A Show of Faith
Millennial, Priest, Minister, and Rabbi walk into a radio station...
A Show of Faith
July 20, 2025 Reconnecting Through Silence: The Art of Listening in Prayer
What if everything you thought about prayer is backward? What if the real power of prayer isn't in what you say to God, but in what you allow God to say to you?
This eye-opening conversation challenges the conventional understanding of prayer across religious traditions. Through the lens of the Martha and Mary story from Luke's Gospel, we discover that Jesus wasn't criticizing service itself, but rather the anxious spirit that prevents true presence. The "better part" that Mary chose wasn't laziness but the posture of a disciple – sitting, listening, and receiving.
Our interfaith panel unpacks the etymology of "religion" itself – coming from "religio," meaning to reconnect. This fundamental insight reveals the true purpose of prayer: not to change God's mind, but to allow ourselves to be transformed through divine encounter. The Catholic concept of "concupiscence" (our tendency toward disordered desires) meets the Jewish understanding of prayer as attunement, creating a rich theological tapestry that transcends denominational boundaries.
We explore the balance between structured prayer (what Judaism calls "kevah") and heartfelt intention ("kavanah"), recognizing that both serve essential spiritual functions. The panel shares practical wisdom about contemplative versus active prayer, petition versus thanksgiving, and how even our service can become prayer when done with the right spirit.
Whether you're spiritually curious or deeply devout, this conversation offers a fresh perspective on how prayer can become less about religious performance and more about authentic connection. By shifting from speaking to listening, we discover the transformative power of true presence with the divine.
Ready to revolutionize your prayer life? Listen now and discover what happens when we finally stop talking and start truly hearing.
There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man with a gun over there Telling me I've got to beware. I think it's time we stop. Children, what's that sound? Everybody, look what's going down. There's battle lines being drawn. Nobody's right if everybody's wrong. Young people speak in their minds Are getting so much resistance from behind Every time we stop. Hey, what's that sound? Everybody, look what's going down. Welcome to A.
Speaker 2:Show of Faith. Hey, what's that sound? Everybody, look what's going down. Welcome to A Show of Faith where a professor, priest, millennial and rabbi discuss theology and philosophy, morality and ethics and anything else of interest in religion. If you have any response to our topics or any comments regarding what we say, we would love to hear from you. Email us at ashowoffaith1070 at gmailcom. That's ashowoffaith1070 at gmailcom. You can hear our shows again and again by listening, pretty much everywhere podcasts are heard. Our priest is Father Mario Arroyo, retired pastor of St Cyril of Alexandria, the 10,000 block of Westheimer.
Speaker 3:Hello, by the way, I am not hearing you through my earphones. I'm hearing you just from the room.
Speaker 2:Okay, Okay, our professor is David Capes, protestant minister and director of academic programming for the Lanier Theological Library. I think he's somewhere.
Speaker 4:Hey, I am here.
Speaker 2:There you are, you are there.
Speaker 4:I am here, hey, and you do sound like you're in a well somewhere.
Speaker 2:Well All right, then in a couple of minutes I'll just move over to the other phone. Rudy Cohn is our millennial. He's a systems engineer master's degree in theology. To the other phone Rudy Cohn is our millennial. He's a systems engineer, master's degree in theology from the University of St Thomas.
Speaker 3:May I suggest? To you that you move? Because I just said that. Huh, I just said I was going to move, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm Rabbi Stuart Federer, retired rabbi of Congregation Shahr Shalom in the Clear Lake area of Houston, Texas. Miranda is our board operator and together Miranda and Valerie. Okay, All right.
Speaker 3:Well, this is Father Mario, and I am in charge tonight.
Speaker 4:You're in charge every night.
Speaker 3:Oh, yes, yes, yes, tonight I was quite taken by the readings of the Catholic Church this Sunday for the celebration of the Eucharist, as many of you may know, or some of you may not that we as Catholic priests have to follow oh much better, have to follow set readings. So no Catholic priest gets to pick his own readings for the Sunday that he is going to preside over the celebration of the Eucharist. And I was quite taken by the gospel because it's something that I've thought a lot about and that's the whole subject of prayer, and it is my contention that prayer, in the normal understanding of people, the general understanding, is seen as a very shallow understanding. Every time you say let's talk about prayer, I can almost see people rolling their eyes, and so I would like to start by I already shared this with Rabbi. It's a reading from the gospel, from the gospel that was used for this Sunday, and I would like to focus in on, focus in on prayer in this short reading. The reading is from Luke, chapter 10, verse 38 to 42. And it's the reading of Jesus coming over to Martha and Mary's house, and these are two women that live together in a village. It's a short reading. Here it is.
Speaker 3:Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary, who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak. Martha, who was burdened and much with burdened, much with serving, came to him and said Lord, do you not care that my sister, mary has left me by myself to do the serving? Then Jesus replied to her Martha, martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of that. I asked what is Jesus criticizing? He is criticizing the fact that Mary notice that Martha is burdened with. Let me find it here. The Lord said to her in reply Martha Martha, listen to this criticism. You are anxious and worried about many things. Okay, and then.
Speaker 3:So what does Jesus say she should be doing? Mary has chosen the better part, and what is Mary doing? He's sitting at the Lord's feet, listening. Now, what I focused in on was not, though, that you had to choose between Martha and Mary, that you had to choose between laziness, or sitting down there and doing nothing, or going and being anxious and upset. What Jesus is saying and the reason I talked about, I thought about prayer is when Jesus says Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from him. What exactly is the better part? And the answer I gave it is that the better part is she has taken the posture of a disciple sitting at his feet, because that's in the ancient world, that when you sat at someone's feet, you were considering them, master, and you were a disciple, a learner. So Jesus is saying the better part is listening, better part is listening, listening. What is Martha? What is her mistake? Instead of being a disciple who's choosing to listen, she is worried about doing this and doing this and doing that.
Speaker 3:So here's the whole point of why I wanted to use prayer, because I often say that prayer, in my opinion, should be 95% listening and 5% talking. However, most of the time, when people think about, when I ask people how do you pray, people say well, I talk to God. I talk to God. I talk to God in the morning, I talk to him before I go to bed. I talk to him, and it's 90, almost all of it I hear is I talk to God. I talk to God, but I never hear people saying I listen to God.
Speaker 3:And so the question for me has become what's the purpose of religion, and I would say especially Christianity? What's the purpose? The purpose is transformation of the way you think and the way you are, your attitude towards the world. You cannot be transformed if you are constantly talking and stalking talking to God, and sometimes, especially the Catholic tradition encourages saying prayers, but when you say prayers, god already knows what you're going to say. You're supposed to be listening to the prayer you're saying. You're not supposed to be. God already knows that prayer, and so what you're asking for in speaking out loud is you're supposed to be listening and letting the prayer itself get inside of you and literally reformat you from the inside. And so that got me thinking well, well, what do we all think about the ways that we pray? And what I mean starting with is criticizing prayer as talking too much, because when you talk too much, you're listening to yourself, you're not listening to god. And what is listening to god? I maintain interiorizing especially the message of the scriptures. Open it up, stuart, why don't you go?
Speaker 2:me next. Okay, I want to take note that what you were saying is that the function of religion is to change the person. Yes, not to change God's opinion or what he's going to do for you, or this kind of thing. That is is correct. That reflects Judaism, okay.
Speaker 3:Now the question I want to ask you is why?
Speaker 2:does the person need to be changed? Actually, it's an excellent question. It's an interesting question Because we have to be like antennas, we have to tune in to what God wants from us and we're not always in tune. We have to settle ourselves down. You know, when I talk about prayer to my congregation, I would say that we cannot walk from out there to in the room and we cannot walk from out there to in here, meaning in the heart, instantly. That's right that you have to kind of fine-tune your antenna, so to speak, to God, but doesn't that presume that we're out of tune to God?
Speaker 2:We're out of tune because we're too busy thinking about material things. We're too busy thinking about what we're going to wear or what we have worn, or you know what we've got to do the next day, because religious services tend to be a day of the week. You're not doing so that you're thinking about what you're going to do the next day, or whatever. You have to get in the mode of prayer even before you start praying. As a matter of fact, there's a saying what did the rabbis do before they prayed? They prayed that they could pray properly. In other words, they were fine tuning themselves before getting into a mode of prayer.
