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The Death of a Pope at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1006121/Death-Pope/

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Transcript of Interview with Piers Paul Read about The Death of a Pope. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

The Death of a Pope at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1006121/Death-Pope/

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Items Discussed in this podcast:

The Death of a Pope

You are also welcome to call in questions and comments to our voice-mail at 206-426-1207. Be sure to join our Catholic Spotlight Facebook Group where we send out announcements about upcoming interviews. You will be able to call in your questions for our future guests. You might just be on our next show.

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Adoption- Choosing It, Living It, Loving It at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1004817/Adoption-Choosing-It-Living-It-Loving-It/

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Chris Cash: Welcome to Catholic Spotlight. This is the Catholic Spotlight, the show where we talk about what’s new, cool and exciting in the Catholic marketplace. I’m your host Chris Cash director of E-Commerce for catholiccompany.com, your source for all your Catholic needs.

And today in this Spotlight, we have Dr. Ray Guarendi. We’re going to talking a little about Adoption: Choosing it, Living and Loving it. Welcome, Dr. Ray.

Dr. Ray Guarendi: Thanks Chris, thank you for having me on.

Chris Cash: Now, this is kind of a – it got to be a fun situation for you, you probably are – used to be on the other side of this microphone.

Dr. Ray Guarendi: It as easy, I get to talk about myself.

Chris Cash: Oh, well and there you go, there you go. ‘Cause usually you are talking about everyone else’s problem. Because adoption not being a problem, but so, tell us a little bit about what got you started in the adoption process for – now you have 10 children who you’ve adopted, what got you – of course your wife says 11, right?

Dr. Ray Guarendi: Yes. And her 11th is her most difficult.

Chris Cash: Absolutely. But what got the two of you started in the wonderful field of adoption?

Dr. Ray Guarendi: Like most folks Chris, we couldn’t biologically conceive. We both wanted a family. My wife wanted a large family, I didn’t know. At that point, I was kind of out the church, so the whole idea of accepting children as gifts from god never really entered my radar. My attitude was well maybe we can adopt one, possibly two if we’re lucky. My wife said, “Let’s try.” Fortunately, we attempted the adoption arena. At that time it was 22 years ago and I would say it was quite a bit of little easier to adopt then locally. There were still birth mothers as a group giving up children for adoptions. The numbers are less now, as more birth moms are probably choosing to keep their babies.

We adopted my son through a great sense of God’s good fortune, and we figured that’s it. Okay, we got a kid, ah, now in the adoption world you don’t get more than that too often, I got one I’m grateful for that. We said, we ever get a chance for two, we can try. We got on the adoption list and it just so happened that the birth mom said, “I sure would like my baby to have a big brother. I always wanted a big brother growing up. We were the only people on the list with an older boy; he was one and a half at the time. And so, we were placed one girl, so we had a boy and girl, we figured oh, well that’s it done. Okay, not a problem we got one boy one girl jeez. We couldn’t be more fortunate. Just as an impulse we told the local adoption agency, if you have a child that’s difficult to place call us, we’re open. My third child Sera was born by racial. She was supposed to have been born white, but she was born by racial, which at that time made her much, much harder to place. They called us that we had a child for you. At that point, we had three. We figure we had hit the adoption lotto, plenty of kids.

Well, Chris, it’s like eating potato chips. You always think you can eat one more, we just kept eating, we kept eating open. The secret to adoption that many children, if you cannot care about the color, you can’t necessarily care about the age and you can’t care about things like drug exposure, more prenatal care, maybe some mild learning difficulties, those kinds of things. So, worked all the way up to 10 by the grace of God, we stopped only because I think we got too old. I like it, I do.

Chris Cash: That’s right. And well, she’s got more kids than you.

Dr. Ray Guarendi: Yes, yes, she’s more tired.

Chris Cash: Well, so, now, what’s the age range you’re children currently?

Dr. Ray Guarendi: At one point, we had 10 children under the age of 12, so right now my old is 22, my youngest is 9. Five boys, five estrogen-American.

Chris Cash: Well, I am only half the family that you are so…

Dr. Ray Guarendi: Yes, but hey, one thing you have…

Chris Cash: But I am about to *** [05:24] up.

Dr. Ray Guarendi: See there you go. Once you get past 5 or 6 kids, you can use the same parole officers for the younger kids. It makes it a lot easier.

Chris Cash: All right, well, so now, a lot of people who are looking at adopting they have a lot of misconceptions about     it. Can you talk to us about what are some of the major misconceptions about getting into adoption?

Dr. Ray Guarendi: Chris, there are a lot of people who would be willing to adopt, who would actually want to do it, but they don’t get over what I call the adoption inertia. In other words, they have a lot of anxieties, fears and worries about what’s going to happen. Let me give you some of the common ones. For example, what if birth mom changes her mind, what if a year and a half later she comes back through the courts and she says, I want my child back, even though the media has a few high profile cases that have worked out like that in fact that is very rare, the courts are scrupulous about making sure that birth moms rights are terminated properly, legally and this almost never happens. It’s not a worry; it’s almost like getting struck by the lighting, not a worry. Many parents will say what about drug exposure, what about those kids whose birth moms used crack cocaine or smoke marijuana. Wouldn’t that mess the kid up? Not necessarily, most of the research says that God designed the womb to be a pretty protected place and by and large, the cocaine scare, the crack kid scare was just that. It was a scare.

Many of my children have been drug exposed. For the most parts, they do quite well, academically and in other ways. I have my older son is in bio-medical engineering, my oldest daughter graduated college at age 20. My third daughter went to college at age 15. So, for whatever drug exposure they had, they certainly seemed none the worse severe. Another common misconception and this is voiced to the *wrong* [07:51] people by the shrinks, all adopted kids have this aching need to find their birth parents. Escaping home in their psyches, it has to be filled by seeking out birth parents, by calling and finding birth moms, and they are going to hold on to this until they are 16, 18, 22 and then they’re going to do it. In fact, Chris, do you know the percentage of adopted children who seek out birth parents?

Chris Cash: I know, I know.

Dr. Ray Guarendi: It’s under 10 percent. The vast majority of adopted kids view mom and dad as their adopted mom and dad in the words of my son he said, I can’t imagine being in any other family. This is my family. These are my parents. I tell adoptive parents all the time. You are mom and dad, biologically you didn’t give birth to that child, but at the same time biologically you are not related to your spouse either. And for most of you, your spouse is the person you love more than anybody in the whole world. I use that reason with my son, aged 14. He came to me and said, “Dad, would you love me more if well, dad you know.” And I said, “If you mean you were born to us.” He said, “Yes, that’s it.’” I said, “Andrew, who do I love more than anybody in the whole world?” He said, “Your ex-girlfriend Tiffany.” I said, “No, no, not anymore.” He goes oh. And I said that mom and he said, “You’re not related to mom?” I said, “No, I’m not.” And that satisfied him. He was totally at ease with that.

There’s another common misconception and another one would be that personalities established by the age of five or six, so that if you adopt a little five or six year old kid, you’re kind of stuck. But that kid is who is and there is nothing you can do about it. Well, that’s crazy, because first of all, that’s a whole psychological theory and second of all that’s by telling a Holy Spirit, well you know I’d like you to work some grace in me and transform who I am, but it didn’t really get to me before I was eight or nine. So, we can’t do much Holy Spirit. Now, that’s as best as eight and nine *** [10:22] grace. Those are some of the more common misconceptions.

Chris Cash: Yes, and honestly I can speak to misconception on the birth parents. I have a cousin who was adopted out and he came back seeking grandma, but really had no desire at all to be in contact with mom or dad because he had heard in some round about ways the issues that existed with mom and dad and didn’t want to be part of that, so…

Dr. Ray Guarendi: Yes. And that’s not an uncommon scenario. A lot of times kids are taken from birth parents and go in – they go into a – not a facility but an agency, the agency has custody, so its no longer a matter of birth parent having custody and relinquishing it. The child is now placed with the agency, and the agency makes the placement. And sometimes the birth parents rather tragically have a very difficult history, very difficult life situation that the child does not wish to immerse himself back in that.

Chris Cash: Yes. But you know at least in our family luckily the rest of the family has now at least got to know our cousin, and he has turned out quite well.

Dr. Ray Guarendi: So, they adopted at the infancy?

Chris Cash: I believe so, I believe so. He was adopted before I was born, so. I don’t know a whole lot about the situation, but I do know him now.

Dr. Ray Guarendi: Yes.

Chris Cash: Anyway, back to we were talking about the fears and misconceptions people have, so I think you’ve pretty much covered that. You know it’s probably a good time for us to take a short break to hear from our sponsor. So, we’re going to do that and when we come back, we will be speaking more with Dr. Ray Guarendi about Adoption: Choosing, Living it and Loving it. This is the Catholic Spotlight.

[Break]

Chris Cash: And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight with Dr. Ray Guarendi talking about adoption: Choosing, Loving it and Living it. Now, although I’ve butchered the title now, not quite but out of order a little bit. Its Choosing, Living it and Loving it. So, Dr. Ray, what was it that made you decide to write this book?

Dr. Ray Guarendi: Chris, I get so many questions from people who want to adopt, but who have worries on adoption. A friend of mine called it the fear factor. She says, “These are people who would adopt. These are good Christian folks who want to take care of the widows and the orphans, like St. James says, but are reluctant for any number of reasons.” They are afraid their kids won’t accept the child, they are afraid their parents won’t accept the child; they are afraid of adopting a bi-racial or black kid because of racial issues. They are just stocked and I thought I’ve got to lay the risk some of these concerns, some of these worries and fears, so that the people who have a heart to adopt will adopt. Beyond that, after people adopt there are certain struggles that they could have. For example, its not unusual for parents to adopt an older child one who has had a rough history, one who is four, five, six years old and already has some patterns in place. For that parent to have to work harder at this one or harder at supervision or harder at socializing and moralizing the child. And the parent wonders you know am I failing, what’s going on here, why is there such a struggle? I attempt to give them good answers regarding that, how they could stand stronger, how they could first appear, how they could be a better parent with this kid who maybe difficult? I talk about what do you do when the child has questions about his adoption? How do you do the quote unquote, adoption talk so to speak? I try to tackle those things Chris, both before and after adoption that people have honest, heartfelt struggles with. And I want to answer them in a no nonsense, non-psychobabble way. I want to get his past some of the junk that’s out there, psychologically speaking, and all parents to see the kind of adoptive parents that they can be.

Chris Cash: Now, I am guessing that your family is probably is very, very colorful ethnically. How has that had an effect on your family?

Dr. Ray Guarendi: Yes. We got three white, two Hispanic, two bi-racial and three black. Chris, I can emphasize, we have seen very, very little, virtually non-existent in the way of prejudice, in the way of this treatment. We believe and it’s been my experience that our society is far, far more color bind than people would believe. My son Peter is black, he’s 12 years old. We adopted him at first; he was born two months premature. The lawyer told us that if we did not adopt him, she only had one other option that was a family in Washington State. This was a lawyer who specializes in adoption, so he had a lot of family. My son Peter couldn’t be more my son than he is, the only difference between Peter and I is that the pigment in his skin is slightly darker than the pigment in my skin. I am Italian, so I am a little on the dark side. So, that’s it. And to look at my son Peter and somehow can talk this racial issue, this racial divide, racial identity on the basis of something so stupid, as skin color is inane in the deeper sense of the word. So, we’ve found almost no complications, at least within our family or from others in our social circle regarding skin color.

Now, that maybe some matter of issues when the kids are older and they have a date and pursue a broader social circle. But for right now, I will tell you my children’s identity is shared with me.

Chris Cash: So, what kind of advice would you give somebody who was actively considering adoption?

Dr. Ray Guarendi: I would tell them you got to do several things, you got to decide whether you want to go foreign or local. Foreign adoptions have their pluses and minuses, local has pluses and minuses, you got to decide which direction you want to go. You got to realize that you will love his child pretty much as you would love a biological child. No question about that. This is your kid, if you have a worry and some people do have this worry. They – I’m not sure I would love ‘em like I should, you will. You may struggle with some of the behavior if you adopt an older kid, that’s for sure. But in terms of adopting a child, especially an infant, you will bond very quickly.

I would say, don’t let money stop you; the government will give a $10000 tax credit for adoption, which can help to pay a lot of the costs, especially locally. If you go overseas, you can get up more to 30, 40, 50 grand’s, but locally, especially…

Chris Cash: It depends on if you have to pay the mob bribes.

Dr. Ray Guarendi: Well, yes, that’s it. If especially…

Chris Cash: My – I have cousins or my wife has cousins who adopted from the Ukraine and a big part of the fee was the mob bribes that you had to pay to get the child.

Dr. Ray Guarendi: Yes, there is definitely that whole underground over there. But locally, for example Chris, if you would adopt through an agency, especially a public agency, there is no charge at all. You won’t pay anything. All right, if you go to children services or state adoption agency and you attempt to adopt a five year old – a two year old let say, you won’t pay anything. So, don’t let money stop you. I would also say that you may find you like doing it and like we did, we felt we’re going to adopt a couple and we ended up adopting ten, because we just enjoyed the family life and we just enjoyed the kids so much. I use this *** [21:05]. If you talk to someone who does not have any children and they say, well, I talked it over with my spouse and really I just think that we’re more content without children. Ah, children don’t appeal to me, I look at other people’s children and they don’t move me. I’m not really interested in kids. You know too often when that happens, you say yes, but you don’t understand when you have that child, that will be a completely different thing. You will underestimate how this child just calls underneath your heart and emotionally connect with you. It’s the same with adoption.

Many parents wonder, can I adopt? What happens if I adopt and then emotionally I don’t connect? I tell them well, have you talked to friends who have said that about biologically conceiving? Yes. What do you tell them? Well, I tell them it really doesn’t, it really doesn’t effects you emotionally until you have the child, then you realize what it’s emotionally all about. I said exactly. And there’s parallel to that to adoption.

Chris Cash: And you know one other kind of misconception I think that just came to my head that we might want to talk briefly about is the misconception that, all adoptive children are from a troubled background of some sort. You know especially when you are looking at say somewhat older children, sometimes it’s been just a real family tragedy that’s put them into the adoptive arena?

Dr. Ray Guarendi: That’s exactly right Chris. It varies. You can have children for example who are older who are in a wonderful foster home, they are well disciplined, they are well socialized, pleasant kids. And even if you adopt them at seven, eight, nine, they are not coming from a troubled background. Like everything else, there is a wide variety of histories, of personalities, of temperaments, of connection if you will across kids. And we adopted four of our children older, two, three, four and four were their ages. And the four olds in fact did not have the best adopted background, but they were also in a decent foster care setting. So, now, they are both 19 and one son talks about wanting to go to the missions and my other daughter works as a preschool teacher. So, you’re absolutely correct, not every adopted kid comes from a troubled background, and even if some of them do, a good solid, stable home can go a long way in smoothing out a lot of history.

Chris Cash: Well, and I am thinking in particular. I went to high school with somebody who within the period of a year, both their mother and their father died and left him orphaned and a younger sister.

Dr. Ray Guarendi: Oh, my.

Chris Cash: And you know it is not uncommon for something like that to happen in a situation where our family member is not available to step in and take up the *** [24:35]. Now, this particular time, an uncle was able to step in and take on responsibility for them, but especially in families with more than two kids it can be quite difficult to find somebody within the family who is willing to step up and take on three or four or five kids. You know myself, if my wife and I died, we’ll be in a heap of trouble or kids would trying to keep them together.

Dr. Ray Guarendi: Yes, you are absolutely correct, because the higher the number you get of children, the less the number of potential adoptive parents are out there. And it’s absolutely true. And family is usually the first line, but if there is no one in the family the agency will step in and attempt to find placement. I – I am familiar with the superintendent friend of mine who several years ago, he and his wife were in a tragic accident. He was killed and she was placed in a nursing home, they had eight children. And the kids fortunately were adopted by the uncle as you say. But you are absolutely right; it would’ve been very difficult to find a placement maybe for eight kids outside his family. But it can be done and looked like those kids were good kids.

Chris Cash: Well, it’s about time for us to wrap this up. Were there any other things you wanted to share with our listeners before we hit on out?

Dr. Ray Guarendi: If they are interested in the book Chris, they can go to my Website which is drray.com, the book is there. And I tell them, don’t get that book if you’re thinking of adopting which you haven’t yet, because I think it will convince you to do it. And if you have adopted, well, get it, because I think it’ll smooth out some of those many questions people have regarding the adoption and adoption family.

Chris Cash: Well, thank you very much, Dr. Ray for coming on over and sharing with us. For those of you who are our regular listeners, this is show number 101 Wo Hoo. We’re still going strong and please hit on over podcast Alley, leave us a nice vote there to help us get the podcast in front of some other people. Also, leave us some positive reviews over iTunes, it helps us get in front of more people and share the gospel in many, many ways. Everybody, God bless, you have a wonderful day.

Dr. Ray Guarendi: Chris, thank you so much for having me.

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Transcript of Interview with Dr. Ray Guarendi about adoption. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Adoption- Choosing It, Living It, Loving It at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1004817/Adoption-Choosing-It-Living-It-Loving-It/

View the Transcript

Vote for us at Podcast Alley - Please vote for us every month to help us get our show in front of more people

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Items Discussed in this podcast:

Adoption- Choosing It, Living It, Loving It

You are also welcome to call in questions and comments to our voice-mail at 206-426-1207. Be sure to join our Catholic Spotlight Facebook Group where we send out announcements about upcoming interviews. You will be able to call in your questions for our future guests. You might just be on our next show.

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A VERY special thanks to Dave Miller for providing the awesome music in this podcast.

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7 Secrets of the Eucharist at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1001090/7-Secrets-Eucharist/

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Chris Cash: Welcome to Catholic Spotlight. This is the Catholic Spotlight, the show where we talk about what’s new, cool and exciting in the Catholic marketplace. I’m your host Chris Cash, director of E-Commerce from catholiccompany.com, your source for all your Catholic needs.

And today, we are having show 100, Ya Hoo, we have made it. We are reaching a very significant milestone today, and our special guest today is Fred Berretta who is a survivor from flight 1549. And he has a real incredible faith story to share with us. So, Fred, welcome to the show.

Fred Berretta: Thank you very much. Good to be here.

Chris Cash: Well, we are just thrilled to have you on. Well, Fred and I had been playing phone tag back and forth for probably the last month and a half now. I’m trying to get this set up. So, I’m just real thrilled that we were finally able to get you on, and as well get you on for show 100, ‘cause you know this is a real special show. And your experience is just – its half way unbelievable you know. There are many of you listeners out there may have seen the e-mail that Fred sent to Vinny Flynn, and just that e-mail has floated around the net for well over a month now, telling this incredible story. And I just really wanted to get Fred on to talk and tell us his personal rendition of the events of that day. What was going through your mind? What happened before hand? And then, how we could see God’s mercy and his merciful hand in all of this? So, Fred, I guess, share with us what happened?

Fred Berretta: Sure. Well, there is a lot to share, and I’ll try to - in a bit of a picture for you Chris. The few weeks I suppose or even months leading up to flight 1549 were very interesting to me on a personal level, like many folks in the U.S. and around the world that it’s been a difficult – it continues to be a very difficult times for all of us financially and due to the economic crises. And I work in the financial services industry and it had been impacted in terms of my retirement, savings and hard earned 401(k) et cetera. Pretty significantly, and it was really reflecting on that and just reflecting on my priorities. And I had committed myself to wanting to have a much more I’d say deep spiritual commitment in 2009. And I suppose my New Year’s resolution was primarily focused on that and I recommitted myself to looking at devotional prayers, including the rosary. And thought that it was a good time to really focus on that and began kind of press the reset button on my relationship to God, and try to do much better in that regard.

So, I had been doing reading and thinking and pondering about different devotions, and it started from a rosary daily. I’ve been inspired for a story of a woman who – her and she and her husband had survived for 14 hours in a hotel room in India, those terrorist’s attacks back in late last year, and I recalled those. And I read a story about this, she prayed the rosary for 12 hours straight as the terrorist walk up and down the hotel floors, knocking through doors and literally killing anyone if they found. And they miraculously survived that as her husband was able to connect back home with his laptop computer under the bed, it was an amazing story. And that really made me think about the rosary and the power of it. I remember the 15 promises that were supposedly attached to devoting the rosary.

So, I started that devotion that led to other things, and by the time January 15th came around, I had gotten into a daily routine of meditation and prayer. And the trip up to New York was a last minute decision, the day before on 14th and it’s gone up there, literally made the decision that day. There was a meeting that I felt were important for me for attend in person. And the meetings went well and everything was normal. And then, I came back the next day and the rest is, is history. But I will also say prior to boarding the flight, due to the last minute nature of my decision to fly up there, I had, had to cancel many meetings in rearrangement schedule. So, that *afforded* [05:37] me an unusual amount of I suppose discretionary time on January 15th. And after I finished my meetings downtown, I made my way to *** [05:46] I was in the proximity of St. Patriarch Cathedral and it was about right 12 ‘o clock. And I always like visiting St. Patriarch’s when I would travel to New York, but typically I wouldn’t be able to make it over there. And I time that day, I had a conference call at 1 ‘o clock, if I will I can stop by and go to St. Patriarch’s and I made it to the 12 ‘o clock mass. I thought I’d finish up and get in the cab and get on the conference call, make it to the airport and be on my way to Charlotte. So, I was able to attend mass that day. And I was coming out of the cathedral, I saw a gift shop across the street and at a few minutes, and went in the gift shop and I purchased Vinny’s book, which is what led to my sending him that e-mail, Seven of the Eucharist. And that I thought it was a very insightful book, read a bit of that.

And just as we were waiting forward and as we began to off and just as I started to relax, think about the work day and think about different things, think about what I had read in Vinny’s book. I had literally just sort of closed my eyes and was just thinking, and that’s when the bird struck the plane. And that sort began the sequence of 6 minutes of my life that seemed to last in eternity and I had described it to *** [07:16] on with my CNN interview following a crash. And it was 6 minutes of a lot sleeping and a lot happening, I can tell you that.

Chris Cash: So, now there were some connections in this to divine mercy as far as the time the plane went down. And did you want to bring out some of that?

Fred Berretta: Yes, there were. One of the things that I had been able to do by sheer happened in the end, the day before is I had mentioned when I flew up to New York and arrive there in the afternoon. I had about 30 minutes of free time which doesn’t sound like a lot, but certainly during the work day that’s a lot. And I really had returned e-mails and phone calls, and I was sitting there in my hotel room and I thought okay I’d get 30 minutes here what should I do? That was a good time to maybe clean up my briefcase, something I don’t tend to do quite a bit. And I found in a pocket, an inside pocket there was an enclosed was *** [08:17] with a zip right down, there is a booklet of divine mercy that I carried around quite a long. And I literally forgot that it’s been in there. In keeping with my New Year’s resolution, I felt well, its - I’ve got time to pray in this chapel and I have devotion. I had learned about 15 years ago as I reentered the Catholic faith; I’ve been away from the church much my youth and adult life and reentered in. And as I did that I learned about the devotions including the divine mercy.

