Okay, distractions. Little story, got a little story to share with you before we kind of dive into it. This is going to kind of frame what we're going to talk about. St. Bernard was traveling with a poor uneducated farmer who noticed that the abbot kept his eyes cast downward. When the farmer asked why the saint wasn't looking at the beautiful countryside, Bernard explained that he wanted to avoid distractions while he was praying. In response, the farmer boasted, I'm never distracted when I pray. Bernard objected, I don't believe it, now let me make a bargain with you. If you can say the Our Father without one distraction, I'll give you this mule I'm riding, but if you don't succeed, you must come with me and be a monk. The farmer agreed and began praying aloud confidently, Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name. Then after pausing for a moment, he asked St. Bernard, does that include the saddle and the bridle? I think this little story illustrates how easy it is for us to get sidetracked, not just in our daily lives, but to get sidetracked especially in prayer, especially in prayer. Why is it so easy? It's because we have a divided heart. We have a divided heart. In the Catechism, paragraph 27-29, we hear the habitual difficulty in prayer is distraction. Habitual difficulty in prayer is distraction. It can affect words and their meaning. In vocal prayer, it can concern more profoundly him to whom we are praying. In vocal prayer, liturgical or personal meditation and contemplative prayer. So cross the board in all of these prayers. To set about hunting down distractions would be to fall into their trap when all that is necessary is to turn back to our heart.
For a distraction reveals to us what we are attached to. And this humble awareness before the Lord should awaken our preferential love for him and lead us resolutely to offer him our heart to be purified. Therein lies the battle, the choice of which master to serve. Prayer is a battleground. Prayer is a battleground. We have to recognize going into prayer that it is a battleground.
Oftentimes, I think we have these expectations that when we go to pray it's going to be this wonderful kind of experience. It's peace, calm, tranquil, all those things. And it might certainly be those things. But what we have to recognize going into it, aside from, and I said our expectations aside, if we could do that, right, if we could just drop our expectations when we go to prayer, when we go to worship, then we're gonna really be able to gain a lot in those moments. Because if we go with no expectations, then that means we can be surprised by all the things that God wants to do in those moments. But, you know, we go with these expectations. This is going to be the best holy hour I've ever had. Or this is going to be the best rosary that I've ever prayed. And then Elizabeth, kind of like what you said, you're in the fourth mystery of it.
You go, wait, did I say the third mystery? I don't remember praying about the crowning of thorns. Well, maybe I did. I don't know. We have these expectations that kind of set us up for failure, I think. But if we recognize that what we are entering into is really a battle between the world, the flesh, and the devil, right, then we're gonna recognize that, you know, we have to, we have to kind of be armored up when we go into prayer. I know that sounds kind of strange, but it really is true. Our hearts are divided. I care about God and I want to draw close to Him in prayer, but I also care about a lot of other things, so much so that I'm attached to them and they pull me away from God. I get distracted because my love for God is still impure and immature. Now that sounds kind of harsh, right? What do you mean my love is impure? What do you mean my love is immature? I'm, you know, 55, 60, 70 years old. How is my love immature?
