Pints With Aquinas - 5 Remedies for Sorrow (Fr. Boniface Hicks) | Ep. 548

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

In this episode, Matt sits down with his spiritual father, Fr. Boniface Hicks, to unpack Aquinas' five remedies to sorrow. There's so much sadness in the world today, may this episode be a healing balm if you're wading through the thick of it right now. 📚 Get my newest book, Jesus Our Refuge, here: https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Our-Refuge-Matt-Fradd/dp/1968630023/ 🍺 Want to Support Pints With Aquinas? 🍺 Get episodes a week early and join exclusive live streams with me! Become an annual supporter at 👉 https://mattfradd.locals.com/support 💵 Show Sponsors:  👉 College of St. Joseph the Worker:  https://www.collegeofstjoseph.com/mattfradd 👉  Truthly – The Catholic faith at your fingertips: https://www.truthly.ai/ 👉 Hallow – The #1 Catholic prayer app: https://hallow.com/mattfradd  💻 Follow Me on Social Media: 📌 Facebook: https://facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/mattfradd 𝕏 Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Pints_W_Aquinas 🎵 TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas 👕 PWA Merch – Wear the Faith! Grab your favorite PWA gear here: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com

Pines with Aquinas is brought to you by Truthly, which is a groundbreaking Catholic AI app built to help you know, live and defend the Catholic faith. Start your seven-day free trial today when you download Truthly on the app store. It's part of what makes us human. So the ability to feel badly about bad things, to experience sadness when there are things to be sad about. What does that say about us when we don't feel sorrow over bad things that have happened? to us. We tend to be a bit elevated to achieve the next thing, to be on guard against the next threat, and all of that elevation then keeps us out of just resting in the good or even resting

in the bad in the sense of being able to be present and sorrowful over things that are not good. We need the emotional affirmation of the gift of those emotions and our own heart's responses. We need someone to be in relationship with who experience us as a gift and helps us to feel that through their response to us. Hey, everybody. Before we get into today's interview, I want to tell you about my brand new book. It's called Jesus Our Refuge. If you, like many people, unlike all of us, to one degree or another, have been seeking refuge in things other than Jesus Christ and have just found yourself increasingly

weary, then this book is for you. This book is about taking Jesus seriously when he says, come to me, you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. It's getting great reviews, and I know it will be a healing balm to your soul. Check it out, Jesus, our refuge. You can get it right now on Amazon. Thanks. Father Bonavis, thank you very much for being on the show. It's great to have pleasure in the new studio we have decided that we will look at thomas aquinus's five remedies for sadness or sorrow because there is so much in here and we also live in a really anxious age i keep hearing statistics about young people not wanting to live having no hope for the future seems like suicide is on the rise breakdown of families is something that always gets repeated but

it's no less tragic because of that. And so I hope that this, I know it will be a balm, a healing bomb for those who are currently just going through a lot, whether it's financial or health struggles or, you know, mental illness, depression, or what have you. So I thought you would be a beautiful person to talk about this. Well, I'm delighted at the opportunity. I didn't have the list of St. Thomas's teaching on those things, but certainly in the world of spiritual direction,

where I'm also always incorporating psychology, interpersonal neurobiology. There's so many fun things that are coming to the forefront from various angles in the world today. And I'm delighted to discover that St. Thomas was aware of these things like a thousand years ago, it's great. Now we don't have this in front of us, but Aquinas does differentiate between different types of sorrow,

like torpor and anxiety, et cetera. But I love your take on this. How in your work, I think you told me you have over a hundred spiritual children or thereabouts, you're encountering different types of sorrow. How would you distinguish the different types of sorrow as you encounter it? Or is that not even the right way to ask the question? It's fine.

I haven't really thought to categorize them. I did read St. Thomas's breakdown of a couple different kinds of sorrow. Sorrow in general is a response to things that are bad. So things that are not as they should be, a deprivation of the good, and that sorrow, that pain of heart that we experience when we've been hurt by somebody, when we're struggling and failing, when our health is affected, when there's some significant loss, when we feel overwhelmed by the threats in the world, when there is an evil present that we can't overcome, then we experience sorrow.

and that's the appropriate human emotional response. And that's been one of the things that has been most important for me to be able to speak clearly about and to have a lot of compassion for and the people that I work with is sometimes we can be shamed about sorrow. Any of the negative emotions, fear, anger, sorrow, aversion, and dislike that we can be shamed about that, oh, you shouldn't feel that way. Christians should be joyful. You're not allowed to. You have these kinds of problems. Just get over it. You know, anxiety is from the enemy. Just stop it. Pray more. Anyway, there's a lot of stuff out there that can make people feel like there's something wrong with them because they feel badly. But when there are things that are wrong, there's a reason to feel badly. And the starting point is to understand what's there. What's happening in me? What do I feel bad?

about. What's this sorrow coming from? And the capacity for sorrow, I really, I've learned so much from Conrad Barr's who is the, you could say the father of Catholic psychotherapy. He took St. Thomas Aquinas's anthropology and used that as the lens to sort of refactor psychology, which at his time was really only Freudian psychology, and re-envisioned it through St. Thomas's fuller picture of the human person. And he renamed the concupiscible appetites as the humane emotions. It's part of what makes us human. So the ability to feel badly about bad things, to experience sadness when there are things to be sad about, which goes hand in hand with the opposite, to feel joyful about good things, to have desire and love for good things. All of this is an embodied way of responding to the

world at the level of natural goods to moral goods and supernatural goods that I could actually have a response of joy in the presence of the blessed sacrament is an elevated form of humanity. And if I don't leave room for sorrow and joy, then I don't leave room for a lot of, well, if I don't leave room for sorrow, I don't leave room for joy either. And for various reasons, and we'll get into some of the remedies and the reasons in our conversation. But we can end up suppressing those emotions under what St. Thomas calls the irascible appetites, what Conrad Barr's calls the energy or the assertive emotions, which are things like hope and courage, but also anger and fear, and then despair is its own interesting

energy emotion. But we can end up achieving, striving. running, there's ways that anger and fear and even hope and courage can push down sorrow and joy so that we don't actually enjoy the present moment so that we don't savor what's happening in front of us and what's going on in us now. That's certainly been true in my own life. There are times where I think, why can't I enjoy this? Maybe five years ago, if this had have happened to me, I would have been elated, but now I can't seem to pluck up the joy. So I guess my question is, what does that say about us when we don't feel sorrow over bad things that have happened to us

or joy over good things we're experiencing? Well, I think we're often living in a little bit of threat mode in that case, so our nervous system is activated, and we're in those energy emotions a bit more. And so what, I don't know, modern neuroscience is identified as threat response, fight or flight, we tend to be a bit elevated to achieve the next thing, to be on guard against the next threat. And all of that elevation then keeps us out of just resting in the good or even resting in the bad in the sense of being able to be present and sorrowful over things that are not good. a lot of times what we need to help us, and this is another insight of Conrad Barr's, was

we need the emotional affirmation of the gift of those emotions and our own heart's responses. We need someone to be in relationship with who experiences us as a gift and helps us to feel that through their response to us. It's related to one of St. Thomas's remedies for sorrow and the sympathy of a person who loves us. And so that gives me permission when, you know, and I just had the blessing of experiencing you with your family, your children, and you can rejoice when your son discovers something, does a magic trick, or finds a lizard. We were doing a little tour of the shrine of Our Lady of Laleche, and he had a lizard hanging from his ear, and he could enjoy this, and we enjoyed it with him, and it reinforced. This is a joyful thing, but we often require that reinforcement relationally. that's part of what forms neuro pathways from the scientific perspective that's the thing that develops our appetites from the philosophical perspective

what you said earlier was interesting that we often get shamed for feeling negative emotions and i would imagine that part of the reason for that is if you're feeling sad you're less of a joy to me so come on suck it up just get over it like be be joyful again so that i can have more pleasure. I don't think we often think it through like that, but wouldn't you say? Yeah, our unwillingness to enter into someone else's suffering is, is understandable from a couple of perspectives, not you just cast it a little bit in a selfish perspective. I don't want. Sometimes I can't, or that's its own kind of threat for me. There's so much sensitivity around the loss of a loved one in me, for example,

that when you're missing someone, you've lost a loved one, I'm resistant to going there without even thinking about it. It's a visceral reaction to what you're going through. I distance myself. So that's why, you know, we've got to do our own work to help other people do their work. The most limiting factor in psychology is the psychologist, not being able to go to a place.

And likewise, in friendship, our capacity to help others is going to be limited by our own woundedness or our own lack of inner healing, freedom. People are talking a lot more about anxiety today. I don't know if they still are, but I kept hearing that. Where is that coming from? And what is it? We use that word in such a variety of ways.

that has a clinical psychological meaning. I'm not sure it's exactly the same as St. Thomas's meaning. Yeah, sure, and not to catch you off. But maybe a hundred years ago people were using the word nerves, like her nerves are shot. So perhaps we're referring to the same phenomena over time. It's just that when a new word occurs to sort of identify the thing, perhaps we think it's a new phenomena.

I don't know if it is or it isn't. Yeah, I guess I'm inclined to recognize the real deficiency in our modern times as a lack of affirmation in Barr's sense, a lack of committed relationships of love in another way of saying it. And part of anxiety can be, in some sense, the uncertainty of whether I'm good, to not have the ground, emotional ground to stand in confidence and know that my life is a gift. And then I'm anxious about proving it, earning it, what people are thinking about it. And those things go, again, sort of into our nervous system. They would be in the level of the cognitive function in St. Thomas's terms. It's not a rational idea that I've come up with and I can therefore correct by getting my ideas straight. It's something that I have to receive into my bones, into my nervous system,

my flesh from another. We receive this gift from another. We're meant to be in relationship and meant to receive love. And, you know, in some sense, we only see our face in the face of another. You know, I'm receiving myself from you right now. Your nods and your eye contact, your attention is telling me that I'm worth listening to and that I have something meaningful to say and that you're taking it in. And all of that is reinforcing what's happening in me. I can't do that. in a mirror. I can't do that in an abstract way. We receive that through relationships. And I think that's the big breakdown in our world today is we have steadily moved to more and more separation in relationships. You know, what I've experienced in your family over the weekend has been such a joy

because you really love each other, you're present to each other, you care about each other, you affirm each other's existence and goodness, and that's just tangible. Just, and I think, that's so, it's more and more rare. I think the breakdowns in the family and it's a cascading problem because you can't give what you don't have. And obviously we heal, we heal through relationships and you've, you know, I'm sure in some way your family is an improvement. You've tried to take the next generation in a better place. But you've received a lot from other people who have received you and loved you and filled in some of the holes that perhaps your parents left. But our society is spinning apart at the seams, and that leaves people with a deep malaise of, like, am I good?

Is my life worthwhile? Does it matter if I show up? Do I have anything to offer? Wow. I think that leads to a lot of anxiety. Yeah, I don't know how anyone could disagree with that. Because I think we would all acknowledge that if a child afterbirth is completely neglected, maybe it's fed by a machine or something like that. And a human being comes and looks at it every so often.

but it's sort of raised by computers and machines, that that person is going to be really deficient. And yet if we've received, yeah, if there's been a poverty in our relationships with our caregivers, I mean, anyone who's been adopted, they talk about this, right? As great as their adoptive parents are, there's this hole there, this desire for something,

their birth parents, that relationship. So the idea that if you've had a negative experience, with your family or you they weren't able to provide what they should have provided for you when you were younger that would have no ill effect on you in a way that as you say gets into your nervous system seems like a strange thing to posit yeah so the some of the scientific ways of expressing this so the realm of interpersonal neurobiology is recognizing that even our neural pathways are formed in relationship a really simple example of this is probably before the end of our interview, your stomach is going to start rumbling. And you will immediately know that the

remedy for that is putting something in your mouth. That doesn't make logical sense. Why would we ever connect our mouth with our stomach? Your mother taught you that. Your stomach rumbled, you cried, she fed you, you felt satisfaction, and a neural pathway formed. So that's a very simple physical example. But then you take that to the emotional example. When I feel ill at ease out in a crowded, noisy, chaotic street. I don't know what to make of that. I don't know if I'm safe. I don't know if I'll get out of it.

