Pints With Aquinas - 206: How to be the Spiritual Leader of your family w/ Dr. Scott Hahn

Episode Date: May 19, 2020

In this episode, Matt interviews Dr. Scott Hahn on why and how husbands ought to be the spiritual leaders of their homes. Get Dr. Hahn's new book, Hope to Die here: https://stpaulcenter.com/product/hope-to-die-the-christian-meaning-of-death-and-the-resurrection-of-the-body/ See The St. Paul Center here: https://stpaulcenter.com/ During this episode, you'll learn about: What family prayer can look like The priestly role husbands and sons play in the household The essential role women play as the "heart" of the home Prayer during this time of social isolation And much, much more SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints  Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/  SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pints_w_aqu... MY BOOKS Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist... Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecr... The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myt... CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequ... -- Website - mattfradd.com Facebook - facebook.com/mattfradd/ Instagram - instagram.com/pints_w_aquinas Twitter - twitter.com/mattfradd

G'day and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My goodness gracious, do I have an amazing show for you today. I spoke with Dr. Scott Hahn for about an hour and 40 minutes or thereabouts. Honestly, I think this is the most vulnerable interview I've seen him do. What a good man and just a lot to share. What a good man and just a lot to share. We talked about being as why fathers are the priests of their household, how we ought to develop a prayer rule in our homes and with our families, how sometimes we can have this idealistic view of how prayer ought to look,

and that sometimes gets in the way. My goodness, we talked about so much. We talked about how husbands are the head of the families, head of their wives, what that means. And then we started getting super theological. I had to write it down. We get super theological. We talk about the kind of platonic versus the sort of Epicurean views of the body, the Christian view of the body. We even got into cremation.

It's like waking up from a night on the drink. You're like, what did we do? Why did you have that lampshade on your head? Again, no one was drinking too much, and nor am I advocating that you ought to. But we just spoke about a lot of stuff, and I think you are going to find this absolutely fascinating. You guys know who Dr. Hahn is. He's the Father Michael Scanlon Professor of Biblical Theology and the New Evangelization at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he's taught since 1990.

He's got like 8 billion books out. He's a former Presbyterian minister. He entered the Catholic Church in 1986. You get it. You get it. He's fantastic. Okay. Hey, do you guys know that I created a course to

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But as we move through this program and as we progress through Lent, he must have done this during Lent, I have become increasingly able to fall on God instead. And through prayers in those difficult times, he has, can you tell that I need glasses? It's honestly, I'm trying not to read them, but use them. He has eased my pain and brought me fulfillment.

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I hope you have a good day and I hope you enjoy this interview with Dr. Scott Hahn. G'day, Dr. Hahn. Welcome to Pints with a Choir Nurse. It's good to see you, Matt. And it's good to hear that you're in good health too. We were praying for you and Cameron. It was just really a heavy burden to go through that kind of illness, no matter what results of those tests you had. I still think there might have been a false negative. Yeah, we'll see. I kind of hope so. It seems to me that we'll all probably end up getting this at some point anyway. That's the way I feel. But some kind person suggested to EWTN that they share on their Facebook page, and that post, goodness gracious, that got more shares than I have followers.

It was quite scary. It was lovely that everyone was praying for us. We certainly weren't feeling well. My wife was admitted to hospital for oxygen problems and things. So it was certainly no picnic. But we're doing better now. If you're going to have something go viral, let it be that and the prayers. Yes.

Ironically. How are you doing with all of this? Yeah, I mean, we're doing well in the Han household. Steubenville seems to be doing well enough. We have we've had a few cases. I haven't heard of any deaths. Kimberly's on city council. So I suppose that news would trickle down. But in our in our own home, it's really been special for the last seven weeks or so. I might have told you this, but we have two, well, we have five sons and one daughter and 19 grandkids, but two sons are in the seminary studying for the priesthood for the diocese of Steubenville, Jeremiah and Joseph. And of course their semester was cut short. They had to come back the beginning of March. And so they've been doing their courses online at Sacred Heart in Detroit. They've been leading us in prayer. We've never done the breviary before as a family.

I've prayed the office a little bit. They, of course, pray it every day. Kimberly had never really done it. Morning or midday, afternoon or evening prayer. In addition, we get to see the live stream masses. And it's just really been, I mean, a strange time for sure, but a strangely blessed time for us as a family. We're certainly not the holy family, but I must admit that this has raised us to a whole new level of unity. And, you know, as they were preparing to come back at the beginning of March, I told them,

I just read an article on fratriarchy in the Old Testament and how prominent brothers are. It's not just the father leading things. And so I said, now that you've all come of age, you know, I'm going to defer to you to lead us in prayer. So instead of just simply imposing the family rosary upon my youngsters, find the most appropriate way to lead us spiritually. And Kimberley and I have been so doubly blessed by Jer, who was supposed to be ordained to the transitional diaconate like three weeks ago. That's been postponed. We're not certain when that'll happen. But Jeremiah and Joseph have just been

stepping up their game with us and our 20-year-old son, David, who's back from the university, his junior year. And yeah, we're all busy doing our various things, but we all have certain times set aside where we gather for prayer and holy water and just all kinds. We sing much more music and song, piano, guitar, acapella, and all of that. So yeah, I'm sorry for all of the tragic and the horrible things, but it feels like a little mini year of jubilee. I mean, it's only been six or seven weeks, but a sabbatical time of grace for the Han household household at least, and boy, did we need it. I wonder if that's one of the goods that's coming out of this whole thing, that fathers in particular, hopefully, are beginning to find their role as the priest of the family

and are beginning to lead more intentionally their families in prayer. Definitely. You know, and even in Scripture, you have the model of the royal priest, you know, where the king is not just a separate office like it was in the tribe of Judah, in the house of David, and you had the Aaronites, the Levites. There really is a sense in which Christ has brought back together both kingship and priesthood so that if the father has a royal responsibility, it's primarily discharged through priestly sacrifice and prayer.

And that's a lesson I'm still learning for sure. I mean, after 40 years of marriage, you'd think I would have had that down, but I feel more like Israel. After 40 years, I'm finally kind of entering into the promised land. Kimberley and I are enjoying fellowship and friendship and fun like I never even knew a married couple could. But we still have a long way to go, that's for sure. What is it, for those who are maybe a little perplexed about that idea of the father being the priest of the household, how are Catholics to understand that? Well, I mean, you step back and you look at the Old Testament and see that the New doesn't

abolish it, it fulfills it. And in the Old Testament, you have this foundational period called the patriarchal period, where the patriarchs like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph too, built altars and they offered sacrifice and they pronounced blessings and they prayed and they did things that later on are reserved exclusively for the tribe of Levi and the house of Aaron after the golden calf in Exodus 32, where you have a kind of division of the royal power and the priestly service. But, you know, in as much as Christ is the image of the father, the firstborn, I'm especially in love with the book of Hebrews, where you have the royal priesthood reunited in Christ, who's a priest after the order of Melchizedek,

the first person to be called priest in the Bible was also the king of Salem, later renamed Jerusalem. And so there is, you know, grace is healing nature. The New Testament is fulfilling the old. And so instead of just having one particular tribal caste called Levi given priestly duties through baptism, we really enter into that. But through holy matrimony, the spouses really enter into that in a unique way, just as Jesus is the image of the Father. So all of us as men in our homes are called to image the Father, and not just in a kind of nominal, static way, I'm the image of the father. No, image means imaging, imitating. And so this is what Christ does. And most especially, not only as he rises to be the king, but as he ascends to be the royal high priest. So that leadership is sacrifice and sacrifice

is service. I have not come to be served, but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many is a kind of model for all Christians, but especially Christian fathers. And so the natural family is supernaturally graced, not only through baptism and confirmation, but also through holy matrimony, so that you can see that back in the Old Testament, the patriarchal family was also matriarchal and fratriarchal. You know, it wasn't a kind of monistic rule. And that's what I think God wants to restore. Ultimately, our true family is not human but divine. It's not on earth but in heaven.

But the grace of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I think, is meant to transform us into, well, what Vatican II calls the ecclesia domestica, the domestic church, that the Christian family is not strictly natural. It already participates in supernatural life. And so, it is the living cell. All of these families are like the living cells of the church. The local parish is a family of families, the diocese too. And so fathers have got to step up. I mean, for too long, we have just kind of been relegating religion to, well, that's a woman's thing, you know. And no, it's not if our faith originates in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Granted, the Holy Spirit overshadows the Blessed Virgin Mary so that the greatest human person who ever existed is, appropriately, the woman of the apocalypse. And I could go on. I haven't been in the classroom

for like seven weeks, so I got to warn you. I'm free all afternoon. That's fantastic. Well, speaking very practically for a moment, when it comes to fathers leading their families in prayer, I'm of the opinion that I often say to parents when they're talking about leading their families in prayer, that they might have to lower the expectations they have as far as how prayer ought to look with kids. I remember after I got married, we had a few kids. You know, you just have this kind of vague idea of how Scott and Kimberly Hahn probably pray with their kids. They're all levitating or something. Meanwhile, I'm trying to not strangle my children with the rosary we're praying, and I'm not sure how to make this work. And for me,

it took a while to realize that it's kind of more important to do this as a family. I want my children to enjoy this time of prayer. I don't want to be so strict. I don't want to impose how I think family prayer ought to look upon them such that they end up not wanting to pray at all. What would your advice be in that regard? Well, I mean, all I can really advise is sort of the lessons that I learned over the years of parenting our six kids. And most of those lessons, quite frankly, were learned from all of the mistakes that I made and all the times that I didn't listen to Kimberly. But, you know, what we did because we homeschooled was to gather as a family for morning prayer. And to this day, we still do the morning offering, the act of consecration together whenever we can.

And then we would also then read at least the gospel for the day. That would be right in the mass. That's great. And then we would also pick up on the saint for the day. And we had different books over the years where we would learn about them. We also wanted to cultivate something of a mission-mindedness in our kids. And so we had an evangelical Protestant book called Operation World, which goes through like almost 200 countries that you can pray for each day. And you can read about the spiritual condition of the people. I think it's gone

through three or four editions. I would still encourage people to use it. I remember we were praying for Burundi when the massacres occurred and Rwanda as well. It was God's providence that we were hearing in the news about the tens of thousands of lives that were lost. And to find out that so many of them were Catholics just intensified the prayers of our own kids. You know, and then we would, we always did this. We would start by doing, we would end by doing extemporaneous prayers. Is this still your morning prayer? Yeah.

