Franciscan Friar Fr Casey Cole, founder of Breaking in the Habit, recently spoke at Reclaim in Brisbane during his visit to Australia. In this talk and Q&A, Fr Casey shares thoughtful reflections on living the Beatitudes and what it truly means to be blessed today, rooted in our Catholic faith.
Transcript
Thank you. Thank you. It’s wonderful to be here. Yes, I did come from the States. It took me 31 hours from door to door to get here. It’s a long way, but luckily I got here Saturday, so I’m mostly awake now. Sort of switching. This is my first time to Australia, first time to the Southern Hemisphere. So, the world is not upside down as I thought it was, but wonderful to be here. Wonderful to be here for Reclaim. And I love that name. And it fits, I think, with The Beatitudes. Because not so much the word of The Beatitudes, but what The Beatitudes mean, which is blessed. Blessed. I see this word all the time. I’m on social media probably chronically, probably more than I should be. And I’m on Instagram and I see #blessed all the time. And you’ve probably seen it as well. And you probably see when it comes up. Just got an A on my test. #blessed. Just got a nice latte. #blessed, right? New job, new boyfriend, great new shirt, #blessed. Everything’s wonderful. And in one sense, that’s great. In one sense, I don’t want to get angry about that because I know what people are doing is just saying that they’re thankful that God is in their lives and things are good and they don’t want to take things for granted. And so, no shade on those people. But I do have a problem with the use of blessed in that way all the time. Because if we look to scripture and we looked at what blessed actually means, the way that Jesus used that, because that’s what The Beatitudes mean. Blessed are, not the people who have all the money and the comfort and the stability. He says, “Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the hungry. Blessed are the mourners.” When was the last time you were on Instagram and someone said at a funeral of a loved one, #blessed? No, no one would ever say that. Just got back from the doctor, have a terminal illness #blessed. No, this is not our conception of blessed. And so, this beautiful idea of reclaiming is something we can do tonight to look to what Jesus says. That blessed are the people who are poor and hungry and mourning and have terrible things by the world’s standards that happen to them. This is what it means to be blessed. And so, unpacking that. What’s wrong with Jesus? What is He getting at here? Because that does not fit with my conception of blessed. I don’t think any of us are really looking to be sick or to be hungry or to be poor. And so, we ask ourselves, is Jesus just a sadomasochist? Does He want us to suffer? No, of course not. Doesn’t bear itself out in anywhere in the gospel. We know that He wants the best for us. He knows. We know He wants us to feel love and comfort in Him. He says, “come and rest. Eat without paying. Come, I am a light load. I will give you light work.” So, we know He is not a sadomasochist. Maybe it’s a Job situation. Maybe it’s He’s testing us, and once we go through these difficult things, well, then He’ll reward us in the future. I’m not so sure that’s what The Beatitudes are about either. Because He says in Matthew 5 and Luke 6 is, blessed are the poor, blessed are the hungry, not blessed will be. But there’s actually something in the very nature of being hungry and being poor and mourning. Something about that situation right now that gives us blessing. This is what we’re here to talk about tonight because I think it’s so countercultural. It is so against the way we often think. Why couldn’t we see these things as good? I’d like to suggest three ways that these are blessings. The first is that when we experience these things, they offer us a greater dependence on God. The second is that they give us greater empathy for those who suffer along with us. And third, they give us a greater focus on what really matters. These are the things that The Beatitudes do for us. And when we experience all those things, we truly are blessed. And so, let’s start with the first one here. Dependence on God. I have a very dated and not so helpful reference, but I’m going to go for it anyway. How many people were alive in 1992? Okay. How many people are from America? Okay. So, in 1992, there was a very big event that happened in, actually wasn’t in the United States, I forget where it was. Did you ever hear of the Dream Team, the basketball team? They were the greatest team ever assembled. I mean, you probably don’t even follow basketball, but who doesn’t know who Michael Jordan is? Just the greatest basketball player of all time. I won’t hear anything about LeBron. Michael Jordan, incredible. This team was so good. They won every game of the World Championships and then the Olympics easily. They won by an average of 44 points. An average, which means they won some games by like 70. Every single game they were dominant. They won the final game. I forget what the exact number was. 35 points, the gold medal game. No one stood a chance. And of course, we know why. Because Michael Jordan was on the team and Scottie Pippen and Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. You just go down this list and like Charles