Having a parent there who says, it's going to be okay. I feel the connection of that relationship. And I start to feel the confidence. I develop the resilience that I need to handle chaotic and difficult situations. But we literally, God has given us the capacity for all of this, but it only forms in relationship.

I'll give you an example of this after the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, may God rest his soul, one of my children was distraught because I run in similar circles, you know, to this child's mind, you know. And so they called me crying, and I was like, hey, it's okay, you know. And they said, you know, that could happen to you. and it won't. It won't happen to me. And they said, do you promise?

Oh, that's a hard question to answer. So I said, yes. I thought that that was the right response, even though I can't promise a thing like that. Yes, I promise. That won't happen to me. But whether I should or shouldn't have said that, the point is that's kind of what you're talking about,

isn't it? Like, I'm in this place of distress, and I need a parent to come in and to soothe me and to reaffirm truth. Yeah. And that's so sweet that your children know that they can just ask you that. So that's another place where having fear could be shamed. And if you had insecurity around that, you could have shamed that in response.

And that would form a different neural pathway. I can't ask dad about these things. Oh, my goodness, I didn't think of that. Yeah, if I had it said something like, why are you being so emotional right now? You're crazy if you think that I would get hurt the way Charlie did. Do you even know how big? He's much bigger than me. He was much more, yes, nothing like that at all.

You need to calm down. Oh, how brutal would that have been. But I'm sure all of us can maybe resonate with an experience like that that we've had. And have made the mistake of offering. Again, that comes many times out of our own insecurity. If you had been really afraid of that and you were in some sense trying to reassure yourself

at the same time, you may have shut down the question rather than being able to enter into it as you were able to. Mm-hmm. Yeah. God forgive me for all the ways that I've done it without knowing it, eh? God make up for the ways I lack. All right. Well, let's look at the first one. I love what Aquinas says about this. He says the first thing, you're sorrowful. Here's what you should do. And it sounds so obvious that like, why even put this in the list? Is it just because you wanted to get to five? But the first thing he says is do something pleasurable. And he's got this great line in the sumer where he says, and maybe you have it in front of you, but it's something to the effect of, What sleep is to a weary body, pleasure is to a weary soul or to sadness. You're tired, you find an end in rest which rejuvenates you. You're sad. What do you do?

You have to experience some legitimate pleasure that you can then rest in to rejuvenate you. Yeah, there's so many interesting layers to that because, of course, sleep matches directly to weariness, whereas pleasure like a rhesus peanut butter cup doesn't match exactly to the loss of my mother. So, and he goes through some of those distinctions as well, that the species of the pleasure and the species of the sorrow may not be the same. And so even the effect may not be, you know, sort of one to one.

And even though the pleasure may sort of cause the sorrow to recede for a time, the sorrow may reemerge as the pleasure dissipates. So just to set up that structure, at the same time, I think it's very consoling for anybody who has ever had comfort food, has tried to ease their pain by having a bowl of ice cream. Yeah, great. St. Thomas recognized. Come on. You're in the airport. There's that low level anxiety that everybody feels at the airport. And you see, I've never had this. I've never seen the drawer of this, but Sinabun or Chick-fil-A, which I definitely see the appeal of and you just think, oh, I just want to inhale a number three meal and everything will be okay. And sometimes it is. Well, the pleasure causes the sorrow to recede. So the problem is if we, the pleasure, the pleasure. also recedes and the sorrow reemerges depending on what it is. It might help us wait out the space in the airport. Right. And that can be fine. Although the reason we're anxious in the airport may be a

more deeply seated reason of our uncertainty about life and feeling sort of threatened in the world in general. But certain kinds of pleasure can cause some of those points of sorrow to recede. And that can be very helpful. It's like if we can give ourselves, a little bit of breathing room. This is one of the places where I have certainly encouraged or supported the use of medication with direct ease, that sometimes when, you know, there can be a real negative feedback loop that someone is going through something, like if my anxiety causes me anxiety, if my pain causes me pain, and that, it's like, how do you ever get out of it? I can't, and that has a way of overtaking our minds. We don't see clearly. We can't

process well and then it's like how do you ever get some breathing room to take a positive step to change something in your life to address a problem it's so heavy and so sometimes uh you know medication sometimes a certain kind of pleasure to get your mind off of it can give you a little bit of breathing room to address what the cause of the sorrow is i love that let's talk about the difference between leisure and dissociation because there are activities which give us a form of pleasure but don't restore us they drain us you know it might be okay occasionally to come home from a hard day at work grab a beer and just kind of zone out to tv i don't know maybe that's appropriate sometimes you tell me but we all know the experience of doom scrolling or engaging in three different

activities all of which should be restful but we find ourselves interiorly fragmented and when it's all said and done we feel just weary and wrecked you know i i have that experience well i have the opposite experience i have the recreation experience when i let's say which i hope to do this weekend leave my phone and computer here at the studio go home and have a weekend without anything vying for my attention. I find that that's the best way for me just to restore. So when Aquinas says pleasure, how do we distinguish between dissociative activities

and recreational activities? Yeah, well, yeah, there's a lot of different distinctions that need to be made. Again, I'm talking about eating food as a way of at least settling sorrow and disconnecting in certain ways. I mean, presumably we're watching entertainment because we enjoy.

It is a form of pleasure. It can be. Sometimes. It can be. I remember once my wife nearly died. She was in the hospital years ago. She was in the ICU. She was in the hospital for a month.

And I'm with my kids. And I remember once I opened up my laptop lid, open up Netflix. And I think I spent 45 minutes just scrolling through the options and then shut it and went to bed. And that was not enjoyed. And even if I had to watch something, it wouldn't have been enjoyable.

Do you know that experience? Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, I think that kind of numbing, use the word dissociation, which is really separating. Well, it's in a form of numbing. It's not feeling anything. It's finding some way to occupy so that I don't feel the sorrow. The sorrow feels too heavy. I don't know how to go there.

And maybe I can't go there in the sense that we can have sorrow that's overwhelming. And that's, again, the importance of relationships. We'll get down to that at number three, but it's, it is, I found it's the most essential remedy in the sense that having someone to hold pain with me is a way of reducing the pain enough to really look at it. And I think, you know, it's so beautiful we celebrate September 14th and 15th, the triumph of the cross and the sorrow for Virgin. Our lady's position at the foot of the cross, being able to carry and hold the pain and communicate love is something so essential. I mean, it's just at the heart of our salvation. Jesus suffering for us, but Mary also fully receiving that and entering into it. So anyway, all of that is to say sometimes we're, sometimes we numb or dissociate.

Again, I want to remove shame from that. Okay. If you've done some doom scrolling or you've tried to disconnect in different ways. if you have a hard time looking at what's causing the pain, sometimes that's the best that we can do until I think, you know, being able to bring someone else into it over time to be able to look at things is necessary. Okay, well, that's good, but let's get practical, though.

You know, someone right now is watching this and like, okay, pleasure. That's way too broad. You've talked about getting your head above water by engaging in what we might call trivial pleasures that are, you know, certainly a relief. But practically speaking, what is he talking about? Well, I think to actually remedy the sorrow... He doesn't mean pornography.

He doesn't mean get drunk. Right. That's doing, pursuing another evil. But these things could be pleasure. Are clearly pleasurable. That's why we do it. So why not those things? Well, and fair enough.

Do they cause... So he's not... He's talking about what causes the sorrow to be reduced. He's not necessarily prescribing patterns of healthy behavior in life in general. He's acknowledging the impact of different passions on other passions. So will using pornography cause your sorrow to be reduced? Well, yeah, actually, for the period of time that you're engaging in that pleasure, is it going to make it worse for countless reasons, not least of which it's terribly sinful? Well, yes. But again,

I think there might be a little bit of a consolation for somebody who finds themselves trapped in that loop. What are you actually doing? Well, you're trying to self-medicate. We use that term. You're trying to apply a certain pleasure to overcome a certain sorrow. I have a lot of compassion for that. The genre, I suppose, of engaging in pleasure to overcome sorrow involves, yeah, a whole variety of activities. What's going to be the long-term positive impact from something? You know, so I'm not suggesting we have ice cream to constantly eat down our pleasure either. And certainly, you know, again, ice cream is not sinful. Engaging in sinful behaviors is going to cause, is going to increase the sorrow eventually.

But temporarily it's going to reduce it. Otherwise, we wouldn't do it. Yeah. Do you find that people know what brings them pleasure? You know, if you were chatting with someone who was kind of sad and you were trying to give this practical application to their life. What would you say? What makes you come alive? What gives you relief? How would you go about helping someone decide what pleasure to try to engage in? Yeah, those are great questions. And they can be hard questions to engage when someone is sad. The best thing is to take a little

inventory when we're at our best and we can see most clearly. And then know what are some of the healthy activities, going for a walk, exercising, having, well, we'll get to that, a good conversation with a friend, engaging in, you know, an activity that we produce something or achieve something. Maybe that's a hobby or even getting some work done, completing some emails. There are a number of things that we can find some satisfaction in, and that can lift our mood a bit. Can I ask you, what is the least impressive thing you do for pleasure? Maybe not the least, but you're not allowed to say read Plato or something. It has to be. What do you enjoy doing that's not impressive? I mean, I enjoy eating. I enjoy a good snack. I enjoy a cup

a coffee. I enjoy a martini. I can enjoy a TV show or a movie. Those are things that, all things being equal, I'd probably want to wean myself off of between now and eternity. But anyway, those are a few of the... I like reading lately, I like reading, I got into fiction through Dostoevsky. Isn't that ridiculous? I never read a book growing up. I think I read a choose your own adventure book once, but I somehow managed to get through high school without reading a book, why would I? It's like, why would you eat health food

when your mom and dad leave Coca-Cola in the fridge and, you know, you're like, why would I even eat that apple? It was disgusting. Right. So I never read anything. So I first got into Dostoevsky because I wanted to be the kind of guy

who would read Dostoevsky, yeah? It's really hard to go from Dostoevsky to anybody else. You know, I tried reading Michael O'Brien. I'm like, what is this? Even though it's excellent, you know. But lately, I've really been enjoying reading some, you know, not terribly sophisticated mystery novels and things like that.

