hello so yes i can hear you we can all hear you and we are i think we're live we should be like now so if you want to say all your funny jokes and i think it might be a good idea to redo that introduction things that was good okay uh you want me to sure go for it go deep all right your brother just said you're here from the meeting do you want to just keep going yeah yeah of course all right uh so i'm kieran lisney and david is my good canadian buddy and i've been on his uh cbs podcast three times and this is uh this is the first time i'm on his podcast as an orthodox christian all previous times it was protestant or searching or you know a catechumen in the orthodox church but now i'm fully uh received into the orthodox church so that's where i'm at now very cool congratulations on that's amazing thanks man what about you aiden i just uh i'm aiden i've been on twice i think uh talked a bunch more times and i only emailed him an opinions when something is off or i need to ask a question and uh that's our whole relationship right david no i mean uh we pray for each other right we do that i tell you that i pray for you but then i forget i thought that's all it was i mean that's that's what i do because i a lot of the time i just tell i just remind uh the blessed virgin that i want you on my implicit daily prayer intentions right because i i don't list every single name they're too many names but you should list mine i should list yours yes i should so uh yeah i do i do mention you by name when you remind me but then the next day i just go back to having the implicit prayer list and there's no disrespect intended it's just uh i don't like having to add names to a list of memorized names and so please don't take it personally and i do whenever i do interact with you anyone i always uh mention them by name that night so i don't know if that's a proper way of managing prayer lists that's how i do it i think that's that's basically how i do it too anyone that's on my mind that they uh gets a special mention so i you know when people reach out to me it does bring them grace of a certain kind little a little booster shot of grace because i get mentioned by name in the prayers and i don't know the way that it i've been reading about prayers and like like seeking out prayers of other people it seems a little bit more generic in that sense because the viewpoint is generally that god's will is for whatever god's will is and so we just pray that god's will be done and so the prayer can take on a more generic sense and like a general well-being can encompass that person which i think is actually kind of nice in a certain way because then i don't have to worry about like any of the particulars i just have to like even if you just have a general idea of a person or a group of people um you know and then like letting the intercessor or letting god just kind of fill in the blanks because it's like i don't know what's good for that person i don't know what's good for me um so you just you just do that and um do you ask explicitly ask for the true and lasting conversion of people that's what i do uh yeah i do things like that but like that's not like my entire you know i don't know i don't know how much of my prayer that makes up you know what i mean in terms of emphasis like if it's like you know uh my friend is sick please give her health and true and lasting conversion i put a lot more emphasis on the true and lasting conversion than on the little sickness and the health like that's a good that's a good thing obviously to wish on someone but it might not be god's will for that person so my emphasis is always on the true and lasting conversion that's cool i don't know if that's what garbage is once again what about your quiet little brother over there what's he think here nevermind just gonna make another game kieran's expense typically i'm not i'm not as good at um praying for people's uh conversion so much if i don't know them okay so like if somebody if if somebody is like an acquaintance or whatever and they have a prayer need and they say oh can you pray for you know my mom she's in the hospital or something like that i'll pray specifically about that but when it comes to like people in my family or my life that are closer to me generally if they say you know i have a specific prayer intention or even if they don't ask me for it and i just pray for them anyhow i'm also praying for their salvation so it's kind of kind of like a you ending i guess but i'm pretty bad at like you know the average person on the street and being like oh i hope they get saved i mean i do but that's not my first thought because i'm super selfish so i'm just like whatever i want to be saved and now if i tell somebody i'm praying for them i try to actually pray for them right right that's one thing i've been doing too and i'll usually usually in that case i'll say i'll just say a quick hail mary or something like that for somebody i'm not saying like that dude i just asked god to smile on me that's all i had oh that's good i mean it works it's it's easy you fulfill the promise and it's prayer doesn't have to be hard yeah just no no yeah and just help them out help them out in that moment yeah do you do your pendants immediately if you go to confession and get a penance do you try to do it as soon as possible yeah usually when i'm walking away feeling light nailed it aiden in the orthodox church they give our father prayers or what do they give for repentances uh so penance is it's um it can be literally anything it could be just like it is in the catholic church almsgiving whatever typical would be like you know say say an extra 100 jesus prayers or something like that or do you know do as add five prostrations to your morning prostrations or something like that so it doesn't i mean i'm sure every priest is different but my my spiritual father is really traditional so typically it will be say more jesus prayers for somebody or pick somebody out and instead of praying for yourself through the jesus prayer insert that person's name along with your own in there say you know uh lord jesus christ have mercy on us rather than or your servant adrian or your servant aiden or something like that so that's a typical penance what about uh indulgences does the orthodox church have any concept like indulgences that we can draw on every time we pray and get the benefit for ourselves or the souls in purgatory or anyone else uh i mean we're we're constantly asked to pray for each other and um but there's no there's no defined doctrine of any type of treasury of merit or anything like that so there wouldn't be like oh saint piecios was really super good in his life so he did so much extra now we can draw from that we would just simply say well saint paulisios pray for me because you're closer to god now so that that i mean there's no there's no there is a difference there's a the one difference that comes to mind is that uh we catholics have to have the conscious intention of gaining an indulgence to gain an indulgence whereas if i just ask a saint to pray for me or for mine it's it's powerful and effective and their grace is involved but i'm not getting that extra boost of the indulgences you see see there is a difference there it's like um uh i don't i don't claim to know how indulgences really play out in the real spiritual world but i like having that little bit of extra icing on the cake and uh i wonder if it's been discussed among orthodox theologians or it's just completely dismissed out of hand um i mean because there's no there's no idea of purgatory in um i mean obviously we could be talking about temporal sins in this life in the catholic setting you know it's not just for purgatorial needs because right now we're in a we're in a in a sense we're in purgation right now we're ridding ourselves of passions but um i think because there's not there's no doctrine of purgatory and orthodoxy that the two kind of go hand in hand so one would expect that there would be a discussion about that if there was in fact um an understanding of of purgatory in the orthodox ethos but there's so excuse me