Barkley is sitting on the bench. You’re like, “Okay, they’re going to be okay.” Now, here’s my question. How it relates to The Beatitudes. Anyone know who the coach was on that team? Of course you don’t. Of course you don’t. Because the coach did not matter. When you have Michael Jordan on your team, you can coach blindfolded and you’re still going to win by 50. I could have coached that team. No one is going up to Chuck Daly, by the way, and saying, “Wow, you’re an incredible guy. You did such incredible work with this ragtag bunch of guys.” No, he’s not getting any attention. Michael is getting attention. And I think this is a lesson that God wants to teach us. God does not want to be pushed to the side. He doesn’t want us to think, “Well, I did it all myself.” He doesn’t want us thinking that we’re Michael Jordan and therefore we put everyone on our back and we just carry them to victory. No, He wants us to remember that He is the author of all life. He is the one that makes things go. If we had a coach that took me and four of you and won the gold, well then yeah, that’s a God that we want to follow. That’s a coach that did stuff. And this is precisely what we see all throughout scripture. Think about back to the beginning. We hear the war of Gideon. Gideon had 20,000 troops and God’s like, “Nah, that’s not going to work. That does not work with what I’m going with. 20,000, you in this battle, you’re going to think you did it, and I don’t want you thinking that. So, He cuts it in half and cuts it in half and cuts it in half until He’s down to 300 soldiers. Can you imagine like four rooms, you know, probably close to 150, I don’t know, here. You imagine if we like went on and I don’t know, took on New Zealand or something or I don’t know, go back and take on Canada. That seems probably easy, we could do that. If we took on a whole nation just us. That’d be pretty powerful. We would look around and say, “I don’t know how we did that. Clearly, we had some help.” And this is what God wants. This is what God wants in our lives. Not to think that we are Michael Jordans, but to realise, “Oh my gosh, I did things that I could not have done on my own. Clearly, He is on my side.” And to the extent that we have wealth, to the extent that we have power, to the extent that we are in control, we look to ourselves with glory. And we say, “don’t worry. I got this.” And that is not a place that is blessed. That is not a place close to God. I have experienced many people who are homeless, many people who have been evicted, many people who are just struggling to get by. And while I don’t want to romanticise poverty and say that everyone who is poor has faith, I have been amazed by the extraordinary faith of some people who are poor. And you could say despite their poverty, they still have faith. But I would say because of their poverty they have faith. Because they realise that they cannot do it on their own. They’ve went down that path of saying, “I’m going to do everything on my own, and it didn’t work.” It is only in looking to God that they realise they have anything that they need. It’s sometimes so sad to see those who are spiritually poor in a negative sense, those who have everything of this world. They may be comfortable. They may have the things that the world says are successful, but what they end up with is a very empty life because they rely on themselves. And at the end of the day when really difficult things come, things like sickness, things like death, they are completely powerless because no credit card is going to save you from that. No social media clout, no political power is going to save you from the inevitable. This is coming for us all. Those who are truly happy, those who are truly blessed are the ones who put their trust in the Lord. Who say, “Lord, I am not Michael Jordan, I need the real coach, I need You to lead us there. “And so, I think sometimes when we have that dependence on God when we are forced to look to Him, we find we are truly happy not when we have everything in this world. And so, we have dependence on God, it’s a great thing to be poor sometimes. But I think there’s something else that comes from The Beatitudes, comes from living in a way that the world does not understand and that is empathy. When I was in high school, I fell in love with the girl that I was going to marry. This girl was amazing. She was absolutely perfect. I mean, she was a hot mess, but she was perfect for me. It was actually a talk like this that I fell in love with her. She was in our youth group and she stood up and she was funny and she was charismatic and she talked about the Lord and I was like, “Yes, that is what I want. This is amazing. I can’t believe there are people out there like this.” Even more surprising, I couldn’t believe that she liked me, too. And we end up dating for two years. I swore literally by week two that I was going to marry this girl. Spoiler, I didn’t. I don’t know if that’s obvious. Don’t worry, I’m over it. It’s okay. But it gets worse because this woman was absolutely fundamental in my faith in helping me grow as a person. And I remember this very distinct moment. I was in a freshman year of college and I was going to adoration and I believed in the Eucharist, and I loved it and I knew that Jesus was truly present, and