Exposing the Crisis in the Church ｜ David Torkington
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Summary
In this episode of The John Hunter Weston Show, Father David Torkington joins us to talk about the importance of time, and the four essential elements of Early Christian spirituality: royal, contemplative, sacrificial, and redemptive.
Transcript
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In Hebrew, there's no such word for somebody who has repented, only a word for someone who is
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repenting. Hello, my friends. Welcome to the John Hunter Weston Show. I've got a guest for you
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who I had before, but I'm going to introduce him in a new way because when I had him before,
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I actually didn't realize he was a priest. David Torkington, I introduced him as before,
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now his father, David Torkington. But the reason for that was because he is a canceled priest,
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a canceled priest of some 35 years ago in a way that is actually very familiar to us today.
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Having exposed sexual abuse inside his order, he was the one removed rather than the other way
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route. That's the way it goes. But the last time we had him, he talked with us about this
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deep prayer that we need to come to, this contemplative prayer and how to get there.
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I was fascinated. Many of you were fascinated by the comments section. But we've agreed to do with
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Father David something that is truly remarkable. A presentation during this jubilee year that we've
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just entered in the church. Retreats. Retreats that will help us to achieve that loving union with God
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that was, as he told us, characteristic of the early church. Stay tuned for this episode of the
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John Hunter Weston Show. Father David Torkington, so good to be with you.
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Hi. If you could lead us off with the side of the cross.
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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Amen. So, Father, take us away on this. I mean, I just read your book, Early Christian Spirituality.
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I'll start with this, and I'll ask you this first, and then you can take it from there.
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The one thing that really struck me is the concept of time. Even though I go to daily mass,
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I say daily rosary, I say daily rosary with my family, I say my morning prayers, and so on.
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The concept of devoting very significant amounts of time to prayer, and I'm going to let you explain
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about all that prayer. It's a really good thing. As soon as I read that, I was like, oh,
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yeah, and our Lord, didn't he say, can't you spend at least one hour with me? And didn't he say,
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that's one verse in the scriptures that I read. It happened to be that day as well,
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the day I was giving my talk, the day after which I got stuck for so long. It was, our Lord says to
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one of the churches, he says, you have suffered lots for the faith. You've even recognized the wolves
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who are supposed to be leading you as shepherds, but I have something against you. You've lost that
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first love, that first fervor. And I was like, oof, wow. Anyway, tell us about prayer, about the time
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needed for prayer, and what you propose to give us at LifeSite for this year of the Jubilee.
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First of all, let me begin by saying that the early Christian spirituality to which we must return
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has four essential elements. It is royal, it is contemplative, it is sacrificial, and it is
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redemptive. Now, let's take the first. It is royal. Why? Because it is the spirituality first lived by
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Jesus Christ, our Lord, Christ the King. It is royal, because after he ascended into heaven, he was given
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all power by God the Father, all power, power sufficient enough to totally change and transform the world
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for the better. But there's always a but when you hear good news, is there not? And there's a but here.
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But the power he was given was love, and love of its very nature cannot be forced upon anybody.
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A person has to freely choose to receive that love, and this comes to the point of time
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that you brought up right at the beginning, the importance of time. Therefore, unless we create
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quality space and time somewhere in our life to freely position ourselves to receive that love of God,
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then that love of God cannot change us, because forced love is a contradiction in terms.
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That's why, one way or the other, we've got to learn what the early Christians learned to do,
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create quality space and time in our life of prayer. Now, I've said elsewhere, because you'll find this
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in the great spiritual writers of early Christianity, that they met at nine o'clock, midday, and three in the
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afternoon, as well as getting up at midnight for prayer, to say what they call their shamer. But in addition to this,
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a new form of prayer was introduced, and it was called meditation. In other words, if you are going to come to know
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and love God, you've got to give space and time in which to learn to love God, and God's love is firstly to be found
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embodied in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord. And so, through Our Lady, through the apostles and the very first
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disciples, when they went to Mass, there may be two or three apostles or disciples, and they tell people
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about our Lord's life, his death and his resurrection, but most specifically about the greatest demonstration
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of God's love ever that took place on Calvary. So that at nine o'clock in the morning, they were taught to
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meditate on his condemnation to death. On twelve o'clock, on him being put to death and crucified. At three o'clock,
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on his death. And finally, in the middle of the night at midnight, on his resurrection. But of course,
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you have to remember, we're talking about a society when they had no electric lights. Poor people
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particularly tended to go to bed at sundown and rise early in the morning, but their nights were far
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longer. So getting up in the middle of the night wasn't so difficult as it would be, say, for us
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today. Now, I'm not making points that these are the times when we've got to stop. I'm making the point
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that they had to create quality space and time in order to meditate most particularly on the greatest
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love ever shown on earth, the greatest demonstration of God's love shown in and through Jesus Christ.
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in his death on the cross. And this introduced a new form of prayer that they called meditation.
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And then, gradually, meditation developed. Because when you come to love someone, when love is developed,
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you not only want to be near them, you not only want to be close to them, you want union with them.
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Now, frankly, you can't be united with somebody who's been dead for two or three years, any more than we
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can expect to be united with somebody who died 2000 years ago. But, but, we can, and we are called
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to be united with somebody who is alive now. And Jesus Christ is alive now. So, from meditation, gradually,
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this develops into what came to be called contemplation. When through love, the Holy Spirit led them up
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into Jesus Christ into Jesus Christ into his glorified and mystical body so that they could
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contemplate the Father together with him. Not only that, but to receive what St. Thomas Aquinas calls
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the fruits of contemplation the fruits of contemplation. Because in the love that is received, what the
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fathers of the Church called the pleroma, that they received with Christ as they contemplated him,
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within this love contained within it, were what we called later the theological virtues,
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the cardinal virtues, the moral virtues. In other words, we receive the inner help and strength to become
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more and more like Christ together with the fruits of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
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This is what made those early Christians replete and radioactive with the love of God in such a way
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that they were able to transform an ancient pagan empire into a Christian empire in such a short time.
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It couldn't have happened in any other way. The world had never seen such love before because the love of
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Christ becomes embodied in those first Christians who were prepared to give their lives. Hundreds and
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thousands of thousands die for him in what they came to call blood martyrdom. And those who didn't die in
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blood martyrdom died in what came to be called not red martyrdom, but white martyrdom, the daily dying to self.
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Now, what we've got to realize if genuine renewal is going to come about is that this daily dying to self
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must come to begin with in our prayer life. Now, Our Lady of Fatima, who's really put the whole of early
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Christian spirituality into absolute simplicity when she said, we are called to repent, to pray, to sacrifice,
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to repent, to continually turn back to God, but within prayer itself. If you give time, yes, give just 15 minutes,
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then I tell you in that 15 minutes you'll have 50 or more distractions and temptations. And you'll say to
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yourself, it's a waste of time. I'm saying to you, far from being a waste of time, every time you turn away
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from those temptations and distractions, you're saying no to self. You're dying to self. You're
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practicing acts of love. And when you do it and receive nothing in return, as God received nothing
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in return time and time again in the Old Testament by loving his people, then you are practicing
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divine loving. You've got to learn to be stripped of the cupboard loving that is endemic to us in order to
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learn divine loving that that's the only loving that will in the end unite us with Christ and then through
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him with him with the father. And this is why we've got to get back to prayer. This is why I have inaugurated
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a new form of mission and it's called a retreat. It's called metanoia or turning back to God.
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And I have called it this as a subtitle. Back to prayer, forward with Christ the King.
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Because it's only by turning back to prayer that we receive the love of Christ the King, which does what?
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Draws us up into him. So that together with him and through him, we go beyond the meditation on the
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the Christ who once lived on this earth, through contemplation to enter into him now in his risen glory,
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into his risen being, but beyond that, into his acting. And what is he doing now? How is he acting now?
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He is taken up into loving his father and receiving his father's love in return, back into that Trinitarian love.
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Now, through contemplation, we're being taken up into that. But the self-centered you and me that begins this
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journey cannot possibly be united with Christ that this be brought about. That is why, within prayer,
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as we persevere and get nothing in return day after day, month after month, we're practicing the
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selflessness that purifies us in such a way that we can be prepared and purified to be united with
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Christ and then through him with the Father. We're back to the great mystics. We're back to
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Saint Trees of Avila. If you want to experience the love of God, you must first learn with Saint John of
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the Cross to go through the dark night. The dark night is, first of all, seeing, experiencing your
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sinfulness and having it purified by the Holy Spirit. Do the scriptures not say that the first baptism is
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of water, the second baptism is of fire, and it is the fire of the Holy Spirit to purify us. Now, isn't it
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a nonsense to think of self-centered, sinful human beings being united with Christ until a purification begins,
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until a purification takes place? This is why, in this jubilee year, I'm trying to inaugurate a movement
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backwards, a retreat, to give everybody some time to retire, to be still, to realize
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what I'm saying very briefly and understand it in more detail. That's why I have written the book that
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you just finished, Early Christian Spirituality. This is why, for those on the retreat, I've also
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written the book, Passport to Perfection, so that the realities that I've just summarized to you so briefly
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can be seen and explained in more detail. Now, what people don't seem to realize,
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I suppose because the majority of people don't remember what were called old-fashioned retreats.
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I do, in the 40s and in the 50s. Now, they depended, in other words, renewal at ground level,
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very much depended on the eagle eyes of the parish priest. He would see there was a need for renewal
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in his parish. And so what did he do? He announced there would be a mission. He contacted the best
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missioner, because only he really knows his parishioners, the best missioner for them. It might
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be a Dominican, a Franciscan, a Carmelite. It may be a Redemptress, or it may be a Montfort father,
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who were trained and specialized in missions. And they came and gave a mission. And believe me,
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those missions were successful in what they were aimed at doing. And what were they aimed at doing?
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They were specifically drawing a person's attention to the four last things, namely death, judgment,
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heaven, and hell. And they were centered on sin to make people aware of the sinfulness that would prevent
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them being united to eternity with God. Sin was central to them. And it was a good retreat if,
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as the missioners used to say at the end of it, they caught many big fish in the box.
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And the box to which they were referring was the confessional box. And believe me, it did work.
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And they were successful. And renewal was brought about time and time again through these missions.
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And the missioners who were specially prepared for it. But for some reason, after the Vatican Council,
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they did continue for a bit. Why? Because I gave them. Now, for a short time.
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And as I gave many, many, many retreats, they didn't disappear. But they tended to be for religious.
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But the retreats seemed to evaporate. People seemed to have forgotten how successful they were.
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And so, what I'm trying to do, John Henry, is this. We're in a Jubilee year. Other people may have
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other ideas what they're going to do in a Jubilee year. But let me tell you the essence of any Jubilee
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year is about turning back to God. Turning back to God to be reunited with God through an ever-deepening
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prayer life. And this is what we must do. No, I'm not suggesting that we go back precisely to those
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forms of mission that I experienced as a young man, successful though they were. But I'm calling upon us
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to go back to practice a retreat. To retreat for a time from the world as best we can. And this is why
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this retreat is going to be so flexible. Ideally, it would be the parish priest who, as in the past,
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would be the one who would run this retreat. Because frankly, I'm afraid that are no missioners
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to call upon anymore. The religious orders have been decimated. More than decimated.
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And so have the number of parish priests. So they are terribly overburdened.
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So the proposal is this. A material is prepared for parish priests to run these retreats
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themselves. That's why I wrote the book that you've just finished, Early Christian Spirituality.
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That they would first read, ideally. And then they would order copies of Passport to Perfection
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for the parishioners to read. And he, with his own background knowledge, plus the book on Early
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Christianity, would be able to lead and guide them. He'd be running the retreat, in other words.
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Now, one thing I want to make sure, make quite clear before I go any further. Thank God we have been
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given a sponsor. The sponsor means this. That no way must anybody
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turn away. Turn away from these retreats because they have to buy a book. Those who can't afford it will
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be given one free. This retreat is for everybody. We're not interested in it. It's not about money making.
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It's not selling books. It's selling prayer. More than anything else.
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And also, it is these books, Satellite, the 15-part series on prayer that I spoke to you about last time.
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They're in place. They're ready. The books are ready. Now, what I'm trying to do is, particularly with Lent
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on the horizon, is to do all that I can to spread the news to parish priests that the material is there
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to run the retreats for themselves. And they will have every help that I can give them before the retreat,
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while the retreat is on, help them to get the books or get them free for those who can't afford them.
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And everybody who starts a retreat who is a leader will get the book that you've just read free anyway.
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And then, together, they watch the 14-part series. Now, how we do this
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depends on the parish priests. For instance, we've only had one retreat that has taken place
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in a Catholic parish, and that is in the parish of St. Michael the Archangel.
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A canon lawyer, would you believe it? I might get to heaven if I've converted a canon lawyer.
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It was led by the parish priest who is a doctor of canon law, Father Welding. He led the retreat,
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and this is how he did it, to show you how it is so flexible. Instead of doing it in a week,
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as they would do it in the old days, he did it in two months. The parishioners who wanted to do
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the retreat would meet once a week on a Thursday. They would watch two of the videos. They would then
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try to read two to three chapters every week, and they would try to program into their day
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daily time for reflection and prayer. And this continued over two months. So they could do it
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while they worked. On the other hand, someone might say,
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no, I want to do it in the old-fashioned way. I'll do it over one week, and I'll give up one of my
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holidays, a week of my holidays, to do it. Fine, you can do that. And if you don't find a parish
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priest who is running it, for whatever reason, you can do it yourself. And we give our instructions
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on how you can do it yourself. Let's say the ideal way would be, if you were, and very few would be
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able to do this, if you were to give two weeks of your holiday. And in the first week of your holiday,
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you'd have a normal holiday and a complete rest. And then in the second day, you would do the retreat,
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as we indicate. On the other hand, you could do it slowly over Lent. In other words, Lent is coming
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now, Ash Wednesday. Every single week in Lent, you would watch two of the videos,
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and you would read two to three chapters of Passport to Perfection. And you would program,
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especially into your daily life, time for reflection and time for prayer.
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So the different ways you can do it, the material is there. The 15-part course on prayer is totally
00:26:15.560
free. If you're leading a group, so is the book, The Early Christian Spirituality. If you have a large
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family, look, we're living in very difficult times. And financially, it's very hard, very difficult for
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some people. Please, if you can afford a book, Passport to Perfection for the retreat, buy it. That will help
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us to enable others who can't to give them a free copy. Please, don't be afraid to say we're financially
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stretched. These retreats. These retreats mustn't depend on money.
00:26:57.640
So this is how we propose to do it. And I'm proposing to people who run chat shows like yourselves,
00:27:07.960
if possible, to say, OK, we'll buy into this. We'll interview you at the beginning of Lent,
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and we'll interview you every week during Lent. And in between that time, the listeners will watch
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two of the videos while reading three chapters of Passport to Perfection. And then the following
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Thursday or Friday, I'll be interviewed again. And in the interview, you would fire at me the questions
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that have been coming from people who are on the retreat. And so together we could go through Lent.
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This is a suggestion, and I'm putting you on the spot now, John Henry. I'm now putting you on the spot.
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How about it? You and me running this retreat during Lent. And if you so wish, you could introduce
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somebody else on the program or another two people on the program with you who are also watching the
00:28:20.840
videos and reading Passport to Perfection for them to ask questions too. And so in this way,
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we consecrate this forthcoming Lent, and we've got plenty of time because it doesn't begin till the
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5th of March this year. And then so we work through Lent, consecrating it to making a retreat to deepen
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our prayer life, to lead us more deeply to union with Christ the King, to receive his power,
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which is love. For that love cannot be received. It cannot be received without prayer.
00:29:07.080
And so you mentioned to me right at the beginning, I don't know whether it was before
00:29:14.520
I began to speak or before we started the program. You said, and reading the book Early
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Christianity, the word that stuck in your mind was the word time, time. I'm sorry. If you haven't
00:29:31.560
time for love, how do you expect to receive love? And here, the words of that great abbot who I'm
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continually quoting comes to my mind is a name, a great friend of St. Bernard of Clairvaux,
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very great friends. They worked together on a commentary on the Canticle of Canticle in order to
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understand secular love, to understand divine loving, to understand how it grows and develops by using the
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love of the love of two married people. And he said this. William of Tarnere said,
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you will never love someone unless you know them, but you will never really know them unless you love them.
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These retreats that I am suggesting, and that's why I'm calling them retreats,
00:30:36.440
retreats. They're not missions. They're calling people to step inside to relearn how to love.
00:30:44.840
Therefore, I'm calling them catechetical retreats, because they're aimed at the head and the heart
00:30:53.160
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One of the things I realized I didn't tell my children, I encouraged them to do the prayers and so on,
00:31:31.960
but I didn't give them that concept of, you need to devote time, significant time to this. When our
00:31:39.880
Lord told the apostles, can't you pray at least one hour with me? Or couldn't you stay awake one hour
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with me? Or whatever it was. That was stunning, because it came at the end of a day where they
00:31:53.480
had been praying. That was the day that they had the Last Supper. So they were praying already,
00:31:59.560
and this was sleep time. It was after probably a pretty big meal. You're tired and everything else,
00:32:07.320
and it's night, and yet he's telling them, pray with them. That was stunning, because it made me
00:32:13.400
think, oh gosh, I needed to tell them. It actually, it's much more than, well, if you did a morning
00:32:19.880
prayer and you said your rosary, okay? Not really. I'm glad you're doing that. But you're also,
00:32:25.560
the concept also of just a meditation that's not necessarily verbal, that's just think,
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I don't know how to describe it properly, but getting to contemplation, but the first step of
00:32:39.960
meditation, meditation, just thinking about. Our Lady pointed to that too, when she gave us the
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first Saturday devotion. In addition, one of those parts that everybody forgets is in addition to
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receiving mass, going to confession, and saying your, you know, at least five-decade rosary,
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you're supposed to meditate for 15 minutes without praying the rosary, but just meditate
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on the mysteries of the rosary. If you could explain that a little bit for us.