Speaker 2:And I always remind people that Judaism is not a Western religion. It's called the Middle East, not the Middle West. Okay, and in an Eastern religion, what do we think of? We think of meditation, yes, and like a mass, like a liturgy. There's a set text. Why is a set text? Why, because the purpose and function of prayer is to change ourselves and to attune ourselves with God. But it's like a mantra, an Eastern religion kind of mantra. It's the same text, it's the same thing, that you're doing each time you pray.
Speaker 7:That's a liturgy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you are attuning yourself, but you're also in a meditative state that transcends time and place, and I don't want to talk about transcendental meditation, but I want to talk about the meditation that transcends?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Because when you attune yourself to God, you're not here, you're there, okay, okay. See what I'm saying? Yes, and so as you go through the liturgy and the liturgy is musical, and when we do something that's musical, we tend to move our bodies so there's, it's a Yiddish system, it's called davening, it means prayer, but you're letting the prayer literally move you, yes, okay, and so it helps put you into this meditative state that helps you transcend time and space. Have you ever been driving and while you're driving, just boom, all of a sudden you're like two blocks further down. You don't even remember doing the driving, that's right, but but you have still been able to maneuver the car and stay in your lane and very good, very good analogy. Well, that is the state of prayer. Yeah, that's to me, that's the jewish understanding of prayer, which I believe has an enormous amount of similarity with Catholicism. But, david, you're next. But every time I hear Protestants in prayer, it's always. I want this. Give me that. This is what I need.
Speaker 3:Okay, David, do you want to respond to any of that Please?
Speaker 4:David, yeah, want to respond to any of that, please, david. Yeah, let me respond. I mean, I agree with a lot of what you're talking about.
Speaker 3:I do think prayer is more complex than what we've described here thus far, david, begin to talk, but why don't you just introduce what you're going to say? Let's go to a break right now, and that way you can. Yeah, and then you can come back in. Okay, this is KMTH 1070, the Answer, and we'll be right back.
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Speaker 3:Oh my God, it's gloopy, gloopy, gloopy, nippy, dappy, doopy.
Speaker 2:Of course Wait, isn't that prayer?
Speaker 3:Yes, Glitty, gloop, gloopy, nippy, dappy, doopy. Good morning.
Speaker 2:Somebody who's not listening might think that that's.
Speaker 3:Good morning, starshine Good morning starshine. The earth says hello. You twinkle above us, we twinkle below. Good morning starshine. You lead us along. This is the most I love and hate.
Speaker 2:Hey, these are good lyrics, oh God.
Speaker 3:Doobie, doobie doos, doobie, doobie doobie. Okay, listen to this.
Speaker 7:This is Bloop gloopy gloopy nabby, nooby, la, la, la, lo, lo. Wait, you're telling me that's not Latin.
Speaker 3:Eby zooby shabby shabby abba w.
Speaker 4:It's not Latin.
Speaker 3:E-B-S-U-B-E-S-H-A-B-E-S-H-A-B-E-A-B-E-W-A-B-A.
Speaker 2:All right welcome back to A Show of Faith on 810.7. The Answer.
Speaker 4:Okay, david you were on. Hello David, yes, I'm not sure I can follow that. I am much more dignified man. You're no fun. I cannot continue on. I'm afraid. Look, I think prayer is more complicated than what we've painted.
Speaker 4:Let me say that there are a lot of elements of prayer, a lot of different ways of praying and purposes to prayer. I do think that, primarily, prayer is a relational thing. It is. We are in prayer because we are in and we have a relationship with God, and I would say with God through Jesus Christ as a Christian. So it is. Yeah, I mean it does change us, it does transform us, it does make us different people and such. Now Stuart's comment. Well, let me go back to the Mary Martha passage. The Mary Martha passage is a brilliant passage for so many reasons. I find it interesting that when Jesus is in a way correcting Martha, he's not saying that she has chosen the only part, she has chosen the better part.
Speaker 3:You mean when he's talking to Mary?
Speaker 4:Yes, about Mary, the showing of hospitality in that culture at that time the welcoming of guests into the home, the preparing food, all of that was a way of celebrating and a way of being present and a way of relating. Now, that wasn't Mary's gift. Mary's gift was something else. Martha's gift was that and so, yeah, there's a corrective measure there, but I think we need to redeem Martha's character there.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm in agreement because he's not criticizing Martha for serving Right right.
