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BARRIERS TO HOLINESS: MISUNDERSTANDING TRUTH

 * 

ANDREW GNIADEK

10 min listen


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TRANSCRIPT


(NOTE: THIS TRANSCRIPTION HAS BEEN AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED THROUGH AN AI
PROGRAM. CONSEQUENTLY, THIS TRANSCRIPT MAY NOT MATCH EVERYTHING YOU HEAR IN THE
PODCAST EPISODE, AND IT MAY CONTAIN ERRORS SUCH AS SPELLING, GRAMMAR, WORD
CHOICE, ETC., DUE TO THE LIMITATIONS OF CURRENT AI TECHNOLOGY.)

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Hey everyone, welcome to episode two of season five of Midnight Carmalite. This
is Andrew Gniadek, your host, I am very happy with the interview I did with Dr.
Larry Chapp, you can check it out on episode one and what I wanted to do for the
remaining episodes of the season is, you know, is to offer some small
reflections on topics that came up in the interview and what I’m calling, just
little things called barriers to holiness. And the idea being is I’m just gonna
point out a couple of things in each, you know, one thing in each episode and
kind of discuss it.

Just things I’ve noticed that either from my own experience, what kept me from,
you know, being more holy closer to christ um and also from my studies or life
experience things I’ve seen, you know, just that kind of thing. So obviously
they’re not exhaust, it’s not exhaustive, it’s meant to just kind of be a
starting point for reflection for everyone listening. So let’s begin. So the
first barrier to holiness, I want to discuss this truth, you’re like, wow,
that’s really way to go Andrew that’s, you know, throwing it all out there in a
way I am, but in a way I’m not, and what I mean by that is this is that we
often, you know, especially older people have heard this debate about faith and
reason, right?

So it’s this idea that can you have reason with faith, do you even need faith,
you know, for this is for non believers? And you know, obviously John Paul and
his famous encyclical Fides et Ratio compared faith and reason to wings and that
they rise to the contemplation of truth. And one thing I’ve noticed is buried, a
holiness is forgetting that God is truth. Now, you say like, well, of course he
is, Jesus says, I am the way the truth and the life, you know, the truth will
set us free.

All these things about truth are about God. In other words, you know, John Paul
II says this, he says, he says in the human heart, a desire to know the truth,
in a word, to know himself meaning God, that’s what truths about. So, okay, so
fine, so truths about knowing God, you’re like, okay, so what does that mean?
Well, think of it this way, and let’s say, someone comes up to you and says, I’m
just gonna name this person bob. So let’s say someone comes up to you and says,
hey, so I heard bob is a doctor, and you’re like, okay, like that’s great, like,
you know, bob’s doctor, like anyone can find that and they say, yep, and bob is
married with two kids, and you’re like, oh that’s great bob is married with two
kids, right?

And you, this person basically starts like listing off facts about bob any
qualities, right? He’s married, He’s this tall, he grew up in this one place,
etcetera, etcetera etcetera. And then this person says I really know bob. Now
let’s say this person has never met bob. You actually see this today with social
media. I forget the term for it. But this kind of thinking, you know personally
the person that you may listen to, you know what I’m saying like like like it
basically I forget the term but it’s like proximate social relationship thing I
don’t I forget.

But anyway, the point being is that you would you would say, look, I don’t think
that you know bob you know things about that’s a that’s a crucial distinction.
I’m gonna say it one more time. You can know things about a person but you may
not know that person. So you may say, okay, what entails knowing things about a
person Because qualities are part of a person. You can’t separate them. It’s
obstruction that’s true. But those qualities can’t be taken as the basis for the
knowledge. What I mean by that is is we are not our qualities, right?