00:33:05.160
Yeah, I'll explain it quite simply, Henry. The last time I spoke to you, I did a monologue. You didn't
00:33:12.360
get a word in. And do you know what I was talking about? Quietism. And the whole point of quietism,
00:33:17.720
this heresy, pernicious heresy that was condemned by the church in the year 1687,
00:33:25.480
it completely took out contemplative prayer from Christian spirituality. It quashed it.
00:33:33.800
Because the founder of this heresy was leading people back into Protestantism and into serious
00:33:41.080
sexual sin. As you can read for yourself in Monsignor Ronald Knox's book, Enthusiasm,
00:33:47.480
chapter 11 to 12. The church, can you imagine at that date, particularly back to Protestantism and
00:33:56.280
into serious sexual sin that he was committing with the people he was guiding? No wonder there were
00:34:02.760
witch hunts all over Christendom. And any form of prayer that led to contemplation was taken out.
00:34:11.160
This is why you're saying, well, I didn't teach my children, because why? You were never taught.
00:34:16.200
Because I was never taught in the seminary. When I went to the Franciscan order, for a whole seven
00:34:22.760
years nobody ever spoke about personal prayer. And when later on I became the director of the
00:34:30.520
residential centre in London for, oh, nigh on 12 years, I audited other orders who came on the retreat,
00:34:41.560
and it was the same for them, because of quietism. Mystical theology was dangerous.
00:34:48.200
Mysticism, they said, begins in mist and ends in sism. Don't touch it. Keep away from it. Therefore,
00:34:57.720
they don't mind vocal prayer. That's fine. You're safe there. But any prayer that could lead into this
00:35:04.440
contemplation could lead to quietism. Therefore, nobody preached it. Nobody spoke about it. And
00:35:15.000
anybody who seemed to make headway in meditation towards contemplation, they were shut down.
00:35:27.720
And so when you're saying to me you never taught your children, neither did anybody else, nor did
00:35:34.200
religious orders teach their children, this has got to come back, John Henry. It's got to come back. Why?
00:35:41.800
Because in contemplation, St. Thomas Aquinas said is the only place where we receive the fruits of
00:35:51.000
contemplation, the cardinal virtues, the moral virtues, the theological virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit,
00:36:02.120
with which Christ was replete and resplendent. When he prayed, he contemplated. The apostles tell us in St.
00:36:12.520
Luke's Gospel, he said that Jesus always prayed every night, went into loneliness to pray.
00:36:21.320
Where they relaxed or went fishing or had a chat. He always went to pray. And when he prayed,
00:36:28.760
the prayer with which he prayed to give us the example, was he contemplated to continually receive
00:36:36.520
in his human, through his divine nature, into his contemplate, into his human nature, the fruits of
00:36:44.760
contemplation. And that's why he was imitated after, on the very first day when the Holy Spirit was poured
00:36:54.840
out on the apostles. The apostles were still sinners. They weren't there yet. They had a long way to go.
00:37:02.040
That's why they stayed in Jerusalem. But when Our Lady received the Holy Spirit, she was immediately taken up to
00:37:09.880
contemplate the Father in, with and through her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. When she was pregnant with Christ,
00:37:18.680
he was in her. Now she was in him, taken up through contemplation into him and contemplating the Father with him to
00:37:29.640
receive the fruits of contemplate and receive the fruits of contemplation. She was the sign of where we are all going,
00:37:35.480
where the apostles were going, to contemplate and receive the fruits of contemplation. That is the only way we are going to be
00:37:44.840
to be radically changed. Now, I have to insist that your experience, my experience, the experience of all of us,
00:37:53.600
this is new. It wasn't new in the early days of the church. It was commonplace to all. And in those days, there were no
00:38:02.200
monks. There were no friars. There were no Dominicans or Redemptorists or Jesuits. There was the family.
