Pints With Aquinas - 173: What is prayer? (& How to do it)

Starting point is 00:00:00 I heard a funny joke from Trent Horn the other day that I had to share with you. There are three things that God doesn't know. First, what a Jesuit is about to say. Second, what a Dominican just said. And third, how many Franciscan orders there are. Come on, that's good. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. Today, we're going to be talking about prayer. Aquinas gives three reasons that vocal prayer is helpful. I'm going to suggest three stumbling blocks to prayer that I experienced and that you might experience as well. I'm also going to suggest three different prayer rules for life that you could begin implementing if you are kind of sucky at prayer. Also want to let you know, if you're a patron, you are now going to be getting Pints with Aquinas episodes a day early and ad-free. So if you're a

Starting point is 00:00:50 patron and you want this to be ad-free and a day early, go to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. Forgot to make that announcement next week. Last week, not next week. I didn't forget next week. Here's the show. Yes, welcome back to Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. Lovely to be with you today and really bloody pumped to be speaking about prayer. I just got back from a long road trip with my family. We were up in Maryland for a friend's wedding and that was really lovely.

Starting point is 00:01:39 There's something beautiful about going to a wedding where you know the couple understand fully what marriage is and have been, you know, living separately and saving themselves for their wedding night. Like a really, there's something to celebrate there. It was just absolutely tremendous. I think some of you, my wife was posting photos on her Twitter account. There's a funny, if you go to my Twitter account, Matt Fradd, there's a photo of me and Matt Walsh. You know who Matt Walsh is maybe from The Daily Wire? He was at the wedding and both of us read.

Starting point is 00:02:08 I think they were just trying to upset all of their liberal friends or something. Anyway, it says, Matt Fradd looking more dour than a Matt Walsh podcast. So Matt Walsh's podcast, pretty bloody serious and intense. But for some reason in this photo, I look like I want to kill everybody. So that was fun. Also, interesting tidbit, I did chat with Matt and he said he wants to come down to Atlanta to be on a Matt Frad Show episode. So, you know, nothing like generating more controversy to make everybody upset with me.

Starting point is 00:02:40 So look forward to that. Anyway, so back in Atlanta, super happy to be here. Today I want to talk about prayer, not because I am in any way, shape, or form an expert on prayer, not because I have reached the lofty heights of the, I guess, the seven-story mansion or something, you know, the interior castle or something, but because I, probably like you, am a beginner. And it can help, I think, at times to talk with beginners about what they're struggling with and if they're learning anything. So you'll be hearing from me, who's definitely a beginner, about three stumbling blocks I experience in prayer and what I'm doing to overcome them. I'm going to be talking about a daily rule for life with regards to prayer that I think you're going to find tremendously helpful.

Starting point is 00:03:26 And then we'll also be looking at what the experts say, what the saints say, and what St. Thomas Aquinas says. And after that, as I already said, we're going to be taking some of the questions from Patreon. So let's do this. Oh, I have to say this too. Many of you beautiful, fine people were so pumped to hear what I shared recently with regard to my traveling to Africa next year, doing this on more of a, you know, more frequently. I just give you an update on that. I'm currently looking at developing a nonprofit. Many of you have reached out and have, this is not a lie, this sounds like I'm exaggerating, but let me say several people have reached out and offered me a really significant sums of money. I just want to ask you, I want to thank you for offering that, but I want to ask you

Starting point is 00:04:15 to hold off on that for now. What I'd love to do is maybe wait till we have this non-profit up, that way the government doesn't take a big chunk of it. Also, I'm open to you not giving me money at all, but maybe you buying me catechisms and things. And we can discuss that. But I want you to know that my assistant reached out to me, told me you've written to her. I'm super honored and humbled, but I just want to hold off for a moment and I will definitely be in touch. And a big thanks to all of you who are giving me relatively small amounts, but no less helpful amounts in the sense, because there's so many of you giving at patreon.com slash Matt Fradd and getting all those free perks in return. So big thanks for that. All right, let's look at what the catechism first has to say about prayer. I love this quote from St. John Damascene. Here it is. He says, prayer is the raising of one's

Starting point is 00:05:00 mind and heart to God, or the requesting of good things from God. Now, I don't know about you, but when I heard that, when I read that for the first time, something in me felt frustrated. Not because I thought he was wrong, but because I knew he was right. That prayer really is that simple. And yet, since I'm bad at prayer, and since prayer is so vital for me, I have to conclude that I am bad at something that I ought not to be bad at, because it's both simple and vital. Does that make sense? So in one sense, prayer is very simple. All it is, is the raising of one's mind and heart to God, or the requesting of good things from God. So why is it that you and I find prayer so difficult? Here's a few reasons.

Starting point is 00:05:48 And these are my three stumbling blocks that I mentioned a moment ago. Lead others to truth and enrich your life in Christ by studying Catholic theology that is faithful to Scripture, tradition, and the magisterium. At Franciscan University of Steubenville, you'll challenge your mind and contemplate the mysteries of the faith while being guided by some of the most respected theologians in the church today. People like Dr. Scott Hahn, Dr. Michael Volstein, Dr. Mark Miravalle, and more. There's a reason so many of the leaders in the church and lay apostolates count Franciscan theology graduates among their staff, faculty, and clergy. Our faculty members are not

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Starting point is 00:07:08 Best of all, you don't need an undergraduate degree in theology or philosophy to enroll in these programs. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to go to franciscan.university.com. Okay, did you hear me? Good, because I really want them to know that these adverts are bloody well working. So franciscan.university.com for more information about graduate theology and catechetics at Franciscan University of Steubenville. That's franciscan.university.com like of beer. franciscan.university.com. The first, for me at least, is that I have this

Starting point is 00:07:41 preconceived idea as to how prayer ought to feel and look. And because when I go and pray, I often don't experience that preconceived notion, I conclude that I haven't prayed or that I was unsuccessful in praying. And I, like you, don't like being unsuccessful in things. If I am routinely unsuccessful at something, I tend to give up. This is why I don't play soccer anymore. You know, even, you know, like a game with some friends who are taking the game seriously. Like I'll opt out of that. Why? Because I'm just not bloody good at soccer. There may have been a time when I was somewhat decent at it, but now that I'm not and don't like failing, I just don't

Starting point is 00:08:25 tend to engage in things that I fail at. And since I have a preconceived idea as to how prayer ought to feel and look, and since I don't often reach that preconceived idea in actuality, I conclude that my prayer was unsuccessful. Is that true of you too? It's true of me. And what do I mean? I guess I mean, you know, I expect prayer to look a certain way. And I don't even know really what I mean by that, you know, that I have to be in some sort of cold stone church with incense, not incest, incense, should edit that out, won't, incense, wafting, icons, candles burning,

Starting point is 00:09:04 you know, something like beautiful like something beautiful like that. Or I expect to feel a certain way. I don't even know what I mean by that. I used to joke, but I think it's rather insightful. When I served with Net Ministries, national evangelization team, they stress the importance of having a daily prayer life. And I would sometimes joke with my brothers on the team. I would say, for me, I pray until I'm no longer guilty about having not prayed. And then I feel somewhat successful, right? And I call that a good prayer time. That's not a good mentality to have when it comes to prayer, but I was just being as honest as I could. I feel guilty that I haven't prayed. So I'm going to go sit down. If I sit down long enough, I no longer feel guilty. And I call that a good prayer time because I mean I don't

Starting point is 00:09:47 feel guilty anymore. What are the preconceived notions and ideas that you bring into prayer? How do you think it ought to look? How do you think you ought to feel? I mean, I've certainly had prayer experiences where I have had, I think, tremendous insights into the Word of God. You know, sometimes you open up the word of God and it feels like the words are just smacking you in the face. And you're like, oh my goodness, this was here all along. I've been reading Colossians a lot lately. And I'm like, how come nobody ever told me this was in the Bible? Now I'm joking, of course. I've read it before, but for some reason it never spoke to me. But lately it's been just smacking me upside the

Starting point is 00:10:21 head in the most beautiful of ways. Or I'll have a tremendous sense of peace come upon me. I'll have anxieties that I bring to prayer and I submit and surrender them to the providence of God and notice a sort of tangible, guttural relaxation and rest in him. Okay. But often when I pray, I don't experience this. I would say most times when I pray, I don't experience this. Like a lot of the time I pray, you know, like I know, look, I know that environment matters. You shouldn't expect to say pray in, I don't know, Times Square in New York City while everyone's hustling and bustling about you. You know, you should set aside, I'm using an extreme example, I know, but you should set aside time to pray, you know, lock yourself in your room, etc. But you know what?

Starting point is 00:11:09 I have four kids and my four kids have personalities that are as loud and outrageous as mine and my wife's. And it's just not always possible to do it. And so sometimes I find myself sitting on the couch with, you know, shoes and bits and pieces littered about the place because my kids haven't picked them up. And I've got a basket of bloody laundry that's erupting. And I'm now sitting down because I've got like five minutes or 10 minutes, the kids are out of the house for some reason. And I open up my Bible and I'm just like, you know, this doesn't feel how prayer should feel. It doesn't look how prayer should look, or at least how I think it should look. The second stumbling block is distractions. Now, the Catechism of the Catholic

Starting point is 00:11:52 Church says this about distractions. This comes from paragraph 2729. Distractions reveal to us what we are attached to, and this humble awareness before the Lord should awaken our preferential All right, I just realized I haven't really kind of given a solution to that first stumbling block, have I? I laid out the problem. I didn't really lay out the solution. I suppose the solution is recognizing just what prayer is, and that is raising one's heart and mind to God. And this can be done whenever, during the day and wherever you are. I suppose we might get to an answer to this towards the end of this episode as I give you a daily rule for life regarding prayer and why it is so essential to establish a prayer time or

Starting point is 00:12:43 times throughout your day. So we'll get to that. But here's the second one. That's distractions. I love what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say about this, because I don't know about you. I go to Eucharistic Adoration. I was there this morning, actually. This morning was okay, because it was a big church and there wasn't a ton of people in the church. But sometimes you'll go to these Eucharistic chapels that are more like closets. And I kneel down and I listen to the person murmuring the rosary behind me. I cannot tell you how much that frustrates me. It just frustrates me. I'm like, we can all hear you. Or when you have like two old ladies up the back who decide to catch up in this little prayer chapel and they're showing each other the photos from their families or something.

Starting point is 00:13:26 And you wanna be happy for them, but at the same time, you want to throw something at them. And that's not an option. So you just sit there and you'd be angry. I don't know. So I feel distracted in that way. And another thing is I just find myself, my head is fluttering all about the place,

Starting point is 00:13:40 90 miles an hour. And so I'll kneel down and I'll just, you know, think about how my guts hurts from something I ate this morning or, you know, I'll think about that stupid thing I said yesterday that I'm really embarrassed about or I'll just get this sense of foreboding or this sense of anticipation, nervousness about something that has to happen that day, yeah? Or I'll begin to think about my kids and what they did that bugged me or something, you see? And one solution I've found is rather than trying to swat them away, just to not worry so much. And when they come up, actually offer them

Starting point is 00:14:21 to God as a prayer, offer those distractions as a prayer. Again, here's what the catechism says. These distractions reveal what we're attached to. And so what do you do when you are kind of exposed in this way that you're attached to these certain things? I guess you could like pretend that you're not really attached and then try to pray in a way that you think you ought to be praying. Or as the catechism says, you can have a sort of humble awareness of them before the Lord. And this should awaken, it says in the catechism, our preferential love for Him and lead us resolutely to offer Him our heart to be purified. So I like to offer my distractions to the Lord in prayer very intentionally. And this makes sense, I think, if you think about it in

Starting point is 00:15:03 terms of like a married relationship. You know, like when I go out on a date with my wife, suppose I'm thinking of a million different things and they're all kind of important to me and they're coming up in my mind. But I think to myself, no, I mustn't talk about this with my wife. So let's just sit here and do whatever a date's supposed to look like. What is it people on dates talk about, you know? I think my wife would say, what are you thinking about? What's going on? Where are you? And that would be a good time for me to say, I'm sorry, I'm just thinking about this silly thing that I said yesterday I'm super embarrassed about. Well, what did you say? Well, I said, you see what I mean? And I think prayer

Starting point is 00:15:39 is raising one's heart and mind to God. it's also can be a conversation between friends, you know, where you tell the Father what you're going through. And so something I've been doing lately in prayer is, you know, I'll remember something I said yesterday, it was embarrassing, and I'll just say, God, Father, I just give this to you. I don't know why I did that. I'm sorry that I did it. I repent of it. I think it was wrong. And then I'll talk to the Lord about what belief I've agreed to about myself because of this thing I said, you know? So you say like, Father, like, what do I believe about myself because of this? And you might already begin to feel it, right? This like, I'm an idiot or I'm a loose cannon or whatever it is, you know?

