to the podcast, Fr. John Neppel and Fr. Sean Conroy. Coming back at you, we are from Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, and it's still the second day of Lent. So there's a general spirit of positivity, dare say excitement in the first days of Lent, which that usually lasts until about Monday.
for me and then i'm like oh man and it's all downhill from there and it's all downhill but you know you start lent and you're feeling like by the time this podcast come out it'll be a couple weeks in it'll be the the heavy kind of drag i don't know maybe some people are just awesome at self-denial but It just feels heavy. Do you like the word compunction? Uh...
I like it. I don't really use it. I was doing some spiritual reading and that word came up and I'm just like, that's a really interesting word. Cause right. Puncture, compunction, puncture. It makes you think of a bicycle tire. At least that's what it did for me.
biking you get a flat but anyways this morning at mass i told all the kids i was like i hope you guys all fail in your lenten resolutions they're like what they just like glared at me they're like what how could you wish that upon us but i'm like when you fail it actually helps you have a more of a spirit of compunction which is one of the main things during lent is like to deflate ourselves so that
I must decrease so that he may increase. But now they're just going to give up on purpose because Father Sean told me to. That is my worry. They're talking to their parents, I'm sure. I told them not to do that, but... That might happen. I got a, uh, pack of them came in with their teacher. Um, Third grade, South Campus. Missyanov. Missyanov. Kristen. Is that a Czech name? I don't know. Because my nephew thought it was Czech, and he told her, he goes, my family's from Chad. Chad.
And he meant Czech Republic, but he said from Chad, she says, your family is not from Chad. He goes, my family is definitely from Chad. This is Micah. That's awesome. Micah's.
skills and his mostly athletic at this point um but so he found out oh we're check we're not from chad so they came into the sacristy and said i get this piece of paper and i opened up it says we challenge you to a plank to the plank challenge yes or no yeah i was like what is a plank challenge i was like oh it's a physical plank we're doing low planks i think it's a low plank but i don't know how they do it because like they're like
Cause they were telling me about it. They're just like, I told them I wasn't going to partake, but they were like, yeah one kid in our class he can do it for 20 minutes no way that is not a real they told me that 23 minutes i was like that's not this isn't real now they are tiny little bird bird arms they can probably hold it there forever but I have a week and a half to get my core strength up so that I can hang.
Good luck. You were smart to not do that. I said, I'll do it if Miss Yanif does it. She was not interested in that. That's funny. So I got to get rid of that. But they are funny. Yeah, so they're all going to be failing their Lenten promises.
It was great to see so many kids and families, especially dads, bring their sons to the – we had a book launch. And thanks to everybody who listens who came to that. We had some people come from – all over and it was a great turnout a lot of fun mom made a huge charcuterie that was epic those man they know how to make charcuterie boards it was just a huge they just put the what do you call the paper down wax paper wax paper whatever and just boom just everywhere and it went
Kegakura is gone. Everything was, it was great. So we had a lot of fun, but it was really cool to see. I think a lot of like dads were bringing their sons to kind of meet the guys and to, to, to hear about the story. And so.
It was an awesome experience. So I thank you for being there and for having some of your guys there. Yeah. Well, congrats. Um, no, it was cool to hear it. It was cool to, um, cause I was a part of the trail, but there's a lot of people who may have not heard as many stories. And so to have you, Cody, Luke and Casey up there.
Cody and Luke did a lot of talking. Casey, not as much, which I don't know if that's because he's nervous with the microphone. Well, we were giving him a lot of crap because Casey's a... He's like a diesel engine when he tells stories, so you got to let the thing run for a bit.
before you start to drive it and then even as you start to drive it if it's cold it's just gonna take a while and i mean he could tell half a story in 45 minutes yeah no hearing him tell the needle story in his foot i'm just like can you like get on this already? Companions were giving me a little hell about not doing more of the theology, but I thought people are here. They want to hear the narrative. They can meditate on the, the, the theology. So.
Uh, we will not bore you with heights and unto depths, uh, more talk as you had four parts of that. And of course the, the through hikers are like, we should do a podcast together. I was like, we just did four. We're not doing another one. So I can't subject that to the listeners and to Father Sean. But I did appreciate doing that and appreciate all the time we were able to take with it. It's been such an incredible experience.
