← The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin, S.J.
Loading summary
Transcript124 lines
- [00:00]
A
At the recent Jubilee of Young People in Rome, Pope Leo called on participants to spread your enthusiasm and the witness of your faith. At Boston College Clowes School of Theology and Ministry. You are invited to answer that call through graduate theological studies. 100% of master's students receive scholarships. Learn more at bc.edu.cstm.
- [00:21]
B
I think I came here looking for God's love. And since then I've discovered I am in God's love. It's just a matter of me being attentive to it and open to it.
- [00:40]
C
Welcome to the Spiritual Life. I'm Fr. Jim Martin. On this podcast, we reflect on how people experience God in their prayer and in their daily lives. And I'm joined by my, I will say, beloved producer, Maggie Van Dorn. Maggie, good to be back with you.
- [00:55]
D
Good to be with you, Jim. And Happy New Year.
- [00:58]
C
Happy New Year to you, too. It's really exciting to start a second season.
- [01:02]
B
Yeah.
- [01:02]
D
We're back for our second season of the spiritual Life. And it should be noted that ordinarily we would release our episodes on Tuesdays, but we decided to take advantage of the brand new year for a brand new season and Release this on January 1st. So the next episode you can expect in your feed on January 13th on. On our regular Tuesday release day.
- [01:26]
C
Yeah. And it's a little New Year's present for everybody. And we're starting with a fun show, something we've been thinking about doing and talking about doing, which is a kind of question and answer session because we've received so many, as Maggie knows, we've received so many questions from our listeners and viewers. And we brought in a Trappist monk, Brother Paul Quinin, and he and I are gonna answer your questions today. So do you wanna tell us a little bit about Paul?
- [01:52]
D
Yeah. So Brother Paul Quinin entered the in 1958 at the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky, where the great spiritual writer Thomas Merton was his novice master. That's a pretty big deal. Brother Paul is a photographer and the author of several books of poetry, including Unquiet Vigil, named a best spiritual book of the year by Spirituality and Practice, and best poetry volume of the Year by Hearts and Minds Books. Brother Paul co authored Carved in Stone and also contributed spiritual reflections to other books.
- [02:26]
C
And.
- [02:27]
D
And his latest book is In Praise of the Useless, A Monk's Memoir.
- [02:33]
C
Yeah. And that last book is my favorite. It's just so wonderful. It's about the contemplative life. And he does, as a little teaser, he does talk a lot about in our Interview his experiences with Thomas Merton, which I was dying to ask him about. So we're really happy to have him onta sort of partner with me and answer your questions.
- [02:51]
D
Yeah. So, Jim, why did you want to bring on a Trappist monk to kick off the New Year and to answer our listeners questions.
- [03:00]
C
Yeah, great question. I am a big fan of the Trappists. Thomas Merton was responsible, I think, in addition to the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, the person most responsible for my entrance into the Jesuits. And, you know, we had Father Isaac Slater on in our first season, who was just great. I think their spirituality is just so beautiful, so simple, so deep. And they often, and you'll see this in our conversation, they approach spiritual questions in a different way. And it's kind of a spiritual reset. That's the first thing. New Year's is a great time to, you know, just kind of think about how to reset your spiritual life. We all do that. In addition to resolutions, we have kind of spiritual resolutions. At least I do. And so I thought. Or we thought, when thinking about audience questions which have built up over the past season.
- [03:47]
D
Oh, yeah, we have hundreds of them pouring in.
- [03:49]
C
Yeah. So it's hard to pick among them to get a Trappist and a Jesuit to answer the question. So I thought it was a nice combo.
- [03:56]
D
Yeah. I think it's great, too, to have a monk because they are trained in habits of prayer, and that is something that often we are looking to change in the new year, that we. To change our habits or our ways of doing things.
- [04:10]
C
Yeah, I agree. And I also think that their lives are so close to prayer. They're supposed to be praying all the time. Right. That when a question comes up, they're not thrown by it. You know, like, what about dryness? Or what happens when you're distracted? And, you know, it's like, well, that happens to me all the time because they're doing it all the time. So they are. They are real experts in the spiritual life.
- [04:31]
D
Well, speaking of dryness, this does come up in your conversation with Brother Paul. You asked him about spiritual dryness, and then you also asked about the dark night of the soul. And I'm wondering if you could distinguish between those two, because someone might be going through a rough time spiritually or in their prayer, and wondering to themselves, is this the dark night of the soul or is. Is this just an arid time?