And it happened to me during the 3 ‘o clock hour, it was perhaps around 3:30 or so and I prayed the chapel and I just sort of glanced through the little booklet and reflected on some of the quotations from Saint Faustina’s diary. And incidentally, the last one that I reflected on towards the end of the booklet was the one where Christ says to Faustina that the 3 ‘o clock hour is the special hour,  the hour of his crucifixion, death and nothing would be refused in that hour to – and so praise for mercy. And I remember thinking about that and how powerful that was and it’s sort of effected me. That literally was the last thought I had before I kind of moved on in my – back into my work day and went on to several meetings that afternoon and evening. And I did think about that, but as I was going down to the Hudson that thought occurred to me that it is the 3 ‘o clock hour and I did – I didn’t have time to pray in the chapel of course and I knew that. But I felt my chances of dying were quite good. Commercial airliners don’t typically crash, landing into rivers and with no fatalities. So, I felt that I had about a 50 percent chance at best of surviving. And I thought about that prayer, thought about that promise, I thought about my wife and asked God to be merciful to us. And sort of contemplated the image on the booklet, divine mercy image and said some other prayers, and thought about my family and thought about my relationship with God and how I was wanting and that I needed to be even commit more. And I really just wanted more time; I felt like to speak to God. I go to monthly confession; I had been to mass that day. To tell you Chris, I really thought God was preparing me to die that was my thought. I felt a certain peace about it and Vinny’s book was comforting. As I just been to mass, but I was really hoping desperately and deeply that I can somehow make through with this. And to recommit, I did my priorities more and more in line and they worked.

Chris Cash: Now, I have a question from a commercial airline pilot by the name of Mike Green. And he wanted to know if you had seen Gods hand in helping you to be a vessel for spreading the message of hope and mercy from the divine mercy?

Fred Berretta: Well, I think it’s interestingly coincidental that I by *** [12:23] is rediscovered perhaps or we thought of the divine mercy chapel and the day before during that timeframe. And the full flight took place during the 3 ‘o clock hour from the pushback from the gate, which was I believe at 3:00 or 3:00 P.M. to when I does not refer though, which was at 3:48, virtually that entire incident occurred during that hour. I think there is something to that. I thought a great deal about it, and I still think a great deal about that. And I like to believe that my prayers helped. I did pray like that, and I know others did. I saw other people praying, people of Christian faith or the people perhaps not of Christian faith praying. And I think the combination of that had an influence, I absolutely believe that. I think it would be somewhat arrogant or very proud of me think that is pray alone affected the whole outcome. I know that God and its great mercy with one very saintly person praying without doubt can accomplish wonders, I am of course not that saintly person. And but I like to think my prayers helped. And I do find it all very interesting that for me personally, I know that I need to think very seriously the promise of mercy and think about that devotion. And do what I can to perhaps in my own small way to help others have confidence in the mercy of God.

It’s a humbling thing I thought, I don’t merit speaking about the Catholic faith, I have tried for many, many years to live a full robust Catholic life. And as all of us know that are trying and its challenging, it’s very challenging to do. I know that the previous 15 years, leading up to flight 1549, I was trying – I would say it was half hearted effort, not that I was since in the effort, but I just wasn’t giving it my full heart and my full mind and my full strength, but I thought I was. And after flight 1549 for me personally I see it very clearly in retrospect where eternally and externally, I was feeling with respect to the Catholic standards and Catholic ideals, notwithstanding all my efforts. And I think one of lessons and there are many Chris for me in this whole episode. But one of them is that I was trying to be too self reliant and thinking even if it’s the possibly that I could make it through on my own that I could somehow whether all the storms, and it’s very hard to see that.

Its very easy face and I think for all of us to fall into. I think its particularly this easy confession to fall into what’s here in the environment of a large corporate type structure, complex type of environment with as many, many things that are *falling* [16:25] at you and demanding for perfect performance from you. It’s easy to fall into that over a long periods of time. And I think I did, and that’s one of the crystal clear messages for me that I tried to really think about that. If you really have to do your best - I know someone said this long ago and let God to the rest, and the yes, a lot other – yes, it’s to do our best. But it’s to try and turn over to him, things can work out. And I think another lesson for me is as long as life, which is - and I described it this way in previous interview, I think there’s a lot of symbolism to what happened in  flight 1549 and how God’s mercy is available to us.

In that, we lost *** [17:23] power and captain Sullenberger was safe with having to make incredibly difficult timely but important decision, which was where is he going to glide this airplane. He had choices, he had options. He ruled out LaGuardia and he ruled out Teterboro, and he chooses the least likely option. But it was the most optical option, which was landing that plane in the river, which all pilots know is the last place you want to try to land an airplane is on a busy waterway unless you have to.

So, he had to make a decision and then he had to execute very well, and he did all those things. And people on that plane were praying I know people that saw the plane going down were praying, I have heard testimony of that. And if you think about that you - to me the other great lesson is if humans do their best, make good decisions, take all their skills and experience what is there, and also then rely on Gods help in the worst circumstances, miracles will happen *** [18:50] that. And I think there is a bit of symbolism there with this airplane crash, and there’s that stuff that I think a lot about.

Chris Cash: Okay, we’re going to take a short break here to hear from our sponsor, but we’ll be back in just a minute to hear for more from Fred Berretta on the Catholic Spotlight.

[Break]

Chris Cash: Hey all you fans of Catholic media, whether that’d be Websites, podcasts, blogs, radio, television, whatever it is that you appreciate watching or listening to in the Catholic world, you are going to be interested in the Catholic new media celebration. This year it’s going to be San Antonio, Texas and I’m proud to say that the Catholic Company will once again be sponsoring the event. This year we are specifically sponsoring the meet and greet on Friday night. So, come on over, join our party and have a great time getting to rub elbows with all the other fans of Catholic media, as well as the producers, your favorite people, the people who make the shows. Well, most of them are going well – are going to be there and have a chance to share with you. But don’t take my word for what a great event it’s going to be, listen to what Dr. Paul Camarata has to say about the event.

Paul Camarata:  During this year of Saint Paul, Catholics have harnessed the power of new media for worldwide evangelization. To learn how you can be a part of this, attend this year’s Catholic new media celebration held in San Antonio on Saturday on June 27th. Hear from author Patrick Madrid and father Dave Dwyer of the busted Halo show, music by Sarah Bauer and network with Catholic new media professionals and consumers, hosted by the Star Quest Production Network. This year’s Catholic new media celebration promises to be bigger and better than ever. For details and registration, visit celebration.sqpn.com.

Chris Cash: And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight talking with Fred Berretta, survivor of flight 1549, the miracle on the Hudson. And Fred, I just wanted to talk to you a little about in what ways have your – has your life changed since the incident?

Fred Berretta: Well, I’ve been asked a question a few times Chris, the first time I was asked that actually was by a catholic reporter here in Charlotte, and I really thought a lot about that question. And my response at that time was I wasn’t sure it was shortly after the crash how my life has been changed. I knew that I had been changed in some ways, perhaps *** [22:19], I didn’t fully understand. But the way I answered it was, I feel – I felt and feel a very deep sense of gratitude to and survive that that we all survived that type of incident, because unfortunately there are most plane crashes in that type of situation without engine power and landing on a busy city don’t end up in that way. And it’s very humbling, and it’s something that instilled me a very profound appreciation for the value of life, the value of time, and what I’m doing with my life and my time. And I just feel obligated almost too consistently improve my life. I felt as best as I can and share that gratitude. I don’t fully know how to do that, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that, but it is constantly humbling me and making me very reflective of the great gift that we all have, of time and being with our families, friends, work associates. So, I know that I had a significant change, in one of the ways that I describe it as that I know I’m the same weak man that I was before, but I don’t believe I’m the same person.

Chris Cash: Are you in contact with any of the other survivors of the crash and or do you know any stories of some of the other people? And ways things have changed for them?

Fred Berretta: We have stayed in contact, their e-mail on *** [24:15] and Facebook site and there have been get-togethers. And I know it had a deep effect on all the passengers that I have come in contact with in a variety of ways, perhaps some are more profound than others, but all that I have come in contact with are effected. And I think that’s typically normal of something like this. And that’s of course, that’s inspiring to me when I hear other passengers telling me they’re spending more time in their church or just giving more to themselves, or they’ve reached out and talked to a long lost friend or loved one. That really helps me a lot. And so, yes, we’ve stayed in contact, hopefully we’ll continue to do so.

Chris Cash: We’ve run out of time for today, was there anything else that you want to share with our listeners about Vinny’s book or your experience?

Fred Berretta: Well, in regard to Vinny’s book, I am incredibly impressed with it. I had of course objectively understood, transcension and what do you first give. While from reading this book, it’s really in plain language helped me even my faith and understanding and appreciation were a great gift of the Eucharist that we have, so I’m grateful for that. And the only other thing, I suppose I would share Chris is that the remarkable ability for God to perform through us in our lives should never be underestimated. And I think all we have to do is trust just a little bit and what is given in return is so much more, we may not realize it at that exact moment, but it will come if we are persistent, interesting. And it’s never doubting in the providence, the mercy of God and it’s really incidental and therefore it’s all the time.

Chris Cash: Well, thank you so much Fred for coming on over and sharing that with us. And for those of you out there who are listening to this show, please be sure to go on over and vote for us on podcast Alley. We got this new initiative trying to help all Catholic podcast get higher up in the rankings on the podcast sight, so that we can help to evangelize and reach out to more people. You can find a list of other podcast and their podcast Alley voting sites over at Catholicspotlight.com/vote. And thank you all of you out there who have listened to us for all our part of our last 100 episodes, it is for you that we have made it this far, and it is because of you that we have been able to make it this far. So, thank you so much all of you for helping us to continue to do this and hopefully in another couple of years, we’ll be up at 200 and still go on.

Fred, I appreciate you being here. I know you’ve got a busy schedule, so thank you so much for taking your time to share with us.

Fred Berretta: Sure. Thank you, Chris. It’s been a pleasure.

Chris Cash: All right, God bless.

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Transcript of Interview with Fred Berretta about Flight 1549. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

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7 Secrets of the Eucharist at The Catholic Company.

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———————————

Chris Cash: Welcome to Catholic Spotlight. This is the Catholic Spotlight, the podcast that we talk about what’s new, true and exciting in the Catholic marketplace. I’m your host Chris Cash director of E-Commerce from catholiccompany.com, your source for all your Catholic needs.

And today in the Spotlight we have Colleen Hammond, author of Dressing with Dignity. Welcome with – welcome Colleen.

Colleen Hammond: Thanks Chris.

Chris Cash: And by the way, for all of you keeping account, this is show number 99. Guess what? Next week hopefully we will have show 100 for you and it will be a doosey or you know it will at least be a 100. All right, well, welcome Colleen. I’m glad to have you on the show number 99. Can you tell about yourself and what brought you to write Dressing with Dignity?

Colleen Hammond: Well, I was born – well, I’ll start right with that and all you people could do the maths. So, I was born in 1962, which was kind of a *baleful* [1:20] time in the church of history, well as the world actually. And I think growing out towards exactly like the ‘50’s for those who grew up in the ‘40’s and the ‘50’s knowing that the church was growing through at the time. So, I always considered my parents the first Roman Catholics, ‘cause there were roaming around looking for a church that was still staying true to the Catholic faith, because our local parish, the priest married the Director of Religious Education, the nun who was the DRE in the spirits of Vatican II as I said. So, they used Vatican II for lot of excuses for doing a lot of goofy things. And it was a very confusing time, so that’s the time that I grew up in. And I know many people can relate to that where you aren’t quite sure where things were headed. So, I ended up getting involved with modeling and acting, and that’s how I actually pulled myself through college. I did my undergrad work in Chemistry and physiologically, fully intended to be a pediatrician. That’s what I was studying for. And because of all my modeling acting, I got a job offer to do weather at the local station and that led to me getting a job at the weather channel. So I put my medical career ambitions on hold and pursue the career on Television.

So, a lot of my background was involved in fashion and television and marketing and entertainment industry. I had actually fallen away from the faith. When I went to college, I was not well formed and I did engaged a lot of things in college that you know thankfully I can look back on and say, I came out pretty good. But still, things that were definitely worthy of going to confession for. But I had been away from the church for a number of years and my marriage was in a situation where I chose that I did not want to pursue and continue in a marriage, because quite frankly it was holding my career back, which was extremely selfish, but that’s where I was at the time. And I found out that I was pregnant and actually went to get an abortion. And it was while I was in the abortion clinic that I actually had my conversion back to the faith, where I was sitting there just thinking I could not – I just can’t go through with this. I was studying medicine in college and I know that this is not piece of tissue; I know this is not a blob. I know this is a baby. And I became very physically ill and I decided to get out of there. And for the first time in almost a decade probably, I said a real prayer. I said please God get me out of this. And it was at that point, I got the surge which I now know it was grace that I get this surge of energy and just stepped up and walked out of the room. As I was leaving, one of the nurses told me that I was not pregnant and I knew that was a miracle. So, I went out to the car, where my Pagan husband was sitting - he is not a Pagan anymore, but I told him I said I need to go there. I need to go to confession and I need to sign a Catholic church right away, which coincidentally there was one in two blocks away.  And coincidentally there was a priest there hearing confessions and coincidentally there was nobody at in line, so I went in and did my first confession back that day. And it’s been a glorious trip ever since. It was as I say in the Bible, the wise prayers that my brought my husband to the faith as well. And now he is a very strong faithful Catholic, and he reads the family the rosary every night, make sure everyone gets the confession every once a month and in *** [04:48]. But it was due to all that background that I got involved with Saint Joseph Radio and I was working with *Lu Cortese* [04:57] there. And we were doing a program at one point and one of the callers that called in, I was talking about communication skills between husbands and wives, but all the calls seemed to be about modestly. How can I get my daughter to stop you know dressing like the hooker and how can I get her to stop dressing like Madonna and what not. And so, the very last call I made a comment and I talked to him after we went off the air, and he said you know all the calls were about modesty. Why don’t you write a book on modesty? And that’s kind of where I ended up. I talked to *Hilda van* [05:30] about it for 3 days when her and I were in a conference together. And she had pointed me in a very good direction.

So, it’s not something I really wanted to do, because I had to gut my entire closet. But it was a great experience to go shopping. And it caused me to have a lot of changes in my life as well. So, it’s pretty much where in a very, very, very small nutshell of where I was and how I came through and how I came about to write a book.

Chris Cash: Now, working at the weather channel, did you have problems with modesty there?

Colleen Hammond: You know its really interesting Chris, ‘cause we did…

Chris Cash: At least the weather channel doesn’t scream out a modest dressed, at least in my mind I guess, but.

Colleen Hammond: Yes. Well, when I was there it wasn’t – it was not owned by NBC. Although, back in the 80’s, early ‘90’s they were – and NBC was always making overture to purchase that. And then, finally, you know how many years later it came true. But I remember, I did the first long programming that they had had on the channel, it’s called the Eye of the Storm and it was about Hurricanes. And it was a one hour long program called you know Live Colleen. You know I was hosting the talk show, and I remember telling me to wear a short skirt. And at the time, I know you know well women we don’t fully understand custody of the eye. We don’t fully understand what our men go through. And if you look at it from a purely physiological point of view, which of course is my background, you know the chemistry and the medical school and what not. But if you look at what women go through on a monthly basis, we have to deal with hormones all over the place. Four major hormones that at any particular moment of any particular day are on a different combination in our blood stream. So, we are constantly dealing with this hormonal cocktail. The causes of the cry add you know AT&T commercials or we have these mood swings or we have fits of anger or fits of crying that we sometimes can’t explain ourselves. That we are dealing with the hormones reaction within our body. So, PMS is a hormonal situation that we go through.

And I think when we as women compare that to a hormonal reaction that a man goes through, although men cannot fully understand PMS and quite frankly either two way sometimes you know. We cannot fully understand what men go through with the custody of the eye. It’s a hormonal reaction that men have that they do not plan. And as you and I were discussing before this show, there – when you look at someone and in this case that the man looking at a women, he goes whoa. You know she maybe an attractive women, she maybe you know look nice and you know whatever, but as you had said it’s when a man looks at a women and starts whoa, whoa, whoa. There’s a wow factor that which is over the top. That a man has to make a choice at that point. Does he continue to look and have his mind wander or does he look away and just shoot a prayer up to *** [08:37]. So…

Chris Cash: Absolutely. The wow as I was saying before the show, the one wow that is perfectly normal, and praise the Lord for our attraction to each other, but when you sit there and dwell on it. That’s when you start to wander in to the near occasion of sin.

Colleen Hammond: Exactly. And so, there is normal response that god had given a man and a women, a husband and a wife to ensure procreation I’m sure. But you know for the procreation, the education of children, for the unity and the enjoyment of couple as along as it maintains its proper place within the marriage. So, when I met the weather channel and they asked me to wear things, I’m like okay whatever you know. That our culture is imbued with this idea of sexuality that…

Chris Cash: You know I can remember Britney Spears on an interview many years ago saying something along the lines of, “I wear this stuff to stay cool. I don’t know why anybody thinks it’s kind of provocative.”

Colleen Hammond: So, there you go. And that’s why I bring the onus back to the dad. And we live in a culture; a very male fashion culture and the feminist have really led the way. Which is you know when you look at the whole feminist group and it’s very interesting how, they say oh we as women, we look better than men. Well, what do they do? They inadvertently looked to - in spite everything that they do have conceded to male superiority by saying we can be just as good, instead of saying you know what that god given gift that I have make me better in certain areas. It’s okay that men are better in some things and women are better than others and you know there are some gender defined roles. My husband never figured out how to breast feed. I mean, so this is definitely a gender defined role. And women…

Chris Cash: Did he try?

Colleen Hammond: No, he didn’t even try. But there are certain things that we just can’t get around physiologically and when you try to raise the differences between male and female, you end up destroying the beauty of each one. The god given beauty of masculinity, the god given beauty of feminism. And so, when we try to erase the two and make them to equal, you destroy those unique characteristics of both. So, you know the feminist are saying oh, we’re just as good as a man. And then, they try to become like a man, instead of embracing the god given power of their own femininity. And not to be manipulated in a way like a black *** [11:16], you know that – that’s wrong as well. But to use a god given gift of strength in virtue, men have that physical strength, but women have strength when it comes to virtue. And if women don’t hold the bar up high, there are so many areas of 6th and 9th commandment issues. Then who will? You know G.K. Chesterton said, “You know if women didn’t care about manners, men certainly wouldn’t.” I mean, who sits around the kitchen table and says, all right, who has their napkin? Normally, the mom. Who wants to make sure that these things, things are important? It’s normally the mom’s role.

So, the women have the emotional fear that there – that they are queen of and they think – I mean, when children fall and scrape their knees. Who do they run to? If they break their arm and run to dad, dad goes wow look at that really weird angle you know. And mom, will embrace the child, I’m here *sweetie* [12:13]. The women teach children compassion, so why can’t we just embrace those god given roles, those higher callings that we have been given, because if we don’t do ‘em nobody will.

Chris Cash: All right, well, we’re going to take a short break here to hear from our sponsor. But when we come back, we’ll be speaking more with Colleen Hammond about Dressing with Dignity. This is the Catholic Spotlight.

[Break]

Chris Cash: And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight with Colleen Hammond. I keep wanting to say Dr. Colleen. I think I’ve got Dr. Coleen Kelly Mast on my mind when I…

Colleen Hammond: Either that or Dr. Laura I don’t know. Because I am quite opinionated.

Chris Cash: Yes. But you know you were looking to go into medical school, so that – it maybe some of that rubbing off as well.

Colleen Hammond: There you go, there you go.

Chris Cash: So, tell me, do you have some practical advice to those of us who maybe either struggling as a man with being around people who don’t dress very modestly? Or – and then, secondly women and young ladies who are struggling with how should I dress when I go out around men?

Colleen Hammond: Its hard for me address what a man should do, and not being a man. You know all I can say is that as they…

Chris Cash: Separate books for a separate author huh?

Colleen Hammond: Yes. I think that’s a man’s role to talk to other men about, *** [14:52] to dad. I mean, dad’s know what go through a - mans mind. So, they have to really you know gently without being an augur, but gently to as the head of the family to make sure that their wife’s and daughters understand. Hey listen, I am man it’s different for us. I know what other men are thinking. Because I love you, because you’re my princess, you can’t wear that. Because you know if you dress in a certain way – and what girls don’t understand is that they want to fit in. I mean, that’s just part of all of us. We do want to have that individuality, but then again we want to belong to a group. We are a very social, sacramental people, so we do have things that we belong to and that’s totally understandable, and fine. But as a teenager, *** [15:37] I don’t want to be a teenager again. I’m quite *** [15:39] – how am I going to do that work, right? They don’t understand fully what we are going through. Like you quoted Britney Spears thing you know, I don’t see it any big deal. I’m just wearing. Oh, don’t worry that is – that’s the case maybe.

So, they have to challenge the father to step forward and say, princess I love you. I love you honey, no, no. Because when you dress in a certain manner, you attract Linking – Lincoln, the Brusk – the Bishop Bruskewitz, well that’s – say that three times *** [16:12], Bishop Bruskewitz had me come in and speak and lead the high school girls retreat. That was a full day retreat. And I went briefly at lunch and went to the young men who were in a different building having a retreat led by men. And I asked them to write something down to the girls in the class, and they all just wrote just little one liner. And I took ‘em back to the girls. And specifically, I said what do you guys think about the way they dress, and probably out of the 100 young men that were there; about 70 wrote these wonderful sentiments, please don’t dress immodestly. It’s very distracting to us. You know please have a little bit more respect and think about us and what we’re going through a little bit more. ‘Cause when you dress that way, its difficult to talk with you. And I had found that straight across the board even when I did an interview on MTV. One of the radio jockey’s on MTV even said that when he’s out in these functions, it’s difficult for him when these girls come up in immodest clothes. They say that – men will say that they are so distracted by what the women is wearing or not wearing, as the case maybe that they don’t hear a word that they are saying. So, these young men…

Chris Cash: Well, you know when I was in college, I can remember having conversations with women about how they felt degraded that men would speak to their breasts, but you know if you’re displacing your breasts…

Colleen Hammond: Why you got ‘em hanging out there if you don’t want somebody to look there.

Chris Cash: Some guys who don’t have a problem looking the women in the eyes you know.

Colleen Hammond: Exactly. And so, they’ll – this radio jockey of MTV was saying just that thing, but I find myself saying look at her eyes, look at her eyes, and I never hear a word she says. So, when we want to be respected for our minds, why do we feel we have to feel we have to flaunt our bodies. And then, on the flip side of that, women will say well I can wear whatever I want to wear, it’s his problem. So, I guess we are not our brother’s keeper. You know I mean we want to do what we want to do and the heck with anybody else. Well, she got a *** [18:15] attitude. Well…

Chris Cash: Well, maybe he has problem, but you’re causing it.