I've been doing a lot of podcasts and radio stuff to help promote the book. And it's just been great. So thanks to everybody. The book's doing really well. It's sold a lot. We've already gone into the second print here. Ignatius Press is happy. I think people are enjoying it. I hope you are. I'd love to hear from you. The first correction was made. It wasn't a typo, but it was...
I misquoted a story by C.S. Lewis, one of the vignettes from The Great Divorce, and so that was adjusted for the second print. there's a difference when's the second print it's not second edition no it's just the second round of printing so I imagine they print, what, like 1,000 copies at a time? 4,000 at a time. 4,000. Yeah.
you've sold they've sold 4 000 sold about 3 300 no kidding yeah that's awesome so we're doing we're doing well we're off to you get like what like one cent per book or yeah i get I forget. I should be careful. This is contractual. Yeah, you don't have to answer. Well, I just don't know. What did I make? 10%? But I don't keep it. So we give it away in our gratis. It is interesting. Authors used to be paid by the word.
which is why when Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens, I was going to say Victor Hugo. When he wrote Les Mis, it's just like, it's like the unabridged version is just like, why did he have to share all this information? Yeah, he can get away with that. Speaking of authors, one of the books that inspired today's topic is this very colorful cover.
Well, it's a good thing I judge a book by its cover. Dia Boyle is Dr. John Boyle and Dia Boyle from St. Thomas, our alma mater. So she reached out, and this was months ago, and Dia, I'm sorry that we're just getting to this now, but... Very enjoyable and nice little book. Obviously, deep felt and from a very maternal heart of somebody who has thought deeply not just about... practically how do you build an intentional home, but also kind of like the philosophy of why we build homes.
Did she teach at St. Thomas? She might have. She did graduate from Cornell. She met John, I think, at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. Uh, so she has graduate degree and, uh, she does teach, but I don't, I don't think she, I never had her at St. Thomas. I think I never did. I had Dr. John Boyle for like John Frederick Boyle.
He taught like Pursuit of Happiness or whatever Catholic Studies 101 was that I had him for. The Devels, both of them taught, Dr. Devel and Mrs. Dr. Devel. I don't remember their names. David, and I can't remember her name. Yeah, the Boyles, I did meet them a couple times. Great people. My first theology class ever was with Dr. John Boyle, and we were all... first it was like the first week of
theology. So the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota is where Father Sean and I went at 18. We went to college seminary. We were too young to start in Denver. We did two years there. They were great years. Catholic Studies program, awesome. Philosophy program, awesome. Theology program, not awesome. So Dr. Boyle was doing both Catholic Studies and Theology, so everybody's to take Theo 101. We come back to the seminary after the first day.
And some of us are like, what the hell was that? That was terrible. This is going to be rough. And some guys were like, I got this sweet class. So we all transferred like 35, transfers the next day into Dr. Boyle's class, and it was amazing. First time reading the Confessions, first time reading St. Thomas, just like the introduction to Western civilization, his ability to communicate it.
And then meeting D, I got to know in Rome because each semester Catholic study sends somebody and I was a chaplain years later. Just an amazing family. Naughton's Boyles, all the people up there, they're incredible. That's right. So what I want to do is I want to reflect on, I'm not going to specifically work from Dia's book here, though I'm going to kind of look at it in reference to this relationship between givenness and home.
givenness and home life yeah so i'm working from a meditation by john paul ii a meditation on givenness which he apparently wrote in the 80s but was not published until or 1994 he wrote But it wasn't published until after his death. So kind of an interesting... Really personal, very beautiful thing. I think you can find online, A Meditation on Givingness by John Paul II.
But before we go into that relationship between what is it like to build a home, what is the theology of the home, what is the relationship with that, and this idea that we find ourselves in a gift of self, how does the home create the ambit for that, going into the... Let's just start with the question of do priests live in homes?
It's so funny. I'm shocked that you just asked that question. Oh, we're going to go into it. Well, as you're talking about this, I'm like, golly, I don't think I live in a home. You don't live in a home, and I don't live in a home. It makes me long for the feminine genius, which I'm sure you get to as well.