And that's something I enjoy doing. I might go home, leave the computer and phone at the house, and I'll just say, I'm going to just spend this weekend and I'm trying to get through five chapters, you know, and I'll go on a walk with the wife and I'll go to the beach with my boy or something like that, you know. I enjoy those things. I've been talking a lot lately about my friends at the College of St. Joseph the Worker,

you know, Jacob Imam, Mike Sullivan, Andrew Jones, and company, the guys who started the college that combines the Catholic intellectual tradition with skilled trades training. Well, listen to this. They're growing their program and are looking to connect with experienced Catholic tradesmen to hire as instructors. So if you are an experienced carpenter, plumber, HVAC technician or electrician, and want to help mentor and teach future Catholic tradesmen, go right now to College of St.Joseph.com slash careers to connect with the college and see how you can become part of something truly special. And if you're watching or listening and know a tradesman who needs to hear this message, please invite them to reach out to the college. Again,

that's college of st.joseph.com slash careers. College of st.joseph.com slash careers. Thanks. And those are, you know, again, matching the pleasure. to the sorrow and even the species of the pleasure to the sorrow. So I can't overcome the loss of the sorrow that comes from the loss of my mother by replacing her. Yeah. I can't ever replace her. So there are other remedies that we have to look at. But temporarily, I can try to do something enjoyable, you know, go to a, go to a baseball game, or read a novel, spend some time with, you know, the family with my brother monks you know so we can find and the and the greater the pleasure is going to be somewhat of a remedy for the greater sorrows and and then we want pleasures that don't

create more sorrow yeah but pleasures that create more pleasure in the sense that they they keep building up the good i definitely have a lot i want to say but i don't want to get ahead of ourselves the second one it's just wild right right right after you talk about pleasure and you think okay I can do that. Great. What's your second thing? He's like, cry. And what I love about it is he doesn't just say cry. He says tears and groaning. So like a good cry, like an embarrassing cry. The end of Titanic cry. That's what you are. I don't know. But why is tears? How does that relieve pain? And what if you can't do that? Yeah. And like you said, what a beautiful contrast from the first remedy, that rather than distancing from it,

which is something of what pleasure is doing, it's pushing in a different direction, it's removing myself from the cause of sorrow. Tears is like pressing into it, going into the sorrow, and feeling it, really letting ourselves feel it. And then tears are the expression of that. So he gives two reasons that, and you may have to have help me with this. Or we can look at the text. But the tears, when I express something that is

actually happening in me, that action corresponds with that reality. Something like an action which befits a man's actual state is always pleasant to him, which is just terrific. Like as an introvert, you take me to a party with my wife and there's a lot of things going on. It's very unpleasant, although I think required, I think friendliness requires it, which is a virtue that he talks about to put on hey yeah it's great to see you hi yeah you know when you or where for me when i go into an elevator and there's like another fellow there and i got to go up 23 flights of oh hey you oh i just i hate it but i'm pretty sure my wife has never found that weird she's you know she usually walks out of an elevator with a best friend somehow like meanwhile i'm like i hate

everything strange everything about this yeah yeah but that's good you know if you're happy I suppose it would be a cause of sadness if you had to suppress that for the sake of people, perhaps people mourning, although you might be bled into their mourning and feel that. But then, yeah, vice versa, if you feel sad and you've got to put on a happy face, that's not pleasant.

I love the second reason he gives, though, because it's something that all of our mothers said to us when we were four. Like my mum, you know, just let it out. You know, like that's basically what he says, hey? Right, right. something like he says and it really is like verbatim it feels like something your mother said he says a thing when a thing is what does he say you say it a hurtful thing hurts yet more if we keep it shut up

come on because the soul is more intent on it whereas if it be allowed to escape the soul's intention is dispersed as it were on outward things so that the inward sorrow is lessened so that to let it let it out, let it escape, not try to hold it in, in which case the intention, the focus on it actually intensifies it, but simply to express it and release it. And tears are the way that we release sorrow. So we honor our lady's tears.

The chaplain of the sorrowful virgin includes three Hail Mary's to honor her 72 tears or something like that. Wow. Anyway, beautiful. Yeah, we honor tears and tears should be referenced and reinforced and encouraged. It's so helpful. I immediately thought of that scene from Dumb and Dumber. Do you ever watch Dumb and Dumber?

Well, I forget the names, but Jim Carrey's character breaks down on the other character. He's like, yeah, it's okay, let it out. And then I've got too much. It's like, okay, when I say, let it out. I'm sure you've encountered this in your years of being. a spiritual father. People not being able to cry. I'd love to cry, but I feel so disconnected from myself. I wouldn't even know how to do that. Yeah. Well, it's been a journey for me. I entering Christianity was also the beginning of the healing of my own tears. So an earlier experience

in life, which I've spent a lot of time unpacking in subsequent years, put me in a position of feeling like men don't cry, essentially, that sounds cliche, but that was communicated to me in a way that I needed to control and suppress my more intense and thus feeling like they were childlike emotions, especially in the world of men. My mother always received my tears. And I felt more comfortable crying around women than around men. But recovering that, being able to respond appropriately to things that are sad, to experience sorrow and express it through tears. is a beautiful thing. Right.

And if anyone is concerned about this, remember Christ did it and Thomas Aquinas encourages it and you are not better than either of them. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so intellectually we should be on the right page but then deciding, we can't just sort of decide to cry. So we can decide sometimes to hold it back.

That tends to be a little bit more in our power, not entirely. And we can decide and to some degree to cry. There's a way of leaning into it and so releasing, as St. Thomas is describing. But that can be a process of healing to you. Sometimes what's holding it back,

and that's my own story, what's holding it back is not something consciously, that I'm consciously in charge of. That's a deeper story, a deeper narrative that's kind of in my nervous system, as it were. Do you encourage people to listen to beautiful music or to watch a sad movie? I mean, that might sound a little mechanical, to put it that way.

But if people are trying to connect with their emotions, is that sort of stuff helpful? It's super helpful, yeah. Yeah, Conrad Barr is in his book, Feeling and Healing Your Emotions, has some really beautiful, practical invitations. But also, and feeling joy and feeling sorrow are working along the same appetite. So, again, what Thomas calls the concupisible appetite, the humane emotions. And so our ability to enter into nature, to enjoy a beautiful sunset, to listen to beautiful music, also not multitasking. Multitasking tends to be driven by our assertive emotions.

And so it suppresses, can suppress a bit more our humane emotions, but just being able to enter into one beautiful thing in front of us and really feel that. And then, you know, a sad movie could be a way to engage some of the sorrow in our heart. and really focus in on that. Well, I've mentioned this a bunch, but I'll keep doing it. There's a book, it's a novella by Dostoevsky called A Gentle Creature. Oh, it's so good. In fact, the addition I had had that image on the front cover, which is why I bought that painting.

But I read this. It'd probably take you four or five hours to read, I suppose. I read this, and when I finished it, broke apart. And I was really pleased that I was alone in a cabin in the North Georgia Mountains and I just had the freedom to just it crushed me. Books do that for me for some reason.

I also read that book by Cormac McCarthy The Road and at the end of that same thing happened. The old man in the sea was another one where I'll just the Lord of the Rings. When I finish the Lord of the Rings and Sam comes back home

and it says she put little Eleanor upon his, I think it was Eleanor upon his lap. He took breath well i'm back but there was something about the arrival and the welcoming of him it was something like the fire was on and the evening meal was ready and this line he was expected and he was expected dude when i finished that book i went through three layers of rooms to be alone i went into my bedroom went into my closet and fell over crying it just broke me it was so beautiful wow i don't know what it is about books that do that but a gentle creature i would highly recommend people read that it's just so

beautiful well and i love your heart they can enter into that i do yeah yeah such a beautiful sensitive heart sympathy of friends you're going to move there yeah i don't know okay so i've got i want to go on a tangent here before we get to this all right sympathy of friends before we even look at this I want to acknowledge something that I'm seeing more and more, and that is the use of AI as a replacement for friendship, as a replacement for therapists, as a replacement for a girlfriend or boyfriend, and I'm terrified to see how things will eventuate.

You know, like right now you can talk to chat GPT, and there's this kind of awkward pause before she or he responds to you. But, I mean, that'll be done in like five days from now. be perfectly fluid and then then what then what you insert that into a life like creature like a woman or a man that you then have a relationship with not uh super optimistic about our future if i'm honest with you but um i know you've done some thinking on AI and how it in how it yeah affects our relationships and yeah yeah the church has a a teaching out now antiqueua at nova that came out January of 2025 that Cardinal Fernandez elaborates on a number of different dimensions,

trying to distinguish humanity, human intelligence from artificial intelligence. And it makes a good argument, I think, that using the word intelligence is actually misleading, that intelligence is really a full-bodied experience of our way of engaging in the world that's much more robust than the reduction to information and words that artificial intelligence is able to capture. So some of the philosophical distinctions there, which I won't be able to represent all of, but are really worth reading, I think are important for us to reflect on. But it is amazing, first of all. I mean, let me honor, you know, as a guy with a background and a PhD in computer science,

I can appreciate as happy as I am to be out of computer science because I love the work I do as a spiritual father, teacher, theologian, et cetera. At the same time, I can appreciate the incredible technology and really to glorify God and a sign of man's ingenuity to be able to put this together is remarkable. And engaging in GPT, I mean,

although you said there's an awkward pause, not compared to text messaging. I mean, the kinds of texting conversations that people have that I've had on a regular basis, even going very deep and in extended ways and communicating very deep things can totally be mirrored by GPT. And that's where the point of connection,

it can seem so similar to those sorts of texting conversations which I've wrapped humanity around because I know in my texting conversations, there's a real human person that I know very well. I know their heart and I know where the words are coming from. But suddenly I have the same words, but not coming from a heart. I can't make that distinction in reading a text thread. I have to knowingly make that distinction.

And that's what the Vatican note also points out is the danger of projecting human qualities or fleshing out the text conversation with a heart and a heart. presence in the world and a face and a number of other things, which we tend to do spontaneously. So we really have to catch ourselves lest we really personify artificial intelligence. And that's exactly where it can be sort of useful for therapy or useful for friendship. It responds extremely well. It can speak loving words to me. I mean, I ask these sort of complicated theological questions and it says, that's an excellent

question. That's a really interesting distinction. That's a great insight. And I feel good about myself. Yes. Yes. I've noticed it to me that. Right. Yes. So it's very understandable that we have those kinds of reactions. And we just have to remind ourselves, at best, that's coming from a couple degrees removed, a human person who knows how to affirm or encourage. But it's not actually seeing me and knowing me and understanding me. And so the more, more that we're able to keep that information engagement in the realm of information and not expect something more robust and human from it is going to be really important. But as you say, I also have anxiety around how that's going to develop, how far down a path of, you know,

talk about sadness. When people engage, do they know that it's a machine at a certain point? who's going to start offering a bot as if it were a human person, telehealth or some sort of therapy, and then you discover after how many months or years that this doesn't exist, that this is not a person? What kind of devastation is that

as we start to build our identity around nothing, ultimately? I would hope there's a devastation, But my fear is that people would be like, good, I'm glad it wasn't a human. Its advice was way better than a human could have given me anyway, which I don't think anyone who's in touch with their heart would say that, but I could see people saying something like that. Well, this is a distinction I really like to make. So I also form spiritual directors.

And although I'm probably a little bit more in the realm of understanding the distinctions of AI than most of the people receiving formation from me, I like to make the contrast. what can a spiritual director do that GPT can't do? Because a lot of times people think of spiritual direction as advice, information, an idea, a plan, a strategy. And GPT can do that way better than a human being can. Okay. What you don't get from GPT is the affirmation of a person.

I don't get eye contact that's connected to a heart. I don't have someone who can affirm the value of my being. I don't have the relational process that actually forms my nervous system by a lot of nonverbal cues and genuine love. If I'm reducing spiritual direction to information, go to GPT. But if spiritual direction is a relationship, I can't have a relationship with a computer that I suppose I can have some kind of relationship. I can't have a human, interactive relationship. It's interesting you say that because this past weekend I was buying a car

and I was interacting through text message with somebody and about halfway through I got suspicious that I wasn't interacting with somebody. And you might say, well, in the case of getting a car, it doesn't matter because what you want is efficiency and the right information for someone to get back to you immediately

or something to get back to you immediately with the answer that you want. But that's exactly right. Imagine it. Because I haven't looked this up, but I would suspect there's bound to be therapy, AI apps. Is there? Yeah, of course there is, right?

That are programmed in a certain way. And what do you think? You don't think that'll help? You don't think that, would there be help? Because I see what you mean. The same thing with spiritual direction. It might be able to give you good advice, but can't hold your heart, as it were.