sure come on aiden get your covey did you want to acknowledge openly and publicly what your cough is all about or no yeah no big deal um we get it it's not it's not a real disease guys um yeah you guys should be wearing masks have you seen anyone uh suffer and die from covet in your hospital i down in anybody die but i've been working with people i've worked with somebody who was most likely going to die okay but that patient was moved off my floor but that patient was very sick tons of comorbidities yeah i i don't like working with covid patients they're it's very frightening um very high acuity very sick human beings yeah uh a lot of work it's a lot of work it's very difficult a lot of suffering will you be immune or only to one of the 5 000 strains after you get through this i think i don't know and it's funny because like i was asked to like did you get the vaccination and i'm like no and they're like did they offer it to you yes i just don't you know this is this is the worst that it's been this is like how many days have it been uh one million it was since last wednesday since the last wednesday that i that i technically had it um but i've been chilling man we got hbo max so friends on on you sound boring sounds you sound sicker now than you did like three days ago yeah um i probably am i probably am but i don't it's still not that bad i'd still be going to work if i didn't know i had two of it i'd be like whatever you know like yeah so you trust the test results that you actually do have coveted yeah yeah yeah i don't feel right adam no but i mean you might just have something else and you got a false positive any chance of that i mean there's always chances of that sure does it feel significantly different no can you speak or cantonese no politically no joke sorry what i don't know oh because it came from china i get what you're saying i think it came from that i think it was an import into wuhan from the us that's what i've heard but like i told you before we went live i've been watching a lot of uh right-wing conspiracy theories which are most so is everything you're saying very tongue-in-cheek right now or is it like yeah okay no i don't know about it other than it's you know nice to have some time yes karen who uh so i kind of like laid off the conspiracy after i'd say like the first like eight eight months so like what are we in like month we're in month 11 we're almost at the year or something like that or we are at a year or we had a year yet i don't know anyhow i'd say like eight or nine months in i stopped like probably actually after the election cycle i laid off the conspiracy because it was getting it dude it's inundating the entire family and people are going insane and it's like what you and i were talking about last year this time when you were talking about conspiracy theories and the evil that's behind them in a lot of ways i i've done a little bit more research into finding validity in that in that i think that there actually is um like this whole awakening thing that people are talking about i i actually truly believe that it's a false it's a false light uh awakening that people are thinking that they're being awakened in a lot of ways but it's kind of like a bait and switch i don't know but you're talking about you're talking spiritually like satan are you talking about oh yeah okay but it manifests in the physical so i think that honestly like because i'm i'm not a republican or a democrat i've never voted in my life i will never vote in my entire life and i'm a hundred thousand percent sure that i will never vote no matter who is the candidate because i just put no faith in it whatsoever but if somebody wants to vote that's cool yeah uh people get really passionate about it but it is something super divisive yeah but i think that trump was a useful idiot in a lot of ways and i think that um he was there primarily to sew more division um because a lot of the things that people were you know cheering trump on for um in regards to exposing fake news and and that corruption and in the political sphere all these different socioeconomic spheres that are obviously um corrupted he's pointing these out but at the same time he's pushing agendas like operation warp speed you know the vaccine he's he's pushing all these other agendas that you're like well wait a minute that doesn't make any sense if he's on our side why is he still doing this or also him calling himself the chosen one and israel regards him as as uh ben yosef uh mashiach but ben yosef i mean it's it's crazy dude like i just i don't know i think it's a false awakening that's a guy it's a cool guy uh yeah i think a lot of the because i've been watching so much conspiracy stuff just for entertainment like i watched the most outrageous uh guy i won't mention him because i don't want to sort of draw attention but uh what's his name he believes that snow is a man-made government-made conspiracy theory there's no such thing as snow it's all man-made oh good grief wait like snow as in like the snow that falls from the sky snow yeah like the weather because his rationale is hot air rises so it's impossible for ice to form up higher in the atmosphere and so i mean that's about as deep as his science goes but anyway i just to say that i think a lot of uh i think a lot of conspiracy theorists are simpletons that just uh get that attention from saying outrageous things and i watch him because he's outrageous right so i'm feeding that i guess but i think it's i think a lot of it's demonic uh just like kieran was saying yeah um it works in a very you know uh the serpent is the most subtle of the creatures so he'll insinuate himself into your mind and into your beliefs and then before you know it you've got a really popular conspiracy theory going and once it's once it's going it's kind of hard to be critical of your own uh monstrosity yeah yeah and the the last thing i'll say about it in regards to the serpent being cunning is that most people we see it's it's again it's the left right paradigm right versus left good versus evil and what i see although the democratic party is horrendous in a lot of ways obviously um people tend to think like oh when satan appears when the antichrist appears uh it's going to be in the form of a socialistic dictatorship you know the one world order uh that sort of thing right but if you if you actually think about it in light of as satan disguising himself as an angel of light um it wouldn't be that obvious so what i personally think is that in the eschaton when all of this goes down could be 100 years from now could be a thousand years from now whatever there's going to be a false flag situation like a new world order in which we all are controlled by a dictatorship a global dictatorship and the solution is going to come in and the person who offers the solution to that social dictatorship is actually going to be the man of perdition exactly so that that's kind of my overall thing so like that's like that's all i know broad scope though but most people think like yeah he's just gonna rule with an iron fist and it's like no no it actually says the opposite in scripture it says he's gonna deceive if possible even the very elect so i mean we would know right off the bat if the dude is a dictator like yeah that's not that's not the the the person instead of christ that is that is a total it's going to be the person offering the solution that's really the antichrist and he's supposed to be mortally wounded meaning that there's some sort of self-sacrifice or a heroic uh gesture that's made right in uh getting getting wounded and almost dying or dying or whatever it is yeah yeah exactly i agree with you we need to go a a little bit further than the surface on all these conspiracy theories and they are toxic they are demonic i think and uh i've just been indulging in it because i've been away from the sacraments so much like we're on lockdown here and the churches are all closing and i've uh i've managed now to find a place where i can reserve and i can get the sacraments um that's crazy it's still like that yeah we have a curfew here it's like