Beyond Saint Podcast
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Beyond Saint Podcast
Inside the Dominican Tradition: Faith, Rosary, and Spiritual Wisdom
Join Father Philip Neri as he explores the deep roots of the Dominican order, its intellectual heritage, and its distinctive role within the Catholic Church alongside other orders like the Jesuits and Franciscans. Discover the spiritual significance of the Dominican habit and the rosary as a powerful prayer tool for peace and spiritual warfare. Father Neri shares fascinating insights into the mendicant lifestyle, the balance between prayer and active ministry, and the theological meaning behind the habit's colors and design. He also delves into the history of St. Dominic, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Dominican commitment to preaching the Gospel through educated and articulate teaching. This episode offers a unique blend of faith, tradition, and wisdom in an engaging and accessible conversation.
Is watching porn a mortal sin?
SPEAKER_02:It is. Any act that can't be like a means or a way or a path to God as our final end and heaven as our final end, those acts are gonna be mortal sins.
SPEAKER_00:Tell me a little about what you're wearing today. Is it Dior?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it is not. It is not Dior, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Did you know that Chanel, she was raised by Catholic nuns and was inspired by Catholic tradition?
SPEAKER_02:Wow, I
SPEAKER_00:had no idea. So maybe it's Chanel and not Dior.
SPEAKER_02:Certainly the rosary is one of the most powerful weapons in the toolkit of someone engaged in spiritual warfare.
SPEAKER_00:I also read that it's the most powerful prayer for peace.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. It makes sense that those two things would come together.
SPEAKER_00:We're here today at Rome Reports with Father Philip Neri. Thank you, Father, for coming to interview with us.
SPEAKER_02:My pleasure.
SPEAKER_00:So tell me a little bit about the Dominican tradition and background.
SPEAKER_02:Sure. So the Dominican order was founded by St. Dominic at roughly the same time as the Franciscans. So both the Dominicans and the Franciscans, both St. Dominic and St. Francis, were... saints that the Holy Spirit really raised up and inspired in the church at a kind of critical moment in the life of the church. So there's a very famous story that the Holy Father at the time had a dream where the church was literally falling apart, you know, a physical church was falling apart, and he saw two men come up and hold the church up and keep it from collapsing. And then lo and behold, the very next day, according to the story, he sees two men come into Rome, St. Dominic and St. Francis, both of whom had come to Rome because they were hoping that the Holy Father would approve of these two new religious orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans. So the Dominican tradition starts with St. Dominic and then moves forward were called the order of preachers. And so from the very beginning, St. Dominic wanted there to be an order in the church that was dedicated entirely to the preaching of the gospel. And for St. Dominic, he had this intuition that if you want to preach the gospel well, you have to be able to preach the gospel in an articulate and educated way. You have to be able not just to tell people what is true, but also explain why it's true and why the truth will set you free. And so from the very beginning of the order, the Dominicans have always been associated with learning and study and teaching as well as preaching because we see them as one and the same thing. So St. Thomas Aquinas is one of the great Dominican saints, St. Catherine of Siena, both of whom are excellent examples of people whose work of preaching the good news of the faith was deeply tied to a very intelligent and articulate expression of the faith.
SPEAKER_00:So it feels like the Dominicans are pretty intellectual, education-oriented order, correct?
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Tell me how that's different from the Jesuits.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, great. So it's a very good question. So both the Jesuits and the Dominicans have a really rich tradition of being dedicated to learning, education, higher education. This might be a little bit unfair, but I can be biased because I'm a Dominican. So in general, I would say that the Jesuit tradition of education is more focused on administration, right? So the Jesuits are much more famous for running schools, both at the high school level and at the college and university level. Whereas Dominicans, our dedication to the intellectual tradition is much more focused on the act of teaching because the act of teaching is a lot closer to the act of preaching, right? Whereas, you know, administration is a way of sharing sharing in the work of preaching the gospel, but it's a little bit more distant, right? So Dominicans have always been more inclined to be professors and lecturers and teachers in an educational context than to be doing the nitty-gritty of running schools.
SPEAKER_00:Got it. Okay, so people don't know that. Okay, so give me one word. Okay, Jesuits are administrators, Dominicans are teachers, legionaries are...
SPEAKER_02:Legionaries are much closer to the Jesuit tradition, and not just in an educational capacity, but really a huge amount of their structure, their spirituality, their entire approach is really shaped and molded by the Jesuits, whereas the Dominicans are much more in line with a kind of older and more classical approach to religious life within the church.
SPEAKER_00:How about Franciscans?
SPEAKER_02:So Franciscans... Dominicans and Carmelites are usually grouped together as the three great examples of what are called the mendicant orders. So you can kind of think of it like this. So religious life within the church is on a spectrum. And so on one end of the spectrum, you have the monks. So they enter the monastery. They're dedicated almost entirely to the life of prayer and contemplation. And they might do some active apostolic work but that's the exception rather than the rule on the other end of the spectrum you have orders like the Jesuits and and a lot of the more modern orders where they they keep a dedication to to the life of prayer but the focus of the order is much more on active apostolic work and then Again, I'm biased, so I'm going to say the virtuous middle between the two is the mendicant orders, where you have the ideal, at least, is a balance between the active life and the contemplative life, the life of prayer and the life of apostolic work. And so Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites are all right in that kind of center position.
SPEAKER_00:Got it. Okay. So tell me a little about what you're wearing today.
SPEAKER_02:Sure. So that actually flows
SPEAKER_00:right in.
SPEAKER_02:Is it Dior? Yeah, it is not. It is not Dior. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Though, though, did you know that most of the work of Chanel origins, she was raised by Catholic nuns and was inspired by uh catholic tradition well i had no idea maybe it's chanel and not do you are
SPEAKER_02:yeah i mean uh so i should um i should put in a phone call and see if
SPEAKER_00:uh see if they want to chat okay perfect so tell me what it's called and tell me what it symbolizes what it means the whole thing
SPEAKER_02:absolutely so um so the the whole kind of get up is called the habit uh and so um all of or most of the religious orders that are older than the Jesuits have a religious habit. And each religious habit is unique to the given order. So in a certain sense, you can read the different habits and know exactly what religious order a given monk or mendicant friar belongs to. So if you see black and white, and especially, well, you can't see it because I'm sitting, but we wear on our left side a very big, long rosary. So if you see black Black, white, and a rosary. Are you allowed to take it out? I can pull it out, sure. So here's my rosary. Here's my rosary. So there it is, yeah. Yours is the little one. Mine's a big one. But they're the same thing. So if you see black, white, and a rosary, that's a Dominican. So typically, if you see All black, that's going to be a Benedictine monk. You can tell the difference between Cistercian monks, Trappist monks, Franciscan friars, Carmelites, all based on what their habit is. And there's a really beautiful spiritual and theological meaning behind the habit, which is that it's supposed to be a sign to the entire world of the fact that this person is consecrated to God and is dedicated to being a witness to the new and resurrected life that all of us hope for. So the idea is that when you see this unusual set of clothing walking around the streets of Rome, it's the very unusual character of it or the very unusual very sort of shocking sign is supposed to remind us that we're all living for not for this life, but for a new life, an eternal life, a resurrected life in the world to come.
SPEAKER_00:When I first met you, this is not how you were dressed, right?
SPEAKER_02:That's right. I was just wearing the white, not the black.
SPEAKER_00:Why not?
SPEAKER_02:So the black is... So now my answer is going to be much less theological and much more practical. The black is our raincoat. So right now it's raining in Rome. And actually, so there's a funny thing in England, both at Oxford and at Cambridge, there are three halls, right? So there's... and two in particular, one for the Dominicans and one for the Franciscans. The Dominican one is called Black Friars Hall,
SPEAKER_00:and
SPEAKER_02:the Franciscan one is called Gray Friars Hall. And the reason is because both Dominicans and Franciscans are friars, right? So we're not monks, but we look like monks, and yet we're nevertheless out in the world. And in England, we're called the black friars because since it's always raining, we're always wearing the black. And for the Franciscans, their cape, their raincoat, is gray. And so because it's always raining in England, the Franciscans are all known as the gray friars.
SPEAKER_00:Even
SPEAKER_02:though kind of more often when you think of Franciscans, you might think of brown.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I was thinking brown.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So the Capuchin Franciscan friars especially are known for wearing brown. And it's where the word cappuccino comes from. So a cappuccino is a little cappuccino. And they called it that because the color of the cappuccino is the same as the color of the cappuccino fries. I love that. Yeah, it's cute. But yeah, but that doesn't work in England because it's always raining. So they're always wearing their raincoats.
SPEAKER_00:Makes sense. A little anecdote. Do you remember when we first met, I was going through some, like, joint issues. And you kind of helped me get a devotion to St. Joseph.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, great. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I think he kind of, he kind of gets shafted a little.
SPEAKER_02:He's an often forgotten saint. He's an underappreciated saint.
SPEAKER_00:But I feel like he comes through.
SPEAKER_02:He absolutely
SPEAKER_00:does. So I just wanted to tell you that. Oh, great. I'm
SPEAKER_02:so glad the devotion has kept up.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, I do. I'm like, everybody forgets about him. It's always the Mary and Jesus show, which for good reason. He's got a really important
SPEAKER_02:place to
SPEAKER_00:play. Yes, I've developed a bit of a devotion to Joseph because of
SPEAKER_02:you. Oh, great.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, now I want you to tell us. about the Dominican history and the rosary.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, great.