- [04:58]
C
Right. You know, years ago, I wrote an article for America called the seven Ds of the spiritual Life. Darkness, despair, dryness, doubt, those kinds of Things, and I think it's important to distinguish among those. Dryness, I would say, is something that's temporary. Right. We all have dry spots in prayer. We sit down, we close our eyes, and it doesn't seem like a whole lot is happening. But I think something is always happening in a deep way. Right. That you might not be aware of, but it doesn't feel like there's a lot of fruit in prayer. And that can last for a couple days, a couple weeks. I would say the dark night is a real extended period of feeling God's absence. Right. And the great spiritual masters talk about this sometimes as a transition almost right. From one way of praying to another. But I think if someone just has a dry period in prayer one morning, it doesn't mean you're in the dark night of the soul. So it's important to just distinguish between those two, especially.
- [05:57]
D
Gotcha. Well, one final clarifying note. In your conversation, Brother Paul refers to his novice master, Thomas Merton, but he calls him Father Lewis, right?
- [06:07]
C
Yeah. It was kind of surprising for me because he refers to him as Father Lewis, and that's his name in religion. So what does that mean? That means at the time when Thomas Merton, that's his baptismal name, entered the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky, he was given or chosen, I think that you give to your novice director three possibilities, and the novice director picks a new name in religion. It's the idea of sort of putting on the. The new person. And he became Father Lewis or Father Louis. Now, I thought he pronounced it Louis because Thomas Merton spent a lot of time in France, as, you know, growing up.
- [06:45]
D
Yeah.
- [06:46]
C
But also because he used to refer to himself, to some of his friends from Columbia, as Chop Suey Louie. Yes. To kind of denigrate himself. So for a lot of the novices, and Brother Paul talks about this, I don't want to spoil anything. They didn't really know who Thomas Merton was because he wasn't going around saying, I'm Thomas Merton. It was just this guy, Father Louis or Father Lewis. So that's his name in religion. And when you go to Gethsemane, to the abbey, to the cemetery today, it says father M Lewis, Mary Lewis Merton, O, C, S, O. So you don't go and doesn't say Thomas Merton on the grave. It says Father M. They would take Mary out of devotion, Father M, Lewis Merton, which I think is just really beautiful. Yeah, I think it's kind of fun. It is fun, and it's great because in this conversation, which I was so excited about. In addition to answering questions, he does talk a lot about what Thomas Merton was like as a novice director.
- [07:44]
D
Yeah, that was really fun insight to get. Well, you also cover so many, I think, six questions from our audience, so this is a real treat. I know many of our listeners have been writing in and imploring us to answer these questions, and you guys tackle them in this episode. So if your question is not answered in this episode and you still want to ask it, you can do that by writing to us at the spiritual.
- [08:11]
C
Life@Americamedia.Org and now on to our conversation and Q and A with Brother Paul Quinnnon. Brother Paul Quinin, welcome to the spiritual life.
- [08:29]
B
Thank you.
- [08:30]
C
Although it sounds funny for me to welcome a Trappist monk to the spiritual life.
- [08:34]
B
Well, I'm not sure I know anything about the spiritual life.
- [08:38]
C
Well, we will see. This is our first episode of the new year, so we have a little bit of a mailbag coming up with questions from our audience, which are wonderful. Sort of a Trappist and a Jesuit give you advice, but I really want to start out by asking you about your own vocation. Can you talk to us about how you came to Gethsemane and maybe what keeps you there?
- [09:01]
B
I came right after high school, actually. I had a fling of about six weeks on my brother's construction business in New Mexico. Otherwise, I've been pretty much here the whole time. I think the two books which really gripped me was the Imitation of Christ, which is a classic now. And it's amazing how many people have read it, like Emily Dickinson, for instance. And then I thought, whoa, gee, monastic life. I mean, this is what I want. This is where love is to be found. So I thought I'd have to go to France. And then I read Seven Story Mountain. I said, well, there is one monastery in the United States, the Abbey of Gethsemane. So I applied here without knowing there were five or six others in the country. Just like Father James Martin. I was influenced by Thomas Merton in my vocation.
- [10:09]
C
Yes, although you followed him a little more closely than I did. What was it about? And I want to get to Thomas Merton, your novice master, a little later. What was it about monastic life and specific, specifically, Trappist life that attracted you? Because I can imagine someone reading the Imitation of Christ and thinking, well, I don't, you know, I can live this out in my own way. Or what was it about the monastery and the Trappist that attracted you?
- [10:32]
B
Well, it was focused on prayer, and it was in prayer that I was Finding love and then reinforced by other love. But it was something I wanted all the time. And you don't have to go searching here and there for love. It's always available. It's something imminent. So I took a shot and seemed to hit the target because I'm still here.
- [11:01]
C
How many years later?
- [11:02]
B
65 years later.
