Pints With Aquinas - Attending to Wounds of the Heart | Mother Natalia

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

Mother talks about her favorite novel, and how good character development helped her to understand wounds of the heart. She also talks about her own recent experiences with allowing pain to affect her relationships 🎧 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 We get a small kick back from affiliate links

Glory to Jesus Christ. I'm Mother Natalia, a Byzantine Catholic nun from Christ the Bridegroom Monastery, and this is Pines with Aquinas. I've recently been rereading one of my favorite novels, maybe my favorite novel. It's called Green Dolphin Street by an author named Elizabeth Gouge. And what I really love most about the novel, I think, and what I really love about Guzzi's writings in general is the characters are just not one dimensional. And they're not easily definable. They're very complex. And I think that's reflective of the reality of humanity And I think that's reflective of the reality of humanity,

because we can get into these modes where we watch a movie or we read a book and we're like, that's the bad person, that's the good person, and, or I know exactly what this person is going to do because it's just so, their behavior is so predictable. But in this novel, Green Dolphin Street, it's just, Gougé really develops the characters in a way such that you can see how their, how their hearts have been formed, the wounds that they're acting

out of, what their defense mechanisms are, so on and so forth. And so you can see this person has the very good exterior, but it's coming from kind of a self-protective place or this person has not a great exterior and it's also coming from a self-protective place or whatever it may be. And it's caused me, rereading it has caused me to really And it's caused me, rereading it has caused me to really look more closely, examine my own actions and try to be more aware of how I'm acting out of my wounds. And I know this kind of sounds like a bit of, I don't know, it's kind of like a buzzword or something like that in the modern world of just talking about our wounds and how we're acting out of them and where we need healing and so on

and so forth. And it can be this place of just like, well, I don't trust modern psychology. And so I wanted to share, like the Lord has just been bringing all of this together for me in my own prayer, in all the different places that I'm like my spiritual reading and this novel and things like that and just my contemplation. And so I want to share three different quotes. One is from a modern psychologist, but two of the quotes are very ancient. So the first is from Dr. Jerry Crete, who is the author of the book Litanies of the Heart,

which is a really incredible book about parts work and coming to heal post-traumatic stress but also anxiety. But I really think it's just a good book for everybody because we've all experienced trauma to some degree, little T or big T or whatever. So anyways, this line really struck me and lit nice of the heart. Dr. Crete writes,

God knows the depth and goodness of our hearts. He sees past the pain, the shame and the fear that keeps us dysregulated and behaving badly. God knows the depth and goodness of our hearts. He sees past the pain, the fear, the shame. In other words, he understands where we're coming from. He knows why we're acting the way that we are. And then the second, well, this is more of a paraphrase,

but St. Maximus the confess, well, this is more of a paraphrase, but St. Maximus the confessor, who you know I love if you've listened to any of my videos, he's not a modern psychologist. He's from sixth, seventh century. And he, I think he was born in the sixth, died in the seventh century, maybe. And he talks about how our passions, our sins basically, in the context that he's using this, our passions are coming from a place of pain avoidance, basically. Like we either are afraid of experiencing some pain,

so we sin to avoid that. Or because we've experienced pain, we sin in an attempt to console ourselves, to have some sort of comfort in the aftermath of this pain. So, Maximus the Confessor has the same thing, right? He's like, the things that we're doing that we don't want to do, it's because of pain. It's because of something in us that's hurting or something in us that we're afraid is going to hurt. And we want to avoid that,

because it's natural to want to avoid pain. And then the next quote is from St. Macarius, who is from the fourth century, I believe. And he says, God knows to which evils the soul is subject, how it is prevented from accomplishing the works of life and how it lies plagued by the overpowering illness of the dishonorable passions. God knows what's afflicting us. He knows what's weighing us down, what's causing us to be afraid. He knows what we're acting out of

and he knows the depth and goodness of our hearts that's below those fears, that's below that shame, that's below that pain. So why is this helpful? I think it's helpful because if we don't trust in the goodness of our heart, and we don't trust that God sees the goodness of our heart, then we'll be too afraid to look at our hearts.

We get worried, I think. I get worried for sure. I'll speak just for myself. I get afraid that when there's something about myself that I don't like, I'm afraid to look at it because I think that's it. That's where it ends, right? But the reality is even those things

that we don't like about ourselves, even the things, even our sin, even our temptations, our imperfections. Like there is a depth and a goodness below those things that we don't get to if we're not willing to look at the things. So I think a really good example of this, my hegemena, my abbess, my superior,

she recently had to give me a correction. I didn't ask her if I could share this publicly, but I feel like since it's the correction that was given to me, it's probably okay. Anyways, she had to give me this correction because I was in a lot of pain and I was being short with my sisters because of that, my sisters in community. I was being, yeah, just really sharp with them.