SPEAKER_00:Let me get my rosary out just in case we have to do a little. Probably yours is a better show and tell, but.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, at least a bigger one. Yeah, okay, so tell me. Although mine doesn't quite sparkle the way yours is. You blessed this one for me. Yeah, nice.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, this is my blessed rosary from you. Remember you did that whole blessing at lunch? Oh, yeah, yeah, great, uh-huh. Okay, so tell me about, there's a whole history behind the Dominicans and St. Thomas Aquinas. is it or did saint dominic
SPEAKER_02:uh so so all of the above okay okay
SPEAKER_00:sorry i remember uh father thomas telling us the story while we were there and i thought it was so interesting i went to catholic school my whole life including st louis university for my doctoral degree and i didn't know that story and i'm like if i don't know that story The rest of the world doesn't know that story so they need to know and I thought that was really interesting. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely So so probably there's well not probably certainly there there's no religious order in in the life of the Catholic Church That's more closely connected with the rosary You know, the the Franciscans have the stations of the cross the Dominicans have have the rosary as sort of forms of prayer that are like our special gifts to the church. The church has this wonderful treasure chest of all these different kinds of methods of prayer. But the rosary really does hold a very special and privileged place among that treasury of prayer. And yeah, the Dominican order is the order that has always been the champions and the preachers and the protectors of the rosary. So historically, there's a really long history account of how the rosary came to be and it developed in little small stages over hundreds and hundreds of years. I'll give you just the short version. So in the tradition of prayer of the various monastic orders, the monks, right, like the Benedictines, there grew up this tradition of praying the 150 psalms every single week and that that collection of praying the psalms and the arrangement of praying the psalms is often referred to as the psalter or and then it became known as the divine office so even to this very day you know the if you go to a benedictine monastery and join them for their community prayers they will be chanting or singing mainly the psalms and the same thing is true for the dominicans for the for the franciscans and even down to you know your every one of your parish priests has what he calls the breviary, which is kind of the priest's prayer book. And it splits up the 150 psalms. Now we do it over the course of a month. It used to be that they did all 150 psalms in the course of a week. And the way that the monks were trained to to pray the Psalms was by memory. So they memorized all 150 Psalms and prayed 150 Psalms each week by memory, which is a lot.
SPEAKER_00:It's
SPEAKER_02:a lot. But it was much harder to do that, to memorize the Psalms, if you were illiterate if you weren't able to read and if you were busy through most of the day. And so it happened that there were some monks were set aside to spend most of their day doing work and they tended to be the ones who couldn't read or write. And then other monks were the monks who were sort of dedicated to being in the chapel praying the Psalms. And so this custom developed among the less literate monks of, since they weren't in choir chanting the 150 psalms, what they would start to do is they would, on a given day, they would pray 150 Hail Marys.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_02:And that became, that kind of poor man's psalter became the... the backbone for the prayer that became the rosary you know so um so for for most of the history of the rosary it's been um split up into decades so you pray 10 hail marys at a time so you've got you see there right
SPEAKER_00:okay 10 hail mary's out of time wait we start out with the
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Or should we go back to how
SPEAKER_02:you're doing it? We'll focus on the core, which is
SPEAKER_00:the Hail Marys. Okay, the Hail Marys. These are the 10 Hail Marys. Yes. 10 Hail Marys.
SPEAKER_02:So the other stuff can kind of change depending on which spiritual tradition you're talking about. But the things that are always there are the 10 Hail Marys. Okay. And you start, so you start with an Our Father. Ten Hail Marys, and then a Glory Be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00:Glory Be, and then an Oh My Jesus.
SPEAKER_02:So in one spiritual tradition, you pray the Oh My Jesus, right? So because I'm a Dominican, we carry on a much older tradition. So there are extra prayers that got added on later in the history, which are great. They're beautiful prayers, but you don't have to pray them.
SPEAKER_00:But wait, before we go on, Tell me about the story about how Mary gave... Yes. Okay, you're going to go to that. Yes. Okay, sorry. Or am I jumping in? No, no, you're doing great.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. So the idea is this. So you have this tradition of replacing... the 150 Psalms with 150 Hail Marys, right? And then those 150 Hail Marys get broken up into what are called decades, right?
SPEAKER_00:These are each decades. These are each decades. So
SPEAKER_02:this is a decade. This is a decade. So one set of 10 Hail Marys is a decade. OK. And then there became this tradition associating a decade with a different mystery in the life of our lord um and uh so for ex and then you'd have what you've got here as what you would consider to be a full rosary right yes is a set of five decades yes right
SPEAKER_00:so i feel like i feel i feel like because i like color by numbers yeah i feel like there should have been one of these, one of the Our Fathers here?
SPEAKER_02:Like a bead, yes. Yeah, just... Yeah. Well, so then this might make you happy. Okay, tell me.
SPEAKER_00:Originally, there was.
SPEAKER_02:Because that was a bead.
SPEAKER_00:Ah, okay, got it, okay. I got it, okay.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so the idea was a set of five decades like you've got there.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:became associated with a set of mysteries in the life of Jesus. So you've got the joyful mysteries, the sorrowful mysteries, the glorious mysteries.
SPEAKER_00:And the joyful mysteries are Mondays and Wednesdays. Sorrowfuls are Tuesdays and Fridays. and Luminous are Thursdays, and Luminous was just added.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Luminous was just recently added. Do you like that? I think they're beautiful mysteries to pray. Just for the moment, let's focus on the three kind of older sets. Because if each set, so like the Joyful Mysteries is five decades, that's 50 Hail Marys, right?
SPEAKER_00:Sure.
SPEAKER_02:And so if you do the Joyful Mysteries, the Sorrowful and the Glorious, so all three sets of mysteries, you've done 150 Hail Marys. And that's the 150 Psalms.
SPEAKER_00:Oh,
SPEAKER_02:wow. So that's the correspondence. And so there's this very beautiful custom of referring to the rosary as Mary's Psalter, Mary's Book of Psalms, right? So if you pray the joyful, the sorrowful, and the glorious mysteries together, then you've prayed a Hail Mary for every single one of the Psalms. And that's how the rosary initially developed. And then in the
SPEAKER_00:course of...
SPEAKER_02:That's four rosaries a day. Yeah, that's a lot of praying, you know. But in the course of the... Four or three? Three. Three. Yeah, three sets of mysteries. Oh, okay, three sets of mysteries. If you were to do all four, if you were to add in the luminous, then you'd do 200 Hail Marys.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, that's a lot. So that's
SPEAKER_02:like going over and above. Okay. Right. But so in the midst... But the development, you know, from... from monks working in the fields just praying 150 Hail Marys as they work to the rosary as we have it now, there was a really long history of development. And in the midst of that history of development, the Dominican order played a really important role of preaching it and popularizing it and encouraging people to pray the rosary as it was developing. And so as you mentioned earlier, part of that comes from a number of different stories where our lord or our lady would appear to different dominican saints so uh and and give the rosary to the dominican saints and
SPEAKER_01:encourage them
SPEAKER_02:um well so in the vision right so so i i think the the story that you were
SPEAKER_00:really sorry i'm asking basic questions right now but i think people want to know
SPEAKER_02:yeah so uh so there's so there's one story where um where St. Dominic saw Our Lady appear to him, and she gives him a set of beads, very similar to the one that you're holding, right? And he's, You know, Dominic stands in this tradition of the development of the rosary as we have it now. But so Our Lady gives him a set of beads in the vision and then encourages him to preach that by praying these Hail Marys, by praying Our Lady's Psalter, people will be able to grow closer to the Lord. There's a similar story about St. Catherine of Siena where she has a vision where it's not just Our Lady, but Our Lady holding the infant Jesus and she sees Dominic there as well. And so Our Lady hands a rosary to Dominic and the baby Jesus hands a rosary to Catherine. And so you'll often find that painted uh so you can find lots and lots and lots of really beautiful paintings of the rosary being given both to saint dominic and to saint catherine uh that comes from this story from from catherine's life so um so you know clearly our lady wanted um clearly wanted the the dominicans to to be promoting the rosary and we
SPEAKER_00:have
SPEAKER_02:um ever ever since
SPEAKER_00:i say the rosary like Three times a week.
SPEAKER_02:That's great, yeah. Dominicans, so in the order, at least for the friars, every Dominican friar prays it once a day.
SPEAKER_00:All of the
SPEAKER_02:mysteries? One set of mysteries. And some places you'll go and they'll pray it in common. So they'll be in the church and they'll pray it. Other places we do it in private, but the Dominicans actually have a slightly different way of praying the rosary. The Our Father, the Ten Hail Marys, and the Glory Be is the same, but some of the other prayers are a little bit different from the way that most people pray the rosary because the little prayers that we have added make it um
SPEAKER_00:the dominicans have added
SPEAKER_02:uh-huh um
SPEAKER_00:so what's the approved vatican
SPEAKER_02:there is there is no single right way to pray the rosary
SPEAKER_00:can you do the rosary without the mysteries
SPEAKER_02:you can
SPEAKER_00:And what's that called?
SPEAKER_02:Just the rosary.
SPEAKER_00:Not the prayer to Fatima? No.