- [11:04]
C
Yeah. I was saying, you have been in religious life as long as I've been alive. So let me ask you, though, I would imagine some of our listeners thinking, well, what does it mean to experience love that way? Is it an experience you have in prayer? Is it in the community? What does it mean for you to.
- [11:21]
B
It was in prayer. And so that's what I wanted. Community. For me, community was a kind of a secondary thing for me. Dialogue is hardly a part of my prayer life anymore. I have plenty of that in choir because we have the psalms and then we have, you know, mass and so forth. But words only go so far. And I like just to be still, just to be present. And for me, that's what a simple form of prayer like that, except maybe, well, I'll use the Jesus Prayer, too. Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me. And that. That has become a habit for me. And I find that very helpful because I can do that when I'm at work. I cook. I've been cooking for about over 30 years now. And it seems to work best when it gets hardest and I'm tired, it's the end of the morning, I have to scrub the floor. Well, that Jesus prayer keeps me going. I mean, it seems to work better then than other times when I'm sort of. My mind is busy.
- [12:39]
C
Now, in those 65 years, what have you learned about God's love, Would you say?
- [12:42]
B
Oh, well, I think I came here looking for God's love. And since then I've discovered I am in God's love. It's just a matter of me being attentive to it and open to it. And I'm not always open to it, but it's there. And so I came seeking God, but I'm finding out God is. Is already within me.
- [13:15]
C
That's beautiful. Do you now, for a young religious like myself, I've only been a Jesuit for 40 years. What would you say the best advice you could give to someone about living in a religious community?
- [13:29]
B
You know, the first book that Father Lewis, that is Thomas Merton, gave me as a novice was a book. I can't even remember the title of the book. It's rather obscure. Benedictine author and I really haven't heard anything about him since then. But the first chapter was on docility, that a person entering the monastery or religious life should practice docility. You never hear that word anymore. It's not a popular word, but it's certainly appropriate to the attitude that somebody, a beginner should.
- [14:16]
C
Have you mentioned your novice master, which I'm really anxious to talk with you about, and I'm sure a lot of our listeners know him as Thomas Merton, but not his father, Louis, the Novice Master. Can you talk about meeting him for the first time and then what was he like to live with and what was he like as, as a novice Master?
- [14:36]
B
Well, when I first met him, he came over to the retreat house where I had a room and he seems a, you know, a very vivacious person. I hadn't made the connection that Father Lewis was Thomas Merton at that point. And so I was here for a whole month before I found out. And that was probably a good thing because then I was not relating to him as the famous author, but as my novice master. And then one day I was having spiritual direction with him and he has a book across the desks by Thomas Merton, is a new book. And I said, well, have you read it? He said, I wrote it.
- [15:32]
C
That's so funny. Now let me ask you something. I, I think I've heard that story from you before. Maybe I read it. Where were the other novices not aware of that as well? Like, wouldn't the other novices, maybe you're in silence, but would the other novices have said, oh, that's Thomas Merton?
- [15:49]
B
Oh, I. Well, we weren't speaking to one another.
- [15:51]
C
Right.
- [15:52]
B
You know, you had strict silence back in those days, so nobody said that. It was just another one of the priests.
- [16:01]
C
You described him as vivacious. Is that, was he like that most of the time, kind of lively and high spirited?
- [16:08]
B
He seemed to have a lot of energy. He was pretty quick on his feet. And he would come through the library and maybe say something to somebody and then go into his office and shut the door and you'd hear his typewriter clacking away. And he did it all with two fingers. He didn't know. He didn't know touch typing.
- [16:30]
C
What did he teach you about prayer?
- [16:32]
B
You know, the thing is, he never gave any courses on meditation. He didn't give advice on meditation. I think his assumption was that given the atmosphere, the context, the divine office, you're praying and so it pretty much takes care of itself. It's like a Montessori school. You give the Kids, the right materials. You don't teach them anything. They just start playing around the things, and in the play, they. They learn how to spell. So a monastery should be like that. You just be there, and then things, you begin to learn things, you pick up things, you get the feel of things.
- [17:27]
C
That's really interesting. Was he also your spiritual director at the time?
- [17:30]
B
Oh, yes.
- [17:31]
C
So you would have talked with him about your prayer?
- [17:33]
B
Yeah, every other week you'd see him. All the novices would go in and see him. And, yeah, he might ask about my prayer and how do you like choir and things like that.
- [17:47]
C
And what would you say he taught you about religious life or life in general? What do you take from his.