I received Him with great love and joy. But there was something about adoration that didn’t really click with me. I saw people around me with such emotional reactions and they had these life conversions and I was just a little too intellectual, I think, and I wasn’t feeling much. And so, I would just kind of sit there like, “Yeah, I get it, I guess.” And okay, I’m kind of bored, right? And I did this for a little while. And then I started thinking about her and I thought about my love for her and her love for me. And I thought about the ways that she had cared for me and supported me and the ways that I had messed up and she forgave me. And as I thought about our relationship and how rock solid it was, I looked at the Eucharist, I was like, that’s ten times better. That, I get it. Like if I feel that way about her and she feels that way about me, imagine how God feels about me. And it was that moment where it clicked, and I just felt this overwhelming sense of love from God, and this place of comfort to know that I was where I was supposed to be. And then three days later, she broke up with me. I cannot make this up. I guess she served her purpose. She led me to God and then God had other plans for me. But I was devastated obviously because I finally had this moment of faith and it was because of her and then she was gone. And the reason I tell this story is because I get it. I get heartbreak. I get having your world completely shattered of having a vision of what things are going to be and feeling in a certain way and then it being taken away. And so, when I work with high schoolers, I work with college students, I work with people who are just having maybe their first loves, their first relationships, and they come to me, and they say they’re devastated and they’re crying and their whole world is ending. I do not say, “Don’t worry about it. It’s going to get better.” I don’t say cliches and dismiss their feelings because I understand what they’re going through because I have been through that myself. There’s something about suffering that allows us to experience the suffering of others in a new way. I love this quote, at least attributed to Oscar Romero. I’ve never found the actually say it, but I love Oscar Romero, I love this quote. So, we’re going to go with it. And he said, “There are certain things in life that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.” There are certain things in life that can only be seen through eyes that have cried. That once you’ve experienced something, you see the world in a different way. Once you yourself have been hurt or betrayed, once you yourself have failed, you can look upon the failure and betrayal of others with different light. You don’t look on them with judgment. You don’t easily dismiss or overlook, but you can say, “I see you.” Not just here, but here. I see you. I feel you. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, but when you meet someone who has had the same experience as you, maybe walked the same trials. You almost feel like family right away. There’s something about it that just binds you and you don’t even have to say. You’re like, I know. I know you. What a beautiful gift that is. What a wonderful opportunity to grow closer to each other through suffering. Through suffering. I remember Steven Colbert, I don’t know if he comes to Australia, the comedian and what is he, the Tonight Show, or something like that. But he, shortly after Anderson Cooper’s mother died, he did an interview and he talked about the fact that when he was a kid, he had two older brothers and his father die in a plane crash. He was ten years old. And he says that for the rest of his life, he has wished that that hadn’t happened. He was so devastated by that moment until his faith began to reveal that he is now able to be more compassionate for other people who have lost. And he finds it as a great vocation to be able to comfort people because he knows what that feels like. And he’s gotten to this crazy point where he is thankful for that which he wish had never happened. He’s thankful. That’s a place of blessedness. That he has felt that heartbreak and so now he can connect with those who have been heartbroken, and he can lift them up out of their darkness. That his faith allows him to connect with people and offer them a taste of the kingdom that death will be no more, to give them hope. This is what our vocation is as Christians. This is why Jesus has come to us and we call ourselves Christians, those Christlikes, so that we may suffer with others. May have that compassion quite literally to suffer with others, so that we may bring light and hope. I believe as strange as this sounds that we do not have enough heartbreak in our lives. I didn’t say tragedy. We have enough tragedy in our world. Just turned on the news. There are calamities every day. What I mean is true heartbreak. Too often what happens when we look out into the world is we see the terrible things and we get angry. We have an overabundance, I think, and maybe you all are much more peaceful people. I know you are. But I know in America we have too much outrage. That when we look on the bad things that happen, the first thing that we do is try to blame someone. It’s your fault. I can’t believe they did it. Let’s fix it by getting rid of those