00:38:11.160
And the family was the place where this loving was first learned, this new type of meditation that then
00:38:20.600
led to contemplation. This is what I'm writing about. And you, as you have seen when you've been reading
00:38:27.400
early Christian spirituality, John Henry, this has got to come back. And I'm pleading and begging that this
00:38:36.520
Lent may be our very last chance this Jubilee year to learn about this prayer, to go back to the early
00:38:46.360
Christianity. Pope Pius XI said men must look for the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ. And he urged
00:38:55.960
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00:39:01.640
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00:39:19.440
I, when I was cancelled, what, 35 years ago? I thought, in a sense, I was free now to speak about the
00:39:34.560
terrible abuse going on in the church that I'd seen on an industrial scale so long ago. Why? Because I was a
00:39:42.120
traveling preacher. And as a traveling preacher, I was preaching to them what I'm preaching about now, about
00:39:51.540
prayer. And everybody thought or thinks that if somebody is giving retreats and talking about prayer, rightly
00:40:00.460
or wrongly, they are a holy person. Wrongly, perhaps, but nevertheless, they confided in me. That's why I knew more
00:40:09.320
about this sexual abuse on an industrial scale than anybody else, because more people were coming and
00:40:15.840
telling me. Right to Rome, they knew about it. All they were interested in was sweeping it under the
00:40:21.880
carpet and cancelling me. When I came out into the open, I thought, now, like Solzhenitsyn, when they threw
00:40:30.040
him into a labor camp, he said, now I'm free. I thought I was free. I now thought I could speak out.
00:40:37.560
But do you know, John Henry, nobody would believe a word that I was saying, because they couldn't
00:40:45.680
imagine. What I was saying was unimaginable, and they didn't want to imagine it. So I did. I made a
00:40:54.400
decision, a major decision in my life. I decided to disappear into semi-solitude, as I did for nearly
00:41:03.940
35 years. And in that time, I would try to re-understand again the spirituality of the early
00:41:14.260
church. And I would try to experience it through my own prayer life, because you cannot understand it
00:41:22.100
without praying yourself. It was a time, therefore, when I lived as a semi-hermit, and I still do.
00:41:28.500
And now, what the book that you read is the fruits of those years, just as the 14 other works are the
00:41:37.240
fruits of those years. But, and here is a major problem. The problem is this. In those years since
00:41:50.020
quietism, as the clergy have unfortunately fallen into serious sexual sins, St. Thomas Aquinas said,
00:42:00.680
if people do not get pleasure out of the spiritual life, they'll look for it elsewhere. And they did,
00:42:10.220
and we know they did. But what happened to the laity? A change happened to the laity, too.
00:42:16.460
A major change took place. The people don't even know that it has taken place. The Catholic religion
00:42:25.280
to which they belong, that was once a religion of love, has now become a philosophy of life.
00:42:33.080
Now, I don't know if it was on this programme, your programme, but I got a shot one day listening to
00:42:40.260
Father Mer, who quite out of the blue said this. He said, I've known Catholics for years, good Catholics,
00:42:48.100
bad Catholics, fervent Catholics, lax Catholics. They won't make any serious sacrifice for their faith.
00:42:58.580
Now, that shocked me. But when I reflected, I realised it was true. People won't die or make sacrifices
00:43:08.320
for a philosophy of life. Socrates did. He was a philosopher. But very few philosophers are prepared
00:43:15.740
to die for their philosophy. Hundreds and thousands are for a religion of love. But a religion of love
00:43:23.140
where we experience the love of God because of quietism has evaporated and people are not prepared
00:43:30.580
to change. Now, my forebears were recusants. And I've mentioned this before. They refused to go to
00:43:38.440
the non-Catholic Church to pray on Sunday for their pseudo-mass. They died. I'm a direct descendant of
00:43:48.640
Sir Nicholas Tempest, who was hanged, drawn and quartered under Henry VIII. I'm a direct descendant of
00:43:55.740
his for taking part in the pilgrimage of grace to stand up for their faith. I could enumerate many,
00:44:02.760
many more who were put to death, thrown into prison. But one thing they all had to experience was that
00:44:12.140
for nearly 400 years, those Catholics who'd lived in castles, stately homes and manor homes had to pay
00:44:20.980
20 pounds a month if they refused to go to the non-Catholic service. That's something like
00:44:27.560
$2,000 or $3,000 in today's money. They lost their furniture. They lost their lands. They lost their
00:44:36.280
possessions. And in the end, they ended up in jail. And they did that for nearly 400 years and were
00:44:44.400
prepared to make those sacrifices because they were men and women of prayer, because their spirituality
00:44:50.420
was centred around the sacrifice of Christ himself. We're not prepared to do that today. We want all
00:44:57.960
the goodies and goodies for the world we're living in, and we want the goodies that we get from our
00:45:03.320
faith as well. We want them both. We're not prepared. I'm afraid Father Mer was exactly put his finger on it.