- [17:53]
B
Well, mostly, I think he taught by example. He was always doing courses. I mean, we had St. Bernard and we had the Desert Fathers and On the Rule of St. Benedict. In those courses, which were, to a great extent, monastic authors, you learn about the monastic life. You know, he's always instructing. And anytime, you know, he would come up with something he found in the tradition or even in other traditions, you know, and he would say, well, now, look, that's what we ought to be doing here, you know, and that's what we actually profess to be doing, but we're not doing it, you know. And so he could be very enthusiastic, and I think the enthusiasm was a great part of the communication.
- [18:48]
C
Thank you for sharing that. I'm always interested in Merton. He was instrumental in my vocation as a Jesuit. We're going to move now to questions from our audience that we've been gathering for the last couple of months, and I'll throw one out to you, and then I can weigh in as well. So here's the first one. As the new year begins, how can I do a reset of my spiritual life? And, you know, we imagine some people are dealing with complacency or dryness or even a dark night. How does one do in this new year, a reset of the spiritual life?
- [19:24]
B
Well, I've quit making New Year's resolutions because I end up not keeping them. And maybe my next resolution will be not to make any resolutions, and I might break that one, too.
- [19:43]
C
My answer would be, I find reading good books on spirituality helpful if you're really dry. So, for example, Paul Quinn's book In Praise of the Useless Life, which I love. I'd recommend something like Ronald Rolheiser's Sacred Fire. Kathleen Norris says Cloister Walk. I think there's something about reading a spiritual book. And I was talking to you earlier about reading your book on retreat. There's something about it that sort of invites us into a new way of looking at things because we're looking at things through the eyes of this author. Right. And it helps us to kind of shake things up a little bit. I also think if you're struggling with prayer, if you can move into something that's a little easier to. To do, basically I think it's easier to read than it is to pray. Sometimes that's helpful. I also suggest to people trying to pray in a new way. Right. If you're always doing lectio divina, maybe.
- [20:40]
B
Do centering prayer or even find a different location. And I always meditate outdoors. And over the years, I have shifted from one location to another. When I find a location, I'm pretty much there for a year or two, maybe more. But then a new place gets discovered. And I find that just that helps. Yeah.
- [21:17]
C
Speaking of which, do you find that you have dry periods in your spiritual life?
- [21:23]
B
Well, I think my whole spiritual life is pretty dry after 65 years. You know, you take that as par for the course. I think the problem is we expect too much. We complain that we're dry because, well, we have experienced high points and consoling periods of time. But I was well prepared for these rather dark nights, either of the soul or of the senses, whatever you want to call it, might be both at the same time. I was well guided to simply take that for granted that God loves you. You don't have to see it, you believe it. And if you keep going along with that assumption, which you might say is an assumption of faith, then it's just part of life, you know, that's the way life is.
- [22:34]
C
Yeah, I think you're right. I think we do expect too much. Thank you for saying that. That's a great insight. And I think, you know, the longer you pray and the longer you stick with it. Both of us have been in for some time, a couple decades. I think you just get used to it. I often say to people it's like getting a cold. Maybe the first time you get a cold, you think, oh my gosh, what's wrong with me? My nose is stuffed and I have a sore throat. And eventually say, oh, I have a cold, right. And it'll go away. I think dryness is like that. You know, interestingly, about your insight that, you know, you can't always be hearing from God. I had a friend, Sister Maddie Taberi, who was a spiritual director at Eastern Point in Gloucester, and she would say it's like a friend. Even if I don't hear from my friend for a while, I still trust and have faith that my friend loves me. Right. Your friend doesn't have to call you every single day or text you every single day. And I think that those absences and sometimes those dry periods are like that. And it's fine. I think it's. To be able to encourage people in that and say, you're fine. There's nothing wrong.
- [23:36]
B
Well, you know, I think ultimately we are called to love God the way God has loved us. And that is for no reason. God created the whole world for no reason. Just out of spontaneous goodness or just. I don't know. But why does God love me? God loves me not because I'm anything special or that I have good qualities. I have good qualities because God has loved me. To be able to love God with no reason, love God for God's own sake, as St. Bernard says, that's a godly love. And so I think we have to not expect to have reasons. You just. You love God because you love God. I mean, that's. That's because of God's sake.
- [24:38]
C
Yeah, it's very freeing. It's also very. It's moving away from the transactional nature that a lot of people have.
- [24:43]
B
Right.
- [24:44]
C
I love God in order that I can get God's love or. Well, let's. Let's move on to the second question, which is a big one, so.
- [24:52]
B
Oh, no, not a big one.
- [24:53]
C
Yeah, here it comes. How can I find God and make sense of tragedy? So the perennial question of why do we suffer? I'm sure people come to you both in the monastery and outside the monastery and ask you that question.