You can't sit before someone. But I don't know. I mean, there's probably, yeah, there's probably therapies where you're just texting back and forth, I don't know, but you're saying, just knowing that you're talking to a computer versus a person is a big difference. Yeah, having a real relationship with a person makes a difference. So it's like, you know, if you reduced a medical doctor to a machine, we've discovered the healing power in human presence, in human touch, in human eye contact. Wow. We've discovered the healing power in a relationship. When somebody cares that you're going to make it, it helps you to make it.

The computer doesn't ever care that you're going to make it. Wow. So is there a great combination? Absolutely. I think a medical doctor who is enhanced by AI, you know, if you can say it that way. Yeah. Great. But, yeah, there are things that we get from personal contact that the person doesn't necessarily know how to provide.

or information that they can't put into words, but also just having somebody who loves me and cares that I'm going to make it. I think it also exposes, you know, so the car example, or, you know, we have some of these online agents that can answer questions and engage our inquiries, how much we've reduced certain roles

to just transactional. And, I mean, this is true even in a, you go to the airport, and then you go to buy something and now most of them have self-service you know that's right and don't offer that to me because I will take it

and I shouldn't but I will and then the person in the store just becomes an annoyance like that's what you've reduced her help to or his help to they're now just an annoyance like standing there kind of looking over your shoulder do you need help no just leave me alone

I don't does that make sense you come to kind of resent human interaction because it just gets in the way, whereas the way people were training me when I worked at a grocery store back in 1995 or something, it was very different. Yeah. People would line up at my, after my conversion, I was so happy. People would line up at my checkout when there were other checkouts available because they would tell my mom, he just makes my day and I'd love to go through his checkout.

So beautiful. But now, um, we're kind of irritated like I'm saying if we're a shop owner we're irritated that they even need a human person you know like can't you just check and see if we have that thing on the app

can't you just go through self-checkout right so we're irritated at them and then because our skills interacting with them as someone who works at a shop and should try to make their experience pleasant in a human way we become an annoyance to the shopper so the whole thing is just humans are annoying

what do you think yeah well to harken back to the beginning of our conversation what's happening in society today fractioning of relationships disconnection from other human beings what's the result of that anxiety and sorrow as we become more isolated and and more wounded yeah so you know modern psychology and neuroscience has discovered that trauma responses so embedding responses of active like fight, flight, freeze, fawn in our nervous system happens not only because of the intensity. You know, we think of this as like Vietnam War vets and survivors of abuse. And certainly those are extreme situations. But the thing, because there are people that are war vets or survivors of abuse who don't have the same trauma responses. And it seems that the common

denominator is being able to share this with someone. Being alone in the pain is what causes the wound to embed itself because we start to tell ourselves stories and we start to react internally. And if we don't have someone to hold the pain and help us to process it and understand it, then we develop deeper trauma responses, which of course isolate us more. So to come back to the most basic kinds of things, which could be healing relationships. I mean, I think of the ideal local general store on the corner of your neighborhood and the owner is a friend of your family and his kids grow up with your kids and he watches after them and you have a real relationship with him and when he has a product he wants the best thing for you and those

kinds of ideals are being replaced by just transactional modes of material exchange where as you say, human beings become an annoyance, and we want less and less to do with them, isolating ourselves more and more, exposing ourselves to deeper and deeper anxiety and sorrow. Wow. Yeah. I don't know if you've heard of the phenomena of He Kickamori in Japan. There are these individuals who lock themselves intentionally up in their room and never see anybody for 50 years, 30 years, 20 years, 10 years. They get everything they need online. It was this wild thing that, I don't know, hit the news maybe 15, 20 years ago. Yeah, very different to the life of a monk,

we should probably point out. But how many of us, that's the goal. You know, Uber eats from the house. And like, it's a part of me. There's like, yeah, that actually sounds great. I actually don't really want to have to be interacting with you. Especially when, like when the service, customer service obviously plummets,

the less we concern ourselves with real human beings. So you're justified in being disappointed with the human beings at the store that you're going to because it's a disappointing experience. And that just seems to be everywhere now. Yeah, I remember when I first encountered John Paul II's teaching and love and responsibility and the personalistic norm that a person can never be used as a means to an end. So he contrasts loving and using, using being basically the ground

of all sin. And I thought, how do you not use the checkout person at McDonald's? Isn't that using? And for it not to be using, we have to be collaborating in a common endeavor. Like, how often do I think about that? And so I think there's been just a latent failure to acknowledge humanity that's steadily grown as our society has become more transactional. So it's become quite natural to replace human beings.

that I never felt that I was interacting with and basically was using to my own shame with computers and that I don't have to work with them at all. And again, what a difference when I, and this doesn't have to only be the shop owner who's the friend of the family, it could be the checkout person that I actually treat this person as a human being,

that I recognize we have a common endeavor. I'm looking for food, he's making money, I want his good, he wants my good, we're working together to achieve those goods, what a different perspective that actually forms a bond. I've tried doing that sometimes. I'll go into a coffee shop or something like that, and I'm going to, and you could overdo that

and be creepy objectively. Hello, you know, I get that. But no, I think even the times where I've really tried to just in a very casual, like, how you doing? Like, how's your morning been? The person's someone who's either doesn't react to that, doesn't know how to react to that, or it is seen as kind of like,

what do you want from me? Ooh, isn't that interesting? When people are genuinely nice to us, that sometimes our reaction is, what transaction are you trying to make from me? Right, yeah, we're guarded against being used that even expressions of kindness trigger a fear of manipulation.

Yeah, yeah. I think I just seldom do any shopping at all. I'm speaking in lots of abstractions, but I think Chick-fil-A actually fosters this kind they seem to friendliness and it's a real principle that they operate on i don't know how they do it but they seem to be crushing it you know it's if you make that a goal that you evaluate people on if that's actually a priority we can do that better now that can be faked as you're saying and we can become resistance to the fake expression of it but but as someone who's it's one thing if you're the customer

and you're being nice i can see someone being like what do you want from me i'm okay with people faking it. I really am. I mean, in a way, you stoop to conquer. So if you just have to fake it, like, that's the bare minimum you can do at this job that you're getting paid for. But obviously, that's not preferable. Where do you see this AI thing going? That's the million dollar question, right? Yeah. It feels like more of a revolution than the internet. I know that's part of the internet. I think so, yeah. But when the internet kind of came out of the gate, We're like, whoa, whoa, what is this thing? And then chat rooms and then.

Yeah, so you can, there's a book I read some years ago that was called The Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford anyway, who was anticipating all of the jobs that could be replaced by technology within the next 20 or 25 years. So one of the positive twist could be, well, is working? at a McDonald's checkout counter really worthy of the dignity of the human being. And could that human being do something more fruitful, creative, beautiful, expressive, could the introduction of more automation lead to greater leisure? And so a kind of springtime of intellectual pursuits and creative developments. There's no way that's going to happen. Right?

No way. Well, I don't know. Why not? I mean... Because we're all idiots and wish to be. Yeah, I mean, that's like, I mean, I hope you're right, but it's sort of like saying how time-saving devices will that lead to this. Clearly, it hasn't. We have so much time throughout the day now, but we just binge and doomscrawl.

I want to tell you about Hello, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding hello.com slash Matt Frad. Sign up over there right now and you will get the first three months for free. That's like a lot of time. You can decide whether it's useful to you or not, whether it's helpful. If you don't like it, you can always quit. hallo.com slash Matt Frad. I use it.

My family uses it. It's fantastic. There are over 10,000 audio guided prayers, meditations, and music, including My Lofi. Hello has been downloaded over 15 million times in 150 different countries. It helps you pray, helps you meditate, helps you sleep better. It helps you build a daily routine and a habit of prayer. There's honestly so much excellent stuff on this app that it's difficult to get. through it all, just go check it out, hello.com slash Matt Frad. The link is in the description below.

It even has an entire section for kids. So if you're a parent, you could play little Bible stories to them at night. It'll help them pray. Fantastic. hallo.com slash Matt Frad. Is that something that can be preached? You know, is that a transformation that we can facilitate? Is that a cultural change that we can develop? Is that, you know, it's a, you could take the cynical approach and say, well, when you remove the blue laws, yeah, everybody stopped going to church. And now it's just done. What's bull laws? Oh, sorry. I think they were especially in the south. Like no stores could be open on Sunday. And so as we allowed the relaxation of certain

limitations, then people just, anyway, we also removed a lot of the shame. A lot of things happened that people felt free not to go to church on Sunday. And now people are not in church on Sunday. And so is that just a failure? Or is that a sign that they didn't know why they were in church to begin with, and it's upping the ante for evangelization. So do we need to work harder to convince people that authentic leisure, intellectual pursuits, creative developments, spending time with each other, building relationships, that these are actually the things that express the dignity of the human person. Does it put the burden on the influencers to influence in these positive directions and then leaves people more free to choose? Wow. I mean,

I'm giving you the most optimistic. I think what's difficult about this is influences are financially incentivized to get you to keep engaging with them in this somewhat superficial context of watching you or buying from you. So I think we just take the easiest route unless we want to be virtuous. I think even today, right, you are seeing something like an awakening among people who are going I can't be attached to my smartphone, so I need to choose to live differently.

Or I've been abusing alcohol my whole life and I need it to get by, so I'm going to get off it. And I'm not going to eat junk food anymore. But for every one person that might be making good decisions, I think there's hundreds or thousands of people who are just getting decimated, destroyed. Yeah, so it's all done.

We're done. No, I think culture can be influenced. I mean, yeah, can it? How do you influence people towards what's difficult, though? I think that's the question. Well, by what's the greatest pleasure? The greatest pleasure actually comes from love. And how do I, what motivates me to do something that's difficult?

Doing it for someone I love, doing it with someone I love. If you came alongside me and said, hey, let's do this difficult thing. together, I'm motivated to do that. If I had to sacrifice for someone that I am caring for, I'm motivated to do that. So, yeah, I think, I think it's possible. All right, we're on the sympathy of friends. One of the things he says, Aquinas, in this point, is that when you see somebody's concern for you, you feel better. You feel pleasure. If I should, share with you what I'm going through and I see your love for me, that says something about me, you know, that I'm worth listening to.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that I'm worth loving, worth supporting, worth sharing the sorrow because it costs somebody to actually have sympathy or to really feel what someone is going through, to take the time to listen. You know, if you think of going to a hospital room and sitting beside somebody's bed who has sick going through procedures doesn't know what's wrong there's some anxieties heightened mood there there's some fear that's that's coming out there's some sadness over things that are already lost and maybe some movements to despair that it'll never get better and that's really heavy and it's like

I don't want to be anywhere near that but I love you and I'm going to come near that for you and I'm going to receive that and hold that from you I'm not going to shame you by trying to fix it, oh, just do this, or just, I'm just going to receive it from you, first of all, to know that we're in it together. That's a real sacrifice, and that's a real gift to somebody. And so it's really saying in a very concrete way, not just in words like GPT can do, but in a real concrete way, I love you, I'm with you. Yeah, it is interesting because I think I've experienced this a lot,

when I might be in pain or someone else might be in pain, people want to not enter into it. Like, ah, you'll be all right. Like, you know, everything happens for a reason. Or these trite lions, they're almost like shields. Like, don't get your pain on me. Yeah, and in psychology, they call that bypassing. Okay. And when we use spiritual motivations for it, we call it spiritual bypassing.

So give me some examples for that. Well, just offer it up would be a form of spiritual bypassing. Maybe somebody has just betrayed you and you're suffering from that. You know, you just need to forgive them. Just forgive them. So that's a form of spiritual bypassing. Why do we try to get people to bypass things? Yeah, I think, like you said, I don't want to enter into it.