people. How easy it is to lash out, to blame someone. Sometimes it’s justified. Sometimes people hurt us and we want to hurt them back. That makes perfect sense. It’s not going to get us what we want, but it makes perfect sense that those people are our enemies, so let’s try to get rid of them. The problem is it doesn’t actually satisfy, and it doesn’t bring us any closer to our God. And so, what I say is I think we need more heartbreak in our lives, not tragedy. That when we experience these things, we may not lash out at them, but that we may feel their pain. I believe very strongly that hurt people hurt people. That the reason that people lash out is because they feel powerless, because they’re afraid, because they have been hurt themselves. What if instead of giving them what they may deserve, what might be justice, we might have a little mercy to look at our enemy and say, “I wonder what’s going on here. Why do you hate me? Why do you hurt people? What is it that hurts you first? And what might I do to be able to heal you?” I love the story of Saint Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio. I don’t know if you’ve heard this story, but it’s a legend from the 14th, 15th century. Francis went among a city that had a ravaging wolf and it was eating people’s sheep and it was hurting people. It was even getting a taste for human blood. And Francis said, “This will not do.” And so, he went out and he made the sign of the cross. He asked God to bless him, and he found that wolf, and he condemned that wolf, and he said, “You terrible wolf. You are doing what God has not created you to do.” You can see this is a legend, right? And this sounds like very Francis. What do you think the wolf did? Yeah, you would think. In reality, this is a legend. So, the wolf bowed before Francis in contrition and felt terrible for the sins he had committed. And we love this part. We love putting people down and saying, “You have done wrong.” But the real point of the story is what came afterwards. Because while Francis was right to say, “You have sinned and you should change your life,” what Francis really saw was that the reason that the wolf was stealing and hurting people was because he was hungry, and he was lonely. And so, Francis had an idea rather than punish the wolf, what if he sought reconciliation? Because he remembered what it was like to be hungry. He knows what it’s like to be lonely. He wouldn’t want any creature to feel that way. And so, he went to the village and said, “Please feed this wolf. And to the wolf, please see these as your companions.” And as the legend goes, they became friends, and they loved each other. So much so that by the end of the wolf’s life when he died, the people mourned him and had a funeral because he had become their friend. What if we could approach our enemies in this way? Defeating them not with the sword and not with our words, but with our hearts. Our hearts breaking for them so that they can feel what we feel, and we can feel what they feel. And so that they’re no longer our enemies before, because they’re our friends. How wonderful that would be. This is what I believe heartbreak does for us. This is what I believe being poor and hungry, being outcast, having those Beatitudes do. Is it brings us closer to one another through empathy. And sometimes we can experience this naturally. Sometimes we have these terrible things that we’d never wish upon ourselves, but they happen, and we see them as blessings. But sometimes we’ve got to go out of our way to experience them. Sometimes we have to look for empathy. This is why we fast. This is why we deny ourselves. Not because we can’t afford food, but because we want that tiny dose of hunger to remind ourselves, “Oh yeah, this sucks. I don’t like this. I can’t imagine going all week like this. I’m just having one day.” And might we have a little more patience for people who are hungry? I remember living in Philadelphia, our soup kitchen, having a terrible night. We didn’t have air conditioning. It was in Celsius, probably 35, 38 degrees that night in the middle of the night. It was hot. And I just like, this is terrible. And then I went out the next morning and I saw that there was a man sleeping on my doorstep. And this was a man who caused me problems the day before and had said mean things to me. And I just thought, it’s okay. Your night was worse than mine. And I can understand that I was in a bad mood. I can’t even imagine how you’re feeling. How that empathy can break things down. And so maybe we fast, maybe we spend time among the poor, maybe we walk the way they walk so that we can understand, not just here, but in our hearts. And so, these Beatitudes, these terrible things of the world can actually be blessings because they give us a greater dependence on God. They give us greater empathy. But I think maybe most of all, is they give us greater focus, a desire for what really matters. A number of years ago, I had an opportunity to go to Mexico. I worked at a refugee camp down on the Mexican Guatemalan border. It was a place called Los Setenta y Dos, the 72, and it was named after 72 migrants who were brutally murdered by cartels at the time. They realised that these people did not have a safe place to go, that they were fleeing violence and fleeing poverty. And the