When you're in a home, you just feel it like it just feels, I don't know if this is the best word, but like cozy, like women just have a gift. Mothers particularly have a gift for just like making that home feel cozy and like a home and thinking of my childhood home, for instance. Uh, are rectories a home? They can be, but 99% of the time they're not. And the current home I live in with the companions, uh, companions house downtown, I'm like.
This just feels like a bachelor pad that a bunch of guys come in and out of. We try to make it feel like a home the best we can, but it's hard. So let's dive into that a little more. And I don't want to make any indictments or judgments here. I just want to kind of lay it out, right? Priests live. There's a number of ways that... priests to live. And I don't think it's essentially bad, because let's think about this in reference to Christ's word about
The son of man has no lace to lay his head. He has no home. And so maybe there's a kind of identification with the priest with Christ to we're not supposed to have a home in the same sense. Because even when priests make homes, it's problematic. And we'll talk about why that is. But here's a number of kind of scenarios. I've lived in a lot of rectories over the last 14 years as a priest. I have lived in ones where it's a total bachelor pad.
So it's just like, but it's not a home. There's no personal objects. There's no touch. There's nothing. I've lived with guys who... have dominated the house with their stuff and it's their home it's kind of like this is my especially as pastors this is my place uh some rectories are built to be just condominiums like the one you're moving into uh where we all have our own space
Yeah, private kitchen in your private room. Some guys will make their own bedroom their home and they never come out of it. That's not good. Some guys have other rectories, like even lords here, there's multiple rectories. So they live in different places. Where do you kind of spend your time? Some guys will live at family's homes, like a family home, and not have anything to rectify. I had a priest friend in England who...
Literally owned nothing. He was also a Benedictine monk for a long time. But he owned nothing. There was nothing in the rectory when I showed up. Wow. Just like basic furnishing. Yeah. It was crazy. Nothing. He owns literally nothing. Any food? No. There's no food. Yeah. So I would say my experience of. moving is always the same, which is call the boys to help you move and then get the women in there to help you.
Get this thing set up. I was purging... my room slash our room yesterday because still got all your junk in it um books i invited junk books i personally invited sean to move his gigantic library out of my bedroom you're like oh when i first When you first moved in there, you're just like, oh, it's fine. Get your books out whenever. No rush. And then yesterday, you're just like, big rush. Get your books out ASAP. That is how I unfortunately work. I wanted to...
finally figure out what this is room going to look like without Sean's stuff. Um, And I don't need like the Fauci conspiracy book right next to my head. You have some books you need to purge. People give you weird books over time. I know, but you don't have to keep them. This is why we purge. So every Ash Wednesday.
Well, it used to be all the companions would purge on Ash Wednesday. Now it's like purge during Lent, and now it's kind of like we'll just purge sometime before August, which is what some guys do. But the point is that everybody... goes through and on friday i'm going to go through it with all the guys with my fraternal group and just kind of review everything and it's i love it i love doing the deep clean the deep dive but also asking the lord to just help me just
go lighter on our feet back to the benedict 100 it's like we got to go light we got to travel light so does purging make you feel like you live more in an institution or more of a home I think that, well, I think that purging makes me feel more evangelical and I don't want tons of stuff. I want to be able, I was able to successfully move. in my car again.
apart from the peloton now it's all coming out now it's getting real personal i had a friend buy buy me a peloton a couple years ago so that had to be moved separate but that doesn't count right uh everything else fits in the car one move that's always my goal Including books. Including books. In the car, but addendum also attached to the car, like your bike and skis. Bike attached to the car, skis on the top, everything else in the car, which is a 4Runner, so it's space.
peloton and mike nimzik's truck that's great that's awesome so that's that's my thing um that's my metric but yeah i don't have I don't have things from Pottery Barn to kind of make a house. I don't know. And so that's always the question. It's like we need to be moving. We need to be not settling into things, but also it needs to feel like a home. And there was something about...