Well, you know, we haven't reached the end yet. We haven't gone through the purification of the fires of purgatory, if that's what needs to happen. We haven't finished the race. We're still running the race. You know, St. Paul uses that analogy of the one who runs the race and, you know, the one who runs the race and triumphs is the one who gets the, you know, the victory, right? They put the crown on their head because they've triumphed, but that doesn't mean that they beat everybody else. In this sense, running the race means we keep going and we keep going and we keep going. We never judge a runner for not being at the finish line. We judge a runner for giving up, right? If you're running a marathon and you only get halfway and you say, oh, I'm done, we didn't finish it, and so there's judgment there. But if, you know, you're running a marathon and you have to slow down and it takes you longer to do it, it's still a victory because you keep going. Same thing with prayer. You know, really, I think bad prayer is no prayer, right? When we give up, when we throw up our hands and say, I can't, I just can't do it because these distractions are too much and so what do we do? We walk away from it and that's exactly what the devil wants us to do. That's why he's gonna bombard us with distraction after distraction after distraction. He's gonna give us the thoughts of the grocery list or the perverted thoughts or the, like, disturbing thoughts that come in and, you know, they're like, oh my gosh, where did that come from? Oh, I must be a really sick person for having that thought. Nope, that's the devil. He's just throwing that junk in your mind. Our hearts are divided because we do care about lots of things more than we care about God. Our gospel today says you cannot be a slave of two masters. It's all about being divided. I'm not gonna give you too much about what the sermon is gonna be but we're divided. We're divided in our own hearts, our own minds, our own ways of thinking. We want what we want and God wants all at the same time and we try to make it work. We try to make the world work with faith. We try to make faith work with the world and, you know, I think that's one of the problems that we have in modern Catholicism really is, you know, we're trying to modernize the faith thinking that it's going to appeal to a lot more people, right? You know, we're gonna bring in hordes of people if we lessen the severity of what we believe, right? You know, but we've tried that. It's not working. It doesn't work, you know, because that's not really something solid to hold on to. If it's shifting, you know, it's like what scripture says, you know, the Lord says, you know, if you build your house on sand, the rain's gonna come, the water's gonna buffet the house, it's gonna wash away the sand and you're not gonna have a foundation and the house is gonna collapse. But if you build your house on rock, on a solid foundation, one that is unchangeable, unmovable, one that doesn't, you know, flinch or doesn't erode away, then the rains are gonna come and the wind is gonna come and that house is gonna stand. What are we putting our faith in? What are we putting our hope in? You know, are we putting it in, you know, the things that I'm attached to, are we putting it in God? And it's really hard to figure out how to do that. You know, we hear, love the Lord your God with all your heart and your mind, your soul and your body, and love your neighbor as yourself. What does that look like? What does that mean? You know, when I sit in the confessional, I hear, you know, I hear lots of confessions and there's a common theme in every one of them. Basically, anytime we need to go to confession, it really does boil down to, I have loved other things before I've loved God. And it's often, I've loved myself more than I've loved God. And so we have to really kind of look interiorly and ask that question, who do I love? Who's my master? Because if my master is God, then I'm not gonna get, been out of shape over the distractions.
But if I'm my master, or if my master is my job or my, my family or my passions or my desires or my comfort or, you know, the things of this world that are failing and fading away, if those are my masters, then I'm gonna wonder, why can't I pray?
Why is prayer really hard? Well, it's hard because we go with a divided heart. Now, every single one of us in here, with the exception of Felix, has a divided heart.
His will get divided eventually, right? You know, he'll grow up unless, you know, he's like this awesome little saint. But that's just, that's just what happens. That's because of sin. Concupiscence does that to us. So what are we to do, what are we to do with these divided hearts? God could easily make it so that we are never distracted in our prayer. Wouldn't that be awesome? God could easily make it so that we never have distractions in our prayer.
Sometimes he does give that particular grace, especially when a person is starting out in the interior life, embracing that. Sometimes God will give that grace so that they have that extra kind of push to go deeper. But then, kind of like Mother Teresa, then what happens? Then you get there and it's like, oh wow, this is a big dark room. And I gotta be in this room for a long time. But the difference between Mother Teresa and most of us is that she had confidence in the love of God. She was confident. Now, that doesn't mean that it was perfect confidence. It doesn't mean that she didn't struggle from time to time with questioning that. It doesn't mean that she had this perfect union with God. It certainly doesn't mean any of those things. And we're like, well, but she's a saint. Yeah, but saints are not made without a struggle. Holiness, right there.
Holiness is that. It's not easy. You don't just snap your fingers and all of a sudden, oh, now I'm a saint. Look at my halo. You gotta go through the fire. You gotta go through the battleground. She was confident in the love that God had for her.
And that confidence was what carried her through those dark moments.
We too can be confident that the Father loves us, but it has to trickle down from our brains into our heart. Oftentimes, the problem is that there is something blocking that, you know, something the pipe is clogged, and that clog is oftentimes me. My selfishness, my pride, my ego, my attachments, my sin, all those things get in the way.
God could easily make it so that we're never distracted in prayer. Sometimes He does give that particular grace when we need it. What interests Him more than our tasting of His goodness now is the enlarging of our hearts so that we can taste of His goodness forever in heaven.