friars set up this place as a rest bit, as a place of comfort for them. They would stop by and get food and then continue on their journey. And in the two months there, I met a guy who was trying to go up to the United States. He was trying to cross the border into Texas. And he told me that it was going to be a difficult journey. He knew this because he had done it three times already, the thousand-mile or maybe 1,500-kilometre trek that he was going to walk most of the way. And along the way, he was probably going to be robbed, and he was probably going to be extorted, and he would probably face violence. And he thought at this time he might not make it. He had survived three times and been stabbed once, he might die. And me in my ignorance looked at him and said, “Well, why would you do that? Isn’t that really dangerous?” And he looked back at me, and he said, “What choice do I have? I lived in Texas for ten years before I was deported. I have two children, and I have a wife there. I had a job. I had a life in Texas. What do I know about this world? I would rather die trying than give up, than abandon my family, than use my breath for anything else than trying to return home. This man was singularly focused. He knew where he was going, and he was not going to let anything get in the way. This is what comes from suffering. This is what comes when we have no other choice in life. I believe when Jesus talks about a hunger and thirst for righteousness, he is reminding us that we cannot do anything else when we are hungry. Anyone here get hangry ever? You miss a meal and then you are just a bit too much to be around. Yes, me too. There’s something about that hunger that makes you unable to do anything else. You think about food and food and food. I went on a field trip once when I was in third grade, and I forgot to bring my lunch. We went to Washington DC, and I don’t remember seeing any of the monuments. I don’t remember seeing the White House. It’s a complete blur because all I was thinking was, I need food. I need food. I need food. This is what this man was thinking. I don’t care about danger. I don’t care about being robbed. I don’t care about dying. All I want is to get to my family. Can you imagine if we lived our lives in the same way for the kingdom of heaven? Those distractions, those temptations would not get in our way if we had that hunger, that true desire, that focus. And I believe that’s what hunger, that’s what poverty, that’s what being an outcast and persecuted does is it reminds us that this world will never satisfy. It cannot give us anything that we really want, and we better be focused on something more. And just in the same way that I think we need a greater sense of empathy, and we need more heartbreak, I think we need more desire in our world. It may sound strange because I think we have a lot of desires. Our world is all filled with desires, but it’s actually not. It’s a desire for instant gratification. I think we want whatever’s easiest. We’ll go get the fast food. We’ll go get whatever is already packaged for us. But desire, the thing that focuses and says, “No, I don’t want that. I’m thinking about that there and I’m going to go for it.” That’s not as common. I remember this as a child. I wanted a bike, and I could have asked my parents, and they would have gotten me like a $40 bike, and I could have had it, and it would have been great and it would have broken in a few weeks. But I didn’t want that. I got a paper route, and I worked and I worked and I worked and it took me about six months before I had enough money for a bike that I really wanted. It was a nice bike. It was like a $150 bike. And this would have been great. But I said, you know, if I work two more months, I can get the really cool bike. And so, I denied myself and denied myself and I focused, and I got that bike. It was great. And that is what satisfies, not that cheap one, not the instant one. It is something about having the focus on the future rather than the instant gratification that brings us true happiness and true focus. This is what The Beatitudes bring us. This is what a life of hardship brings. Sometimes when we have everything we want, we can get distracted and say, “this world’s great, I’ll just stay here. This is everything I want.” But then we realise it doesn’t satisfy. Sometimes we need to look beyond and say, “The kingdom of heaven is what I want, and I’m going to give up everything.” Sometimes we may be crazy and take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Maybe we’ll give up the immediate gratification of the comforts of this world because we know there’s something greater. It’s what Jesus says when talking about celibacy, that some people don’t get married because they’re focused on the kingdom. Now, this is not to say that you shouldn’t get married, right? But it says that sometimes we look beyond what we want right here for something we want right there. I think that sometimes hardships brings us that. It gives us this challenge to look beyond. I’m reminded of a story I told yesterday of a woman. She was born in the French Revolution. Can you imagine being seventeen in 1793 in France? It’s probably not a great thing. She was of the aristocracy. She had everything she wanted in life. She had food. She had power. She had a great