I mean, well, actually. It sounds pretty intense. Yeah, it would last about 20 hours or so. More like 20 minutes. Okay. But we would do extemporaneous prayer beginning with the youngest. And we would encourage or coach, but we wouldn't feed them lines. And it would often be like, you know, two and a half broken sentences, you know, giving thanks or whatever.

And then we would end with the oldest with mom and then dad. And I would gather them in what we call the holy family huddle and just say the blessing over them in the morning like I would do in the evening like I did a few hours ago. Holy water too. So I'm trying to think if people want to kind of implement this, is this something you would do say before breakfast? Did you tell the kids, we all do this before we eat so that you stayed true to it? Or how did it work? That was one of my mistakes. Yes, I did stipulate that. Kimberly shook her head. I didn't realize how right she was. And so we had a lot of hangry kids and parents. So we ended up doing it after breakfast when the flesh was subdued a little bit.

And so we have it. But I would say one size doesn't fit all. If you can get three minutes, that's better than nothing. And if you can stretch it into four after a month or so, or if you start off with 10 and you've overdone it, learn from your mistake and go back to five minutes, whatever know, whatever the traffic will bear, you know. That's good. It's more important to do this habitually than to have a burst of enthusiasm, say we're going to pray, you know, three mysteries of the rosary in the morning, and only last for a couple of days. But don't overdo it. Yeah. And I would say also, if you do it for a few days, and then for whatever

reasons or excuses, you miss it for a few days, don't give in to feeling defeated. You know, just pick yourself back up again, because we did end up, you know, whether it was vacation, or when I was gone, or Kimberly was busy, you know, we might go a few days without it, or we might do it for two days, skip a day, and then do it for three or whatever. But, I mean, it's just one of those things where you make the resolution. And there were times where I almost strangled my kids with the rosary. That makes me glad to hear. I probably shouldn't be glad about that, but I'm glad you're human.

I should also mention, too, that I imposed the family rosary for a while. And Kimberly shook her head and she said, an after-dinner decade. So we did an after-dinner decade. Scott, that is so good to hear. And I remember when John Paul called for the year of the rosary, Kimberly kind of initiated, well, why don't we at least try it as a family? And the kids had come of age where it was mostly a positive experience. I mean, for me, the rosary is like my favorite. And for the kids, it's not even in the top 10, you know, because nobody ever imposed it on me. No, this is so terrific. It's so important, I think, that we all be real about this because

we can have these idealized views of prayer. And I think sometimes our temperaments come into play here too. I tend to be of a melancholic disposition, so I'm very idealistic. I want prayer to look a certain way, to feel a certain way. But I think we've got to get over some of that, and it's more important to be loving and consistent. You mentioned praying with your wife. What's that like? And how have you grown in that since you got married? Yeah, I mean, prayer with her is so natural. We don't have a time that's stipulated on the schedule. We usually pray at night. We also pray together as a family. And then when the kids are gone, we often go through the Magnificat together and that sort of thing.

I would also say that a lesson I learned from Kimberly, not only for us as a couple, but for us as a family. And that is, you've got to play with your kids as much as you pray with them or more, you know? And so the importance of throwing a Frisbee or a football or a baseball. I mean, since I have five sons and one daughter, you know, she never really learned to play catch like the boys have, you know, but ever since I was a little boy, my, I had a cannon for an arm. And so I try to train up my boys with the football and the baseball and the frisbee. But also, you know, cards. I must admit, my five boys have ended up, the three youngest especially, they've ended up being gamesters in a way I never was. I mean, they just love to play games with each other and draw me in.

Kimberley and I played Moods with them like three nights ago. And we had a blast. What's the Kimberley and I played Moods with them like three nights ago, and we had a blast. What's the game called? It's called Moods. You can look it up and play it, and it's especially good for us melancholics. So, Matt, you will shine, I am sure, like I tend to do too. They play Risk and they also play…

I love it. In this day and age where so many children are kind of taken in by their screens and isolated from one another, I love when kids get into board games because it's just a beautiful excuse to sit across from each other and to enjoy each other for 20 minutes to an hour or more. Yeah. Oh, my kids will do it for hours sometimes, hours a week. Let me think. There was another. Oh, you know, movies also. I didn't grow up in a time or a culture where movies were so central. Obviously, by the 80s and 90s, when our kids came, were born and came of age, you know, suddenly, you know, movies were much more dominant, I think, from Star Wars on. But I was in college when the first episode of Star Wars came out. college when the first episode of Star Wars came out. And so I'm the caboose in our family when it comes to movie fluency. But Joe is so capable of spouting lines that he inadvertently memorized by the hundreds. And it adds a lot to the humor of the dinner table conversation. One last thing, too. This is something we inherited from Kimberly's family. Never does a dinner go by where we don't eventually end up going around the table and sharing good things.

My wife is responsible for that in our household too. Yes. What's your favorite thing from today? What are the three best things that happened? Yeah, it's usually two or three things. And, you know, so far, none of us have ever levitated. And so we still have a long way to go. I'd like to say I go to confession weekly ever since I became a Catholic.

And Kimberly has never suggested that I go too frequently. And the kids don't either. Oh, that's good. Yeah, your wife, my wife met your wife. And my wife immediately was taken by her. And my wife tends to be like she is the textbook choleric. It's like if we were in a plane and the plane was going down, she would push her way to the front and be like, let me figure this out. I've got to get out of the way.

And she probably would make it work. She's incredible like that. And so it's not often that she meets a woman and immediately just wants to sit at her feet and learn. But when she encountered Kimberly, that was the experience she had. And the way you talk of Kimberly, that's how I talk about my wife as well. That was the experience she had. And the way you talk of Kimberly, that's how I talk about my wife as well. If my wife has a hunch about something or if she says we should do something, the times I haven't listened, they've backfired.

Right. You know, it took me almost a decade to learn that. And in the process, I was becoming Catholic and she wasn't. She wouldn't. And when she did, I thought, well, it's going to be hunky-dory. She'll, you know, fall in line and follow me. And it didn't work that way when we moved to steubenville we had uh this really dark wall-to-wall a tie a tie-in carpeting that was newly put in by the previous owners that we were assured would last 30 years but it made our our house seem cavernous but i didn't care it would last 30 years

and so when she got the idea that we would brighten the home and get other carpeting and ripped this one out, you know, I went ballistic, you know, and I'm like, we can't afford that, you know? And then I realized I can't afford not to listen to her. And I remember the day when I said to her something that seemed like a revelation, you know, Kimberly, I have never gone wrong trusting you and I've never done right distrusting you. Even when I could prove you were wrong, that just made me more wrong. And she looked at me and she's like, we're on the same team. You finally figured that out. And I'm like, yeah. And boy, I never looked back. I still have to learn by making mistakes, but that was one of the biggest life lessons I ever learned.

And it was a source of joy back then and still is. I think a lot of men, you know, they understand that the scriptures say that the father is supposed to be the head of the household. And this is a true statement, right? A truth the scriptures teach. And yet, so on one hand, we experience how men are portrayed in the media maybe as overbearing or tyrannical. And then on the other hand, you've got this feminism movement that says, no, men and women are basically interchangeable. How would you suggest that a man take responsibility for his household, be the head of the household, the priest of the household, while at the same time having that humility that you're talking about? Because I would imagine one of the reasons that prevented me and maybe prevented you from listening to our wives is there's an authority that I ought to have in the household and that my wife even wants me to have, even if she's right more than I am.

Wow. Okay. So three thoughts just popped into my mind. The preliminary thought before the other three is my own pride, my own insecurity that makes it so hard for me to lead in a way that is natural for them to follow. And so I remember years ago hearing a phrase, I forget who used it. It might've been one of the, the, the Naramore brothers, Clyde or Bruce, who were evangelical Christian psychologists, but the phrase was non-anxious leadership. And I remember when I heard that I latched onto it thinking, okay, even if it takes me 10 years to attain that, that's my goal. Because leadership came naturally for me because of pride as a man, you know.

But anxious leadership is like the worst of both worlds. Because when you try to lead anxiously, everybody just feels your angst. And they don't want to follow you because everything, everybody's on edge. And so, you know, if I get to the moment when I'm not anxious, well, it's easy to fall back into the easy chair and just not want to lead at that point. So it's a combination of non-anxious leadership. It seems to me that that is the essence of fatherhood. And I saw it in my father-in-law. Dr. Jerry Kirk was the exemplar.

Oh, my. You know, we used to compare him to like four or five people, to Dick Van Dyke, to Jimmy Stewart, to Ronald Reagan and Fred McMurray. He was just unhatable. Yes. And he would lead non-anxiously. And I would learn from him. I would also end up feeling crushed with anxiety because I was so unable to do it like he did it so naturally. But over the years and through our friendship, he just set an example and strived to emulate.