00:45:12.840
So this is my problem. This is why we've set up the retreats. This is why I have asked Bishop Schneider
00:45:22.380
to preside over them. He's read my books. He's seen the material. He said, I'm with you. I'm your patron,
00:45:30.380
and I'm going to help you. And we've asked Our Lady of Mount Carmel. We've dedicated them to her. And these,
00:45:38.180
we want to come to as many parishes, and if the priests won't do them, the laity to do them, beginning
00:45:44.800
particularly this Lent, help me. As I'm asking everybody to help me, we've got to turn the clock
00:45:52.980
back. We've got to turn back to prayer. We've got to have time to love. You expect to, if you fall in
00:46:01.980
love with somebody, you want to give time to be near them, to be close with them, to allow them
00:46:09.800
to love you, and for you to love them. Now, if you're not prepared to give that time, you're playing
00:46:15.060
at it. You're playing at it. You don't really want the real thing, real love. It's exactly the same
00:46:22.180
with our faith. It's no good, unfortunately, for everybody to say, well, that isn't how I was brought
00:46:29.420
up, you know. I know it isn't. I know it isn't. And if it wasn't for the fact that I was forced into
00:46:37.040
solitude for 35 years to pray, to study, I wouldn't have seen it myself. I wouldn't have known it myself
00:46:48.060
if I hadn't had the time. And I want to share that gift with other people too. But, but, but, but,
00:46:56.160
sacrifice is necessary. Our Lady of Fatima said, the three things I repeat again, to sum it all up,
00:47:07.000
three things necessary to repent. Now, in Hebrew, there's no such word for somebody who has repented.
00:47:17.220
Only a word for someone who is repenting. Inside of prayer, you are repenting at speed.
00:47:26.660
Because as I've indicated earlier, you were endlessly turning away from distractions.
00:47:32.140
You're repenting at speed. You say, it's a waste of time, this. I should be out doing something.
00:47:36.960
I should be outside transforming the world. I should be outside, to quote a famous member of our hierarchy,
00:47:45.320
who said, you've got to get out there and take part in what he calls contemplation in action,
00:47:52.400
which means you've got to act without prayer. Nonsense. It's a non-entity. It's a contradiction in terms.
00:48:00.560
We've got to learn to meditate firstly again, to rediscover God's love as it is embodied in Jesus
00:48:10.220
Christ our Lord. It is in doing this persistently, consistently, persevering in doing this,
00:48:24.600
When he sees we are serious. As night follows day, the Holy Spirit will lead us on into contemplation.
00:48:36.220
And in contemplation, to receive the fruits of contemplation.
00:48:43.340
Now, I'm not going to detail this because time is short, but I detail it in the little book,
00:48:49.340
Passport to Perfection. Because in contemplation, we have to learn more deeply, more profoundly,
00:48:58.600
what the great medieval mystic, Angelo Foligno, calls divine loving, the same sort of loving with which
00:49:10.460
God loves us. In the Old Testament, there was a covenant between God and his people. It was a
00:49:19.020
unilateral covenant. God said, whether you return my love or whether you do not, I will go on loving you.
00:49:27.140
And the great prophet of this love was Osei, who had a wife called Goma. And that wife of his had so
00:49:38.880
many children that Osei said he didn't even know which of them was his own. And yet he went on loving
00:49:47.440
her. But this is what a prophet was. Somebody who practices what they are prophesying, what they are
00:49:56.040
teaching. And it's the same in the life of Christ. He went on loving, loving, loving, though they hammered
00:50:04.720
him to the cross, though they put him to death, though they tortured him to death. He went on loving.
00:50:13.560
Now, this is the loving that has to be learned somewhere along the line, because only then there is
00:50:21.660
a similarity between our loving and his loving. We begin like that. Look, we're all locked up in
00:50:28.000
ourselves. That's us to begin with. That's a fact. That's original sin. That's the teaching of the
00:50:32.780
church. That's the dogmatic teaching of the church. But it is also the teaching that we call for union
00:50:38.540
with God. God is all loving. So God sends the Holy Spirit so that gradually we give the time for prayer
00:50:47.540
in which to gradually allow the Holy Spirit to open us out so that union can take place. And then when
00:50:58.060
union takes place with Christ, in with them together with him, we open ourselves to receive the love of
00:51:07.180
God. In which St. Thomas Aquinas said in the pleroma, as the fathers of the church call this love,
00:51:16.760
are all the infused virtues, the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. That's what we're called to do.