home, until it all came crashing down. Right? When she was seventeen, 17,000 people literally lost their heads. That’s a lot of death. That is going to mess you up a little bit. 10,000 other people died in prison without a trial. This is a woman who saw some stuff. But it was because of those things that she realised she needed to change her life. She realised that there was an opportunity before her that there were a lot of children now without any parents. There were a lot of children that didn’t have an education. There was a world that desperately needed reconciliation. And so, she decided to set her life on founding orphanages and feeding people and teaching people. And she ended up forming a religious order. And this woman became a saint. This was Saint Claudine Thévenet. And I think what’s so extraordinary about her life is that she became a saint not despite the evil that she experienced, but because of it, because of the hardships. Had she have everything she wanted had there had been no French Revolution, she would have lived a really happy life, and she wouldn’t have become a saint. Because there was something that needed to snap her out of it, to say this isn’t what you really want, this is what you want, the cross, sacrifice, loving others, laying your life down so that others might live. Sometimes this is exactly what God wants for us, to suffer. I know that sounds crazy. We think, “oh, suffering is the worst thing in the world.” But it’s not. Going to hell is the worst thing in the world. Being separated from God’s the worst thing in the world. And sometimes suffering, like a good workout is exactly what we need to focus us on what really matters. If I miss a meal and it helps me have more compassion for others, it helps me focus on what really matters, then I’ll tell you that’s a blessing. And I think that that’s where we have to be right now as we look at our lives. We have to ask ourselves, am I on the track to heaven? Am I focused on what really matters? Or am I too distracted on what’s right here? Am I too concerned with creature comforts? Too concerned with what people think about me? Too concerned with how much power or influence I have? How many social media followers I have? Everyone clapped. That’s great. Thank you for that. But that’s not where I find my worth. I hope not. Where I find my worth is in Jesus Christ. And sometimes we need to stumble and fall. Sometimes we need to be pushed down in order to look up. We need to understand that suffering so that we can know there’s only One who can take our suffering away. And so, I pray that you may be blessed today. Not in the Instagram way. Not in that everything will go in the way that you want, but truly that you may experience some weakness in your life, some powerlessness, some hunger. So that you may have dependence on God, so that you may have some empathy and love for one another, so that you may be focused on what really matters. When you experience those things, I tell you, you truly will be blessed. Amen.
Amen. Let’s give Father Casey a big round of applause. Thank you so much, Father. Are there any questions from the crowd? Anyone have anything they’d like to ask? We’ll start over here. Maybe say your name and then give your question.
My name’s Matthew and my question is for the I guess for the more extreme like embracing of like poverty, chastity, obedience. How does someone in practice know that that’s for them?
Yeah, I mean, I guess you’re talking about testing of the spirits and discernment and just a general concept. So, we can’t answer that in maybe a minute so much, but I think you’ll know it by its fruit. Is this something that bears fruit in your life and in the world? I think that there are some people that when they fast in an extreme way, they become worse people. Now this is sometimes because that’s the nature of who we are, but sometimes because we need more practice. I found that in my life. But I do think there are limits for each of us. And we found this even in the early days of Saint Francis was there was a brother who fasted way too much, and he was he was dying. I mean, he was literally and figuratively dying. And Francis made an example of him, not in a negative way, but he woke all the other brothers up that night and he made them all eat so that the brother wouldn’t feel embarrassed. And then he pulled him aside and said, “Maybe go easier on yourself.” And so, I think that we all have our limits. And so, you test it, and you ask yourself, is this bringing me closer to God? Is this helping the people of God? Or am I maybe too involved in myself and am I trying to just survive? That that’s not something that we want. I think there are people that need to be like Mother Teresa and Saint Francis who are willing to literally starve and put themselves through difficulty, but I don’t think that’s a vocation for every one of us. And so, I’d say test it and find what the fruit is.
Hey, Father Casey. You do a lot of work on social media, making videos, giving talks. How did you know that that was the path that God was calling you to on top of being a friar? Was it something that you just thought, oh, we’ll give this a go and then get spiritual confirmation, or did it come from like your superior? How did that journey go? Because not every friar does that.