we because like codewood will get you if you're out too late well it's because they don't want i guess young people going and mixing it up after dark and uh i don't i don't know i mean as if that's gonna as if that's gonna stop young people from going outside after dark yeah and like you could just have your little party and stay up all night i guess i mean nothing could stop me if i were young and wanted to party with my friends nothing could stop me that's for sure but um you know i do have some sympathy for the governments of the world and for my local and provincial government here because no matter what you do you're going to get flack for it i mean if you're too strict not strict enough like no matter what you do if you're if you're too s if you're too consistent or if you change too much like no matter what you do you're going to get harsh criticism so i think you're between a rock and a hard place if you're trying to govern and guide the masses like that's a tough so i want to talk about the orthodox catholic common ground and uh you know this whole thing with uh the hesi caste movement and all that sort of thing because that's what you showed some interest in aiden do you want to sort of you want to sort of pinpoint some of the questions and uh directions you want to talk about with your brother or maybe kieran can say right away kieran you you're knowledgeable um i know so kieran and i um have had a couple of discussions on this um and as of late um a third party was involved named george what's up george and um george's orthodox and um we were chatting about it um has a chasm and i'm like i'm like the more that i pray rosary i'm like oh the rosary is a it's a prayer of the heart and something very similar i think that the same thing is happening i just think the methodology might be tricked i think there might be some differences here and um the more that i come into contact with ezykasm i'm like oh that seems like a really tried and true tried and true path and um very beautiful obviously the name means such but um when i was bringing it up with with george and kieran kieran you didn't specifically express an opinion but george pretty emphatically stated that no catholic theology and orthodox theology they cannot they cannot co-exist and i said well what if it's a problem with language like what if it's just two people using different words for the same kind of phenomenon and then like just bickering over um terminology over terminology and like semantics and he's like no no no like they've they immediately pulled out words that i that i didn't understand and immediately pulled out concepts that i didn't understand and so the first thing they said was that just doesn't jibe with divine simplicity man which like i don't know anything about um other than i know that god is supposed to be simple not complex and they're i think what was being said composite not composite so like when you have an iphone versus holding a an android you feel the iphone and you're like ah simple light beautiful but then it was said you know the essence energy's distinction um is then made and god can't be simple i think divinely simple in those terms if he if he has essence and energies is that kind of the argument kieran no so god is simple um so this is this is a really weighty topic and the reason why i hesitate to speak on it is because i'm not well versed on it either and i don't at this point at this point in my life i don't care to be so well versed on it but so when we're talking about hezekiah basically hezekiah is not just like um like when you tend to think in in catholic terms you think of oh i'm of the franciscan school of thought i'm uh from the carmelite school of thought i'm from the you know whatever um augustinian school of thought the aquinas school of thought so you have all these different either philosophical or maybe theological uh leanings that accent and pinpoint different parts about the catholic faith so it's not to say that any of them are like dialectically opposed to each other it's just to say that the equine in school focuses yeah the emphasis is different whereas in orthodoxy the emphasis is all in hezekiah which is why specifically in the monastic orders you don't see you don't see a differentiation between a monk in russia and a monk on mount athos because it's all one order it's just there's no delineation they're all practicing the prayer of silence they're all practicing hezekiah um the reason why when we talk about god and how what is the nature of god's being this is particularly pertinent because this is how if how how god is or who he is or how he is defined is directly connected to how we have access to him or how we can interact with him so in further looking into what the catholic definition of divine simplicity would be it doesn't seem and david you can correct me if i'm wrong but it doesn't seem to me that there is actually a dogmatic decree on the equinan type of leaning towards absolute divine simplicity or the franciscan like uh you know skodan kind of thought where there is distinction in god but it's a formal distinction it's not a it's not a yeah it's not an actual distinction so yeah i think if it could be a semantical thing yeah from what i understand uh we would say that there are actual distinctions in god obviously starting at the basis from uh the trinity their son be good we would see father okay father son holy spirit there's a real distinction between the persons and obviously the essence god is not god the father is not his essence he has the divine essence same thing with the son same thing with the holy spirit they share the the same essence just as you or i would share human nature but our human our human nature doesn't give us our our personhood it doesn't give us our personality doesn't give us our our our specificity basically so like me you and david all share human nature um but let's say for instance uh aiden you're more into cars or something and i'm not into drawing right exactly but you have you have different distinctions we have these we have these different distinctions within us and let's say a lower life form could look at us and say oh i know that there are they have human nature because of the energies that they have because of the activities that they that they possess the activities that they perform i can see from those activities that they share a common human nature so let's take creation for instance we can translate this then to god let's say christ we know created everything right holy spirit shares in creation god the father shares in creation creation is a specific activity or or a nergay which is just the greek word for energy which only god possesses so because christ possesses um an energetic creativity same thing with the holy spirit same thing with god the father this specific energy of creation is not equal to the divine essence but it points to the divine essence does that make sense so like so when we talk about interacting with god there's no way that we can interact with his with his nature with his essence it is through his activities whether they're infinite activities or their finite activities whether they're passive or they're active it's through these things that we interact with god so god's love his glory these would be instances of of infinite activities or passive um passive and could be active activities but something like the incarnation was a specific point in time where that came into the incarnation was not from all eternity to eternity the sonship was but not the incarnation so these are all distinct energies that interplay with each other and when we're talking about prayer over interacting with is the grace of god which would be another energy and the reason why we know that this has to be equal to god on some level is because grace by nature is is uncreated otherwise it doesn't have the ability to save you grace is everything that's given to us and david you talk about this a lot or at least um i think you did how everything is grace you know the things that we are given it's all by god's grace and so this we know um is one of his