Pints With Aquinas - Are You DROWNING in a Puddle?! | Mother Natalia

Episode Date: July 7, 2024

Mother talks about why it is okay to feel overwhelmed and how to get past it and focus on Christ. 🤝 💸 Support the Channel: https://mattfradd.locals.com 🎧 Mother's Podcast: https://whatgodisnot.com/ 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/matt 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd  

Glory to Jesus Christ. I'm Mother Natalia, a Byzantine Catholic nun from Christ the Bridegroom Monastery, and this is Pines with Aquinas. A couple of weeks ago, I was cleaning out the gutters at the monastery, and the reason I was cleaning out the gutters at the end of June is a different story, and I'm not going to go into that right now, but the point is I was cleaning out the gutters and a very dear priest friend of mine came to help me with this on his day off because he's just so good. And as we're cleaning out the gutters, I end up having two reflections. Both of them kind of

happen actually in the midst of the work and so it wasn't even something that I had to wait for later which is really good because I needed the reflections right away. So we have leaf guards on our gutters and the leaf guards work great for keeping out the leaves. However, I realized when I was up there on the roof that there was a lot of moss that was growing inside the gutters and to the extent that some of them were blocking the drain and we had to...anyways, it was a whole thing. But here's the point. Before going up on the roof, I had told Father Steve,

Father Steve, there's only a couple sections left that we need to do. It's probably only gonna be like 20 minutes. And then we get up there, and as I'm taking off the leaf guards and looking underneath, the moss is just covering the whole thing. And we're scooping this out, handful by handful,

and it's taking forever forever way more than 20 minutes we're up there for I don't know an hour hour and a half and and I realized how terrible my attitude was about this because of my expectation going into it I was expecting this to be a quick job, and because it was taking so much longer. And we had the time for it. We had the time set aside. So it's not even like this was pressing

on the rest of my schedule. But it just wasn't what I was expecting. And because of that, I had a really poor attitude. I was complaining the whole time. Every piece of leaf guard that I took up, I'm like, Father Steve, do I really need to pull this out? Can we just leave it? Can I, like, I'm trying to do the bare minimum of work. And Father Steve was very patient and very gentle, as he always is, how much more it felt like work because of my attitude

and how much more draining, no pun intended, how much more draining it was that I was complaining the whole time. And which was really convicting for me, actually just this morning at Matins at morning prayer, I prayed the opening line. And one of the opening lines of our Byzantine morning prayer, I think this is somewhere in the Roman office as well, maybe also morning prayer. But anyways, one of our opening lines is, oh Lord, you shall open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise or my mouth will proclaim your praise. And I was so convicted by that line because I was like,

that is not what I was doing on the roof. I was not proclaiming his praise. I was not giving him glory. I was just complaining. And part of the problem with this is that when we have a sour attitude, that typically just opens the door to more of the same attitude, right? It's like when we're focused on how terribly things are going or how things aren't going as we wanted them to, then it's kind of difficult to shift to then a positive mindset.

It's like we just get stuck in the gutter, again, no pun intended, and we can't, we just can't get out as easily. We can't turn back to the Lord as easily and we can turn back to Him by grace, but it just, it just takes a lot more effort to do so. I came across recently this beautiful quote by Mother Teresa, Saint Mother Teresa, who this quote was on the back of, shout out to my friend Father Frankie, who was ordained this May to the priesthood, and on the back of his ordination card, his prayer card, he had this quote from Saint Mother Teresa, take whatever he gives and give whatever he takes with a big smile. Take whatever the Lord gives and give whatever the Lord takes with a big smile. And I think again this the

point of this is not only for our relationship with the Lord, having that positive attitude, giving and taking with a smile. Primarily it's for that, but it's also just the fact that when we don't have that smile, when we don't have that positive attitude, it just makes it more difficult for us to enter into relationship with Him, to focus on relationship with Him. As an aside, I've always really appreciated St. Mother Teresa's balance in these things, because I think we actually, as the good pious Christians, can get into the good habit of letting Him take from us with a smile, but it's harder for us to receive

his gifts sometimes with a smile. Like we think we're not supposed to receive good things from him or something, which is utterly ridiculous. Okay, so there were two reflections I said. The first was this part about just how terrible my attitude was and how much more miserable that made the work. The second was this and again I I think that part of the reason I slipped into this second mistake or this second battle was because of my poor attitude to begin. But this particular battle,

we can fall into, we can get caught up in even when we start out with a positive attitude. So, I don't want to say that this only happens when you're starting from a negative place, because it doesn't. So, as we're up there on the roof, Father Steve, good Father Steve, is noticing some other stuff as we're up there. So I'm scooping the moss out. I'm miserable. I don't want to be up there.