The second thought that comes to my mind is from Ephesians 5, where we hear that Christ is the head of the church, and so the man is the head of the home. that Christ is the head of the church and so the man is the head of the home. I think of Pius XI and an encyclical that he wrote, Casti Canubi, back in 1930 on Christian marriages on the internet. It's one of the most neglected classics of 20th century papal teaching. It was in direct response to the Lambeth Convention, as you might know, which the Anglicans had just justified contraception for the first time under, you know, extraordinary circumstances, of course. But, you know, that becomes a, you know,

that little loophole becomes something that trucks can drive through. But in the response, he's not just explaining why the church says it's wrong to, you know, practice contraception, but he explains this vision of marriage. I remember reading it before I became a Catholic. And he draws from Ephesians 5 and points out how the man has primacy in the order of authority as the head. But then quoting St. Augustine, he refers to the fact that if the man is the head of the home, then the woman is the heart of the home. That if man has primacy in the order of authority, the woman has primacy in the order of love. And I'm like, huh, okay. There are two orders that are not in competition, nor are they separated from one another because authority is always meant to be not an end in

itself, but a means to an end. And the end is obviously love. And so if I wield my authority, you know, as the king, it's to exalt her as the queen. Because, you know, even if I think I'm usually right, I might have the right answer, but I hardly ever come out saying it in the right way at the right time. You know, but she always translates my knowledge into wisdom because she knows the kids. She knows their hearts. She knows their strengths and weaknesses. So I learned that when I take my authority as the head and I defer to her as the heart, she's always capable of not only translating what I'm trying to say, but she's also able to kind of

function as a prophetess and say, I think this is what you mean. And in my pride and in my insecurity, I'd be like, that's not what I said, you know, and all of that. So again, hundreds of times where I make the mistake, you begin to really catch on and develop a habit. The third and final thought that I have comes from a friend of mine who works with me at the Franciscan University and here at the St. Paul Center, Dr. John Bergsma, a brilliant biblical scholar, perhaps the greatest Catholic biblical scholar of this next generation, I'm convinced. And he's given a talk on a number of occasions. In fact, he's working on a book right now dealing with marriage, living out the sacrament of matrimony. living out the sacrament of matrimony. And the way he illustrates this principle of male headship and the woman is the heart is by pointing out how a man is meant to lead a woman in dancing, ballroom dancing, or whatever classical dancing you might think of, because he's clearly the one

who is meant to lead, but she is the one he intends to showcase. So it's not his beauty. It's not a narcissist kind of leadership. He is leading her so that everyone can see her grace and her dignity and charm. And so if a man understands that he has headship and authority, it's basically to kind of showcase her. And so I've also learned this with my own kids when we're not dancing, but we're in the kitchen or whatever. The more I show respect and honor to her, the more my kids just bask in it. You know, the more affection and respect and good humor, the more I defer to her in matters that aren't necessarily, you know, moral or immoral. I just feel as though it just contributes immeasurably, exponentially to the harmony. And let me just rewind for a

moment to put things in a realist tone, because when we moved here in 90, before I learned that lesson, you know, I think people were sort of surprised at our neighborhood at how strained our marriage was visibly. How strained? Okay. Yeah. There were a lot of stress lines, fault lines, because I had become a Catholic in 86. She didn't become one until 90, and I wasn't sure she ever would. And once she did, I thought, well, you know, happy days are here again.

But, I mean, I think our neighbors would have given our marriage about a 50-50 chance, you know, especially in the summertime when the windows were open. I've got a set of pipes, you know, and I don't always play happy tunes. I had to learn the hard way, you know. And now I would say it's the grace of the sacrament. It's God's fault that we're so blessed. It's her fault as well. And I'm just, again, the caboose that is learning mostly by mistakes that I make. But I think that's true for a kind of avoid any confrontation,

which means really avoid any direct engagement as husband or father. I just want to say a quick thanks to our second sponsor. Not Strive. We did that earlier. Halo, H-A-L-L-O-W. This is a Catholic meditation app to help you find peace and grow in your spiritual journey. Halo offers a permanently free, come on, free version of their app, which includes

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grow in your prayer life, you've been having trouble concentrating while you pray, you can't go past hallow. Please check it out. H-l-l-o-w dot app slash matt frat come on i know how to use this bloody thing okay it's time to get back to my discussion with dr scott hahn or it's a kind of absenteeism uh that uh is just easier to kind of avoid any confrontation, which means really avoid any direct engagement as husband or father. Which again is a result of this anxiety. I find that when I lose my cool with my wife or my kids, it is for that very reason.

It's because I'm not confident in my ability to lead that I lead with a sort of anxiety that this might not go well and I'll look stupid, or you might not listen to me because who am I that you would listen to me anyway. And then far be it for us to speak for women. But it's funny because my wife is much more the natural leader than I am, as I've already stated. And yet there's a desire that she has that I would lead the family, which I think is very interesting. I've never met a stronger woman than my wife, but she wants me to lead us in prayer, which I like to do, thankfully. But I think there's a lot of women out there like that.

When they want their husband to lead, they're not saying I want you to kind of dominate or be tyrannical or anything like this. They're not saying I want you to kind of dominate or be tyrannical or anything like this, but there is a desire to be led in a submissive way. But I don't mean submissive in a pejorative way, which I think is how we often use that term today. That's right. No, submissive doesn't mean obsequious. In fact, you know, it's like the Roman centurion. I'm a man under authority. That doesn't take away his power. That's the source of his power. And I'd like to think that what I want to do is to release Kimberly.

You know, I had first suggested that she go into city council. Now she is a kind of spiritual matriarch in our little city of Steubenville. You know, and likewise, we move down the street, you know, to have five and a half, six acres. And she has just transformed this unwalkable backyard that was nothing but dense foliage. I've been there. It's absolutely beautiful. I mean, it's like the hanging gardens of Babylon, only it's Ohio. And I mean, you recognize that authority is ordered to love.

And so headship is ordered to hardship. And so, you know, the truth comes to the head, but it has to get translated into the heart. The truth comes to the head, but it has to get translated into the heart. I can't help but think that your bride likes my bride so much because, well, it takes one to know one. She is choleric also. I am much more melancholic. I would also say this, too, that not all men have been blessed like we are. are. I don't know about your wife, but my wife was raised in a home with a very strong relationship with her dad who affirmed her to the clouds. And I mean, the strength that a woman draws from an affirming father is, I mean, it is inestimable. And, you know, it's also irreplaceable. And so

if a woman has felt torn down by her dad or alienated and estranged by his insecurities and stuff, I mean, it's almost impossible. So I don't want to create a false sense, you know, for men out there or women. But I do believe that grace picks up where nature leaves off and God provides us not only with what we need, but he makes up for what we lack. And that's what the sacrament is for. You know, matrimony is not a sacrament whereby we try to get God to do what we want. He empowers us to do what he wants and to discover how much better that is for us than whatever we wanted.

And so I think we have to tap into the sacrament and go to our Abba Father and say, help me to be more like you. Help me to image you like Christ did by laying down his life and to take this from the realm of religious rhetoric and translate into even just one or two practical things that I can do in my domestic church. I point out in one of my books, I forget which one, how in the Eucharistic liturgy, we all know our lines, lift up your heart as we lift up to the Lord and all of that. But in the domestic liturgy, there are a number of lines that we as men, I think, have to learn. Like, not only I love you, but I don't deserve you. Oh, that's good.

Or yes, dear. Yes, dear. Or, you know, I am sorry. And not I'm sorry that you misunderstood me yet again. Those full apologies that we weaponize. But I'm sorry I hurt you. Even though I didn't mean to, you know, this time, it doesn't diminish the pain. And so please forgive me. Or how about a date? Or tell me about your day. Or thank you for dinner. Thank you for cleaning up. And I'll be glad to is one of the harder lines for me in the domestic liturgy of our church.

I think I've heard you say that in the talks at some point. But it really struck me. From now on, whenever your wife asks you anything, just say, I'd be glad to. And it really does hurt sometimes. She's like, I am not glad to. But you're my wife and I love you. And so I wish to serve you. So in that sense, I'm glad to. Yeah. And it doesn't diminish anything in us that matters, perhaps our ego, you know, but as persons, we are made in the image and likeness of God. And that's especially true in our marriage and family life as well. Yeah. So we've talked a lot about being being idealistic when it comes to our prayer life, maybe our

marriage, maybe things like this. And when we don't see the ideal, when we don't meet the ideal, whether that be through daily prayer or our marriage or our family, it is very easy to become disheartened. No doubt many married people whose marriages might look great from the outside think to themselves, gosh, what if I had married someone else? What if things had been better? What if I didn't have this child who I find so difficult and these sorts of things? And I imagine we have people listening right now whose husbands aren't the leader of the household in the way that they should be. Well, they're dealing with some sort of difficulty and maybe they're looking at you,

Scott, and me and they're thinking, well, it's easy for you. It does sound like you guys have some of this down, but for me, it's chaos. And I mean, what's your kind of suggestion to people so that they don't lose heart in all of this? Well, you know, if any person is idealizing the relationship between Scott and Kimberly, you know, it's mostly her and then the rest is God, or it's mostly God and the rest is her. But I mean, if anybody had to spend a week with me, they would, you know, as a woman, they'd go back to their husband and just clutch him and hug him and thank him profusely and just say, man, have I taken you for granted? I remember when I got engaged to Kimberly, the chaplain at Grove City College just kind of harumphed and said,

oh, yeah, they deserve each other. Well, I didn't think so then. I still don't think so now. But I know what he was referring to, and that was her intensity in mind. People think I'm intense until they meet her and they realize, okay, she redefines that kind of energy. You know, I am intense, but I can be neurotically negative. She is pathologically positive. Me too. My wife too. Gosh, that's so funny. Pete There was a time, I had never said this to

anybody in a public setting before, so forgive me, Lord. But I remember we were in a Bible study shortly after we got engaged, and we were discussing in this group how to discern and discover the will of God. And I had know, I had a bunch of friends who were like, you know, who does God want me to marry? You know, what does, what courses does God want me to take? What parking spot? And it drove me nuts because it just seemed to lack any, any sanctified common sense. And so I made a really, really foolish statement that I paid for many times. And I said, you know, when it comes to the will of God, there are options, there is freedom. You know, I suspect that there are 50 women out there in the world that I could

probably marry and be happy with. And the guy leading the Bible study, Dr. Sparks looked at me and just tried to give me this signal, like Kimberly, Kimberly was with you. Yeah. Take back those words before you take any more oxygen, you know? And suddenly I realized I had put both feet into my mouth, you know, and Kimberly is playful to me, reminded me. In fact, Dr. Sparks, when I saw him last reminded me of that as well. I mean, it's taken me more than 40 years to realize there aren't five women in the world who could have married. I mean, one of us would have survived, but the other. No, I think I backed into the will of God, you know, freely. But at the same time, you realize that, you know, it's not like pick a card on the one hand.

It's not arbitrary, but it is something whereby I think God as a father wants us to exercise our wisdom and our freedom. You know, I don't want to dictate to my six kids, you know, what they do. You know, so when it comes to pleasing a father, I think exercising our freedom brings greater pleasure to God as a father precisely because we're not slaves and he's not our master. and he's not our master. And so I think we have to recognize in our relationship to God and each other that there is the freedom of love much more than our culture will ever, ever catch. Along the lines of what you were just talking about there, I do think though that this, and you correct me if you think I'm wrong, that this soulmate notion is more of a pagan notion that it is a Christian one. I'm thinking of the symposium where Socrates talks about the two halves. Maybe it wasn't Socrates, but somebody in the discussion.