SPEAKER_02:Yep. So there's the prayer to Fatima that a lot of people will add, right, to the rosary. But look, so let me tell you a story. Okay. So there's a beautiful story about Blessed Jordan of Saxony, who was the successor to St. Dominic, so the second leader of the Dominican order. And there were two Dominican novices, so two Dominicans who were in their first year of Dominican formation. And they were having a debate about what the best kind of prayer is. And so one of these novices was really kind of in favor of a way of praying that's associated with the older religious orders, the monks, called Lectio Divina, or a kind of prayerful reading of scripture. The other novice was really a big supporter of this idea this beautiful way of praying that developed in the Middle Ages that was called the visitation of the altars. So you'd have in a church, so like in a Dominican church, you'd have kind of the main high altar, but then you'd have lots of little side altars all around the church and they'd be dedicated to different saints. And so there was this practice that developed of going and spending just a few minutes in front of each one of those side altars and having a little bit of kind of me time with that particular saint. And so one of them thought this was the visitation of the altars was the best kind of prayer. One of them thought Lectio Divina was the best kind of prayer. So Blessed Jordan arrived right in the middle of this debate, and so they asked him, you know, will you be the judge? So Blessed Jordan arrives right in the middle of this debate. And so they look to him and they ask him to be the judge. So tell us what the best kind of prayer is. And you can sort of hear him kind of facepalming. But his answer is very beautiful. His answer is, brother, that prayer is best, which makes you love God most.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02:That prayer is best, which makes you
SPEAKER_00:love God most. So whatever works for you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so, you know, all of the different kinds of prayer within the church are, they're treasures, right? But some people, you know, look, you might like emeralds and I might like diamonds and that's fine, right? You can like emeralds and I can like diamonds, right? So, I mean, for some people, the rosary doesn't move them at all, right?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it totally moves me. It calms me down.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. For many, many, many Catholics across hundreds and hundreds of years, the rosary is something that we find deeply moving, deeply powerful, deeply spiritually enriching. But there are different ways to pray the rosary itself. And so I think Blessed Jordan's rule of thumb is very helpful here as well. that way of praying the rosary is best, which makes you love God most. So if you like the fathom of prayer, add it.
SPEAKER_00:Five more questions.
SPEAKER_02:Great, go
SPEAKER_00:for it. Okay, so I thought, okay, so sometimes I do the rosary without the mysteries, but then someone told me that the whole point of doing the rosary was to meditate on the mysteries themselves.
SPEAKER_02:So, yeah, so that is strictly speaking not true. So, yeah, so, yeah, yeah, you're fine. And, you know, one way that we can know that that's not strictly true is because of what we just talked about, the very history of the rosary, right? So the rosary first developed not with mysteries, but as 150 Psalms correspond, or 150 Hail Marys corresponding to the 150 Psalms. So the first kind of way that the rosary developed was as a way for people who don't have all 150 Psalms memorized to sort of share in the monastic prayer of the monks in the chapel, right? So if you can't be with the monks praying the 150 Psalms each week, That's okay. You can pray the 150 Hail Marys, and that's like your way of participating or sharing in their really rich life of prayer. Later on in the development of the Rosary, the different mysteries of the life of Jesus get associated with sets of 10. And that's great. So if praying with the mysteries helps you love God, then pray the rosary with the mysteries. If you want to pray with different mysteries, that's great too. There's no official and so no correct versus incorrect way to pray the rosary.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, how about speed?
SPEAKER_02:Uh-huh,
SPEAKER_00:yes. Sometimes I'm like
UNKNOWN:.
SPEAKER_00:That's
SPEAKER_02:what we call an Irish rosary.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Is that okay?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, it's fine.
SPEAKER_00:Because the Pope said, you're supposed to think about the prayers and not rush through them. I'm like, I screwed up again.
SPEAKER_02:No, so the important thing, and I think what the Holy Father was really sort of talking about there, is that However it is that you want to pray the rosary, you should do it attentively. So our Lord says in the gospel that the way that the pagans pray is with many words, just thinking that saying a whole bunch of words will somehow make prayer possible. better. And that's not true. What makes prayer really rich and life-giving is the attentiveness of the mind that we bring to it. But there are lots of different ways that you can be attentive while praying the rosary. So for some people, it's especially helpful to be attentive to the very words of the Hail Mary or of the Our Father that are being prayed, right? For other people, it's helpful to be attentive to the mystery of the life of Jesus that's being associated with the time that you're spending praying rosary. praying those words, right? So here's what you should avoid. Avoid praying the rosary like it's sort of something on your checklist that you need to check off. Because if you're approaching the rosary as just something that you need to get done, then probably you're not going to be attentive to anything that's spiritually life-giving.
SPEAKER_00:You know what, though? I'll flip that a little bit. Sure. Sometimes I make it like that, like a checklist, and then as soon as I start doing it, it centers me down.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:You know what I mean? Absolutely. I'm like, I've got to do the rosary. I haven't done it in a few days or a couple days. I've got to do the rosary. I've got to do the rosary. It's my checklist. And then I start doing the rosary. I'm like,
SPEAKER_02:ah. Yeah. No, absolutely. Look, so there's an old Dominican who once gave me a very helpful bit of advice. Prayer is one of the few things where the only thing we have control over is the quantity, not the quality. So sometimes we're sitting in prayer and it's just a dry spell. We don't have this really vivid experience of the Lord being present to us or speaking to us in the words of the prayer. revealing himself to us in the mystery that we're meditating on. But what we can do is we can sit our butts down for 15 minutes and we can pray the rosary, right? And we can give him that quantity of time and then just ask the Lord, invite the Lord, right? You say, Lord, This time of praying the rosary is your time and whatever graces you want to work in my heart while I'm praying, that's up to you. But what I can give you is the 50 Hail Marys, right? And so I don't think there's anything wrong with praying faster or slower, right? So just a little personal story. So for me, sometimes the most difficult rosaries to pray are rosaries that I pray when I'm visiting Dominican nuns, cloistered Dominican nuns, because many Dominican nuns will pray the rosary very, very slowly.
SPEAKER_00:I can't do it.
SPEAKER_02:And for me, that... that slowness of the rosary is actually kind of distracting, right? I know. So again, I think it comes down to this, I'll call it blessed Jordan's rule, right? So that way of praying the rosary is best, which makes you love God most. So if praying the rosary very slowly is distracting for you, then don't pray the rosary very slowly. If praying the rosary really quickly is distracting you, then don't pray the rosary very quickly, right? The right speed is the speed that helps you be attentive to the Lord and that helps you love God most.
SPEAKER_00:One of my non-Catholic friends said, you should not do the rosary because repetitive prayers are like not okay. Right. So tell me about what that means.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Because all the rosaries is a repetitive prayer.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Yeah. So it's an excellent question, and it's a very common objection coming from Protestants. In some respects, it's not a very serious objection because it's an objection that you would only raise if you didn't have any concept of how Jews at the time of Jesus prayed. Because the prayer of the Jewish people, and so the prayer that Jesus would have been trained to pray in the period of what's called the Second Temple period, involved a lot of memorized prayer. wrote repeated prayers. So just from a kind of historical standpoint, I think in general, it's a good rule of thumb to not criticize any kind of prayer that Jesus would have prayed. And Jesus would have prayed repetitive or memorized or wrote prayers. Now, like we talked about before, Jesus does criticize the pagans for thinking that a prayer is better just because it involves more words. Oh, I see. Yeah, that's definitely false. And so we definitely should not think that the rosary or a litany or a novena or spontaneous kind of charismatic prayer. We shouldn't think that any of those kinds of prayers are... better just because they involve more words.
SPEAKER_00:What's your favorite prayer?
SPEAKER_02:Probably Lectio Divina, which is that kind of prayerful monastic reading of scripture. But I also... I also do love litanies, actually. We have them on the app. Yes. Yeah, that's right. And I should say that actually my favorite kind of prayer has changed and shifted over the course of my life. So there was a time in my life where I found litanies very hard to pray. There was a time in my life where I found the rosary very, very hard to pray. And so it's also true, I think, and very normal and very natural, that the kind of prayer that makes you love God most can can shift as you change, right? You know, the kind of prayer that fits you best and that helps you love God most at any given moment can be different. So the most important thing for us is to always have the commitment to the life of prayer and an openness to for the Holy Spirit to kind of move us in different ways when it comes to the sorts of prayers that we say.
SPEAKER_00:Tell me, okay, so I heard a story about how the Hail Mary prayer came to be. I guess Elizabeth says, or was it Elizabeth that started the prayer? There's quotes that were put together. Yeah, exactly. So the Hail Mary starts by different quotes that were put together. That's right. Explain those to me.
SPEAKER_02:The Hail Mary, in its earliest form, was only half of what we call the Hail Mary. Okay, so tell us about that. So Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus, right? So, you know, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen, right? So let's just focus on the first half, right? So Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you, right? That's a quote from the Archangel Gabriel, right? Oh, I thought it was from Elizabeth. So the next bit is from Elizabeth. So you're not wrong, right? You're just not quite right yet. So, Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. That's Gabriel at the Annunciation. Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Elizabeth, let's back up for people that
SPEAKER_00:don't know. Elizabeth is Mary's cousin. Is
SPEAKER_02:Mary's cousin, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:And they were pregnant at the same time.
SPEAKER_02:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:And when Mary went to go visit her, that's when she said...
SPEAKER_02:Yes, she says... So, so Elizabeth, she sees Mary and the moment she sees Mary pregnant with the, with the Lord Jesus, the baby in her womb, John the Baptist leaps for joy. Right. And so she says, you know, who is this that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Right. And then, you know, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Right? So Elizabeth, so what you have is the first half of the Hail Mary, which is the older, the oldest sort of thing that we would identify as the Hail Mary. Itself is composed of these two scriptural quotes, one from Gabriel to Mary, and then the other from Elizabeth to Mary.
SPEAKER_00:And then how does the rest come about?
SPEAKER_02:So again, through the, the pious devotion of the people who pray it, right? So in the same way that you mentioned earlier that you like the Fatima prayer, right? And so what happened was people who thought the Fatima prayer was really beautiful would add it after a decade. So you'd pray the Our Father, the 10 Hail Marys, the Glory Be. And then they said, well, this is a really beautiful prayer. Let's add that on. And so then it gets added on. So then the second half of the Hail Mary eventually got added on as a beautiful bit of prayer.