- [25:06]
B
Christ has identified with our human condition. Jesus is in the midst of all of that. This is happening to Jesus, and God has put himself in our midst. Christ bears all of it. Just as, you know, the suffering he had on the cross, he has made himself one with all of it. In a way we don't understand. He has taken upon himself the suffering of the whole world. And that's what I'm seeing is Christ's sufferings. Even the suffering that a sinful person has to go through simply in the delusions of their own sinfulness, that's Christ suffering, too.
- [25:55]
C
So when someone comes to you and let's say they're suffering from a terminal illness or their child is sick, or they've lost their job, or they're just worried about the state of the world, you would say that Christ is suffering that suffering Or Christ is going through that with them. Is that the idea?
- [26:13]
B
I don't know if I would say that to them. Sometimes you trivialize something by giving advice, and the best thing to do is just share it with them. Like Christ shares wordlessly with our suffering.
- [26:32]
C
Yeah. I remember in theology they would tell us in pastoral counseling that these easy answers can be very difficult for people. You say, oh, the person's in a better place if they've died, or God knows what you're going through. And even if these things are true, that, you know, a person who dies is in a better place, and God does know what you're going through, and you might learn something from it, that people have to come in their own way to their own meaning of suffering. I mean, I don't think there's any satisfactory answer for why there's suffering in the world. I was just reading a book by a scholar named Aaron Klein at Georgetown. It's called the Problem of God. It's very good. It hasn't come out yet. And she talks about, you know, the philosophical idea. If God is all powerful, he's either all powerful or all good. Because if he was all powerful, he would stop suffering. Right. So he can't be all powerful. Or maybe he's not all good. Because if he's all powerful and he's not stopping suffering, he's not good. So he's either one or the other. And I think this is this sort of philosophical conundrum. I think it's called the. The inconsistent proof or something like that.
- [27:37]
B
Yeah, but it's all in your head.
- [27:39]
C
It is.
- [27:40]
B
Yeah. And I think you have to remember what St. Thomas said, that everything we say about God is more untrue than true.
- [27:48]
C
Yes. So I find those philosophical things not helpful. And I really do, in my own life, believe that there's no satisfactory answer. But for me, the. The experiences that are helpful for me are, first, as you were saying, knowing that Jesus knows what we're going through because he suffered on earth, he's a human being. He understands what we're going through now.
- [28:11]
B
Right.
- [28:12]
C
He's, you know, with us in the spirit, and he understands this as a human being. And so when you pray to him, you're praying to someone who understands suffering. And then I also find it helpful to look for signs of God's presence in the midst of the suffering. Right. And really to say, how is God accompanying me?
- [28:31]
B
Right.
- [28:32]
C
Because I think sometimes people say, well, God's with you. But if you can pay attention to the ways that God is With you, I think it can console you.
- [28:42]
B
Yeah, a relationship, that's a key word there, relationship. I mean, that's what we have to keep coming back to. Circumstances are secondary. But if you got the relationship, you can see the circumstances are secondary.
- [28:58]
C
We're going to pause for a short break and we'll be back in a minute.
- [29:04]
A
At the recent jubilee of young people in Rome, Pope Leo called on participants to spread your enthusiasm and the witness of your faith. At Boston College Clow School of Theology and Ministry, you are invited to answer that call through graduate theological studies. 100% of master's students receive scholarships. Learn more at bc.educstm. the holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry. With LifeLock, save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply.
- [29:59]
C
So the third question is, these are all pretty tough. Does my lack of being in a state of grace make any prayer that I would offer less valuable or worse? Says this questioner. Does my hubris, does my pride anger God?
- [30:16]
B
Well, I think God sees something pathetic and your pride or your hubris, he said, oh, the poor guy, look where he's headed for. And I think it's a mistake to God to presume when God is more pleased and when God is less pleased, you know, God is more pleased with one kind of prayer than with another kind of prayer. Well, that's all sizing things up in our own terms. We really don't know. Maybe God is mostly pleased when. Well, I don't know how you can pray and not be in a state of grace. I mean, in some, there's such a thing as actual grace, and that is already it's a grace, you know, if you're praying while, you know, in a state of sin, at least you, you're making some kind of reorientation of yourself and you're trying to, as it were, get beyond whatever condition you think you're in.
- [31:28]
C
Yeah, and I think we're all, I mean, unless we've come right from confession. Right. We're all, I mean, imperfect. And I think most of us approach God imperfectly. And I think God's able to hear you not because you're more or less holy or the person's more or less Holy, but because God is holy. Right. I often use the parable of the prodigal Son, that the Father in that story, in Luke's Gospel forgives the Son even before the Son says anything. Right. I mean, we're even. The desire for forgiveness and the desire to be in a state of grace, I think is in a way enough. Yeah. And as for the hubris, I think that, yeah, we all come to God with a, some sort of pride, right. In different things, because we're all human. So for me it's about just being, being yourself before God. And I think that a parent, right, who, you know, has a child that is, you know, broken a rule or sinned in some way, they still love the child.