Yeah, I’m still not convinced it’s the best idea. But we’ll wait and see on that. No, no one kind of pushed me into it. Certainly not my provincial or anyone like that. It started actually before I joined the order. It came from people just saying, “hey, this is really weird you’re joining the friars. Can you send me email updates what that’s going to be like?” And I said, “I ain’t doing that for fifty people.” And so, I started with a blog, and I started just sharing my experiences. And it got real positive feedback, and I got people writing to me saying this is really helpful in my own discernment and I realised it was beyond me. It was it was helping the common good and people in discernment. And so, then every step of the way has kind of been that. I begrudgingly went into YouTube. I begrudgingly went into Instagram, begrudgingly went into Tik Tok. I’m sure there’s going to be something after that. But I think seeing the signs of the times and reaching people is really important that a lot of people are here tonight and that’s fantastic but more people are not here tonight and I can reach a lot more people from my studio than I can from the pulpit. And sometimes you just got to take a risk. So far, it’s borne some good fruit but for another talk I think there’s a lot of dangers to social media and there’s been some frustrations and so I often find myself taking breaks which are important.
Thank you so much Father Casey and thank you for coming to Brisbane incredible to have you here. I wanted to ask, you know, as kind of young people here, we’ve got our whole lives ahead of us and, you know, this journey of faith. And to kind of give us some like pointers, what advice do you have to young people on how to grow in faith and grow closer to Christ?
Yeah, young people grow in faith. Particularly young people today, I think you got to commit to something. And you got to have hope. I think the two things I see with my high schoolers and college students, and I don’t know where you are in your ages relative to that, but I find a lot of cynicism and I find a lot of distrust and I understand it. I’ve lived through similar things that you have, and I see that there are reasons that this world is a mess. At the same time, our God is in control. And I think we really need to remember that. And I think that it makes me sad that someone can love Jesus and not His Church. That they can love God and not have relationships with other people. And sometimes we need to step out and take risks. We need to meet new people. We got to try new things, and we’ve got to commit to something. I think that there are so many people in our world today that see our world as on fire and say, “well, there’s nothing I could do about that. There’s no way I can put out the whole fire.” And maybe my exhortation to you is that you don’t have to do the whole thing, but you got to do something. And maybe you take one step or maybe you take a step to communicate with other people and you get together and you form something new, and you do it together. But the disengagement I see from a lot of young people, the fear, the cynicism, that is not going to lead anywhere good. You got to take a risk, you got to commit to something and ultimately trust that God’s going to be in charge.
Good evening, Father. My name is May and my question is you spoke earlier about meeting people with compassion, especially your enemies and empathy. How do we know how to do that in practicality, especially if your enemy has done something actually really quite bad, whether it’s like emotional abuse, financial abuse, defamation, maybe even physical abuse. How do you know how to yeah, how to do that? Like the common sense of what the world tells you to do and what might be what Christ is telling you to do and having that example of like Saint Francis and the wolf.
Yeah. So, the much longer answer would be read Fratelli Tutti. So, Pope Francis’s document on brothers and sisters to all because he answers that in a hundred paragraphs, and I think it’s really wonderful, so Fratelli Tutti. But one of the things he talks about is an acknowledgement of what you said of abuse and there are certain limits to our forgiveness, he says that we must forgive but we must not forget. And I think one of the cliches of our world is forgive and forget. but he said we shouldn’t forget. Because when we forget then we allow the same structural and personal evils to perpetuate themselves and we must hold people to justice and if people cause harm in others if they are abusive to us we can forgive in the sense that we let go of their control over us, but that doesn’t mean we let them hurt us again, whether it be us or it be us. And so, I think finding that balance, we don’t strike very well as a culture where we can say, “I’m not going to hurt you, but I’m not going to let you hurt me back.” Is very difficult because either it’s a, well, I forgive you and everything is perfect again, or we should draw and quarter that person and make sure their lives are absolutely terrible. There’s something in between. And in fact, there’s a sense of justice that liberates people. There’s a sense of holding people accountable that actually frees them from their sins. And if we just say, “ah, don’t worry about it. You just killed a million people. It’s fine. Yeah, we’ll just forget about that.” That mark is going to be on their soul forever until they can have contrition. And so sometimes pointing it out and say, “No, you have done bad, and we will not talk again until you acknowledge this.” Is actually what they need. It’s not us being harsh. It’s being loving the truth is important. But read Fratelli Tutti. Yeah.