I don't want to feel it. It's an inconvenience to me. I'm not, you're not worth it to me. It's not worth suffering to me. Sometimes it hits my own stuff. If I feel like, if I feel a sense of responsibility and it's somehow my responsibility to make it better, and I don't know how. then I'll cover up my own inadequacy or insecurity

by coming up with some pious platitude to throw your way. Oh, he's in a better place when your dad died. You're like, why would you do that? Why? It's offensive. Yeah. And we all kind of get that. And people say that without even asking how we are. They didn't even care how we are.

How we are would be a burden to them. Yeah, that's right. a little clip that I use in my spiritual direction classes teaching about listening and empathy is from Brinay Brown. If you look at Brunei Brown on empathy and she says, empathy is this sacred place like you're going down into the hole with someone

and you're just with them in it. Sympathy, so I don't know that I agree with the terms but anyway for the sake of repeating her categorization. She says sympathy is like sticking your head down, the hole and going like how is it down there yeah yeah um it'll get better want a sandwich um you know oh you you uh you lost your baby at least you know you know you can get pregnant oh you know oh you uh your your son is failing school well at least your daughter's doing well and that little term at least is often trying to put a silver lining on things wow again

rather than entering into the pain and then she says it very beautifully what makes things better is not an answer, it's a connection. Just being with someone in it. I don't know what to say to you right now, but I'm just so glad you shared it with me. I'm grateful to be in this with you. That's why it's said that people who are in great pain, who have experienced great evil,

don't in that moment need Christian apologetics. They need a Christian to suffer with them, to be compassionate with them. They Christ. That's right. And our lady didn't stand at the foot of the cross, And it's actually better that he's going through this because it's going to be the salvation of the human race. And so we just have to wait it out until it's done and he's risen from the dead

and then it'll just be fine. What would that have said about Mary's relationship with herself if she, we don't want to come close to blasphemy? But I mean, what would that say about someone who's doing something like that? Yeah. That they're just not in touch with. Well, we see that that the perfection is not in coming up with the answer. The perfection is being able to enter into the compassion. So our lady demonstrates for us what the path is towards that perfection of love. Again, not that the answers don't matter. And thank God for good theologians who can think through things.

But that's not the most important thing. The foundational thing is the bond in love. And it's very true. So again, I'm going to borrow from Conrad Barr's. a little bit, but we do move into our heads to protect ourselves from what we're not able to hold the pain that we're not able to enter into. And so we can dissociate and theologizing and intellectualizing, rationalizing, being up in our heads to say it colloquially is a way of dissociating from the pain. So, yeah, our lady would have not been able to enter into the pain

of that reality and would have been escaping from it in a certain way. The apostles escaped in their own way. They just couldn't go there. They didn't go to the cross. Who knows? Maybe Peter was theologizing with James somewhere else trying to make sense out of this thing

rather than being able to just be present to it and suffer it. And by that bond of suffering to be brought through it into the new life of resurrection. That makes me think of when someone in the family dies it's easier perhaps for some people to just busy themselves with the details to be a genuine help to those around them

and to the people who are grieving rather than to enter into it. Yeah. And going back to our first remedy for sorrow, there's a certain pleasure in carrying out the details. Yeah. And that can be a helpful breather, get a little bit of breathing room from the sorrow, and then to be able to enter into it.

We just can't stay at that distance. We can't stay dissociated. We can't keep ourselves removed from it. Again, I think it's important to be gentle with ourselves in terms of how much we can handle and not shame ourselves. You ought to be able to enter into it. You ought to be able, okay, if you can't, that's fine. Recognize it.

Don't shame and hurt the other person in the process and take the space that you need, but then get the help to be able to enter into it. Friendships feel like a precarious thing today, to your point about society being sifted like wheat where we're becoming increasingly isolated, do you see that? Like in your spiritual direction,

do you find there's a lot of people who don't seem to have many good friends and do people know how to build friendships? And what's the reason if they aren't? Is it that people move so frequently? Is it that they're engaged in their devices and so don't have time for actual relationships. Of course, there's this term called ghosting

where we just sort of back away from people entirely. Where's this coming from? I think the capacity, what did you call the Japan thing? Heikikimori. He'll have to look this up. Yeah, I've mused a number of times that that's possible today in a way it's never been possible in history,

that the ability to totally isolate because of the capacity to order everything online and to have everything you need coming into you from the outside. And so I think that's part of what exacerbates the challenge around friendships is it is possible to ghost in a way that was maybe a degree less possible because not only did we choose each other, we also needed each other. And so it kind of held us in relationship a bit more.

And then even around commitments, there was a certain, and sometimes unhealthy pressure to stay in relationships that were unhealthy, in fact. But today it's just much more acceptable to end marriages, to leave priesthood, to walk away from jobs, to transfer the kind of mobility, which is not only physical, but also sort of emotional and personal, is much more societally acceptable. In a way, again, there's some benefits to get out of harmful situations, but also there can be some real deficiencies in enabling some bad behavior. Aristotle famously has these different levels of friendship, all of which are good, but are different, one of them being a sort of transactional,

maybe not that term, may that term is unhelpful, but usefulness, friendship of usefulness. Do you think it's because we require these less and less that those friendships don't ever begin to then develop into a virtuous friendship? That's a nice insight, yeah. Yeah, that's a friend overnight. Sure, that's right. It takes experience, it takes trust.

Sacrifice, commitment, perseverance. All right, here it is. Hikikimori is a severe, protracted form of social, withdrawal, most often associated with Japan, but now recognize globally where individuals isolate themselves in their homes for at least six months, refusing to attend work or school, limiting social contact primarily to their family. This phenomenon is not typically a distinct illness, but a state of social isolation that can stem from factors like intense social pressure, bullying, or a breakdown in family communication and may co-occur with underlying mental health issues. But I was reading

a story about someone who's like I think 50 years yeah not bananas yeah would have been a lot harder 50 years ago for sure it's a lot easier to pull that off now right yeah I think it means pulling inward being confined yeah and again I you know I want to touch all of those things with a lot of reverence because we do that without thinking about it and it's not helpful to further shame people who have that, you know, for mental health reasons and there's pain that's being avoided. But then the challenge is on the one who has enough freedom is on the verge of deciding, am I going to isolate more, or am I going to engage and can answer, you know, can actually choose to engage, repair, work through problems, confront

someone. Let me give a gentle nudge that way. It's also a chat. challenge for those who can reach out. Do we even notice the person is missing? Do we go out of our way to keep track of somebody who might be getting isolated, who suffered in a significant way and might need the human supports that are there? I know for me as a father with children, sometimes I hear about that and I think, that sounds lovely. I would love that. I'd prove everybody wrong. I could do this and be happy. But what happens to me is, when my wife leaves, let's say, to her parents, or she goes somewhere with the children

for like a night or two or three. I find the first night, I'm actually loving it. Like, as someone who's introverted, I actually really enjoy being alone in my house, doing my thing, love it. But by day three or four, I don't like it at all. So I just say that because it's bound to be like a mother of small children

being like, oh, how do you pay to become one of these? Well, I think it's a little bit like hunger. When we're hungry, we think I could just eat constantly for days. And then we have a full meal and we think, I don't want to eat anymore. Yeah. Or when you're exhausted, you think I could sleep for a day. But sometimes, like, you get 20 minutes and you're like, I'm good. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. Friendships. Yeah. It's going to be interesting to see how these things develop in the modern world. Especially with everyone moving. You know, I grew up in a small country. town of South Australia. Everyone else did. There was very few people that moved into town. Like if they did, it was a novelty. At least people who then had children who went to my school.

Do you know what I mean? Like that was a novelty. We kind of grew up together and it's funny how quickly that, see, maybe in America that sort of thing. Even back then, it probably wasn't a thing. But for us, your aunts and uncles and grandparents, they all lived in the same little town. Yeah. And that doesn't really, I mean, look at me. I abandon everybody and moved here, you know, and we're not even near my wife's family. So I'm not making a judgment on it. I'm just, that's a really, and then you even do,

there's this weird phenomenon now where you call close friends auntie and uncle. Right. Which I don't like, I don't like using words. Yeah. I don't like abusing words like that.

Like, well, this is auntie so-and-so because they're close. And that's fine. It's innocent enough. But that's interesting that we would start to do that. Yeah, when that's expansive, it can be a beautiful thing in the sense that we have more aunts and more uncles and more of these kinds of close relationships,

which is acknowledging how close someone is to the family. I think there can be something beautiful there. When it's a kind of substitute, I cut off my physical aunt and uncle and I replace them with my chosen, this person or that person. And again, I can imagine some reasons for that. But, yeah, I think surrounding ourselves, one of the beautiful things about family and neighborhoods is that it challenges us to be around people that at least at first we don't like to be around or at certain points we don't like to be around. You know, in the family, you may have people all across the political spectrum. and it teaches you if you're a Republican

how to be with Democrats and not kill each other to actually listen to each other and perhaps have some positive developments. That's the kind of thing, you know, Chesterden had with his main interlocutor. Yeah, I forget the name, but he mentions him in Orthodoxy and other books, yeah.

And then they go out for a beer together. Bernard Shaw, was that it? Shaw, yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, so, yeah, they went on. I just put on my American accent. You were looking at me, Strachian. sure. I was like, what is that? Yeah, so they could go out for a beer together after, you know, Chesterton just decimated him and as one of his books. There was a way of coexisting

of not reducing someone to one aspect or one disagreeable portion of themselves or, you know, we learn greater sensitivity and we, so we learn how to commit to relationships that are hard. Yeah. How do we learn to do that again? yeah because at one point it was necessary now it isn't that's right like it was necessary in the sense you live in a small town with somebody yeah you're gonna have to figure out how to at least be in the same space as you say without cursing each other out because you won't be able to a town won't function you won't function unless you figure out how to do that but now that everything feels so fluid people leave towns for another town people have what they call starter houses and they keep

moving from one house to another house so you can't trust that you're people who live in your neighborhood are going to be there and then maybe you get enough money that well you're never satisfied anyway and you keep buying bigger and better houses so no one's sticking around and there's no towns anymore where people walk yeah i mean to be too depressing i'm being a bit depressing here, but it's kind of true because you go to these small towns in Europe and they were built for feet. Right. So everyone just lived in the same place and now we build towns for cars. Jacksonville, I think, is the second largest city in America. Maybe the largest city in America. I think somewhere in Alaska is probably the first, but continental USA is the first or second. And you mean largest

geographically? Geographically. Interesting. What I mean is they say it takes an hour to get to Jacksonville from Jacksonville. Wow. And how do you have community in a place like that? Yeah. It's almost like these structures of sin that we've created. And maybe not even sin. I don't know if that's too strong of a word,

but the automobile, like what that has done and what we're maybe learning that it's done. Yeah. Of course it can bridge distances, but it can also create them. Seems like it's done way, way more bad than good. Yeah, you know, again, just to pose a counterargument, you talked about my 100 spiritual children, you know, that wouldn't be possible. Yeah.

I have a lot of relationships, a lot of connections. You're away from your wife's family, but you can drive to them. So it can create connections. I mean, well, I came down here from Pennsylvania. So, you know, would be hours in the car. it would be impossible to ever do by foot, reasonably speaking. I mean, I make this trip once a year or something and take me half the year to get here.

So it's made connections, more connections possible. But again, I think that it... But those connections are more tenuous. You know, like you could have said, I'm not coming because something came up, or you could say to one of your spiritual children, hey, this isn't working. They could say the same to you.

Yeah, that's right. So it puts more pressure on our freedom to not ghost people, to not cancel people, to not surround ourselves only by like-minded people. It puts more of a pressure on us to use our freedom well. And this is where the gospel should help us, right? I mean, Jesus commanded us to love one another as he loves us. Wow. He didn't say only the people you like, only the people that are useful. only the, to love everyone as he loves us. That's holiness.