As much as I'm giving you a hard time about your books, it was just like, I need to get my books in order and figure out what am I reading? What do I need to get rid of? uh you know just kind of create this space around my my vocation which my my room is really an intellectual space so there's one section of it you'll see has all the projects and i got to kind of lay out what am i working on and where are my notes and
What books am I working on in what ways? But frame pieces of art, framed photos, these kind of things. It really is important to try and create a home. At the end of the day, I don't think you can create a home without a woman. So I just think that men... A woman living in the home? No, not necessarily. Okay. Like I think about if like somebody's wife died or something. That's a home. But I think that... So a woman doesn't have to live in the home, but like...
There's just something about the feminine. Diaboya writes this book. If you and I wrote this book,
The thoughtful home, it would not be very thoughtful. It would be... just be guys so that so it's not just the bachelor mentality which lies you know is always a temptation in priestly life it's also just something about men of just like we just don't think about the what she's writing about and talking about um we're not we have to really work at and i think that um Yeah, you can also feel a rectory where...
Like when we were up in Aspen, it's like, this is a rectory that priests have lived in for a hundred years and they've made small contributions to... It feels like a home. And that's different than some empty suburban house that your pastor doesn't want to live with you with, so he buys another one. Like some of the horror stories we hear from guys who just live in these things. But I do think that, you know, when I brought in Daryl and Bixeman.
to help with my office. She's just like, boom. Everybody loves my office at the seminary because it's amazing. Because Derry found all this random... stuff that just and she made it look really cool empty makers marked bottles empty maker that's a big i contributed those i emptied those personally so but here's the line from john paul ii that i want to kind of frame this on and i think this is worth
challenging priests to figure out how do you create more of a home life and live in it, but also for everybody to just reflect on what are they doing in light of homes. This is from a poet. John Paul II is quoting a Polish poet who I did not know. His name is Cyprian Camille Norwid. That does not sound Polish. Norwid. I don't know. So this is what he says. Norvid once wrote, beauty exists to us and to work, and work exists to raise us from the dead.
Beauty exists to awe us into work, and work exists to raise us from the dead. That is a very... beauty work and resurrection so the first thing is that part of what does a home life do like what what what are the contours and the texture so to speak of a home well first off it's a place of safety it's a place of warmth It's a place that facilitates communion.
The essence of a home is that it's a place where man and woman are given to each other, and it's the ambit of self-gift, and it creates that atmosphere and that climate, because that's the difference between a house, of course, a rectory, a priest. You know, no human being, no kid grows up and he's like, someday I want to live in a rectory.
Like, even the phrase, just like, what does that even look like? What does that even mean? But a home is something that's been personalized. It's a space that's been transformed by interpersonal relationship.
But how to build a home requires work. And we don't have a home. And part of the reason is we are disconnected from... i sound like a marxist here the means of production it's not that it's just we don't physically aren't working on homes as much you are uh you do more than most priests i think in terms of just fixing things sure
Even though the toilet paper dispenser was broken when I moved into your bathroom, just putting that out there. If you want to come over and fix it sometime, I noticed it was just, oh, okay. So we're just going to set the toilet paper on the sink, apparently. You're funny. You know what I'm talking about. I do. But in my defense, that was never working. The day I moved in, there was no toilet dispenser paper. This is way too personal. Okay, we'll let you pass. But...
It's a lot of work to build a home, to maintain a home, to make a house into a home. It takes work. The point of this line from Norvid is beauty exists to awe us into work. Beauty exists to us and to work. That's a different way of thinking about work. I think that what it means for me is like Like somebody asked me, they're like, what do we do? I was talking to a Legatus forum group yesterday about my book and they were like,
I know you want to run off to the mountains, but we want to do that, but we can't leave our life here in the city. And I think that's the answer to it. We go to ski on Mondays to inspire us. The beauty of the mountains awes us into deeper giving of self Allah work. It's not about running away so we can go play. work is part of how men men and women find fulfillment um and the house is is is the work of the family, the work of the couple, the work of man and wife. And that's why...
