In today’s episode I talk about this beautiful quote from Robert Sarah. It’s a reminder that the effectiveness of your vocation does not depend upon working harder. In the busyness of each day it can be hard to take the time we need for what truly matters. In this message I want to try and explain how much change you can experience when you make a start upon the journey of a deeper interior life.
Transcript
Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you.
Speaker:Once again, welcome back to the Catholic teacher daily podcast.
Speaker:Hope you're doing well.
Speaker:Busy times.
Speaker:Huh?
Speaker:It's uh, depending on when you're listening to this, there's, what's
Speaker:the old Navy seals saying, you know, there's a famous book about the us Navy
Speaker:seals called no easy day, no easy day.
Speaker:I think there's sometimes it's the same with, um, with being a Catholic educator.
Speaker:Isn't it?
Speaker:There's, uh, there's not often a days where you go, wow.
Speaker:That was a breeze.
Speaker:There's always so much that, uh, is being asked of you.
Speaker:In this incredible giving of yourself.
Speaker:So I hope that you are.
Speaker:Slowly becoming an expert on self care.
Speaker:I, uh, talked to my wife, Karen, about this all the time.
Speaker:I got kind of good at it.
Speaker:Sort of.
Speaker:You know, I sort of got pretty burned out a few years back and, uh,
Speaker:learn to take better care of myself.
Speaker:And, uh, it's the old saying, you know, put your own.
Speaker:Oxygen mask on first in the plane and then help others.
Speaker:So, um, there may be no easy day, but we can navigate this if
Speaker:we're looking after ourselves.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Maybe I can just prompt you a little bit.
Speaker:If you're feeling a bit frazzled, remember that, uh, nothing is served by
Speaker:you getting wiped out with exhaustion.
Speaker:And also remember that there's no way.
Speaker:That the Lord was going to call you into a vocation just to wipe you out.
Speaker:I think he was going to call you into a vocation to help you become
Speaker:more deeply dependent upon him.
Speaker:But, uh, you know, burnout, exhaustion, all that stuff that happens.
Speaker:Isn't his will.
Speaker:So can I be so bold as to say that, that, uh, and I know some of your listening gum,
Speaker:or what about the complexities and all the demands we have, and we can't help.
Speaker:I hear you.
Speaker:I know.
Speaker:I keep saying that on stage that, uh,
Speaker:The complexity and the pressures are increasing.
Speaker:And, uh, we can only do so much in terms of efficiency sooner or later.
Speaker:I think what we're looking at here is a great dependence upon
Speaker:the grace of the holy spirit.
Speaker:To carry us through, uh, talked about it earlier this week.
Speaker:If you want to go back and check out the episode called the cosmic gamble.
Speaker:I think that's worth listening to, because I really think that's where we get to.
Speaker:And I want to talk a bit more about that today.
Speaker:I want to give you a great quote as always from, uh, one of my favorites,
Speaker:Robert Cardinal, Sarah, um, an African prelate, African Cardinal.
Speaker:Who, uh, just writes beautifully in his books.
Speaker:Are very special to me, but listen to this beautiful quote, he said
Speaker:the most important moments in life.
Speaker:Are the hours of prayer and adoration.
Speaker:They give birth to a human being.
Speaker:Fashion.
Speaker:Our true identity.
Speaker:They root our existence in mystery.
Speaker:Listen to one more time, the most important moments in life.
Speaker:Are the hours of prayer and adoration.
Speaker:They give birth to a human being.
Speaker:Fashion, our true identity.
Speaker:They root our existence in mystery.
Speaker:I think there is so much here we could, I could talk about this for half an hour.
Speaker:I love how he says that this is commitment to prayer.
Speaker:That fashion's our true identity.
Speaker:You see life and experience and a whole bunch of things,
Speaker:positive and negative experiences.
Speaker:Tend to shape many people's sense of identity, you know, they can.
Speaker:If, if we've lived with rejection or judgment, we can get a
Speaker:sense of identity around that.
Speaker:If, um, people have always told us we're amazing and we've always been
Speaker:successful, we can base our identity in that, but let's always remember these
Speaker:things can be taken away in a heartbeat.
Speaker:So what prayer does, is it.
Speaker:It sort of reveals and fashions and shapes our true identity.
Speaker:What is that?
Speaker:Well, the ultimate level of identity, and I always used to
Speaker:teach this in staff seminars.
Speaker:So I'd say, look, there is.
Speaker:Three levels of vocation.