Speaker 4:He's criticizing for the anxiety so important. What Stuart said about Protestants asking, asking, asking, asking is consistent with prayer and with part of the purpose of prayer, because there are different types of prayer. There are thanksgiving prayers yes, some prayers are just simply breathing word of thanks to God before a meal or, you know, before after something good has happened. Some prayers are prayers of confession, yes, where we confess to God our sins. Confession where we confess to God our sins. You know when Jesus taught us to pray and gave us the Lord's Prayer. When you look at what Jesus said to do to model our prayers, most of those are requests Let your kingdom come, but your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Good point Give us today our daily bread, bread. Forgive us our trespasses. Uh, do not allow us to fall into temptation. Protect us from the evil one.
Speaker 4:Now, those are requests, that's true, and those requests, those requests that jesus taught us to pray in. The way that he taught us to pray is not to say that it's just a bunch of asking, asking, asking, asking, but that is a vital and important element to prayer. We call it petition. Petition just simply means asking, and when we ask God for things, it could be a whole host of things, but that's a part, and a very important part, of prayer.
Speaker 4:I don't want to diminish that in any way, I do want to affirm exactly what Mario was saying that we fail because prayer is relational, Prayer is communication and communication is as much well, maybe not as much, but it's speaking, but also listening and a great deal of listening. So I really applaud you for making that point today, okay, Rudy.
Speaker 10:I wanted to mention. There's a key distinction here. There's what we call a contemplative and an active type of prayer. Right, and I like what David said there, because it's not.
Speaker 10:Jesus isn't necessarily criticizing Martha, right, it's not like he's saying what she's doing is wrong right Now. And I want to bring up in Psalm, psalm 46, it says Be still and know that I am God. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted on the earth. Now, in Matthew it also says but when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.
Speaker 10:Now, of course, martha comes in as distracted, right, but you've also got to remember Jesus didn't travel alone, right, he was normally surrounded most of his time with 12 other guys. Right, and guess what? These people are hungry. They come in, they come into the room, and so what she was doing isn't necessarily something that didn't need to be done. It needed to be done. I think the important distinction here is just the timing of what needed to be done, right, and, of course, the sort of comment Jesus makes. Right At this particular moment Jesus was teaching, right, and he is the teacher and, as a student, it's about active listening.
Speaker 10:It's about being present. Present, it's about hearing and engaging right. This, this, the reception of divine truth and I think that's what real prayer is about is is being engaged to receive that divine truth and and for that to occur, we need to be open and participating in that. I know we have to go to break here in a minute, but, um, of course it's a lot of it's a deep passage and I think we can work it down, and I think I was going to bring up Teresa, st Teresa of Avila and her moradas it's called right and her interior castle. She has a whole process, but a good place to start for many people is with the active, with the service right that leads into that kind of contemplative prayer.
Speaker 3:Okay, we have to go to a break, but when we get back we'll continue talking about this and, rudy, you can finish up anything you want to say when we come back. This is KNTH 1070, and we'll be right back.
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Speaker 3:The answer Rudy Rudy finish up what you were saying.
Speaker 10:Yeah, I just wanted to finish. I just wanted to say that, martha, what Martha's doing in itself isn't wrong. What she's lacking is essentially what I would maybe consider a proper foundation right, because I think you can have authentic active prayer, as long as it's being done sort of with that kind of connection and union, in this case, with Christ's teachings. I think there's a space for that right. I think the main thing that gets to me about that passage is her angst, her anxiety that she feels with that right, because I think she could have been attending and she could have been, you know, making dinner, doing this, whatever it was, to kind of host the guests that were there, but not in an anxious way, and I think that's kind of where I kind of, at least, the difference that I see is a lot of people do find that active prayer helps and is much needed, right, I mean, Jesus calls us.
Speaker 10:You know, whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me, you do for me. So it's definitely about an action, but it's also a sort of template of action.
Speaker 3:Do you think, though? Do you think, that the issue is this is something that came to my much time and energy, worrying about what they're going to feed, how the table's going to look, all of this, and they miss the whole point of the visit. The point of the visit is not for me to have a gourmet meal although sometimes they want to show off, or something like that, and have a great meal, or they want you to enjoy yourself?