- [32:27]
B
Right, yeah.
- [32:29]
C
So that, that question has never proven a problem for me because I'm always aware of my sins, so.
- [32:34]
B
And I'm always praying, well, God forgets sin, so why shouldn't I?
- [32:39]
C
Yeah, no, right, that's a good point. I think we all tend to be overly scrupulous. Do you suffer from it yourself at all?
- [32:49]
B
Oh, yeah. I think what happens, I just got this insight last week. The devil is called the accuser. And so if you do something where you're accusing yourself, you are in the hands of the devil, I mean, you're letting yourself through your own self accusation, then you're as you're playing the devil against yourself, for that matter. And maybe that's where God, maybe that's where the devil wants you to be.
- [33:21]
C
Now that's a great insight. We have to think of God as greater in love and greater mercy than we are. And, you know, God's much more merciful than we are sometimes on ourselves. And for people who come to me, that struggle with scrupulosity, I say, look, God's, you know, God's all mer. I mean, there's Merton's line, mercy within mercy within mercy. Right. And even if you're condemnatory and judgmental of yourself, that's not the way God is. And it's, it's, it's sort of challenging people in their image of God too?
- [33:49]
B
Oh, yeah, that's important. The image of that you have of God. And that often needs to be worked on.
- [33:56]
C
Now there's a question. Has your image of God changed over the last 65 years?
- [34:00]
B
Yeah, yeah, I think it has. What's happened is I've learned to do less with images. I depend less on images. You know, I was this morning, I went out after mass like I often do. Well, usually do outside. And it was down, it was 31 degrees. I still had my cowl on and a wrapper around my shoulders. And there was fog. The sun was ready to get up and there was different densities of fog here and there. It was beautiful. And he. You couldn't see beyond the tree lines because of the fog. And it's like everything was kind of immersed in a sense of mystery. Well, for me that's an image of God. I don't have to create my own image. They're always coming to me. And I was thinking at the end, if I could sense that mystery in other people, I could sense the mystery in that particular atmosphere of nature. But I ought to be able to sense the mystery of another person. You don't really see beyond the surface with most people.
- [35:35]
C
That's a great insight because God is as present in the other person as in that scene that you're seeing.
- [35:40]
B
Oh, more so.
- [35:42]
C
Yeah, more so. Next question. Also tough. We reserved the hardest questions for this mailbag. How do I care for the poor as Jesus commands us, while reserving resources for myself and my family? And then the question continues. Should I sell all I have and give it to the poor?
- [36:02]
B
Well, I think only certain people are called to do that. And that's a great thing if you're called to do that. But even in the monastery, you know, I share a great wealth, you know, and you know, we got a nice place and it keeps the upkeep is good on it. And I only have to do a little bit of the work. And so in a way I shouldn't be answering that question because I'm not living in that kind of situation. What I live with is a collective responsibility for the poor. And so the monastery has a very fulsome kind of budget for the poor people. Our policy is that we live by the work of our own hands. And we do. The monastery makes a surplus and so the surplus goes to our charity budget. And the neighbors consider us to be very generous people. But I don't deal with those one on one, see, because that's just part of the enclosed life, is not everybody has contact with outsiders. And so I just leave it to the monastery to take care of that. But I pray for these people.
- [37:25]
C
Yeah, I agree. I don't think many people are called to give everything away. And even we both take vows of poverty. Even, you know, both of us, we have, you know, we're provided for in our religious communities and we all need some resources to support ourselves, especially if we have a family, if you're a parent or something. I also find great comfort in an idea from one of Gerhard Loefinck's books on Jesus. He talked about what he called resident disciples. In other words, not everybody's following Jesus along the road, right? Literally traveling with him and sleeping by the side of the road and depending on the generosity capacity of others that he had friends like Martha and Mary and Lazarus, who, you know, are living in their house in Bethany and they're providing for Jesus, but they're. They're not giving everything up. And so I think there's different ways of. I think we're all called to live simply, right? There's. But there's different ways of following Jesus in a simple lifestyle. I do think, however, you know, and I. As you're saying here, all of us have a responsibility to serve the poor as whether or not we're in a monastery or outside. So I think for me, the key is in whatever stage of life you're in or state of life you're in, to live simply, care for the poor. But I. I think few people are called to, you know, give everything up literally. And even in Jesus's time, you know, as Lofink was pointing out, not everybody did that, you know, who was a disciple.