So, my name is Kabir. We have a ministry in Brisbane called deliverance down under. So, we go out every Friday night and spread the gospel in Fortitude Valley which is like the nightclub where people go and party basically. So, my question to you is we have a lot of backlash from people when spread the gospel in culture in Australia, in Brisbane. But I’m sure it happens in the United States as well. So, how can we equip Christians to be better evangelists, in light of the fact that there’s such a need for the gospel because you said yourself that we live in such a fallen world and, you know, there’s, you know, so much depression and anxiety amongst people. So, that’s my question.
Yeah. So, it’s a great question and very important and very relevant to what I’m about to do when I go back to the States. I think the words evangelisation and spread the gospel are very charged words and they require unpacking. In my context, I see a lot of Protestants and particularly evangelical Baptists getting on the street corners with megaphones and saying, you’re going to hell unless you accept Jesus Christ or holding up signs that say God hates blank, you know, whoever that might be. That’s not evangelisation to me. There’s a lot of things that are really just proselytism which are just trying to be oppressive and to force people into faith, making them feel guilty. If we want to be true evangelists, I think we need to follow the example of Jesus obviously goes without saying, but what is the example of Jesus? How did He evangelise the Good News? He said some words, of course, He gave some discourses which are very important. He offered some corrections and condemnations, a lot less. But if we look at the majority of what He did, He fed, He healed, He spent time with people. The way that He spread the gospel was by acknowledging their dignity and their worth. And so, I think that we need to make sure we don’t skip over those steps. It is important to say the name of Jesus Christ. It is important to proclaim explicitly the gospel, but I would suggest that’s probably step twelve. Steps one through eleven are forming relationships and showing that we can build trust and acknowledging their worth. And we might say that this is pre-evangelisation, but I’d say it’s the very act of evangelisation is feeding people and giving them worth and giving them drink and doing the corporal works and spiritual works of mercy. And that’s difficult in the way that you’re describing it when it’s a random occurrence, when it’s just with strangers. I would say one of the ways that I find successful in doing that rather than just walking up to someone and saying, “Do you believe in Jesus?” or “Are you happy with your life?” or something like that. That can kind of put people off. Is once you have a conversation with someone, ask them, “Can I pray for you?” I think it’s kind of a sneaky subtle way to get onto the conversation because it doesn’t put the onus on them, it puts on me. I’m praying for you. You don’t have to do anything. And if you don’t want that, that’s fine. But I’m going to be praying for you either way, so you might as well tell me what to pray for. And so, then people can say, “Oh, well, actually, I’m going through a difficult time right now.” And they can talk about themselves, or they can think about the things that matter to them in the world, and all of a sudden, they’re talking about their parents or they’re talking about their concerns in society. And what they’re doing is thinking beyond themselves. And I think it does two things. The first is that it kind of pulls that scab a little bit and it opens that wound to remind themselves that they are hurt and that they need something more that they’re not finding. And then it also asks them to look, well, how could I answer that? And maybe you won’t solve that problem right now, but they’ll start to think, well, maybe I do need a God. Maybe I do need something beyond myself. So, I would recommend the corporal works of mercy and asking that question, can I pray for you?
Hi, Father. My question was, how do you personally deal with stress? And do you have any tips on how to, I guess, practical ways of how to do that?
Yeah, I don’t know if I’m the best person about stress. I often go back to a line from Saint Francis is very helpful because a lot of my stress and one of my weaknesses is I’m very worried about what people are thinking about me which is why social media is so good for my mental health. Everything lives rent free in my brain. I go back to the line of Saint Francis in the admonitions. What a man is before God that he is and nothing more. What you are before God is all that matters. And so, what other people say about you, what your friends say about you, what your parents say about you, all the things that are expected of you of society, all the things you have to do, they don’t matter as much as what God says about you. And so, it’s just a realigning of the priorities. Now, that’s not to say quit your job or to get rid of all stresses and run away. But it is to kind of question why you’re worried in the first place. Okay, maybe I missed this deadline. Oh, maybe I can’t pay my bills. Maybe terrible things happen. I’m not trying to mitigate those things and say they’re easy. But at the end of the day, will God still love me? At the end of the day, will my soul still be protected in Him? Yes. Well, I can live with that. And so, putting those priorities in place, I think, can be very helpful in reminding me God has got this. It may not fix every problem, but it helps me sleep at night.
Can we give Father Casey another big round of applause?
Thank you.