And so we have this kind of romanticized view of marriage that we're going to find each other and then we're going to click and everything's going to be perfect. And nobody finds themselves in that situation. And it can be easy to start questioning whether you've made the right decision. And it's important to talk about these things because I think a lot of people are embarrassed to talk about these things because they wish they weren't feeling these sorts of things. But they are. So they need to be addressed. Wow. You just said something about a minute ago. We don't find ourselves in that situation, you know, and I think what happens. You're right. I mean, wow.

First of all, you're right. I mean, this whole phenomenon of looking for a soulmate to me is like a counterfeit bill, only it's a high denomination. It's like a thousand dollar bill that you're looking for or winning the lottery. And when you don't find it at home, you know, it's easy to kind of find it somewhere else where, you know, a woman who doesn't have to really put up with you, you know, who respects you. And so at work or someplace out in the world, you know, this to me is not only counterfeit, it is toxic, but it's nearly universal. And so, you know, I remember our first year of marriage when I was at seminary and Kimberly was working down at Mount Auburn in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And she was coming back, you know, exhausted.

And I was coming back excited from all of my theological study. And she would talk to me about work. And then suddenly one day I think she mentioned that she'd been reassigned to another part. I'm like, oh, so you won't be working with so-and-so. No. I'm like, who reassigned you? And she said, well, actually, I put in my request. I thought you were really enjoying that particular work and that co-worker.

I was, perhaps too much. Oh, that's fantastic. Fantastic that she's so honest and that you're so honest about this. This is beautiful. Then suddenly I realized the next day that I was in a lecture hall sitting next to a female who wanted to do theological mission work, what we called theological education by extension T. And Kimberly was like, I'm not ever going to be open to missionary work. I want to be close to my family. And so I would talk with her.

I don't remember her name, but I just remember, you know, like there was a connection there. And the next day, I was relocated on the opposite side of the lecture hall because I realized there was just a little too much sympathy, you know. Did you relocate yourself? Yes. Yes. Good for you. I thought if she can't i must yes and you know if this happened in our first semester of marriage i you know i felt like the biggest jerk on the planet you know i i was naive i must admit you know i didn't realize that when you get married, you might actually find yourself falling in love and lust, you know, for another woman. You know, it's a lesson that unfortunately I've had to learn again and again. But I mean, it's what's caused me to kind of come back not only to confession, but also to Kimberly, you know, and admit to her that my heart is weak.

You know, but, you know, you are God's gift. You know, it isn't just the sacrament of matrimony that I'm called to. You know, St. Josemaria once, you know, identified the sacrament for each and every male and female. You know, the sacrament that you are called to has a name, and it's Kimberly. You're not just called to marriage. You are called to her, and she is God's beloved daughter, and he has entrusted her to you. And you're not going to be judged primarily on the last day on the basis of how many books you wrote or talks you gave, but how you loved my beloved daughter and stopped making excuses for

not loving her sacrificially. Forty years into this, I'm still learning, sometimes the hard way. But this idea of soulmate, we have finally backed ourselves into a kind of soulmate relationship that I didn't really think was realistic or possible. But only after tens of thousands of apologies, you know, and all of the rest. It's all it takes, but it takes all of that. This is so, I'm so grateful to you, Scott. And I know there's going to be so many people who are saying, thank God people are being real. You've been doing this for a long time. You've written a gazillion books.

You've given a gazillion lectures. Have you found that over the years you've been able to kind of be more real? I'm not saying that you weren't. I imagine you're yeah i mean you're you're quite a you're a household name it takes courage to be vulnerable like this because there's always somebody who wants to misinterpret what you're saying or to twist what you're saying i found that in my own life but i find that people you know they need to speak about honest things so they don't feel so alone and alienated and isolated and so

that they can just like what you were saying i mean i've had experiences like that where i think the deepest desire a man has is to be respected and if you know he's being a jerk at home and he's not getting that respect and he finds it elsewhere it's incredibly incredibly attractive and right unless we can say that out loud and if we don't name it we can't tame it that sort of thing and that's why i think this is this is yeah. You know, I can remember a turning point that occurred in my life in the 90s, so much did. I just love Steubenville. I grew up in Pittsburgh a half hour away, and we'd look down on Steubenville like, can anything good come out of Nazareth, you know? But in the late 90s, I got a call one evening from a guy who I knew by reputation. His name was just simply Dion,

Dion DiMucci of Dion and the Belmonts, you know, Abraham, Abraham, I was going to say Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but it's Abraham, Martin, and John. You know, you study the Bible a lot. Yeah. So Bruce Springsteen, I think, was the one who gave, you know, the introduction when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But Dion called me out of the blue one night and was just an ex-Catholic and evangelical. And we ended up striking up a conversation, a friendship. And it's lasted these many years. And he and Mike Aquilina now are best of buds and all of that. But in the first few weeks of our friendship, he would share with me the lessons he learned from a 12-step program that he not only has gone through, but he has sponsored, I suspect, over 100 people.

You know, he said, hey, you know, because here he is, famous rock and roll artist calling me, you know, and he just said, if I didn't know me, I might be impressed. I'm like, I'm going to borrow that line for the rest of my life. And he's like, oh, don't worry, you know, I'm not much, Scott, but I'm all I think about. I'm like, okay, you went two for two, you know, and that's so humble. And he's like, you know, you have no idea how humble I am. I'm like, okay, I'm taking all three lines for my sake, you know? And so there is a Scott Hahn out there. There's a persona. And if I didn't know me, I might be impressed. And, you know, and at the same time, I'm not much, but I'm all I think about. And when if people ever want to kind of figure out, you know, how can I become famous like you? I think part of the answer has to be first by not wanting it. of the answer has to be first by not wanting it. Um, cause I didn't, I didn't want to become famous. The second thing is this though, to admit that I don't like the fame, but sometimes I don't like it for the wrong reasons. You know, there are parts of it that I like too much. And there are other parts that I don't like because it calls for sacrifice on my part that I don't really feel

like sacrificing to anybody else, you know. But I do think that in becoming Catholic, you and I both know the difference between becoming a saint and becoming a celebrity. And a celebrity doesn't facilitate sanctity. It impedes it, you know. And if anybody knew that and taught it, it was St. Gregor the Great, who's not only a saint and a doctor of the church, but really the doctor of moral theology, because, you know, he becomes Pope. And he just didn't want to have the kind of influence that God obviously wanted him to wield. But I think that's the tension. That's the dynamism. That's the balance. And you never strike it in a sense of perfect equilibrium. Your kids keep you honest, and yet at the same time, your kids can end up being a

little starstruck by being Scott and Kimberly's kid until we realize, until we remind them, I'm not much, but I'm all I think about. And then they quickly remember the dozens of times where we convinced them quite easily that we're not saints. It's crazy to think that one day there will be canonized saints who had Twitter feeds, which we can look up. It's almost like it's easier to idealize people like St. Anthony of Padua, because really, we only know all the nice things he said. We don't know about the time he may have lost it at someone or said something stupid and just tweeted something out and then had to delete that because it was incredibly

insensitive. I wonder if that's going to kind of humanize or in the proper sense, our view of saints in the future, because we do tend to, I think at times have rosy colored lenses on when it comes to the saints of the past. You know, I think that will be true. I'm almost certain that it will be, but it won't necessarily because of their Twitter feed. It will be because they really relativize that kind of social medium. I do think that most of us who are on, you know, Facebook or whatever other social media out there are going to end up in purgatory. So if you're watching this 20 years or 50 years later, please pray for us. Yeah, yeah, it's a trap. Okay, well, how many books have you written? Do you know?

I honestly don't. It's somewhere between 40 and 50, closer to 50, I guess, nowadays, because I just came out with a new one called Hope to Die, the Christian... I'm the same. It's the publisher who comes up with it isn't it the title no no i came up with it did you i'm in my early 60s now so you just caught me in a senior moment hope to die christian meaning of death and the resurrection of the body and here is my newly birthed book it just arrived last night isn't it so lovely well give it give us a look at it because i don't have it i don't want to see the thickness of it. It's the closest thing a guy will ever have to having a baby. You know, I made the mistake when I got a book back from Tan. I said to my wife, I'm like, this is almost better than having a baby. And I didn't say that again. That was a very bad thing to say. But tell us about this book, why you wrote it and how apt the timing is given the coronavirus.

you wrote it and how apt the timing is given the coronavirus. Well, you know, I honestly didn't have anything to do with the timing, obviously. God had a sense of timing in this book like I have never seen before. I think back about two years to when I was in D.C. with a good friend, Ken Baldwin. He's the executive director for the St. Paul Center. And we were attending this conference, the Authentic Reform Conference, and bishops and all kinds of folks were there. And on the way out after the banquet, a couple guys stopped me and said, would you be willing to consider coming to Manhattan and addressing a small group on the subject of cremation? And everything in me was just like, I've got to make sure I don't laugh when I say no. Instead, I hear these words coming out of my mouth like, yeah, I'd be very open to that. And I'm thinking, I only had one glass, a half a glass of wine.

Where did that come from? And when I got to the airport, I said to Ken, you know, why didn't you stop me? What was I thinking? But I did have this sense that for whatever reason, our Lord might want me to do that. And it was months away. So I kind of put it off. And then I remember it was on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, December 12th, 2018. And just a few days beforehand, terror struck. I'm like, I don't know what to do. And so I went to Our Lady, what would you have me say? And, you know, in the next day or two, some thoughts came together that really came from outside of myself. And so when I went to New York and I made this presentation, it was intimidating. It was a small group at a banquet table. I didn't have a lectern. And I'm addressing chaplains. I'm addressing priests and theologians

and ethicists. And I basically begin by saying, look, I don't want to open up a new front in the culture war, you know, contraception, abortion, the definition of marriage, now cremation. Instead, I want to propose that we look at how we care for the dead, our own beloved dead and others, including ourselves, and to do it in relation to what Christ has done in assuming our bodies and, you know, assuming our human nature in experiencing suffering and death and resurrecting that body and promising to resurrect ours. And so theologians have a technical term for it. In Latin, it's conveniencia. It's an argument from fittingness. And why? Because God didn't have to create the world. And once he did, you know, he didn't have to plan for our redemption.