That's part of the meaningfulness of everything that's kind of built into the house is that we've poured our life into this place. But the beauty of the relationship, the beauty of the newly married couple, let's say, who buys their first house, It's the beauty of the life together that is the awe that moves them into work. It makes me think about why do we...
compartmentalized houses where you have like, oh, this is the kitchen. This is the living room. This is the family room. This is the dining room or whatever, right? Like everything has a room. Now there's something fitting with that, but I guess thinking about the rectory. The common spaces tend to be...
Those are actually the places that can make a home, but they're often the ones that feel the most sterile in a rectory because there's no, to your point, no personal items there. Like I don't have a picture of... me and my family in the common area. And maybe we should. In the Companions House, we do that a little better, I think.
where we have like an image of a picture of all of us companions, you know, from ordinations or from whatever. And then we have different pictures, maybe of priests who have inspired us. We have a picture of Garonsky on the wall there and Father Drendel. But then I tend to keep my personal items like an icon of St. Maximilian Kolbe, a crucifix that was given to me by Monsignor Glenn. I tend to keep those in my room.
But I don't know. I mean, do you have thoughts on that? Like we compartmentalize it of like, here's my stuff in my room, but should that be more public of like building the home together? Yeah. I mean, I think that part of it is. You live in a house that's also the house of the association, so the main floor is kind of used for that. I live in a rectory.
which is connected to the office, which is like the worst ever. But Christine is really nice and she works at the front desk. So I chatted up with her. I was in sweatpants yesterday moving all of your stupid books. and uh you should read that fauci book no i'm not gonna read this um so the um yeah so the point is like i guess what is the relationship between a personal space
and then common space. You know, one of the things that like... i remember andrea told me like her dad took the doors off their bedrooms when they were teenagers that's awesome because he was so sick of them shutting the doors but I live with a priest whose door is always shut. And I live with a priest whose door is always open, who checks in, drops into my office, or drops into my room, and I'm sitting there like it's a totally different way of relating. And I think we have to start by saying,
We don't privatize our existence here. And then it's no man's land downstairs in the kitchen or it's one man's. house that you you rent a room from which feels very awkward as an assistant as well that's probably more common so there's just something really transient about priestly life sure that I don't think really bothers us. I don't think we're all just like, oh, I'm so sad for us. I mean, moms listening to this, they're probably like, oh, it's just so terrible.
I don't really think that we lose sleep on it. I mean, I think it's a travesty that most companions don't make their beds every day. I think that's just absolutely ridiculous. But you've got to keep your room clean. But everybody says mine looks like a hotel room, and that's the opposite extreme. So there's a neurotic side as well. This is just kind of riffing on like, how do we live in space in such a way as to facilitate
communion, that's what's going to create a home. When you don't have a fireplace at St. Louis, you don't have a common space downstairs. The rectory does not have a common space. then it's going to be everybody siloed up in their room. So building the common spaces are really key.
populating them inhabiting them so it doesn't feel like grandma's house which is what sometimes the rectory common space feels like yeah so i all these things are just kind of questions to be considering but married couples And to families, what I would say is those who labor and maybe feel or even resent the home ownership, which I would imagine happens at times.
This is a real challenge. Beauty exists to us and to work, and work exists to raise us from the dead. Like, that is a powerful way to think about work. We live in a culture that just loves. comfort and well-being and now we're we're a part of a generation that will not be known for its kind of just hard work there's a lot of hard-working millennials but Not going to be the model. We're reacting to something else, which is everybody is. But work.
exists to raise us from the dead. Yeah. I mean, with regards to homeowners, because you gave the example of Like we go off and experience the beauty of skiing, God's creation, hiking 14 years, whatever it is. And then we come back and it makes us better priests throughout the week. But if I'm a homeowner, there's so many dads out there or husbands who Saturday morning, they wake up and then mow the lawn for two hours. Why? So that the beauty of their home...
exteriorly and then, you know, interiorly as well, fixing things up or whatever's going on. It looks in a way that, you know, that the beauty inspires them to work. But then when they work, it causes a kind of newness of like they're being raised from the dead. Yeah, that's a really powerful line. Yeah.
And I think that most men I know... love working on the house and they love doing things and you become you become competent like my brother is like Mr. Home Depot now because he's just like I'm not going to pay somebody to fix this thing yeah you got to just fix it you know
and uh so what are you gonna do you know figure out how to do it and a lot of youtube a lot of youtube yeah and so there there is a sense of like my dad loved mowing the lawn more than anything that was like his his go-to And then when we mode it, it had to be perfectly straight lines. Cross the lawn, you know, very military, which is why I am the way that I am. But, yeah, we have to challenge a culture that says work is something.
that is external to me. It's something I have to do in order to live my life. I just think there's a very compelling line, work exists to raise us from the dead. What does that actually mean? Does that mean sending emails? It just means making a gift of yourself, living a sacrificial life. And this is something I think about a lot in seminary formation, about are we creating the kind of men? coming out of our seminary who are going to be priests who just
They're just get it done. Just hard workers. They got grit. They're tough. They're strong. They live balanced life. They're not workaholics. But they know how to work. And they feel a redemptive sense of what work is. It raises from the dead. I think one of the complaints I've heard lay people have against... priests that we get especially young priests is there's a sense of entitlement and I think Seminary, you have to work hard to get through seminary. Absolutely.
But one of the challenges in seminary, I don't know how to fix this, is all your meals are provided for. All your housing arrangements are provided for. You have a small income. You're pretty much going into debt when you go to seminary. But everything's given to you. Everything's just handed to you and you don't have to work that hard for certain things. You have to work really hard for other things.
I don't know. How do you form a culture where men coming out of seminary, becoming priests, they're not entitled just to be like, I'm the top of the food chain now. I'm everyone's boss. And I don't have to do any of the hard work. I don't have to take out the trash. I don't have to unload the dishwasher. I have my rectory cleaner to do that. Yeah, yeah, too. I think that entitlement is a deadly poison, and it combines pride and possessiveness. So it's owed to me.
that this happens, that this is taken care of. Somebody comes and does my laundry or whatever. You know, that kind of stuff. It's like... You feel that in priests? That's really bad. That's deadly. So living in an institution makes men soft. It just does. It turns men into boys.
because it's just like i'm disconnected i don't have any ownership of things i just do what i'm told my life is kind of prescriptive and i kind of move through it and do the do all the things and then i and then i go on to move my live my life And yeah, you just stop being like, no one told me to take out the trash today.
So I'm not even going to think to take out the trash today. Good guys, but then the trash is overflowing. So this is why priests just kind of say, well, let's just do our own thing and live in our own way. We institutionalize men, and then they carry that institutionalized mentality into parish life, which is that
I just do what I'm told, and then I live my life when I'm not doing what I have to do. This is really, this is not how most priests live, but this is really bad. And this is still happening. We perpetuate that kind of entitlement. And I think that lay people see right through it. And I think that they're... their work is not disconnected from their life. And again, the sad thing about entitlement is that you lose
the truth of giftedness because you're, you're, you're given too much and you're possessing it. You're squandering it. Um, instead of I work. And as I work, I make a gift of myself, and then I receive the hundredfold from Christ, which is what he promises to everybody from a spiritual perspective.
But I'm translating work here as, self-giving love yeah which is what christ does is this the laying down of one's life we're not talking about having a job or an occupation but just thinking about like How do I live the most sacrificial life possible for the greatest longevity so that I can serve the kingdom?
That's the question if guys don't have in their hearts and they're not actively pursuing and demonstrating, then I've got to say, I don't know if you're ready to be a priest. Because it's not going to get any easier. most of it is not driven by entitlement and pride. Most of it's driven by fear of workaholism and burnout. And I tell guys in seminary, I said, you're not going to burn out from too much work. You're going to burn out from an inordinate attachment to work.
