Unpacking the Litany of Humility

Shannon: We are back with another space with one of my favorite people, John Mark from Building Catholic Men. How are you?

JonMarc : Brother, I'm very well. How are you? Good.

Shannon: I haven't talked to you in a while. I know you've been busy with your your fraternity, which we'll hear about later. But I don't think I've talked to you in several weeks. So how's it going?

JonMarc : Yeah. It's it's been too long. It's it's going very well. Very busy with family and work right now. But, yeah, the the new fraternity launched at the beginning of the month.

We've got 20 guys in there, some young fathers, some some older brothers in the faith, and having lots of great discussions and prayer times together. It's been a real blessing.

Shannon: Well, you're always an inspiration. I always see your tweets early in the morning, and you're on an exercise bike, and you're lifting weights. I'm eating my bagel thinking I should do some of that. So you're very inspiring. One day.

One day.

JonMarc : Just a just a one day at a time, man. That's all it is. Right?

Shannon: Yeah. So, when we were doing a lot of those spaces on the screw tape letters, I think that was in July we were doing that, you just kinda made an aside comment, like, we should do this thing on the litany of humility sometime. And then it was like, a week after and it was it was a while afterward where I said, hey. You you said there was something we could do on that, and so that's why we're here. And I can't wait to, to dive in.

JonMarc : Me too, man. Yeah. What I was thinking let me give you just a little road map for tonight. I thought that we would we would begin with prayer, and we would begin by just going ahead to pray the litany of humility. And I can do the main parts.

You could do the secondary parts if you would. So we'll just pray through it slowly. And then, yeah, let's talk a little bit about the virtue of humility and some of the different ways we think of it, and we wanna think of it rightly. And then we wanna look at some of the mechanics of this prayer, some some aspects of it that, that I think are quite interesting. And then I wanna talk a little bit about the vices that humility opposes.

And And then finally, I wanna talk about the the virtue that the other virtue beyond humility that humility paves the way for. So it's gonna be a good, virtue and vice discussion tonight. And I, you know, I please please jump in at any time, Shannon, if you have any thoughts or or reflections or questions. And maybe at the end, if we have time, we could see if there's any comments from the the group as well. That sound good?

Shannon: Absolutely. Sounds great.

JonMarc : Awesome. Alright. Let's pray. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.

O Jesus, meek and humble of heart

Shannon: Hear me. From the desire of being esteemed. Deliver me, oh Jesus. From the desire of being loved. Deliver me, oh Jesus.

From the desire of being extolled. Deliver me, oh Jesus. From the desire of being honored. Deliver me, oh Jesus.

JonMarc : From the desire of being praised.

Shannon: Deliver me, oh Jesus.

JonMarc : From the desire of being preferred to others.

Shannon: Deliver me, oh Jesus. From the desire of being consulted. Deliver me, oh Jesus. From the desire of being approved. Deliver me, oh Jesus.

JonMarc : From the fear of being humiliated.

Shannon: Deliver me, oh Jesus.

JonMarc : From the fear of being despised.

Shannon: Deliver me, oh Jesus.

JonMarc : From the fear of suffering rebukes.

Shannon: Deliver me, O

JonMarc : Jesus. From the fear of being calumniated.

Shannon: Deliver me, O Jesus.

JonMarc : From the fear of being forgotten.

Shannon: Deliver me, O Jesus.

JonMarc : From the fear of being ridiculed.

Shannon: Deliver me, O Jesus.

JonMarc : From the fear of being wronged.

Shannon: Deliver me, O Jesus.

JonMarc : From the fear of being suspected.

Shannon: Deliver me, oh Jesus.

JonMarc : That others may be loved more than I.

Shannon: Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

JonMarc : That others may be esteemed more than I.

Shannon: Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

JonMarc : That in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease.

Shannon: Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

JonMarc : That others may be chosen, and I set aside.

Shannon: Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

JonMarc : That others may be praised and I unnoticed.