So, God permits these distractions. God permits these thoughts. God permits this darkness. God permits the dryness and the aridity. God permits all of these distractions. God permits all of that so that we can work harder in allowing Him to stretch out our hearts, to open our hearts.
Our options are simple. There's one option or another option. We either lean into it, as a good priest friend of mine says, you know, I'll go to him and be like, hey man, this is going on in my spiritual life. It's really hard. It's really a struggle. And he says, lean into it. Or we can run away from it and just say, you know what? It doesn't work. I can't pray. It doesn't work. I'm too distracted. I'm too focused on this. I'm too focused on that.
It doesn't work. So, I'm not going to do it. It doesn't work. So, I'm not going to do it. We give up so easily. So easily. She leaned into it.
And then when it got really bad, she leaned into it.
Yeah, she leaned into it with tears and with suffering. And, you know, I think about Pope St. John Paul II and, you know, like, I know there's lots of, you know, oh, he was this, he was that, but let's set all that stuff aside. You know, one of the things that he taught us, I think, was how to suffer because he embraced his suffering at the end of his life, there was talk about Cardinals trying to talk him out of, you know, you should retire, you should, you know, kind of whatever. No, he suffered. He leaned into it. He leaned into it. You know, for whatever it's worth, that was a good lesson for all of us postmodern men and women who, you know, we get a headache and we run to the Tylenol bottle. I'm guilty of that. You know, I'm the first among equals when it comes to, you know, run into, oh, I don't feel good. I need to feel better. Oh, poor pitiful me. You know, like, we do that, right? But, you know, we see, Mother Teresa, we see in, you know, all, like, all of those martyrs, all of the martyrs, we see in them, we see in, you know, all of the saints, that great cloud of witnesses, that, you know, the key to success in the spiritual life is leaning into God's grace, and leaning into it when you don't feel it, and leaning into it when you doubt it, and leaning into it when you, you know, are convinced that it's not really there. It's to lean into it no matter what. And God opens, like, opens our hearts up. He stretches us. He stretches us and enlarges our hearts when we do that. Our earthly life is a period of spiritual purification and growth by which God increases our capacity to enjoy Him.
I think that's amazing. Our earthly life is a period of spiritual purification and growth by which God increases our capacity to enjoy Him. Now, remember that first question in the Baltimore Catechism? Why did God make us? He made us to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this life, and to be happy with Him in the next life. So, God does this so that in eternity, we will enjoy Him as thoroughly as He knows we can. In eternity, we will enjoy Him as thoroughly as He knows we can. One of the means by which our hearts grow larger is by battling distractions and prayer. This is why God always allows them to occur. God allows them to occur so that we can do the battle, we can grow, we can expand our hearts, we can grow in that virtue, right? That virtue of constancy, right? Y'all have heard of, you know, you've heard of long, long-suffering. Have you heard of that? Long-suffering. I had never heard of it until I went to confession one time with, with a priest friend of mine, and I don't know, I was complaining about something, you know, poor, pitiful me, this is so hard, blah, blah, blah, and he's like, you know, you don't know how to do long-suffering. I was like, well, that sounds horrible, right? Like, suffering sounds bad, and then if you put the word long on it, that means it's even bigger. That's not what it means. It's, it's an inter-, it's like an entering into a willingness to, to, to kind of go through the, go through the battleground, to go through the gauntlet, to, to enter into the crucible for the sake of, of God, you know, for the sake of that relationship with the Lord. You know, I look at the lives of St. Therese, I, I, I can't help but talk about St. Therese every time I open my mouth almost. You know, if you read, if you read the story of a soul and you encounter, like, what she was going through at the end of her life, it was awful. She was in lots of pain, but she entered She embraced it. She leaned into it, really. I'm reading right now the, the story of St. Gemma Galgani. I, I got this, I got this first-class relic of her when I was in Rome a couple times ago, and, you know, all throughout, like, on that trip all throughout Rome, I would see these images of St. Gemma Galgani, and I'm like, what, what's the deal? I got the relic, but what's the deal with this, you know, with this woman? And, you know, I, I kind of was moved and challenged, you know, I heard some people talking about her. One of my confirmation kids told me that, hey, I chose Gemma Galgani as my confirmation saint, and I was like, what? Like, what do you know about her? And this kid just starts spouting off stuff about Gemma Galgani. I'm like, man, I got a relic of her. I need the, like, she's, there's a reason, right? There's a reason I got a relic of her. So, I'm listening to her autobiography, and you want to talk about somebody that suffered a lot. She suffered immensely, immensely with physical ailments. She had spinal meningitis. She had terrible headaches. She had all kinds of illnesses. She had all kinds of issues. Her mom died when she was young, and then, like, her brother went to seminary, and he never made it because he died, and then, you know, another sibling died, and then her dad died, and she, there's just all this pain and suffering, and all, all the time, she just kept praying to Jesus, Jesus, can I come to heaven now, please?