Starting point is 00:16:24 And you say, Father, is it true that I'm a loose cannon, you know? Is it true that I'm an idiot or I'm a loose cannon or whatever it is, you know? And you say, father, is it true that I'm a loose cannon? You know, is it true that I'm always failing, that I'm always socially awkward? And I'm trying to use other examples that don't just pertain to me, but I keep accidentally hitting the ones that absolutely do pertain to me, you know? But you're like, father, what does this say about me? I'll give you a real life example. This happened recently and it's a powerful story and I wasn't going to share it, but heck, here we go. It's super great. I think I wasn't say about me? I'll give you a real life example. This happened recently and it's a powerful story and I wasn't going to share it, but heck, here we go. It's super great. I think I wasn't going to share it because it's actually really embarrassing because I'm super ashamed of

Starting point is 00:16:52 how I reacted. So here's what happened. I went to divine liturgy and after divine liturgy, while there were still some prayers taking place, sometimes there are these extra communal prayers that take place after divine liturgy, but my kids have sort of had enough. So I said, yeah, let's just head out. And so I was sitting out the back with them. They were going to the bathroom, waiting until everyone else came out so they could start eating snacks and things. And this old woman, older woman, not old woman, older lady came out of the bathroom and she looked at my son and she said, why aren't you in there praying? At least that's how I heard her say it. I don't want to put that on her anymore,

Starting point is 00:17:30 but like it sounded like an old woman snapping at my kid. And this just really frustrated me because I don't know, maybe I've got some wounds from like old people being rude to children in church, either my children or when I was a child. So what I said next, I just want you to know I'm super embarrassed about, okay? So judge me, but I've been to confession, so just I've judged myself. So I looked at her and I said, because I said he could, just like that, like very pointedly. Now, if that's all I said, I think that would have been okay. But I went further and here's where

Starting point is 00:18:02 it gets super embarrassing. I looked at her and I said, why are you out here just like that? How terrible is that? So I was like, why aren't you in there praying? And I said, because I said he could. Why are you out here like that? Just like that. It was super rude of me. And I come from a very small kind of parish. And so the conversation ended abruptly. She went back in there. I kind of felt a little embarrassed. And then a few days later, I went out for coffee with my priest, Father Lewis, and we were sitting down and I said, Father, this thing's just troubling me. I said this thing to this old lady. And he said, yes, I know. I said, what? How do you know? And

Starting point is 00:18:40 he said, well, I think there was someone else in the room who heard it and they mentioned it to me. I said, oh gosh, I need to apologize. He said, yes, you need to apologize. Okay. So the next week I got to divine liturgy, I went to confession and confessed this irritableness and the snappiness. And then I was waiting for her and her husband to come. Now, I didn't know how she was going to respond. We often find it easy to ask forgiveness of people if we think they will respond well. You know, if they'll kind of almost congratulate us, right? Like, look at how humble you are. But you don't always know how people are going to respond.

Starting point is 00:19:15 I mean, maybe she'd just be super angry at me. I didn't know. So anyway, her and her husband come. They sit down like the third pew or something. And then the husband gets up and goes somewhere. I'm like, okay, here's my chance. So I stand up and I walk up and I sit down and I just, you know, she turns to me. She's a little shocked that some rando just sat next to her. She doesn't know who I am yet. And I said, hey, I just want to say, I'm really sorry for being rude to you last week. You did nothing wrong to deserve that and i was totally wrong to have snapped at you like that and

Starting point is 00:19:47 i just asked that you would please forgive me and she kind of hesitated for a second and then said i accept it and i was like okay good okay yes well good uh thank you and i got up and i left and i really had no idea really what that meant but it was nice that she said i accepted she accepted my apology i suppose is what she meant so the next week I was somewhere else. I forget where, didn't get to go to divine liturgy. I think I went to the Latin mass down in Atlanta. I met a bunch of people there who knew of Pines of Aquinas. And then anyway, the next week, this is just last Sunday, after divine liturgy, I see this old lady for the first time since I've apologized to her. And she starts pointing at me and like calling me over to her not pointing at me like accusatory but like hey

Starting point is 00:20:29 come here come here and oh yeah so I start following her she's like come here okay and I'm following her and I really don't know what's going to happen and she go takes me to where the fridge and freezer are and she pulls out a plate of like beautiful chocolate cookies that she had made for my family. I couldn't believe it. She's like, hey, I baked this for your family. Oh my gosh. I said, thank you so much. That is so generous of you.

Starting point is 00:21:02 And I took them back to the table and I made an effort of getting all of my kids to go to her and say, you know, thank you so much. And it was good, right? Because one of my children was like, you don't need to apologize to her. Did you hear the way she spoke to me? I'm like, no, you've done something wrong. You need to apologize. And so anyway, the point is that was just an amazing Christian moment. I have totally forgotten why I have told you about this story under the second stumbling block header. What was it? It was a great story. Okay. But there was a point as well. Oh, yes. The point is that stupid thing I said yesterday and the things that I began to believe about myself, right? Like I'm just an idiot. I'm such an idiot. I'm always stepping at it. All right. So the point

Starting point is 00:21:39 with the stumbling block is you say, okay, well, father, I feel like an idiot. Is it true that I'm an idiot? And if the father is speaking to you, he's not going to be like, totally, unless he's joking. Like, no, you are a beloved son of God, a beloved daughter of God. So do you see what I mean? Like you just bring whatever is rising up within you to the Father. It's as best as you're able. You worry about something tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:22:01 Father, I'm worried about this. Why am I worried? I know what you've said, that you'll take care of me. What does this reveal to me about my lack of trust in you? What have you said about why I should trust you, Father? Let your distractions lead you into this sort of dialogue, this prayerful dialogue. At least that's what I've been doing, and that's what I've found very helpful. Okay, here is the third stumbling block, and that is not being intentional. In other words, praying only when I want to. Okay, let me share with you two quotations. One comes from St.