Shannon: Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

JonMarc : That others may be preferred to me in everything.

Shannon: Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

JonMarc : That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I ought.

Shannon: Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

JonMarc : Amen. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. So let's begin first just by reflecting on the virtue of humility itself and making some distinctions about what it is and what it's not. Now, if you're anything like me, you've if you've prayed this prayer before and perhaps even praying it again tonight, there are multiple points in this prayer for each person that kind of prickle you. Right?

There are there are certain fears. There are certain desires, announced in this prayer that you feel rather keenly. And so I always find it to be a challenging prayer, certainly one that I need. But I I do think it's important though to to reflect a little bit on what humility is and what it's not. And I I think this is probably stuff we've all heard before, but I think it's always helpful to go back over it.

We know that humility is not a negative view of oneself. As as Lewis says, humility is less about thinking it's it's not thinking of yourself thinking less of yourselves. Sorry. But thinking of yourself less. Right?

It's it's not to, it's not to to think badly about yourself or to put yourself down. Really, it's to turn outward from yourself. Right? Really, if we if we're gonna get into the the vices that humility counters, but they're all vices that turn you inward, that have yourself as the object of your focus, in a again, in an inward focused way, not looking at yourself in light of of God, in light of who he is, in light of what he's calling you to do, but being enmeshed and mired in your own fears and desires. And we're gonna talk about them for a moment too, in a moment as well.

But the key thing I wanna put out here right at the beginning is that I think one of the more helpful ways to think of the virtue of humility is to think of humility itself as a conversion. We know that conversion means a turning, a turning towards, a turning to. And humility, I think, again, a helpful way to think of it is humility is a conversion to reality. It's a turning to what is real and what is true and away what from what is false. Now there are two there are two primary lies that humility turns away from, and those are pride the the vice of pride and the vice of sloth.

And really these are two opposite lies. Pride is the one that we more typically think of in relation to humility. Right? Thinking thinking too highly of yourself. But sloth is sort of the opposite of that.

It's to to think too lowly of yourself, to to despair of God's mercy, to despair of your life, to, let's see, to despair of your ability to to hear and to heed and to meet God's calling in your life. And again, in some sense, in some important sense, humility is the antidote to both of these. Because humility is a turning away from lies, turning away from really conceptions of yourself that are based in yourself, And it's instead turning to God and looking to God for the truth. The truth of this reality we live in, the truth of who he is, and the truth of who we are in him. Right?

We want our identity to come from God, not from our own high or low estimation of ourselves, but from God. So that's that's one the the first key here is that there's a very deep connection between humility and truth. Humility and our ability to really receive truth. And you can't see truth if you're if you're navel gazing. Right?

And you can't see truth, you know, whether that navel gazing takes the form of, again, a puffed up pride or a despairing sloth. You can only see truth if you turn outward to look to God. So that's that's number one, humility and truth. The second thing I wanna point out about this prayer if you and especially if you have the text in front of you, look at it for a moment. What's interesting about this prayer is there are two things that when you boil this prayer down, there are two main things that this prayer is praying for deliverance from, and those two things are fear and desire.

If you look throughout this whole litany, right, the first whole section, it's not prayer for deliverance from being loved. Right? That would be a little silly. And and all these things aren't necessarily bad things. Right?

To be loved, to be extolled, to be honored. They're not bad things. But what is or what are we praying for for deliverance from? We're praying for deliverance from this disordered desire for these things. Right?

And on the other hand, if we move on to the next section of the prayer, right, humiliation, being despised, suffering rebukes, being calumniated, etcetera, we're praying for deliverance from the fear of these things. Not so much from the things themselves which are going to happen in this life, right, there will be moments in which you're despised especially if you're living as a follower of Jesus Christ. There will be times when you will rightly be rebuked, when you've made a mistake. There are times when you will be forgotten, when you'll be wronged. And in this prayer, we're praying for deliverance from the fear of these things.