SPEAKER_00:Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners
SPEAKER_02:now and at the hour of our death.
SPEAKER_00:Amen. Do we know who added that?
SPEAKER_02:The person? You know, I don't think there is any one identifiable person who kind of composed that and added it.
SPEAKER_00:But the first half is Gabriel and Elizabeth. Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:the first half is sort of scriptural quotes and then with a few words here or there kind of stitching them together.
SPEAKER_00:I like it. Our Father is from Jesus.
SPEAKER_02:That's exactly right. That's the perfect prayer. Beginning to end from Beginning to end. Yeah, that's all our Lord.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, now I'm going to go over this with you really quickly. Without the mysteries. Let's start.
SPEAKER_02:Well, so this is... Sign of the cross. Yeah, but so you're doing the dangerous thing, right? Why? Because, so I'm a Dominican. So we pray it differently. So I can tell you the way the Dominican tradition starts.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, let's do it. Okay, let's do the Dominican verses real quick.
SPEAKER_02:So the beginning of the... See, you didn't know what you were in for, right? I really did not. Yeah, no. No, it's great. So the Dominican rosary starts like this. Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will proclaim your praise.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:That is the way that... So when all the Dominicans or all the Franciscans or all the Carmelites or any of the monks are gathered together in the chapel to begin their very first hour of prayer of the liturgy of the hours, which is, remember, that's the psalms, right, where we pray the 150 psalms. The very first communal prayer where we chant the psalms each day begins that way. So, oh, Lord, open my lips and my mouth will proclaim your praise.
SPEAKER_00:Non-Dominicans is a sign of the cross.
SPEAKER_02:Non-Dominicans sign of the cross. Okay. Then the second thing that the Dominicans do is, God, come to my assistance. Lord,
SPEAKER_00:make haste to help me. Are we still here?
SPEAKER_02:I have no idea. Okay. Because it's different, right? Okay, got it. How many will we get here, though? Yeah. Well, so here's the thing. So let me pull out mine, right? So mine's really big, right? And so you'll notice for the bit of rosary that I'm going to grab, do I have any of that? No, I just have the decades, right? So I prayed my rosary on the bus on the way here this morning. So what did I do when I prayed the rosary? So I grabbed this bit. And I started the way I just told you. Lord, open my lips and my mouth will proclaim your praise. God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever. Amen. Right. And then I just start into the mysteries.
SPEAKER_00:Ah, okay, so.
SPEAKER_02:So everything that you guys pray here, so in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, right? Our Father. Our Father. Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary, right? Our Father again. And then Our Father again, or some people will add the creed, so the Apostles' Creed. Apostles' Creed, of course. And then, so all of that, that kind of introductory, all of those introductory prayers on kind of the normal rosary, right, are replaced in
UNKNOWN:you
SPEAKER_02:the Dominican Rosary, or maybe better is to say that the Dominican Rosary is sort of an older tradition. But our introductory prayers are all ways of connecting the Rosary to the chanting of the Psalms together in choir.
SPEAKER_00:Got it. So you guys go right into the
SPEAKER_02:decades. Yeah, after all of the beginning stuff. And then we go into the decades.
SPEAKER_00:Got it.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:On the app, we have one version of the
SPEAKER_02:Rosary. Which Which is the much more common standard version, right? But maybe the listeners will think it's kind of fun to discover that there's a different way of praying the rosary that can't be wrong because the Dominicans are the order of the rosary, right?
SPEAKER_00:You know, I didn't do the rosary for a really long time because I was too scared to screw it up.
SPEAKER_02:You know, don't be afraid. It's intimidating. It is. No, I remember... When I was in high school, it was the first time I'd ever gone on anything like a kind of religious retreat. I never went to Catholic school growing up. Really? And so when I didn't know how to pray the rosary, right? My family, we would pray grace before meals, but we never prayed the rosary together as a family. And And in my own private prayer, I just never learned it. So for me, it's a very vivid memory of being as a high schooler, being on this retreat, and somebody asking me. We were all praying the rosary together, and I was just kind of there along for the ride. Going through the motions. But the priest who was leading it was just pointing to different people to lead the decades, right? And so he- Very intimidating. Yeah, so he pointed to me, and I was paralyzed, right? And even though I'd been listening to other people kind of leading it in the past, I couldn't do it, right? And it was extremely embarrassing for me, right? And so I... So after that, I went and sort of learned how to pray the rosary. But yeah, it is not something that we should assume that everyone knows how to do.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I found it very intimidating in the beginning. And then I just kind of color by numbers.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's right. And I mean, having a guide for how to do it on an app is really a very kind of gentle, welcoming point of entry.
SPEAKER_00:Is it okay for me just to, I have a narrator on the app too, is it okay just to turn it on and listen? Yeah, of course. Okay, good. I just wanted to make sure. Sometimes I'm like, I'm not saying it, but I'm listening.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. That is still praying. That's still kind of actively participating in the rosary. And another thing that many people find very helpful is kind of guided rosary meditations. So there are lots of examples that you can find where people will have composed or maybe they've cut and pasted from scripture a little bit of text. So after you announce the mystery, so the the first joyful mystery, the Annunciation, and then you might have on some ways of doing the Rosary a little bit like a guided meditation on the Annunciation and the way that Gabriel appears to Mary, what that must have been like for Mary. Oh, okay, that's pretty interesting. And then they'll go into the Our Father and the Hail Marys. And like we've been saying, none of that is wrong, right? You know, whatever is the best and most helpful way to pray is the way you should use.
SPEAKER_00:Who's your favorite saint and why? Ooh,
SPEAKER_02:favorite saint. Taffy. So... Setting aside Our Lady. Okay, that's
SPEAKER_00:like numero uno.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. St. Thomas Aquinas is the saint who is nearest and dearest to my heart. Why? Because he was a man who was humble and pure and holy. And totally dedicated to the truth. So St. Thomas, maybe this is the best way to kind of explain my love for St. Thomas. So a lot of people find St. Thomas hard to kind of fall in love with because when you pick up any of his writings, it's like he's not there. So his writings are very, they're very intellectual, they're very intelligent, they're very well-reasoned, but you don't get a sense of the person. Whereas when you pick up Saint Augustine, Saint Augustine, the man is kind of jumping off every page. When you pick up Saint Catherine, Saint Catherine's personality is just leaping out of her different writings. Saint Therese of Lisieux, you get to know the person as soon as you pick up their writings. Saint Thomas? Not like that at all, right? But there's a really beautiful reflection that a 20th century Dominican gave on St. Thomas that meditates on exactly that point in a beautiful way. So he says that St. Thomas is, in all of his writings, he's totally transparent. So you don't see him, you see through him to the truth. So he's totally dedicated to communicating the truth of the faith and the way that that truth will save us and set us free. And so this Dominican, he said, so in that way, St. Thomas is a lot like the piece of glass that you so when you go to eucharistic adoration the the blessed sacrament is put in something called a monstrance so it's usually it's like a big gold thing that holds up the the blessed sacrament and you and you sit in or kneel right in adoration looking at at the lord in the sacrament and you look through straight through a piece of transparent glass to look at the Lord. And he said, St. Thomas is just like that. His dedication to the truth and his dedication to clear writing about Jesus makes him like that little bit of see-through glass that you look through him to Jesus. And I think that's really beautiful. And I hope that I can be like that.
SPEAKER_00:You are. Thank you. But wait, and he's also the patron saint of students and teachers, right? He is, yeah. Is there another patronage he has that I don't know about?
SPEAKER_02:So he's called the common doctor. And so he's kind of the universal teacher for all Catholics. And yes, especially for students, but also for teachers.
SPEAKER_00:I want to talk to you a little bit about the importance and the power of the rosary, praying the rosary. Great. So I read that the rosary was the most powerful prayer against evil. Can you explain a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_02:Sure. I mean, so of course, you know, the most powerful name against the evil one is the name of our Lord Jesus, right? discussed a little bit, the Rosary is fundamentally a prayer about The mysteries that we meditate on as we pray the different decades of the Rosary are mysteries that are focused on the life and the work of the Lord Jesus. And there's no one who's more dedicated and more focused on Jesus than his mother. And so our Lady's Rosary, our Lady's Prayer is dedicated. by that very fact, first and foremost, a prayer focused on Jesus. And so the more centered on Jesus something is, the more powerful it's going to be against the evil one. And so there's an incredibly rich history and tradition of the rosary as a weapon against the devil. And in fact, this is a fun little thing. So you can't see it right now, but the Dominicans in our religious habit, we all wear that very big rosary, but we wear it on our left side. And there's a kind of spiritual symbolism there because back in the Middle Ages, soldiers and knights would wear the sword on their left side. And so for the Dominicans, we've traded a physical weapon of the sword to a spiritual weapon, which is the rosary, but we wear it in the same place. And so it's a sign of the power of the rosary as a weapon against the devil and ultimately a tool that we can use to protect ourselves from his influence in our lives.
SPEAKER_00:I heard that there's a priest in Texas that makes rosaries out of bullets. Really? And puts it in this like giant case and it's basically like spiritual warfare.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, well, certainly the rosary is one of the most powerful weapons in the toolkit of someone engaged in spiritual warfare.