Starting point is 00:22:40 Gregory Nazianzus, and the second is a quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. And both drive home to us the absolute importance of prayer. And then we'll talk about why we need to be intentional about prayer. The first comes from St. Gregory Nazianzus, who says, we must remember God more often than we draw breath. That's pretty difficult. But here's what the Catechism says. We cannot pray at all times. That's something St. Paul told us to do. If we do not pray at specific times, consciously willing it. I really like that. You know, we can have this vague desire to pray at all times, just like we can have a vague desire to be healthy, but unless we're intentional about praying or eating well and exercising, it won't come about. And so you and I need to be intentional about our prayer.

Starting point is 00:23:28 And for me, oftentimes, I'm not, right? I'm not. I pray when I want to pray. Now, if that happens to be frequently, then that's good. But sometimes it's not frequently at all. So I might get up and I might just be totally exhausted. And the idea of praying my morning prayers might come to mind. But I might think, you know what, I just, I don't really, and I don't even think about it. If I thought about it, I'd be guilty of it, right?

Starting point is 00:23:52 And so I'm like, I just quickly bat it away and stand up and busy myself, distract myself with something else. So this kind of gets back to that first thing about like thinking that prayer ought to look or feel a certain way. Once you recognize that it doesn't actually have to, because as St. John Damascene says, prayer is merely the raising of one's mind and heart to God. Then what you have to do is say, well, okay, all I got to do to pray successfully is to do that. And then you need to be intentional about prayer. So here's what I want to do. Before reading from Thomas Aquinas on the importance of vocal prayer. I want to suggest three daily rules of life with regards to prayer. Now, when I say a rule of life, you know, you think of these Benedictines and these Dominican sisters, and they have a daily prayer life that they have to stick to. I remember when I was discerning the priesthood, I'd go to the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal

Starting point is 00:24:43 website or something, you know, and it'll say, you know, they pray from like 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. They have Holy Mass at 6 a.m. Then they have like spiritual reading from this to this. And that's not optional for them. It's not like, you know, if you want to, we have morning prayer available. If you want to sleep in, that's cool too. But obviously, it's available. And I just, if you want, you can do it.

Starting point is 00:25:04 That's not what they're saying. It's obligatory. Now, obviously, as if you're a parent with small children, you can't commit to the same life that a monk or a friar or a nun can, but we can still commit to something. And that's my point. We ought to commit to something. So what I want to do now is suggest three daily prayer routines going from easiest to hardest. Okay. Easiest to hardest. This is the bare minimum we should do. So if you hear this and you think, oh gosh, there's so many more things you could do that you've left out. As I say, this is the bare minimum. Okay. So, um, here would be stage one. And I want to encourage you, you know, if you don't yet have a daily prayer routine and you you're desperate for someone to tell you, let me bloody tell you and just take one of these and do it. Okay. So

Starting point is 00:26:00 here's stage one, right? So if you're not into praying regularly, here's what you should at least do. Again, just a suggestion, but I think adopt one of these and be faithful to it. Number one, make a morning offering before your feet hit the floor. Okay? What is a daily offering? And by the way, I want to point out, I am aware that we have evangelical listeners as well as Catholic listeners. To my Protestants out there who listen frequently, I want you to know that I love you. I learn from you. You are so welcome here. So if I suggest some things that are specifically Catholic that you don't think that you can yet pray, okay, but then think of an equivalent, okay? So when I say a daily offering before your feet hit the floor, what I mean is to memorize some prayer in which you offer your day to God before your feet have

Starting point is 00:26:51 hit the floor. It's that simple. You wake up, you're groggy, you kind of rub your eyes a bit, and you're looking forward to your coffee. Before your eyes hit the floor, make a daily prayer. And it can be something as simple as this, you know, Oh Jesus, through the immaculate heart of Mary, I offer you my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day in union with the holy sacrifice of the mass offered throughout the world. I offer them for all the intentions of your sacred heart, the salvation of souls, reparation for sin, the reunion of all Christians. I offer them for the intentions of our bishops and of all the apostles of prayer, and in particular, for those recommended by our Holy Father this month. There are many different ways that you can... A daily offering doesn't

Starting point is 00:27:38 have to be that exactly. It can be something a lot simpler, but something like that, all right, I think would be really good. What I'll do is I'll throw this text up in the show notes, and I would recommend that you would put that by your dresser and then pray it every morning. Another small thing you could do is if you wear a scapula or a crucifix around your neck, like the first thing you should do when you gain consciousness, right, is kiss that crucifix, make the morning offering and get out of your bed, right? That's the first thing. The second thing you could do is you could pray the Holy Rosary that day and or the Jesus prayer for my Eastern Catholics out there or Orthodox. And then the final thing is to do an examination

Starting point is 00:28:22 of conscience that night. Do you see how simple that is? So if you're looking for a prayer rule for life, I've just given you a very simple one. Morning offering before your feet hit the floor, a rosary at some point during the day, and then finally an examination of conscience at night. And if you're a Protestant and can't pray the rosary or even the Jesus prayer, maybe 10 minutes of scripture reading can be the thing that you set yourself, something like that. Now, what is an examination of conscience? This is actually something I've been doing a lot lately because I'm

Starting point is 00:28:52 in Exodus 90, which is like an ascetical program for men that I'm doing with a few brothers. Basically, it means this. At the end of your night, spend some time reflecting upon your day from when you woke up and then gradually go through each hour of the day as best as you're able, thanking God for the many blessings that you have received from him that day. That's the first step. And now that you've thought about your day and thanked him for the blessings, repent of the ways that you have failed. So repent for your, you know, lack of charity or for your moodiness or for the ways you didn't pray when you said that you would or for not helping a friend or for your lust or pride or whatever it is. Repent of those things and ask God's grace to help you not commit those same sins the next day. It's that simple.

