"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Anyone who knows me knows that I love going to the movies. Movies are powerful. They have the ability to entertain and inspire, as well as to teach. Do you like “The Breakfast Club”, “She’s All That”, “Back To The Future”, … I’ll admit, there are a couple of movies here I quite like. However, what kind of lessons do they teach us?
The notion of leadership recently came up in discussion and the question was asked: What qualities make for a good leader?
If you go into a secular bookshop today you will find a large number of books which attempt to explain what it is you have to do in order to become a great leader.
In recent years, Christian bookshop shelves too have started to be filled with an increasingly large number of books which try to turn their readers into leaders by explaining the “eight key leadership principles” or the “five simple steps”, etc.
The first passage of Scripture which comes to my mind when someone mentions to me the word “leadership” is from the Old Testament book of 1st Kings. In this passage, King Solomon has just died and his son Rehoboam has ascended to the Throne of David.
A while ago I wrote a short post about my friend Mike. He was Baptized at the Easter Vigil this year and I had the honour of being his Godfather. Well, the ol’ boy just chalked up another Sacrament! A couple of weeks ago he married my former neighbor, Mara.
Back when I began Restless Pilgrim I wrote a post entitled Early Church Fathers, Love & Romance and I was going to end this current post with my favourite quotation from St. John Chrysostom, but I thought instead that I’d end with a Scripture as Mike and Mara really did a superb job of choosing the Readings for the wedding. The Second Reading they chose was the same one I read for my sister at her wedding…
…I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. – Ephesians 3:14-19
I’d appreciate it if you’d say a prayer for them tonight 🙂
Tonight’s “Theology On Tap” was hosted by Paul Kim. Paul came to speak to use about “Adulting the Catholic Way”. Paul is a husband and father of two, as well as a well-known Catholic speaker, beatboxer and avid Instagram picture-taker!
If you would like to hear audio from other San Diego “Theology On Tap” sessions, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play or manually via the RSS feed.
“Adulting the Catholic Way” (Download)
If you would like to hear a little bit of his beatbox, please click here…
Next week is the anniversary of the death of Brother Roger of Taizé in France. If you have never heard of this man then you have really been missing out…
Although he lived much of his life in France, Brother Roger was originally from Switzerland, the son of a Protestant Pastor. In 1940, after studying Reformed Theology in Strasbourg and Lausanne, Roger felt God calling him to go to Taizé, a small town south of Paris. For two years he lived a life of prayer and helped those fleeing from the Germans into unoccupied France.
After being forced to leave Taizé, Roger returned in 1944 where he began to found a group of men living together in community. This eventually flowered into the ecumenical monastic community which forever after would be associated with the name “Taizé”. The focus of this community is prayer, silence, peace, social justice and reconciliation. Brother Roger wrote many books on these topics.
Monks in the “Church of Reconciliation”
In anticipation of Season 4, Matt sat down and shared some of his favourite quotations from the book which we will be reading this Season, The Screwtape Letters…
S3E00: “Season 4 Trailer” (Download)
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The roadmap for Season 4 is available here.
Time Stamps
00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:11 – Welcome
01:35 – Book Setup
02:16 – Quotations
13:23 – Closing Remarks
YouTube Version
After Show Skype Session
No Skype Session today!
Show Notes
There is no need to despair; hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a I brief sojourn in the Enemy’s camp and are now with us. All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favour…
The Screwtape Letters, Letter 2
If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.
Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling; and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment.
The Screwtape Letters, Letter 4
He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over.
The Screwtape Letters, Letter 8
…the Trough periods of the human undulation provide excellent opportunity for all sensual temptations, particularly those of sex
The Screwtape Letters, Letter 9
The Enemy’s demand on humans takes the form of a dilemma; either complete abstinence or unmitigated monogamy
The Screwtape Letters, Letter 18
It is the business of these great masters to produce in every age a general misdirection of what may be called sexual “taste”. This they do by working through the small circle of popular artists, dressmakers, actresses and advertisers who determine the fashionable type. The aim is to guide each sex away from those members of the other with whom spiritually helpful, happy, and fertile marriages are most likely.
The Screwtape Letters, Letter 20
You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday’s paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods.
The Screwtape Letters, Letter 12
You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked”.
You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden
The Screwtape Letters, Letter 9
Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts
The Screwtape Letters, Letter 12
Everything has to be twisted before it’s any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side.
The Screwtape Letters, Letter 22
To be greatly and effectively wicked a man needs some virtue.
The Screwtape Letters, Letter 29
You must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility. Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character
The Screwtape Letters, Letter 14
Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that “suits” him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.
The Screwtape Letters, Letter 16
You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favour of the “best” people, the “right” food, the “important” books.
The Screwtape Letters, Letter 13
The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel…
Pilate was merciful till it became risky.
The Screwtape Letters, Letter 29