And once we fell, he didn't have to. And once he decided to redeem us anyway, he didn't have to become a human, suffer and die. So why does God do all of the things that he chooses to do? It's not arbitrary. It's not strictly by necessity. It's a fittingness. Once you discover who God is from all eternity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you realize that the inner law of divine life is life-giving love. And so who God is, is revealed in what God does when the Father sends the Son to give us the Spirit. So theologians learned early on that none of this is necessary. All of this is from the divine freedom of love. So what we discover is that what God did was the most fitting. It was so appropriate given who God is. And this is the way we basically argue for the Trinity and the hypostatic union of

the two natures in Christ and for whatever he does in his own paschal mystery. But what is seldom done is turning that around and applying it to the Christian life, to the Christian moral principles. And so we tend to kind of fall back upon the natural moral law, or the Ten Commandments, or whatever the church has authoritatively dictated, you know, which is right and good, but really not sufficient because so much of what Christ teaches about how we are to live, in a certain sense, is an echo of a mystery of how he lived, you know, that he exercises his divine supremacy by becoming a servant, you know, and not counting equality with God a thing to be grasped, but instead empties himself, becoming a servant, obedient unto death, even death on the

cross, you know, not just obeying the 613 statutes of the Mosaic law, but obeying the will of God, even unto death on a cross. Therefore, God has exalted him and given him the name above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee should bow, every tongue confess. You know, and we tend to think that what Christ did morally was to kind of obey this arbitrary standard imposed upon him by the Father. And it's like our kids holding their breath as we go through a tunnel on our way to our vacation, you know. For 30 years, he held his divine breath and endured this while he was concealing his divine identity, his divine dignity, when in fact what Paul is saying in

Philippians 2 in the Christ hymn is that Christ wasn't concealing his divinity. He was revealing it. He wasn't, you know, he was revealing it and at the same time concealing it. But what is supreme in God, we tend to reduce to the fact that he's God, we're not, so he can dominate and always win and have his way with us. Whereas that would make supremacy in God almost dependent upon dominating creatures. What is supreme in God is what is supreme in God from all eternity, apart from creation. And what is that? Life-giving love. The Father doesn't lord it over the Son.

He lavishes his life as a gift of love. And that's what it means to eternally father the Son. And that's why the Son is co-eternal. He's not younger or smaller than the Father, because he is eternally begotten. He's God from God, light from light, etc. And so how do you manifest that in human history? How do you manifest that in human nature? That's the incarnation. That's the Paschal Mystery. And so it isn't God the Father simply rewarding Jesus for going above and beyond. It really is God showing us that what is supreme in God is love more than power, and a love that is life-giving, not just warm, fuzzy feelings, and a life-giving love that isn't done giving just by healing and teaching and raising others from the dead, but laying down his life so that death for Jesus for the first time in human history is not the loss of life.

It's the gift of life. It is an act of love. Death is turned into a prayer. The prayer is turned into a sacrifice, that sacrifice becomes the liturgy of the new covenant we call the Eucharist, because on Holy Thursday, he sets this love into motion by laying his life down before anybody can take it. So he's not really losing his life on Friday if he laid it down on Thursday. He's not the victim of Roman violence at Calvary. He's the victim of divine love. And so if the Eucharist transforms the execution into the supreme sacrifice, and if Easter Sunday turns that sacrifice into the

blessed sacrament that we all celebrate in the holy sacrifice of the mass, what is the most fitting response to Jesus assuming mortal human nature in suffering and dying out of love, rising, raising that up, and not just resuscitating his own corpse, but through the power of the Holy Spirit, making his sacred humanity not only divinized for himself, but divinizing to us so that that humanity becomes communicable. It becomes edible. And that isn't something unforeseen. That isn't plan B. The Eucharist is plan A. It isn't just a farewell supper. If we're living the pastoral mystery and receiving Christ's body, blood, soul, and divinity, if the Eucharist is the sacrament of his resurrection because the real presence is the body that is raised and ascended, like, okay, how do we go out

and live that? Well, by keeping the Ten Commandments, by fulfilling natural moral law. Well, wait, time out. You know, how do we live? How do we suffer? How do we die? How do we treat the bodies of our loved ones, and even those that nobody loves? If Christ assumed mortal flesh for our sake, he didn't get anything out of this whole proposition that he didn't already have. He was God to begin with. So why go to all of the trouble if it's not to get something you were lacking? It's to obviously impart to us all that we're lacking, to share his glory with us. And it's like, okay, then living the Christian life is reflecting the

Paschal mystery. And it's like the Ten Commandments. It's the natural moral law on steroids. I mean, you take it to the next level. And this is sort of like, it's too good to be true unless it's the truth of the gospel. And in a certain sense, it seems to be, you know, it's not hard. It's just humanly impossible. I mean, the only way you can possibly even approximate it is by a supernatural grace that, you know, it's like calling us to do something would make us prefer the 613 commandments that we find in the law of Moses. the Holy Spirit to fulfill his life, death, and resurrection, then suddenly, okay, if you're going to command us to do this, and at the same time empower us to do this, this is exactly what Aquinas calls the new law. In the Prima Secundae of the Summa, you know, by the time you get to

the treatise on grace around question 106, you're like, wait, the new law isn't easier than the old law. You don't look at the beatitudes and the sermon the mountain say oh wow at least we don't have to keep the ten commandments i haven't come to abolish the law i've come to fulfill it you know and so suddenly the new law is requiring more of us but it's giving much much more to us and so it's like okay god deal you have just struck a bargain that you know the early church fathers love to speak of as this, what, commercium admirabile, this admirable exchange, this great, this, I mean, it's like too much good news, but it's the truth.

It's the gospel. This is a very different talk to what I would have given if somebody had asked me to give a talk on cremation. So let's bring this back. What does that have a talk on cremation. So let's bring this back. What does that have to do with cremation for slow people like myself? Yeah, well, I mean, I must admit, I have given the talk to you in slow motion. I got through that in about 14 minutes. But a lot of them were trained theologians, so they knew exactly what I meant by an argument from fittingness. They also recognize that it's seldom applied to morality and to questions of moral dispute. And so I applied it to cremation, and I basically said that Christ didn't give us any commandments about burying the dead.

He didn't have to because as a Jew, you can see in the first six books of the Old Testament, You know, you can see in the first six books of the Old Testament, three of them end with Jacob and Joseph and Moses and Joshua giving explicit commandments about or instructions about where I want to be buried. And it's not because God can't resurrect the body if it happens that we've been buried in Egypt. But it's because the patriarchs want to impart as fathers to their offspring a living faith that there is going to be a resurrection at the end of all of this. And in the book of Tobit, you see this. And in 2 Maccabees 7, the mother is telling her youngest child about before he's going to be, you know, tortured to death, you know. And so, if Christ is picking up where the Old Testament leaves off, and the teachings of Christ are being assimilated by the early believers, then no wonder the pagan practices of ancient Rome that usually involved

cremation or just simply throwing a body of the corpse over the wall of the city, gradually it's transformed into inhumation, this form of burial that was there for the believers, but even the unbelievers. And apart from any explicit commandment coming from the lips of Christ, you just look at the early Christians and realize, okay, they treat the sick and the dying the way Jesus did. And it's sort of like the imitatio Christi, but it's not just imitating Christ on our own power. It's a participatio Christi. But it's not just imitating Christ on our own power. It's a Participatio Christi that we're united to him. We're participating in his own life.

And so in the first three or four centuries, the Roman Empire completely adopts this entire new set of burial practices like they ended up adopting the Hippocratic Oath for Medicine. How did it differ from their practices? How did the Christians treat the dead in a way that was different? Well, I mean, you can see it in the case of the martyrs, for example, with the martyrdom of Polycarp. And in 203, in the Colosseum there, the arena in Carthage, Perpetua and Felicity go to their martyrdom, as expected mothers who have just given birth, you know,

in prison, they go with a joy, their bodies are revered. And this is true for Presides and others, you know. And so, it's like, without any book being written, without any papal encyclical being promulgated, there is just this, if this is what God has done for us in Christ, this is what we got to do in response to him for each other. And so the respect, the reverence that is shown to the body with the recognition that this body is going to be resurrected. We're not just going to get a new body. Jesus says, I make all things new, not I make new things. You're not going to get a new body 2.0. You're going to get your own body, and it's going to be transfigured so that it's going to be a resurrected body that

is immeasurably more glorious. It is sown perishable, as Paul tells the Corinthians in chapter 15. It is raised imperishable. It is sown with corruption. It will be raised incorrupt. But it's going to be like a seed that falls into the earth and dies and then bears this fruit. I mean, if you're reciting the Creed and you get to the 11th article, I believe in the resurrection of the body. You know, the word in the original Greek was not soma, body. It was sarx, flesh. And Augustine admits that of all the articles, this is the one that is met with the most incomprehension, the most opposition, because you've got to be kidding me. God is going to resurrect the body, this flesh?

Yeah. Look at Christ and realize what difference this makes. It's like it makes all the difference in the world. all the difference in the world. And I mean, it's like, do the math. Even if it takes, you know, a year for all the dominoes to fall, I think the early believers, just almost by a supernatural instinct, recognized that the most fitting response to what Christ has done and what he promises to do for us is for us to do that for one another, to show that that respect to regard the body as sacred to recognize that that life is sacred but there's life and then there is life there's life that's human there's life that is divine but they're not distinguished to separate because that divine life is united to us in water

through baptism it is you know magnified through the holyucharist. And so this body of my mother's not only bore me, but got baptized. Likewise, Kimberly, I mean, we've just got to see bodies as more than disposable cartons, more than boxes that contain great contents. We're not angels. I'm not sure if you looked into this or not, but the way Christians treated the body after death, how was that different to, say, the Platonists who sort of didn't have the best view of the body or at least thought of it as something like a machine, you know?