Colleen Hammond: Yes, and as the Catholic we realize the culpability of *** [18:15] if we become culpable for some else’s sin, so I mean that’s pretty serious as well. But these young men of Lincoln, Bruskewitz, 70 percent of ‘em basically spoke with the girl and said you know please uphold some sort of virtue. We’re looking to you to help us, but 30 percent didn’t like that. 30 percent saying oh, we like this, we like that, and the girls were really *** [18:45] basically. They said, oh, who wrote that and I said, no this anonymous. I told the boys not to sign it. And they said, ah, I think we know and they were bringing up names. I said no, no names, no names. So, they said oh, these are the crepes of our class. They went ah, ha. See what type person you attract when you dress immodestly?

Now, who would you rather attract to you? Who would we rather be our daughter to be attractive to men or young men with character or these boys who like the girls who run around in half dress. So, you have to remember as a young lady, we don’t understand this that you attract the type of person to you by who they perceive you to be, and if they perceive you as a young lady with virtue and character, you’re going to attract a young man whose virtues and who has a strong character. And it’s that what we all want for ourselves for our daughters. Its something to keep in mind, if you insist on respect, people will respect you.

Chris Cash: Now, do you have specific guidelines? And I’m sure you probably do in the book, but do you have some specific guidelines to help young women in learning to dress more modestly?

Colleen Hammond: Absolutely. And I think that the trap that I fell into in the beginning was to be – you know you try to dress down, because you think dressing down is holy. And I get quote after quote after quote in the book from Pope’s throughout the ages that say – you know especially from Pope of the XII, he addressed this because of the fact that we’ve really seen in past 100 years. There’s really been a deviation from how women avoid that. Where Pope of the XII was saying, “If you attract inordinate attention, to yourself by the way you dress either one way or the other, it shows a lack of humility.” So, what we are going to look at it that it’s okay to follow the fashion as long as they fall within a certain set of guidelines. And Pope after Pope, again and also within the last 50 to 100 years have said these modesty guidelines are not dictated by time. These are set in *** [20:55]. So, these are not things that I personally have come up with. These are the guidelines that’s been established by the Catholic Church.

Your neckline, nothing below two finger breadth, basically before - below the pit of the throat. That’s pretty easy. I mean, just make sure that shirt is buttoned up. All right, sleeve length, should go down to your elbow. Now, then again sometimes I know the folks just say that fashions made maybe such that you can’t find them, so then a couple of inches above the elbow is fine. And then, as far as skirts are concerned, it should be at least 2 inches below the knee. Of course, Padre Pio said 8 inches below the knee right that was his specific guidelines. But the church says nothing shorter than 2 inches below the knee, nothing tight, nothing clinging and nothing *** [21:44]. And if you keep those basic guideline and don’t try to be more Catholic to the church, but then again don’t try to flip the other side and make exceptions to the *** [21:53]. If you just follow those basic guidelines, there is a lot of real pretty skirts out there; there is a lot of pretty blouses. Right now, so no more time to *** [22:01] wear *** [22:01], wear something underneath them, but or pick something else, because there are other options. But this is some really basic guidelines.

And if you go to my Website just ColleenHammond.com, I have a free download. Just click outfit guidelines, there is a free download of the church’s specific guidelines and how to go through step by step, things in your closet and determine if those things set the guidelines. And even give some tips on adjusting what you have to work within those guidelines, there is a *** [22:29] ditch in your whole wardrobe. Don’t just rip out your whole closet and only own wardrobe, unless you want to, when you have the money. But you can take what you have and work with it, and layering with them right now with the world that we can work within fashion, but still maintain the sense of dignity.

Chris Cash: You know I have heard in historical shows about how during times of great financial boom that we see lines of skirts and such go up, and that during depressions and recession we see clothing become much more modest. Have you seen any correlation with that in our latest recession?

Colleen Hammond: Somewhat. But I think fashion is more dictated by the designers wanting to sell. They have to make sure they make a profit every year. So, they can’t come out with the same length of skirt every year, because people will say oh, good, skirt lengths are still such and such you know it would just keep *** [23:31] headlines here. So, fashion I think really is a pendulum, it swings all the way one way. And quite frankly, you know 5, 6. 7 years ago, the fashions have become so skimpy, they didn’t have anything left to take off, they didn’t have anything left to take off. They had to swing back the other way. So, suddenly modest was in, but again now, we are seeing it switch the other way. The skirts are going shorter really you know. So, I think the economy dictating fashion is much more about designers wanting to selling something new, every single *** [24:05] year to win.

And you know think about men’s clothing, really how much have they changed? You know it’s the – because men don’t really care about that…

Chris Cash: I wear my jeans till they get a hole in ‘em.

Colleen Hammond: There you go. And then, your wife takes them away. Don’t wear those anymore. You know so the wife is more…

Chris Cash: No, my wife doesn’t have to rip the holy jeans out.

Colleen Hammond: That’s good. That’s…

Chris Cash: I get rid of them pretty readily.

Colleen Hammond: But they do say that that fashion shows the more direction in a culture. And we look at the more direction on culture is heading in right now, do we really want their advice on what we’re going to wear? So, you know that people will just say that that fashion is dictated by the culture and that’s not what we as Catholics, as Christians that are concerned about our fellowmen, that’s not how we should look at it. We should say you know what I can follow these fashions fad as long as I stick within a certain basic guidelines. And it’s something respectable, and that will dictate what we wear.

Chris Cash: So, do you see some hope and some *** [25:17] of hope in the modesty movement? Is there forward direction here or do you see the momentum going the other way like you said?

Colleen Hammond: I really just see a lot of momentum going in the proper direction, because when I first wrote this book, I believe there was no one out there doing anything. And you know many radio shows that I did, secular radio programs that around the world and the regular on the BBC said, they said you are the lone wolf crying, trying out. And so, I’ve seen over the past few years, yes, there’s just been a snow ball, because I think once the life gets clicked on from one person, they tell two friends, they tell two friends and so on and so on, so on. And you know I have seen a huge snow ball of that kind of proper direction. But I have also seen people who are trying to compromise what the church has set down for us. If we just did with the churches guidelines, it can form our teachings as long as we can form our conscience to the mind of the church. All I know that church has been trying to protect us from 2000 years, and as long as we can form our thinking in that direction and not start making exceptions to the rule. All of those guidelines were written 50 years ago or 60 years ago or whatever, as there were *** [26:33] go a bit. You know instead of making excuses, truth has no time limit. You know it’s not like saying well Christ said that 2000 years ago, that doesn’t apply anymore. Well, yes, it does. So, when - only that a church says something until she comes out and says something different, you still stick by those guidelines. So, really again, you know nothing too low cut, nothing tight, nothing clinging, nothing *** [26:58] sheer. It’s Dressing with Dignity, just being dignified and respectable, and remembering too that it’s a kind of life for everything. There is proper clothing that it’s dictated for a specific time and place. You wear wedding dress to wed, you wear night gowns to bed, you wear play clothes and work clothes to work and play, and you wear work clothing you know in the work place. There is a time and place for everything.

You know I get this question all the time again about for example, makeup. There is a time and a place for makeup. Saint Thomas Aquinas said, “You know what for this *** [27:34] and what that, its okay to wear makeup.” That was say Thomas Aquinas. So, our culture dictates at this point that certain things are expected from women. So, we’re getting back to our intent and fitting our clothing and addressing clothing choices for the time and place that we are in, but still following those guidelines. And I think its something that we can do.

You know nature – and my grandmother said this and I *** [28:01]. And, “In nature things that are valuable are difficult to find.” You know so you’ve got gold deep down in mind, you’ve got diamonds that take you know a long time to form that are down below the earth, pearls at the bottom of the ocean in an oyster. Those things that we consider valuable are *** [28:23]. Even in our – a holy mother church bailed those things that are holy and sacred. And *** [28:27] over the alter, *Ciborium bailed over Ciborium* [28:30], things that are holy and sacred are bailed. In the same way, our body, our modesty is a gem. Our bodies are holing it secret. Women – like G.K. Chesterton said, “Women have something that everyone in nature is involved of, to cooperate with god in creation.” A woman when she’s pregnant carries 2 souls within her body. Her own soul and the soul of her unborn child. God reaches down into the women and places the soul in her body, so she is participating with god in creation. What a holy sacred, beautiful thing. This is not something to flaunt around. You know this is not something you bear, but you in the proper context have been in the marital relationship. The marital embrace is something that’s holy and sacred. You know I think Scott Hahn was saying its – “You know it’s not good, *** [29:28] it’s good, you know that sexual relationship between husband and wife is holy and sacred. So, let’s keep those things in the proper context and keep *** [29:40].

Women have to recognize there’s an innate dignity involved and a privilege, *** [29:48] Hilda van said, “A privilege of being a women.” We were taken from Adam’s rib, taken out of his side. We were taken out of his head *** [29:54], when we were taken out of his foot to be *** [29:56]. We are there out of Adams side, side by side with our husbands going through life. And we have immense dignity; don’t relinquish our role as women. And not to ignore our true femininity, which is the strength, but to be there and fulfill, see the feminine side. Its like two eyes, your left eye sees one part of the world one way, the right eye overlaps. It sees the world from a different perspective. The same thing with masculinity is femininity. Like those two eyes looking out perceiving things a little bit different, but when they work together properly, the whole world is beautiful, its *** [30:36]. It takes on a whole life of its own. So, and you see that kind of a role. I get excited about this stuff and it’s so powerful that women have such a power that, we have been you know buying into the cultures conceptive of relinquishing on a role. And men are sitting back on fine, you want to take ahead, go ahead. You know I’m not going to go and do what they want to do. It’s such a temptation, such a temptation.

Chris Cash: Well, you know I like any author who is passionate about what they write about and what they speak about. So, definitely are in good company, Colleen and be passionate about what you have to say. Are there any final things that you want to share some passion about here?

Colleen Hammond: Well, you know I guess when I wrote Dressing with Dignity, it’s not something I really wanted to do, but its one of women’s two big issues. That god has given us certain weaknesses and one of them were fashion, and the other one is gossip. And that’s actually the next book that I’m working on right now is called the Gossip’s Guide. And you know there are things that we say and do that we are not – and that there is a lot of misunderstanding about gossip, *** [31:51] attraction. And there are times that we are obligated to step forward either defend ourselves or to defend others. And I’m learning a lot – and again, it was like when I writing Dressing with Dignity and I had to throw a lot of things out of my closet and fix my soul. I am finding the same thing now, researching and writing this book on gossip. There is a lot of things that I have to throw out of my mind and a lot of soul searching that I had to do myself.

So, that’s the next book, I really do ask for people to prayers, because it is – when was the last time you heard of *** [32:24] on [32:24]. You know it’s not something that people are talking about, it’s just like people weren’t talking about modesty 5 years ago when I just wrote *** [32:31]. So, I ask for people’s prayers that we’re heading to the final statements of that book. And to follow my Website and there’ll be more information. You just go to Colleenhammond.com, there is more information that I’ll be updating from there. And I just – I hope women learn to embrace their femininity and embrace their motherhood. That’s what the word *matrimony* [32:58] means duty of motherhood. That’s where the word comes from. That women can truly embrace the god given femininity, and realize that the strength that they are given to whom much is given, much is expected. And our blessed mother raised our dignity, blessed, blessed among women. And we pray to her, you know our Lady of Fatima, when she here said – asked us to pray the family rosary every night. And I don’t think god looked down and say, oops, how she came out of heaven down into Fatima. You know god allowed her to come and hear this message for a reason. And so, he supports what she says. And to - for us to turn to our Lady of Fatima who said back in 1917, “Fashions will be introduced that will offend Our Lord very much.” So, we turn to her and trust her as our mother.

Chris Cash: Well, thank you Colleen. We really appreciate you coming on and talking with us today, sharing with us your passion about modest. What percentage of your closet did you actually have to throw out?

Colleen Hammond: Almost all of it.

Chris Cash: Oh, god.

Colleen Hammond: Yes. At that point, I had a lot of sweat pants too, so you know and that’s maybe comfortable, but not very dignified. So, I tried to get a sense of class *** [34:14].

Chris Cash: There is a place for them, it’s just…

Colleen Hammond: Absolutely, but not 24/7. So, yes, I had to get rid of a lot of dress.

Chris Cash: All right. Well, all of you listeners of the Spotlight, please do it’s the beginning of the month again. So, that means its time to go on again to Podcast Alley, vote for our show as well as all the other Catholic shows out there. Come on over to catholicspotlight.com/vote. That it’s our brand new page, where we’re starting to collect links directly to the places where you can vote for other podcast. Help to promote all of us Catholic podcast, up to the top of the ranks where we knock some of those sex shows and Pagan shows and Left Wing political shows off those list, and replace them with some good wholesome catholic content you know.

We’re really passionate right now about trying to do that. And trying to help, reach out and evangelize the culture, because the higher we get on some of these lists, the more people are going to see us, download us, listen to us and be evangelized. And it is something that will really make a different. I am quite sure; you know even one person converted makes it worth the effort, right Colleen?

Colleen Hammond: Amen, exactly.

Chris Cash: Amen. So, head on over catholic company – catholicspotlight.com/vote, vote for as many catholic podcasts as you can. I think we got 3 posted right now as I am recording this, but I am hoping that some others will join in with the effort of promoting this, and getting many more up on to the lists, so that you can just go down the list and knock out a whole bunch, right real quick. And that is all I got for today. Thank you, once again Colleen and everybody out there, have a great day and God bless.

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Transcript of Interview with Colleen Hammond about Dressing with Dignity. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

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Dressing with Dignity at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1011181/Dressing-Dignity/

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God Help Me at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1033372/God-Help-Me-How-to-Grow-Prayer/

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Chris Cash: This is the Catholic Spotlight, the show where we talk about what’s new, cool, and exciting in the Catholic marketplace. I’m your host, Chris Cash, director of e﷓Commerce for catholiccompany.com, your source for all your Catholic needs.

Chris Cash: And today in the spotlight, we have Jim Beckman. He is associated with the Impact Center out in Colorado but he’s been doing youth ministry on a wide national scale for quite a while and we’re very happy to have you, Jim.

Jim Beckman: Yeah, it’s great to be with you, Chris.

Chris Cash: Well today Jim, we’re going to talk about your new book, God Help Me: How to Grow in Prayer. So you want to give just kind of a brief outline of what this book is and what inspired you to write it?

Jim Beckman: I think in my life what really is the inspiration behind this book is over the last three or four years, I have started spiritual direction with a new director that really has just transformed my experience of prayer and I think it’s somewhat even transformed my spiritual life which is transform my marriage and a lot of other things in my life and it was the experience of that having been really for years during ministry and working with lots of people and praying and being even in a lot of leadership roles but still having such a powerful conversion, deeper conversion into a life of prayer that was still rich and meaningful for me, it was just something I really had a strong desire to share with other people what I had learned and how I had been brought to a new place. So I’ve developed really the inspiration for me behind wanting to write this story.

Chris Cash: Now, I know a little bit about your background at Steubenville and I know that when you’ve talked in the past, you’ve talked about how you had kind of a fake prayer life at times. Do you want to talk a little bit about that and how that has evolved over time into a true spiritual life?

Jim Beckman: I think…one of the things that happened I think is we have experiences of deeper conversion in our lives. It’s easy to look back on what we were experiencing before and think of it as fake, right? In some ways, it was what we were able to experience at that point and then God just in His great mercy and love is always drawing us into deeper and deeper experiences with Him as we’re capable and have the capacity for that. So I think I would term some of those experiences when I was younger, particularly when I was in college, I was a student at Franciscan University and I still look back and remember times of really watching the clock as I would go into a room to pray because I knew people noticed how long you prayed; just stupid things like that.

Chris Cash: Right but it was a common experience especially at Steubenville, I’m sure.

Jim Beckman: Oh yeah. I think there was something a lot of people are kind of caught up into was having the image of being a prayerful person and spending lots of time in prayer so that people would look at you like that. But I remember lots of times sitting in a room and knowing like I couldn’t get up and leave because people might…I don’t want to seem like I’m having too short of a prayer time or something. And I look at that and even though I know I have some powerful experiences of prayer during that time in my life and even as I got older, the newness that I’m experiencing now in my prayer is there is something where I could tap into more of level of intimacy than I’ve really ever experienced before and some of that I’m sure is I’m in the time of my life where I have a greater capacity for that but I think some of this is just learning some new tools of how to navigate the spiritual life and spiritual depth that I just didn’t have before and now with those tools, I’m able finding myself able to access more.

Chris Cash: Now, this book is aimed at whom? Is for teens or for adults? Is it for people who have an active prayer life or who are sitting on the outside hoping to have an active prayer life at some point? Kind of who do you see is benefiting the most from what you have to say?

Jim Beckman: I think in my mind as I’m writing the book, I’m primarily thinking of teens over the years that have grown older, are now young adults, are beginning their lives. Many of them are getting married or starting careers and they’re kind of floundering in their lives and particularly in their spiritual life so that in some ways, that group is what I’m thinking about as I’m writing the book. But I think the book really would benefit anyone. I have a lot of friends of mine who are adults who’ve read the book and have found it really helpful. They really enjoyed it and I think the material is really accessible to teens as well. I’m hoping that it’s a book that a lot of teenagers could benefit from in terms of growing in deeper intimacy and greater depth in their prayer as well.

Chris Cash: Do you have any favorite prayer experiences that you share?

Jim Beckman: Yeah, I tell a lot of stories in the book. I’m using the experiences with different young adults that I have relationships with as I’ve kind of tried to help them grow in their prayer. I used a lot of stories about my children because I have experiences everyday talking with my own kids and trying to help them bring prayer into the normal everyday experience of their life. So I do in some ways in the book, I tell lots of stories like that.

Chris Cash: Care to share any of those stories with our listeners?

Jim Beckman: One experience that I share in the book is I had this great experience with my daughter once. She was really struggling really for over a period of several weeks with seemingly a lot of anger, a lot of agitation and one morning, we were driving to school and things just kind of unraveled in the car. A fight broke out and the next thing, there’s a couple of punches thrown between my kids and I’m not sure if anyone’s ever experienced that kind of meltdown but as we…

Chris Cash: I have five kids too so I know what you mean.

Jim Beckman: It’s like…very quickly things just get really out of control. We’re pulling into the school and all I could do at that point was just get everybody to keep their hands to themselves and just stop as there was a lot of crying and a lot of emotion on the scene. But that moment, I kept all the kids in the car. I didn’t drop them off right away and I ended up actually staying down on the kids’ school that morning and decided to go back and take my daughter to lunch and I was trying to talk to her over lunch about a lot of the things that I talked about in this book, about the different parts of our heart and how our heart in prayer where we need to relate to God, but most importantly how God really desires to help us understand ourselves and sometimes when we’re in a place in our lives where our emotions are sometimes seeping out sideways from us, which is what I think she was experiencing. She had all of this stuff going on inside of her but she didn’t really know what it was and where it was coming from. I think God in prayer has a great ability to kind of speak into the circumstances of our lives and really bring clarity and bring understanding and I’m drawing on napkins in the little restaurant where I took her out to lunch and she obviously wasn’t getting any of what I was talking about. You know, she had a good chance to blank stare and it was like, “Okay.” So I said, “Why don’t we go and let’s just go pray for a minute before I take you back to school?” So we sat in the parking lot of this little restaurant and I kind of led her on a little experience of prayer and really just asking her to invite Jesus into her heart and help her understand what’s going on. And that’s a lot of the tools and principles that I’m trying to teach in this book is how do you first of all get in touch with the deeper things moving in your heart, the stuff that’s really most important, how do you relate that to God and then how do you really listen to God and know what it’s really authentically Him that’s talking to you? And so, here we were in this parking lot, I lead her to a little prayer. Just open your heart and be receptive to what God would want to do. We prayed. She seems to have this really long…I actually thought she fell asleep in the car. She was quiet for so long, had her eyes closed and I was afraid she would fall asleep but after a while, she has a little smile on her face. She kind of giggles and then she opens her eyes. And I was like, “Well, what happened?” She said, “Well I heard three things.” The first thing she heard was “Claire, you need to stop hitting your brothers.”

The second thing she heard was “Everything is going to be better when the science fair is over.” And then the third thing she heard was “Claire, you’re beautiful.” Well I had just spent all of this time talking to her about her heart and how God speaks into our hearts and how do you really distinguish His voice from the other voices in our heart and then she said, “This is awesome. Like let’s just look at those three things and kind of ask where did they come from?” So I asked her, “Where do you think that first thing came from, Claire you need to stop hitting your brothers.” She said, “That was from God.” And I was like “Well, that was actually probably from you. It might have been inspired by God but God specifically doesn’t condemn us in the way that He speaks to us. God may have showed you. If it as really God talking to you about that, He probably would have said ‘Claire, you need to love your brothers.’ But like just the way that that’s worded, like that’s your conscience kind of telling you that it’s not a good thing to be hitting your brothers. That’s not really the loving way that you want to relate to them.” I said, “How about that second thing? Everything’s going to be better when the science fair is over?” And she said, “That was from God?” I said, “Well, it could have been like God and so I think that was probably from you too. Maybe God’s given you some clarity and some understanding that underneath all of this emotion over the past couple of weeks, what you’ve been experiencing is you have a lot of stress about this science fair project you’re working on and there’s a lot of fear in you maybe that you’re not going to get it done or something like that.

So maybe God’s just helping you understand that but it’s probably that human voice in your heart really giving you some clarity there. And how about that third thing, Claire, you’re beautiful?” And she said, “That’s from me.” And I was like, “Actually that’s from God. That’s exactly the way God talks to us.” I was like, “Do you realize this morning, you punched your brother in the face in the car? And like everything melted down and unraveled and you know with our whole family, for those moments in the car this morning and the first moment that you have to really connect with God in prayer, the first thing He wants to tell you is how beautiful you are. But that’s exactly the way God loves us and God, He kind of sifts through all of the problems and all of the circumstances and just comes right to the heart of “Claire, you’re beautiful”. And because you’re so beautiful and because I love you so much, I want to you to love other people the way that I love you. He doesn’t look at your failures or your faults. He just goes right through your heart and tells you how much He loves you and how beautiful you are. So that’s one story that I kind of convey in the book that if you come to that point of particularly really trying to distinguish between how do I know when it’s God that’s speaking to me and how do I distinguish His voice and really kind of hone in on what He’s saying because that’s the most important thing in prayer is to really hear God.

Chris Cash: All right, we’re going to take a short break to hear from our sponsor but when we come back, we’ll be speaking more with Jim Beckman about God Help Me: How to Grow in Prayer.