Speaker 3:yeah, but at the same time, I came to visit and part of the visit is common, new communication, common union, uh, and part of a large part of that is look, if I wanted to just go somewhere to have a great meal, I go to, to a restaurant. I don't have to listen to the waiter, you're there to pastor, yeah. But if I'm going to someone's home, I want to get to know them and for them to get to know me, and so that's the main thing, not the food. That's my sense. Comment Rabbi.
Speaker 2:Well, I wanted to tell David that was well spoken and you reminded me of something I didn't say. Actually, because you're totally right that there are numerous kinds of prayer and the petitionary prayer is kind of embedded in Jewish prayer, at a part of the prayer which is silent. So I don't know what they're doing, they don't know what I'm saying and it's individual and private. So there is room for petitionary prayer and I kind of made it sound like it was only liturgical prayer. Yep.
Speaker 3:So, thank you, david, the question I would like to lead us.
Speaker 2:Well, just one more thing, and that is you also remind me, david, that there's different kinds of prayer. Remind me, david, that there's different kinds of prayer. When I think it was Avraham Joshua Heschel was going down to Selma to march with Martin Luther King and he was talking about going, you know, trying to get students from the Jewish Theological Seminary to go with him. He was talking about praying with your feet, that being involved in the march and for justice, issues of justice and social action. It was a form of prayer, but it was praying with your feet.
Speaker 4:I always thought that was interesting, yeah no, I think that's great, and yeah, I do too, you know, and as Mario was talking a minute ago, I'm wondering to what degree sometimes people use busyness and staying busy, let's say, preparing a meal, as a way of not having to engage with people.
Speaker 2:Yes, I've seen that too.
Speaker 3:Because it's my sense, I always go back. I like to go back. I like to go back to the etymology of the word religion, because of course it's re, it's do it again. Anything with a re is repaint, rewrite. Anything with a re is do it again, and the word religio means to connect with re is do it again, and the word religio means to connect. And so if the word religio or religion means to reconnect, it's a presumption that they're disconnected, otherwise we could just do religion Right, because you're presuming that there is a disconnect and you're having to reconnect. And so, in my sense, is that true religion is not about doing stuff that is religious, like standing up and kneeling down and saying this prayer and that prayer, the form.
Speaker 3:That's the form, yeah, the form of prayer. It's about interiorizing. Even when you're asking for stuff, interiorizing making something interior, like when you're saying Internalizing Interior, okay. For example, like David said when he was talking about the Our Father, the Our Father should be, yes, asking, but asking not just superficially. Whenever I'm trying these days, when I'm saying the Our Father, I'm very conscious of saying give me this day our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses. In other words, it's coming from the heart.
Speaker 3:But the problem a lot of times I find in prayer is that you know, like the other day, um, some a, I heard a priest give a penance, you know, when you go to confession, and he said I want you to say 20 Our Fathers.
Speaker 3:The priest said told the person okay to give 20 Our Fathers.
Speaker 3:And I think what a dumb penance Saying the Our Father 20 times.
Speaker 3:You know what about just saying it one time and thinking about it, instead of just repeating it 20 times? And so I just think sometimes we take prayer and instead of connecting the prayer to our hearts and to our minds and to our desires, it's sort of something done religiously that we think God is God likes us to say the Our Father 20 times, or the Hail Mary 50 times, or you know. That's why one of the criticisms that Jesus was saying when he said that some of the scribes and Pharisees think that they will gain audience by multiplying their words Pharisees think that they will gain audience by multiplying their words, and I think the whole point of religion is not to get the stuff done. It's to reconnect the presence of God and the presence of the heart of the human being, because they are disconnected. The whole point, I think, of religion is to reconnect you with God, and if it's not occurring that way, if it's just a formality, then I think the religion has failed its purpose.
Speaker 2:Mario, there's a duality of concept or intent. I'm not sure what the word is. In Judaism we talk about prayer. There's kevah and kavanah. Kevah is fixed, it's in the text, yes, but it doesn't mean the kavanah is there, kavanah is feeling it while you're saying it. That's exactly Knowing it, understanding it, believing it, expressing something within you. That's right and it's a balance, because sometimes what's what is covenant one day can be fixed and wrote and not feeling the next the following day after that, then it is.