Starting point is 00:29:40 Don't make it something that's too complicated. Again, I want to make this as easy as possible for you because when we make things too intricate and complicated, again, we have this preconceived idea of how prayer ought to look and that gets in the way of us actually praying. So there you go. That's stage one. Again, I'm going to put all of these in the show notes so you can see them. Stage two, like if you're a little more advanced than that, offer a morning offering before your feet hit the floor. Do 10 minutes of scripture reading in the morning. Do a rosary or Jesus prayer during the day and then do examination of conscience at night. So you're just adding 10 minutes of scripture reading in the morning, do a rosary or Jesus prayer during the day, and then do examination of conscience at night. So you're just adding 10 minutes of scripture in the morning for that one. Stage three would be this. And again, if you're not keeping up,

Starting point is 00:30:15 just look in the show notes, they'll be here. Morning offering before your feet hit the floor, plus 10 minutes of scripture reading in the morning, plus a rosary or a Jesus prayer during the day. And then in addition to this, visit the blessed sacrament and offer three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys, and three Glory Bees every single day, every single day. And then finally make an examination of conscience at night. Now, some of you might be thinking, Matt, you know, you didn't incorporate enough Bible reading into that. You didn't incorporate daily mass into that. You didn't incorporate whatever, adoration. That's right. And you'll remember, I said that these were bare minimum things, because here's what I think happens. You and I get super pumped about praying and we're like, oh my gosh, I'm

Starting point is 00:30:58 going to do a holy hour every day and I'm going to do this every day. But the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. So we start out strong and we last two or three days and then we stop. So what I'm saying is why don't we be a little more humble in our aspirations and be faithful to those aspirations. Rather than coming up with these big plans and then failing and then losing heart, start small. So again, check out the show notes and commit to something like that. Again, daily offering, rosary in the middle of the day, examination of conscience. I think that could be a really awesome way for you to begin growing in prayer. And all right, let's take a look at what Thomas Aquinas has to say before taking a look at the questions that we're getting

Starting point is 00:31:40 in from our patrons right now. Always excited to get questions from our patrons because they're always super cool. All right. So this comes from Aquinas' section on prayer, the Secunda Secundae, question 83. There's a lot of great stuff in here, by the way. There's 17 different articles. I want to look at article 12, whether prayer should be vocal. All right. There's so much wisdom in this. So like, here's the first objection to Aquinas' answer, just to kind of show you what he's responding to. So someone could say something like, you know, it would seem that prayer ought not to be vocal because prayer is addressed chiefly to God. Now, God knows the language of the heart. Therefore, it's useless to employ vocal prayer. Here's the second objection.

Starting point is 00:32:32 Further, prayer should lift man's mind to God. But words, like other sensible objects, prevent man from ascending to God by contemplation. Therefore, we should not use words in our prayers. Third objection. Further, prayer should be offered to God in secret, according to Matthew 6.6, but thou, when thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy father in secret. That comes from Matthew 6.6. But prayer loses its secrecy by being expressed vocally. Therefore, prayer should not be vocal. All right. So these are sort of the objections that he's going to respond to. So let me kind of show you his main response here. Okay. When it comes to individual prayer,

Starting point is 00:33:18 right? And by individual prayer, we're talking about prayer, not communal prayer, like the holy sacrifice of the mass, but individual prayer, which is offered by a single person. He says, whether he pray for himself or others, right? This is this individual prayer. It's not essential to such a prayer that it be vocal. And yet the voice is employed in such like prayers for three reasons. Okay. So we're going to look at these three reasons. So again, that's really, he's saying, you don't have to use your voice. It's not a matter of necessity, but here's three reasons. It's a really good idea. Okay. And I think you'll resonate with each of them. First, he says, in order to excite interior devotion, whereby the mind of the person praying is raised to God, because by means of external signs, whether of words or of deeds,

Starting point is 00:34:08 the human mind is moved as regards apprehension and consequently also as regards the affections. Hence, Augustine says that by means of words and other signs, we arouse ourselves more effectively to an increase of holy desires. Hence, then alone should we use words and such like signs when they help to excite the mind internally. But if they distract or in any way impede the mind, we should abstain from them. And this happens chiefly to those whose mind is sufficiently prepared for devotion without having recourse to those signs. Wherefore, the psalmist says, my heart hath said to thee, my face hath sought thee. And we read of Anna in Samuel chapter 1 verse 13, that she spoke in her heart.

Starting point is 00:35:00 All right, so let's just pause there and just think about that. I really like this. I was actually listening to a video today of a bloke who was sharing on YouTube about his desire to pray the Holy Rosary. And he said he was driving to work and he started shouting one of the decades. Now, I'm sure he didn't mean shouting in like a violent, crazy way, but speaking the decade very loudly. Why? Just like Aquinas is saying here, to sort of excite this internal disposition to make it focus more upon God. And so this is why praying out loud can be very helpful. And I'm sure you've noticed this. If you sit down, come into adoration, or you sit in your chair or you shut the door, and you start praying the rosary, you can be very distracted, especially if you've just walked in to pray.

Starting point is 00:35:51 And of course, when you start to speak the words out loud, it orders your mind. And this is why I think vocal prayer often leads to contemplation, right? So you speak, you're kind of directing yourself, and then this leads to sort of contemplation. It's sort of like how lovers engage, isn't it? You and your spouse, hopefully, might begin to speak with each other, chatting about the day. And as you go along throughout the night, you might just begin to enjoy sitting in each other's presence and think to yourself, it wouldn't be the same if she weren't sitting here, even though neither of us is speaking or something like that. So that's really good. I've even had people say that if you find that your desire to read Holy Scripture or to pray is lacking, then you should do something physical, like get down on your knees, kiss the book, kiss the Bible with your lips, kiss it,

Starting point is 00:36:37 thank God for it. You know, and if you're an evangelical listening, I think, you know, you could employ some of these things. Sometimes people look at Catholics and say, golly, the sign of the cross, they're genuflecting, they're bowing. Why do they do all these things? You don't need to do these things. I think the answer sometimes is, yeah, you're right. You don't need to do these things. But because we are incarnate beings, not just angels, not spirits, but like matter and soul, we lead the soul with what we do with the body. And even if you're an evangelical listening, I'm sure you've found this to be the case. Like, do you pray better if you're sitting up reading your scriptures or, you know, or if you're laying in bed holding the Bible above you? Do you know what I'm saying? Like, we have to take our physicality into account. So that's