Can I come to heaven now, please? And Jesus would say to her, not yet, not yet, not yet.
She's like, but I just want to come to heaven, and we look at that, we look at Saint Therese, we look at Gemma Galgani, we look at Maria Goretti, or whoever the saint is, and we can see in them, like, that's the secret to holiness, right? It's leaning into that trust of God's love.
Even when we don't feel it, even when we're hard-headed, you know, hard-headed, and it's hard for us to pick up on it, we've got to lean into it. God allows the distractions in our lives, and in our prayer life especially, so that we can do the battle, because we grow strong, we grow strong in that, we grow strong in our faith, we grow strong in our, our wills that are directed to him and surrendered to him. Now there's two, there's two particular kinds of distractions that we need to understand. The first one is involuntary distractions, right? These are the involuntary, these are the, these are the little, you know, the flies that pop up, right, while we're praying.
You know, the thoughts and images that pop into our minds by surprise, and always seem to happen when we're praying the rosary, when we're sitting at holy mass, or when we're trying to meditate.
You know, the word, the Lord gives you a word in, in prayer, and you, you, you sit with that word for a while, you know, like I told you all about this meditation I had where I got, like, I was focusing on fire, right, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, smores.
That would be what we would call, I don't even like those things, right, like, no, I don't. Marshmallows are gross.
Just saying. But yeah, like that, I'm like, smores, no, that's not, right, that's an involuntary distraction. Now it would have become, it would have become a willful distraction if I would have thought, well, you know, what would make a s'more better is if you get rid of the marshmallow and you put this on it and you do this, and you know, I'm creating a recipe while I'm in there trying to meditate on fire, that would be a willful distraction. So these involuntary distractions there's a priest that calls them, you know, the flies and we got to get out our spiritual fly swatter, right, and sometimes what we have to do with those involuntary distractions because they will come, you know, like rapid fire. We have to say a rebuking prayer or we have to say a binding prayer, right, because the evil one's just pelting us, like, he knows, right, he knows what's going to get, he knows what your buttons are, he knows how to push him and he knows when to push him. And so this priest that, I was listening to a conference that he was given and he was talking about, you know, spiritual fly swatters and I was like, well, that sounds funny, but this is exactly what it is, you know, these little things that pester us, we have these tools, these weapons to battle them with and something as simple as, in the name of Jesus, I rebuke this thought, I place it at the foot of the cross to be judged by our Lord. In the name of Jesus, I bind this spirit of lust or confusion or anger or doubt or fear or anxiety or distraction, I bind any spirits that are not of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus and I place them at the foot of the cross to be judged by our Lord.
Swing the sword and get back to work.
Introduce, talk to the same thing.
Yeah, yeah, you put it at the foot of the cross to be judged by the Lord.
Yeah.
It's exactly what, yeah, that's exactly what we're doing there. We're acknowledging the presence of the evil one trying to pester us and draw our attention away from him and we're throwing him at the foot of the cross, like the last place he wants to be. He doesn't want to be at the foot of the cross because what happens, he's going to get covered with the blood of Christ and that's going to burn him. He's not going to like it. Janet.
Or a bad situation that comes to your mind.
Like for instance, like if there was a trauma in your life and you get pestered by that, that's where you call out to your guardian angel and you ask your guardian angel to help you to, you know, not necessarily forget it but to not be bothered by it and to kind of protect from that.