Speaker 3:that's why it has to be to me, that's why I use the word interiorizing. In other words, you have to. When you say any prayer, the prayer has to be heard not just by God but by you, right, it has to echo inside your heart and accomplish that religio, that reconnection, because if it doesn't, then it's just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Does that make sense, david?
Speaker 4:No, that makes a lot of sense. No, that makes a lot of sense, and I think what Stuart was saying is probably one of the early origins of what we understand to be interiorizing, or internalizing prayer, recite as you think about the weather or as you think about what you're doing the next day. It's something that you recite because it's become part of you, david.
Speaker 2:That leads me to a question for all three of you. The story that Mario read at the beginning of our hour about Martha. Well, it's not in the Bible, so I have a question about it.
Speaker 3:It's in the New Testament what it's in the New Testament.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the appendix to the Bible, oh.
Speaker 3:God.
Speaker 2:Couldn't resist. Okay, anyway, my question is this Okay, most of you have said that the admonition of Jesus was not for Marthatha's doing the, the serving, but that she was so anxious and I can think of people who would serve, you know, when we had dinners and stuff, but who were very attuned to what was being spoken and is it possible that the criticism is that she was so anxious she couldn't also listen and learn? That's correct.
Speaker 3:That's correct because you see, for example, and after this we have to go to a break. But but what example? For example, we have one of the saints of the catholic church is saint teresa of the little flower. Yes, saint teresa of the Little Flower. Say that again. St Teresa of the Little Flower? Okay, of Le Zoo, and she was really. What was she? 19th century or early 20th century?
Speaker 10:Both, I think, late 19th, early 20th.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Okay, St Teresa of Le Zoo was a nun who entered the convent a convent of monastic convent when she was 16, I think, and she died at 25. And she did not become a saint until after her diary was discovered. But what she would do? She never left the convent, she never did anything like that. She was given because she was one of the junior sisters. She was given some of the meanest of the tasks, like washing the floors and and stuff menial labor, menial label but what she would do is she would for every. For example, she was famous for every every one of the tiles that she would wash. She would offer a prayer for the missions and she would offer all kinds of prayers as she did her tasks. And so her tasks did not take her away. Her tasks were united with listening to God. But we got to go to a break and we'll continue this on when we get back.
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Speaker 1:The answer oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Welcome back To a show of faith To a show of faith.
Speaker 3:These last 10 minutes that we have left, I'd like to just focus in on something that you and I, stuart, probably disagree about, but I don't think we ultimately do, and that is the whole question of if religio means to reconnect and if you're asking for the reconnection between God and human beings, why are we disconnected between God and us? What is the source of why we're disconnected? Distraction, no, no. When we were created, were we connected to God? And if we were not, we never stopped being connected.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay. Even after Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, they're still talking to God.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're still. No, I'm not talking about a total disconnect, I'm talking about a partial disconnect. Okay, because St Augustine said this is the whole thing about original sin, which you and I have talked about before Often. Oh, yeah, but even St Augustine was saying that human beings have a tendency to what's called concupiscence. Ever heard that word before? Yes, from you. Yeah, concupiscence is the tendency to act out of a disconnected relationship with God. That we have that tendency Not that we're totally disconnected, but that we have a tendency to act in ways that are not originally what God intended, which is what makes religio reconnection, total reconnection, necessary. And so I just wanted to get David's and yours and Rudy's understanding of why is it that we don't just talk about ligio, but why do we have to go re-ligio, to reconnect what happened? How do we understand the initial disconnect? So I want to get to Rudy first disconnect. So I want to get to Rudy first and then I want you to go to that. Okay, rudy, in your opinion, what's the original disconnect?
Speaker 10:Well, as a Catholic, of course, we kind of uphold the concept of concupiscence right, and there's this verse in Galatians I was thinking about it's, for the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other. So it's kind of essentially this conflict that we're kind of talking about. That we're kind of talking about it's what kind of disorders are our intellect, our will, our emotions, our passion and of course, eventually the physical right, the body.