energies this is what energizes us in the sacraments this is what energizes the host in the sacraments this is what um this is what energizes our prayer life how we interact with him how we commune with him um and this is the uncreated light that hezekiah is always constantly searching for so the ultimate goal in prayer from the orthodox perspective and from the from the catholic perspective whether some catholics know it or not is union with christ through the uncreated light that they saw on mount tabor and christ says in um i think it was in the gospel of john christ says i share the same glory that my father in heaven has from all eternity to eternity and this is the glory that i'm going to share with you so if god has this glory from all eternity to eternity that means it's not finite which means it's it's it's uncreated and if we're going to share in that that also means we're we're participating in that uncreated energy or that uncreated life or that uncreated growth so all that to say basically um david or george and i haven't talked much about this um so he's obviously way more well-versed than i am on it i would simply say that for the uh from the orthodox perspective from what i know of people who have no who have very very surface level understanding of catholic theology and praxis which is really what we're talking about they would look at some of the of the different almost like the cafeteria kind of picking and choosing of whether it's a specific devotion or it's a specific kind of type of prayer or whatever most orthodox i think would look at that and say well that's weird we just have like we're all just trying to do the same thing in the orthodox and at the bottom catholics are doing the same thing but there's um there's such a differentiation between different schools of thought and practice in the catholic church the way i would talk about it is in terms of video games like you can uh today and i think since the beginning of video games development there have been games within games so you can be a character moving around in the world and then you can approach a computer and you know the password you can get in and then you can play games on the computer so it's sort of a meta thing so i think what you're saying and i think the way that i i don't think there's any conflict between the orthodox and catholic positions on uh essence energies and all that sort of thing and uh the uh you know any of the issues that you talked about i i don't think there's any difference between um there's nothing that's been dogmatically fixed by the catholic church that's in contradiction to anything you said yeah i got koba too just kidding but we caught it through the phone what i would say wear your mask what i would say is that the vision that you're painting kieran of the orthodox way is uh reminiscent i guess of the uh the red pill in the matrix where instead of being on your computer playing a game and within the game world you find a computer and you log into that computer and you play a game on that computer which will be the catholic sort of uh very um abstract approaches to theosis what you are emphasizing always and everywhere is take off your virtual reality headset and you're sitting beside jesus right now right here right now right so all of the game all of the games within games are designed by jesus christ to bring us to the point where we can remove the virtual reality headset turn and embrace our lord and savior jesus christ who's true and true man so what you're claiming is that the orthodox just skip all of the games that were designed by jesus to help those of us who are maybe further away from the theosis uh you're saying just to emphasis emphasize this one approach which which lifts the veil right through a series of techniques of what i guess we could call quietism which has been condemned by the catholic church so that might be a sticking point quietism has been condemned by the catholic church very explicitly but qualitiesism is another thing that confuses me david because there's so many like that word has been used for like a lot of different things it's kind of like modernism the more people say quietism and the more people say modernism the more i'm like i don't understand what either of those those two things are well it's an inactivity it's a purposeful inactivity whereby you have a an attitude of complete passivity right that's that's oh no no that's the cross that's the crux of uh of quietism where you're you you relinquish your desire for salvation for example that's that's how extreme quietism is right you think that's that sounds that sounds like centering prayer that that's what i was just gonna say that sounds more like centering prayer to me but no that is completely opposite of hezekiah right um but there might be some concerns among some uh catholics who don't understand orthodoxy to clump them in together you see to me so i'm not saying that orthodox the orthodox approach is quite isn't what i'm saying is there might be some confusion about that and on the surface it might look like that because your orthodox approach from the way you've described it and i've never heard it described that way before even though i know there's a more mystical approach in the orthodox church my wife is orthodox even though she doesn't practice but if you just look at this if you look at the liturgies you can see that the the mystical component and even in the icon iconography and all that um but what i'm saying is that uh my to defend my catholic approach with the game and the game within the game and so on and so forth these sort of nested games within games uh that's been provided by the economy of salvation which is designed and guided by god almighty um i think that we might be tempted if we're orthodox who might be tempted to look down our nose at some of these games within games and to poo poo some of these some of the devotions that are uh quaint and maybe popular devotions that arose in uh peasant culture or something like that whereas god would see all of that as equally valuable and everyone's in a position to be saved everyone gets enough grace to be saved and it's not just for the superstars that are able to lift the veil and remove that uh virtual reality headset so i'm not accusing you personally i'm being a snob no no no no no i'm saying it might be it might be a temptation if you're if you're orthodox if you have a strong ego and if you're prone to vanity and pride it might be a temptation it would certainly be a temptation for me i think that i would i think what i would probably respond to that is um simply that we're all given the same gospel so it doesn't matter if you're it doesn't matter if you're a monk it doesn't matter if you're a lay person or if you're a priest or a bishop or an archbishop or you know in in catholicism it doesn't matter if you're a cardinal or whatever we're all expected to do and sacrifice the same way but that looks differently depending upon the vocation this one person might have so you you better believe that there's not orthodox christians every single one of them walking around saying to jesus prayer 24 7. that far from it um there's plenty of monks that don't even do that um basically the grace that we're given we're called to respond to synergistically so um that's going to look different for different people i think ultimately what what the hesikistic tradition um which really is just the orthodox tradition tries to get down to at bottom is that we want to be in union with christ and um there also is um there's a real hesitation to use um personal imaginations personal images um things that you can cocked in your mind because we know that our hearts are desperately wicked and so if we get taken down that path there's a real chance we could be deluded in a lot of areas so we emphasize having a spiritual father to help guide you into this and to keep you from from from falling into pride into temptation um having a spiritual father you know fasting as as as best you can praying as often and as best you can and at bottom trying to to just love people as best you can