SPEAKER_00:I have, people give me, I'm in this field and friends with a lot of priests now and they always give me rosaries and blessed or i usually buy a beautiful rosary but so i look at i have like a collection of rosaries right next to my bed and i i swear it protects me
SPEAKER_02:absolutely
SPEAKER_00:when people from downstairs are coming to visit they see those rosaries and they bolt and i have a virgin mary next to my bed too i heard that they can't stand to see her face
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely, yes.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, now tell me, it's the most powerful prayer against protection, but I also read that it's the most powerful prayer for peace.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely, yeah. And it makes sense that those two things would come together, right? Because what is, you know, if you think about the act of... protection, right? So when we protect ourselves from the devil, what does that do? It saves our spiritual lives, right? And so to be spiritually alive, to have sanctifying grace in your soul is to be protected from the devil, right? And as long as you're protected, you have that sanctifying grace. And then one of the very first effects of sanctifying grace in the soul is the fruits of the Holy Spirit and what is one of the first fruits of the Holy Spirit, but the fruit of peace. And so the more we are spiritually safe, the more profoundly at peace we're going to be. And so it's not an accidental connection that a prayer that powerfully protects us from the devil is also going to be a prayer that gives us a profound sense of peace.
SPEAKER_00:Makes sense. Tell me now, Father, about the miracles that are attributed to the rosary.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, so there are way too many for us to talk completely about, but...
SPEAKER_00:Highlights.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, yeah. So, I mean, let me start with one related to the last thing that you just said, which is the rosary as a prayer focused on peace, right? So... I'll talk about not peace in an individual soul, but peace in the world. So probably the event in world history that the Rosary is most commonly connected to is a battle, right? The Battle of Lepanto. So in 1571, the A huge Turkish army and navy encountered a much smaller navy and army put together by the different Christian countries in Europe. we were so profoundly outnumbered that basically everyone thought that Christendom as a whole was doomed. And so the Pope at the time, Pope St. Pius V, who, you know, we're here in Rome, so you can go to Santa Maria Maggiore and you can see him lying in state there. But he had been, before he was elected Pope, he had been a Dominican. And, you know, being a good Dominican, he had fostered a very deep devotion to the Rosary. And so in this moment of great distress and great need, the Holy Father called on all Christians to pray the rosary that the Christian army would be protected from the invasion of the Turks. And so during the battle, He personally was praying the rosary the entire time and he called on all of the Christians to pray the rosary and to commend the peace and the safety of the Christian world into the hands of Our Lady. So the Holy Father calls on all Christians to pray the rosary and he does it himself personally, right? So during the Battle of Lepanto, Pope St. Pius V is praying the rosary. He has all the Christians throughout Europe praying the rosary. And lo and behold, despite the fact that the Christian navy and the Christian army is completely outnumbered, they're able to win the Battle of Lepanto. And historians really do say that in many respects that one battle kept Lepanto Europe Christian and kept the Christian faith alive in the West. And there was no question in anyone's mind that this victory was won through the intercession of Our Lady, right? And so in many respects, you can think of the Battle of Lepanto as a a modern version of any of the battles that you would read about in the Old Testament where God is directly intervening to save the Israelites who are completely outnumbered by their enemies. This is something that God loves to do. The Lord loves to pick the underdog and then bring protection so that they can win a victory. And what God loves? Our Lady loves. And so Our Lady through the power of the Most Holy Rosary brings about this great victory for the underdog and really saved us. And so the The date of the Battle of Lepanto, it turns out, is a date that we celebrate every single year because after our victory, Pope St. Pius V made that the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I love that. Okay, great. Any other miracles that you know?
SPEAKER_02:I could, I mean, so you can look to... Almost all of the individual particular miracles of healing that are associated with the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes are also miracles of the Most Holy Rosary because what did Our Lady in the vision at Lourdes recommend that all Christians do and pray? The Rosary. And
SPEAKER_00:I actually started praying the Rosary after, I mean more, When I went to Magigore and the visionaries, they were telling the story of the visionaries, and the visionaries said one of the messages that our mother gave us was that we should pray the rosary. And so ever since then, I've been really actually trying to pray the rosary. I do it probably about three times a week. Sometimes I do it every day. Yeah, great. Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:I mean, this is a consistent theme, right? So when Our Lady appears to visionaries, she's constantly promoting the Holy Rosary and asking them to promote the Holy Rosary. There's, all right, have you heard of Blessed Bartolo Longo?
SPEAKER_00:No.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so I have a funny feeling this is one you're going to like, and maybe it almost certainly is not going to be one that the people who watch your interviews will be familiar with.
SPEAKER_00:It's sad what gets me excited these days. I'm so excited to hear about Bartolo Longo. Yeah, exactly, right?
SPEAKER_02:So Blessed Bartolo Longo was a... an Italian layman who lived in the middle to the end of the 19th century, so like the late 1800s. And that was a time in Italy's history where there were a huge number of changes going on, right? So Italian unification had just happened and one of the And so there was a lot of tension, let me put it that way, between the Italian state, which was very secular and kind of nationalistic, and the Catholic Church. So many people in Italy at the time sort of viewed the Catholic Church as belonging to the past and a kind of secular Italian identity as the way in the future. But something that a lot of people don't know about Italian culture during that time is that there was also a rise of spiritualism, paganism, and even explicit Satanism during that time. And so Bartolo Longo was a young man who was studying law. And eventually he became a lawyer, but he was also caught up in this movement of young Italians to turn away from Catholicism and embrace Catholicism. paganism, spiritualism, and explicit Satanism. And so Bartolo Longo was ordained, if you can call it that way, a satanic priest. And this should not surprise you, but Pretty soon afterwards, he became racked with anxiety, racked with depression, racked with suicidal thoughts. And he just, he knew that he wasn't, if he kept going along this path, he wasn't going to survive. But he didn't know what-
SPEAKER_00:Wouldn't he be rewarded temporarily, at least, if he was a satanic priest?
SPEAKER_02:You mean by the devil?
SPEAKER_00:Yes. You know, like you would think there's like a window of like all good things happening. happening and then it all goes bad. That's kind of my...
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, and to some extent, you know, I think you could say that he was, right? You know, he was by, in worldly standards, he was a successful man. He was a successful lawyer. He was, you know, he was well-respected by his peers, you know, but... his interior life was a mess, right? And so he reached out to a friend who, just to ask for advice, for help, and His friend recommended that even though the Catholic Church is kind of backwards and not the way forward, well, there's this good Dominican priest that I know. Maybe you should have a conversation with him. And so it was by talking to this Catholic priest that Bartolo Longo was persuaded to he was convinced that it was, the root of the problems in his life was his satanic practice and these sort of spiritual practices. And the solution and the path towards interior peace, like we talked about before, was to foster a devotion to Our Lady and to begin praying her rosary. And so Bartolo Longo takes the advice. So he returns to the Catholic faith. He falls in love with Our Lady. Lady and her rosary and it's through praying the rosary that his life is completely converted and he begins to find that interior peace that had had eluded him so much before and so he ends up moving to the city of Pompeii to practice law. And there, he begins really actively working to promote the rosary and to promote catechesis among the Italian people there in the city of Pompeii because he finds that these people, they don't even know the basics of the faith, right? So he asks an older gentleman, How many gods are there? And the older gentleman says, well, when I was a boy, I think I remember being taught that there were three. Recently, I've only really heard people talking about one. So maybe I guess one of the others died or got married. And Bartolo Longo is losing his mind, right? Because it's clear that the level of catechesis, the level of understanding of the faith was just zero there. And the people of Pompeii were, any time that they had a problem, they were seeking out the interventions of a witch. So he begins preaching the rosary, teaching the faith, and he creates a shrine to Our Lady in Pompeii, and he's given an image that has become now known as Our Lady of Pompeii, but it's also an image, like we talked about before, of... Our Lady giving the rosary to St. Dominic and Our Lord, you know, the infant Jesus in Our Lady's arms giving the rosary to St. Catherine. And the number of personal miracles of healing, miracles of conversion, miracles of a transformed life that have come through devotion to the image of Our Lady of Pompeii and devotion to the Holy Rosary and praying the Holy Rosary because of that shrine that Bartolo Longo created. I mean, it's countless miracles, countless conversions.
SPEAKER_00:You don't think I'm going next week?
SPEAKER_02:Are you going? I'm going to go. You're going? Oh, I'm going to go now. Yes. No, you absolutely should. Yeah. He's an incredible blessed in the church that almost no one knows about. I
SPEAKER_00:know for me, the Rosary is a really powerful tool because I'm just like naturally an anxious person. And I feel like with age, all of our like issues just get a little more amplified i don't know you can't really relate you're younger than i am but well i'm not i'm not that young yeah but you know what i'm talking about like more of you comes out as you get older and i'm like getting more and more anxious as the years go by but like seeing the rosary for me has been just a powerful tool because it like calms me down sometimes when i have insomnia at night i'll start saying the rosary and I'm like an OCD person too, and I'll start almost instantly falling asleep, and then I make myself get up. That's the OCD in me. Finish the rosary, and then I'm like, just go to bed. And for me, it's been like a real calming experience.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I think there are an enormous number of people, myself included, who have exactly the same experience with the rosary. And I think there are a number of things about the rosary that really help and contribute to making it such a great tool to overcome anxiety and to find a real deep sense of peace. One that comes to mind is just that all of the central prayers involved, they're totally familiar to us. The Our Father, we know it. The Hail Mary, we know it. The Glory Be, we know it. It's a familiar prayer and anything familiar is something that is going to help us overcome worry, overcome interior distress, overcome anxiety. Another thing that I think helps it in that regard is the way that it's repetitive. So you don't need to be creative when you're praying the rosary. You don't need to be sort of on the top of your game. You can just sort of let yourself fall into it, let yourself slide into it, let yourself rest in it because you're repeating these prayers over and over and over again. And then maybe a third thing that contributes to that is the fact that the mysteries that are associated with it, right? So the things that aren't the words, right? But the themes are precisely mysteries that are supposed to be meditated on, right? And meditation is a peaceful practice, right? And all of this, you know, ultimately is... grounded in Scripture as well, right? So you can think of the repeated lines in the Gospels about Mary where it's said that she she kept these things or she pondered these things in her heart. And so Mary was the first person to really meditate on Jesus. The time where she's carrying him physically in her womb is also a time where she's carrying him meditatively in her heart and in her mind. And the rosary as Mary's prayer is like our way to enter into that experience that Mary had of pondering these things in her heart. So it's a deeply meditative practice. It's a deeply meditative prayer. And so yeah, we shouldn't be surprised if it helps us overcome anxiety and distress.