Was that borne out in how they treated the dead? You know, let's step back and look at things since this is Pints with Aquinas in light of St. Thomas' teaching, because, you know, what Plato didn't understand is what we have by revelation. I mean, you could have understood this by reason, you know, but reason after sin is weak. So man is a peculiar creature. St. Thomas Aquinas describes human nature as being a composite of contrary elements. And what does he mean? Well, the soul is a spiritual substance, but that by nature is immortal.

Unlike the souls of vegetables, plants, or animals. On the other hand, the body is a physical substance that is made of matter. And so it is naturally mortal. So you have man, but, you know, kind of between and betwixt. We're like the angels because we have the soul as a spiritual substance whereby we can know what is true, we can contemplate the truth, we can recognize through the will what is good and choose it, and thereby enter into interpersonal relations of communion. But we have bodies that have passions, that have

appetites, that have emotions, that have, you know, we're hungry, we're tired, whatever. And so, there is this composite substance. And the body is mortal. Even apart from sin, Aquinas points out that our bodies, like animal animal bodies would have died until and unless God gave us sanctifying grace the preternatural result of which is that our bodies are rendered preternaturally immortal or immortal if we continue to live you know by faith hope and love then a body which is naturally mortal would somehow be raised to participate in something that is immortal well we, we never found out what that was like because our parents, our first parents fell. And so, you know, we have to look at that mystery as well. But I think what we have is something so

different than Plato. Plato is wrong, but for the right reasons. He distinguishes the body from the soul, but he is wrong because he sees the body as a kind of, well, there's a pun in the Greek. The body is the sema of the soma. That is, it's the prison of the body. So the soul is imprisoned in the body. The word for body is soma. The word for prison is sema. And so the soul is liberated when the body dies.

and his semah. And so the soul is liberated when the body dies. And so, you know, the soul can be, you know, the body is shed like a snake molted skin, you know. But that is wrong. But at the same time, it's wrong for the right reason, because we're not materialists. We're not Epicureans. We're not hedonists. We distinguish body and soul, but not to separate or oppose. We distinguish to unite because the body is a part of human nature. The lower part, the soul is an essential part of human nature. The higher part, but we're not just souls trapped in bodies temporarily. We're embodied souls. And the body is in a certain sense.

St. Thomas doesn't say this, but I think we can adapt what he does say to say this. The body in a sense is a sacrament of the person. Because a sacrament, not one of the seven sacraments, but a sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible reality. And so the body is a visible sign of the invisible reality of my soul, of my very personhood. So when I'm moving my hands and moving my vocal cords and speaking, it isn't just my body acting physically, it is my soul using the body to express what is on my heart and in my mind, and you're getting it. And so communion among humans is different than among angels. And so what God does in making our nature thusly is also what God does in redeeming our nature thusly. And I think we have to recognize that, you know, we don't worship matter like the pagans did, you know, as who was it?

The last of the fathers. Oh, I've seen your moment again. But, you know, we worship the God of matter who has assumed matter and uses matter to redeem us, not just spiritually, but also physically. And this is something that Platonists and even Aristotelians couldn't imagine. imagine. Because even though Aristotle emphasizes matter in the physical body more in his own hylomorphic formula, and even though Aquinas, you know, adapts that, there is a sense in which if Aristotle heard Thomas's teaching about the incarnation, he'd scratch his head and say, no way. You know, if he heard Thomas's teaching drawn from St. Paul about the resurrection of the body, he'd say, time out. You're not just kind of adapting Aristotelian terms and categories. You're transubstantiating or you're subverting them. And so the mystery of faith goes beyond

reason, but it doesn't go against it. And it goes beyond matter, but it never disposes of matter. It really is a set of sacred mysteries that in some ways I think our opponents understand better than we do. Because, you know, apart from the grace of revelation, you know, people rightly said, how in the world do you believe that? Because at a natural level, it's unbelievable. Not because it's absurd or contradictory, but it goes so far beyond the limited powers of reason. Never against, but I mean, I think if we recognized how precious these sacred mysteries are, we would say, thank God that we believe. It isn't like, oh, how come these Catholics don't believe in the real presence 70%? It's like, how come the 30% do?

And if God can get through to us, maybe he can use us to get through to the 70% and everybody else as well. What you just said there reminded me of a quote that I love from Anthony Essel, and I quote him in my book on pornography. He says, of our reverence it is not a tool not an object of consumption like a steak or a keg of beer not an not an animate provider of pleasure it is the outward expression of a profound mystery that of another human being and and it reminded me there as we were kind of talking about you know platonism or kind of epicureanism if you if you swing one way or the other it seems to kind of give us license to do with our bodies what we want. If my body is not me, then what I do with it doesn't affect me.

Or if all I am is my body, then I'm just an animal and whatever I do with it's okay anyway. Whereas the Christian understanding really kind of elevates and shows the dignity of the body. And once you start to get that, you start to see why things like pornography are so abhorrent. Yeah, that's right. You know, this mystery is planted very early in the Bible, and St. Thomas sees it. In the span of just 10 verses there in Genesis 2, you have the mystery sewn like an acorn that takes, you know, ages to become sort of the oak tree of the Catholic faith. But in Genesisesis 2 verse 7 god breathed in the man's nostrils the breath of life and so man became a living being and the word for life is not bios which we share with the animals it's in the greek zoe it's life you know and so

the first breath that man draws is not just oxygen like he shares with the animals. It's the breath of God. It's the spirit of God. So he has life that is natural, human, physical. But he's also, he has life that is divine, eternal, and supernatural. So that when you read 10 verses later in Genesis 2, 17, you can eat from all of the trees except this forbidden fruit. The day you eat of it, you will surely die. It's a solemn pledge from God. And so one chapter later, they eat, but they don't die physically. So you're tempted to say, well, it must have been God issuing an idle threat or walking it back or whatever. But no,

it's a solemn pledge. The day you eat of it, you'll surely die. Well, what is the mystery here? Well, there is life that's human, but there's life that is divine. And so there is death that is human. We all know what that is. It's a bullet to the brain, or perhaps a snake bite would do. But how does divine life die? Well, the only way you can experience spiritual death is by giving consent to mortal sin. What we read in 1 John 5, 17 is the sin unto thanatos. It's the same Greek word used in Genesis 2, 17. The day you eat of it, you will surely die the death. And so what our first parents did with the divine life that they were given was to forfeit it. They committed an

act of spiritual suicide. The day they ate of it, they surely died, but the life that they lost wasn't human but divine. And so the life that they lost wasn't human but divine. And so the death that they died wasn't metaphorical, but metaphysically, it was a darker and deeper death than if the serpent had bit them or if a bullet had entered their brains. And so when we speak of the original sin that our first parents committed, it's a mortal sin. And the day they did it, they died. And so when we speak of the original sin that we contract, you know, as a Calvinist, I believe that we were born depraved. I don't believe that anymore. I don't think that's faithful to Scripture.

But what the Catholic Church teaches is faithful to Scripture, because we are born deprived of divine life. We contract original sin, which means we get human life, human nature from our parents all the way back to Adam and Eve, but it's human life utterly devoid of divine life. We have been deprived of that supernatural life. Even if your parents happen to be canonizable saints like St. Therese, they still had to have her baptized. And then in baptism, you get that divine life back. Paul speaks of original sin in Romans 5, 12 through 21, and immediately he speaks of how Christ overcomes it in Romans 6. The opening verses say that you who have been baptized have basically come to share in his death and resurrection.

And why? Because, well, when we are baptized as an infant or as an adult, we are resurrected to divine life, and that resurrection is more than a metaphor. It is more real than what Lazarus experienced after four days, because all Jesus did was to restore the supernatural, divine, eternal life that our first parents forfeited, that our own natural parents weren't capable of conveying by sexual means. So the goal of the Christian is not merely to follow the Ten Commandments. It's divinization, right? It's cooperating with theosis, which we don't talk a lot about these days. But this is what you're getting at, I think. Yeah, it seems like it's theosis, divinization, deification. I mean, talk about delusions of divine grandeur.

Get off of it. But I think if we see in 2 Peter 1.4 that we have been made partakers of the divine nature, we can see that the inner logic is nothing based upon human attainment. You know, what we can't do is to ascend to the divinity, but what we can't do, God can do by descending to humanity. And when he assumes what is ours, human nature, he does so for the purpose of imparting what is his divine nature. He doesn't just want to heal us of the illness of sin or perfect us in what Rahner called harmonization. No, grace heals and perfects nature, but ultimately the goal is gratia elevans. Grace elevates human nature so that we participate

in divine nature and thereby discover the inner logic of the Easter exaltate. We all missed Easter vigil, but we might've watched it on live streaming, you know, the necessary fault, the felix culpa, the happy fault of Adam, because we end up better off in Christ, the new Adam, than we would have been in the first Adam if our first father hadn't sinned, we would have accrued. His righteousness would have accrued to us, but it would have been finite and human. Interesting. Whereas what Christ gives to us is an immeasurably greater share in a righteousness that is his own as the son of God that he imparts precisely through his human nature. Yeah. What you just said there makes sense of Augustine's Felix Culper, right?

Amen. Yeah. That we've been raised above what we would have had otherwise. Yeah. I know I'm squeezing an ocean through a funnel. And as I said earlier, I haven't been in the classroom for almost two months. So your listeners are paying for it. Oh, I'm sure they're loving it. Well, we touched upon just quickly, we touched upon cremation. But there's probably some Christians and Catholics and Protestants out there who are like, well, wait, what is the Christian view on that?

Is that something we can do? Does the church promote it, allow it? Does the church promote it, allow it? And then, so answer that, and then answer also, like, is it really reasonable to suggest that God can give us back our own bodies if they are either burnt to almost nothing or deteriorate over time in our coffins? Matt, I appreciate how concrete and practical you are. You know, I would much prefer to indulge in this esoterica and speculation. Okay, so those are two great questions. Let's address those. Okay, so first are two great questions. Let's address those.

Okay, so first of all, cremation. What is the church's teaching? You know, I think we should recognize that cremation was strictly prohibited by the church, you know, back in the 1870s. And the reason why is because we found ourselves after the French Revolution in a post-Christian culture that was not only revolutionary, but also explicitly anti-Catholic. And so you see the Masons, the Bolsheviks, and others weaponizing burial praxis by basically introducing cremation as a way of subverting or undermining the faith of Catholics, not necessarily but arguing against the articles of the creed, because I think they recognize pedagogically how humans learn. More is caught than taught. And so we learn a lot by cultural assimilation. So if you can change the culture, you can change the way people think without even thinking about it. And so, you know, the church in our canon law basically outlawed cremation because it was explicitly and emphatically anti-Catholic. Well, you know, in the 60s,

Paul VI changed that after 77 years because people were now practicing cremation without any anti-Christian intentionality, without any anti-Catholic consciousness. And so there was permission granted in the 60s and 70s, especially the 70s, but it was only and always permission. That is, it was an accommodation to the weakness of the formation of many many catholics and whether we should have done it or not is another question but the fact is the church has permitted it now for the last several decades but has never approved it and i strongly suspect we'll never approve it and so the church accommodates herself to a culture that is becoming increasingly secularized and post-christian but at the same so the church accommodates herself to a culture that is becoming increasingly

secularized and post-Christian. But at the same time, the church will never teach that it's a matter of indifference. The church will never approve of cremation. And again, you can say there are pros and cons to that. But I think what we have to recognize is this, that there is a certain logic to it, that if somebody's body was burned in a building, you know, a 9-11 or whatever, it isn't, well, a burned body can't be resurrected. Or if a body is lost at sea and eaten by sharks, oh, what is a poor deity to do on the last day? No, the God who brought creation into being out of nothing can bring a new creation into being out of nothing, but at the same time can resurrect what was there. And this is the miracle that Christ has released or effected. You know, so what I, to summarize, you know, the church permits cremation. It doesn't approve of it. But even there, there are certain standards that the cremains can't just be kind of tossed out at sea or sprinkled in the

backyard that what is most fitting and again what is called for by the church's teaching is for the cremains to be placed in holy ground a cemetery not on the uh you know not on the shelf as it were and so even still if you're going to cremate, you know, and I think right now about 52% of Catholics, you know, are cremating. I was just talking to the director of this Catholic Cemetery Association. He gave me that statistic earlier this morning. And it just shows what a catechetical breakdown there has been and what a cultural tsunami has overtaken us. But there are still norms that apply to the cremains, as they're called. I might also just kind of say as a footnote that, you know, I almost ended up attaching an appendix to my book, Hope to

Die, but decided not to. Because when you go on YouTube and you look at what cremation involves, you kind of think it's a neat and tidy process of just burning the body, you know, to ashes, when in fact, you know, the body is put into a wooden box. And so the ashes are a mixture of the flesh and the wood. But the fire, however hot it gets, isn't hot enough to burn the bones to ash. And so much of what cremation involves is a kind of really, And so much of what cremation involves is a kind of really, it's a pulverizing of the bones. You know, I don't know how to say this, but, you know, it's sort of like, it's like sausage. You know, I like sausage until you find out how it's made. And then you're like, okay, I want to go a few weeks without it.

And cremation is a barbaric treatment of the body. and I think that's what we have to kind of unlearn. Now, on the second matter, you know, what is the nature of the resurrected bodies that we end up? And I must confess, I haven't looked at the time until now, and I realize— This is great for me. You go when you need to go, but I'm loving all of this. Okay, well, I think we've lost everybody, but, you know, your life and mine. So, you know, the teaching of Scripture in 1 Corinthians 15 is pretty clear. St. Augustine took it to the next level, but nobody synthesized it as masterfully as St. Thomas Aquinas. It's in that section of the Teretia Pars that is often called the supplementum, because it's drawn from the material that he wrote long before he died when he wrote the scriptum on Lombard's sentences. And so it's a little anachronistic.

He might've adapted it later in life. But what you have there is something of a consensus that everybody gets their body back. And Paul, and Jesus speaks this way in John 5, that there's a resurrection unto life and glory, but there's also a resurrection unto death and judgment. And so, you know, there are three conditions that all bodies will share, according to St. Thomas. First of all, there's the condition of identity, that you're going to get your body back, not just one that looks like it.

It's also going to have the same quality so that if you were a man, then you are going to be a man. Now you'll get a male body back or a female body back. And then the third condition is this integrity that if you had your amputated, or if you lost your leg, you know, in a, in a, in a battle or something, you're going to get your whole body back integral body, you know? And so that or something, you're going to get your whole body back, integral body, you know. And so, that's the, those are the three conditions shared by all resurrected bodies in the end. But then St. Thomas goes on to identify these four properties of those bodies that are resurrected under glory. Those four properties are first, impassibility,

under glory. Those four properties are first, impassibility, second, subtlety, third, agility, and the fourth is clarity. And these are not terms that have much meaning for us today. And so I can briefly summarize what I think Aquinas is getting at, but I don't want to pretend to be an expert on Thomas. I'm a Thom I'm a Thomist to be sure and have been for a longer time than I've been a Catholic, but I'm sort of a, an amateur or a peeping Thomist as Ralph McEnany put it. Um, I would say this, that, uh, the impassibility points to the obvious fact that our bodies will no longer be capable of suffering, much less dying anymore. And so our bodies are going to be raised indestructible. Our bodies are going to be raised impassable. And it's a kind of negative property because we won't have to suffer and die. We won't be able to contract illness, but it really

is a sign that points to the more positive properties. So the first of those three more positive properties is agility. No, I'm sorry. It's subtlety. So subtlety, what is that? Well, the opposite of subtlety is sort of what we experience now when our souls are weighed down by our bodies. You know, when I want to stay up, I can't because I'm tired or I want to keep working, but I can't because I am hungry. You know, and so the souls are kind of dragged along by our bodies on this side of things. But now what we see in a resurrected body is a body that is completely responsive to the soul. You know, so now if I want to go from Steubenville down to see you in Georgia, you know, I've got to find a flight and, you know, an airline that still flies. And so I've got to get my body in a motion. But,

you know, the subtlety is such that if I want to go to Georgia in a resurrected body, I've just got to think of Georgia and the peaches. And then suddenly I'll be transported there without all of the gravity and such. And so subtlety is a property that is going to make our bodies utterly subject and completely responsive to the holy impulses of the soul. And then agility kind of flows from that because agility is a mobility, you know, so that the lowest saint in heaven who gets the weakest resurrected body of them all is going to be more agile than the greatest Olympic athlete in all of history. The bodies are going to be capable of a kind of mobility that is unimaginable for us on this side of the veil. And so the last property is this idea of clarity.

And so the last property is this idea of clarity. And I think this is one that is really beautiful, but somewhat elusive. Because what clarity means is, you know, right now I just said, you know, which is a verbal crutch, you know. And when you're seeing me through Zoom or Skype or whatever this happens to be, you know, there's an opaqueness. And even if we were together in person, there's an opacity, you know, so that sometimes I'm smiling, but I'm feeling sad. Other times I look glum, but I'm really happy. You know, the body is meant to be a sacrament of the soul of a person, but it isn't always a clear window. And so what we're going to have at the end is clarity. So that I'm going to be

able to look at Kimberly's body and see her soul and see her heart and then my kids as well and others. And so the clarity is going to conduce to a kind of communication, the likes of which nobody could imagine. So that kind of clarity in communicating our hearts is going to lead to a communion that is going to participate in the life of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, as well as the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. And so in the chapter of Hope to Die, I point out how deficient sometimes we are when it comes to the beatific vision. We're going to know the divine essence through christ that's awesome we're gonna contemplate and come to know god as god knows himself as he has enabled us to do all of that is true but it sort of implies a staring contest that we're all gonna be staring at god you know and then only break and look at the other person

staring you know quit quit looking at me stare at god you know, and then only break and look at the other person and say, you know, quit looking at me, stare at God, you know. Well, obviously, it's more than that. It will be a contemplative gaze upon God, but in as much as God is not an egomaniac, but God is a loving Father, then what we're going to be discovering in the divine essence, in the beatific vision, is that God's fatherly vision is not just of me and of you individually, but of us interpersonally. I like nothing more than getting all of my kids together, now that they're grownups especially. And then with the 19 grandkids, I mean, this is like a big thick slice of heaven. And to sit back and listen to them, share their stories and recognize that his story

and her story are really all part of our family. That's part of one story, you know, and when you're on a plane and you meet somebody and you realize you've got common friends, or you went to the same high school or two years ago, I met a guy who was not only sharing the same birthday at October 28th, 1957, but he was born in Pittsburgh, the same hospital as me. We were roommates down the hall. And when you discover all of these common things that you share, it's like, wow, what a coincidence. Well, you discover that history is just a series of all of these stories that share

all of these coincidences that we don't know, and none of them are purely coincidental. All of them are providential. And God the Father is going to be so pleased when he gives us each like 10,000 years to share our story. And a billion years it will take for all of us to share our stories. And all of a sudden we're going to realize, wow, not only is that an exciting story to see how God took this underdog, you know, and brought him back, you know, but it's like, wow, every one story is all part of this master story. This is what God the Father scripted. We're going to need at least 10 billion years just for the first run. And, you know, if time flies when you're having fun, time will just scoot by, but we're going to

want to see it again. You know, we're going to want to see it again. We're going to want to hear it again. And after trillions of years, the first minute of eternity will pass and we'll realize that God is a father beyond anything we could imagine, that the love of the Trinity that spilled out into the Holy Family has now become ours, but it is us. It's who we are forever with our bodies. And, you know, just as Jesus bears in his flesh the nail marks and the spear, so all of the scars will glow with glory so that we'll see the sacrifices that each other made and we'll realize this is why we are who we are forever. And I just think that heaven, you know, this might sound like the spicy hot religious

rhetoric of a convert, you know, who's overly zealous. When we get to heaven, the first minute will pass by, you'll look back on this Pints with Aquinas episode and realize Scott's words fell so far short of the glory, they were almost falsifiable. You know, it's so much more than we realize. This reminds me of Peter Kreef's line, which you've no doubt heard. Asking, you know, will there be sex in heaven is like a child first learning about sex from her parents asking, well, when I do have sex one day, will I be able to eat candy? And the parent says, oh, darling, you won't want to. It's going to be so much better than you think. I think the happiest vacation we ever had at a family reunion will look like and feel like a garbage can in comparison to the lowest pleasures that the lowest saint will have forever and ever.