Starting point is 00:37:22 one reason praying out loud is a good idea. Here's the second reason Aquinas gives. He says, the voice is used in praying as though to pay a debt so that man may serve God with all that he has from God. That is to say, not only with his mind, but also with his body. And this applies to prayer considered especially as satisfactory. Hence, it's written in Hosea 14, three, take away all iniquity and receive the good, and we will render the calves of our lips. All right. So it's a more kind of fuller expression of prayer. And this gets back to what I was saying a moment ago, using our whole body to kind of give back to the Father. Here's the third reason praying out loud is helpful. He says, we have recourse to vocal prayer through a certain overflow from the soul into the body,

Starting point is 00:38:13 through excess of feeling. According to Psalm 15, 9, my heart hath been glad and my tongue hath rejoiced. So when we encounter something inspiring or beautiful, we want to praise it, make noises in some sense, say something intelligible. And this is another reason that we use our voice. Let's look at some of these responses to those objections we saw a moment ago. The first objection you'll remember is that God doesn't need you to speak. He knows the language of the heart. And Aquinas says to that, vocal prayer is employed not in order to tell God something he does not know, but in order to lift up the mind of the person praying or of other persons to God. In other words, we don't pray out loud for God's sake,

Starting point is 00:38:57 we pray out loud for our sake. You'll remember that the second objection had to do with words like other sensible objects being distracting and that's why we shouldn't pray out loud and aquinas is going to say to this that words about other matters do distract the mind and hinder the devotion of those who pray but words signifying some object of devotion lift up the mind, especially one that is less devout. And I, at least, am one who is less devout. And so using words that I read out of a prayer book or something can very much help me in that way. Now, what about thirdly? The third objection you'll remember is this idea that we're supposed to be praying to God in secret. And if we pray

Starting point is 00:39:42 with our voice, we're going to lose that secrecy. Here's what he says. He quotes Chrysostom in saying that, Our Lord forbids one to pray in the presence of others in order that one may be seen by others. Hence, when you pray, do nothing strange to draw men's attention, either by shouting so as to be heard by others, or by openly striking the heart or extending the hands so as to be seen by many. And yet, according to Augustine, it is not wrong to be seen by men, but to do this or that in order to be seen

Starting point is 00:40:21 by men. I think that's a really good distinction. I know for me at times, I was doing this last night, I was walking around the neighborhood praying the Holy Rosary. And sometimes it occurs to you, doesn't it? Like, am I? I want people to, I do, I do want people to notice that I'm doing it. I noticed that in me. I want people to recognize I'm praying and I want them to know it's a Catholic thing, you know? And I think partly that is actually because I want them to know it's a Catholic thing, you know? And I think partly that is actually because I want them to know that I love Jesus Christ. That really is it. And then another part is perhaps for pride. And that's something that needs to be discerned.

Starting point is 00:40:55 And so that's not always easy to discern. And I think for me, that really wasn't the reason I was praying, you know, walking around the neighborhood. It really wasn't. I would have been just as happy to pray the rosary in my pocket, except it's kind of more cumbersome. And I wanted them to, I love when I see people praying the rosary, it kind of inspires me. And that's kind of why I was doing it. But there've definitely been times in the past where I think to myself, yeah, I'm really just doing this to impress this girl or something, you know, in that situation, it would be wrong. All right. So there are three reasons

Starting point is 00:41:26 that we should pray and to pray vocally. We've talked about three stumbling blocks to prayer, and now we're going to take some really fascinating questions from our patrons. All right. A very big thanks to all of you who support me on Patreon and make all of this work possible. If you're not yet a patron and want to be, please go to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd, give as little as a dollar a month or more, and you'll start getting free perks in return, like audio library, video library, post-show wrap-up videos, the Matt Fradd Show, signed books sent to you, the ability to engage in online book studies like we're about to do with Flannery O'Connor, and a whole lot else besides. But more than any of that, you'd be supporting all this work that

Starting point is 00:42:09 does not support itself. So a big thank you to all of you who would choose to do that, patreon.com slash Matt Fradden. If you are a patron, seriously, I know I say this all the time to you on Patreon, but from the bottom of my heart, thank you for supporting all the work that we're doing here. Okay, the first question, and I haven't read these in advance. I mean, I skimmed some of them, so I know kind of some of the topics. That's why I know they're interesting, but I haven't read them. So here we go. Ryan McKee says,

Starting point is 00:42:33 Would love to hear what led you to love the King James Version of the Bible. As a former Anglican, I love it as well, and just recently purchased an awesome King James Version with Apocrypha from Cambridge University Press. All right. First of all, Catholics don't call the Deuterocanonicals the Apocrypha. Protestants do. We call it the second canon.

Starting point is 00:42:57 And this is something that the church has always used up until the time of the Reformation when Martin Luther decided to excise some of these books from the canon, he had reasons that he thought justified him in doing so. I won't get into all that here, but just a quick technical note. You may have heard the phrase apocrypha or deuterocanonicals. Catholics use the word deuterocanonicals. Interestingly enough, the deuterocanonicals were present in the first edition of the King James Version as an appendix. So that's an interesting fact. I very much like the King James Version. I don't use it on a day-to-day basis. I use the RSV or I have an ESV app. ESV is based on the RSV and I very much enjoy that. The reason I like the King James Version is

Starting point is 00:43:40 why I like traditional prayers and the Latin mass. And, you know, I'm attracted to those things because I think that words matter. The way we phrase things matters. The way we pray matters. And when you use banal language, you know, that doesn't often lead the mind to God. Sometimes different translations can give you different insights into different matters. But I do very much like the King James version of the Bible. So I think it's fine. I think it's a beautiful... I could not get into the Douay-Rheims, which precedes the King James version and is thought to be the kind of Catholic standard Bible based off the Vulgate. I couldn't really get into it. I didn't find it as beautiful. That's just a personal preference. I would think that if you could get into the Vulgate, if you could get into

Starting point is 00:44:29 the Douay-Rheims, then you should. You should choose that over the King James Version, just because you avoid the complications of not having extra books in the Bible. I shouldn't say extra books, but the right amount of books. All right. Daniel Miller says, what are your thoughts on universalism or what does Aquinas have to say about it, if anything? Was listening to the Trent Horn podcast you recommended? Good. I'm glad you guys are listening to my recommendations. Trent is amazing. He's going to be in the Matt Fradd show, by the way, in a few months.