- [38:51]
B
Well, there were these women following him around and providing not just for him, but, you know, that. That whole group of apostles, you know, no wonder Martha complained, because she didn't just have him defeat, she had the whole 12 of them.
- [39:10]
C
Yeah, right. Yeah, the women of means. Right?
- [39:14]
B
Who. Yeah, women of means who supported him.
- [39:20]
C
Another question. When I pray, I'm aware that I am the central focus. I consider how I feel, what I'm getting out of it, and how it's affecting me. What advice would you have for me to shift my perspective from a focus on me to God and God's desires?
- [39:39]
B
Yeah, well, that's one of the things that Father Lewis Merton had really underlined for me, and that is don't pay so much attention to yourself. Don't focus on yourself. He accused me of being narcissistic. And then later he said, well, all young people are narcissistic, but the point is you don't watch yourself in the prayer, and you don't pray just in order to be spiritually beautiful, and that's narcissism. Maybe it's good to have God as an object in some form or other, but I think for me, the important thing is just to get rid of these images and props and objects in order to simply embrace the mystery. You are living in the cloud of unknowing and the author says, you shoot these darts into the cloud of unknowing, but that doesn't make it any less unknown.
- [40:48]
C
That's really helpful. I. I've shifted a bit in my thinking about this. I think it happens mostly when we're going through difficult times and we have problems. And I was taught by people like Father Bill Barry and my early spiritual directors about the necessity of being honest with God, which is true. So in any relationship, if you're holding something back, if there's a problem and you're holding something back, and listeners will have heard me say this before, if you don't say it, your relationship can grow cold, Right? If you're not being honest with God and transparent with God about a problem, like in any relationship, your relationship can get cold, informal and distant. But a few years ago, I read in Ronald Rolheiser's book Sacred Fire, that one of the difficulties is that if you keep focusing on those problems, if you keep, you know, sort of bringing them up to God, it can be a bit like navel gazing. And it can actually make it worse, in a sense, because you're becoming almost obsessed with them. So if I'm struggling with, gosh, I lost my job, or I have a ruptured relationship or something, if I'm continually bringing that up to God, it can take on an obsessive quality. And His. His suggestion is really to shift the focus to God. And, you know, I often tell people now, you know, maybe look at a passage in the Gospels, right? Just imagine yourself in a gospel passage and focus on Jesus. So I think it's a kind of balance. I mean, we don't want to not share things with God that are bothering us because that's unhealthy and, in a sense, dishonest. But we don't want to focus on them so much that they become, you know, obsessions, right?
- [42:33]
B
The implication is that you don't trust God, right? Yeah. God knows it. You don't have to keep pestering God.
- [42:43]
C
I had a spiritual director a couple years ago, Father Damien o'. Connell. I was going through some tribulation. I don't remember what it was. And I was just complaining about it. Complaining about it, complaining about it. And he said to me, I found this so helpful. He said, well, are you being honest with God in prayer? And I said, well, of course I am. I said, I told you, I'm continually bringing this problem up. And Damien said, well, yeah, but you're not looking at the rest of your life, right? The Rest of your life is not a big problem. And you're not looking at the love that God has for you. And so in a sense, you're not being honest. You're not sharing your whole life with God.
- [43:17]
B
Well, you know, that's the nice thing about choir. You know, we go to choir seven times a day and then mass on top of that. And it's not your prayer. You know, what you're doing is you're reciting the psalms and those aren't my words. Now, I can identify with the words sometimes, but no matter what the words are, I should be focusing on that. And I can't say I always do. But nevertheless, it takes you out of yourself. I'm praying, but it's just not my. My own particular prayer.
- [43:54]
C
Yeah, I found that the times that I visited gethsemane and also St. Joseph Abbey up in Spencer, I found that very helpful because it does take you away from yourself. It's hard to be so self focused. So our final question. Brother Paul, also a rich question. What does it mean to have a personal relationship with God? And the second part is also very common. How do you recognize God's voice just from your own interior voice? So those two questions. What does it mean to have a personal relationship with God? And how can you recognize God's voice, assuming God's communicating with you from just your own voice?
- [44:34]
B
Well, personal relationship. You know, we just talked about choir and going to choir. And it's a personal thing that I go to choir in the first place and that I have accepted a way of life that, you know, obligates me to attend choir and to pay attention. I think solitude to desire solitary prayer is by its nature a very personal thing. And I think you can. You can cultivate that personal quality simply by solitary prayer. And what that means? Well, I think it means you're finding meaning in that. If you can find meaning in that, then that's enough. It is its own meaning. It has no meaning beyond itself. That is the meaning. That is the relationship. You love God just for the sake of loving God and for God's own sake.
