Fr. Gregory Pine

You may have experienced some measure of pain, a heaping helping of suffering.

There might be a lot of like seeming incoherences, but it's part of a story.

And that story redounds to God's glory and potentially your salvation.

And so you can have the confidence that if you gaze into it,

like it won't be the void that gazes back.

So like, I think like a couple of preparatory virtues, which I commend to all people of all times and places are curiosity and honesty.

In a sense, like be curious about what you're actually experiencing.

I think a lot of people are worried to inquire as to what's going on in their life because they fear that there are no answers or there are no solutions.

But the fact of the matter is just taking on someone else's counsel or authority that there are, and then you can be honest.

You can be like, I'm embarrassingly this way.

I am shamefacedly that way.

I am less than I ought to be, or I am, you know, I think a lot of people feel that they are simultaneously too little and too much, which is a terrible place to be.

But you can stand to be curious about your experience and honest with what you find, and you can try,

to hand that over, you know, like goodness comes from without.

And if there's going to be a goodness that enters your life, it's often going to be by asking for help from a friend, from a member of your family, from a trusted kind of source of wisdom, somebody who's been through it, somebody who's whatever, been down that road.

But ultimately, like, I think that that network of relationships and interactions is meant to conduct us to God.

And so when he comes knocking,

you're probably going to be able to recognize the sound at the very least, and maybe even the voice.

So yeah, even in my attempts to be less than preachy, I end up being more than preachy, but like, it's just,

Yeah, people can have the courage to live their lives because it's not beyond us.