Starting point is 00:45:00 So thanks for making that possible. He says, find myself attracted to the idea of universal salvation, but I also find that it makes no sense. What's the point of evangelizing or even Jesus coming to earth if everyone is saved in the end anyways? It consoles me in the thought of my atheist family members being saved, but it contradicts with everything I understand about living and religion. All right, so there's several things to pass out here. First of all, Augustine and Aquinas certainly believe that many people go to hell and are not universalists in the sense that all will eventually be saved. And some universalists would go on to say that even the demons will eventually be saved and there will be universal salvation.

Starting point is 00:45:47 Okay. Now you say, what's the point of evangelizing? Okay, well, I'm trying to think from a universalist perspective, right? So this isn't my answer specifically, but I'm trying to give them a fair shake. I think they would say, when you come to Jesus Christ and live in relationship with him, isn't that a beautiful thing? Doesn't that increase the value of your life? And if it does, and if it is significant, wouldn't you want that for other people? So a universalist would perhaps say that even if people are saved in the end, it would be good for them to know Jesus now, and that's why they evangelize. And then you say,

Starting point is 00:46:19 what's the point of Jesus coming to earth if everyone's saved? Well, they would say to that, well, it's precisely because Jesus came to earth that all will be saved in the end anyways. Do you see? So that would be their response. But I think the more traditional understanding is that people go to hell who reject Christ. And, you know, this whole area of soteriology can get rather complicated.

Starting point is 00:46:43 And I don't necessarily want to delve into it at length here, but you asked, what does Aquinas have to say? Aquinas indeed believes that many people go to hell. Okay. But we can hope, I think, that your family will be saved. We can hope for that. And we can pray that God would bring that about, you know, so we can trust that the father loves your family, Daniel, more than you do, more than I do, right? And that he can make a way for them to receive salvation, you know, so don't give up, don't despair. Stephen Lehman says, favorite video game? Which Lord of the Rings character is your favorite? Gosh, favorite video game. I haven't played video games in forever but i was a big fan of the tex

Starting point is 00:47:25 murphy uh games back when you know this is around nine in the 90s i liked them a lot pandora directive was really good um and then i like some first person shooters like quake i always found quake terrifying but you see i'm not pointing any recent ones out because i haven't really played them in forever uh lord of the rings character gosh it, it's so hard to say. They're all my favorite for different reasons. How could you not say Sam Gamgee? How could you not say Frodo? How could you not say Gandalf? How could you not say Strider? It's one of the beautiful things about that book is many of the characters are very lovable. Mark Doob says, what does Aquinas have to say if anything about spirituality, Mark Doob says,

Starting point is 00:48:04 what does Aquinas have to say if anything about spirituality, sorry, spiritually healthy relationships between orthodox and mercy? Lately, it would seem by some in the church that these two things are incompatible instead of complimentary. Yeah, I think this kind of gets to what Daniel was asking a moment ago about universalism. I really don't want to get into this all again

Starting point is 00:48:24 because whenever I do, something blows up. But Bishop Robert Barron, I think, hopes that all will be saved. And he doesn't see in that a contradiction from Christ's words about hell. Bishop Barron certainly does not reject the existence of hell. Bishop Barron isn't even making a claim about the probability that many will be in heaven. He simply hopes that all will be saved. And I think you're right. I think we tend to push back against excesses, right? So if you encounter somebody that's talking about universalism and you're seeing this kind of takeover in the church, I think a tendency is to speak forcefully against it, to use an analogy from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, you bend the stick back the other way,

Starting point is 00:49:06 past where it ought to be, so that it will then be straight again, you see? And I think people might have the tendency to do this in the other direction. And I think we have seen this, haven't we? That people often say, you know, when I was a kid, it was all hell and you're going to hell and God's going to punish you. Whereas today, we've seen this reaction against that. And so you say, how do we compliment these things? I think by reading the word of God and the catechism of the Catholic church. Coming into relationship with Christ and being saved for all eternity is easy, but so is going to hell. Both are easy. We have to accept the free grace of God given to us initially through baptism ordinarily, right? And then we have to be faithful to that grace and

Starting point is 00:49:53 work out our salvation with fear and trembling, like St. Paul said. But responding to the grace of God is easy because God gives us the grace to do it and we just have to choose to do it. But we can just as easily choose to reject the grace of God and make, as one of the epistles says, I think it's James, but I'm not sure, shipwreck of the faith. So I think the two can be harmonized. We just don't want to fall into either excess. James and Alison Lee says, I grew up evangelical, have started going to mass the past few months since listening to this podcast and reading Into the Deep. I find the daily mass to be an incredible avenue of spending time with our Lord, despite not being able to receive the Eucharist. The reverence and devotion of the 40 plus people who are there is so compelling. Yet I must admit, Sunday Mass has not been a

Starting point is 00:50:46 similar experience. Of the hundreds there, it's evident many do not take the Eucharist seriously. That is, you know, hungover college students, many leaving right after the Eucharist before the priest has concluded Mass. I really believe the Lord is there either way, but I still find the reverence of those around me greatly affects me, probably more than it should. While I yearn for daily mass, I haven't been much interested in going back on Sundays. Any advice on how to better appreciate the worship on Sunday in such a context? Okay, this is from James and Alison Lee, so I'm not sure who is writing this. I'll just assume that it's James. Okay, so I'll speak to you as James. James, many Catholics listening to this podcast are nodding their head in agreement. We fully understand the experience you're going through. See, as Catholics, we're obligated to attend Sunday mass. We are not

Starting point is 00:51:34 obligated to attend daily mass. Therefore, you're naturally going to find people who are more serious about their Catholic faith at the masses. They're not obligated to attend, but are going out of devotion for our Lord, love for Jesus Christ. So it shouldn't surprise you. I think I would say this. First, it sounds like you're still a Protestant, so you are not actually obligated to go to Sunday Mass, right? You're not obligated to go to Mass during the weekdays either. So you say you have a desire to go to daily Mass, but not necessarily Sunday Mass obligated to go to Mass during the weekdays either. So you say, you know, you have a desire to go to daily Mass, but not necessarily Sunday Mass. That's okay. You could do that right now as you continue to discern coming into the fullness of the Catholic faith.

