiting my wife and and she would always look at her phone while we were talking you know and i was like yeah i hate that at one point i just excuse me at one point i was like could you could you stop doing that like why why are you doing that be with us yeah i said it in a lesser bracelet you know what i just think it's rude to be honest with you but then she said because i had a book i'm just gonna keep talking through this it would be that's genesis before period i think we're at revelation right now in this interview and then i said um yeah could you you know why are you doing that and i had my book opened up on my lap and she's like and i was glancing at occasionally and she said what's the difference and at first i thought she'd got me but then i realized she hadn't and here's why i act on a book but a phone acts on you that's a good point i think that's why we want the bible who's driving the car here yeah all right so anyway we've come to the end of the the show uh and i'll tell you this ascension if you bring out a great bible plants with aquinas will flog it for you absolutely sell it hardcore in apologies for yeah cool well yeah thanks for coming on the show oh it's been it's been good it's been great yeah anything else well my wife is leaving and not me [Laughter] my wife is like he's going to be she's going to israel and she's an archaeologist so she's going to be at shiloh and doing some digging there and then i'm going to go join that's so cool that's what we do we love we love taking trips to israel so that's why i've never been to the holy land i got to bring you okay i'll bring you like tomorrow with your wife like no no not tomorrow no i have several trips uh next june father mike and i are going to israel and i don't like tours i don't want to go with people i don't like people showing me things and going in buses with randos i hate that no we just want to go to pubs no i want to go on my own or with another couple of people but i don't like you that way i'd like tours you that way you're too is good somebody of christ i want to amputate myself all right well on that unfortunate note uh thanks everybody for watching uh please check out the links below you can learn about the great adventure podcast which everybody already knows why am i even telling them about it but also when they can where they can go and watch those videos of ascension that eight part series sounds really exciting and the stuff for the kids we'll put that in there anything else that'll do oh if you want to go to israel with me go to jeffgavins.com and i'll get you over there and uh this coming trip in two weeks i'll be there that'll be my 59th pilgrimage to the holy land are you and steve ray kind of on a contesting i don't think we're in i think we do different things there but you know what the beginning get this at the beginning of the covet i had an australian tour all lined up and i was gonna go all over australia you've been there to australia i have been there yeah yeah it's no new zealand but it's okay oh i just i just thought that was a coffee table people are very upset because tasmania is not on it is that where you're from no no i'm from here i'm from the adelaide the cut out part yep no i i was going to go all over and everything got cancelled so i've always wanted to go to you no oh crikey how great would it be for you to ride your bike neil what's cracking me crikey i'll have to google at home with aquinas along with a glossary you know what i should do i should do you could do your tour to israel and i'll do a pub crawl through the city of brisbane and i'll compete for your people well you know i like to do my pub crawls alone no paw patrols i'll go with people i just want to go to i want to go with the group i just want to go to the pub myself do you like tours i hate tours so much really oh god i can't stand them yeah what are you going to do in heaven it's a big big issue don't tell me that i mean i want to go i was just in auschwitz a couple of weeks ago i was too yeah yeah no i was right before they said a couple of weeks it was i was uh right before the coven oh okay well i yeah i was about a month or two ago subtle lent it was powerful i think i liked that tour because there was just a lot i couldn't have known like you know without someone telling me i was shocked at how prominent kolbe was i thought he would have been one story among many yeah he's a prominent figure there yeah it really had a big impact on me father josh johnson and i went and i don't want to be a name dropper but father scott hahn always tells me not to be here benedict told me not to yeah that's right even better all right yeah we went there it was like it was life changing yeah more so than i thought it was going to be especially with pope john paul ii the hair that's what freaked me out had the ponytails that had been cut off when they were gassing these women oh yes that was oh that gigantic room of head i know uh you just pronounce it differently we should make a joke with him with auschwitz i know on that note that's our second ending do you like it nor mcdonald do i like old macdonald norm mcdonald yes here's a show called hitler's dog if you think i'm gonna end a stand-up on hitler's dog that's how he ends it yeah is this the third inning ever sure the third inning you've ended it three times you gotta stop just stop it stop it now

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 97,850

Keywords: aquinas, catholicism, catholic, pints with aquinas, matt fradd, theology, debate, religion, st. thomas aquinas, thomas aquinas, philosophy

Id: OhcRDjDC07U

Length: 153min 46sec (9226 seconds)

Published: Mon May 16 2022