00:51:26.180
And we have not been doing it for centuries, John Henry. That is the truth. That is the truth. And
00:51:33.540
frankly, the only reason why I have been able to see it when others haven't is not because I'm a
00:51:42.860
mastermind. Exactly the contrary. Because I'm dramatically dyslexic. And I was a total failure
00:51:52.860
at school. Thought I was a fool. That didn't actually happen, as I found out later. But I
00:51:59.560
therefore had to turn to God because the retreat master said God knows everything. And I thought, well,
00:52:06.720
my teachers don't know anything. God does. So I turned to God and I persevered. And when anyone
00:52:12.680
else would have given up, why? Because they were going to university, because they had their exams
00:52:17.980
to pass. I had nothing. I had no hope. So I'm saying I wasn't a pious young man. The contrary. I just
00:52:27.000
needed desperate help and no one else could give it to me. So I persevered through thick and thin
00:52:32.780
and came through to see where we should all be going. This is one of the great secrets of the
00:52:40.120
spiritual life, that God's power works in weakness. And what I thought was the curse of my life has been
00:52:48.840
the greatest gift of my life, because it has enabled me to see the truth. And the truth is that we are far,
00:52:58.640
far away from God, and we've got to return to pray, as we have not been praying, not just for decades,
00:53:06.420
but for several centuries. It's about saying prayers. We've got to give, as you notice, the time that has
00:53:14.640
to be given. And the actual giving of the time is screaming out to God that you're sincere. Even when
00:53:22.300
there are 101 distractions, even when on this journey, you will have to see your own sins loom
00:53:29.540
large. And you will, because the Holy Spirit will draw them out of deep down in here, deep down in
00:53:36.140
what, in what Freud would call the id or the unconscious. That's where you are. That's, that's
00:53:42.840
where you will rule. That's how you will rule by the evil within. That has to be brought up.
00:53:47.320
That's why St. John of the Cross talks about the dark night of the Spirit. The Spirit within us has
00:53:54.440
to be purified. And I am appealing, therefore, to everybody to realise that it's time to retreat.
00:54:05.080
We've got to find the time to retreat, to learn how to pray once more, to be purified, to be united
00:54:14.000
with Christ, to receive the fruits of contemplation, to begin all over again. This is how the new
00:54:20.880
Catholic Renaissance will take place. This is how the spring, the new spring, as promised by
00:54:27.920
your name, St. John Henry Newman, will take place. But it's got to begin now, because believe me,
00:54:37.200
we are in the last minute of extra time. I'm afraid, I believe that we're, we are in such a state that we
00:54:50.000
really do need a shake up. If I have given the impression that I have in some way being disparaging
00:54:58.080
about those early retreats when, sorry, early missions, when we'll be called back to God and
00:55:11.840
we've been frightened by the sanctions that God is preparing for those sinners and hustled people
00:55:19.680
into the confessional, I'm afraid we need something like that now. I'm afraid we need it,
00:55:25.600
because we are still philosophical, intellectual Catholics. We need a good shake. And that's why I
00:55:31.640
believe, as Our Lady, I believe was promised, that there is going to be some form of illumination of
00:55:40.880
conscience, because John Henry, without that, I can't see it. We've got to be shaken to the roots. Somehow,
00:55:49.120
we've got to be shaken to the roots of our foundation. I've been trying to do it in my talks,
00:55:55.520
or my writings, or when I speak. I can't do it. I can't do it. I'm sorry. I'm not strong enough. I'm
00:56:03.760
not powerful enough. No matter what I say, I don't believe that the arguments that I can give, that the
00:56:09.280
course that I have prepared, that the lectures that I give can do it. I'm sorry it needs God. Now we've been
00:56:17.200
promised that the gates of hell will never prevail against the church. They're making a pretty good
00:56:24.880
job of it at the moment. And I'm afraid we need some form of divine intervention. I believe it's
00:56:32.920
coming. But how much better if we begin now? Anyone can begin if something dramatic like that takes place.
00:56:40.340
Oh, we all begin. Where are his talks? Want to read his writings? Where is his book? Then how much
00:56:46.820
the better to do it now of our own volition? Hence, these retreats that I'm pushing. Help me to push them.
00:56:56.500
Amen to that. Father, thank you so very much for joining us. We're going to do this. We're going to
00:57:02.180
go out into this retreat and do it with you. And we'll see. Please, God, many of you will join us.
00:57:10.180
It'll be a great Lent because it will be a way for you've heard about contemplative prayer. And
00:57:17.300
it's hard to even understand what that means. We've been disconnected from it for a long time. As Father
00:57:21.620
said, people thought only it's for religious and that's the ones who get there. And it's something
00:57:26.820
actually in his book he makes clear, as he said today, it is started in the families before there
00:57:33.220
were religious and it was born from them. So let's do that together. Join us if you would. It'll
00:57:40.340
be right here on LifeSite News. Thank you so very much, Father. And we'll be seeing you very soon.
00:57:46.260
God bless you. God bless you and God bless everybody. Indeed. We'll see you next time.
00:57:56.820
Aloha, everyone. This is Jason Jones for LifeSite News. We hope you enjoyed this video. For more
00:58:02.420
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