SPEAKER_00:You know, you said it's a Rosary is a spiritual warfare tool. I interviewed Father Daniel Rehill. He's kind of an Instagram famous exorcist in the United States.
SPEAKER_02:I'm not on social media at all.
SPEAKER_00:I'll catch up to speed. He is now working with the Navy SEALs, Team 6. I thought that was interesting in spiritual warfare. And I have a feeling he's probably just going to give every one of those. Like Team Six, as you know, is the most specialized Navy SEALs group of men. And he's training them in spiritual combat. And I think that's super cool.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that is super cool.
SPEAKER_00:And I have a feeling he's giving them blessed rosaries like,
SPEAKER_02:I would be shocked if he's not.
SPEAKER_00:I know, right? One thing I really struggle with is we have a very good idea of what jesus looks like in our head right like we know he's dark hair somewhat dark skin and a beard right
SPEAKER_01:but
SPEAKER_00:i have i really struggle with and i've kind of this week come to terms with this conclusion i'm about to tell you i don't really have a good idea of what mary looks like what she actually looked like in my head because she appears in her apparitions where she comes like when she came to magigory she came as a typical looking croatian woman with pale skin blue eyes and black hair when she revealed herself in guadalupe to the mexicans she came as a indigenous mexican woman You know, I'm pretty sure when she has an apparition in Africa, she's going to come as an African-American. I mean, not an African-American, as an African, as a black woman. So I want to know what is the most real depiction of Mary. I
SPEAKER_02:mean, so for just most real, right? I mean, so she was a young Jewish woman. from the Middle East, right? Right. So historically speaking, that's what she would have looked like. But I think actually there's a really important spiritual lesson that we can learn from the phenomenon that you just talked about, right? So I'm a Dominican. We talked a little bit about, you know, I'm really devoted to St. Thomas Aquinas. And so one of the things that when St. Thomas talks about ethics or moral theology, he says that one of the most important things is in our moral growth is that we have exemplary, virtuous people that we can look to who are our guides. So if you want to learn how to be patient, you can read a book. But way better is looking at the example of people in your life who are actually patient and following their example. If you want to learn how to grow in justice or in courage, you look at individual people who are exemplary in that regard. So, we learn by looking at the good examples. So, when we look at how Mary acts, what do we see her doing? Exactly what you just said. We see that Mary over and over and over again, she will appear to people as they are, right? She's doing that for a reason. Because she's the mother of Jesus and the church is the body of Christ, which means she's the mother of the church. The mother of us. Which means she's the mother of every single one of us. And so you shouldn't be surprised that Mary will appear to people as their mother. And not just in a kind of vague spiritual sense, but the actual visage that she'll take on is one that's going to be familiar, one that's not going to cause anxiety, that's not going to cause distress. She never appears to us as someone alien and other. She appears to us in the most intimate way possible. So we should not be shocked by the fact that she would rather appear to people in a way where they can immediately relate to her as their mother than appearing kind of as she historically would have looked Just
SPEAKER_00:for reference, though, I'd like to know what she
SPEAKER_02:looks
SPEAKER_00:like. Yeah, that's right. How she looked to Jesus.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Yeah, I mean, I would, too. But, you know,
SPEAKER_00:we don't have any... Even with the paintings, she looks different in almost every painting.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, and we don't have any images that are, you know, 100% photographs of Our Lady from back then, right? But I think... I do think also for us there's a spiritual point as well, which is that we should strive to be like Our Lady, which means when we encounter other people who need to meet the Lord, the way that St. Paul puts it is, be all things to all men. And so we should do everything we can to appear to people in ways that are familiar and familial So in just the same way that Mary appears to people in a familiar way that's not going to cause anxiety and in a familial way as their mother, you and I are called to encounter people in a familiar and familial way. You should present yourself as their sister and I should present myself as their brother. So as to never cause needless anxiety or stress or distress to them, right? We want to present the gospel and present Jesus in a way that will ultimately bring peace.
SPEAKER_00:I thought it was interesting in the Marian apparition at Medjugorje that I always, in my head, envisioned the apparition or when she came to speak to the visionaries as a hologram. Is that how you envisioned it? Envisioned it?
SPEAKER_02:You know, I have to be honest. I don't think I ever thought about visions and holograms before. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I'm a very visual person, so I'm like... So I asked the visionary... We stayed at one of the visionary's sister's homes. And I asked her if I could talk to her. And she said, yes. I said, do you mind if I ask you some questions? I am like now in like... the second half of my life, just a journalist, I guess. So did not expect this, but I said, can I talk to you about how the visions were? And she said, yes. Do you, did you see her as like a light, like a kind of like how you picture a ghost or like a hologram? She said, no, she looked like an actual person, like a real person. And then I said, like, what was she doing? She said she was holding a baby and the baby was covered in a blanket. She was so beautiful. And we thought she was from like a neighboring village and all the other kids got scared and were running away. She said, I came towards her. She kept going like this with the blanket to let me know that the that was baby Jesus. And so Maria was her sister, is one of the more famous pioneers who still has visions to this day at six o'clock in the evening. So, but she wasn't allowed to go back because she had to help on the farm. But I just thought that was interesting that she came as a real human.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Not as an actual vision like this.
SPEAKER_02:Right. It's not like a ghost that you're seeing through
SPEAKER_00:or something. Yeah. I thought you would kind of see her like kind of like a dream. But no, she came as a real person.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And I think, again, I think the There's a spiritual lesson to be learned from that, right? Because Mary, like Jesus, is alive. You know, right now. So Christ rose from the dead with a real body. And so, you know, right
SPEAKER_00:now. What happened to the body?
SPEAKER_02:He has it, right? He's up there. So Jesus Christ at this very moment has blood pumping in his veins, right? And he's got air, you know, coming in and out of his lungs, right? He is as... human, as bodily, as physical as you or I, right? The difference is just that his body is glorified where ours isn't, right? So, you know, he has real wound marks in his hands, you know, now and forever, right?
SPEAKER_00:Like Padre
SPEAKER_02:Pio. And yeah, I mean, you know, Padre Pio's real wounds, right, were an imitation of and participation in the real wounds of Jesus, right? And then the same thing is true of Our Lady. So part of what we believe as Catholics when we talk about the assumption of Our Lady into heaven, right, is that she was assumed body and soul into heaven.
SPEAKER_00:Body
SPEAKER_02:and soul. now is what we hope for after the second coming, right? Which is we too will rise again. We too will experience a bodily resurrection, right? And so, yeah, so it doesn't surprise me at all that when Mary appears to people in vision, she would appear not as a ghost, not as an angel, not as a kind of like a glowing ethereal, you know, who knows what, but she would appear as a a real physical bodily person because that's what she is. I
SPEAKER_00:told you about my Mary experience.
SPEAKER_02:You didn't, I don't think.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, this is a really good story. As I was kind of, I'm a bit of a revert. I'm born and raised Catholic, went to Catholic school my whole life. I think that kind of had a bit of a... kind of backfired on me because I felt like it was being shoved on my throat at all times. And of Armenian descent, really. When I was in Turkey, I used to share a room with my grandmother sometimes. And I used to have to hear all of the genocide stories. And I was like, OK. Even though I thought it was so sad and never really like, I never really rebelled against it. But I was just like, OK, I want a little bit of breathing room from this religious stuff. And after high school, you know, every day, even during high school every day, reflections about this and how, you know, Catholic holy moly stuff, right? And so I will go to college. I kind of like center of left, left of center, I mean, and kind of like left the faith a little bit, always believing but never really practicing. And even, I'm ashamed to admit, I didn't, I have baptized my children but never really practicing. did what my parents did you know and when I started this company Saint I started doing the research and really found my with the Saints and really found my faith back again and I developed a fear of flying I didn't get on an airplane for 10 years and um I decided this is ruining my life. I'm just going to get on this airplane. And I'm like kind of halfway back, but halfway out. And I just, the plane is turbulent now. And I took a Xanax because I wanted to sleep and it's my first flight in 10 years. And I'm saying the Hail Mary over and over again. And I said to myself, if you're real, please send me a sign. the plane landed i'm really excited to be in europe my friend peter helps me with my suitcases and it was right at the end of covid and um there was a something stuck to my suitcase about this big And it was full of like tissue. And Peter's like, don't touch it. It's gross. We're going to catch COVID. And I'm like, no, no, what is it? And I took it and I peeled it. And it was a giant plaque. And I'm talking to you. It looked like it was over 200 years old. Okay. The Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus.
SPEAKER_02:Really?
SPEAKER_00:I have a picture of it. I'll show it to you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, send it to me. I sent it to Sister Maria.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. And she said it was something that they... put on the bread. Something about like some...
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, like an imprint to make the image appear on the...
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and like from the Russians. I don't know. She had some name for it. Like a Mary of something.
SPEAKER_02:Cool.
SPEAKER_00:And I thought to myself, this is my sign. Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:there's your sign.
SPEAKER_00:That's her. I mean, what is the likelihood of a Mary medal this big at the airport from JFK to London? No way. I'm like, okay. i've got my marching orders i'm good now
SPEAKER_02:yeah praise god
SPEAKER_00:so a year almost to the date i'm going back to europe and i kept that thing with me everywhere i went i mean sometimes it was in my bra sometimes it was in my purse sometimes it was in my back pocket i never went anywhere without it and it was kind of like a security blanket and then i'm going through security a year later and i see this little boy he's in a wheelchair he's got like tubes all over him, ball, like some things go, cancer, I don't know what's going on. And then I thought to myself, I'm gonna give this to him. So I gave it to his mom, I said, here's, and then I'm like, why did I do that? I shouldn't have given, but I feel like maybe it would've helped him more. Anyway, so that was kind of my, Sorry, my little apparition of the Virgin.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's beautiful. I'd be so stoked. And I think you did the right thing giving it to that boy. You think so? That sounds like an inspiration from the Holy Spirit right
SPEAKER_00:there. I'm so mad. I miss it every single day. I'm like, what did I do? Anyway, so that's all I got.
SPEAKER_02:That's great.
SPEAKER_00:But yeah, so that's my Mary's miracle.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I hope she appears to me, though, one day. I'm so happy.
SPEAKER_02:I'm pretty low on the totem pole, I have a feeling. No, no, no. I mean, the advice that I'll give you is, so my patron saint, St. Philip Neary, was a man whose life was marked by lots of very extraordinary spiritual experiences. But he... always said that Christians should not seek out extraordinary visions. We shouldn't hope for them, long for them, kind of put our trust in them because ultimately they're not the most important thing, right? You know, the Lord can and often does appear in miraculous ways to people who are not in a state of grace, right? And, you know, to people who aren't, you know, saints, right? And so having visions is not a mark of holiness. And that's something that I think a lot of people get wrong. You know, we think, you know, oh, these are such extraordinary experiences, so they must correspond with like extraordinary holiness. They do not, right? And so, in fact, this is one of the reasons why the church is so careful whenever she investigates claims about visions, because, you know, the consistent teaching of the saints and the great theologians of the church is that, you know, to quote a Portuguese proverb God writes straight with crooked lines and so God can give visions to very sinful people and he can work good through through those people and through their visions through he can work miracles through sinful people right so a sinful man can be an instrument of God's you know act of of miraculously healing and so The miracles themselves aren't signs of holiness. Let me put it to you this way. If you ever had a miraculous vision where an angel appears to you, or one of the saints appears to you, or Our Lady herself appears to you, and they ask you this question, you have a choice. Either the rest of your life can be marked by extraordinary miracles, or the rest of your life can be marked by no miracles and just simple sanctifying grace. You always choose sanctifying grace. Because that is what gets you to heaven, not the miracles.
SPEAKER_00:I knew the answer to that. I'll tell you a little story. You already know this, but people probably don't. One of the visionaries, Vitska, She had a brain tumor. Okay. And the virgin told her, I can get rid of your brain tumor, give you basically, grant you a miracle, or... But if I grant you this miracle, I'm not going to appear to you again. She said, no, I'll keep my brain tumor. And guess what? The brain tumor went away and she kept seeing her. So she got both.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I mean, and, you know, look, like the Lord always, you know, he always wants to work miracles in our lives. But from his perspective, the miracle that's that's the the deepest the most profound and the most impressive right um is the miracle of a of a heart converted from from sinfulness to love of god right um i have a question about that change is way more profound than the the healing of a brain tumor or the you know the curing of an illness or you know uh something like that
SPEAKER_00:i have a question kind of related sort of related to that um if god is forgiving Why do we have hell?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so because God is also just. And so, you know, think of it this way is so, you know, close your eyes and imagine people who are suffering from, I mean, profound, deep oppression, right? When they call out for justice, right? Should their prayers be heard or not? And so God, I think we're all going to agree that the cries of the oppressed should be heard rather than dismissed, right? And their desire that their oppressors be punished, right? That justice be done, you know, that the scales be leveled is a good and holy desire. It's not misguided or something like that. And so God... always, like you said, is merciful, right? Which means he always gives the opportunity for conversion, right? And so anyone who turns away from their wicked deeds and says, Lord, I'm sorry, please forgive me, the Lord will give them forgiveness, will give them his mercy, will give them the gift of heaven, right? But if someone just stubbornly refuses to turn to the Lord, you know, and is oppressing others with their wickedness, with their evil, with their sinfulness, right? And, you know, in big ways or in small ways, right? And that person refuses to ask for forgiveness, right? Then what is the Lord going to do? He's going to be just. And so he's going to punish people who deserve punishment. He's going to balance the scales. He's going to hear the cries of the poor and the oppressed. And so at the end of the day, one of two things will be given to us by God, either mercy or justice.
SPEAKER_00:One thing that Father... Omulain told me that really kind of like I think about all the time. He said that when he goes to give the last rites to dying people that if they haven't like had Jesus in their life or like maybe dabbling in the occult, he said those are really sad because people are like kind of like getting tortured near the
SPEAKER_02:end.
SPEAKER_00:it's so scary i don't want to be that
SPEAKER_02:yeah no no you don't and uh to to bring it back to kind of where we started which is um you know the rosary in addition to being a a powerful prayer for peace um and a powerful prayer for protection is also one of one of the greatest prayers for um dying a holy death right um and so that's interesting you know the the the rosary is uh has been, I mean, consistently recommended as one of the greatest prayers, aside from the sacrament, right, of anointing of the sick and, you know, and the conferral of last rites, one of the most powerful prayers that we can pray by the bedside of a dying person is the Most Holy Rosary, right? Now and at the hour of our death, amen, right? And so, you know, Our Lady is is there when we're taking our final breath, right? And she's interceding for us. And, you know, no matter how bad a life you've lived, up until that point, salvation is there, present, ready at the 11th hour. And so if we turn to our Lord and to our Lady in the Rosary, in those final minutes, that can be a powerful path to salvation.
SPEAKER_00:Super cool. I have kind of a stupid question for you. Sure. I just recently did the Jubilee, but I guess it's cleansing of our soul, right? I did the four things and I was in line to do confession and there were all these people in line for the English American confession. And I was, people were like, oh, I'm just going to confess this one thing that has been on my... I said, no, you can't, or else it's invalid. You have to confess all your sins or your confession's invalid. And usually, and some people were... I became some sort of a confession guide now for all the Americans, which I thought was hilarious because I'm like... if only my mother could see me now, you know? But that aside, I go into confession and usually I just get like a one Hail Mary and three Our Fathers. And the priest was like, you have to see the joyful Mysteries Rosary. I was like, Is that a little worse, though?
SPEAKER_02:So, yeah, so two things.
SPEAKER_00:Did I do something really bad? No. That was a lot of prayers to say, which I'm totally fine with, but I'm like,
SPEAKER_02:am I being sketchy? No, the penance that you get is at the discretion of the priest who is serving as your confessor at the time. So, you know, some priests give more rosaries or more home more prayers, longer prayers, harder penances than others. That's just up to the priest. And so your task is to do whatever penance the priest has assigned to you. The one other thing to say just about something that you said earlier, which is that so any Catholic is obliged to mention penance all of the sins that they're aware of that are mortal sins that haven't been confessed before yes um so you know if someone is um uh is not in a state of mortal sin right um and they're aware of you know a bunch of venial sins and they mention some but not others it's not like that's an invalid confession Do you
SPEAKER_00:want to tell everyone what a venial sin and a mortal sin is?
SPEAKER_02:Sure. So the difference between a venial sin and a mortal sin, it just comes straight out of Scripture, right? So in Scripture, we hear that some sins are deadly. and some sins are not deadly.
SPEAKER_00:Examples?
SPEAKER_02:So, well, so what do we mean by deadly, right? So deadly sin doesn't mean a sin where, oh, if I commit that sin, then I'm immediately going to die, right? That's not, you know. So what it means is spiritually deadly, right? So what a mortal sin is, is a sin that kills the life of grace in the soul. Whereas a venial sin is a sin that doesn't kill the life of grace in the soul, but it does sort of turn us temporarily away from God. So you can think of it like this. Mortal sins are any actions or omissions of ours where we change fundamentally our spirit spiritual destination right so as long as I
SPEAKER_00:need a concrete example
SPEAKER_02:yeah so so think of it like this so it's it's not possible for me to say oh yeah my destination is heaven and the way that I'm going to get there is with this act of murder Yeah, that's a gimme. Right? So an act of murder is not a way to get to heaven, right? An act of, you know, of... Overeating? So some acts of gluttony are going to be mortal sins. Some acts of gluttony are going to be venial sins, right?
SPEAKER_00:Like overeating, venial?
SPEAKER_02:Well, so depends on the case. So for example... Suppose you've got a really extreme case of gluttony where someone is overeating to the point where they make themselves sick and they know full well this is going to make me sick, they know full well that I don't I don't need to be eating this way. It's not like we're celebrating someone's graduation or a birthday or something and it's socially appropriate for me to have a sliver of cake even though I'm full. But imagine someone who is a true glutton, a really extraordinary glutton where they genuinely do knowingly and willingly eat to the point of making themselves sick. right i see that that's not a way to get to heaven that's what makes it mortal right um so this you know
SPEAKER_00:um mildly over
SPEAKER_02:yeah so so look like if um you know if you're yeah you know so
SPEAKER_00:in italy especially yeah
SPEAKER_02:right um
SPEAKER_00:i always say i'm not going to get this again i'm just going to eat a little more
SPEAKER_02:right
SPEAKER_00:because i'm going back to the united states
SPEAKER_02:yeah so so if you if you know um that so a um i'm I'm full, and B, there's not like a really good other reason for me to eat this. Like, for example, it's somebody's birthday, this is their cake, and they want me to have a slice, right? And I still eat more, right? Then that's a sin of gluttony, right? But it's a venial sin of gluttony. V. Neilson.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, got it.
SPEAKER_02:So, you know, it's not fundamentally changing. You know, it's not incompatible with my getting to heaven, right? Got it. But it does actually make it harder. You can think of it like this. It's taking a kind of winding route.
SPEAKER_00:It's like a federal crime versus death. To
SPEAKER_02:get to heaven. Well, no, because both of those can put you in jail,
SPEAKER_00:right? So can both of you. Gluttony could do both, too.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, I guess so. Mortal and venial. Well, I was thinking hell is jail, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So venial sin doesn't send you to hell. But you have to confess it still. But yeah, because it's like, look, I knowingly and willingly took the long way to get to heaven.
SPEAKER_00:Then you're in purgatory longer? I
SPEAKER_02:mean, you will be.
SPEAKER_00:Is watching porn a mortal sin?
SPEAKER_02:It is, yeah. And so the litmus test, right, that you should always ask yourself, whether it's pornography or drunkenness or impatience or something like that, is just this. So think about the act that you're engaging in and ask yourself this question. is is this act um a way of getting to heaven
SPEAKER_00:that's for sure and and if the answer is no
SPEAKER_02:right um then then the act the act is incompatible with having heaven as your as your final destination or what saint thomas aquinas would call your final end um and so no action um that's that's incompatible with heaven as your final end, with love of God as your ultimate goal, is an action that we can knowingly and willingly engage in, right? So any act that can't be like a means or a way or a path to God as our final end and heaven as our final end, those acts are gonna be mortal sins. But acts that are are like orderable to, they're like ways, you know, it's not incompatible with like trying to get to heaven. This idea that I've been talking about, you know, with heaven as your final destination, Saint Thomas Aquinas just often talks about your final end, right? And so the idea is this, All of the actions that we engage in should be means or ways or paths that lead to God or heaven as our final end, our ultimate destination. And so if there's an action that just, it's not possible for that act to be a means that leads to God as the end or a way or a path that leads leads to heaven as our final destination, that action is a mortal sin. Venial sins are acts where we kind of willingly, knowingly take the long route, but they're still kind of ordered towards heaven as our final destination.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's me. The idea of desire, not acting on the impulse, but thinking it. I think it's not fair that that's a sin.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so maybe two thoughts on desire. First, the negative part about sin, and then maybe a more positive perspective
SPEAKER_00:on desire. Because you're practicing restraint.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so you can think that-
SPEAKER_00:Can't you be in your head a little bit?
SPEAKER_02:Well, so it depends on what you mean by that. Let me give you two examples. Okay. So one example is not just a lustful thought, but a sinful thought. So suppose you're someone who unfortunately lives and drives in LA. And so you have a regular, unavoidable temptation to rage, to the sin of wrath and anger when you're caught in traffic. you know, you have, there's that first moment where the sinful thought, the sinful impulse, the sinful desire, right, kind of arises in your heart. So whether it's, you know, seeing a beautiful person and, you know, the kind of lustful desire, you know, gets stirred up, or whether it's getting cut off on the highway and all of a sudden there's just this desire to pop your trunk, take out a driver and just smash somebody's window, right? There's that that initial moment of unruly desire. And that moment is not a sin. because it's not a voluntary action that we have. It's an emotion. It's a feeling we feel. But then it's the beginning of an action, but it's not yet a properly human act. This is something that I teach all of my students in ethics. I teach an ethics course at the Angelicum. And so we have a class day that's devoted to this. So there's the initial moment of feeling or emotion or desire that wells up within us. And then there's the moment where we engage our heart and our minds, you might think of it, or our reason and our will. And so there's the moment of what do I do with these feelings? And so here's one thing that can happen is just in the moment you can recognize, nope, to act on that, would not be right. You know, I shouldn't smash the window of that car in front of me. You know, I shouldn't commit adultery or fornication or something like that, right? And so your, you know, in your mind with your reason, you know what the right thing to do is, and then when you engage your will, you exercise what you were talking about earlier, which is self-control or self-restraint, right? And so if that's how the story goes, that the act that you engage in is just an act of the emotion or the feeling wells up, reason and will engage, and you control yourself, and then your outward action corresponds with that inward choice, then you have an act that is not just not a sin, but is a positively virtuous action because it builds virtue in the soul. Here's a different way the story could go, right? Is the emotion wells up, right? You feel the feeling. You experience the temptation. And then sort of when your mind and your heart, your reason and your will engage, you make this choice. Well, I'm just gonna kind of like indulge in the thought, right? So I just, I let myself imagine popping the trunk, pulling out the driver, smashing in the window, right? And I kind of like, I like, I stay there for a while. And I cut it off eventually. I don't outwardly perform the act. I stop myself before I actually open the door, pop the trunk, and smash the window. But I do kind of make the interior choice to indulge in the thought. what St. Thomas would call, it's an incomplete human action. So it's an action that stays interior and doesn't become exterior, but it is sinful. Venial or mortal? So depends on what's going on in there, right?
SPEAKER_00:I need clear lines.
SPEAKER_02:So basically it depends on what the... the exterior act that you're sort of allowing yourself to indulge in is. So if the exterior thing is a mortal sin and you give yourself free reign interiorly to indulge in it, then the interior act is a mortal sin. And, you know, Jesus tells us this in the Gospels, right? You know, so he talks about people who have already committed the sin of adultery in their hearts, right? You know, so, you know, even Even if you're not exteriorly engaging in an act of adultery, if you're knowingly and willingly giving yourself permission inside to indulge in that fantasy, you're committing adultery in your heart. You've engaged in what St. Thomas again would call an incomplete act of adultery. What kind of action is it? It's still a mortal sin. It's just an incomplete mortal sin. Got it. Yeah. So restraining, having the feeling well up and stopping it and exercising self-restraint is one thing. Having the feeling well up and then knowingly and willingly indulging in the thought is a very different thing. The one is not just not a sin, it's actually a virtuous action. The other is a sin and depending on what sort of fantasy you're indulging in, it might even be a mortal sin.
SPEAKER_00:one more question sure one of the biggest dms i get through instagram is i believe in god because i do a lot of interviews with exorcists i believe in god but not the devil and i i'm always like well if you believe in god you kind of have to believe the flip side of god too which is the devil how would you as a priest answer that
SPEAKER_02:um sure i mean so um I probably don't have anything especially insightful to say, but one thing that is often said because it's so true is just this, that the devil wants nothing more than people to not believe in him. Because if we don't believe in the devil, then we don't defend against the devil.
SPEAKER_00:Great answer. Great answer.
SPEAKER_02:Maybe just one other thought for... So that's the answer that applies to most people because most people are probably inclined to go to the extreme of not believing in him. For any kind of like Catholic listeners or viewers that you have who might be tempted to the other extreme, that's also worth saying, which is that we should not spend nearly as much time thinking– talking obsessing about the devil as we do thinking talking and obsessing about god
SPEAKER_00:i love that i love that because i know people because i do interview a lot of exorcists constantly looking for clues about the devil and demons i'm like look you're gonna find it you go looking for it's kind of like looking for illnesses in your body you could be on web md all day looking for a symptom of this and symptom of that that's right like
SPEAKER_02:Here's one way to think of it. So I think all of us have the experience of toxic people in our lives, right? And one of the things that I think all of us would agree on is that the more we let the toxic people in our lives sort of control our mental space, our mental energy, our spiritual time, right? the more their toxicity affects us, right? 110%. The devil is the most toxic person in the world, right? And so the more we let him influence our thoughts, our words, and our deeds, you know, the more sort of spiritual space we give to him, we shouldn't be surprised that that's going to have an effect on us. So the best thing we can do is believe that the devil is real, recognize that he is, you know, constantly knocking on our door, recognize that he's, you know, like other toxic people. He always wants our time and our attention. And then what we should do is just ignore Because God is much more powerful than the devil, right? And God is worth our time and our attention.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, we talked a lot about Mary, the rosary. Father, do you know the prayer? We live in Rome. Do you know the prayer for finding a parking space?
UNKNOWN:No.
SPEAKER_02:I don't. I don't have a car. I'm happy to teach it to you. Please. I would love to learn it.
SPEAKER_00:Hail Mary full of grace, help me find a parking space.
SPEAKER_02:Beautiful. Beautiful. Yes.
SPEAKER_00:That comes from Father Thomas Montanaro.
SPEAKER_02:And look, Our Lady is not above
SPEAKER_00:the little things. And I swear it worked. He was driving around like, okay, it worked twice now.
SPEAKER_02:I totally believe it. I did my PhD at the University of Notre Dame, which is often called Our Lady's University. And there's a wonderful story about a past head coach of the Notre Dame football team who he was in an interview and somebody, a kind of skeptical reporter and interviewer, said, I know that you have the team pray before every game and you pray after every game. I mean, do you really believe that God cares about who wins a football game? And without missing a beat, he said, no, of course God doesn't care about who wins a football game. but his mother does. I love it! Which is to say, look, you know, there are lots of things that are not ultimately spiritually significant, right? Like our salvation doesn't hang in the balance on whether a team wins a football game or whether we find a parking space. But that actually doesn't mean that God doesn't care about them, right? And so, you know, if helping us find a parking space is also going to protect us from getting frustrated and getting angry, then Our Lady cares.
SPEAKER_00:I
SPEAKER_02:love it.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Father. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02:This has been a pleasure.