whether that be a catholic or a hindu or a buddhist or whoever um orthodoxy to me the reason why it's so beautiful is because it kind of has like a it i i hesitate to say the word dual you know duality to it but when i first looked at orthodoxy i thought to myself boy they don't really they don't really seem to have anything pinned down and then when i you know became started to become catechized i thought wow man they're like really strict on a lot of things like they have a lot of things really pinned down it's just that in orthodoxy there's not so much of a dialectical tension we don't try and evaluate paradigmatic things through dialectics so the western minds that's what i was saying this whole time the western mindset the western mindset is essentially going to say um and i'm not saying you know if you're in the west this is automatically your viewpoint i'm just saying that it's common in western enlightenment thought to oppose things so that's why you have protestants and catholicism and catholics thinking that they're so uh they are diametrically opposed in so many ways but it's because they're they're they're trying to answer a question that doesn't even necessarily need to be asked same thing with with modernists or secularists or or what have you so orthodoxy tries to take a step back and say well is that even the proper question and i guess to some that would look like well that's kind of like high-minded and douchey but um ultimately the emphasis is too is to find salvation and to uh and and to gain union jesus christ so um it's not that we wouldn't it's not that we would automatically write off like for instance the rosary they're they're orthodox that pray the rosary um that you know i don't know if they would pray in the same way that a catholic would but i mean certainly these things are not it's not like uh everything is in a box basically that's that's that tends to be what i see in western christianity is we have to put all these things in their neat little theological boxes um and we need to have it all in a specific place and that's just this is not how it is in the orthodox church that's why when we say prayer of the heart most people equate that with the jesus prayer but the prayer of the heart is that's not a that's not a prayer that's a state you know that's to be en engaged with prayer of the heart can be done through the rosary it can be done through saying god have mercy on on me it could be through going throughout your day and just lifting your thoughts to god constantly as saint augustine says you know when he says that to be in ceaseless prayer is to always want to be in ceaseless prayer that that can be prayer of the heart it's just how much are we devoting to that and i'll be the first to say that even though the jesus prayer is my devotion you know i barely get by on my prayer rule as it is you know with what my father my spiritual father tells me to do because i'm i'm horrible but um yeah i mean but i do i do understand totally what you're saying some people could look at that and be just like you know the the palamites as they're called you know saint gregory palamus they used to call them naval gazers because they couldn't understand why they were always hunching their backs and sitting on stools to pray um but i guess it's just again kind of what aiden said earlier maybe there's some terminology or traditional things that aren't understood because for at this point i mean the west and the east specifically catholics and orthodox we're so similar in so many ways but we've there's such a chasm between us and other areas that it's like well that's stupid the immediate thing to do on either side is to just write the other one off uh which is you know a shame but it is what it is at this point david and the response is going to say some of the time yeah some of the time um what i was gonna say is actually david the cool thing about the prescription that kieran's talking about which you say you can like there's a tendency towards pride and i'm like oh that's probably why i'm attracted to it but um but one of the things is when you get catechized um in the catholic church once you're done you're like okay cool i'm just like so what do you want to confess her now and it's like yeah i guess if you want just come on it's come on sundays and don't not show up because that's that's a mortal sin and make sure you're here those couple extra days and then it's like okay but what else and like you know you're like you know you can read a little bit it's good to do some spirituality every once in a while yeah i'm jealous of the guidance that kieran has i mean i wish i had i've been it's not that i haven't been trying to find a spiritual father a guide it's just the hurt it's hard to find a holy catholic priest right and if you find a holy catholic priest i can guarantee you he's even busier than the unholy ones so right or the less holy ones um but you know i i it was a life-changing thing for me reading the uh filipillia or however you pronounce it and every time i would watch catholic media that's why i stopped watching catholic media was because i just kept thinking okay all your arguments all your presentations all your your uh polemic uh it seemed transparently obvious that this was a deliberate distraction from right examining your own appetites like that just seemed painfully obvious after having read the phila calia it's like why aren't you disciplining yourself why aren't you controlling your appetites and examining yourself why aren't you entering into that uh self-examination i mean that just just turned me off from watching any talking heads talking about religion because it seems like you're wasting time you should be confronting yourself and you're getting control of your appetites well and that's when i was reading some of the desert father's stuff i told kieran this the other day i'm like there's a discrepancy between that christianity um and the christianity of today and i said this looks different than catholicism and um you know what's what's wrong here or when i read saint anthony of the desert and i'm like there's there's something really pure and beautiful about this that seems to be like there's just so much stuff because of the variety in catholicism which i'm not necessarily poo pooing because i think it's really good david like you're saying it reaches out to a lot of people and hits different people where they're where they're at um it's like okay the variety is good but like there's this there's a loss of something there because there's so many variations it makes you go like yeah but what's like what's how do you cut to the chase and so um with hezekiah there's this direct route and it's like well we know that this this works and you should you should do this you should follow this this path here and avoid these things and just um you know go this this route my only um trepidation with some of those old works is that they're all written for monks um that's not my only trepidation but they're all written for monks so then you have to adapt that to like how does the modern married man apply this to their life you know in like a healthy way yeah and also like priests so i have a really smart priest you know um he's great um but he's super western and so if i said to him like hey chief talk to me about this he'd probably be like yeah that's that's a thing i don't really know anything about it and then i'd be like cool that's great you know who does that's like you have to you know you i don't i want there to be some kind of standardizations that i can you can seek that out and you can go and and get that for yourself and um because all cohesiveness seems to i wish i could do that little crying thing that he's doing now it's so cute with the eyes watering and the little broken throat so emotional uh it's very touching yeah but no i just want i want to talk about the connection sort of the bridge between the lisney brothers here i'm the bridge because uh to me it's all about vatican ii the teachings of vatican ii the universal call to holiness the structured uh nature of the hierarchy the economy