So I am not the clothes I wear, right? I am not the job I have, who I am is the
person who does those things. Those things aren’t me per se. But the only way to
know someone is to have a friendship with them. And what is friendship? It’s a
type of love. So now we’re getting to the key about truth here. The problem we
have today, in my opinion is that we think that by knowing facts, knowing about
things that we know things and you can see this all the time because then
someone will for example, you have a person who let’s say, studies a book on
something, but then someone else comes in and just seems to be able to do
something okay.

Yeah, they may possess the natural talent for it, but also knowing something.
The book is merely a means through signs, meaning words to see a reality. It
isn’t putting ideas into your head, it’s through the book. You’re seeing the
reality of things clear as if someone is talking to you. Like I am right now
pointing to the reality, the objective reality and that objective reality. That
truth, all truth, ultimately is Christ. Because like John says in his gospel,
all things were made through him and nothing came to be without him.

That’s why truth is identified with the person. In other words, our desire to
know the truth is to know God and to know God because God is a person requires
loving him. So, love is the principle of knowledge for how you know God. You can
know things about God in other words, you could read St. Thomas’s go through
these things and know a lot of things about God, but that does not mean, you
know God, that means you know things about God in other words, Saint Thomas is
telling you things about God.

To know God is to love God, St. Thomas wasn’t a saint because he wrote St.
Thomas was a saint because he loved God and showed holiness in his life and his
writings were an effect of that holiness. See what’s going on here now. And
we’re talking about barriers to holiness, that’s what we need more of today.
Love of God is how you know the truth, because you will be in the presence of
truth itself. Now. Okay, how do we do that? How do we know the truth? Well,
we’re gonna go through St. Teresa of Avila says the quickest measure of your
charity, your love, right?

And Jesus said love God and neighbor, right? Is your love of neighbor. Why?
Because it’s very difficult to see your love of God because of all the
difficulties of the spiritual life. Right? So she said, the key is to look at
how well you love your neighbor now. Does that mean that something to the effect
of like social programs are the measure of your love of God? Not necessarily,
because the social program may not have the right intention circumstance object
can go through the whole thing, but if you’re loving your neighbor their own
good, right?

So in other words, you look as you are a servant to them, you go out to them
that act or acts, I should say those that activity will help you know God
because he told you to and then you bring that back to prayer and in that love
of God in prayer or in liturgy, that’s where you will grow in holiness through
growth and charity, faith and hope. So I know this is a kind of a complicated
thing, but the reason I bring it up is because I feel like we’ve for too long,
we’ve allowed rules things about to dictate a personal relationship. Now.

That doesn’t mean subjective, that the word personal today in our modern, you
know, secular, it means like, I take it personally, I mean, it’s, it’s like a
it’s an identity pain, right? That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking
about the metaphysical reality of a human person. I’m not talking about an
identity pain now, an identity pain is in at the emotional core of a person.
Like if you take something personal, that’s your emotional core, but I’m not
even talking about that. This isn’t about emotions, I mean, emotions are
involved, you’re an integrated human person, but it’s really beyond that.

So it’s beyond the heart in the center of the soul. That’s the meeting place of
God. And so I feel like when we want to know truth today, like how to act, what
to do. We need only look at Christ because God revealed himself through
Scriptures and Sacred Tradition as the measure of faith christ through him. We
can get back to the father, we can see truth itself. The word God’s only word
that he spoke as St. John the Cross says who fully reveals everything that is
where we can go.

So anyway, I just wanted to start with that, you know, try and love God more
through loving your neighbor and that will give you more truth rather than
deducing or looking at rules that aren’t grounded meaning coming from that
personal relationship. Again. If you start with Christ and then see how the
rules connect to Christ’s life, actions, what he says, you know all that, then
that’s fine. I’m not there’s nothing wrong with with rules. Logic is derived
from reality. It’s a tool for thinking things through clearly, that’s why it
exists.

That’s why it’s been developed as an art. But the key is the logic is not the
reality. The logic has to be derived from the reality and the reality is that
truth is a person which is Jesus Christ. Anyway, that’s it. For now I will see
you next episode


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