Chris Cash: And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight with Jim Beckman talking about God Help Me: How to Grow in Prayer. Now Jim, I assume that you’ve kind of had some sense of a lot of different people’s prayer lives and maybe what would you find to be some of the biggest stumbling blocks and road blocks that people get in having an authentic prayer life with God?

Jim Beckman: Well, I think that one of the greatest gifts that we have in the Church, in Catholic tradition and Catholic spirituality is some of the principles of the Ignatian spirituality particularly the rules for discernment that St. Ignatius gave us and I think a lot of times they get overlooked because people look at different spiritual streams in the Catholic Church like Franciscan spirituality, Ignatian spirituality, or Augustinian spirituality or *** [00:16:31] prayer and they kind of lump things into those big categories. There’s been a lot of work I think done over the years on things with prayer and temperament and different personality types and how people have leanings towards certain types of prayer experiences which all of that stuff is good but in some ways, some of the principles that St. Ignatius gave us in the rules for discernment, I believe that they apply across the board no matter what your personality type. In some ways they aren’t so much a part of the Ignatian type of experiences which involve much more imaginative prayer and things like that.

That part I can understand how it might be more of a personality type thing and somebody might not lend themselves to more of that Ignatian type of prayer experience but these deeper principles particularly in the rules for discernment, I just think they are critical foundations for anyone to understand the spiritual life and how to really grow in the spiritual life, how the enemy works, how consolation and desolation in the spiritual journey affects your ability to pray at certain times, how to understand desolation when you’re in the midst of it and I really try in this book to break open a little bit of particularly those first fourteen rules for discernment and talk about how they become such a critical part of understanding the way that we grow spiritually and to understand the way that the enemy is trying to keep us from growing. I personally believe that that’s one of the biggest road blocks for many people in their spiritual life is without an understanding of that foundation, particularly younger people, they get a kind of desolation in their life where circumstances or things start to go wrong and what’s the first thing that they do? They stop praying and then circumstances in their life actually cause wounds and cause them to interpret things in certain ways which that’s all part of the way that the enemy tries to deceive us and that sometimes can cause them to get off track and flounder for months and months, even years in their life and it really could have all been averted if there is just a basic understanding of some of these principles of spiritual growth.

Chris Cash: So once you understand the principles of spiritual growth, then that’s going to help you to push past any roadblocks that you come up against, right?

Jim Beckman: Yeah, I think in some ways the natural even swell of the spiritual life involves consolation and desolation. There are certainly times in our life where you feel really close to God and prayer is actually easy. It’s natural; we’re still inclined to it. There are other times where we feel exactly the opposite and you can have the tendency to interpret those times as I don’t know if I believe in God anymore and instead of looking at it like this is the period of time where God is going to help me grow deeper in my spiritual and deeper in my conviction and you can actually use those times of desolation to grow stronger instead of allowing it to knock you off the track altogether.

Chris Cash: So where do we look to get our strength up during these times of desolation?

Jim Beckman: Well, I have a whole chapter in the book where I really try to go into this in a lot of depth but there is a way that if you really understand desolation and what St. Ignatius talks about as the reasons for desolation, obviously desolation can happen in our lives because we’ve gotten lazy or we aren’t really sticking with our spiritual discipline and our prayer and things like that. So there’s a way that we can actually contribute to being in a place of desolation just because of choices that we’ve made. But the other two reasons for desolation are one, sometimes God allows us to experience desolation because he wants us to remember that He is the giver of the gift. Consolation is a gift from Him and sometimes we can appreciate the consolation more than we can appreciate who gave it to us. Does that make sense?

So God will allow us to go through a kind of desolation just to remind us or allow us to be reminded of that reality. And the other reason for desolation is to give us a test, to give us a time of…and it’s not so much that God needs the test just for you to know how strong we are but He allows us to go through those times because we need to know how strong we are. We need to know that we can endure times of hardship and inconvenience and even feeling distant from Him and so He allows us to go through these times to prove our spiritual strength. When you understand desolation in light of that then when you start to experience those feelings of being far away from God or feeling like God’s not there, instead of panicking, you can look at those times like “Okay, it’s time to strap up and use this as an opportunity to really grow and I’m not going to stop praying. I’m going to pray even a little bit more because the Lord is going to be my source of strength. He’s going to assist me through this time and I know at some point, the consolation is going to return and that’s what I hold onto and cling to during those times of my life.”

Chris Cash: Now one phrase or word that you use quite often in the book is intimacy in prayer. You want to talk a little about what is intimacy with God in prayer and how is that experienced?

Jim Beckman: I think that this is what I experienced and we were talking earlier about just going through times in my life where I felt like my prayer really was pretty staged. I think we can go through times in our life where prayer becomes more of a formality and we’re just going through the motions and not really connecting heart to heart and in some ways, I think about prayer a lot now in my life like my marriage. If I went too long at the time where I was dysfunctional in a relationship with my wife and I wasn’t really sharing my heart with her, after a while, our relationship would get pretty distant and we would start to experience tension and there would be a lot of ramifications of just being functional and kind of going through the motions in our relationship and not really connecting and sharing the beatings going on in my heart, what things am I afraid of and what things am I anxious about and what am I really joyful about and what I am really hoping for. Well, the same principle is really true in prayer. If I’m not relating to God consistently in my prayer with those deep things going on in my heart then after a while, my relationship with Him is just going to be very functional and it’s not going to have the kind of impact that God wants to have in our life through a relationship of prayer because we’re not really relating on that deep intimate level. And I think one of the things that I’m really trying to convey in this book is if there’s one thing that I think our culture in this country has had such a big effect on is our capacity for intimacy. I think it’s one of the ways we’ve really been crippled particularly younger people, there’s just so many things in our culture that cause us to be kind of distant and functional and kind of utilitarian in some ways in the way that we relate with other people and I think that all translates into our experience of prayer as well.

Chris Cash: All right, well we’re running out of time. Was there anything else that you wanted to share with our listeners about what’s going on with the book or what’s going on with Impact Center or anything else?

Jim Beckman: I’m excited to…this book has been kind of a long project in the works and it’s exciting to be out there. I just hope that it really helps draw people into greater intimacy in their prayer and draw them into more fruitfulness in their relationship with the Lord and I’m excited to share that with people, the gift that it’s been to me in my own life.

Chris Cash: Well thank you so much, Jim for coming on the Spotlight to talk with us about this. All of you Spotlight fans out there, we have started a new program right now where we are trying to promote Catholic podcasts around the net through votes at Podcast Alley as well as by doing reviews of the podcast over at iTunes and I don’t know if all of you recognize the impact that we can have here but over at Podcast Alley, when you vote for a podcast, it brings it up higher into their listings of the top 50 or 100 podcasts or however many they list to people who come in and have a look and a lot of those top 50 podcasts, they’re either sex-related, left wing political, or pagan. And we could have such an impact if we can get not just the Catholic Spotlight but several other Catholic podcasts to rank up higher over there and push some of these other less holy shows a little farther down in the rankings. So if you are interested in helping out with that, go over to catholicspotlight.com/vote and you’ll see where we’re starting to develop a list of Catholic podcasts where you can just go straight down the list and vote for all of them or vote for the ones you like to help all of us rank a little higher and helpfully give us more chances to evangelize those who need to hear these messages. Obviously, this message about prayer is an extremely important message to get out there, don you think, Jim?

Jim Beckman: Yes, absolutely.

Chris Cash: All right and by the way, today is show number 98. We are creeping up on show 100 and we will be there, I guess in two more weeks assuming everything goes all right. I still haven’t figured it out what we’re doing if we’re going to do anything special for show 100 but stay tuned, two more weeks and we will be at least throwing a little raise in the roof for show 100. Jim, thanks for hanging out with us and you have a great day and God bless.

Jim Beckman: Thanks, Chris. Yeah, God bless you too, thanks.

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Transcript of Interview with Jim Beckman about God Help Us. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

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God Help Me at The Catholic Company.

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Epic A Journey Through Church History at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1111300/Epic–Journey-Through-Church-History/

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Chris Cash: Welcome to Catholic Spotlight. This is the Catholic Spotlight, the show that where we talk about what’s new, cool and exciting in the Catholic marketplace. I’m your host Chris Cash, director of E-Commerce for catholiccompany.com. Your source for all your Catholic needs.

And today in this Spotlight, we have Steve Weidenkopf. Is that correct how I said that just now?

Steve Weidenkopf: That’s correct. You got it.

Chris Cash: All right, good deal. And Steve is co-author along with Alan Schreck, Dr. Alan Schreck that is of the excellent series from Ascension Press, Epic: A Journey through Church History. For all of you out there who are familiar with the great adventure series, Epic is in a sense the extension of the great adventure into the history of the church beyond the end of the Bible. So, this is just an extremely exciting development to see this come about. Can you share with us a little bit about how the idea for Epic came to you and got started?

Steve Weidenkopf: Yes, sure, Chris. The idea for Epic really kind of came from my time out in Denver. I spent some time in Denver; I actually worked for the Archdiocese of Denver for Archbishop Chaput, where I was the director for marriage and family life. And a good friend out there Tim Gray was the director of the Catholic biblical school and I knew of the Great Adventure Program through Tim. He helped *** [01:44] with that program. And we were talking one day and Tim said you know, it’ll be great to have a church history program as a kind of follow on to The Great Adventure and you know kind of where The Great Adventure stops with acts and the missionaries activities of St. Paul. You know it would be good to have a Paul Harvey, you know the rest of the story, so to speak to get people you know from Pentecost up to the modern day. That they are just rich tradition and history you know of our church and how it shaped Western Civilization.

So, Tim and I were talking and he said, “You know hey, I really think you have a great love for history and I was teaching some courses for the Catholic Catechetical School out in Denver, one of those was church history. And I’ve had a great love for church history. I had a - in history just a general when I was an undergrad at Syracuse University, I had a – I took a specialized concentration of courses on legal history. I just really love that, I’ve always enjoyed history, so Tim approached me with the idea about well this is a great idea. So, I sat down to come up with a Epic and an outline and how we could actually present this in the same *empiric* [02:59] ideal, the same methodology played by The Great Adventure. So, I came up with a initial outline, you know I presented that to Ascension Press and we got into contact with Dr. Alan Schreck and then he and I collaborated together on the final product.

Chris Cash: Now, this seems like it would be much, much bigger than just a – the rest of the story kind of a deal, because you know you got the outline and what’s in the Bible before The Great Adventure, but when it comes to the Epic product, it is so broad and wide reaching what topics you could cover in the history of the church.

Steve Weidenkopf: Yes, that’s true. I mean, you’re right. It is more than just of the story, but it’s – you know the focus and theme we kind of tried to place on Epic is the overall - is to give people the big picture. I mean, it’s the same thing like The Great Adventure. There is so much that you’d get into with the history of the church or even history of the western civilization, there are so many different political or economic or theological you know areas that you can get into. You know its – so it’s the scope, you know trying to come up with a good scope that will help give people that they picture was you know was challenging. But well, we kind of focused on was lets you know use that narrative approach that’s employed by The Great Adventure, basically to help people know their history through story. And so, we focused on what is the – what are the main stories or some very interesting stories that people need to know in order to you know help understand or remember the history of the church. In a particular, we kind of tried to focus on is how it’s illustrating for people, how the church influenced and the shaped and built and sustained western civilization. Because you know its one of the things that I think in our culture today that we’re faced with this identity crises. Now, many people catholic, non-Catholics *alike* [04:38] really have no sense of who we are as a society. You know what – where we came from. We really kind of lost that I think over the last generation or so. And you can see it even more clearly in Europe, Europe really is suffering from the severe identity crises of not knowing who they are, where your roots are, so much so that several years ago you know as I am sure *** [04:59] there is no – that the European union was trying to craft this new constitution for the union. And in the preamble, they couldn’t even bring themselves to mention the word you know Christianity or Christian faith. There were just really those you know elements in European society that were so anti-Christian. They couldn’t even mention the word that formed a foundation of their entire culture and civilization.

So, there is a severe identity crises, so we wanted to try to *write this* 05:28] Epic is to give people in the sense of – first of all, you know *pride in the Catholic Church, but also and understanding who they are. Because learning the history is really learning our family history. Just as we would go and try to study our own you know background or our own genealogies, so to speak. Individually for our families, we do the same thing. That’s really what church history is. We were studying the actions and the events of the – our brothers and sisters in the world who came before us. And so, it’s really our family history, our family story and it’s vitally important for all of us to know that story. Because it shapes who we are and it helps determine where we are going in the future.

Chris Cash: Now, you’ve got the history broken up into time periods just as The Great Adventure does with the Bible. And you have 12, 12 time periods here.

Steve Weidenkopf: 12 time periods.

Chris Cash: What did you use in determining what were the important ways to divide this up?

Steve Weidenkopf: Sure. Yes, what we did is we sat down and note that you know okay we’re going to employ the same methodology, which is very – it’s is been very helpful in improving to be very successful in teaching people scripture, The Great Adventure. And so, they have 12 time periods, we decided to use 12 time periods for *** [06:40] world to keep that kind of consistency and continuity. And so, when we looked at that history at least 2,000 years, from Pentecost to the modern day, you know we could - as we walk through the different events and things we wanted to focus on, it was certain clearly defined time periods came into focus. And we tried to focus them you know dramatically as well, ‘cause it’s a way to help people remember the story the church. So, in each of it you know beginning and end dates for each time period correspond to it, you know certain historical event and is of prime importance.

So a good you know – a good example the first two time periods – the first period is the “mustered seed” and this is the time period obviously when the church is very small, the apostle that small band of brothers is - has been filled with Holy Spirit to go into the *** [07:27] world even beyond to proclaim the gospel and bring people into the church. And so, we start our timeline from the year 33 A.D. from the time of Pentecost and then we take that to the end of – or to the death of the last Apostle St. John around the year a 100. So, our first time period is from 33 to a 100. Next time period is time period for persecution is it when the church is gone out and many people have come in to the church. The church is spreading throughout the Roman Empire, as a result of that they come into contact and clash with the Roman Empire and the *** [08:00] system. There the empire begin a series of persecutions, you know over 250 years of the church. So, our time period of persecution runs from a 100 to the year 313. And the year, we pick the year 313 for the end of that time period, because it’s in the year 313 with the emperor Constantine has issues and proclaimated the – that’s known as the *** [08:23] for he provides toleration before the Christian faith. So, it’s not the legalization of Christian faith. Many people think that Constantine legalized the faith or he legalized it, but rather than many people think that he made it the official religion of the empire. He did not, he allowed paganism to continue. What he did was *** [08:41] one is just to legalize the faith and allowing it to be tolerated openly.

So, and you know a time period of persecution that runs from the death of the last apostle around a 180 up to 313. So each of the time periods, in case you go through they are all, all the beginning and end dates are all fanatically based on an important date or event in the history of the church.

Chris Cash: Now, the first Epic product that you have your covers at least from a sky-high point of view each of these time periods. Are you coming back with additional material in the future that’s going to dive deeper into each of the individual period going forward?

Steve Weidenkopf: Yes, we – I like to do that and I think definitely. I mean, the – as you mentioned you know this first Epic product is a 20 week session with 20 parts you know study of church history, and its even with 20 parts, it seems like a long time but its really with the rich *origenism* [09:40] and breath and depth of our history. It’s only really kind of skimming the surface, its only getting you know the big picture represented. So, you know I teach at the Notre Dame graduate school, Christendom College. I teach Church history there. You know I – over 2 semesters is when we covered Church history and that’s 26 weeks and even then, there’s only you know a certain amount of material you can actually present. So, this is even condensed from what you would normally get in 2 semesters of graduate school. But the idea yes is to hopefully in the future we’ll go forward into *** [10:15] down into some of these time periods and do individual maybe you know, 8 to 10 parts studies on of these individual time periods, so that we can get into more detail and present the story and need more focus.

Chris Cash: As you were putting together the outlines here as well as going into the topics were there any really tough decisions about things that you had to cut out?

Steve Weidenkopf: Yes, there were. I mean, there were few items that as we went through that we really wanted to try to focus little bit more on and highlight that we realized that just we’re not going to have enough time to really to delve into that. Or it just – it kind of amazes, it didn’t flow naturally with the rest of the product. So, for example on a time period of missionaries and the emperor, we initially in our – on our – on the Epic chart, we – basically, what we’ve done is we’ve identified a 100 main events, individuals or events that one really needs to know the story of those individuals for that event to understand the big of church history. So, those 100 events run you know through 2,000 years of history of our church. And initially, we had much more than a 100, but there – you know we had a – we cut them, we had to cut back in order to not you know over extend the product and to not to overwhelm people. ‘Cause there is a lot of material packed into this study, just even now in its final form that is more into the beginning. But for example in the time period of missionaries and the Emperor, we had to really cut out a whole discussion of Alaric and the Sack of Rome in the 5th century. And you know that was an important event in the history of the church, but in an history of western civilization really. But you know as we looked at some of the other things that we were talking about in that time period really the main theme and main focus of that time period, this is the time period whether the church sends out great missionaries throughout Europe, to bring Europe into the phase. This is actually the fall of the - it is also during the fall of the Western *** [12:17] Empire. So, we – you know and then the emperor, we talk about this time period is *** [12:22] when he comes through the picture and then kind of reconstitutes on a smaller scale of the Roman Empire and begins to enter into a direct relationship with the *PBC** [12:31] Rome and really begin to the flowering out the church throughout Europe. That was – those were our focus, you know it was missionaries and then *** [12:41]. So, any kind of event that did really try too much into those that means we had to cut out. So, that’s what we did Alaric and the Sack of Rome. We still listen to that event on our *** [12:53], we don’t spend time going into that particular story.

So, yes, in other word, there are a few things that we had to cut out. But for the most part we kept it all – we kept you know the major events, the major person, so that people could get that sense of the grand story of our church.

Chris Cash: No, I think one of the biggest challenges in putting together a study like this would have to be making it interesting enough, because you know this isn’t a college class where people are required to sit through it. You got to have the material be interesting enough that people are going to – wants to come back, week after week and listen to the presentation and learn about this stuff, discuss it. Where there any special things that you did to try to make the information really relevant and interesting to people so that they would who wants to come back and hear more?

Steve Weidenkopf: Yes. I mean, what we try to do is was we – you know I present church history from a narrative approach and basically from the position of story. So, that people have a understanding you know that church history is not just as history as a whole really is not just a bland you know kind of boring memorization of dates, events and then personal you know. And that’s what that many people think of when they think of history, because that’s unfortunately now history has been presented to many of us in throughout our education. But it’s just this you know these events and dates from the past, they really have no meaning, no bearing on my life whatsoever, and some – you know many people think of history. So, what I try to do when I teach now at the graduate school, but also when I teach the Epic through this presentation is to present it from the narrative perspective. So, to tell the story. So, when we talk about you know Saint Pope Gregory the Great, you know we talk about who he was and then what were time like in which he lived and what were major achievements and events that he accomplished and why its important for our lives as Catholics to know this great man. And we talk about some of the great Jesuits missionaries in the time period of the Catholic reformation. And we tell their story, you know Saint Isaac Jogues now he came and his companions came to North America and they missioned along the – you know the North Americans here in our own you know area. And we talk about how you can go up to upstate New York and you can see the Shrine of North Americans martyrs and the beautiful Mohawk valley and see where he was murdered.

And so, we present you know history from this story approach that helps people understand the story really – or that history really is you know a great drama. It has all kinds of exciting stories to be told and the – of the men and women who have you know shaped our civilization and spread the gospel from the world, so it’s really something exciting. So, I try to you know when I present I focus on those exciting events and those exciting stories. And you know I also think it comes from the teacher too, that the teacher have a passion for the material and this is exciting to him and to her. Is it something that you know they have incorporated to their lives and it’s meaningful for them. And you know I have a great love, great passion for history, so I try to and do that as I present on history. So, I think that’s its helpful for people as well.

Chris Cash: Okay, well, we’re going to take a short break here to hear from our sponsor but when we come back, we’ll be talking more with Steve Weidenkopf about Epic: The Story of Church History. This is the Catholic Spotlight.

[Break]

Chris Cash: And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight with Steve Weidenkopf talking Epic: The Journey through Church History. And you know before we get back into the Epic, I just have to mention we are on show 97 today. And so, we’re getting really close to 100 and we are trying to come up with something kind of special to do for show 100. We can’t – we haven’t quite figured it out yet, I guess we are kind of running low on time for figuring that out. But all of you loyal listeners out there be watching because we are intending to do something special for you.

Anyway, Steve, Can you share with us what some of the feedback you’ve gotten from the leaders of this program as well as the participants on just some of the excitements that’s out there about this?

Steve Weidenkopf: Yes, sure. You know some of the things that people have said to us is they’re – you know they are - just they are very excited about this product as a whole and in particular you know we’ve heard that men excited about this program. And that’s one of the things that we hope comes out from Epic. One of the effects of it is that is fable to generate more interest from men in growing in their faith and learning their faith. And so, it’s a great program for men’s group. Its – you know parishes that are looking to try to you know help men to become involved in their faith and learn their faith. Epic I think is a great tool for that, because its – you know history men love history, they love math’s, they love great battles, they love you know all those kinds of different stories; you know biographies have great men who’ve done very important things through our history of our church. So, men are very excited product. We heard that and you know I have got around in the country and I have given several one day seminars on Epic to try to – when I come in to a parish and I give a even shorter kind of overview of the history of the church, cover all the time periods, but we don’t focus on every major event or every person obviously, because its time. But in those one day event you know I’ve had people that express great excitement in their - you know very enthused by the product they want to delve in more and take the 20 week, 20 parts studies where they learn more about and through the church.

And so, I think there is a great hunger out there as well you know, people, Catholics are always – you know we hear in our media you know all the time, different events or historical events about and the church was involved and its just really – this represented and is characterized in our media and academia as well. And Catholics *normally* [20:28] know how to respond I think to those events, and social things like the crusades or the acquisition of Galileo. I mean, all these topics we cover in Epic with a - the great you know the great authentic catholic focus. So, we present the authentic story, but from a Catholic world view. So, it’s not one-sided but it’s very balanced. And a question we get most of the time and in our culture today is a - you know bias you know response to those events. So, the other side of the story is not necessarily cool, so people are excited about that. They - you know they come away when they hear me present about the crusades, the flowering I didn’t know, you know people during the crusades, how they actually saw what they were doing was a armed *cover image* [21:16] what you know the media tells us that it was this great global conquest of the holy land and they saw *** [21:23] by the Church. Or you know I had no idea that the reason why Galileo got in trouble with the church with his disobedience and the Pope, *** [21:30] he was instructed not to teach on write on a theory that he kept you know teaching and believing it was true.