Speaker:We, you know, Often when we hear the word vocation, we automatically.
Speaker:You know, if you haven't heard about it much, you, you think vocation
Speaker:automatically means religious life?
Speaker:Which of course it doesn't just mean that.
Speaker:People think vocation means a job or a career, and we're going to get
Speaker:to that, but there's three levels and that's actually the third level.
Speaker:So the first level of Christian vocation is simply the vocation
Speaker:of being a child of God.
Speaker:Did you know that that's the first vocation?
Speaker:Every single one of us is called into that vocation by the grace of baptism.
Speaker:So the fundamental vocation that we have is being a son or a daughter of God.
Speaker:That's the ultimate level of identity.
Speaker:So when Cardinal Sauer here talks about fashioning our true identity.
Speaker:This commitment to prayer.
Speaker:This being with the father.
Speaker:Reveals the truest level of our identity because in deep prayer,
Speaker:Where we're not subject to the world.
Speaker:We're not subject to people's judgment of us.
Speaker:We're not subject to people's construction of our identity.
Speaker:So you could see what happens if we don't pray.
Speaker:We don't have a life of prayer that our identity is you.
Speaker:Is a pretty flexible thing that can be shaped by all sorts of
Speaker:positive or negative forces.
Speaker:And then he goes on here to say that, um, these hours of prayer and
Speaker:adoration root our existence in mystery.
Speaker:I always love talking about that because I think in a postmodern world,
Speaker:we have huge problems with mystery.
Speaker:We're an extremely technocratic society.
Speaker:So we've sort of made a fair STI and pact that we believe that, you know,
Speaker:technology and administration and governance have the answer to everything.
Speaker:We don't do mystery.
Speaker:We don't like death.
Speaker:I've often used to say that, uh, there's a great quote from Richard,
Speaker:John Neuhaus, father Richard, John Neuhaus, who said that?
Speaker:One of the interesting contrast between our moment in history and the Victorian
Speaker:era is this now often the Victorian era was, was seen as very prudish, right
Speaker:around matters of the body and sexuality.
Speaker:And the quote that he wants shared is you said that, um, you know,
Speaker:Well, he basically suggested that in the Victorian era.
Speaker:Nobody wanted to talk about, you know, six, but death was common, right?
Speaker:Death was everywhere.
Speaker:You know, you would see dead bodies.
Speaker:There'd be, you know, funeral processions in the streets, dead, you
Speaker:know, infant mortality was so high.
Speaker:So that was a culture that didn't talk about sex, but very much talked
Speaker:about death because it was everywhere.
Speaker:Now stay with me because he says, if you come into our current postmodern
Speaker:world, it's the exact inverse of that.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So we're a culture that often is obsessed with the body and sex and
Speaker:that's, you can see that all through the internet, social media, of course.
Speaker:But we're a culture that doesn't want to talk about death.
Speaker:And one of the interesting things about COVID is that there's this phenomenal
Speaker:anxiety that's been triggered.
Speaker:This I've read some really interesting.
Speaker:Um, I guess.
Speaker:Psychological and spiritual insights into this idea that the
Speaker:COVID has revealed a deep anxiety.
Speaker:A deep, deep anxiety around death and mystery.
Speaker:And this idea that, that through governments and, you know, through
Speaker:control and systems, we can automatically mitigate these risks.
Speaker:So all of this, I hope I'm not losing you is basically saying that we're a culture.
Speaker:That doesn't want to do mystery.
Speaker:But when you go into prayer and you go into, especially into adoration.
Speaker:You, you become a contingent being your existence is dependent upon something.
Speaker:You get this sense of this great enveloping mystery that you're part of.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:What's this got to do with you.
Speaker:I know.
Speaker:That's what you think.
Speaker:I'm banging the drum.
Speaker:I've been banging the same drum forever.
Speaker:And I think that what we need for a transformative experience
Speaker:in Catholic education.
Speaker:And I mean at the personal level.
Speaker:So you listening to this now.
Speaker:A transformation of your vocation and a transformation of your school.
Speaker:And remember, I really talk about systems.
Speaker:Um, mother Teresa was kind of big on this.
Speaker:She, she kind of felt that big programs weren't really that fancy.
Speaker:She kind of thought that what you really do is act at the most
Speaker:basic level of your own classroom.
Speaker:For example.
Speaker:Your own relationships with other teachers on staff.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:I don't think we can carry this vocation without a.
Speaker:Call to a deeper life of prayer.