That's what we're aiming at. Yeah. And so in some sense, as Christians, we should say, yeah, I hate all of this technology because it makes it possible for me to actually be in contact with so many people that I can't possibly hope to love as well as I'm really commanded to love. But let's get going and do our best to. extend that love that he has given to us. Yeah, the other downside of technology is people can't tell the difference

between a friend and an acquaintance or something, you know, because I'm sure you have this too. I certainly do where people reach out to you because it's so easy to reach out to you. I mean, they could DM you, email you, find your number online and text you, and then people have, and then you have to somehow learn how do we distinguish between who's my friend who has a sort of demand on my time and my family, and my family, my wife first, children, close friends. And then who isn't that?

And it kind of blurs the lines. People reach out to you expecting a response, text you, see that you've seen their text, get offended when they don't hear back, text you as if they've just spoken to you in the same room as you. It blurs the water, it muddies the waters. Yeah, yeah. It's not even, it's like the technology did that.

It's not, it's not like the person's irrational for seeing that you saw their text message and didn't respond and felt hurt. That's not necessarily irrational. But the technology has made it that way. So then how do we even understand what a friend is now? If a friend can be someone who knows me online or follows me on Instagram and we've had a couple of exchanges, you know?

That's interesting. Yeah. Well, what you just described is always a cause of such deep pain for me because I, whether it's speaking in a place where there are, you know, hundreds or thousands of people, I would love to meet every one of those people. And the way that I'm often blessed to meet people is on the level of interiority

where people open their hearts and become vulnerable. And there's nothing more beautiful than that. When we actually connect at that level, a lot of the other external things, which can be points of disagreement and dislike and things like that, often fall away when we really get the chance to see the person.

And I love people. when I get to see their hearts that way. And people reach out to me as I know they do to you and share their heart over email or something like that. And I'm always in agony. I can't possibly give the loving response fully to each one of them that I would want to. And so that has to turn into prayer and a certain surrender.

But the technology has made all of that possible, has increased our sorrow in some way, although sometimes our joy. You know, I know you got feedback on one of your listeners in Germany. Oh, yeah. What a beautiful experience. Or somebody in Iceland who's able to find hope because they can connect through a podcast

and there are those sweet moments, but then also the agony of not being able to fully respond like we would want to. It's almost like, I mean, I know that there's John Buller Second who put an emphasis on human information within seminary information. That's right, yeah. How important is it, do you find, I mean, you teach seminarians, that people have to be taught how to have friends again?

Or is that not, is that too far? Yeah, I think, trying to think if I've actually... It's almost like dating, right? Like dating, you may not have had to teach people how to date a hundred years ago. There may have been these like standards that made sense to us as a community, as a culture. for us today like it feels like we have to teach men here's how you should treat a woman or women

how you should treat a man and I wonder if we're there not just with dating but with friendships like how do you have a friend yeah yeah yeah that's that's a great question I haven't I haven't felt that that was the case as much I guess the the men that I work with seem I suppose there's some fringy things of people that need to be helped as certain conflicts arise seminary formation, we live together. And so some of these, it's meant to foster a little bit of the kinds of tension, actually to overcome exactly the problems we're talking about. When you live with the same men for four, six, eight years, all the stuff comes out. And then the formators, hopefully are formed well enough to be able to help work through the repair that's necessary,

the commitment that's necessary, the forgiveness that's necessary. And hopefully we as priest, become real experts in humanity, in part because of that seminary formation. But really, that has to be grounded in the family. There's some real deficits that can be challenging to overcome. But I guess I feel like, now maybe if I think about the college students, I see that a little bit more immediately. I'm also situated. St. Vincent College is all one campus with the seminary, the monastery, the parish. And with the college students, maybe the sort of connecting over I don't know, superficial activities, connecting over drinking or just talking at superficial levels

or and then isolating into certain kinds of tribal things that are not dying to themselves to get to know somebody who's a little less comfortable immediately. I suppose I see maybe at those younger ages. People are talking a lot more about social awkwardness these days and they used to. Yeah, for sure. I wondered, does that have to do with a rise in certain things, like autism?

Is it that combined with us not engaging with humans and looking them in the eye? Truthly is a groundbreaking Catholic AI app built to help you know, live and defend the Catholic faith with clarity and confidence. Whether you're navigating a tough conversation, deepening your understanding, or looking for daily spiritual guidance, Truthly is your companion on the journey. It's like if chat GPT went through OCI. got baptized and made it its mission to proclaim the truth of the Catholic Church. But Truthly is more than just a Q&A tool, its formation in your pocket. Take audio courses on topics like the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Eucharist, Purgatory,

and why the Catholic Church is the one founded by Jesus Christ. Each course is designed to be accessible, engaging, and deeply rooted in the teachings of the church. You'll also receive daily audio reflections, short, powerful meditations to help you grow in prayer and stay grounded in your spiritual life. Already downloaded by thousands of people worldwide, Truthly is transforming the way we learn, share, and live our faith. One question, one course, and one prayer at a time. Start your seven-day free trial today.

Download Truthly on the app store. Yeah. Do you find that in seminary? Do most of the fellows who show up, do you have to turn away a lot more than you may have once done? because of this? So we're not as much the entrance happens at the diocesan level, and then we take their students.

Obviously, we give evaluations. For the most part, we've been able to form the men that have been sent to us, I think. And if I can brag, our seminary has the highest retention rate, I think, of any seminary in the country, around priests being ordained and remaining in priestly ministry. So in any event, I think, there's been a real capacity to form men.

They say there's a rise in autism. I don't understand all the factors in that. If that's purely biological or if that's developmental as well at early ages or how that works, but that is some of that social awkwardness. Yeah, some of those things need to be taught for sure. And we do a little more of that with some men than with other men in seminary formation, helping them giving that clear feedback. Because that's also the, you know, like they need to be told, like your children need to be told.

Jordan Peterson has some, you know, nice teaching on these things. Like before the age of four, you need to make your children able to interact socially. Because if they get past the age of four and they are irritating to others, that will lead to the successive isolation that becomes super problematic. And so... That's along the lines of his, don't let your children do things that make you hate them. that's right yeah you could say something similar don't do things that would make reasonable people hate your children that's right that is if you can help it i mean that's a really good gift to your children one of the things i've often said to my children when they'll go over to a friend's house

and the house the friend's house i trust them i love them i and i'll say like be good because you want them to invite you back nice which kind of is i don't know what the how that's received but you need to know it and i'll say hey you're that that friend of yours just came over see how he was well spoken see how he said thank you and please and he was kind to your siblings i'm gonna have i'm i'm way more willing to have him back because he was like that so you should be like that when you go to their house it sounds kind of horrible to say to someone be nice so people will like you but it's true well it's one measure right so we don't uh people would talk about the danger of people pleasing.

Yep. Yeah, that's true. So there's a kind of fawn response, compliance, or a trauma response, fawning or compliance as a way of just making things good that aren't good so that I don't agitate and intensify a threat from someone else that I'm perceiving. But on the other hand, there is a measure around how acceptable am I and is my behavior based on how people are responding to it. So I need to be able to calibrate that a little bit

in order to engage, yeah. All right, so number four is contemplation of the truth. That's the fourth remedy for sorrow Aquinas gives. I remember somebody saying, it may have been Chesterton, you know, he's the kind of repository of unattributed quotes. Someone said something that horses chew contentedly in the meadows while men smoke discontentedly in the bars. it's good isn't it so in other words you satisfy an animal a dumb animal's needs and it goes to

sleep you satisfy man's natural needs for food and sex and sleep he asks questions this idea that greek philosophy arose when it did because of relative stability and peace or significant stability and peace that then caused people to ask questions about the nature of the world and truth and language and things like this, which is really interesting. Like, why aren't you just satisfied? Right, right. To eat, busy yourself about the reproduction of the species,

have a good nap. We're not. We want more. And that's, to get to this point of we were made to contemplate the truth, which is why I guess it's so, it's so pleasurable to us. But what's your take on this as a remedy for sorrow? That's interesting.

Do they ever call man like homophilosophicus or something? I don't know, but I like it. Yeah, yeah, we're sort of inquisitive, quizzical by nature, always seeking to penetrate reality, to grasp more deeply the truth. Yeah. Do you happen to know, does St. Thomas mean contemplation in a prayerful way and, yeah, that's interesting.

That word contemplation gets so overloaded in the realm of spiritual theology. St. Ignatius means something quite different as a technical word than St. Teresa of Avala would mean than St. Francis DeSales would mean than the catechism means. So that word gets so overloaded. I don't want to say overused.

Overloaded just in having a variety of meanings And I don't know, I don't know Thomas well enough to know how he means that, but certainly, especially as insofar as the truth is a person, contemplation of the truth would really be a connection with Christ. I'm looking up his exact words right now. I understand, I don't understand how the term is used, but I want to kind of get the context. So he says, I answer that, the greatest of all pleasures consists in the contemplation of truth. Now, every pleasure assuages pain, as stated above, hence the contemplation of truth, assuages pain or sorrow, and the more so, the more perfectly one is a lover of wisdom. And therefore, in the midst of tribulations, men rejoice in the contemplation of divine things

and of future happiness, according to James 1 too, my brethren, candidly joy when you shall fall into diverse temptations and what is more even in the midst of bodily torches. This joy is found as the martyr, how do I say that, to birchia? Tuberthus? I think. When he was walking barefoot on the burning coal, says, me thinks, I walk on roses in the name of Jesus Christ. I don't know if that shows me why.

There seems to be a little bit of a range of things in that. So he talks about being a lover of wisdom, which is of course a philosopher, right? Yeah. And then the contemplation of divine things and a future happiness, that seems to raise it above because one could say a scientist is a is contemplating truth right he's reflecting on the nature of things why is this working in the way that it is and there's a certain satisfaction about uncovering the the laws of the universe and the the movements of the planets or the or the the neurobiology that we've been talking about a bit throughout the our time together

there's a there's a beauty in discovering those elements of truth but then of course the higher truths are those that are pointing to God to divine things of future happiness with a capital H. And so the things of heaven that are beyond what we're even currently capable of seeing. But I always like to point out that although our sight is limited at faith, our hearts, our love pierces the veil. We're able to love now in the way that we will love in heaven. We're not able to see now in the way that we will see in heaven. The beatific vision is a real transformation of our current reality. But our love will be expanded, but it's the same love. And so there's a way that love goes beyond what can be seen. That's one of the reasons

for the dark night, for example, is that we have to let go of what we can see in order to pierce beyond that through love. But contemplating insofar as we're able to contemplate. And I think, you know, much what we're doing and probably the reason a lot of people watch Pines of Aquinas and a whole variety of other things is because there's something really satisfying about understanding what's happening. Yeah. And as much as we said a little bit earlier, like, well, you don't want to just come up with theological reasons for suffering when somebody is suffering. Well, you do also want to come up with theological reasons for suffering when someone is suffering. There is a question that emerges. There is a desire to understand why is this happening. What does it?

this mean? What is this all about? And being able to connect about that and understand to a certain degree. We don't fully understand. Again, a lot of things are held behind the mystery of faith about the veil of faith. But insofar as we're able to make some sense out of it, it's a great consolation. You know, at the beginning of this interview, you spoke about how this maybe disparity between the pain I'm feeling and the pleasure I seek to satisfy the pain. I think you said, you know, if my mother has died, then a Reese's peanut buttercup is somehow disproportionate. And that's sort of what he addresses here in the third objection, right? So the third objection says, the remedy for an ailment should be applied to the part which

ails. But contemplation of truth is in the intellect. Therefore, it does not assuage bodily pain because that is in the senses. Aquinas answers, in the powers of the soul, there is an overflow from the higher to the lower powers. And accordingly, the pleasure of contemplation, which is in the higher part, overflows so as to mitigate even that pain which is in the senses. Isn't that beautiful? Because it feels like the opposite could be said as well. Like the level of pain of having your mother die is so much greater than the Reese's peanut butter cup that it it sort of overflows and swamps the pleasure of the peanut buttercup. But I could see the opposite happening as well,

whereas if I'm contemplating heavenly glory and I truly believe that it exists and that I will experience it soon, then that overflows onto lesser pains. I think the fundamental principle for Victor Frankl's logo therapy is that man can do it with a sufficient why, man can endure anyhow. And so having an adequate meaning can help us to endure suffering.