You're thinking about work the wrong way because you have to be, you're looking to be needed. You're trying to possess your, your calculating whatever. Um, but. You can't control the workload. But you can control your relationship to the work and make sure it's healthy. I think home life is what grounds that and is what assures that. And that's why part of the task of the companions is trying...
try and get guys together in such a way as to have a family life, live like a family and have a home. And for us, it's the most basic things of just connecting with priests. knowing where we're at touching base nightcap in the evening holy hour in the morning whatever it might be but just like the touch points start to build the home right and make the rectory house into a home yeah yeah and that's where i feel like the
The flourishing of a home. Now, living with three 18-year-old seminarians is actually really helpful too because it forces Jason, CJ, and I to really be on the same page and really help. uh, when we're on the same page, it inspires these, uh, the proper dudes as we call them to, to live in a way that hopefully is inspirational that they see us like.
because every morning after holy hour we just take our calendars out and it's just like what do you got today what's going on when will you be home um and then you know when when schedules align it's like great you know sometimes you have things that come up where you're not going to be back till late. But the, one of the loneliest experiences of rectory life is you just feel like you're, um,
I don't know. You're like two ships in the night is maybe the best way to phrase it, where you know there's another guy living there or two other guys living there, but you never see them. Yeah. Well, the other thing is like the... The rectory is a place that's more marginal because
We don't have a job. Priesthood's not a job. It's not a 9 to 5, so you don't go back at the same day at 5 o'clock and, I don't know, watch Jeopardy or something like that. That's not how it works. At least it's not what it's meant to be. And so there's an identification of Priestly life with the mission. There's not an occupation.
Because like for a layperson, the home is identified with the vocation. Sure. It's the priority. It's the place, especially you build out a home for children. You want to create an ambit of joy and safety and freedom where a child can flourish in his humanity. So rectory becomes like the sleeping pad.
where I just go hard all day. And that's the experience of a lot of priests. It's kind of the guys you live with in a lot of ways, at least once you. And it's because he has a drive out to a parish that is brand new. He's doing a great job with that. We don't look for the home to be the place, the primary place. And the rectory shouldn't be the primary place where we are. Priestly life should be more itinerant. It should be out. It shouldn't be in an office either. It should just be out.
with people in the church, wherever it might be. But the primary place is not the rectory as home, and that's a vocational difference, I think. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. No, I love it. It's making me think a lot about this. I haven't read Dia Boyle's book, so I don't know what she says in there. One of the things that I've appreciated about...
Like spirituality, your house is built this way. You have really small rooms, so you don't have that much stuff in it, and it forces you to go to the communal spaces. And so my advice, if I can give unsolicited advice to families, Keep your children's rooms small.
where they don't have a lot of stuff in it and then they should be doing homework you know if you have an office great but at the kitchen table or just at a place where you just see them and you're working with them especially if they have technology um you want that stuff in the public and then you know have a place to plug those stuff in at night and then you go to your bedroom technology free and you want limited time in your room
so that you can actually spend time together as a family, you know, play board games, play card games, whatever it is. Not board games. Hate board games. But no, I'm just joking. Yeah, that'd be great. Here's another line from Norvid. And maybe this is about how do you cultivate the beauty? that inspires the awe to want to work, whether it is a board game, whether it is just sitting by the fire and talking, going on a walk, just the...
The squandering of time and the sharing of life as a family, as friends, as priests, brothers, whatever it might be. This is all part of a deeper kind of metaphysical level, which is rooted in this idea. So this is what John Paul says. Norvid had an immensely perceptive intuition of this truth. And he wrote that beauty is the form of love. beauty is the form of love beauty cannot be created if one does not participate in that love one cannot create beauty if one does not look
with the eyes through which God embraces the world he created in the beginning, and beholds man whom he created within that world. He's talking about the creation of art and the truth of beauty, because really a home is a work of art. It's a work of art. It's a work of self-expression and of co-creation with God, the Creator, to take a space.
and to uniquely fashion it as your own within relationship. And that's why it's hard to make a home by yourself because it's meant to be the relational dynamic of the beauty. is expressed interpersonally. It's not to say it can't be done solo, but it's meant to be a place that is shared, that's a place of communion. That's really the heart of it all.
But if we're not inspired by the beauty of our relationships, then we're not going to desire to make a home because a home is just a physical expression of what is communion, which is an indwelling in the other person. I am at home in this person. in father sean as he is in me because there's friendship there because there's real there's a real kind of spirit of predilection, as John Paul II will talk about, the choice in the election, but also the delight in the other.