But yes, you can also, you know, say because what's the evil one, I mean the devil's going to, he's going to latch on to that stuff, right, and he's going to throw it at you and he's going to remind you, you remember the time that you did this? How bad that was? Like you just said, he knows what our buttons are and when to use them. And when to use them and he's going to, look folks, here's the thing, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the devil is after you. He's after you.
Why is he after you? Because you're fighting against him. You're trying to become a saint.
He doesn't want you to become a saint. He hates you so much that he wants you to rot in hell for all eternity and so he's going to do whatever he can to get you. If that means he's going to drag up stuff from 25, 30 years ago, he's going to drag it up and he's going to swing it at you.
But see, we can be confident in healing and wholeness that comes from, even if we're not completely healed and we're not completely whole, we know that God is the one who heals us and God is the one who makes us whole and God is the one who loves us perfectly and that perfect love promises if we respond to it and if we accept it and if we allow it to to come into our lives and to change us and transform us, that perfect love promises to make us whole and to make us holy.
And that's our confidence, right? That was the humble confidence of St. Therese.
So I would have a hard time remembering the stop or the Jesus. How did you say it?
When you're having the thought experience? Oh, the binding prayer? The binding prayer.
I would have a hard time remembering that but I teach it a technique to my patients when they're having intrusive thoughts that keep them from doing things in their daily life because we're all drivers to make sure our stop sign to stop and turn right to thoughts that are more pleasant.
If you're praying, it's a redirect, right? Yeah, that's a redirect and it's easy to picture a stop sign and do something. For me, that would be easier. Yeah, well, I mean, that's powerful. I'm sorry.
What? A stop sign? Yeah. Well, but because scripture tells us, at the name of Jesus, every knee in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, in hell, in purgatory, every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess to the glory of God the Father that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Yeah, I mean, I think you could, you know, like, particularly in the work that you do, you know, like, you'll be labeled the weird church lady if you're like, no, you need to say a binding prayer. But why not? I mean, well, then see, you're already the weird church lady. But the name of Jesus is powerful when we use it appropriately.
But, you know, you were making that point about the evil one is after us, he knows the pressure buttons, and he knows what triggers us, he knows us, and he's after us, he's after us constantly.
But just a thought occurred to me when we said that, but we after him, we never think about going after him when he comes after us. So we put up the foot of the cross when he does not want to be, right? And we get developed that habit, that spiritual habit.
He's going to think twice about taking us on. Well, I mean, you know, like, how do you deal with a bully? Right? How do you deal with a bully? Like, that's the devil is just a bully. Right? And so yeah, yeah. I mean, we oftentimes don't, you know, we don't utilize the we don't utilize the weapons that we have available to us, Sharon.
I know it sounded like a lot of other stuff, but it will start coming automatically to you.
You have the practice at home where you can read it and read it and read it and read it.
Yeah, it's, and you know, like, in the name of Jesus, I bind this thought, or I bind this spirit, the spirit of, and name the spirit, whatever it is.
Fear, anxiety, doubt, you know, lust, whatever it is. Or if you don't quite know what that spirit is, I bind any spirits that are not of the Holy Spirit and place them at the foot of the cross to be judged by our Lord and punished by Him. Yeah.
They're always kind of brewing there.
Well, that's why, you know, that's why they were talking about it being a fly swatter, right?
You know, it's going to be hard to kill a horse fly with a fly swatter, you're going to have to use your shoe. But with the little pesterings, you can just, you know, and it's kind of like that, like, you redirect back to, you turn back to your heart, you turn back to that source of truth, beauty, and goodness, the heart of God. Janet, you were going to- Simplifying your life, slowing down the pace. I don't know, are there some real, like, practical kind of things?
Practice detachment.
Oh, that's a whole nother conference, okay. So detachment, detachment in a nutshell is, let me tell you what it's not first. So we hear the word detachment, we think, man, I gotta give up all the stuff that I've got. Maybe, it could mean that. But generally, what detachment is, it's choosing the right master.
Is my money my master or is God my master? Is my job or my family or my hobbies or my, fill in the blank, my master or is God? And to practice that detachment means that we have to turn our hearts to him and recognize that no, my, you know, like, I'm going to run out of money eventually. My house is going to fall apart. My car is going to stop working. My health is going to fade away. If those are my master, then what do I end up with in the end? Rob?