Speaker 10:So I mean ontologically, or at least the first cause, I mean I would consider that it's that initial sort of what we have in the Garden of Eden, that initial breaking of God's commandment right, god gives a very clear and precise instruction and we, you know, we can say that we are misled or we, but we fashioned ourselves or thought that we could be like God out of our own volition right, out of our own sort of misguided intellect, if you will, and I think that's sort of what we continually fall into today. I mean Thomas Aquinas, he calls it ignorancia right, which is a sort of essentially ignorance right, and what we are is we're ignorant that we are created, that we are created with a purpose, with a divine dimension, and without this sort of understanding, everything around us becomes disordered, which we see. This same manifestation of disorder right. The same manifestation of disorder right, with extreme war, death, poverty, yeah.
Speaker 10:Everywhere right, it's just suffering.
Speaker 3:You know, I just looked up the word concupiscence and the center of the word is the word cupere, and cupere basically no, it's.
Speaker 3:Cupere is a disordered desire and it's very interesting, disordered desire, so that our desires, instead of desiring what is good for us, we end up being largely controlled for things that are not good for us. And our tendency we're not disconnected from God totally, but we have this tendency to desire what is actually not in our best interest, and that's it's. My opinion is that's where I'm going with this that the whole idea of prayer is to the true expression of religio, religion which means that you are connecting to the correct desires that you have, that you should have when you are created in the image and likeness of God. When we're disconnected, we desire what is wrong.
Speaker 10:Yeah, Just real quick. Thomas Aquinas explains concupiscence as the rebellion of the lower appetites, which means that our sensual desires are acting against reason, Natural right, divine reason, if you will.
Speaker 3:Yes, because you're created in a certain way and what's happened is we are desiring that which is basically suicidal not physically suicidal but you're desiring things that are ultimately going to hurt you.
Speaker 4:David want to jump in on that yeah, I mean I would agree, uh, with a great deal of what you done damage to us. Yes, and damage to each other and damage to the environment and the world and damage to the relationship that we have with God. So religio means that we have to work with God. We can't work separately from God to sort out the damage. God has already acted by his grace and mercy to seek us out and to fix the damage that we have created.
Speaker 3:Rabbi.
Speaker 2:Jewish perspective. I just don't see it as something for which we are to be condemned, but rather how God made us, so that I mean even Teresa of the little flower I don't think she was 100, 100, 60 minutes out of every hour, every hour of every day in prayer. I mean, I think that god made us in a way where it is a struggle and because it's a struggle and does not come naturally to us as we have been made, that means that when we succeed, there's good, there's reward, there's benefit, there is an effect of it, because if we were made purely good, then what's the reward of being good?
Speaker 3:Everybody's good? No, but the reward of being good is goodness itself.
Speaker 2:And that's true, but if a person is automatically good, there's no reward.
Speaker 3:I agree, that's for human freedom.
Speaker 2:So it's not just human freedom, it's the freedom with which God made us yes, as Judaism would look at it, not from sin and not something that God made us in a way and therefore condemns us as a result of it.
Speaker 3:So that's how I would look at it. Okay, any closing comments from any of the three of us? Four of us, don't everybody? Go ahead, david.
Speaker 4:I think it's central to all of our faiths. Honestly, this whole idea of communication why we do it may differ, how we do it may differ, but the fact that we are engaged in this sort of consistent communication with God makes it just a vital part of our faith.
Speaker 3:Yes, I agree, just a vital part of our faith. Yes, I agree, because I'm constantly telling Catholics. When Catholics talk about going to communion, I always like to say listen to the word communion, common union. It's a matter of us going back to a common union with God and you have to pay attention to that.
Speaker 2:Otherwise religion becomes just perfunctory. That's the Kevin Kavanaugh part.
Speaker 3:Say that again.
Speaker 2:I said that's the part, that's Kevin Kavanaugh, the fixed as opposed to the feeling it. That's right.
Speaker 3:Okay, who's next week? Rudy, Rudy, I think it's my turn. Yep, it is Okay. Who's next week?
Speaker 10:Rudy.
Speaker 3:Rudy.
Speaker 10:I think it's my turn.
Speaker 3:Yep, it is Okay. We will join together next week to listen to the Rudy Wisdom brought to us the wisest.
Speaker 3:Oh God, okay. Well, you've been listening here to the Show of Faith here on 1070 KNTH. Thank you for listening here to the show of faith here on 1070 KNTH. We look forward every week, every Sunday night, to being with you to talk about our faith and talk about what things that are important in our faith, in our constant desire to reunite ourselves with our God. And so please, during this week, keep us in your prayers, because you are going to be in ours.
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