Starting point is 00:52:16 You could go to a daily Mass. And in the meantime, I might suggest that you look up different parishes in your area. Maybe see if you have a Latin mass in your area that you could attend, or you could ask some of those going to daily mass whose devotion you find so beautiful, do you know of any other masses around here where it's this devout on Sundays, and you might make the decision to go to Sunday mass there? Because I agree with you. I've been to some, you know, go to holy mass on a Sunday and you think, goodness gracious, people are shuffling about the place like it's a 7-Eleven. There's no sense of reverence here. The music's awful. You know, this is very difficult. Now, as a Catholic, I'm obligated to go to Holy Mass and so would go whether or not, but if it's not

Starting point is 00:53:02 my only option, I would certainly go somewhere else. So that would be my advice. Okay. Benjamin Chavez says, a follow-up on the Timothy Gordon episode. I would like to hear your thoughts on it. Yeah. Thanks, Benjamin. Okay. So for those of you who haven't seen it, it was a pretty provocative interview. And so what would be my thoughts? My thoughts would simply be this. I was not prepared and and shame on me, for that episode. I had not watched TNT, Timothy, what are their names? Taylor Marshall and Timothy Gordon. I hadn't watched a full episode. I'd watched little clips here and there. All I knew was here are two men who love the Catholic faith and are serious about it. That's really all I knew. And so a friend of mine called me and said, hey, Timothy Gordon's in the area.

Starting point is 00:53:48 He'd be open to being on your show. Would you like that? And I said, totally. So I didn't read his book. So the point in me saying all this is I was caught flat footed. So there was one point in the episode where Timothy Gordon seemed to have been making the claim that it was always a sin for a mother to work. Now, when he made that claim, I just had no idea how to respond. And again, shame on me for not being prepared for that, you know, encounter. So I didn't respond right then and there, because he was quoting these different encyclicals. And I couldn't obviously pause right then and there and read the encyclicals. So I wrote a follow-up article after I had gotten out of that interview and thought about it and read some things. But that would be my thought.

Starting point is 00:54:31 I think Timothy Gordon is a very good man. He loves Jesus Christ. He's a very good husband. Him and his wife and children came over to our place. And it was just evident that he loves his children and loves his wife. And so that's all I got to say about him. I think he's a good dude. All right. Trey Weaver says, should we boycott business or corporations that support Planned Parenthood or abortion in general? If so, where do we draw the line on that?

Starting point is 00:54:58 I recently looked up a list of Planned Parenthood donors, and it seems like every major company in America from all sectors and supported in some way, it feels like we'd have to live off the grid in order to do so thoughts. Okay. This is a good question, Trey. I wish I was more prepared to answer it. You know, in moral theology, we talk about actions that are more or less proximate to the sin. And you can be culpable for one sin, the nearer you are to that sin, but the further you are away from it, you're still participating in it, but you're not culpable, right, for any sort of wrongdoing that's happening. So an example would be, you know, a friend says to me, I want an abortion. And I say, all right, well, get in the car with me. You know, here's the money. I'm driving you now. All right. So I am very

Starting point is 00:55:48 closely connected with that sin and have sinned grievously. Okay. That's very different from buying a cappuccino at Starbucks, you know? And I'm not sinning by buying a cappuccino at Starbucks, generally speaking. It might be a very admirable thing to no longer drink Starbucks because they support Planned Parenthood and LGBTQ stuff, all right? Very admirable. But that's different to saying that it's sinning if I go. Now, suppose I was to show up at a Starbucks and it said 10% of today's proceeds go to support Planned Parenthood.

Starting point is 00:56:24 Well, okay, they're making a public show of it. Then to walk into that place would be to sort of offer my support in a public way. And so in that case, I would refrain. So I guess the only point I'm making here is we're not called to refrain from, you know, we're not called to boycott every single business that is tied to something immoral because it's just totally impractical. It can be an admirable thing, but we're not strictly speaking called to boycott every single one. I think that's what I would say. Now, there are some that are more egregiously, yougregiously promoting certain abominable activities than others. And in those cases, I think there might little bit uncomfortable. What do you do when you come across it with the little fr America, it's a very sensitive issue. So I'm going to do my best here. I think what I do is I read the word. Again, I think the N word we're talking

Starting point is 00:57:53 about is usually the N-E-G-R-O, right? Again, I'm so afraid of Americans killing me that I just, I don't know how much is offensive and how much isn't. And I really do not mean to be offensive to any people for which this is an offensive word. I really do mean that. But I would read that word and then I would explain to my children, she's referring to black people, but this is a word that is very insulting. And so we don't use that word anymore. And here's why. I think that could be one way. The other way would be simply to replace the word with, you know, whatever, a little black child or something like that. You know, if your children are older, you don't want to prevent them from seeing what Flannery said, but if you think it's going to cause more confusion

Starting point is 00:58:35 than not, and they're only young, you might do that. Oh my goodness gracious. There is so many wonderful questions here. Why don't I take one more? Penny Marchetti says, when do you plan to have the Flannery O'Connor book club? Yes. Okay. In October or November, Father Damien Ference is currently getting his PhD in Flannery O'Connor and philosophy and Thomas. It's all kind of baked together there. So he's going to be doing a five-week book club on her, just for you patrons. So soon we'll release the reading material for you to read. And as I say, there'll be videos that he will lead, and then he'll be commenting with you and me in the comment section so that we can really understand what we're reading. So that's coming soon, I promise.

Starting point is 00:59:26 And if you're not yet a patron and you want to have access to that as well as a whole bunch of other things, that's something you could consider doing. All right. I think that'll do it for now. God bless you. Thank you very much for tuning in to Pints with Aquinas. And I hope that you have a lovely day. Bye.

Pints With Aquinas - 173: What is prayer? (& How to do it)

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