of salvation the way that god almighty set up his church to serve everybody exactly where they are and the availability of this uh theosis or his hezekiah you call it hezekiah karen yeah it's available to everyone and it's not i i don't feel personally i don't feel like oh i wish i were orthodox so i could practice that no i feel that the church is encouraging me to practice that but it's also encouraging me to recognize my vocation in life which is to be a married man with no children and uh it's a rather unusual situation that i find myself in with my wife because of a particular attitude toward catholic church she was raised greek orthodox has a cultural hate does she cultural hatred does she believe any of the greek orthodox stuff does she like any of it no ah she just thinks it's the best she just i don't want to talk about because she doesn't like my talk about her publisher but she just thinks it's the best and that i should be orthodox not catholic because orthodox is the best and catholic is the worst but does she know anything or does she believe anything no but it's the best so it's a sort of a cultural hatred and a cultural pride which doesn't attract me to it but but the thing is uh i want to emphasize the teachings of vatican 2 because it's what's enabling us as catholics to adapt to the modern world and to see our place in the church and how everything we need you know everything we need to have that deep relationship with jesus christ that's what it's all about that's what vatican 2 talks about and emphasizes and there is a lot to unpack in the catholic church today and you want to talk about politics you want to talk about the hierarchy and the drama within that within that and it's bored with all that though like i'm so sick like i don't pay attention to it i don't pay attention to current events so okay when i'm reading when i'm reading the documents of vatican 2 or listening to an analysis of the documents of vatican ii it's abstract right i mean this is the role this is the role of the bishops this is the role of the priest this is the role of the lay people this is the role of the religious and so it's abstracted from current events current events drive me mad right the only reason i paid attention to current events over the past years because of donald trump and all he's ostensibly done for uh the children in the womb like that was my main reason why i was following donald trump so closely because he seems to have done more for the unborn than any other politician but uh i'm going to go back now to ignoring current events because joe biden the catholic is ramping up abortion already so i'm going to just go back to ignoring current and current events but we have everything in the church do you get bored with certain like things that are flavored explicitly catholic so such as like hope every time you say vatican too a little bit like no i'm not i'm on fire i'm on fire for the papacy and for the second vatican council it's like uh dude the only way is the only way that you can be like that you can just elicit more of a response and this probably says more about me than it does about anything else is if you were to bring up like magicoria or fatima i just simply because yeah and it has nothing to do with the complete demonic influence behind the other one i'll throw that one tell you david um i just because they're so up on catholic culture i just i want to vomit every time i hear about them because i'm just so bored i don't i could like oh did you guys hear about the ladies you messaged your megoria and all i'm thinking is when was the last time you opened your bible open go open your bible and they're like what's the bible you know it's the same people that don't you know like i i don't know i guess i just like a part of me hates right now folk catholicism because it's so like it's coming out of a really bad time and it just um well it's just i mean i'm sure i'm sure you want what's best for these these people that are getting excited about all the wrong things right like they're getting excited about all this stuff i'm sure you won't definitely i'm sure you want what's best for them right yeah it's just it's just like um it's just like seeing the same episode of a television show over and over again eventually you just you you regardless of like the content you're gonna hate it you're gonna just be like i can't i've seen that so many times i can't even i could change it to the next one yeah i'm not exposed to people's enthusiasm for for anything catholic i don't have anyone around me that's enthusiastic about the catholic church i don't have any i don't watch any catholic media that shows people that are excited about the catholic church so i'm completely out of touch with that i'm not i'm not uh i mean i i can understand what you're talking about with right the uh the revulsion or the the disgust that you might feel but i mean you always have to remember to connect that to your own pathetic uh foolishness right and to yeah well acknowledge it yeah i prefaced it with that yeah i just acknowledged that you are proud and that you feel superior to another human being which is not a good idea right as long as you know that yeah but i don't feel superior to those people i just can't stand i just can't stand hearing the words fatima and magicoria literally it's working uh no i definitely do and i do with isolated incidents but i'm double minded so it's something that's always combative it's never something that's just unchecked and like i'm never like like oh this group of people they're dumb i'm like oh this group of people and then i'm like you're cheering for that i'm like you're cheering for them yeah yeah yeah absolutely i just don't i just don't wanna i'm just so tired of like the fact that fatima was the main message of um you know the 20th century in catholicism when it's just like hey you guys remember that and it's like why yeah i do but like can't we talk about something else can we do something else you know because it it seemed to me that the same people that would just go to church every sunday receive communion and were just like joe six-packs those are the same people that i just always associated with like um these popular apparitions and um and our dad our dad is a big lover of magigoria and um uh he um he's not obsessed with it by any means but he's always like he's always you know thought that it was legitimate he's like no a lot of good stuff has come from this and um there's actually this there's this small faction of catholics they're not small anymore that have come out of magicoria um and i won't name them but they have all of these different types of um these different types of devotionals that have sprung from this david and they're even more annoying and so like you have the divine will um uh devotion and and i like aspects of this one but the flame of love devotion and um uh like oh i forget i forget some of the other things that have come out of this but like these things that they're always um ever since i i listened to um jimmy aiken talk about this and like talk about how very similar this phenomenon was to the ufo phenomenon that would occur he basically said there's this formula that like every couple years there'd be a ufo book that would come out and the person would claim that they had some kind of experience that built on the um that built on the uh the experiences of somebody else and um but they have revealed more and somehow in the economy of things they're receiving more than that person then they're going to give you something that you didn't get before and um and the more that i look at these like um certain devotionals and catholicism i'm like that's doing the same thing and jimmy aiken pointed that out as well so you have saint teresa's little way and then you have another saint who came 20 after 20 or 30 years afterwards and hers is called the littlest way and it's like and it's like perhaps it's legitimate i don't want to take a steaming dump on something that could be legitimate but like i'm going to try to use my orthodox method of not visualizing anything ever right now