No, not, not in the sense of, like, seeking him, but to go after him with that spiritual, that spiritual battle, like, you know, what he was saying was to, you know, to be mindful of, like, we can fight fire with fire, right? He's gonna, he's gonna come after us. So we, what we do to go after him is we place him at the foot of the cross.
No, you don't, no, no, no, you don't go seeking that. But when, when those things happen, I was just thinking, yeah, no, I don't, I don't think he was saying, let's go.
It's good to be clear. It's good to be clear. Yeah. We're not, we're not ghostbusters.
Right. Okay. Right. You know, I saw, I saw, yes, that in that sense it is. But I think what Rob is saying is like, we're not, you know, we're not gonna conjure up a demon so that we can beat him up. Right. Right. I mean, that's that. Yeah. It's not, you know, you don't go get the Ouija board and say, all right, come on demons. I'm gonna, I'm gonna kick your butt. That's not what we're saying.
Conjuring evil spirits to fight them. Right.
Father, why are you summoning demons so that I can fight them? Yeah. No, it's not that the, you know, Elizabeth, you're talking about the Hail Mary, but they're a friend, a friend of mine in seminary. I don't remember if it was a coffee mug or a t-shirt or something, but it said, Hail Mary, full of grace, punch the devil in the face.
Now that's, that's kind of, that's a little crass. Right. But, but what, what's our lady's role?
Right. What does our Lord say about our lady in Genesis? She will crush the head of the serpent with her heel. Yeah. We're part of that. You know, we're part of that as, as sons and daughters of our blessed mother. We are part of that. And so when we pray, that's why the daily rosary is so important. So important. Yeah. It's so important. Okay. I think we're supposed to be praying a rosary right now up in the chapel. So let me just kind of land this. St. Francis de Sales says what to do about distractions. If the heart wonders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in the master's presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour of prayer, but bring your heart back and replace it again and again and again in our Lord's presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed. So what St. Francis de Sales is telling us is don't be discouraged. In your distractions, in all those struggles, don't be discouraged. Bring them back to the Lord. Bring them back to the Lord. Bring your heart back to the Lord. Take, take that stuff to the foot of the cross and leave it there and go back to the Lord. So there's involuntary and willful. So involuntary is when they pop into your head. Willful is when you grab a hold of them and you ride them off into the sunset. Right? Exactly. Yeah. But the willful, so the involuntary distractions become sinful when we, when we do that. You know, people are like, I'm distracted in prayer. Well, what does that mean? Well, I had this thought and then I went back to prayer. Okay, then that's fine. I'm distracted in prayer. I had this thought and I started thinking about, you know, this sinful thing that I did a long time ago and I enjoyed that rather than, that's, that's where those differences are. Yes, Linda. When you were talking about self-suffering, I know of two priests in my life that I know who have embraced that. Yeah. Father John Hollowell. Totally. And I missed that he went off social media because I missed hearing how his progress is going.
And Father Glenn O'Connor. Yeah, Father Glenn. Because when Father Glenn got sick, he forbade his family to talk about his illness and tell anyone that he was sick. I'm pretty sure that included the bishop.
Because he knew that when the bishop found out, he would put him on the sabbatical. Yeah. And that's why, I mean. He worked to the end. A friend of mine was at St. Suzanne's when he was there and she said to me after Christmas mass, she said, I'm not sure he's going to last much longer. And I was like, wait, what? Yeah. And then in March he was gone. Yeah. But that was the week that we had like five priests die like bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Yes. But he forbade his family. Yeah, I think that's. From sharing that. That's pretty funny. And that's just if you know anything about Father Glenn. Yeah. He was always in there doing, you know, and he talked about somebody who lived his life going above and beyond. He was always there with his priestly duties and his friendship and his incantation and his spirituality to everybody. Yeah. He would pick up pregnant women on the street and call Michelle who was to have a paper project over there and say, yeah, I've got a pregnant woman. You need to find a place for her to live.
That was Father Glenn. Father Glenn found a pregnant woman who's homeless.
Yep. Okay. That's how he was. Yeah. I think we need to make our way up to the chapel.
So let's do that and then we'll have Holy Mass.