Speaker:And as I say, in almost every episode and I sit in the cosmic gamble episode.
Speaker:The fear we have is that, and I was talking to Karen about this yesterday.
Speaker:You know, she's, my wife is an amazing woman.
Speaker:She's running this incredible online.
Speaker:Um, ministry Catholic ministry for women.
Speaker:And, you know, she's creating some phenomenal stuff and has a huge following.
Speaker:And, but she said, She's having to work pretty hard.
Speaker:And, uh, and I'm being as supportive as I can be while we were talking yesterday.
Speaker:And I said, Don, I said, you know, the, the challenge is that
Speaker:what most people do is they.
Speaker:They believe that if they stop, if they take time for prayer.
Speaker:That the stresses will increase.
Speaker:They believe that if they stop.
Speaker:Um, that all the stuff will Mount up.
Speaker:You know, some people think that prayer is kind of an indulgence or,
Speaker:you know, maybe a quick prayer for 30 seconds in the morning and in the car.
Speaker:But deep prayer.
Speaker:And I said to her that what we learned from the saints of
Speaker:course is the inverse of that.
Speaker:We learned that from the saints that this commitment to pray creates this
Speaker:extraordinary reality where the holy spirit just tends to do stuff through
Speaker:them because they're fully yielded.
Speaker:So that's the cosmic gamble and that's why people like Cardinal Robert Sarah here
Speaker:is saying that the most important moments in our life are not the study or not the
Speaker:actual teaching or not the conversations, the most important moments in our
Speaker:life as Catholic educators actually.
Speaker:The commitment to prayer.
Speaker:To Eucharistic adoration.
Speaker:To the sacraments.
Speaker:Because it's those things that allow the graces of our baptism
Speaker:to flow into the vocation.
Speaker:So I hope that's given you a lot to think about there's a lot there.
Speaker:Um, so.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:It's the cosmic gambler, right?
Speaker:And as I've been saying, the last few episodes, I've, I've made a decision.
Speaker:I've always had a very structured prayer life for decades, but I've been spending.
Speaker:At least an hour a day now, Eucharistic adoration.
Speaker:And that's with all of the pressures in my life, three young children,
Speaker:you know, complex business and vocational stuff that I do.
Speaker:I did.
Speaker:It's just become a non-negotiable and, uh, and I think Cardinal Sarah is right.
Speaker:The more that I go into that hour a day.
Speaker:The more, I have a different sense of self.
Speaker:You know, the fashioning of a true identity and.
Speaker:The more that I'm exposed to this great ineffable, vast mystery,
Speaker:the paradox of the mystery of God.
Speaker:Who's both utterly ineffable.
Speaker:And in a sense, unknowable.
Speaker:But also deeply personal.
Speaker:There's a paradox because of the incarnation.
Speaker:The God.
Speaker:Of the cosmos is not only so vast and unsearchable, but
Speaker:also deeply personal and human.
Speaker:It's incredible.
Speaker:Isn't it?
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:All right friends.
Speaker:That's it for me today.
Speaker:I just want to encourage you make prayer, the bedrock of your vocation.
Speaker:If you've got a chapel at your school, sneak in there.
Speaker:Just 20 minutes, half an hour, whatever you can do build on it.
Speaker:I use noise, canceling headphones, believe it or not.
Speaker:I have a set of Bose noise, canceling headphones.
Speaker:I'm sure people that adoration think I'm strange.
Speaker:But I have a couple of apps on my phone.
Speaker:I use the calm app and I just have these, um, nature sounds.
Speaker:Um, I actually use something called Jasper lake.
Speaker:So it's like this recording of a just water and night chat and
Speaker:it's very quiet and it allows me to enter into deep silence.
Speaker:So use whatever works.
Speaker:If you get distracted.
Speaker:Um, but I hope that's a blessing to you.
Speaker:Please do me a favor.
Speaker:Make sure you've subscribed to the podcast.
Speaker:Hit that subscribe button, wherever you're listening.
Speaker:Uh, jump across to Spotify, Amazon.
Speaker:Uh, Google anywhere, apple and, uh, and please subscribe.
Speaker:And of course, check out the website@onecatholicteacher.com.
Speaker:One Catholic teacher.com.
Speaker:And send this to some friends all right that's it for me
Speaker:today my name is Jonathan dog.
Speaker:god bless you thank you for your ministry this has been the catholic
Speaker:teacher daily podcast and i'll have another message for you tomorrow
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