So, it was – its very enlightening for people. They really walk away with a, I think a great sense of pride, the authentic pride in our faith in our church, which I think is you know really needed in our day and age. People need to know that the church is – you know it gets beat up an awful lot in our modern culture. But there are many things that we can point to in history of our church which he has done and that many people might not realize. So, when they take an Epic seminar, they take this 20 part of course, they really walk away with the greater understanding of the role the church had played in building up our modern culture and in our modern civilization. And they are filled with a sense of pride for that - with that, and they are giving the tools at which respond is some of the criticisms that our church always receives today.

Chris Cash: Now, if you had to pick one event in church history that was the most significant as far as the church shaping the world or giving a contribution to the world. What would that be?

Steve Weidenkopf: Now, that’s an excellent question. I mean, that’s also really kind of hard to you know down just picking one, one event, ‘cause there is so many to be honest you know in terms of contributions that the church has played a role to society. Well…

Chris Cash: We’ll have to get the study to get number 2 through 20 you know.

Steve Weidenkopf: Yes, exactly. You have to you know get the product and delve into more. But you know I think to – let me see, I’m just trying to think – I mean, I think I would pic just kind of – and I’m not *** [23:14] one event, but its one theme. And I think the theme that I was hit is you know just the missionary, that it’s just a faith is a whole. I mean, the church gave the world you know through the sending out of missionaries, the Christian faith. And the Christian faith has shaped you know our entire civilization, our entire culture of the whole world. Now, there is really not too many places in the world where missionaries haven’t gone and that was inspired and began by the church. You know and in Europe, all the things that Europe has gone over the years in terms of contributing to culture such as university education, and universities were founded by Pope or father and founded by the Popes. The church gave us the university education system. You know all the great art in architectural flowering of humanity, the allowing of you know creative mind of man to express himself fully was you know - was brought forward by the church and by the actions of the church. But you know those missionaries who went out into foreign land to places where they didn’t know the language in times – many times to hostile locations to spread the love of you know the gospel and the message to Jesus Christ. And you know its – you know the church continues the missionary efforts, but then even those who broke away from the church you know starting in the 16 century up to our present day, you know they are very involved in missionary efforts, but why? Who said – who gave that standard? Who gave that example of how to go about spreading the faith? It was Catholic Church.

And so, you know the great missionaries during the time period of missionaries, the Emperor Saint Boniface for example.

Steve Weidenkopf: You know all the great art in architectural flowering of humanity, the allowing of you know creative mind of man to express himself fully was you know - was brought forward by the church and by the actions of the church. But you know those missionaries who went out into foreign land to you know places where they didn’t know the language in times – many times to hostile locations to spread the love of you know the gospel and the message of Jesus Christ. And you know its – you know the church continues the missionary efforts, but then even those who broke away from the church you know starting in the 16 century up to our present day, you know they are very involved in missionary efforts, but why? Who said – who gave that standard? Who gave that example of how to go about spreading the faith? It was the Catholic Church.

And so, you know the great missionaries during the time period of missionaries and the Emperor, Saint Boniface for example who missioned to put his now modern day, Germany as well as up with another ones. I mean, he was a great man who left his homeland of England to come to the continent of Europe to go among these German barbarians *** [25:07] many of them were even cannibals and who participated human sacrifice, and he and his companions put their lives in allowing to spread the message of Jesus Christ. Well, in the *** [25:17] in result of that is these Germans are civilized. I mean, that’s the effect of the church’s missionary efforts. It’s the civilizing effect on humanity. So, and I’m not sure I answered your question you know with one particular event, but at least – it’s a thematic answer I think to that.

Chris Cash: Well, of course the other thematic thing that goes along with the civilizing of society is the moral code that permeates most of western culture in terms of the structure of the legal system even.

Steve Weidenkopf: Yes. Exactly. Yes, now you are right. I mean the – you know the moral code it comes from you know a living of life for virtues, if I want to think of them as the teachings of the church. I mean, it’s definitely an aspect of – a very important aspect of you know civilizing effect that the church has in spreading of ever through the work of the missionaries. And you know it’s unfortunately it’s - you know that moral code or that underpinning society as we know in our modern day, you know being attacked on all different levels. So, again, that’s why I think in a product like Epic its extremely important because it provides people with a history of and a background of you know how this came about, how our society was originally structured and even why. And so, when it’s under attack today, we have a better understanding of life support to defend it.

Chris Cash: Well, Steve we’re running little shy on time now. Were there any final things you want to share with our listener’s before we finish up?

Steve Weidenkopf: You know now just a few comments I guess on the – you know why it’s important to study church history. I think, again many people you know history as just as kind of a boring memorizations of names and dates and events that have no bearing on our lives, but really the study of church history is extremely important because it helps us grow closer to Christ that’s you know the foundation of any good catechetical program or any program that is designed to help when we are in faith. But it you know helps us grow closer to Christ by learning our history. It also helps us gain a better understanding in pride in our Catholic church you know what she has done throughout the world and the great – through the great men and women that God has called to participate in his divine drama, the history of the world. And it also you know helps us to understand and the modern day and our own day and age to understand the different you know events in the past and how – what happened in those events and how they influenced today. So, we have a better ability to understand those events that are happening to us today. So, there is one small example of that is the whole struggle against Islam today in terms of you know the terrorism that we are faced with in our society and how that greatly – the attacks of September 11, greatly changed our society and how we view the world. And you know many people were kind of – were shocked and rightly so in those events. But you know when you know your history, you know that the events of September 11 didn’t happen in a vacuum that there were many, many events in previous battles and engagements that Western civilization and even the church has - have engaged in dealing with Islam. And you know it keeps stretching all the way back and beginning of Islam and Islam in the 7th century. So, this is a long ongoing struggle.

So, if you know your history, the events of September 11 and all those happening in our modern world today in that one area, make much more sense. So, knowing our history gives us a sense of the world, the sense of where we’re going, because we know where we’d come. So, and then I just also want to add with, I think earlier we were mentioning, we are talking, you asked me the question about what was difficult to cut out of the program. And I talked about Alaric and the Sack of Rome, and I unfortunately placed Alaric and the Sack of Rome in our conversation in the wrong time period. I talked about it in terms of missionaries and the emperor that actually happened in the time period before conversion and councils. There was one other event in missionaries, the emperors that we did cut out because it was too – it was important, but it didn’t fit into the rest of the story, and that was *** [29:26] first in his restoration in the Roman *** [29:28] the Emperor – Empire. So, I got a little confused on our conversation there and I flipped those two events in the lines, but.

I think that this is a great and exciting product and I’m hopeful that people will get a lot of out it. And we know we’ll the story of the church, be excited about it and be able to study their you know history of their favorites saints, and what is going on in the history of the church when their saint – their favorite saint was alive. And really feel that this is an important study for you know – for the Catholic people. I think that its one in the world. Help them as I mentioned grow closer to Christ and to the church in a time and age when we desperately need to those things.

Chris Cash: And of course, in high school learning names and dates is all well and good, but when it come to on a college or adult on goings formation level, we really have to take the history that we learn and learn from that in a way that it puts us into action to help revitalize the church. We got to learn from some of these saints and martyrs and missionaries and evangelists that we study about and figure out how to go out and re-evangelize some of these areas that they originally came from.

Steve Weidenkopf: Yes, absolutely. I agree wholeheartedly. That’s one of the things that we end with an Epic is you know now that we’ve learned this whole story of our brothers and sisters and the faith they’ve come before us. You know the question now becomes so what is your role. Every person that God creates, you know he creates them before; he gives them a specific task, a specific role that they have to play in his divine drama and his story. And so, that’s you know what is it that you are called to do. So, we ask, invite people at the end of it and the study to pray about that and think about that, and to become active like you said to you know – and becoming active can be simply just you know knowing the story of the church and knowing the teachings of our church so that we can defend upon their attack and we can explain them to others and we can invite into a relationship with Jesus in this church. And that’s you know, we do that one person at a time and if enough people do it, then we can change our society and change our world to be vitalized, the church and our society and so.

Chris Cash: Thank you very much Steve for coming on the show and sharing with us about Epic. All of you who are interested in picking up a copy of Epic, head on over to Catholiccompany.com and check it is an awesome program and I think you definitely want to know more about it. Also, for all you fans of the spotlight go on over to podcast Alley give us some votes, get us up there on the listings, help us out a little bit there. Also give us some positive reviews over on iTunes; it helps to bring in more people to hear about the awesome new things that are out there. And we think all of you listeners out there for listening show 97, be watching for the upcoming events leading up the show 100.

Steve, thank you so much and God bless man.

Steve Weidenkopf: Thank you, Chris. I appreciate the time and bless to you as well.

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Transcript of Interview with Steve Weidenkopf about Epic: A Journey Through Church History. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

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Epic A Journey Through Church History at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1111300/Epic–Journey-Through-Church-History/

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Liturgy of the Hours at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1033343/Liturgy-Hours-Set-4-Leather/

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Chris Cash: Welcome to Catholic Spotlight. This is the Catholic Spotlight, the podcast where we talk about what’s new, cool and exciting in the Catholic marketplace. My name is Chris Cash, director of E-Commerce for catholiccompany.com, your source for all your Catholic needs.

And today in this Spotlight, we have William Michael; he is the director of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. Welcome William.

William Michael: Thank you.

Chris Cash: Now, today we’re going to talk a little bit about the classical Liberal – well, my tongue is little tied on that one. Classical Liberal Arts Academy, what Classical Liberal Arts Academy does, what it is, as well he had – Michael has a real – excuse me. William, you’ve really got me tongue tied today. With such a long name and such a long name for your organization. We’re going to be talking also with William about the Liturgy of the Hours because he has got a really awesome weekly guide to the Liturgy of the Hours that comes out at his Website.

So, let’s just start by talking about what is the Classical Liberal Arts Academy?

William Michael: Well, very simply, it’s the return to one is education that focuses on the cultivation and development of the soul rather than focusing wrongly on the body and on *** [01:43] but this life. It’s essentially a return what was defined as not only Catholic education, but also the education that was enjoyed by all religious men, all wise men of the past. Mainly, because of the focus and benefit for the soul.

Chris Cash: Now, is this a full curriculum online?

William Michael: It is a – yes, it’s a full curriculum. There is seminars, and when you look at the arts, you see only 7 subjects and it may look like when you think of all the subjects that are normally listed in the modern curriculum. But really most of the modern subjects are divisions of several liberal arts or addition of modern subjects like special sciences or even math’s and things like that. But it is a full curriculum.

Chris Cash: And what are the age ranges of the children that this caters to?

William Michael: Well, the Classical Liberal Arts is progressive and therefore really and early as a child can start better they’ll be, because they start on that progress. So, we have children as young as age 5 and 6, starting in the programs grammar and catechism. And, but at the same time we’ve got students starting at 15, 16 who are finding about it late. So, basically, there is no age limit as far how early the children can start, sometimes parents have to help the younger kids, but that’s really not a problem at all.

Chris Cash: Now, what was it that got you started doing this?

William Michael: Well, as an undergraduate student I studied classics and I – that as a 20 year old learning philosophy for the first time, thinking of theology for the first time, reading *** [03:27] for the first time. And would always concern me or what my question was, why did we learn that so late, why didn’t we study this at the high school or a middle school. It answered so many fundamental questions, it helped me with the language skills and things that were expected of me when I graduated high school, but there are things you never learned. And my question is always, you know why didn’t we learn these things earlier. They seemed to be so important but left out in modern curriculum.

Chris Cash: And how long have you been running the Classical Liberal Arts Academy?

William Michael: Well, I’ve been teaching in private academies for almost 10 years, so I’ve taught the courses in various ways in different arrangements, but the Classical Liberal Arts Academy itself was officially launched this past August.

Chris Cash: Okay, so are you getting a good response out of it so far?

William Michael: Absolutely. We had a confident enrollment and information request from all over the countries, a lot of countries. And really without any advertising at all, so the interest we’ve had and which has almost got us maxed out in terms of what we can handle has come with really nothing other than word of mouth advertising and just a word down through the Home School and Catholic Community.

Chris Cash: So, this is your first kind of radio interview then?

William Michael: Absolutely.

Chris Cash: Boy, get ready for the explosion now, all right.

William Michael: Let’s see.

Chris Cash: And of course, you confined the Classical Liberal Arts Academy and classicalliberalarts.com, if you’ve got trouble spelling that come over to Catholic Spotlight, I have a link in the show, no its along with the show. So, now, you mentioned enrollment, what comes along with an enrollment in the academy?

William Michael: Well, the classes in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy are based on the old Jesuit model that was used throughout history, and they set up schools all over the world. They didn’t have much time to resources or manpower, but they’ve been managed to educate 1000’s of kids. And we looked at their model and saw how technology could help us to imitate it and apply it today in a way that could actually serve kids all around the world. So, the courses are self teaching. Parents don’t need to plan lessons; they don’t need to teach the classes, they simply enroll the children. The enrollment gets hem a full years worth of studies. We manage their lessons; we provide their lessons through a student page, they have online. And they can simply printout their lessons to study them away from the computer throughout the year and take exams online or do the entire course online, and all the exams are automatically graded. So, we really take care of everything.

Chris Cash: Now, you also do some private instruction in the Charlotte area, correct?

William Michael: That’s correct, yes.

Chris Cash: But the majority of this is all just online and run by the parent in the home?

William Michael: That’s correct, yes. Supervised. We really don’t put that much of pressure on the parents. We know the parents generally aren’t said to teach the subjects in the Classical Liberal Arts curriculum, so really the parents are expected to supervise and we have the instruction.

Chris Cash: Now, you also have a live chat, Monday through Friday from 7:00 to10:00. What the – what – can you tell us a little bit about that?

William Michael: That’s correct. Sure. We expect the children and really encourage the children to be in touch with an instructor. Some of you know as the subject help them, so they have access. Mainly to me in the evenings between 7:00 to 10:00 for any questions they have and help they need in their work and that’s over to parents as well. So, rather than a parent or a child going isolated and not having anyone to ask a question, they can just get on and chat and get an instant response. We help them through their exams; we help them understand lessons and answer questions. And then, a lot of times there are just questions the kids would like to ask that come out of their lesions and we have fun answering those as well.

Chris Cash: Now, do you – is this live chat kind of like a group setting or is it just individual one on one consultation?

William Michael: It’s individual between a student or parent and their instructor.

Chris Cash: Okay. Well, was their anything else you wanted to share with our listeners about the Classical Liberal Arts Academy?

William Michael: Yes. No, I just invite them to visit the Society and read the articles that they are interested, because there is ton’s of information resources available that we get pretty good feedback on. So, I’ll just invite them to visit the site.

Chris Cash: All right. And I highly encourage everybody to at least check it out. Make sure that you find out what’s going on, ‘cause this really is an excellent program. And I think that you know even if you are not at home schooler; there is something that you get out of checking this out and maybe even getting involved with it little bit.

Do you have anybody in your curriculum who is not a home schooler or just using bits and pieces?

William Michael: Oh, sure, yes. We have people who – for example we have students who have taken year to in Latin and then stopped but wanted to continue, they can continue on *** [08:57]. But we have adults that are signed up for the basic grammar and catechism courses, because they never studied it and want to go back and try to get something in the Classical education. So, we got a full range of students, whether they are young children starting out full program or students in schools taking individual courses here and there and even adults are trying to catch by on an education that they missed…

Chris Cash: It sounds really awesome. So moving on, we’re going to talk now about the Liturgy of the Hours. And one of the great things about the Liturgy of the Hours is you know the church has two official prayers, one being the mass and one is the Liturgy of the Hours, sometimes also called the Divine Office. So, what – do you know anything about the history of where the Liturgy of the Hours came from?

William Michael: Oh, sure. When we look back into the Old Testament, we’ve see the life of David for example through songs. And we see often songs, references that he makes to praying at various hours and times. And there is one song in particular where he mentions praying 7 times a day. And as we continue to see the development of religious life in Israel, we get to the time of Jesus and we see that they had set hours of prayer. We have been praying into 3rd hour or the 6th hour or the 9th hour. And so, we see this tradition of hourly prayer all through the history of god’s people. And really it was simply continued on through the church and it has developed over the past several 100 years.

Chris Cash: Now, why is it that the Liturgy of the Hours or the divine house is the second official prayer of the church as apposed to something like the rosary or something that has a wider following?

William Michael: Well, I think that when most people think of the Liturgy of the Hours first time through, they were looking at it for benefits that that receive from it, they are looking at it as a form of private emotion and they sort of missed the big picture to really appreciate the Liturgy of the Hours. We need to step back and think of the Catholic Church throughout the world. For example Morning Prayer would begin somewhere in the east and will be repeated every hour through the entire day around the world. And if you think about it that way, you can imagine the church offering up this constant endless prayer, using the Liturgy of the Hours where they’re all united, offering of prayers throughout the world at all times with one voice. And it gives you this picture of what really is the universal catholic church expressing all of its cares and desires and prayers to god, all together throughout the world. And it allows us to become part of that and really unifies the church and makes prayer what it really should be to the catholic mean and women.

Chris Cash: And another thing that that really unites the Liturgy of the Hours is that all priests as well as I believe almost all religious nuns and brothers also are required to do it throughout the day.

William Michael: That’s correct.

Chris Cash: So, even if they are not going to mass everyday, a priest or a religious is committed to doing the hours.

William Michael: That’s right. And there is different requirement, some orders will do simply evening and Morning Prayer, but there are some that do the entire full course of hourly prayers.

Chris Cash: Now, I think one of the things that holds people back from the Liturgy of the Hours is that it is seen by many as just being really complicated, specially when you get the books and you’ve got these note cards that tell you where you have to turn now and then, you’ve got to flip here and then you got to go over here. And it’s back and forth and takes quite a bit of training at least initially to get started. Is it getting any easier or are there easier ways to manage getting started with the Liturgy of the Hours?

William Michael: No, it doesn’t only seem complicated, it is very complicated. And that’s what led me to really begin to develop a weekly guide, because there are other guides published and they are simple enough, but it still takes time to prepare, to learn how the books work, to learn where the prayers are and all that. And if you are already busy and you are trying to make time to pray and then you’ve got to add to that, the burden of finding prayers and getting lost in pages or thinking you are praying long prayers. You end up discouraged and so, that difficulty is definitely an obstacle for many people. And I believe that with the guide that we developed, it scripts the entire day of prayers for you with the page numbers in detail. So, rather than having to do any of that flipping around or trying to figure out where things are, you simply follow the guide and turn to the exact page in terms of – it takes all of that confusion there.

Chris Cash: Now, your guide is specifically for the larger set, what we call the 4 volume set.

William Michael: Correct. Yes.

Chris Cash: Okay, so and that of course is the more complicated harder to use set, but there are some simpler volumes available which may not go – may not include all of the Liturgy of the Hours, but at least included the basic parts of it than you need to have a beginning devotion.

William Michael: That’s right.

Chris Cash: And there are also several other helping books available to help somebody out who wants to learn more about it and get into it slowly. There is a much smaller one volume version that you can get, it’s called the Christian Prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours. It’s not by any means as extensive as the 4 volume set, but it’s a good place where you could get started.

William Michael: Well, sure but that’s Christian Prayer of the single volume only covers morning and evening prayer. That’s a little difference. On the office of reading which really the glory of the Liturgy is – the Liturgy of the Hours is the office of reading because it contains you know readings from church fathers and some scriptures for everyday of the year. So, to not pray office of reading will be to loose out on all of the church fathers reading that is there. So, you know that’s the reason why the 4 full volume instead is worth the money.

Chris Cash: So, how many times a day do you pray with the full Liturgy of the Hours?

William Michael: Well, we would start out with Morning Prayer and then there is a midday prayer, you know we pray around noontime and then there is evening prayer, we just pray around out dinner time. Then there is an office of reading which can be prayed anytime, but usually it’s prayed in the evening, and then there is a night prayer before bed. So, you look at it like that and there is 4 or 5 main times with prayer and there is couple of extras also. There is one for a mid morning prayer around 9 ‘o clock A.M. Then there is a mid afternoon prayer for 3:00 A.M. so. But those are optional, the mains who are always morning and evening. Office of readings can be done at anytime. And the goal is not to keep every single hour which really for most late people is not realistic, but its there where you can keep as many as possible. And its personally challenging to see just how many you can incorporate into your life *** [16:59].

Chris Cash: Well, you know when you say it’s something about, “It’s not realistic to be able to do that,” that brings to mind to me immediately the Muslim tradition where they have their 5 daily prayers and they all do it. You know I used to work in a secular company and there was a specific stairwell in the complex where there were some prayer mats set up underneath the stairs. And quite often I’d go by there and see the middle of the day prayers going on with some of my Muslim co-workers. Just because it’s not the easiest thing to do, it doesn’t mean that it can’t be done by someone in these times.

William Michael: Yes. Yes, I think that’s the long terms vision that we should have. We should have a vision where – we should look at the Muslim and admire the time that they have and look at ourselves and wonder where that is in our own lives. And the Liturgy of the Hours gives us a good goal, gives us a good vision of what’s possible. And in all reality as Americans, we tend to enjoy quite a bit of leisure. And that leisure can be converted from this sort of ideal time, bored time, watching TV time into real fruitful helpful prayers and devotions readings. And so, I think you are right, it is possible. And its good goal for us, maybe that’s the best value of it for us. Today is to see where things can be and making it our aim to get there.

Chris Cash: Yes. I mean, wouldn’t it be tremendous if we could raise our religious devotion to the point as a culture. Just like the Muslims at the – you know it would really re-evangelize our entire culture if we as Catholics could raise our religious devotions to that level.

William Michael: And it would sanctify our lives. Okay, the spiritual benefits of it alone are worthy of Catholics. We got to realize just how much information there is in terms of devotional reading, how much benefit there in praying a song, in praying all the hours. To have all of your thoughts and prayers and emotions and interest guided by this official guides from the church and see how that unites all Christians and brings everyone together and desiring all the same things, obviously would have tremendous influence on the growth of and life of the church.

Chris Cash: Now, the service that you do with the Liturgy of the Hours it’s a once a week e-mail, right?

William Michael: That’s right, yes.

Chris Cash: So, once a week you get an email and it basically outlines everything that you need to do with the larger volume set in order to pray the entire Liturgy as it is.

William Michael: That’s right.

Chris Cash: Simple enough.

William Michael: Yes, it’s a full script. It includes page numbers, it’s followed by the day you are on and the hour that you are praying and it’s guides you through the entire thing.

Chris Cash: I don’t think we could ask for it to be much simpler than that other than you just putting the whole thing on to the page and mailing in each week. Of course that might take a lot to print out.

William Michael: Yes, I am not going to try that.

Chris Cash: And are there any other resources for the Liturgy of the Hours?

William Michael: Well, actually in the Liturgy of the Hours in this run of the first volume, there is great articles written on the history, the purpose and how the – all the different parts of Liturgy work together. So, I would recommend by *** [20:50], he said just that first set of essays beginning up the Liturgy of the Hours series to do that, its got great stuff.