It's hot. All of the things, I'm complaining. And as this is happening, Father Steve is looking in this pipe on top of the roof, which I have learned is called a sewer stack. And he's like, there's water in here. There shouldn't be water in here. So he calls his maintenance man from his parish and finds out what we need to do and whatever. And then he's looking at a chimney and Father Steve is like, these cracks in the chimney are not good. This needs to be fixed. And as he's mentioning these other things to me, which I'm

grateful he tells me about, because I need to know the reality as being the one who's in charge of the maintenance at the monastery. And but I'm also just getting more and more overwhelmed. And none of these things that he's pointing out are terribly big deals. Like none of them are going to take a lot of time or effort or money to fix. It's just the matter of it's one more thing. And that is the battle of discouragement that I know we can fall into, is the thought of,

it's one more thing. It reminded me of this great image that one of my spiritual daughters used recently and I was like, can I just steal that because it's amazing? And she was like, absolutely. recently and I was like can I just steal that because it's amazing and she was like absolutely. So she was talking about how just life can get overwhelming in just all of the small things and it's like looking at any one of these things separately it doesn't seem like a big deal but all put together it feels like she describes it as, I'm drowning in a puddle. And I was like, that is a great image, right?

None of these things are in and of themselves a big deal, but I'm drowning in a puddle. And this is a frequent tool of the devil, and we need to be on guard against it. So that's why I bring it up in this episode. To quote my man Evagrius, it is needless to insist that we should not worry about clothes or food. The Savior himself forbids this in the gospel. Do not worry about what to eat or drink or what to wear." It's a reference to Matthew 6 25. An attitude of this kind is entirely wrong for Christians who believe that even two

sparrows which are sold for a farthing are under the care of the holy angels. Matthew 10 29. Matthew 10 29. The demons however suggest worries of this kind so that Jesus conveys himself away because of the multitude of concerns in our mind. Jesus conveys himself away that's a reference to John 5 13. The divine word can bear no fruit being choked by our cares. Avagrius goes on to say, just as a runner is obstructed and weighed down by clothing, so too is the intellect by anxious thoughts. We become weighed down by our anxious thoughts. Because of the multitude of concerns in our mind, we can no longer see Jesus. This is what Evagrius is getting at here when he says, Jesus conveys himself away. We can't see him because we become so overwhelmed that we just zone in on the cares

and we can't focus on anything but that, which means we can't focus on Jesus. So when we get to this point, when we're totally overwhelmed, when we're being attacked by just all of these little thoughts that in and of themselves are not big deals, are not big anxieties, sometimes they are big anxieties, right? But even when they're not, this isn't...

I would encourage you to not in those moments fall into the shame of, I shouldn't be overwhelmed right now. Why am I overwhelmed? None of this is a big deal. That's the shame that we can fall into and when we're doing that, we're still not looking at Jesus. So it's still a problem, right? Right? What we need to do when we're feeling overwhelmed is ask ourselves and ask the Lord, Where is Jesus right now? How is he working in my life? In this particular situation, in these particular cares, sure, that's fine, but it doesn't even need to be that. My point is that we need to somehow bring our attention back to him,

and that will just as a byproduct, like, dismiss some of those cares or at least relieve the weight of them. One of my favorite lines in the Divine Liturgy in the cherubicon, this hymn, we say, let us who mystically represent the cherubim, I don't know if I can do this without singing it, let us who mystically represent the cherubim and and oh man, this is so embarrassing. Okay, well anyways, there's a line in the cherubicon that says, let us set aside all earthly cares. And every time we get to that line in the Divine Liturgy, it's one of my favorite lines

in the whole liturgy because I'm always falling into the trap of being caught up in my earthly cares. So that line is just a reminder to like, set all of that aside and just be with Jesus in this moment. So sometimes we need to ask him to speak into the cares themselves. But again, the point is just to bring ourselves back to encounter with Him. So turn to Him, turn to the scriptures, praise Him.

You know, it doesn't even, again, it doesn't even need to be, I'm praising you for this, even in the midst of this difficult thing that's happening right now, but praise Him for something else entirely. Because anytime we're turning back to him, that's allowing us the opportunity to refocus, to reset, to remember our goal, to remember who we need to be in relationship with. And just as a reminder, one quick follow up on that

thought of not falling into the shame over our cares and over our distraction, I really love, I might be repeating myself here, maybe I've talked about this before, but I really love the scripture that talks about when Jesus gives the example of the two different houses, one being built on sand and one being built on stone. Because in this passage, he says that the storms come and the wind comes and beat against the houses and the house on sand falls because it doesn't have the foundation and the house on stone remains

standing but as i was praying with that passage a couple of years ago it struck me that it struck me that in both cases the winds come, the storms come. So it's not like if you have a solid relationship with the Lord you're not going to be afflicted by the cares, you're not going to have the thoughts, you're not going to have the temptations. Because it's not that the house that was built on stone didn't have the storms, it's that it was able to stand firm in the midst of the storm because of the foundation. So when you are overwhelmed, when the storms come, when the thoughts come, stand firm on the foundation of Christ, turn back to Him and ask Him to hold you and help you to remain strong through His grace. In the name of the Father, and of the Son,. Thank you for the gift of your encouragement.

I ask that in this coming week, you help myself and those who are listening to this. Help us to keep our minds and our hearts focused on you, to stand strong through your grace and not through our own power, to stand strong on the foundation of your Sun as our as our rock. Help us to not become overwhelmed, to be distracted by earthly cares, cares that cause us to look away from you. distractions as opportunities to turn back to you, to encounter us and to give you what you take with a big smile. I ask all of this through the prayers of St. Nathaniel, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Mother Teresa, through the prayers of St. Mary of Egypt, St. Augustine, St. Peter and Paul, the most holy Theotokos, and all the saints, through the prayers of

our holy fathers, the Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen.