Michael J. Kotarski - Track 1

Michael J. Kotarski - Track 2

Michael J. Kotarski - Track 3

This is a Draft Version. Final Revision Will be posted soon!

Introduction: Michael Kotarski has been with Carmel since 1979 and knows a great number of you at this point because he along with a team of helpers and he emphasizes the team of helpers, have put on not only this, but two previous conferences here in Flint. Those of you who know Mike, I tend to get a certain mental image of kind of a walking tornado. (Laughter) He is highly energized. Loves the Lord. Loves our Lady of Mount Carmel. Wants to see everybody else come to know and love them. And is really willing to suck you in to whatever (laughter) help he can get you to do. This is why I am standing here today. So, please welcome Mike Kotarski.

Audience: Applause.  

Mr. Kotarski: Ah, thank you Teresa, and ah, I appreciate that. For those of you who may not know, this is the talk that we are going to give on His Holiness, John Paul, II's Spiritual Direction. Guiding the faithful into deeper intimacy with the trinity. Maps and how to's. So it may not be real cerebral. It's meant to show you what's working. Okay. And then you can have an opportunity to massage it and make it work in your communities. So this is a very practical conference. It's intense in the sense that we have a lot of talks here but you know I was trained by Father Healy. If anybody goes to sleep on me, I'm not offended. He's not offended. You can take naps, we encourage that, its all taped. That's why it is, but when we get an opportunity to bring everybody together, we want to share what's going on. And ah, so ah, let me begin to go into this a little bit.

Again the intent is to increase. The only intent we have here is to increase the knowledge and love of God. And there are methods that work. I want to show you what has worked for us, and then take you into the message. It is not meant to limit and there are many different approaches that you can do. But because we try to develop others, we start with some very basic and elemental things. So, I'm going to begin. I have some props here, and I have for the tape. I have just a block of cheese. Kraft cheese, and I have sliced a couple of pieces off. This is going to for our purpose represent God's will, and I'm going to make a point for you. This is God's will, this block of cheese. I'm not meant to offend anybody, but I want to talk in non-theological terms, non-philosophical terms and you can communicate to a nine year old. We have tested this for children to understand it. This is God's will. This is the same will that Christ did. There is one God's will, one Father's will. Christ, there was a piece sliced off and Christ consumed that. Its the same block of cheese that Mary consumed. One will of the Father. And its the same will, same cheese, that the angels consumed. One will of the Father. And I think we can forget that oftentimes, and when we go deep into the message of John Paul the Second, his holiness, its good to understand some preliminary points here so that you'll have, we'll unbundle the message and you'll begin to realize wow, that's what the church is talking about, that's what his holiness is talking about. You have to understand there is one will of the Father. You are going to be invited to consume that will. The same cheese for all of us.

Audience: Laughter.

Mr. Kotarski: Now, not only are you going to be invited to consume it, but you are going to be invited to increase your capacity to consume it. So you want to not only consume that cheese, but you want to increase your capacity to consume it. Again, consume God's will, but increase your capacity to consume it. That's what is going on. The consumption of God's will produces effects. Just like you would consume the cheese...it is nutrition for my body, and there is growth. You see that when I eat that cheese. In your spiritual direction it's going to be the same. When you are consuming God's will, you will be able to see that you are being receiving nutrition and there is growth. So there is powerful, powerful meaning here. If this is one of your maps and one of your how to's.

I have another prop, and it helps to show what happens when we draw closer to God. The cheese is one and this candle is another. For the tape I have lighted a candle, and do the same thing. We have done this and there was a nine year old girl in one of our study groups who was brought there by a Rosemary Spankie and she was kind of slumped over, and when I lit that candle she popped up. She understood what we are going to go into, so its been tried and tested. Okay? We've taken these methods out on the road and tested them and seen how they work, and she understood that. I have the candle. It is producing light, and it is producing heat. There is two processions from this candle. For our purposes a procession of light, and there is a procession of heat. God communicates both when He communicates His will. God is going to be communicating light and God is going to be communicating heat when He communicates His will. For the Trinity there are only two processions for our purposes. There is a procession of truth, which is known. You know that procession from the intellect of God as Jesus Christ. There is a procession of love. You know that procession as the Holy Spirit. Two processions from the trinity for our purpose. Procession of truth and a procession of love.

What can prevent me from eating this cheese? There are obstructions that can prevent me from eating this cheese. And you can think of them. I can cover my mouth. I can close my eyes and can't find it. Let's talk about what are the obstructions to the light? To God's will, Christ in your life, in your spiritual direction. And I have with me a pie pan that is aluminum. That is an A & P Kroger's across the United States, and for those in the audience here, maybe not in the United States here, its a simple pie pan, very light weight. We almost throw them away here in the United States. I am going to take the pie pan and I have folks here watching me, and I'm going to obstruct the light. They no longer can see the flame of the candle. For our purposes that pie pan is ignorance. Ignorance can obstruct light. The light of Christ. Truth. That's why we want to know the word of God. That's why when the Holy Father's talking about deeper prayer, deeper spirituality, he lays the foundation that we understand the word of God, scriptures is not going to be abandoned. And that's the first thing reverts or converts to the Catholic faith start to hear about Teresa of Avila or John of the Cross and they say is this scriptural. You'll want to watch how the Holy Father anticipates that question and handles it. Where there is ignorance we admit there is an obstruction and that's why with St. Jerome we affirm clearly that ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ. That will never be taken off the map.

Now, I've held the pan here for quite some time, and I invite anyone here, and I've had anyone here take it, to put their finger on that pan. It is hot. There is heat. That is the Holy Spirit. Ignorance cannot prevent the Holy Spirit from acting. That's what happened to Paul. He had not the light of truth, and there was a manifestation of grace defined as participation in or experience of God. That is a great consolation of the Trinity, if you are experiencing trouble in your families. It is that heat. They are not going to want to hear about Christ, but love, watch how that procession of the Holy Spirit is not going to be limited or constrained by ignorance. The heat is still there. Watch how that plays out in this message that the Holy Father is conveying. You need that on your radar screen. You need that on your map of knowledge. Consuming God's will, we've reflected that in the cheese. The lighted candle is the procession of the Trinity into your life, and the life of the world, into the family. Those are some elementary concepts that you need to have. Excuse me for a minute here. Is everybody with me so far? Okay, because if you're not, I have John Leidy standing over here to spill in at any moment, to kick it up a little bit.

Audience: (Laughter).  

There are limits to truth, but the heat of love, His spirit still penetrates a dark heart. A dark heart and everybody has those in their family. No question about it. Particularly in the United States. There are dark hearts. Don't be frightened when they won't reflect Christ. Great hope, even for unborn generations, and its beyond of this talk. But John of the Cross talks about when this heat in your heart grows so hot you will penetrate unborn generations. That's why we are considered the children of John of the Cross, and Teresa of Avila, because we are still being nourished by their love. Generations later, and he talks about that, its beyond that, scope of this talk. Now, when God communicates His will to angels, we're going to watch how this works. We see reflected there the effect of this heat and this light. The effect of truth and goodness. And we're going to talk about the angels, so that we can move from the angels, which is creation to you and I. And the Holy Father uses the term 'man' and he uses it generically meaning male and female.

God communicates His cheese to the angels. God communicates both light and heat to the angels. Angels, you should understand there are two effects when He created the angels. The angels are equal in dignity. Equal in dignity. But they are distinguished one from another by their capacity to serve. By their capacity to consume the cheese. By their capacity to reflect light and heat. That's what's happening in the angels. When you start with an angel and you move up to the seraph. Now let's watch what happens in these angels.

Second point. So there is equal dignity in the angels, and they are distinguished by their capacity to serve. The second point that we see with the angels as you move up the hierarchy of angels, and they are ordered. And there is hierarchy from angel, to cherub, to seraph. What do you see? You are going to see an increase in the capacity to serve, and an increase in the capacity to consume God's will. I'm repeating that. You are going to see an increase in the capacity to serve, and an increase to consume God's will. We see this in the seraph and the cherub. The cherub loves what it knows. Its capacity has two powers the angels have, the power to love and the power to know. The power to love and the power to know is equal in the cherub. The cherub loves what it knows, knows what it loves.

What distinguishes the seraph that has a greater capacity to consume God's will. Has a greater procession of light and heat in it. What is that distinction with the highest order? We know that the cherubs loving and knowing is equal. The seraph is like you. The seraph has the ability to love beyond knowing. It loves what it doesn't understand and it loves what it doesn't know. Getting back to the pie pan. Do you see how important it is to not limit the power to love, even though you don't understand, and you do not know. The cherub is going to need light to love. The angels are ministers to the body of Christ. You are children. God the Father, your Father, is trying to communicate Himself to all of us. We are His children. Do not be limited by that capacity to love by, as...do not imitate the cherubs. Do not love only what you know. You can love beyond understanding. That is an act of faith. Conclusion here for us. This is how the life of grace is expressed in the angels. Grace defined as participation and experience of the Trinity. Participation in experience of the Trinity and its the same with us. It is how this grace, this life of grace beginning with baptism we experience, and we're going to grow this life of grace and we're going to grow our capacity, and that's what this noble millennial message is going to talk about.

Why? Why is God doing this, other than to say we are His children. Why does God want to increase our capacity to consume His will? Why does God want to increase the truth and goodness that dwells in us? The procession of Christ and the procession of the Holy Spirit. Very simply, there is an answer. Your Father has a vision of what is to be. What ought to be. Your Father is in need of your help. Your Father is attempting to govern, attempting to conserve and maintain creation. When the Holy Father starts to mention in this message the trinitarian union, he is moving you (its called an anthropological shift, but you don't need to know that we're not talking in a scholarly fashion). He's moving you from the point of view that where people normally at to the point of view the Holy Father wants you to look at reality through the eyes of the Father. Which is symbolized in John of the Cross pencilled drawing, which is the first time that image was used in art, preserved by Salvador Dali in the front of all your books on John of the Cross, where the crucified Christ is out, and the point of view of that pencilled drawing is the Trinitarian point of view. The Father looking down on a crucified son. We don't think of our Father as needing our help. We don't think of our Father, things from the point of view of the Father. We are going to the Father, asking for things.

Your Father has a task to accomplish. He created. There is a distinction in creation and He is now wanting to govern creation, maintain it, and conserve it. In order to do that He wants to communicate His will to everyone, because if you possess His will you will then govern, He will then be able to govern through you. You will begin to maintain and conserve creation as He desires. That's why. Very simple. People spend lifetimes studying this and writing books on it for dissertations. That's it in a nut shell. We need that. We need that writing, but the Holy Father is saying this message must be defused in families. Must be defused to nine year old girls and boys. It is not meant just for white papers at a scholarly level at higher levels. This was first meant for people who have never gone to college. Look at Joseph and Mary. Adam and Eve. Your God is almost desperately in need of your help. That's why we are here today. That's why we do these conferences. His creation is governed by the expression of this life of grace in you. Now what does God, and I'm answering questions here, giving them, because I'm anticipating you'll take this and you'll massage it and make it better than what it is. I just give you the elements. It's what we call a lineamenta. It's an outline. And then you massage it and make it work in your life. I'm sure each of you have different backgrounds you could provide there.

So how or what does God do to express in us His will? The truth, the goodness, the life of grace. What does God do? For the purpose of governing, conserving and maintaining? How does He do it? What does He do to express Himself? The answer is very simple. Prayer. Prayer, prayer is the door that God will enter. And this is significant when we talk about this Novo Millennio Ineunte message because He uses mystical theologians as examples when everyone would admit we have a problem with faith. We have a problem with morality, particularly in the United States. You know the church, the teaching of Jesus has been codified by the church and we divide it for our purposes. What to believe? Dogmatic theology. How to act? Moral theology. How to perfect ones actions? Mystical theology. Okay.  

For our purposes He goes to the mystical doctrines of the church, Teresa and John. Why? He knows that you need to know better what your faith is. He knows that morality has a problem. If you, through prayer, and He will define prayer for you as relationship that progresses into deep relationship with the Trinity. If you have that relationship, you will want to believe right. You will want to act right. And so he prioritizes the task that he wants us to do. He prioritizes that. And that's the priority, and He has a plan and we're going to talk about that. If these concepts are off your map it's hard to understand that. It's hard to understand what He is talking about, and in your bag we talk about, we go into a little bit more, it would be nice. I don't have time here in the limited time that I have, is to talk about His natures. The essence and the natures of essence and operations. Pow, that's powerful when you go into that and we give you that. We can't give it to you now but it's on the tapes in your bag. The answer is deep prayer, deep spirituality, which grows the life of grace in us, and God expresses us His life, His will in us. And our capacity for His will increases. So, if you're going into spiritual direction, and you're praying, you should not be the same person you are a year from now as you are today. Things should be increasing, going in a direction.

The Novo Millennio message is just that. It's the plan for us. The plan talks about relationship. Progression is put on the map and union in the context of prayer, which goes to contemplation. He begins to talk about contemplation. Father Healy is so fond of talking about this and teaching us this, it's through this prayer. It's a snapshot of the Holy Father's Novo Millennio Ineunte message. Through prayer that progresses to intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit that leads ultimately to union with the Trinity. That's the diagnosis, that's the remedy. We need that. Now with that background let me go to the message here.

I'm in Noble Millennium Ineunte which was released on the solemnity of the Epiphany, January 6, 2001. If you are going to teach this, you are going to be teachers, that's significant. There is nothing that this Pope doesn't do that doesn't have significance, is not defined. Epiphany as defined by the Greeks before there were Christians, as manifestation. Public manifestation. We've christianized that and we call it public manifestation of Christ. That's the solemnity. What significance if it has any significance do you think this message is, the big picture, for the Pope to release it on the solemnity of the public manifestation of Christ? It's meant to publicly manifest Christ. It's symbolic, it's not meant to be private. He, every opportunity he gets, is that he wants you to turn to God. He wants you to grow in that capacity in order to be another Christ for others. That's significant when you're teaching that you will run, you want to keep that in mind. It will be more significant as we move on. It is a plan. I'm at paragraph fifteen. It is a plan, we have a task, the gospels are important. You'll want to identify those. Effective post jubilee plan. Much awaits us, and for this reason we must set about drawing up an effective post jubilee pastoral plan. And that's what we're talking about here today. With everything that's preceded this, this point in the tape is to develop a concept. To develop terms for you to understand to be able to dialogue into what the Holy Father is talking about.

It is important however, that we propose, with the help of God, should be profoundly rooted in contemplation. Ours is a time of continued movement which often leads to restlessness with the risk of doing, for the sake of doing. We must resist this temptation by trying to be, before trying to do. We must resist this temptation by trying to be...before trying to do. In this regard we should recall how Jesus reproved Martha. You are anxious and troubled about many things. One thing is needful and this spirit before setting out a number of practical guidelines for your consideration, I wish to share with you some points of meditation on the mystery of Christ. The absolute foundation of our pastoral activity. And he goes into these points and he develops them and he talks about Christ as a face to contemplate, and he introduces concepts. Growth and development is one concept. This is in paragraph sixteen and you can read it for yourself. Growth and development.

Then there is direction to growth and development. If growth and development doesn't have direction, doesn't have a mind in our human body, that's called cancer. It's not just growth and development, it has a direction. It has purposeful growth and development, and that purposeful of growth and development is towards a new man. He uses it generically a new man or woman. And he sets out the problem that this growth and development should take place in. He talks about how today people are talking about often perhaps unconsciously, ask believers not only to speak of Christ, but in a certain sense to show Him to them. And is it not the churches task to reflect the light of Christ in every historical period to make His face shine also before the generations of the Novo Millennio? Our witness however, would be hopelessly inadequate if we ourselves had not first contemplated His face.

Now, he then interjects, and I'm paraphrasing what the Holy Father is saying, so that Saint Jerome can vigorously affirm, and we agree with Saint Jerome. Ignorance of scriptures is ignorance of Christ. Remaining fully anchored in scriptures we open ourselves to the action of the spirit. From whom the sacred text derived their origin as well as the witness of the apostles who had a first hand experience of Christ, in Christ. The word of life they saw Him with their eyes, heard Him with their ears, touched Him with their hands. 1 John 1:1. He's saying you go to scripture. The truth which is Christ is on the way the truth and the light. You go to the light to come to relationship with the Holy Spirit. Between the two of them you come to union and you begin to consume God's will. You cannot then, with your deep prayer be able to say I touched the face of Christ. I experienced...when he says when he's talking about we want to be witnesses like the apostles who had first hand experience. He's going to be telling you contemplation as it progresses it will allow you to have first hand experience of the trinitarian life.

Deep faith. That's defined as progression and in flow the Holy Spirit. If you don't know that it might not mean a whole lot to you. You're not going to be able on judgment day to say "Hey, I got Kotarski defending me, (I'm a lawyer), and you know what, I didn't live in the time of Christ, so you can't hold me to the same standards you did the apostles, they could touch Him". Uh, uh, he's telling you ain't going to work. That's not a defense, because you can experience deep relationship with the Trinity, through deep prayer. And he is going to warn people against shallow prayer. Watch how this develops. Am I moving too fast? Or ah, we've got limited time here and you need these concepts. These are key concepts for you to take in your community. What must we do? Luke gives us an indication which points in the same direction when he notes that this dialogue with the disciples took place when Jesus was praying alone.

Both indications conversion, I am reading from paragraph 20 of this message, make it clear that we cannot come to the fullness of contemplation of the Lord's face by our own efforts alone. It's the Holy Spirit that will help you folks. But by allowing grace to take us by the hand. Grace is an experience of the Trinity, or participation...so grace is there. God is there. Only the experience of silence and prayer offers the proper setting for the growth and development of a true, faithful and consistent knowledge of that mystery which finds its culminating expression in the solemn proclamation of the evangelist Saint John. And the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. Full of grace and truth, light. We have beheld His glory. Glory as of the only Son of the Father. Now you can think about that, and we could spend a whole day on that. Powerful, when he's talking about that. I just want to introduce it here for the tape. Paragraph 20. Let's go to paragraph 23. And this is what must we do? He is laying this foundation. The new man. Jesus is the new man. That's the direction, that's the goal he is going to point out to.

Jesus is the new man, who calls redeemed humanity to share in His divine life. The divine life of light and heat. The mystery of the incarnation lays the foundation for an anthropology which reaching beyond its own limitations and contradictions moves towards God himself, indeed towards the goal of divinization. Divinization that John of the Cross talks about. You and I are aware of. By participation, and watch those tapes because we define essence and operations for you, and you understand how you can participate in there.

This occurs through the grafting of the redeemed onto Christ, and their admission into the intimacy of the trinitarian life. The Fathers have laid great stress on this (? 403 sateriology)...that's salvation. Think of our religion as a (? 404 salific) religion, we believe in salvation. The father's have laid great stress on this salific dimension, I'm putting that word in, he uses sateriology dimension of the mystery of the incarnation, it is only because the Son of God truly became man, and that man, in and through Him can truly become a child of God. If you don't understand that our faith is a faith of salvation, you won't understand that we are being saved from something. And being saved you are moving again in direction. So when he uses the sateriology term you've got to know a little about that. Just understand its direction towards the new man. You are being saved from a lack of light and a lack of heat. Defined as Satan, ultimate life without God.

Alright. Now, we're going to pick up the speed a little bit.

Audience: Laughter.

Mr. Kotarski: I don't...he talks about the (? 413 lib) theology of the saints. He says Saint Teresa lives this. Saint Teresa lives this so if...you have to think about it again. Saint Teresa lives it and you are doing what she did you're doing good. The Little Flower, talks about her and Saint Catherine of Sienna. The lived experience of the saints. What must we do? He answers the question. Talking about a little bit about defining the problem. Now what must we do? It's not there for a matter of inventing a new program. No need for a new program. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. This is paragraph 29 of this message.

The program already exists. It is the plan found in the gospel and in the living tradition. It is the same as ever. Ultimately, it has its center in Christ Himself, who is to be known, loved, imitated, so that in Him we may live the life of the Trinity. And with Him transform history unto its fulfillment in the heavenly Jerusalem. You just take on the light, you take on the heat, in order to turn, to give the light and the heat to somebody else. That's it. This is not heavy lifting. But, if you get skewed you're not going to catch that message. It can be tragic for your spiritual direction. You won't be happy, you won't increase in light, you won't increase in heat, you won't have peace. You won't have an impact on your family. This stuff is meant not for the library, its not meant for museums. It's meant to have impact in your communities, impact in your families, in your marriages, in your relationship with others. And it will. It's a powerful message when you understand it, and you can birth new communities, new life in your families.

So he begins to talk about what to do. What must we do? First of all I have no assertion in saying that all pastoral (? 432 initiatives?) must be set in relation to holiness. Holiness is going to be the banner under which we live. That's the edifice, holiness. And he says, and he talks about this holiness. There is a universal call to holiness. He points that out, and he talks about this. It is necessary therefore to rediscover the full, practical significance of Chapter 5 of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, (? 437 lumen gentium). Dedicated to the universal call to holiness. The council fathers laid such stress on this point, not just to embellish ecclesiology, embellish the church, with a kind of spiritual veneer, but to make the call to holiness an intrinsic and essential aspect to their teaching on the church. The re-discovery of the church as mystery, or as a people gathered together by the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, was bound to bring with it a re-discovery of the churches holiness understood in the basic sense of belonging to Him. As belonging to Him who is in essence, the Holy one the thrice holy.

To profess the church as holy means to point to her as the bride of Christ. For whom He gave Himself precisely in order to make her holy. This is as it were, objective gift to holiness is offered to all the baptized. That's why the little booklet, book, or the tape cover says "Dressing the Bride in Holiness". Bride in holiness. Dressing the Bride in Holiness. Dressing yourself and dressing your neighbor. It is a gift of holiness, and then he begins to identify this gift as a task. And he identifies it. But the gift in turn becomes a task which must shake the whole of christian life. This is the will of God, your sanctification. This is the will of God, your sanctification. That is your task. Now, he then says "Can holiness ever be planned? Can holiness ever be planned?" What might the word holiness mean to the context of a pastoral plan?

Now, he talks about this, and he is going to go into this. Let me summarize this a little bit. He is going to call for training in holiness. He is going to talk about training in prayer. The art of prayer. And he recognizes there is demand, increased demand for spirituality. And then we have a duty to show to what depths prayer can lead, and that there is this concept of progression in prayer. These are concepts that are off the map. The idea of progression. The idea that there can be shallow prayer, and that there can be deep prayer. The idea that there is much that we know about prayer. And that's what he is talking about. And he says start schools of prayer. And he says do not be content with shallow prayer. Okay, and he's talking about that.

So under the heading of holiness the choice is filled with consequences. Once you choose that holiness is your ultimate goal, and ultimate plan, there are consequences. Big time consequences. Okay. And he says to them, and he says, and let me diagram this out for you a little bit. All (? 469 inishes???) must be set in relationship to holiness. Now, think of the cheese. Think that you're trying to increase the capacity to consume this cheese and that God can better penetrate the world, if people have a greater capacity for Him, and He is trying to break in, and He can't break in. He restates the universal call to holiness as a gift. Think in terms of God's communicating His life. That's what holiness is.

Two processions. The gift becomes a task, and it must shape the whole of christian life, your sanctification. The point here is significant, he says can holiness be planned? Now, the answer is yes. Now, there are consequences. I've re-summarized that for you a little bit, because we are going to bring it back here. What are the immediate consequences? They become very clear. The first one is you can not, you may not settle for a life of mediocrity. Holiness is your plan you can't be mediocre. The seraph must not act as a cherub. Its very simple once you understand this we put that language on it, and I can use those languages because you now understand it. That one word gives you a whole train of thought. How do we identify mediocrity in our life. He tells us you don't have to speculate. If you're going to a spiritual direction this is a capsule of spiritual direction. This is, Father Dubay is watching for this stuff. This is not rocket science. How do you identify mediocrity? And he talks about it. He says, two ways, very simple. Couple ways.

First of all, he answers that, being minimalists. Doing only the minimum. That means there is no stretching, you're not stretching. No stretching allowed. I use a great term that Ralph Martin uses, about physical therapy. Physical therapist. You'll see them usually going into a hospital to burn victims or stroke victims where they are asked to stretch their arms. Some of these people, I've been in the hospitals, they're screaming, it's very painful. Many would choose to be crippled for life rather than to endure the pain of the growth and the stretching. They would prefer to do that. That goes on in the spiritual life too. People want to be minimalists. They do not want to stretch, because you have to endure pain. Change is pain. That's what John is going to be talking about here.

Now, the story...I've told you about the cripples, and you can use that and I've taken that from Ralph Martin and its a great one. Second point. How can you identify mediocrity? Minimalism. But you'll have a shallow religiosity. You're going through the motions. There's no heat, there's no light. Shallow religiosity. Now that's what it means from you. I want you to pick your own answer to me, but there is no movement up in heat or light. And there is no heat and light. There is no magnitude for those who are electricians. The magnitude is increasing. If you are at 70 degrees, you were 70 degrees five years ago and you'll be 70 degrees five years from now. How can you give more heat and light to others if you're not increasing? So minimalist doing just a little bit, or just what we call shallow religiosity.

Now, he warns. Avoid minimalism, avoid shallow religiosity. What he is saying here and I'm going to give it in different terms here so that the nine year old girl could understand this, or boy. Some of you out there will or you may know people, or I know in my life I've experienced this, I want to avoid the plow, but if God hitches me to the plow, lets just drag it across the surface. If I gotta take the plow I'm going to drag it across the surface. That's that minimalist and that's that shallow religiosity. One, you don't want to get hooked up the plow. Two, if He hooks you up to the plow, God gets you boxed in. Let's just kind of go through the surface here and get out of this really quick. We've all experienced that, you want to avoid that and the Holy Father warns you that that's going to be an issue. Perfection must not be understood as extraordinary existence possible for a few uncommon heros. He warns about that. Gives us those two warnings. Avoid this minimalism, and the second one is perfectionist not be understood, its just for a few select. Its the normative way. Holiness is to you and your nature, what blooming is to the rose. The roses bush is to bloom. You are to bloom in light and heat. It is of your nature. Amen?

 Audience: Amen.

 Mr. Kotarski: What will it look like training in holiness? It will look like...let's take a look to eat more cheese. If you're to eat more cheese to increase heat and light? You are going to increase your heat and light. Watch that in your spiritual direction. Tell your spiritual director, you know I think I'm at the same heat. I'm at the same light.  Now that, we're not talking about exceptions to the rule, like the Dark Night. Except, and they'll identify that. We're talking about the normative way to union with God. We can say three things. He talks about, we're going to be talking about training in holiness. Above all, training in the art of prayer. Three things I want to say. Prayer that is defined as relationship, that progresses to deep relationship that leads to ultimate union with God. And you want to look that up and you'll see that in paragraph 30 to 32 to 33. If you don't have time. It's just three paragraphs there. It just does it much better than me. Read it.

When we get to this one paragraph, I want to show you when the Holy Father invites you to take as guides, St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross, you have to ask yourself. He says "How can we forget here among the many shining examples, the teachings of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila. He talks about this trinitarian union. He talks about sustained by grace. This is all in paragraph 33. Thirty three years to Christ's life. This is very powerful stuff. So think about it when they do that. So, when ah, he could have taken a great Jesuit and said "Why don't you take Father Hardin or a great Jesuit to teach you more faith?" Or a great Dominican, moral theologian to learn to act correctly? Why not do that? He didn't. You know he is a man of charity. He's not going to say that. But when he positively puts out mystical theologians, theologians who are known for their great love, mystical love, that has significance, and it has place and time and purpose in the church here. Why? Because if you have relationship and you experience God you will believe and you will act right. I am certain that that's if you believe, and have relationship you will believe what needs to be believed and you will act right. You will show Christ to others. God enters creation, and governs it according to His will. Okay? The cheese is moved from the Trinity. From the Trinity to your heart. Amen?

Audience: Amen.

Mr. Kotarski: I'm done.

Audience: Laughter and applause.

John Leidy: Your supposed to ask if I have anything to say.

Mr. Kotarski: Ah, John, do you have anything to say?

Audience: More laughter.

Mr. Kotarski: John is the second part of this and we're going to flip, I'm going to put him on. Help me out here.

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