Chris Cash: Sounds good. So, we encourage everybody to at least check out and you can find the Liturgy of the Hours resource from the Classical Liberal Arts Academy over at classicliberalarts.com. There is a link on the front page going straight to it. We’ll also have a link over in our show notes in catholicspotlight.com. And we’re going to take a short break to hear from our sponsor, but when we come back we’ll be speaking more with William Michael, the director of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. We’re going to hear a little about his personal conversion story. This is the Catholic Spotlight.

[Break]

And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight with Mike – with William Michael, director of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. And we’ve just spent some talking about what the academy is, what it does, as well as the Liturgy of the Hours. Right now I wanted to hear more about your personal conversion story, ‘cause you know I have not heard much of it. But I am told it’s quite a doosey.

William Michael: Well, I started out well, I was baptized Catholic. Attended Catholic CCD classes until I was about 12 years old. I had my first communion. But when I was around 13, my mother went to work and she was really the spiritual influence in my life. And we stopped going to church, I stopped going to catechisms class and from the age 13 through high school, I really just sort of floundered. I played sports which was my whole life. And when I was 17, I met a girl in high school whose family is Evangelical and they invited me to church. I started to go to church with them and I always missed going to church, I always had something of a religious spirit or a sense in god’s presence in my life. But I just did nothing. And so, we started going to church and I think of studying quite diligently, studying the faith and when I went to college studying pre-med student and then converted the classics – that’s another long story. But started studying the classics and I was involved in Christian youth groups and all that sort of stuff.

I went to college, did great, earned all sorts of awards for academics, and then started teaching. I was, teaching in a private protestant school in North Jersey and I was teaching great books. And as I went through the class and was going through all the great books, I taught Saint Augustine’s confessions and I thought *** [24:46]. And loved really loved them. And as time went on, I had more and more questions, and what would happen was when my first child was born in 2000, I was in a Baptist church that didn’t practice baptism. And I wanted my son baptized and this was sort of a natural desire that I had was of course he should be baptized and so that led me to being saying that all the expressions of theology and baptism and that is and that. And finally, we joined the *** [25:17] l church, because we were friends with a *** [25:21] Rector. But the questions continued and the answers weren’t embarrassed, so we continued on and kept asking questions and reading and this and that. And as time went on I found more and more that I was getting all the best answers from catholic office, whether it was Saint Augustine or *** [25:40] or Thomas Aquinas, it seemed the best answers always came from Catholic office. But we were so thoroughly trained that Kabbalahism was anti-Christian and couldn’t possibly be true that we didn’t even consider an option. Until the time went on, the questions continued and we really had got through the point where we just thought that there was no place to go to find answers to our questions. And one night it was late, because one night we were up and I was just flipping through the channels and I came across Mother Angelica and I saw her on TV you know in a *** [26:20] and everything I was watching. And I just said there is something just so interesting about this women. And I didn’t think twice about it, I turned it off. Then a few weeks later, my wife and I were talking again and I said, “Why don’t we just go and visit a Catholic Church and see what its like. Let’s just go take the ride, we go to mass on Sunday and see.” I never had any bad experience in Catholic Church, so I wasn’t afraid. My wife, she was almost terrified to go because of all the things she was taught. But I finally got her going there and we went. And again, I felt perfect and comfortable and enjoyed it. And at the end of the mass, I looked over at wife and then she was actually really upset moved by it all that how beautiful it was, how wonderful everything was and how – and she had a sense that she had been lied to all her life about what Kabbalahism was and the Catholic Church was. And we decided to convert shortly thereafter, that was *** [27:19] before.

I had been given the job at the time, I was actually writing great books program being published by a publisher. He wasn’t too happy when I decided to convert to Kababalahism. But we gave that up and moved to North Carolina and have been the- happy members of the church ever since.

Chris Cash: Well, thank you for sharing that with us. It certainly gives us some insight to why you have had such a fascination with the classical education as well.

William Michael: Well, I saw them leave me back into the church. And I think there are a lot of people going to that same sort of thing, people who are receiving the classical education, even in Protestant schools. And that classical education is leading them into truth and leading them into questions. That really the answers are only found from the Catholic Church doctors. And I think that that’s going to be a trend that we see a increasing or more of time in the future.

Chris Cash: What was the most influential thing that you read in the doctors and in your classical training that really made you stop and go huh and investigate the Catholic Church more?

William Michael: Well, it really was – it was the sort of the other way around. It wasn’t so much that what I saw in the church bothers helped me to see new things. It was that the things that I had believed as a protestant were not there. That was the main thing. It was concern that I had. For example in a Baptist church where no infants are baptized. I tried to back and meet the church fathers where infant baptisim is assumed. Those sorts of blessings where challenging ones for me. And its just – as it went on the question continue and you then you get – you have to get in the questions of the church authority, or the nation and all sorts of things like that. And the more that those questions are opened up and you look back through church history, you just find that there is no other denomination or group that can have the continuity with what’s going on ever since the beginning of the Christian Church, except for the Catholic Church. So, it’s more of what is not present in the Church fathers that what is present that helped me to realize that I needed to return to Catholic Church,

Chris Cash: Well, William you have done a great service to us and hopefully, are also doing a great service to all the people who are coming to study in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. Well, anything you wanted to finish up on?

William Michael: No, I just like once again to invite people to visit the site and read the resources and check things out. There is some other need stuff on there too, its not just intended for students, its not all academic. There is a guide who like prayers on there, where we walk students through all the Latin prayers that are used n mass and explain them help each other out. Understanding you know how they are pronounced, that sort of thing. There is resources for home school parents, there is resources just on the history of education and curriculum development and all that sort of stuff generally the parents are interested in. And then you got the Liturgy Hours guide and another resources were developed. There is tons of stuff online; I would just really like the people to check that all out.

Chris Cash: Well, good deal. I hope that everybody will go on head on over check that out over at classicalliberalarts.com. Make sure to also come on over to catholicspotlight.com. Check out some of our other shows, if you haven’t listened to some of our older shows yet. Also, please make sure to vote for us over at pod cast alley. It helps to bring new people in as well as to leave comments about us, positive ones that is. Positive comments for us over in iTune store and always, always, always helpful if you got a blog or a Website to just drop us a link on your side bar, man, that just – it helps more than you know. And for the Catholic Spotlight, this is Chris Cash *** [31:34] say thank you for listening. And I hope to hear you all back again net week. William, thank you for coming on and God bless.

William Michael: God bless. Thank you.

———————————

Transcript of Interview with William Michael about the Liturgy of the Hours and the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Liturgy of the Hours at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1033343/Liturgy-Hours-Set-4-Leather/

View the Transcript

Vote for us at Podcast Alley - Please vote for us every month to help us get our show in front of more people

Items Discussed in this podcast:

Liturgy of the Hours four volume and one volume sets.

Classical Liberal Arts Academy

Liturgy of the Hours Resources

You are also welcome to call in questions and comments to our voice-mail at 206-426-1207. Be sure to join our Catholic Spotlight Facebook Group where we send out announcements about upcoming interviews. You will be able to call in your questions for our future guests. You might just be on our next show.

Subscribe to our feed | Subscribe with iTunes
Subscribing to our feed lets you know when new shows are available
so you will never miss any of our exciting guests.

A VERY special thanks to Dave Miller for providing the awesome music in this podcast.

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Donate to the Missionaries of the Poor at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/mop

———————————

Welcome to the Catholic Spotlight.

Chris Cash: This is the Catholic spotlight, the show where we’ve talked about what’s new, cool and exciting in the Catholic marketplace. My name is Chris Cash, director of e-commerce for catholiccompany.com, your source for all your Catholic needs. And today in the spotlight we have Peter Tonon, who is a supporter of the missionaries of the poor. He’s a lay supporter, not formally affiliated. But, we wanted to talk today about what is the Missionaries of the Poor and what is it that they do, as well as Catholic companies’ recent involvement in helping to support this awesome apostolate. So, Peter, welcome to the show.

Peter Tonon: Thanks, Chris.

Chris Cash: So, Peter, can you tell us what is the Missionaries — or what is it that they do?

Peter Tonon: Sure. Missionaries of the Poor are a Catholic brotherhood that was started almost 30 years ago by a Jesuit priest by the name of Father Richard HoLung, who at the time was a university professor at Boston College, University of Scranton and University of West Indies, recently when he went back to Jamaica where he was raised. And it is a brotherhood, which is — which its mission is to provide joyful service to the Lord, living a life of beatitudes and service to the poor and needed throughout the world, it’s about the best way I can explain it. Their mission, so to speak, is to preach the crucified Christ and particularly bring good news to those poor and suffering, imitating the joyful service of Christ in the cross. It’s really quite a — as I’ve explained it to some of your listeners, it would kind of a male version of Mother Theresa or — that’s the best way I can explain it.

Chris Cash: That’s a good way to explain it, I think. Now, Father HoLung, what was it that got him started in his work to create the Missionaries of the Poor?

Peter Tonon: He’s really — it’s an amazing story of the activity of the Holy Spirit and, I’ll try to be as economic as possible without giving too long a story. But, his parents emigrated from China. He’s Chinese born and his parents migrated to Jamaica, some 60 years ago, when he was a young boy. It’s been a little over 60 years ago and mainly for a better opportunity of — in economic life. Apparently there were a number of emigrates from China into Jamaica, that time it’s through out the Caribbean and they were Hindus and Buddhists, really mostly what they were. His parents being good Chinese parents, everything was — they sacrificed everything they could so their children can get a top rate education and like there are many other places in the world, the best place to do that was in the Catholic schools. So, they sacrificed and their kids all went to Catholic Schools, Sister of St. Francis was an order and was operating in Jamaica at the time. And, when he was in high school, he accepted Catholicism and became a convert to Catholicism.

And he realized very shortly thereafter he had a calling, a vocation to the priesthood. He went to a Jesuit high school in Jamaica and from there, he went off to Boston College and began his seminary studies, where he eventually received his PhD in Humanities and also was ordained a priest in the Jesuit order. He taught at Boston College for many years and University of Scranton for many years. And then, he was — he came back to Jamaica, 30 years ago or so. And he was teaching at the University of the West Indies at the time. And, interesting there was a kind of an elderly community home that was government sponsored, that was near the university operating. And at the time, I think for Father HoLung being away from the island for so long, he couldn’t believe the radical changes he had seen in the quality of life in his island. Michael Manley at the time was, you know, running a socialist government which came to power in Jamaica and radically transformed the way life operated there in and I think in terms of Father’s perspective, there was a dramatic increase in the poor, the work — the ranks of the poor.

In the time, there was this elderly home next to the burned down and — all the residents were displaced and the government did nothing about it. And, day-by-day, he’d go to his office at the University of West Indies and he just couldn’t take anymore and basically he got his call and he took a young boy by the name of Father O’Brien who was 17-years-old at the time and they just started picking up people from the streets And here’s some 26, 27 years later, they’re a Catholic brotherhood with missions all over the world and some 500 almost 600 brothers that are either professed or are in the process of being professed. And, with the radical growth in the brotherhood, there’s become a need for more priests, so, they’re in the process of forming about another dozen or so priests, in various seminaries around the world, also. So — interesting, really interesting activity of the Holy Spirit working through him. And, thought he was called to life in Academia and really relinquished everything he owns and became the servant of the poor.

Chris Cash: And, currently the Missionaries of the Poor have their mother house in Kingston, Jamaica. They also have operations in India, the Philippines, Haiti, Uganda and Kenya. So, they are truly spread around.

Peter Tonon: Yes. Actually the mother house is in Jamaica, which was where the first apostolate was. There are now, in addition to the mother house, where there is novitiate where there are some 200 brothers now. There are five apostolic that serve, let’s just say, physically-mentally challenged and heavily impoverished residents of Kingston. There’s a home for young children, there’s home for women, there’s a home for AIDS — AIDS patients. So, there are five apostolic in Kingston. About 15 years ago, they opened their first apostolate in Cebu which is in the Philippines — they have two apostolic in the Philippines now, they have two in India, they have one in Uganda for about seven or eight years and recently opened Nairobi, Kenya about three years ago, they had one in Haiti, a town called Cap Haitian which is the second largest city in Haiti. They had that one for about 12 years. And, now actually they have an apostolate in the United States in a little town called Monroe, North Carolina, which is about 15 miles south and west of Charlotte.

Chris Cash: Now, we had hoped to have Father HoLung on to talk with us about what’s going on with the order as well but he got caught up in a crisis in Jamaica trying to help keep abortion from coming to the country. So, unfortunately, we weren’t able to have him on the show today. But Peter has had an involvement with the Missionaries of the Poor for a while. You want to share a little about what you as a lay person have been doing to try to help them?

Peter Tonon: Sure. I first got — I first became involved when I heard a Father preach a homily in our parish house some eight or nine years ago. I’d say probably in the mid 90’s, early 90’s to mid 90’s he started to spend more and more time evangelizing the nature of his mission to the United States, particularly in South Florida and eventually to Atlanta and then to Charlotte. And we had a deacon in our parish that brought whoever was interested in going to serve, to go down there for a week and serve with them at their mother house in Kingston. And, you know when I heard him speak, it was just — clearly there was something there was different about how this man spoke and what he said. And my life at the time had been, let’s just say, from my early college years I have a calling to serve the poor in whatever way possible. Homeless shelters or parishes that we’ve had throughout the various places we’ve lived. And we eventually made a trip there in 2004 and it really — seeing what they do. And seeing the lives of these young brothers choose in joyful service to the poor is just really a real witness in authentic apostolic action. And to us it was really the fulfillment of what the church, the Universal Church really stands for in the mission of Christ from the cross in serving this poor, in a life of beatitudes.

And, almost everyone who we’ve met, and we’ve met over hundreds of people there’ve been — over a hundred, two, three, maybe even four hundred people that have spent either time in the missions had come back to their own neighborhoods and their life is radically transformed. And it’s a beautiful thing to witness so — it just kind of, as I was explaining to the superior here in Monroe, once the spirit calls, it’s just something that won’t let go of you. And no matter how hard or how many things you’re asked to do or called to do, it’s just something that we can’t let go of. It becomes more and more of an integral part of our everyday living from our Catholic faith than ever before. And no matter how much you might want to kind of take a break from it every now and then, the spirit doesn’t let us. So it was my first trip to Cap Haitian about four years ago. And we’re sitting there with Father happened to be there because they were consecrating the new chapel on the mission grounds. And it was a pretty big-to-do. The archbishop was there and there must have been 500 or 600 people from the town and priests from all over the place and various sisters, missionaries there. And the next day we got to spend some time with Father, we were just having conversation with him. And what we realized was just building the Cap Haitian mission was not really what we were called to do.

The Missionaries of the Poor operate in crisis mode everyday of their lives, wherever they are in the world, because as mendicants. And is completely relying on the Holy Spirit for everything they have - clothing, food, buildings, shelter, medicine, whatever it may be. Given the places they are operating, which are some of the most — poorest places that have abject poverty in the world. And now their mission is adjacent to a garbage dump. And slowly but surely, more and more kids who actually live in the garbage dump are living in this mission and going to school in this mission. And so they really are reaching out to truly the poor, the wounded, the oppressed throughout the world, the ones who are forgotten by society. And it’s really — it just, when you actually see the authentic apostolic action live and in person, it radically transforms, you know your thinking and you come back home into our comfortable towns and our comfortable neighborhoods. It’s a real call to apostolic action ourselves. So — but it’s just hard to describe why we’re involved other than simply it’s the Holy Spirit’s calling so….

Chris Cash: Now, you’ve made several trips to help them out right?

Peter Tonon: Well, it’s interesting you say that, you ask that question that way. You know, when you go — when one takes a trip there, it serves in them. And you would stop, you live the life of the brothers, life of a contemplative in action, as they like to call themselves, a semi-monastic. And you think you’re going to “help those people you’re serving but you — what you quickly realized is they’re the ones helping you. The residents that are — reside and are cared for in the apostolate of the Missionaries of the Poor throughout the world, they have the brothers to take care of them everyday and there cannot be a greater caretaker in one’s life, no matter what your needs are than having apostles of Christ caring for you in the most loving, charitable and authentic way possible. So those people are just fine because they are under the care of God in the most beautiful and charitable way. And what you learn quickly is you didn’t they help yourself, they’re the ones that have the effect on you. They’re the ones that live a life of spiritual poverty where between the brothers and the residents, they’re completely dependent and relying on the graces of God for every form of their existence.

And there’s nothing else in their way. So, I go there to edify my faith in life and to grow in faith. And, I remember my first time there was one of the other lay people on the trip said “I come here to learn how to love” and it’s something that stuck with me ever since because it’s true. It’s true, there we can really truly learn how to love like Christ loved, to heal the wounds of the sick, to unchain the chains of the imprisoned. It really is a beautiful apostolate where we can really learn and walk in footstep of the crucified Christ. And for His blessed poor, He’s blessed poor is the ones he came to serve, the sinners, the poor throughout the world. And you really see the universal church in action in a really, really intimate and beautiful way. So — but when you quickly realize you go there not to help them, that they were actually helping you, it then becomes a necessity to go often because the more you come back into this third world that we live in, a world influenced heavily by the prince of the world and the prince of darkness. Only then can you return and go and spend time with where Christ operates, you know, most charitably. And so we go for our souls, we go to edify our Catholic life and to really witness and really see that as we all fight our way around this, you know, the weight of the world and the influences of world and the influences of society. You go to see and you get to rejoice in how watching Christ operate in the most beautiful and authentic way possible in the midst of, you know, Saint Paul says a twisted and depraved generation.

So it’s a wonderful, it’s a working retreat in its most authentic form. But what I realized and my wife realized and I, is this is a place that — it’s so much more about raising money, it’s so much more about — because they do need this, of course they need funds. Because funds allow them to go into different parts of the world with the invitation of many bishops, who by the way are not able to provide them really anything to get them started. I mean it’s wonderful that all these bishops are inviting them to do work there but unfortunately, most of these bishops are in impoverished diocese themselves. They don’t have land. They don’t have buildings. They don’t have monasteries that someone can just walk into. So again, as mendicants, they rely on the good graces of those where they are operating and those in places like the United States and Canada and Great Britain. So they can, you know, use, provide funds that can allow them to do their work. And once you see those funds put in action — and I have this conversation with Father in Haiti that time about how — I asked him, I said you know “If you ever are interested in someone really leading an effort to raise funds, let me know.” And he flatly rejected it, he flatly said “No. No. We have a different mission. And as much as you know I know your heart is sincere. No. We’re just going to continue on our way of doing as we’ve done, which is basically beg.”

So — but there was a project he called me in about a year and a half later, I think once he realized that I had spent enough time in formation with many of the brothers around the world and understood more the cares in what they do and how they do it and why. I offered to see if I could raise money to build a mission, the second mission they had in the Philippines, in Naga. And it was a great exercise for me because I ended up involved in many, many Catholic “fund raising” options opportunities, particularly here in Charlotte where, we’ve been in two parishes and being a new — being an area which is, you know, growing in Catholicism to Catholic campaigns to build parishes. And — which is something completely different. So — but, you know, it was very successful because the response from some of the people I knew around the country, once they understood where I had been and what I had done, it’s amazing how the Holy Spirit operated and then the size of some of the gifts were just astounding. And with those funds and help of some other people, we were able to send funds to the Philippines, to India to buy land for a second mission in an area where Christian churches are being burned everyday, to send money to buy land in Nairobi for the second Africa apostolate. So — and you start seeing you know, the fruits of the Holy Spirit. So, that’s what the more and more involvement with many different things involved in around the world. And eventually to having a lot of participation in the growth of the mission here in North Carolina, at the invitation of our bishop, bishop [ph] Jugas.

Chris Cash: And of course the Catholic Company has recently become involved in trying to help Father HoLung and the Missionaries of the Poor by committing to fund raising for the purpose of sending them catechistical materials. As of our last count, we have sent them over 2700 Catechisms, over 240 bibles, 400 prayer books, over a hundred rosaries and this is an ongoing effort through Catholic Company. So if anybody is interested in helping to provide these materials for Father HoLung, these are all things that Father HoLung has specifically requested of us. That you can find an area in at CatholicCompany.com on donating to Missionaries of the Poor with a list of all the materials that Father HoLung has requested.

Peter Tonon: Well actually, Chris, you know the genus of this was really came from the Catholic Company. When Father was in Charlotte a few years ago, he had an activity to visit the Catholic Company which I thought was an outstanding opportunity for the good Catholic that he is to see that there’s something this beautiful that is actually operating in the United States. Because of course, being someone who has travelled the world and actually lived in the States for many years, of course to see if — he understands the importance of Catholicism in the United States because he feels this is — America is the last stand against Satan. You know, the church in Europe has faltered, the church around it. And America is the place where we can make a stand against Satan. So, if I bought him the Catholic Company, he was really, really edified and overjoyed that actually something like this really existed.

He really had no clue. And — but it was really the initiative of the Catholic Company that came up with the idea of sending materials. Father really didn’t request it, it was something that the principal of the Catholic Company and the employees there, I think responded to and what was said initially was penny Catechisms. It was sent to Jamaica, and eventually was sent to the Philippines and to Africa. And one thing, you know I think, one of the challenges when a lay person is speaking on behalf of the Missionaries of the Poor, it can be — it can tend to just focus solely on service to the poor. But there are also professed brothers, they’re evangelists. They teach and preach and live the faith throughout the world.

And they bring the good news to those who typically would not have the opportunity to hear the good news. And what better way to hear the good news than actually with a penny Catechism that they can actually go into the poor, in the villages of the poor, or teach the residents in their own apostolate the faith in a way that they normally wouldn’t see it. And, by the way, when every other Christian denomination is “intangible” in the same way, you know, so when the archbishop of Jamaica calls and calls Father and is overjoyed when he — because it’s parishes in some poor areas of Jamaica. And saw a penny Catechism and said to the pastor “Where did you get this?” and they said “Well from Missionaries of the poor”. Where do they get them? They get them from the Catholic Company in the United States as a donation. He sees the Holy Spirit and sees the teaching and preaching of the saints come to life to a booklet which is very important. So, it’s a lot more than just service to the poor, it’s the building up of the universal church and starting with the poorest of the poor, who normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to hear the good news, so — Yes, they serve the poor. They’re serving our Lord. They’re serving our Lord by living the faith and teaching the faith. So I think that’s something that those of your listeners who have contributed last summer to that request should know that it’s evangelism in the purest and truest sense also.

Chris Cash: Right. And the request to help out has not ended. It started last summer but it is an ongoing effort and we are continuing to take donations for the Missionaries of the Poor. Anybody who’s interested in making a donation can go over to CatholicCompany.com. And on the side bar you’ll see a “donate to the Missionaries of the Poor” link. And we are — what we do is as the donations come in for the specific items, we will put those items together on a palette and then when we get to a certain number of things on the palette then we put them together to be shipped directly to Father HoLung for use in whatever he sees fit. We have even recently started collecting donations of liturgies of The Hours booklets for all of the young seminarians that he has in formation right now.