right no i know right steaming dump no but you see you see something like that and i'm like you know i'm always afraid of being tricked and i feel a lot like i'm being tricked here and so you have that with this luisa picareta stuff that's going on now where this woman do you know the saint that she i think she's up for canonization but dude volumes upon volumes of her work has been analyzed where she supposedly received all of these um revelations from god and they're just so excessive they're so excessive and um daniel o'connor he's really he's on fire for the lord he's really cool but um his work with the divine will stuff it just every time i hear it it just screams heresy to me and i can't pinpoint what it is and at first it attracted me um but now the more that i hear about it i'm like this is there's something really wrong here the explicitness the extremeness of this it seems like it's it's adding on to biblical revelation it's almost as like as if it's like yeah here's the gospel but here's the super grace right right and we're going to give it to you and it's like um which like from you look at it and you read it you're like this seems really cool this seems really neat um but like there's just like there's so many holes in in those things that it's just like i don't even want to look at that anymore it's just so irritating because i just feel like i feel like everything is a trap and i just um i feel like inflamed i feel like a big open nerve and so then anytime something like that comes towards me um i just want to like i just want to run from it because i if not i'll vomit with rage and so then like looking back and looking backwards is the only safe thing and so you know you read something um um that's a bit older you read ancient christianity and you're like oh this feels a little bit better because this was back when they didn't have this fringy crap that they had to deal with they were just like trying to convince people that mary was the mother of god because they knew that if you took away um her motherhood then you could take away the divinity of jesus and so it's like yeah i want more of that and i want less of this other stuff with this italian saint who supposedly received a whole bunch of stuff and is you know wearing the biggest crown in heaven next to such and such a person because uh look at all she did and um you know i don't know maybe i'm just bitter but i want to get kieran's thoughts on yeah yeah um i think okay wow um in a nutshell because i do have to wrap it up here in 15 minutes yeah or less so i think this is this is again going back to the desert father thing first when i read the when i read the contemporary saints of the orthodox church there doesn't seem to be such a huge divide between them and the desert fathers or the patristics and except for their speaking out against um heretical or sectarian groups because obviously when the desert fathers were around they were basically just fighting against nominalism which is why they went out into the desert because they realized that christianity was just becoming too much of this uh easy thing there was no cost to it anymore so when i read somebody like saint piecios or elder afram or saint joseph pause that for a second have you heard of any of these david only read through him are they any of them in the uh philocalia no so these would all be contemporaries so they would all be 20th century oh no um so uh so just as for instance one of my favorite saints of the orthodox church is this is a saint by the name of paisios and he is born arsenios and he he uh was born in 1924 and lived until 1994. you mentioned in your last interview with me yeah he is um the more that i read about him the more that i pray to him the more that i have interactions with him the more um the more i start to in the orthodox church we call it the fronima of the church the mindset of the church the whole ethos so our connection just as you guys would have you know the the state's post you know schism you would you would look to a saint like saint teresa of avila or saint francis of assisi and say yes when i when i'm close to them i'm closer to the church of christ from your perspective right you're putting on the mindset of the church when you read these saints which is why it's unchristian to not read the lives not god but from what we say in the orthodox perspective is that we know that we know that we know that grace is within the church we just don't know where else it is so we're not gonna say that grace is definitely in uh this presbyterian church over here we're not gonna say that grace is over in the catholic church we're not gonna say that grace is you know with god forbid well god don't forbid but the jehovah's witness or some other crazy sectarian group i'm sure there's grace working there's grace working all throughout the world but we just know that it's in the orthodox church and we see that captivated from the time of pentecost all the way up into our our modern day saints of the orthodox church and there there are elders alive today who literally their faces shine like the sun just as moses when he came down from sinai and and just this is the that's the orthodox ethos so all that to say um i think what aiden's kind of getting at is that the overarching issue or maybe problematic um part on on on the part of catholic sort of fanaticism would be that there is such a there's such a fixation on this thing here and this thing here and this thing here and you get all these sort of little groups and what i personally see it as and i don't mean it to be offensive but when i personally see a lot of this sort of catholic devotions to be it's very similar to pentecostalism in a lot of ways because it's kind of just like a free-for-all if you will and i can't again pass a judgment and say well there is no benefit coming from that there is no fruit coming from that but at the same time i can look at it and say yeah but it's still dangerous like i personally wouldn't do it and i would advise somebody who i love probably not to get involved with it either like my dad spent 12 years praying the saint bridget prayers so that he would have x amount of time out of purgatory that's like that's kind of autistic like that's like very like that's like very point counting and and it's like that seems like an ad extra to the gospel which is basically just union with christ through christ's salvific work in our working with the grace that he has given just us reaching out and taking hold of the gift that he's giving us that is that is salvation but when you add all these extras on to it they might be true i can't say for certain if they're not you know if they're true or not but i would i would guess that um if it's an addition to the gospel message then it's probably best to stay away from it and that would be the politest way one thing i would say is that um first of all uh in terms of apparitions they're all optional like even the approved ones are optional you don't have to believe them uh and there's nothing contained within those operations that which are approved which contradicts or adds to the gospel so everything there's only one public revelation and it's uh public revelation ended with the death of the last apostle and so uh there's no risk as a catholic if you're a faithful catholic following the teachings of the catholic church there's no risk of going beyond the gospel okay that's number one number two uh we are being guided and directed to what is essential for our salvation but there's so many shiny toys i guess that's one way we way we can put it like oh this devotion that devotion these sorts of things but we are sternly warned by the church to avoid taking on too many devotions or getting distracted by our devotions or completely you know basically what it boils down to is it's very easy to completely miss the point of religion and uh there's a famous catholic saying that religion is for those who lack faith right religion is for those who lack faith so what we the goal is to have faith right the goal is to hey guys uh i am super sorry my wife is having a panic attack