So Victor Frankel in the concentration camp said people died before they died. They died when they lost a reason to live, not when they were overcome by pain or suffering so much as when they lost a reason to endure that pain. So a little bit related, that higher meaning, that higher value of contemplating what my life is for and where I'm going. You know, you can see this. Obviously, the martyrs are empowered by a supernatural grace as well, but I was just learning about one of the martyrs of La Florida, Antonio Injas, who, as he was being burned alive while crucified, was preaching to the people who are present, to the natives who

are present in their own language, and then even to his persecutors who are present in their own language, begging them to repent, to convert, that their souls won't be lost for what they're doing. And so that higher purpose seems to have elevated him above the obviously horrible physical pain, not to mention all of the emotional pain of the kinds of rejection, exclusion, the ending of his life, all of the questions that naturally emerge. But, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Anything else to say on that? Contemplate truth. Well, and I think to... You know, you might want to speak to this to cut you off right after I ask you a question. Sorry. You've talked about how important narrative is

and relationship. Yeah, yeah. And you're welcome to talk about that some more. But it seems to me that when we contemplate the truth, we're seeking a narrative. Yeah, that's right. And that's what then makes sense of our suffering. So when we kind of like think about God's existence,

So we read the catechism or St. Thomas Aquinas or the problem of evil. It sort of situates us in rationality and it makes us feel less chaotic. Yeah. There's something really beautiful there. So truth is the fullness of reality. And this bad thing happened to me is a narrowing of reality. I just got sick randomly. That's a narrowing of reality.

It's not the fullness of reality. There is a whole succession of causes and effects. There's a succession of even intentionality. And then there's a framework of divine intentionality. And as we open to a fuller reality, we never fully get there because, again, some of it is veiled. We don't see as God sees, not in this life, not fully.

but we get glimpses of it and as we allow reality to expand those sorts of things are a part of it there's a relationality there's more than just a number of separated monads bouncing off of each other having things happen to them there's the intentionality of relationships there's the spiritual bond of relationships and so my sickness is not just an unfortunate incident you know somebody takes care of me. It affects people around me. I'm supported by somebody who sympathizes with me and shows their love for me that I didn't get before I was sick. So there's a whole relational realm that's a part of the fullness of reality. And then there's also a whole narrative realm. So when John's Gospel says, through him, the Logos, all things were made. So in the beginning,

a divine logic, a logos, a meaning. And through that logic, through that meaning, all things were made. All of creation is meant to glorify God. And everything is made for as to be a part of that eternal embrace between the father and the son. And to be part of the son's love song to the father and his way of honoring him for all of his perfections. And so everything has that meaning from a, you know, a little lizard to a rock to a, everything is part of giving glory to God, but human beings in a preeminent way. So anyway, there's a whole narrative around the things that are unfolding, which are much richer than we often, we're living in very reduced experiences of reality, perceptions of reality all the time. And the more that we can expand that

to a fuller perspective, the richer it is that we're living in. And so, yeah, to be able to get a glimpse of, well, even like a Victor Frankel, you know, to say in some way, and this is what God is always doing, and we have to be a little careful how we express it, but in some way, Victor Frankl's life was improved by being in, I think he was in Auschwitz, in a concentration camp. In some way, his life was even richer having gone through that concentration camp than it would have been if he had never gone through. the concentration camp. So we have to be careful not to say God sends people into concentration camps in order to enrich their lives. He allows the consequences of our free choice, sin and evil, but he never allows anything which he cannot bring forth a greater good from. And so no matter what we've done or what's been done to us, we can always say from this moment in time, in some mysterious way that I may not fully know until heaven, my life is actually going to be better because of this bad thing that I'm in the middle of.

And that hope can really be a remedy for sorrow. Yeah. To be able to contemplate that truth. Yeah. Well, the final one, which is everybody's favorite one, is sleep and baths. So he's going to say that sleep and baths and such remedies and such like remedies, yeah. So he's not limiting it to these two activities,

but just his point is, seems to be that we are, are body-soul composites, each being equally a part of who we are. We don't have a body, we are a body. And so what you do to the body affects you because your body is you. Yeah, something like that. And so if I'm, if I, that's to say, my material self is weary, if I'm falling into any kind of heresy here, you'll correct me. You're doing great.

If I fall into any sort of exhaustion, then whatever revives my material self, me because I am my material self, something like that. Yeah, it's a, it seems to me kind of a corollary of the first one, that pleasure is a remedy for, and as he points out, any pleasure, is a remedy and all the ways that we discussed in part temporarily, perhaps, but is a remedy for sorrow. There's something about, well, I wonder if we can reflect on what it is about baths.

and sleep. But there is something that's kind of whole about those things. My whole body is cleansed. My whole body goes unconscious and is restored by sleep. Think of a good massage. Or laying at a beach in the sun.

Yeah. Do you mind if I read his main response? Yeah. It's quite short, but potent. He says sorrow by reason its specific nature is repugnant to the vital movement of the body and consequently whatever restores the bodily nature to its due state of vital movement is opposed to sorrow and assuages it moreover such remedies from the very fact that they bring nature back to its normal state are causes

of pleasure where this is precisely in what pleasure consists as stated above it's a it's a powerful recognition as you even emphasized in reading sorrow by reason of its specific nature is repugnant to the vital movement of the body i mean you think about the person who becomes so depressed they can't get out of bed yeah what is that yeah what has sorrow done to them that they don't want to move their body doesn't have the energy to move yeah i mean just in in in reading that it brings up so much uh so much compassion in my own heart for you know it's it's one of those it becomes one of those negative feedback loops. It's like sorrow weighs me down and then being weighed down, my whole body is affected by that. I feel the weight of sorrow. There's an oppressive quality to it.

And it makes me not want to get out of bed and in some way less and less capable. And the more I stay in bed, the more limited I become by that sorrow weighed down by it, it becomes this negative feedback loop. Makes me think also of, you know, Jordan Peterson's simple advice, right? Make your bed. Do something. Clean your room. Just do something to start to animate. Take up as heavy a burden as you're able to carry at this moment and carry that through. It's really, I suppose, the first remedy of some kind of pleasure. It feels good to have accomplished something even as simple as making your bed. It's within reach. It's possible to accomplish cleaning your room. It's within reach. You may not be, you might, for all kinds of reasons, be afraid to go out of your room,

but then just clean what's there, organize what's there. Make something beautiful. It can be a starting point to give us a little bit of momentum, start us moving forward. So I think likewise, if you can at least get out of bed and take a shower, just clean and there's something refreshing about that or likewise don't be afraid to take a nap maybe you're weighed down i can you know to share a little bit personally i mean i certainly have had many experiences where for for different reasons i'm going through something i'm dealing with some conflict i'm overwhelmed by something i don't know how to solve um interpersonal situation a pastoral situation and i just weighs me down and and i just want to turn off and I'll curl up and take a nap and just allow myself to kind of press in. I remember the first

time I became aware of this. It was just maybe my second year of priestly ministry and I was having a lot of conflicts in the ministry. I was also getting a doctorate in computer science and I was, you know, I just had a number of things. And there was a part of me that wanted to like stay up. I didn't want to collapse. I wanted to fight against it. And then eventually I just had a sense like, no, just settle into it, fall into it. And as I was doing that, I had a real sense of just sort of collapsing in the arms of Jesus, letting and then letting Our Lady hold me and slipping off into a nap. I didn't want to, I think actually I didn't want to get up in the morning and just thought, okay, rather than fighting this, doing violence to myself,

forcing myself to get out of bed, which I've done on other occasions and it can have its own value. But in this case, I just felt like, oh, I just need to really settle into it, let myself be held, just have some sadness, feel it. It's a little bit like the tears, express it. And then pressing down farther into it,

I received some love there and then was able to kind of get up and keep going. but yeah i think giving ourselves a break being gentle with ourselves it can be a real remedy to that and of course too the reason we might feel sorrow isn't because of any emotional or psychological difficulties it could simply be that we are run down i mean you came and visited me spent a few nights at our house thank you and i felt pretty bad that i was just pretty stressed out actually like i've had a a busy couple of weeks and i think my body was like, okay, time out. And so I was getting sick. I got this thing on my eye that started

appearing. What's that called? Stai. Stye on my eye. And I was like, I need to rest. And just to have the freedom to do that was really good. And I think that that is sort of what he's talking about, just restoring, trying to restore nature. Yeah. And you experience. And I felt better. And that's the thing. So it's unlike the example you gave, which was excellent, that if you're sorrowful to allow yourself to rest. But for me, it was like I was exhausted. It wasn't, I mean, maybe it was stressed, but I didn't feel any kind of sorrow, I think. But my body was just run down. And I needed to allow my body. Yeah. Allow yourself to be human. Yeah. The stress that you talked about, is it kind of sorrow, isn't it? Yeah. And interestingly, in some way, it was your body that alerted you to the fact that you were carrying sorrow. Yeah, that's right. Stress, sorrow.

Yeah. Anyway, there's a little mixture there. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. It's important to listen to our bodies. It's important to listen to our bodies. Yeah. Again, I think that's one of these things that's emerged, and you and I were having the discussion anyway a couple days ago of like,

is everything becoming too psychologized traumas? trauma. Is there a popular pushback against this? And, you know, this message to be gentle with ourselves and take care of our bodies and listen to our bodies. And sometimes those things feel a little overdone. But there's so much truth there. I mean, it's the body keeps the score is the name of the sort of famous book by Bessel van der Kolk on trauma. And that we do hold a lot of these things in our bodies. And if we allow ourselves, if we pay attention to what's there, our gut, our hearts, our stress, our necks, our heads. We can almost ask the question, like, shoulders, what are you trying to tell me?

You're carrying a lot. What are you carrying? You know, we can almost have this kind of inner dialogue with ourselves. And our bodies, because we are, we're not a soul in a body. The body is the expression of the soul. And although there's a little bit of disconnect because ultimately there is a disintegration that will end in death. there's a lot of connect there's a lot more connect than disconnect

and so John Paul could say in his theology of the body the body is the language of the spirit the body is the expression of our soul so it's not surprising that it's expressing things that aren't necessarily passing through our conscious thoughts and then we would have to kind of query it to bring it to conscious awareness

what is this thing that I'm still holding carrying that's weighing me down oppressing stressing yeah it's interesting isn't it how I brought that up the other day about are we just sort of, this sort of like therapeutic culture and is this somehow toxic? Should we be rejecting this? Because, you know, from one angle, you could say,

well, this is this new fad that sort of like entered into popular discourse. And goodness, I don't know if I see that in the saints or the fathers or at least expressed with the same language. And so therefore, this is novel and to be shunned, possibly. another way of looking at it though is sometimes things have to be emphasized at different times and we live in a day age where maybe we're beginning

to try to treat the body like a machine we take our energy drinks and even the language around energy drinks seems to treat our body like a car and so maybe what seems to us to be a fad is more just a part of Christianity that has to be emphasized at a given point point because of the moment we're in.