And she gave me a gentle correction on that and basically just asked me to be attentive to the way that I was speaking to my sisters. And there are a lot of ways when someone comes to us with something like that, there are a lot of differences to be attentive to the way that I was speaking to my sisters. And there are a lot of ways when someone comes to us with something like that, there are a lot of different ways we can respond. And I've responded in all the ways at different points. And I think I probably had initially

when she brought this to me, I probably had some of those, some of the more negative responses, yeah, initially, but then was able to get to what I think is the ideal response that I want to encourage all of us to try to embrace. So one of the ways that we often respond in a situation like that is to just get really defensive and to rationalize. And well, I only spoke that way because so and so said this,

and if they hadn't said this, then that wouldn't have made me say this. And well, I realized that I was being short, but their question was stupid or, you know, whatever the thing is. We can get defensive and we can rationalize. Another response is we just immediately take to heart what this person has said and we crumple. And we just drown in self-hatred and self-rejection and we're like, I am the worst human being, she's right. I snap at my sisters all of the time and I'm the worst. And how could anybody possibly love me because I don't love myself?

Both of these responses are an avoidance of some kind, right? Because both of them are an avoidance at just looking at the reality, at trying to figure out what's going on here. They're both, I'm going to place a judgment on what happened there, and either I was in the right or I was in the wrong, and that's just where it ends.

But the other option, the other response is to receive the correction, receive the, yeah, whatever it is that the person has noticed, or whatever it is you've noticed in yourself. And to look at it honestly and to look at it deeply. And when I got to that point after again, probably some of the defensiveness and probably some of the self-hatred,

when I got to the point of actually being able to look at it and look more deeply, I was able to see and to open up to the point of actually being able to look at it and look more deeply, I was able to see and to open up to the Lord the pain that I was in, the pain that I was lashing out of. Why I was being short with this sister, why whatever it was that she said was so painful for me to hear, which had nothing to do with what she had

said, right? This was, this was me and my response, my, not even response, my reaction. And I think it's, I think it's important to remember here that the point of doing this, the point at trying to figure out where the pain was coming from, why I was acting in this way, is not to make an excuse for our sin. The correction that my hegemena gave me was justified. She has every right as my hegemena to say, I want you to be attentive to speaking more charitably to your sisters, because I have a Christian obligation to charity, right? So it's not like, oh, well, this was coming from a place of pain. And so everyone needs to just accept that I'm being a jerk right now.

That's not the point. But the point is, if we're not recognizing the wounds that we're acting out of, we're not opening up those places to the Lord to heal, which means we're going to continue to act out of them. And maybe we can grit our teeth and kind of just like forcefully choose the externals and choose the virtuous actions. And that's good. And we have to do that.

We have a will that we need to act out of, even when we're not feeling charitable, we have to choose to be charitable. And so that's good. But it's not enough to just work on the externals. And frankly, it's exhausting. And it's not the to just work on the externals. And frankly, it's exhausting. And it's not the deepest level of purification that we're called to.

I'm reading right now from the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. That's a very long title, by the way, I recommend shortening it. I'm reading their directives on formation in religious institutes because I'm one of the formators in our community. I'm very much being formed myself as I'm trying to learn to be a formator. And I was really moved by this section in the directives

on how to teach about chastity, because the directives are explaining that chastity is not, or it shouldn't be educated as simply a matter of self-control and mastering urges or something like that. Because we can also become, we can have this, it says, self-centeredness that is content with one's fidelity to purity. The document then says, it is no accident that the ancient fathers gave priority to humility over chastity, since this latter, that is chastity, can be accompanied as experience has shown by a hardness of heart.

So I could just focus all of my energy on never snapping at my sisters without ever examining where that's coming from. But that's not actually softening my heart. That's really focusing only on the will, which again, the will is important, but it's not the entirety. Because the Lord wants to heal us at the deepest levels. He doesn't want to just get rid of the externals, as I've talked about on this podcast before.

Is this called a podcast? I don't even know. Anyways. So again, to go back to that quote from Dr. Crete, God knows the depth and goodness of our hearts, below the shame, below the fear, below the pain. He knows the depth and the goodness because He formed our hearts. He knows our hearts. This is all over the Psalms.

Because He formed our hearts. He knows our hearts. This is all over the Psalms. So I would encourage you to be attentive to your reactions, especially the negative reactions, the ones that are causing sin or the ones that are sinful. Because we can spend all of our energy focusing on what other people are doing and what their reactions are, and basically trying to figure out what other people are thinking and feeling and where all of their stuff is coming from. And it's just far more illuminating and

fruitful to spend that time and that energy trying to understand your own reactions and your own heart. And to realize that while those reactions are always, at least in God's mind, understandable, that doesn't mean that they're the healthiest reactions. And it doesn't mean that we don't, yeah, need to be purified and need to be healed there. In the name of the Father and of the Son

and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of this day, for the gift of my community in which I am able to in this rock tumbler see my own sharp edges and be softened by my sisters. Thank you for the gift of those in our lives that give us loving, fraternal correction. And I ask that you grant myself and those listening right now the grace to receive correction through the lens of your love as our Father, regardless of whether or not the correction is given with that love. Help us to know the depth and the goodness of our hearts,

to see more deeply the goodness of our hearts, that our vision may be more in union with yours. Grant us a self-awareness, a self-acceptance, a self-possession, and a self-gift. I ask all of us to the prayers of St. Nathaniel, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Macarius, St. John Paul II, the Most Holy Theotokos and all the saints, and through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercianess. Amen.