right now okay i just got a text message i love both of you very very much i love you too and i love you too buddy well peace out we'll talk to you soon good luck to your wife all right we're praying for her now pray for you buddy i love you guys talk to you very soon thanks for doing this all right thank you guys bye karen peace it something i said no i'm kidding i'm kidding is his wife uh prone to anxiety attacks yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i went through that happening like a late adolescent in my early 20s i went through that for a year it's very very very scary it's not fun i had a i had a i don't know if it was a panic attack or if it was an anxiety attack at work um because i i get i mean um yeah but usually it's um when people say that they have like a panic attack usually they say they feel like they have the sensation like they're going to die i didn't have the sensation that i was going to die but i felt this overwhelming um anxiety for yeah for like i don't know three hours it was it was really gross it was awful it was dude it's so tiring um it's really yeah the job's been tough that day was really gross and um it's uh one of those things i'm like i i don't ever want to feel that again i like i almost left that day i almost bounced out of there they're like what's gonna make you feel better i'm like leaving and never coming back yeah you know but peace peace is so um valuable but i learned that this past year has been rough for me because i haven't had access to the sacraments as much and i lost my peace a couple of times and it's uh i talked to you about that privately and it's not uh it's not good we're so fragile we're so vulnerable to demonic attack too and i know i'm dumb dude i uh i don't i don't want to go back to uh being a plaything of satan and his demons because it's really not fun well aren't you always because i feel like i always am i feel like i'm just like i'm easily roped into it i feel like um you know what i mean and then like like i i even get tricked into like thinking something and i'm like great i just disconnected my soul from the church and it's like you didn't even sing you just thought about sinning yeah you know there's a palpable difference like what i what i went through and i explained it to you and your brother i'm not going to talk about it publicly just sure too embarrassing but what i went through i mean is like i literally am i've opened the gateway to the demons and they're they're playing with me and i have to get to confession as soon as possible and as soon as i got to confession bang i had peace and so i know that i am a disgusting sinner unworthy of salvation but i also know that i'm in the state of grace because i went to confession right and i know that i want to keep going to confession and availing myself of the sacraments especially confession in the eucharist because even though i know that left to my own devices i'll just welcome the demons in again i will right i've proven that even though i know that god still loves me he wants me to be saved he wants me to avail myself of the sacraments in a worthy manner and to avail myself of prayer better and better and this is the focus of my uh catholic way of life and that's why i don't see a big big difference between the glorious way of the orthodox church that your brother was talking about and bragging about and rightly so because it is something that i think is sorely lacking in most christians right but there's not a big distinction between that glorious way and the way that christ is leading us as catholics toward and it really is a very very simple difficult but simple approach that we are called to take with with our faith right and to not get caught up in religion is a very very important uh part of that not getting caught up in religion so you can have that faith you can have that fresh spontaneous love and uh have access to that grace right yeah yeah i concur i it's funny though because you talk about the way you talk about confession is the way that i talk about it um people um i was envious because kieran was talking about communion the other day and george was talking about communion and they were just like basically it's like race just like rains down upon everybody at divine liturgy and i'm like man that's dope um like we got to start talking about mass the same way yeah um but i was thinking like i've um i've i have a real struggle with communion just like concentrating and focusing and treating it the way that i should confession no confession like i feel a physical like there's a physical component to confession that is is immediate and it's like yeah yeah people will be like well that's just psychological and it's like no it's not because like because you know like this i didn't there's i mean there is a psychological component obviously but like if i tell you david like if i list off all the sins that you know i've committed to you and you're like yeah man that feels good there's a sense of camaraderie where we both like talk about like how ugly we are i mean there's something nice about that but like that's not like that it's just not the same thing there's something there's something very viscerally real happening at confession um that i've been blessed with and i feel like you've probably been blessed with feeling too where you walk out of there and you're just like free you know wondering how long it'll take you to to get to you know dirty that's never again never ever again it's but yeah the path the path is um simple but i i convolute um treacherous everything yeah you're over complicating your faith walk i think um and the nice thing about having a brother like kieran is he can really cut to the chase and everything he's emphasizing i think is what you and i and every christian needs to hear right which is don't get distracted don't get distracted don't allow yourself to get distracted just because it's a religious thing that you're distracted by doesn't mean you're not distracted right right i mean look at the jews in the time of jesus were they religious or distracted well both they were distracted by religion right they couldn't see what was right in front of them jesus christ so it's the same thing with us we need to get beyond that uh that shallow and lazy religiosity and get to the hard work of self-discipline and uh self-control fortitude and temperance and i mean it's lent now right so i'm trying to be good i'm trying to be self-disciplined but i mean you know by now that i'm not exactly you're awful i hear like a hero of self-discipline self-control especially when it comes to food so i just dude you and every other person in north america i like to cheat that's one thing i like about lanterns like oh i'm going to cheat a little bit now i'm going to have like i'm going to have what i'm not supposed to have taken you do sundays yeah i do sundays sunday is my cheat day oh because i don't even go in your food yeah yeah yeah um is that a type of thing sunday's a cheat day i don't know there's debate on that some people are like oh we don't do that and a lot of people are like no it's fine sunday's a feast day i don't i don't see what that's an issue i pray that the glorious mysteries on sundays only the rest is historical during that oh really yeah oh that's brutal why that's uh that's too much sorrow it's no not at all it's actually it's cool i mean no i'm terrible dude my uncle mark and i've had lengthy discussions about like how the sorrowful mysteries are the best ones yeah we're just like yeah i love the ones where jesus suffers because he he caused that and it's yeah i mean yeah but at the same time though there's this identification with that we're like it's probably disgusting it'll probably like hey we gotta talk about this at some point my favorite my favorite mystery is is um the crowning of thorns i don't know what it is about the crowning of thorns but the idea of them of a man of sorrows where i'm like i just want to go up to that dude's feet and i want to kiss them and um maybe it's just like metal you know maybe it's just like there's something really like brutal