I think that's very true, yeah. And so we have to be careful not to emphasize that and lose other elements, but at the same time, emphasizing it is a real need. I do think there's a lot of disembodiment, even as we were talking about AI and the internet and the kinds of disconnections that are there, being disconnected from our own bodies is pretty rampant, I think, sort of using the body, exploiting the body,

and... Especially as we retreat from manual labor of any degree. I pay a kid to mow my lawn. I make my kids get the mail. Like, what am I doing? It's good for your kids. It is good for my kids,

and I'm certainly not saying. You don't have a robot mowing your lawn. Yeah, well, that's funny that you say that because I want to get, I told my wife today, little robot. The Roomba. Yeah. Because Alice doesn't work because I don't want to bring this one home from work. Because I'm not going to do it. You know, this is so much easier. And I'm not demonizing those things. But it is interesting, like the less we need our bodies. Yeah. Like think of a Tesla.

Yeah. You're no longer required even to drive your own car. Yeah. To wash your own dishes, to wash your own clothes, to sort of facilitate your own entertainment through your active engagement with it such as on a piece of paper like just open up your mouth and eyes and we'll just shovel everything in do you know absolutely wow yeah i can see you could see how you could quickly become disengaged from your body or to think that the body is a sort of annoyance like those humans we talked about earlier in the in the grocery store yeah absolutely and the reconnection to our bodies you know in the way a bath and a nap yeah can really affect our our souls And I think this, you know, as we've been able to work through this wisdom that's 800 years old and we've represented it in language that is entirely modern, it shows that some of these modern discoveries, which I think adds some a light. They shine a light. They give a little nuance. They give us a different perspective. And yet we see how they're grounded in wisdom that's centuries old and held by one of the greatest doctors of the church.

So it's a nice affirmation for what we're working with today that it's not just the latest fad, that it's not just pop culture, pop psychology, that there is a real grounding and something. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, he would have said a massage would help. I mean, listen to this, what does he say? So this is him, this is his said contra where he's using Augustine,

talking about baths. Let's see, I'll just read it. Augustine says, I had heard that the bath had its name from the fact of its driving sadness from the mind. And further on, he says, I slept and woke up again and found my grief not a little assuaged and quotes the words from the hymn of Ambrose, in which it is said that sleep restores the tired limbs to labor, refreshes the weary mind, and banishes sorrow. Okay. Then in the respondeo down the bottom the final line there right he says pleasure assuages sorrow so therefore he says sorry is a swage by such like bodily remedies so he's not saying like only sleep and baths do this

and there's no other kind of activity physically that we restore you so that's that's really nice but i mean i know i've kind of i'm circling back to something i said earlier but i really do think that if you, let's say someone's been watching this and they've been feeling really down lately, how would they put these five things? Just for fun, just for fun, into practice, you know? And I think a big part would be to put the phone and the computer away because it's,

I know this from experience, I could be laying down all day. Not that I do that, but I could. And if I did and just binge things mindlessly, I end up more exhausted. I've been lying down all day and I'm exhausted because my mind is going, you know, mile a minute is that the expression sorry um and so i you know here's something here's my suggestion you give me yours father afterwards all right so here's what you could do i think get some distance

from any kind of screen like if you can get 24 hours to 48 hours i know that sounds like a lot for people but if you can find a way to do that um like a digital sabbath as it were do that first you know maybe have a hot bath glass of wine and a good night's sleep please god you'll have it and then connect with somebody that you love you know not only to share what's been going on in your life but to receive from them because that's actually another thing that kind of distracts you from your own pain to kind of engage with another person and to hear their own sorrows and joys kind of takes you out of yourself not that we should be caring about other people for our sakes i don't mean that but it is a it is a sort of um downstream consequence um and then to

contemplate the truth yeah pray the rosary meditate on the mysteries of the rosary or to think about the great love and providence of god something i try to say to myself which i don't always succeed in is that fiat voluntas tour throughout the day when things happen they either happen because of his perfect or permissive will, and so I can join myself to this unpleasant thing by accepting it, consenting to it, as it were. Not that I have a choice, do you understand? So if my car, if my tire bursts on the highway, and I didn't want that to happen, and I didn't try to make that happen, I can, in a way, I can choose it to happen, because I can endure it, but I can go one step further and somehow thank God for it. This happened to me once upon a time several years

ago, someone took over my Instagram account. I don't know how they did it, but they got into my Instagram account, locked me out of it and started posting images of Saddam Hussein. I don't understand what was happening. People were like, what is happening? Like in the comment section, I eventually got it back. I don't remember how. But I remember when this happened, I chose by God's grace to go, praise God. Thank you. Thank you, Lord, that this happened to me. Not because God perfectly wielded or anything like that, but just to sort of accept, that takes a lot of the suffering out too. Anyway, so maybe that's a prescription for what you could do to sort of assuage some sorrow based on Aquinas' five suggestions there. What do you think? I like that.

I think if I can just comment on one point that you made in terms of separating from the phone, I think I would find that a little bit less for myself, but I'm a little less involved in like I don't have any social media accounts that I pay attention to. I don't scroll a lot of things. So one of the things I heard then was remove yourself from what is a cause of sorrow, perhaps, a cause of exhaustion, a cause of stress. There are some, we can't always remove ourselves from it,

but sometimes we can. And if the phone is a cause of sorrow and distress and it interferes, then set it aside. Can I interject real quick? I think the reason it needs to be stated and the reason it's not so obvious is the phone is a cause for many of exhaustion and sorrow,

but at the same time, it's a cause of excitement and anxiety relief. That's what makes this difficult. It's not like it's only a source of anxiety. No, it also actually, like you're standing in a coffee line with a bunch of people you don't know and you feel anxious, maybe.

and you pick up your phone, you start scrolling through it. It relieves your anxiety somewhat. Do you see what I mean? That's what's difficult about it. Because in my experience, when I give up the phone for the weekend or for a week or for a month as I used to,

there's an immediate sense of anxiety. What if people are texting me if you think I'm ignoring them? Right. Oh, I forgot I should have done this thing. And so it's not immediately obvious that putting the phone aside will cause this sort of peace. but in my experience, it does with a little time.

But I grant your point as well. I don't mean to demonize technology. Perhaps people are using it appropriately like yourself in a way that I might not or others may not. Well, and I'm not trying to undermine that, just identifying part of the, and I love what you brought out. It's an immediate source of excitement or relief,

but it's a longer-term source. It's a little like we were talking about with, you know, whatever, unhealthy coping mechanisms. I'll just say it like that. that are, you know, maybe that bowl of ice cream provides immediate relief, but then I feel overweight and that provides more stress and anxiety afterwards. So separating ourselves from causes of stress or anxiety, if we can get a little bit of distance, we should have permission to, you know,

it might be a relationship, it might be taking a day off of work. It might be separating ourselves from, I don't know, some other source of stress in our lives, getting a little bit of distance from it can be a big help. And then I love what you were saying, you know, being able to embrace a difficult situation, that's kind of that contemplation of truth against,

embracing that narrative that's accessible to us through faith, that God has a way of working all things to the good. If this place that I'm in weren't the best place for me to be for my sanctification and salvation, I wouldn't be there. if I can actually embrace that. In some way, it's better for me that the tire blew out. Maybe I'll even find that out.

You know, I find out there's an accident that I wasn't a part of because, you know, or those sorts of stories come through. But just to be able to embrace that in faith can be a great relief rather than fighting against reality, wishing things were not the case that are. That is the cause of much of my pain. Yeah, yeah.

Is that I fight against my crime. cross. Yeah. Who is it who said the cross eagerly born is like half the weight or something to that effect, right? I mean, Lazier, Altrez, others talk about that. But it's so true. There are things in my life and I hate that they are. I do. I hate that they are the way that they are. And I wish they weren't. And I grieve that they are. Yeah. Yeah. And but I also know, at least theoretically, that if I would like choose my crosses that I haven't chosen, that I have no choice over, but I would choose that I would be much happier. I love that, fighting against reality.

And, you know, as we've talked about, it hurts. So without any bypassing, without pretending like, oh, I really like the fact that my, you know, tire blew out, and I'm stranded on the side of the road, I'm going to miss my flight and all my plans are just wrecked. I really like that. Like, no, I don't like that. But can I enter into it?

Can I feel the pain and then find a way to, say, yes, Lord, your will be done. Thank you, Jesus, for this. That's, well, that's, it's advanced spirituality, I have to say. That is not easy by any means. And some of these other remedies can help to take a little bit of the edge off of it so that I can enter into it. Sometimes reaching out to a friend and saying, can you believe my tire just blew out? I'm straining on the side of the road and I'm like, I'm going to miss my flight and this is all, oh, this is not what I wanted. And just somebody to receive me in that, the sympathy of a friend can settle that. And then by the time that I'm through that, I say, I think this is, God has something planned. And I can really

authentically enter into a story that's much bigger than the little story of what I like or dislike today and whatever difficulty that might cause me. Thank you. You've written books and stuff. Tell people where they can find them or what you're involved in that you would like them to know about. Thanks. Yeah. I'm a director of spiritual formation at St. Vincent's Seminary. So I'd love for you to pray for our seminarians and the work that we do there for our Benedictans, but also a number of dioceses that we serve. Really, really proud of our community and of our seminaries. I mentioned really great retention rates. And I think we do a great job with formation. I also direct the academic programs for an institute for ministry formation. We form spiritual directors and catechists. Those

programs are all available online. So I.m.f.scentvencens seminary.edu, all spelled out. And maybe you'd like to sign up for a class or a program. We offer certificates and master's degrees as well. And hopefully we'll keep growing. I hope that continues to happen. And yeah, I've written, I'm part of an Arch Abbey, of course. I'm a Benedictine from St. Vincent Arch Abbey, and for young men who might be watching and are discerning a vocation, the vocation to the Benedictine life. And then as it's lived out at St. Vincent, we have a college and a seminary, pastoral and missionary apostolites. We're pretty active as far as Benedictine monasteries are concerned. Aren't you the largest Benedictine monastery in the world?

We are the largest Benedictine monastery in the world. How many monks do you have? So about 150 altogether, yeah, and it's a great community. The Lord keeps sending us young men, and so we have old men in their 90s who I love and inspire me and are so faithful in their prayer and their generosity and charity who have been there for 75 years. And we have 20-year-olds, 21-year-olds that entered, you know, three months ago. And that whole range of ages is, and demographics. graphics and backgrounds and anyway, it's really a, really a beautiful place that way.

So, and then as you mentioned books, so perhaps my own website, father bonifist.org, spell out father, would be a way to see the written five books, two together with my spiritual father, Tom Acklin, Father Tom Acklin, and Mary in consecration, a book on St. Joseph, a book on the Mass, and then the kind of two really substantial ones, one on spiritual direction. and one on personal prayer, and hopefully a few more to come. You get a few more in the works, or you currently, you don't have to say what they are, but are you? Yeah, I'm working on a book on, like to a handbook on accompaniment. So I think that grace, everything in some sense that we talked about in our time,

how to rebuild relationships, how to listen to people without bypassing them, how to offer the genuine care for another that can reduce sorrow and help people to see a bigger picture. and so many of the things we talked about really getting into what that looks like. I mean, so much of what we discussed here, we'll find its way into that handbook. And then also as the new translation of the Liturgy of the Hours comes out in about 15 months or so, I'm working together with Chris Carstons, who's the editor of Otoramus, and on a book on the Liturgy of the Hours, try to talk about what that is and how to pray it better and hopefully re-inspire or inspire,

a broader sense of appreciation and prayer and commitment to the liturgy of the hours. Great. Well, thank you for being on the show. My pleasure. Great to be with you.