Peter Tonon: That’s right and the more brothers that come — it’s a very — It’s important for your listeners to understand how these young brothers are being formed. The young brothers throughout the world that answer the call usually hear it from a parish visit from one of the brothers or priests that live in that country. If those young people are interested, those young men are interested, they come and spend usually a couple weeks in one of the missions and actually see what goes on. And they go home and they’re invited to come back and they spend a year in that mission working, just working and praying. They live the life of monastic order, praying The Hours five times a day. And so when you have, you know, two or three or four hundred brothers around the world, in all these formations, there’s two or three hundred sets of, roughly 175 or 180 a dollar document that ‘s needed. So and then once they spent a year in service, a year of work, they usually return to the mother house, they usually go to the mother house in Jamaica where they spend two years in the mission, which is essentially continue their work in the apostolate and also study.

[Ph]Ken and Log studied in the faith and then at that time, they make their first profession of vows, which is after three years. And then which — they continue their formation, schooling and work for another two years before they make their next profession of vows in five years. They make their final profession of vows at ten years. So, it’s — in addition to the actual work they do, in the apostolate caring for the poor, they also spend a lot of time in formation. And of course, there are others that are called to be priests. And there’s a number of generous contributors, Franciscan University sends the online materials for the further early philosophy and most of the brothers spend time in theological training at the oratory in Toronto, for where they’ll spend their theology and then they’ll spend a year in a seminary, usually in the Philippines. There’s a seminary there in the Philippines which have been very gracious to them. And then they spend, you know, go six months back in Jamaica and then they’re ordained in Jamaica. So I think there’s now — there’s probably 10 or 11 priests now, there’s another dozen or so in formation right now in seminaries. So — and that’s going to be a great advantage to them as they — for their community and for the residents they serve and for the communities they’re serving. So, because many places don’t have priests where they go

Chris Cash: Absolutely. Is there anything else that you wanted to share with our listeners before we finish up the show here?

Peter Tonon: Sure, real quick, you know. I guess maybe to put a plug in for — it’s fantastic that the Holy Spirit has called them and the invitation that they *** [00:29:31] in Australia, they have an apostolate in United States now which is certainly a little different for them. But it’s really a time to, you know we do believe that this is really an answer in call of the Holy Spirit. A time where a lot of people are really struggling economically and — but it’s an opportunity where the brothers feel that they can — they can be instruments and agents for higher calling, so to speak. And even saying what they have done in the small communities, only three or four brothers here right now, what they’re doing is really, really just so a beautiful, beautiful witness to that and attestation to what our church is. So please pray for them, we’re in the process of finding a monastery for them and an apostolate building where they can at least start with a kind of an outreach ministry of service to the poor and underemployed and unemployed here and I tell you predominantly immigrants and poor area of North Carolina.

And it’s wonderful that I’m in the States and it’s a great, great testament to really be obliged with the vibrant life of the universal church around the world. So — and if people want to learn more about the mission, you can plug their website and they love visitors. There’s — they have — in the mother house there’s a place for everyone to stay and you can go and spend as much time as you want living and understanding the life of the Missionaries of the Poor. And also you can look *** [00:31:15] Father, and there’s a couple different series, *** [00:31:17] which you can see I believe on Saturday afternoons, where you can hear Father speak and also see some live clips of some of the places that they serve. So…

Chris Cash: And what is their website?

Peter Tonon: It’s www.missionariesofthepoor.org

Chris Cash: And we will also make sure to include a link to that over on this show notes, just in case anybody has problems finding it.

Peter Tonon: I can tell you Chris, on behalf of Father and all the priests, because I’ve made many trips during the last year. They are extremely grateful for the generous donations and the thoughts of your listeners and customers of the company because it’s really — it’s had a profound effect on the people they serve so…

Chris Cash: Well, thank you Peter for coming on and taking this opportunity to share with us and with our listeners about what the Missionaries of the Poor are and what they’re doing around the world. Please, all of you out there listening if you have a chance, do go over and visit missionariesofthepoor.org as well as stop by Catholic Company and at least consider leaving a donation there for some of the materials that help in their evangelization out in the field, especially if you — we would love to see some people actually go out to Jamaica or some of the other fields, places and have an experience out with learning and helping in the field.

Peter Tonon: It’s highly recommended.

Chris Cash: And thank you very much Peter.

Peter Tonon: Thanks Chris, God bless. I appreciate it.

Chris Cash: God bless, bye.

———————————

Transcript of Interview with Peter Tonon about the Missionaries of the Poor. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Donate to the Missionaries of the Poor at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/mop

View the Transcript

Vote for us at Podcast Alley - Please vote for us every month to help us get our show in front of more people

Items Discussed in this podcast:

Donate to Missionaries of the Poor

You are also welcome to call in questions and comments to our voice-mail at 206-426-1207. Be sure to join our Catholic Spotlight Facebook Group where we send out announcements about upcoming interviews. You will be able to call in your questions for our future guests. You might just be on our next show.

Subscribe to our feed | Subscribe with iTunes
Subscribing to our feed lets you know when new shows are available
so you will never miss any of our exciting guests.

A VERY special thanks to Dave Miller for providing the awesome music in this podcast.

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Paul in a Basket CD is available at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-gifts/5003025/Paul-Basket-Musical-Adventure-Kids-CD/

———————————
Chris Cash: This is the Catholic Spotlight, the show where we talk about what’s cool and exciting in the Catholic marketplace. I’m your host, Chris Cash, director of e﷓Commerce for catholiccompany.com, your source for all your Catholic needs.

Chris Cash: And today in the spotlight, we have Rob Evans, also known as the Donutman. Welcome Rob.

Rob Evans: Hey Chris, thanks! Great to be here.

Chris Cash: Now Rob, you got an excellent new product out called Paul in a Basket. Can you tell us just a brief overview of what is Paul in a Basket?

Rob Evans: Absolutely! I just love Paul and I don’t think there’s anyone who’s ever set foot in a church or cracked open a bible that hasn’t been impacted by this great saint’s life and I wanted little children and their mommies and their daddies to meet this man in a fun and memorable way so I used my music and storytelling abilities to bring Paul in a Basket to life. Paul in a Basket, the title refers to Paul being lowered down the wall of Damascus in a basket. It’s kind of an exciting story and I happened to put it to music.

Chris Cash: Now, first off, I guess before we really dive into the Paul in a Basket, why are you known as the Donutman?

Rob Evans: Oh! Well, for 25 years now, I’ve been singing to moms and dads and kids all about Jesus and I came up with a donut repair idea whereby I put on a colorful costume. I’ve got a sidekick named Duncan, the talking donut and at the end of every concert, every video and virtually every CD I’ve made, we talked about how God fills up that empty place in us with His love, with His Word, with the sacraments and hence I became the world’s first donut repairman. I fill the hole in the donut with a round pastry donut hole, hence I am a donut repairman!

Chris Cash: Is Duncan there with you today?

Rob Evans: No, he is at McDonald’s with his girlfriend Doughnette.

Chris Cash: Doughnette, that’s…

Rob Evans: So, in other words, that’s my stock answer, Chris. You have no idea how many kids ask me, “Where’s Duncan?” And I always say, “He’s with his girlfriend Doughnette.” But don’t Éclair she’s Danish. I’ve got lots of puns so don’t get me started.

Chris Cash: Well maybe Duncan will come visit us someday on the show.

Rob Evans: Oh he would love that.

Chris Cash: So, this Paul in a Basket was written mainly because this is the year of Paul and of course, it’s going to be a great resource even after the year of Paul is over. Do you want to talk a little bit about the process that you went through in putting this together?

Rob Evans: Sure. I was inspired when I realized that Pope Benedict XVI had declared this to be the year of Paul. I thought, “Wow, I’ve got a lot of songs I’ve already written about his life.” And I started to pray about it and I started to see a pattern by which Paul’s adventures actually produced his messages. For example, we have a little segue that is, the way the album works, the way Paul in a Basket works is that you’ll have children be the storytellers, narrators, if you will, a reader. And they tell a little bit about Paul’s life and then we hear a song about one of his adventures, an adventure song followed by a reflection of “Gee, I wonder how that adventure affected his teaching?” So obviously, his life produced his message. So we’ve got a song on the CD about the earthquake then we talk about how Paul was worried about the jailer. “Hey, Mr. Jailer, don’t kill yourself. We are all still here. The Lord we serve has opened the doors. It is He whom you should fear.” And then we go from there into a song about the fruit of the Spirit which is another important aspect of Paul’s life. So half of the songs on Paul in a Basket are adventure songs and the other half of the songs are his teachings, all about being born from above, being the new creation, the fruit of the Spirit, and the finale of Paul in a Basket is 1 Corinthians 13, faith, hope, love but the greatest is love.

Chris Cash: So, Paul in a Basket can be a nice CD to listen to in the car or while you’re going to bed but it’s also has the potential to actually be a production that is put on by children at a church or some kind of a gathering as an educational tool.

Rob Evans: Absolutely. The simple CD, there’s a CD that sells for about $9.95 and that’s the one that you would listen to at home for I call it the kids and family CD. But for twenty bucks, you can get the director’s CD which gives you a director’s package which tells you how you can create costumes and rehearse the children in a way so that they recreate Paul’s adventures. For example, we have a song about the shipwreck and while we’re doing it, we have blue and white sheets rippling across the gymnasium floor, children shake them up and down while Paul and Silas or whomever are rocking back and forth in the shipwreck. So this is a play as well that can be simply reproduced and presented for your kids at the gymnasium or for a family night. Definitely. Like you said, there’s two ways to listen to Paul in a Basket. One, just as a family and then the other one, it can be performed live.

Chris Cash: Now my kids’ been listening to this and they’re pretty enthused about it as well, even my daughter who says she doesn’t like it, she goes around the house singing of the songs when you’re not looking so…

Rob Evans: Ah! So well, that’s your stubborn child, right?

Chris Cash: Yeah, absolutely.

Rob Evans: Oh yes, I have one of them too. No dad, no dad, and then she says yes and you like this music? No, no, no but they do. Well, that’s good that even the stubborn ones like it. That’s great.

Chris Cash: Well, let’s jump in and present some of this music so that people can have a feel of what Paul in a Basket is like when they pick it up and are able to do this as part of a church presentation, so…

Music: Such adventure, such faith, such love, such grace! We are here to remember and celebrate a great saint.

Chris Cash: And of course, that would be the way that Paul begins, it’s nice narration going into the first song and each…

Rob Evans: Yeah, we…I’m sorry but that’s a great way to start it out because it gives you a taste of how say a sixth-grade child can be a reader and that girl happened to be a sixth grader and so we have them tell the story and then the next song is called My Name is Paul and it is ostensibly that the whole audience is invited to pretend to be Paul and so that’s why this song is called My Name is Paul.

Chris Cash: Right. And what’s nice is that in between each song, there is this narration to kind of keep the story going and explain what is going on in each of the songs.

Rob Evans: Right.

Music: And I am happy because when I am weak, then I am truly strong. I’ve been shipwrecked. I’ve been shipwrecked. Been in prison, been in prison…

Chris Cash: And of course, that’s the My Name is Paul song. Very nice march, gets everybody up and going and excited right away at the beginning.

Chris Cash: Yeah and it is basically derived from 2 Corinthians 11th chapter where he enumerates all of the things that he has suffered but he still keeps his eyes on the Lord. So it’s a great overview of Paul’s life just before he enters the end game that is, when he is imprisoned. So what we’re actually going to do now is start with the way Paul’s adventure begins on the road to Damascus, if you recall, he was an enemy of the faith and he even helped hold the ropes of those who killed Steven. So this next song is called Saul, Saul, Why Do You Hurt Me? And it’s the story of how God spoke to Ananais and told him to come and pray for this believer named Paul.

Music: Saul, Saul, Saul why do you hurt me? Saul, Saul, Saul why do you hurt me? Saul, Saul, Saul why do you hurt me, why do you hurt me Saul? Ananais, now don’t be late. Go down to the street named straight. There’s a man who lies and waits who’s blind and cannot see.

Chris Cash: And of course, the music is just really well done and very captivating, very full, and you can play this music either with the words and music that you’re hearing here or you can play just the music track as well.

Rob Evans: Yeah, we actually, on the CD present it twice, one with the spoken stories and then just the songs so you can find your own way to enjoy it. Well, the next song is now a reflection. So now, we’re starting into the pattern of Paul in a Basket and that is, we just heard an adventure song, Saul, Saul, Why Do You Hurt Me? And it’s when God blinded him and sent Ananais to pray for him. Well, the reflection is, how did Paul feel when the scales of blindness fell off of his eyes? Surely Paul never forgot how wonderful it was when he was born from above. So if any man be him Christ, he’s a new creation, for this particular song, when we do it live, we have little children dressed up as butterflies flying around the stage celebrating being born from above. This is called the New Creation.

Music: If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. He’s a new creation. He’s a new creation. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; he’ll always pass away in both the new and star. Second Corinthians five seventeen. Come on, everybody. Sing along. Let’s do it together. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation…

Chris Cash: And of course, that’s a nice little sing-a-long there. And that’s one of your older songs, right?

Rob Evans: Yeah, that one is an older composition but it’s used for the first time in this particular application so it’s an old dog doing a new trick.

Chris Cash: And I know that I’ve seen it in at least one of your videos that my kids have so…

Rob Evans: Yeah, yeah that’s right and I think we go from here to Paul’s adventures continuing because he’s so boldly and courageously proclaim the gospel now. He got in trouble and had to escape the walls of Damascus in a basket. So here’s our title track, Paul in a Basket.

Music: Here comes down Paul in a basket, Paul in a basket. Lower him down. Here comes down Paul in a basket, Paul in a basket. Lower him down. He’s preaching in the morning, preaching at night. Preaching about Jesus in the broad daylight. Paul’s making enemies by what he’s said. Paul’s making enemies by what he said…

Chris Cash: Now that particular song also comes with some visuals, right?

Rob Evans: I’m sorry?

Chris Cash: I said that particular song also comes with some visuals, cups and lowering cups up and down, right?

Rob Evans: Oh yeah. We have the way it’s presented live is we put a puppet version of Paul in a basket and lower him over a wall all the while the preschoolers in audience have a little paper Paul doll and a paper cup and they lower him down as they sing. So the whole idea is to have physical activities to go along with the life of Paul, kind of along the lines of here’s the church, here’s the sea that will open the doors and see all the people in the way that you want to make memories with your children doing finger plays, Paul in a basket is particularly geared for children aged 4 to 10, to help them to remember the incredible adventures of the saint and then to reflect on how these adventures affected his teaching. So for the next reflection is what made Paul so brave, why Jesus made him brave, and he realized that he could do all these things through Christ who strengthens him. And so that’s our next song, Through Christ Who Strengthens Me, I Can Do All Things.

Chris Cash: And this is the one that my kids particularly will, I’ll catch them going around the house singing the first part of this one so…

Rob Evans: Oh good.

Music: Oh I can do all things, all things, all things. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Corinthians 4:15. That’s right. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. How many things? All things! Really? Three things? All things! Forty things? All things! Okay, everybody ready? Come on!

Chris Cash: And by that, I will often catch my six-year-old going around asking my four-year-old, “How many things?”

Rob Evans: All things and eat my vegetables, clean my bedroom, you’re right Chris. This is a great song for introducing the message of Paul where children live rather than this being just a bible story and you go, “Oh, that’s nice.” We actually make application right in the middle of the song. How many things can you do? Do your homework? Feed the dog? Clean your bedroom? Eat your vegetables? All things!” So God does help us do the most mundane things with joy and that’s one of the lessons of Paul.

Chris Cash: All right, well we’re going to take a short break to hear from our sponsor but we’ll be back in just a minute to hear more from Rob Evans the Donut Man about Paul in a Basket. This is the Catholic Spotlight.

Chris Cash: And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight with Rob Evans talking about Paul in a Basket. So we had just gotten to the earthquake, I believe.

Rob Evans: Yeah, we had done I Can Do All Things, Christ Just Strengthens Me. And the next narration says, “Well, they’re going to need God’s strength for the next adventure.” Then we ask the question, “Have you ever gotten in trouble for being good?” Well, as you know Chris, the bible is full of stories of people who get in trouble for being good, that is, obeying God and living for Him. So the narration that the children present before this next song is to speculate about how God helped Paul and Silas (a) to worship and praise Him even though their backs had been whipped by the jailer and then the amazing turnaround in this next song is that the jailer would then fall on his knees and pray that God would have mercy upon him and that he and whole family were baptized into Jesus Christ. The song is called Earthquake.

Music: It’s an earthquake, the jail is erupting. It’s an earthquake, the jail is erupting. It’s an earthquake, the doors aren’t locking tonight.

Chris Cash: And of course, once again a very upbeat high-energy song going on there.

Rob Evans: Indeed!

Chris Cash: I think that tends to be your specialty, right?

Rob Evans: Well, no, you know, at this part of the musical, yes. But it’s not being loud for loud’s sake. Obviously you wouldn’t have a lullaby around an earthquake.

Chris Cash: No, no.

Rob Evans: It would not lend itself to a lullaby but the second to the last song is actually very solemn and noble but you’ll have to wait for that one, Chris. Because the next song is actually a little more mellow. It has kind of a Jamaican flavor…

Chris Cash: Which I just love personally.

Rob Evans: Oh good! Well, it’s called The Fruit of the Spirit and at the end of the earthquake song, the narrator says, “What made Paul think about the jailer at a time like that?” Here’s the jailer was the persecutor of Paul and Silas and yet they thought about the jailer and his family. Now what made this happened in him, why, it must of Fruit of the Spirit. So of course, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness…this is a classic teaching from St. Paul. And we’ve made a song out of it called The Fruit of the Spirit, aren’t you glad, yes you’ll feel very happy. Listen.

Music: Just listen, I will sing about it. Oh, do you have the fruits of the Spirit? If you do then aren’t you glad? Yes, you’ll feel very happy because these fruits will never go back. Whoa…God is a good father and He wants me to…

Chris Cash: And of course, like I said, nice Jamaican feel there, really cool island, makes you want to head down south, right?

Rob Evans: Yeah, and that’s one of the earmarks of Donut Man music, if I might say so myself. We had a march, we had a rock piece, we had a country…If any man be in Christ, that’s a country song…here comes down Paul in a basket, why that’s a show tune feel. The Earthquake was a good old fashioned rock and roll because the earth did rock and roll and now the Fruit of the Spirit, why indeed, we go to Jamaica. The next song is called Shipwreck and it’s kind of a Motown R&B thing where they all cry out in despair shipwreck but the chorus of this song is how the angel then comes to Paul and says, “Do not fear. Everyone is getting out of here.” And the reflection for this song is have you ever been used as an instrument of peace in the Lord’s work?” And so, that’s the marvelous thing about the story of the shipwreck, the way the angel came to Paul to put everyone’s mind at ease. Listen to Shipwreck.

Music: Paul was on his way to Rome but he got shipwrecked! It didn’t look like he’d get home because he got shipwrecked! Everybody was starting to cry. They were sure they were going to die. But an angel told Paul, “Don’t fear…”

Chris Cash: And I’d like to say there really is a wide variety of styles across this album and I don’t anybody could accuse you of just recycling the same song over and over.

Rob Evans: No, no, no, no. That’s been my handiwork for all of my albums, donutman.com is a place where 30 or 40 of my CDs can be listened to and every one remarks about the sheer variety of the musicology behind what I do. I work with great arrangers from LA, Nashville, and so these are no modest productions. These are top-drawer with some musicians from LA Philharmonic, for a matter of fact so there’s some very, very good musicianship and great arrangements in these stereo recordings, of course. Well, we’re almost done our journey in Paul in a Basket and our next reflection, second to the last song, is as Paul’s life was coming to an end, as he was in the Roman jail looking at the window, perhaps at the very place of his execution where he was to die for the message of Christ. It was there in Rome that he sent some of his greatest letters and he said, “I want you to remember that Christ died for our sins.” And so this next song is a very noble, solemn processional, so our second to the last song is where we lift our eyes to heaven and reflect on the Lord whom Paul served for his whole life and then of course, was martyred for the cross of Christ.

Music: I want you to remember. I want you to remember the good news I brought to you. I’ve passed on to you what I was…

Chris Cash: And that’s a very nice mellow song once again.

Rob Evans: Yeah, it’s written with heavenly chords. For any musicians out there who uses tone shift so you think you’re in the key of A but you’re really in the key of E and it gives it kind of a transcendent musical feel and then our finale is a real celebration, before we go to the last narration presents to the audience, how would Paul want to end this musical? What would his last words be? Well, we prayed about that and we were quite convinced that as we looked at all of the letters that Paul wrote to the Corinthians, to the Ephesians, Colossians, Thessalonians, to Timothy, to Titus, this is someone who made a lot of friends and so we are convinced that Paul’s last words would be, “Faith, hope, love, but the greatest is love.” First Corinthians 13 and music.

Music: Faith, hope, love, but the greatest is love. Faith, hope, love, but the greatest is love. Faith, hope, love, but the greatest is love. Faith, hope, love, but the greatest is love. If I should speak, if I should speak in the…

Chris Cash: Well I think anybody who wants to teach their parish or children about the life of Paul, this is absolutely an excellent resource to get them started on that.

Rob Evans: Thanks Chris, there’s nothing like it. Fr. Mitch Pacwa of course, has his DVDs and his marvelous productions on the life of Paul and he endorsed it. He said there’s nothing like it and there really are no musicals out there who would ever think of…that the life of Paul could be put in musical form in a way that’s not frivolous or too stiff and as you can hear from these little samples, we struck a good balance, Chris, between content and creativity and we’re all done, your children, your family will be catechized with ten different Scriptures, five songs of his adventures, and five songs from Paul’s message. The greatest is love and that’s what we found out in Paul in a Basket.

Chris Cash: Now, Rob you have recently become Catholic. What about…two years ago, right?

Rob Evans: Three years ago this Easter.

Chris Cash: Care to share anything about that with our listeners?

Rob Evans: Yeah, I, in no way, am backing off of my wonderful Protestant experience. We focused on Jesus for 35 years. I met Christ in the Protestant realm and went to literally thousands of bible studies and I’m very, very grateful for the foundation of Scripture that I have under me. It’s just that there were certain things that were just omitted. You do not meet Christ in the sacraments in a Protestant church. I know enough about church history to know that there was a split, what we now know as the Reformation and unfortunately, there’s a divide by which one group tends to emphasize Scripture to the neglect of sacraments but I love the balance that I have found in a Catholic Mass. You’ve got the first half is the Liturgy of the Word and then the second half of the Mass is the Liturgy of the Eucharist which is sacramental. So there are two wings that we need to be heaven-bound and to get ourselves, to break the bonds of gravity, so to speak, and the left wing is Scripture and the right wing is the Sacraments. So, when I discovered that the church that Christ handed to Paul, I’m sorry, Peter; I’ve got Paul on my mind, but the church that Jesus handed to Peter and the other apostles but the preeminence of Peter…you’re Peter and upon this rock and I give you the keys and what you bind is bound, what you lose is lost. The magisterial that we discovered to still be alive and well 2000 years later, I must admit Chris, that I had a mind that the real church would only be found in heaven and that we would have a united church only after Christ returned. But when I started to go to Mass in the Catholic Church, I discovered an ancient church that is alive and well and so I’m bringing one of those separated brethren that Vatican II addressed and so now, I’m bringing my gifts, my songs, my stories now into the Catholic Church and I hope you’re glad I’m there.

Chris Cash: Oh, I’m extremely enthused!

Rob Evans: Thank you, Chris.

Chris Cash: I fell off my rocker when I heard that you’ve come over to the Church so…

Rob Evans: Well, then you’re supposed to say, “Welcome home!”

Chris Cash: And I do. I say, “Welcome home, we’re very glad to have you on the continuing journey because you’ve been on the journey for quite a while.”

Rob Evans: That’s right. Well, Chris, thank you.

Chris Cash: Now, you do also still do concerts and such in parishes, right?

Rob Evans: I do. I do Protestant and Catholic churches and I’m not insensitive obviously to the Protestant emphasis on Christ and the Scripture and so, I honor that tradition and now, wonderfully and richly in the Catholic Church, my concerts tend to orbit around the way Scripture helps us to understand the Sacraments. For example, one of my concerts, I do in parishes, I call Hide and Seek. And of course, the Scriptures begin with a hide-and-seek story. Do you know what that is, Chris?

Chris Cash: No!

Rob Evans: Who hid from God?

Chris Cash: Oh gee, I think maybe Adam and Eve.

Rob Evans: There you go. And Seek is the story of God’s love in pursuit of us. So we’ll go from a song about creation and then we’ll do hide and seek, it’s a song; hide and seek, God looked for Adam and he looked for…so we sing about that and we go through the story of Abraham and Moses and David and Christ and the finale of my hide and seek concert is the Eucharist song. So in the Eucharist, Christ comes to us under the appearance of bread and wine but He comes to us, His real presence in the Eucharist and so, the finale of that concert is called The Eucharist Song. So that’s kind of a summary of what I do when I’m invited to parishes to perform.

Chris Cash: And if somebody’s interested in having you come out to their parish, how would they get a hold of you?

Rob Evans: Donut Man. At Donut Man, my email is donutman and my website is donutman so just remember D-O-N-U-T-M-A-N dot com so you can email me donutman@donutman.com and I’ll get it and we’ll talk about coming to your parish. Obviously, the two concerts that I offer these days are Hide and Seek and then the first one we talked about today, Paul in a Basket.

Chris Cash: Well, thank you very much, Rob, for coming on and sharing with us about Paul in a Basket as well your concert experiences and if there’s nothing else you want to share?

Rob Evans: Well, Chris, I would just like to say congratulations on your new little girl, her name is Anna?

Chris Cash: Adeline.

Rob Evans: Adeline, I would just like to be the first one on the air to welcome Adeline to the planet and just how happy I am for you to be such a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young daddy and I’d just like to thank you for taking this time today to help me showcase my Paul in a Basket project. Well done, Chris. Thank you.

Chris Cash: Well, thank you, Rob. And for all you Catholic Spotlight fans out there who want to help us out a little bit, please do head on over to PodcastAlley, vote for us, leave us some reviews over at iTunes and help us to get in front of a larger audience and it’s also putting links on your blogs and websites over to the site. It helps us to bring in more people as well and thank you so much, Rob. We look forward to hearing from you when your next project comes out.

Rob Evans: Thank you, Chris.

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Transcript of Interview with Donut Man, Rob Evans, about Paul in a Basket. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

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Paul in a Basket CD is available at The Catholic Company.

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Paul in a Basket Musical Adventure For Kids

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A VERY special thanks to Dave Miller for providing the awesome music in this podcast.

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Praying Scripture for a Change is available at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1033331/Praying-Scripture-Change-Introduction-to-Lectio-Divna/

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Chris Cash:  This is the Catholic Spotlight, the show where we talk about what’s new, cool, and exciting in the Catholic marketplace.  I’m your host, Chris Cash, director of e﷓Commerce from catholiccompany.com, your source for all your Catholic needs.

Chris Cash:  And today in the spotlight, we have Dr. Tim Gray to talk about Praying Scriptures for a Change, An Introduction to Lectio Divina.  Welcome, Dr. Gray!

Dr. Tim Gray:  Thank you, Chris.  It’s a pleasure to be with you.

Chris Cash:  Now, we’ve had a former guest, Carl Schultz come on and talk about his book on lectio divina so I’m interested to know, do you have any knowledge of that book and maybe some of the differences between the two?

Dr. Tim Gray:  I’ve heard of Carl Schultz’s book, I haven’t actually read it.

Chris Cash:  Okay, well that solves that issue.  So let’s just dig right into…that interview was done, oh probably a year and a half ago, so I’m sure that we have a lot of different listeners now than we used to.  What can you tell me about lectio divina and what inspired you to create this book in the first place?

Dr. Tim Gray:  Sure, about three-and-a-half years ago, I teach at the seminary as well as the Augustine Institute in Denver and the seminary asked me to teach the spirituality year guides, that’s the first year of the seminary where we walk through the bible…they read through the whole bible in a year as well as the catechism and I was to take them through the bible and the goal of the spirituality year is not to study the bible academically but to learn how to pray with scripture and especially in the method of lectio divina which at the St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver, that’s what they focus on.  And so, that forced me to really read through…work through the whole scripture with them which I’ve done in different bible programs in different classes but with an emphasis on prayer and meditation.  That was a great opportunity for me to go back and look into the Catholic tradition of what resources and what were the classic writings on lectio divina and kind of match that with my background in scripture and it was a real spark.  And then that led to one of my favorite classes I’ve ever taught that year in spirituality year and every year since then, and then I started teaching at parishes giving talks on lectio divina and people would ask me for resources and so I decided to write the book.

Chris Cash:  All right, so what is it that’s different when you’re talking about doing something and praying the scriptures as opposed to just reading the scriptures academically?

Dr. Tim Gray:  That’s a great question.  There is a real difference, both in tone, style, flavor, spirit.  I think, for me, I spend a lot of time studying the bible so I’ve studied in Hebrew, Greek, and I’ll read all the texts and tried to uncover the history behind it, what’s the nature of the language that’s being used, what’s going on literarily.  But then, if I want to bring that word and listen to it as God’s Word, not a word just simply to be dissected and studied but a word to be listened to and obeyed and reflected deeply in the heart, that’s where you want to have that kind of approach that’s more spiritual and that’s where lectio divina really is a great tool to open up God’s Word and then come up with an approach to pray with it effectively.

Chris Cash:  Now, lectio divina has been used classically by contemplative monks and nuns.  How much of an acceptance do you see going into the secular world now?

Dr. Tim Gray:  I think we just had a Synod on Scripture that Pope Benedict called for last October and in that Synod was a Synod on Scripture in the life and mission of the church and the overall urgent theme of the whole Synod, the most repeated refrain from bishops all over the world was the need for the lay faithful to learn how to pray with scripture in the method of lectio divina.  And so lectio divina was probably the hottest topic of the Synod and I think that goes back to the church even going back to days of Vatican II calling on Catholics to read and pray with scripture daily and that the scriptures should be opened up to all the lay faithful and I think that in the past, people had an idea that the scripture was something just for clergy, just for the sisters maybe and that you shouldn’t be reading this on your own and the church has made it clear at Vatican II and even at the Synod, that’s not the case at all, like the catechism even says that all the lay faithful are exhorted by the church to read the bible and the Word of God daily in their daily lives.  So I think that there’s an impetus now that the church is saying “Hey, lectio divina isn’t just simply the method of prayer for monks and the religious.”  Now of course, there’s a great tradition in the monastic tradition of using lectio divina but what’s interesting, Chris, is that if you go back to the early church fathers and their preaching and exhortation to lay people, they talk a lot about lectio divina and so this was the common practice of prayer that the monks formalized or I’ll even say they took it a few steps deeper.  They deepened it in their monastic life but it was the common life of Christians and in terms of how prayer was to be approached.

Chris Cash:  Now, if I were to want to become more versed in lectio divina, obviously one thing I’d want to do is pick up a book like yours but what are the other things that I would need to do to get going, learning how to do lectio divina?

Dr. Tim Gray:  Sure, what I try to do in my book Praying Scripture for a Change is to lead people through the traditional steps of lectio divina as the monks kind of perfected it, so to speak, and refined it but then at the end, I tried to give practical tips.  So people would say, “What part of the bible should I start with?”  And for some of those practical steps, I’d say the Gospels are the first and best place to begin lectio divina so either Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John; any of the four are good for lectio and lend themselves to that.  The other part of the bible that is a great place to start and continue lectio for the rest of your life is the Psalms which I think is why the church gives us every day in the Mass and the liturgy hours, the church gives us a Psalm of the day and so, in other words, the church is saying the Psalms are so important for prayer, we’re going to give you a Psalm every day and the liturgy hours are saturated with Psalms and every day we get a Gospel reading in the Mass because the Gospel has primacy and importance.  So no other two books, no other genre in the bible is read everyday in the liturgy, in both the liturgy hours and in the Mass like the Psalms and the Gospels and that’s why I think they’re the best resources and the easiest place to start lectio divina.

Chris Cash:  So what are the mechanics of lectio divina prayer?

Dr. Tim Gray:  Actually, there’s two approaches to lectio divina as the tradition develops.  The first, which I like to keep very simple, is that when you look at the problem of prayer, we Christians know that we pray without ceasing as Paul said.  We should pray all the time.  A Christian who doesn’t pray is a strange thing.  It just seems like something inherently wrong with us if we don’t pray and we’re Christian and yet, prayer often tends to be dry and the experience of being boring or dull or fruitless and I think the number one reason for that that I kind of dive into is that if you’ve ever been in a conversation with somebody where they don’t talk, they don’t say anything or on the other hand, they do all the talking, what you end up with in either case is a monologue and monologues tend to be monotonous and boring.  And so we try to avoid those people because they’re boring, they’re burdensome.  They dominate conversations.

Well, when we enter prayer, if all we do is we talk to God but we don’t hear God speak to us, prayer then becomes a monologue and then it becomes monotonous and dry and what the secret of the saints is, I believe, and I try to go into this in the book, the saints understood that we could hear God not through being mystical or having divine voices speak to us but by taking up His Word, that as St. Augustine said, “When we pray, we speak to God.  When we read scripture, God speaks to us.”  And the key for that dialogue, to make prayer a dialogue is to have the Word of God, that the scripture is the normative way God speaks to his people.  And so, if you look at St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Cyprian, they all said and the Vatican II quotes this phrase and puts it front and center at the end of the constitution on the Word of God that when we pray, we are talking to God; when we read the scripture and listen to the Word of God in the scripture, God speaks to us.  And so the first step I would say of the lectio divina is that it’s as simple as the Texas two step.  You share your heart with God and then you listen to the Word and you read it reflectively and God will start to speak to you and then you can have a dynamic dialogue and prayer can transcend the monotony of a monologue.

Then after that, Chris, I like to explain how the monks and I like to quote the classic work of the Middle Ages on lectio by Guigo the Carthusian.  He wrote a little book called The Ladder for Monks and Guigo outlined four steps to making lectio work simply.  And in those four steps, number one was reading or lectio, to read the text slowly and carefully.  And then stop at whatever key phrase or word that seems to really resonate with our hearts and speak to us.  And then that leads to the second step which is meditacio or meditation.  Meditation is where we stop in our lectio on a key image or phrase or word and now we begin to really think through it and reflect on it.  So for example, if you’re praying in the Gospels, maybe in the Gospel of Luke and you’re praying to the story of Mary and Martha, and you hear Jesus say, “Martha, Martha, you’re anxious about many things.”  If you’re a careful reader of Luke, you’ll realize that Jesus has spoken about anxiety in several places and as you do a meditation on anxiety in your own life and in the text of Luke, you’ll see a pattern of this coming up in the Gospel where Jesus is constantly speaking into our anxieties and then we can have a prayer where “Lord, I’m anxious about many things right now.  I’m anxious about the economy.  I’m anxious about my job security.  I’m anxious about my family and whatever concerns are going on.”

And then that leads to the third step of lectio as Guigo outlines it and that is what he called oratio or quite literally prayer and this is what we usually call prayer but prayer in this third step is where we’ve taken the meditation of what we reflected on, maybe an anxiety and what is making me anxious and what did Jesus say about anxiety and how I should be free from it and now it leads to a dialogue where I say, “Lord, I’m anxious about these things.  Help me.  Help me find peace of heart, help me find trust.  Help me to trust in You.”  And now that leads to a conversation where we’re expressing the thoughts of our meditation into a request, into a conversation with God.  Then that leads to the fourth step which is contemplatio or contemplation.  And contemplation is what Guigo says, it’s where we to quote Psalm 34, “taste and see the goodness of the Lord”.  It’s where we experience God in our prayer and God responds to us and that response can be wordless and that’s important for people to understand and I go into that a fair bit on my chapter on contemplation because that I find that this step is the hardest for people to get their minds around and most importantly in their hearts.  And this is where to use an example, I remember one time a couple of years ago, visiting my sister in San Diego and my wife and I were walking on the beach at sunset, and watching the sun set over the ocean and we didn’t have to express in words the beauty of the moment but just holding hands, walking in that beach, sharing that moment was powerful.  And that’s what can happen in prayer.  Once we’ve really entered into a deep dialogue with God and we’re just sitting in His presence, all of a sudden, it doesn’t have to be a word but we can experience God’s presence whereas Guigo says, “to taste and see the goodness of the Lord”.

Those are the four classic steps and then I like to add a fifth, and I do this by the inspiration of St. Francis de Sales.  St. Francis de Sales warned and cautioned that once you start praying and living a life of meditation, there’s a serious danger that we will encounter and that danger is that as we pray and meditate about holy things and about virtues and about God and a spiritual life and things that are spiritual, we can become easily deceived that we’re actually virtuous, that we’re holy, and that we’re really spiritual because we meditate about spiritual, virtuous, and holy things.  And we actually think that we have the virtues that we meditate on.  We think we have the holiness that we reflect on.  We think we have the spirituality of the deep spiritual authors that we’re reading and St. Francis tells what we need to kind of buffer us or protect against that is a practical resolution to put into practice the meditation we have.  In other words, St. Francis de Sales cautions us that if we just meditate about virtue but don’t practice it, we’re actually in a worse place because we think we’re virtuous and we’re actually not.

And so, what we have to do is end our meditation in our prayer time with a practical resolution of what we’re going to do that day in a small way to put into practice the inspiration and the meditation that we’ve had in prayer.  And so then, I talk about the practical steps that St. Francis de Sales and others have given of how we’re to do that in our prayer to make our prayer fruitful.  And there’s a great spiritual writer, Fr. Jordan Aumann who talks about the importance of that practical resolution and it’s really powerful when people incorporate that into their prayer life.  It’s amazing.  It’s also very humbling because you realize, I remember the first time I tried to do that, the first week or two, I was successful with my practical resolution maybe once and I usually forgot about it during the day and I realized how hard it was to do this and to put it into practice.  But that’s part of the struggle and that’s the great thing, once you make this intentional, then you enter into the struggle to spiritualize and then you see your setbacks, you also get to see advances and that’s really exciting and it makes prayer exciting once you have this simple message to crack open the Word of God and make it effective for prayer.

Chris Cash:  Okay, well we’re going to take a short break here to hear from our sponsor but when we come back, we’ll be speaking more with Dr. Tim Gray about Praying the Scripture for a Change, An Introduction to Lectio Divina.  This is the Catholic Spotlight.

Chris Cash:  And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight, talking with Dr. Tim Gray about Praying the Scripture for a Change:  An Introduction to Lectio Divina.  Now, Dr. Gray, I think one of the most powerful things with regard to lectio divina is that it is deep and it’s powerful but at the same time, it’s something that you can do without having a deep and powerful knowledge of scripture already.

Dr. Tim Gray:  Absolutely, I mean, this is the beauty of the Word of God itself is that the Word of God is as Gregory the Great once said, “It’s a simple stream that a lamb can cross but yet it’s deep enough that an elephant can drown in it.”  And it’s really true.  I mean, the scriptures and that’s why I oftentimes recommend start with something as simple as the Gospels but you could pray the Gospels your whole life and you’ll constantly learn deeper insights.  A way from which the Old Testament alluded to it, parrots within the Gospel of repetition and deeper insights into what Christ is saying and yet, you can start with very little background.  All you need to do is read the story of Jesus and that story starts to have meaning.  You just read the simple encounter of Jesus with the leper and you can do a lectio on that.  It could be very powerful and fruitful and the other key to all of this, I believe is, this is where the Holy Spirit becomes a guide because the Holy Spirit inspired the Word of God and as Paul says, we don’t know how to pray as we ought.  In Romans 8, Paul says we don’t know how to pray but it’s the spirit of God that helps us to pray and what God wants to do to empower our prayer is to take this divine text, this divine word in His scriptures and then pray for the presence of the Spirit to enable and empower our prayer and that Spirit can make our prayer as easily understandable for a child and yet as deep for the deepest intellect.

Chris Cash:  Now, have you started getting any feedback from people who are using lectio divina and especially using your book to get involved with and learn more about lectio divina?

Dr. Tim Gray:  I have, I’ve been teaching this for a few years at the seminary and as well as at the Augustine Institute and giving talks all around the country in different parishes and I just got a comment, actually yesterday from a woman who read the book and actually, it was a review on Amazon and she talked about how it transformed her prayer life and it helped her overcome a lot of pitfalls and that’s really one of the things I love about lectio divina is that I think some of the most common pitfall and problems people have in their prayer life can be overcome by this very simple and effective method.  For example, a lot of people want to experience contemplation and they’ll go to the chapel.  They’ll have a 10- or 15-minute prayer.  They have a 20-minute break and will go to the chapel and they’ll start praying and they want to hear God speak to them and they try to get really, really quiet so that they can hear God speak to them like He did to Elijah in a still small voice and then someone praying the rosary almost out loud and that’s annoying and in the Adoration Chapel and they used to be quiet and they think if they can get it quiet enough, they can hear God.

And what we go on, what this method shows you is that contemplation is the fourth rung on the ladder and people try to start at the fourth rung and they can’t reach it and then they find prayer too hard and they stop.  And what I love to show is that lectio just simply if you can read, you’re ready for the first step in prayer and all you have to do is read God’s Word slowly and carefully and re-read it and you’re ready for the first step and you put your foot on that first rung and now the second rung, meditation is within reach, whereas to step up on and to start with meditation can be really difficult.  It’s like trying to reach the second rung in the ladder and then once you start in the meditation then the next rung is within reach and that’s oratio and then that leads to contemplatio and so I think that one of the pitfalls I hear from people is they’re like, “Wow!  I always want to start with contemplation.  I wondered why it was always so hard for me to get there.  And I didn’t think I could do it and once I understood that there was a couple of simple steps to get me there that helped me so much.”  Those are the kinds of things that I get excited about and that’s why I wanted to write this book because the feedback I got from talking and teaching people about lectio is people like, “Wow!  This opens it up.  Now I understand how to get where I want to go in prayer.  And now I have a roadmap in front of me and it’s a simple road map and that helps people and empowers them and that’s what I get excited about is empowering people for their prayer life.  And the other thing I like to do is, as a modern scholar of the *** [00:22:23], there is a lot of simple methods that scholars have recognized for reading scripture, literary methods and other things.  And I try to take that and match that with the wisdom of the Catholic tradition on lectio and get people some practical tips on how to read for their lectio to enrich their lectio which will in turn enrich their meditation and prayer.

Chris Cash:  Well, I’ve pretty much exhausted my thoughts on this particular book.  Was there anything else about this you wanted to share with our listeners?

Dr. Tim Gray:  I would just say that there’s nothing more exciting than an encounter with God that’s lively and dynamic and if you stumbled with prayer and you thought that I may actually have a mystic gene in me that I can just have that deep prayer life like someone like Teresa of Avila and the other saints.  I just want to say that God wants everybody to pray and He wants to be reached in prayer.  He wants to help you pray and I just think of someone like St. Teresa of Avila who said that she wouldn’t go to the chapel without a holy book and Teresa in other words…Teresa of Avila always brought the Word of God into her time in the chapel, into her prayer to enable her to have that dialogue with God and if you can just learn that method of how to enter into that dialogue with God with scripture, it will enrich and empower your prayer and your relationship with God and nothing in life is more exciting than that.

Chris Cash:  Do you have any future projects you want to comment on to let our listeners know about what other great things come in on the line?  I’m sure that there’s something in works with the Great Adventure series right now.

Dr. Tim Gray:  Yeah, Jeff Cavins and I are working on…we’ve been doing the bible timeline, the Great Adventure Bible Timeline bible study program and people keep asking us for a book on the bible and so Jeff and I are close to hopefully, it will come out in September.  We’re in the last edits of a book we’ve done together called the Great Adventure which is it takes the 12 periods of the bible timeline and there’s a chapter on each period where we go into detail to kind of open up the whole bible in one book to kind of give people the plot of scripture story and the overview in one penny book.  And for me, I’m excited about that because it does help with lectio divina because if people can get their minds around the big picture of the story scripture saying it will enliven and help their prayer lives, and it also gives people a biblical world view which is incredibly empowerful and important today because as St. Paul says, “We should not let our minds be conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewal of our minds in Christ.”  And to have that renewal of mind, we’ve got to know God’s story.

Chris Cash:  Well, that sounds like a pretty exciting product.  I’m definitely going to be looking forward to seeing that.  I’ve always been a huge fan of the Great Adventure series as a whole so well, if you don’t have anything else to share then I’m going to say thank you very much, Dr. Gray.  I’m glad to have you on the show again and hopefully, we’ll be hearing from you soon.

Dr. Tim Gray:  Great, thanks a lot, Chris.  God bless.

Chris Cash:  God bless.

Chris Cash:  Thank you for listening to the Catholic Spotlight, a production of the Catholic Company, your store for over 10,000 Catholic books and gifts that make a difference.  Find us online at catholiccompany.com.  You can find more podcasts from the Catholic Spotlight at catholicspotlight.com and if you have a question, comment, or would like to be featured in our intro, call our voice mail at (206) 312-0069.  We would love to hear from you.  You can find more info on being featured on our intro at catholicspotlight.com as well as announcements about future interviews.  Have a great day and God bless.

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Transcript of Interview with Dr. Tim Gray about Praying Scripture for a Change.  This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

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Praying Scripture for a Change is available at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1033331/Praying-Scripture-Change-Introduction-to-Lectio-Divna/

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Praying Scripture for a Change - An Introduction to Lectio Divina

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