- [45:50]
C
I think for me as a Jesuit, a personal relationship means that you speak to God, you're open with God, you spend time with God as you would in a friendship. This is one of the insights of Bill Barry's work, which I like very much, that you can fruitfully compare a relationship with God to a relationship with a friend and things that make up a good relationship with a friend. Honesty, listening, trust, spending time with that person, letting the relationship deepen or change are the things that make for a good relationship with God in prayer and in your daily life. I've always liked that. The other thing I like is St Ignatius Loyola's counsel in the Spiritual Exercises that you can speak to God, quote, as one friend speaks to another.
- [46:32]
B
Yeah.
- [46:33]
C
Which is really. It's very powerful. And we, obviously, we believe that, you know, God's the creator of the universe and obviously above us. But I think that that intimacy is so helpful.
- [46:43]
B
As Dom James used to say, well, Jesus is my pal. I said, oh, gosh. But, you know, the word intimacy was very important for Dom James, my first abbot. And Christ wants to be a friend of us. You can. You can believe yourself to be a friend of Christ if Christ. If you believe Christ is a friend of you. And that helps an awful lot.
- [47:12]
C
Yeah, no, I agree. And he says, you know, I call you friends. Second part of the question is pretty tough. I struggle with helping people with this. How do you recognize God's voice or distinguish God's voice from your own? So if you're praying and something comes into your head, how do you know that it's God speaking to you and not just your own sort of thoughts? What would you say to that?
- [47:35]
B
Well, I never really do, ultimately, but at Mass, I'll get an idea. And there seems to be something fruitful in the idea. I don't really take it as coming from God, you know, as if I'm getting a locution of some sort. But there's a sense there's something fruitful here. This seems to be like a good possibility. Why did I think of that? I've been trying to puzzle out something, and then without even being aware that I'm trying, something comes. And so I think those are. That's a good indication, you know, that. And then oftentimes when I carry through on the thing, it turns out to be a good thing. I was thinking this morning, what am I going to say on this interview? And then that idea that the mystery of nature around me is also to be found in person. I said, oh, no, that would be a good thing to talk about today. So there it was. I was just sort of dumped in my lap. And here we have carried through with.
- [48:55]
C
It now, Paul, I'm going to take that with me for a long time. I think the word fruitful is so helpful. You know, I wrote a book called Learning to Pray, and I answer this in one of the chapters. And I have some questions that people can ask themselves about something that pops into their head in prayer. And my way of looking at it is first you say, is the evil spirit involved? So my joke is if you're praying about someone you're angry with and you think about punching them in the face, just because it comes to you in prayer does not mean you should punch them in the face. So is the evil spirit involved? Second, does it make sense? And if I say, oh, you know, I think I'd like to, you know, try out for a professional football team, like that comes into my head, that doesn't make sense. Does it lead to an increase in love and charity? So that's always a good sign. Does it fit with what I know about God? So does it make sense that God would want me to be, say, more forgiving? Is it a distraction? Sometimes things that come into your head are just distractions. Is it wish fulfillment? That's a, that's a tough one. But is it just sort of, oh, I don't like my job and oh, I think God wants me to leave my job. Is that just wish fulfillment? Fulfillment? And is it important for my, my sense is that when God really speaks to us, it's, it's important and it will stick with you. Right? But I love this idea of fruitful and we, because we always have to test things out. I think that's hard for people when they're beginning their spiritual lives and beginning the life of prayer and they're praying with regularity. They have, they have to discern, right, what, what really is coming from God and what's, what's sort of my own creation. But I really love that idea of what's fruitful. So, Brother Paul, I want to thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us and a little bit of your wonderful and beautiful and fascinating vocation. And I would just like to say please keep me in your prayers and please keep all of our listeners in your prayers down there in Gethsemane.
- [50:46]
B
Well, it's been my pleasure.
- [50:48]
C
God bless you.
- [50:49]
B
God bless you.
- [50:57]
C
Well, thanks for listening everybody. If you want a little more information and some more spiritual insights on this conversation, go to my article@americamagazine.org Also, I'd like to let you know that I have a new book out, a memoir called Work in Progress. It's the story of finding work through a variety of crazy summer jobs like busboy, dishwasher, caddy, factory worker, and many more, eventually finding God. Basically, it's a light hearted spiritual memoir about growing up in the 60s, 70s and 80s and is available in print, ebook and audio anywhere. Books are sold. I really hope you enjoy work in progress. The Spiritual Life with Father James Martin is produced by Maggie Van Dorn, Sebastian Gomes and myself. Kevin Christopher Robles and Adam Buckmuller and Will Gualtieri engineer the show. The theme score is courtesy of Teddy Abrams and Nate Farrington. You can follow me across social media at jamesmartinsj. Thanks very much and God bless.