And home is physically expressing that. It grows out of that. It also physically creates the space to cultivate that more, but it has to start in persons and it's beauty that moves the human heart.
Yeah, I love that. And it does start in persons. And in many ways, like we had that summer conference a few years ago, right, where Father Brady is like, uh the home is in the brothers like can you be with the brothers and and that should be where we we kind of return of just like when you're stressed when you're anxious like who do you call you call a brother um yet
I agreed, but physical spaces are still really important. And you could have a home with the brothers where, right, the rectory that you currently live in, which is also an office, as you mentioned, the kitchen there is like the weirdest setup I've ever seen where like the back of the stove is like,
should be next to a wall and so it's like in this island that's been awkwardly cut out you know and it's like it's just hodgepodge together and so no one's going to want to hang out there but like how do you have a home with the brothers or with family Or can you have a home with persons in that way if you don't have a physical space? I would say yes, you can. It just makes it more difficult. Yeah.
Yeah, it does. And we don't have common space in the rectory right now, which is unfortunate. We do what we can with that. And we have other places we can go. But I think that... The home is with the brothers, but circling back full and then kind of concluding this. The priest is not one who has a home in the same way. And we should not be looking for that.
uh that there is a the home is really distinctive to marriage in its i think in its preeminent form for children um other vocations every human being needs a home in some way but it's just We can't expect that. We can rely on friends, especially women who are friends, to help us kind of create that space. We can inhabit the space and live in such a way, especially as brother priests challenge ourselves to live more intentionally, like you're saying, to be at home with the brothers.
But ultimately, there's something precarious and evangelical about the priestly life, which is that we're on the move. And you're packing up your stuff here and moving. And you're going to move to a new place. You're going to be there for a year. You're going to be there for however many years. I don't know. But we have to be ready for that, and we have to keep that before us. Because once you're a pastor, you're going to want to settle in, create the home.
And I think there's always something about the purge, about the movement, about the readiness for change that we keep before us. And that's part of the adventure of our vocation. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And there's a giftedness to the poverty, the givenness, as you mentioned, to the, you know, it kind of makes us poor. I'm just like, I don't own a home. And I remember Ryan O'Neill once said that to me, like he loves he's like such a homebody that he would just love just to.
have a home and like invite people into it but as priests like yeah it's just the constant constant moving yeah All right. That's all I got. Thank you. That was good. So The Thoughtful Home, do you recommend that? Recommend it. Dia Boyle, Thoughtful Home. And then also, John Paul II, A Meditation on Givenness as well. That's the two things we were working from today. So what do you got for shout outs?
Let's see. Shoutouts. I'd like to shout out two people if I can. Jackson or Jack Fox and Sabrina. Sabrina, I can't remember your last name, but you are soon to be a fox. They're going to the marriage prep retreat this weekend. They're listeners. At least Jackson is a listener of the podcast. So thanks for listening. And then I'd like to shout out Tyler Smith, whom I've never met, but. He apparently loves hockey. He's from Castle Rock and he listens to the podcast. Nice.
Go Avs. Go Avs. All right, do you meet Megan from Carlos Springs at the book launch? She drove up from Carlos Springs. Megan Helmstead or someone else? No, it was a different Megan. I think so. She came to the 6 p.m. Mass. Yeah, she's really, really great. So Megan, thanks for coming up. It was really great to meet you. We really enjoyed it. And then I had a... Creazio fundraiser on the book with Amanda and Brandon Mixon and your friend Jenny and Mario Gasparo were there.
brent and jenny hanlon um we had a really fun night it was great to be with him drank some good whiskey talked about the book a little bit and uh drank whiskey but didn't do much talking about the book huh that is true we talked more about greyhounds and all kinds of random stuff so Alright, that's it. You got anything else? I don't think so.
All right, thanks for listening. Father Sean and I will be back in two weeks as we kind of continue to move through Lent. We'll be approaching Holy Week and moving into, we're going to be together through April, and then we're going to make the handoff to the other boys. So thanks for listening. Wishing you a blessed Lent. We're praying for you.
catholicstuffpodcast at gmail.com. Please let us know what you're thinking about, especially about the book Heights and Unto Depths, and we will see you next week.