And again, that isn't hyperbole. That's an understatement if what we say and profess is true, that I believe in God the Father Almighty. This is what an all-loving, almighty Father is all about. And again, the mysteries of faith exceed anything the stock market might ever achieve if it rebounds and then some. I mean, we put all of our hopes in the natural when, in fact, the supernatural just blows it away. Well, and that's why I'm so glad you've written this book. I think if you were to ask the average Catholic, when's the last time you heard a homily on, say, heaven or hell, the afterlife in general, what it'll be like, I think most of us will say, I don't really remember. It seems like sometimes we can fall into the trap that our homilies are like self-help tips, how to live your best life, how to be the best you, when Christianity is about so much more than that. And I think this book will be a great contribution to that.

Oh, I hope so. I do. I mean, it's the first time I ever wrote a book for my own purpose in my own time, and then discovered that God kind of overrode this. I spent most of 2019 working on this with Emily Stimson, a dear friend, a former student, and a really gifted author in her own right. And it was so much fun to edit this, to get back the page proofs at the end of the year and spend January sending them back to the printer. And then all of a sudden this crisis arose, the coronavirus crisis. And it's leap year. So on February 29th, I remember calling up the printer and just saying, stop the presses.

I've never asked this before. I'm like, but I want to rewrite that last chapter in light of what everybody's going through. I know in five or 10 years, we'll be out of it in a new normal. But for now, it just is. I mean, I just had a sense of divine timing. And so I shared about what it was like for us as a family to go through 9-11. Because in a certain sense, this is like 9-11 in slow motion, you know, over days and weeks and months now. And so I basically describe in that last chapter that evening of 9-11 when my daughter, after family prayer, looked at me and said, Dad, I'm not even sure she was 12. She's like, are we going to die? And I'm like, wow, okay.

And I looked at her and I said, definitely. Just not today, you know. She's like, okay, you have to explain that. And I'm like, okay, we're going to die, but probably not today. Let me remind you, the mortality rate is a hundred percent. None of us are going to get here alive. But I said, I want to remind you that the immortality rate is also a hundred percent, that everybody who ever lived and then died still lives in one state or another, a state of grace, anticipating glory, or a state of disgrace. And so what really matters the most is, are we ready to face death?

Because that will be the hour that matters the most of all, you know? And she's like, okay, well, thanks. You know, I said the blessing. They went to bed. And I went down to the parish in downtown Steubenville into the Eucharistic chapel in the basement. And fortunately for me, I had that hour alone because this was the evening of 9-11. And when I knelt down, I kind of let it rip. I poured out my heart like, why would you let this happen? This is the darkest day of my life.

This is the darkest day of all of our lives You you could have stopped it, you know But after I kind of vented my spleen and poured out my heart, you know A few minutes of silence and then it's something I realized who I'm talking to and what I'm looking at is the monstrance The Holy Eucharist and I realized okay 9-11 However bad it was wasn't really the darkest day in history. Good Friday was. I heard from my mom, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

But looking at the Holy Eucharist and remembering Good Friday, I realized that they called it good because they were torturing you, slandering you, crucifying you. And you were doing more than making lemonade. I mean, you were saving the human race. You were redeeming the very vicious perpetrators who were driving the nails and thrusting the spear and falsely accusing you. They're torturing you while you are redeeming them. The single greatest sin the human race has ever committed, the single greatest crime in all of history turned into the single greatest font of grace and mercy, the source of the salvation of the human race. And here it is in the Holy Eucharist. And so I can trust you to make the best out of the worst, you know, that you can take our weakness and reveal your strength, you know, and suddenly I realized Good Friday is our reminder, and the Holy Eucharist is sort of what Easter Sunday is all about. The Eucharist is the sacrament of his resurrection, and therefore

of ours. When he said, he eats my flesh and drinks my blood, I will raise him up on the last day. This was the point, that when I eat ordinary food, I assimilate it to my body. But when we receive the Holy Eucharist, he assimilates us to his body, his resurrected body, so that the Eucharist becomes the instrument whereby we're not only divinized, but ultimately our mortal flesh will share in his own immortal glory. About an hour later, I'm like, I'm still unhappy that 9-11 happened, but I'm not going to be untrusting. You know, you are going to do great things. Well, as we wrap up, Scott, please tell people maybe why they should get a copy of this book and where they should get it from. Well, you know, you can get it from the St. Paul Center.

Yeah, I was going to ask you to tell us about that, too. I'm on the website right now while we're talking, and I have to say it's so nice to see incredibly beautiful Catholic content. I sometimes joke that this is so beautiful you doubt that it's Catholic. Right. Which is not funny. That was our goal. And we've seen our Lord assemble a team of 25 to 30 coworkers that are the most creative, the most energetic, the most positive, the most fun to work with.

I couldn't even imagine. I almost feel wonder sometimes am I allowed to have this much fun? But 20 years ago, Kimberly, I wanted to kind of, we wanted to figure out a way to leave a legacy, to read scripture from the heart of the church, biblical literacy for lay people, biblical fluency for our clergy and our educators. And so we established the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology as a lay apostolate, but never in our wildest dreams did we imagine something that has, well, come true. So stpaulcenter.com, which in the last seven weeks has become what is affectionately nicknamed the Quarantine Catholic Hub. I'm showing everybody right now as you're talking,

they can see it on the screen. I'm scrolling through it and everyone can see it. Yeah. Well, I used to publish my books with Double Day or Random House, and now I'm publishing all of our books through the St. Paul Center, through Emmaus Road, which was started some 20 years ago with the help of Tim Gray and Curtis Martin, these former students who've become close friends and coworkers. And so Hope to Die is the book. And as you said, the Christian meaning of death and the resurrection of the body. The last book that I published came out almost exactly two years ago, The First Society, The Sacrament of Matrimony and the Restoration of the Social Order, also through Emmaus Road. They do simply the most beautiful covers, books, and I am just so proud and pleased to publish with the team here. But I must admit that of all my books, I look back on Rome's Sweet Home 25 years ago, the Lamb's Supper, actually it was 28 years ago.

The Lamb's Supper was almost exactly 20 years ago. And there is a trajectory because in so many ways you have the acorn, the sapling. And now this book represents the full flowering of the vision of the Lamb's Supper, that discover that the mass is heaven on earth, the fulfillment of John's visions in the vision of the Lamb's Supper, to discover that the mass is heaven on earth, the fulfillment of John's visions in the book of Revelation, but then to see that in the Eucharist, we have the sacrament of Christ's resurrected body. I mean, it's the same body that was in the upper room on Thursday, the same body that was hanging on the cross on Friday, the one that was buried in the tomb on Saturday, but

it's not in its mortal condition. It is resurrected for the purpose of becoming communicable, edible. It is deifying us gradually, you know, and so to discover all of this is like the full flowering of the Lamb's Supper, that the sacred mysteries that made us Catholic that we described in the book Rome's Sweet Home, it's like too good to be true, but it's just, it's taken to the next level. And so I hope it's also an easy, breezy, you know, it's not a difficult read. It's not overly theological, but I really hope it instills hope.

Now, I'm in this section. I'm showing people right now under your audio courses and resources. I'm seeing these different audio courses, the Gospel of Mark, Feasts of Faith, the Splendor of the Church. Are these audio courses that you've created? Yep. Yeah, man, that's beautiful. And part of the vision that we never really put onto a banner is this, that you might like. Some 20 years ago, I wanted to assemble a team that all would embrace what I affectionately call biblical Thomism. Because Thomas Aquinas did not describe himself as a systematic theologian.

You and I did a show a couple of years ago. That's right, I remember. We talked about how biblical theology for St. Thomas isn't a kind of, you know, well, is it biblical or is it theological? Is it exegesis or is it, you know, proof text? No, biblical theology would have been like a redundancy not an oxymoron yeah and so he was the magister he was the the master of the sacred page that was his job description and i i believe that the only safe way to really read scripture coherently

is through the perennial philosophy embodied in saint thomas aquinas and to point to him to show that what he did on a daily basis was not teach philosophy or even systematic theology. What he did every day in the classroom was to open up sacred doctrine in terms of the sacred page. He would do nothing but lecture from sacred scripture. And this is how scripture comes alive. Like Vatican II reminds us, the study of the sacred page is, as it were, the soul of sacred theology. And so, you know, I am so happy not only to share Pints with Aquinas with you, but I can't wait to get our resurrected bodies back so that you and I can share maybe a thousand years of Pints with Aquinas then and there. Sounds fantastic. Sounds fantastic. Hey, I hope you enjoyed that chat.

We've got more, which I want to show you. I just had a powerful post-show wrap-up video with Dr. Scott Hahn in which I ask him what it's like being a Catholic in a church that feels increasingly divided, where it feels like we have people who are pulling us to the left or the right, to use these sort of political terms. How does one stay sane in the church today in a time of such anxiety, not just out of the church, but within the church as well? His answers were absolutely amazing. We always do these post-show wrap-up videos at the end of these discussions, and they're only available to my patrons. So I

want to invite you and ask you to please consider becoming a patron by going to patreon.com slash matt frad when you do i give you a ton of free things in return uh you get signed books a beautiful beer stein that looks like this this is absolutely amazing expensive as expensive as it looks you get that i'll send that to your door um you can be part of a uh private video chat with me, community forum. We have different courses that we do. We're just doing a course right now on an introduction to the great works of Western literature. It's a seven-part video series with a professor who's actually engaging with my patrons in the comments section after each of his video lectures. We're doing one on the Reformation soon, hopefully. We've done one on flannery o'connor before we've done a whole course

uh on dante's divine comedy you get a bunch of free content we're continually cranking out content just for patrons you get all of this stuff all you gotta do is go to patreon.com slash matt frad and in doing that you're going to support the show support the website support all the work that we're doing and you'll get to watch that uh post show wrap up video that i just did with scott hahn so i hope you'll enjoy that thank you for watching before you go if you haven't already click subscribe and that bell button and as i say youtube that way will be forced to let you know whenever we put out a new video thanks for being here