I find that's really a really fascinating aspect of this prayer that we're being we're praying for deliverance from fear and from desire. Let me pause for a moment there, take a sip of my Fresca, and see if Shannon has any thoughts so far.

Shannon: Yeah. I was gonna ask you that that where you said it's not deliverance from some of these bad things, like being humiliated or despised, but Right. From worrying about them or having some emotional attachment to this shouldn't happen happen to me. You're talking also a little bit about the truth. You know, the, the mother of all virtues is prudence.

And part of being prudent is knowing reality. Right? Knowing the truth. Right. Because you can't make good decisions if you're in some sort of fantasy world.

JonMarc : %. Then there really is, you know, there really is a close connection between prudence and humility. In fact, one might be part of the other and, you know, I'll leave it to to greater minds than mine to to tease all that out. But there's definitely a close connection between those two. Yes.

You can't be a person who makes good decisions. You can't be a person who goes on to practice other virtues unless you've rooted yourself in truth, which means you have to experience a conversion to truth first. It's interesting. Some of Jesus' first words in the gospel of Mark are, repent and believe the gospel, which as father Thomas Dubay points out, is sort of an odd formulation. We we'd expect it to be the other way around.

In other words, accept the gospel first and then, you know, change your life. But there's there's a conversion, there's an interconversion that has to happen first before we can even receive the gospel. And I think, you know, one of those things we might call that conversion is precisely this humility, this turning to truth, this decision that I wanna be a person of truth even if it hurts, even if it you know involves suffering some of these things that I'm I'm afraid of, I wanna be a person of truth. But the, you know, the connection I wanted to make here is that if we think about your disordered desires for things, we think about fears, in some sense, those things both distort our sense of reality when we're caught in them. Right?

When we are when we haven't mastered our fears, then that that lack of mastery, those fears distort our ability to see reality, to to see truly who God is and who I am in God and who other people are in God. Our fears distort that. When we're trying to make decisions and we we we lose control of our fear, right, we're caught up in fear. It's difficult to make decisions in that moment, right? When we're when we're afraid of being embarrassed, right?

When and we when we have no we've not practiced like pushing against that fear and overcoming that fear then we have situations in which we we are almost unable to see the truth of the situation because we're so caught by that fear. I think we've all been in those kinds of situations. Again, whether it was humiliation, whether it was, you know, somebody being upset with us, rightly or wrongly, whether it was feeling left out or forgotten or lonely. Certainly there's an there's an issue there, but if we're caught in the fear of it, if we're overwhelmed by fear, then we can't we can't see the situation rightly. We can't see the bigger picture of the situation and we can't respond rightly to it.

You You know what's that line from from the the great sci fi book Dune, right? Fear is the mind killer. Right? And that's that's true, right? If we let fear overtake us in this deep way it's it kills the mind, it kills our ability to be prudent.

And so too with desire, right, when we have desires for anything other than God himself, anything other than authentic true charity for God and neighbor, That even if they're good things, right, those desires warp and distort our sense of reality. You know, we again, we've all been in the situation where actually, you know, these Twitter spaces are a good example. I've been on Twitter spaces recently, you know, and somebody's talking And, oh, man, I just I just wanna get a word in edge wise because I man, I really, really think that what I have to say is just the most brilliant and beautiful thing that the space is gonna have heard. But whenever we we sense that in ourself, whenever we sense this this strong desire for these things, we have to be cautious here because we know that those desires, because they're untempered, right, they're they're disordered, they're not ordered rightly and they're and they're stronger than they ought to be, They distort our sense of what is true and so we gotta be very cautious there. And so we have this prayer in which we go through these things and we and we pray deliverance not against again, so much from the things themselves, but from the fears and the desires that distort our ability to see reality.

You know, if God puts us in a situation where we are loved or we receive praise or honor, we are you know the the the false humility, the person in false humility says oh no I I couldn't possibly you know you're you're terrible I'm I'm really terrible no the you know they demure right. That's not real humility. No, when when someone gives you a compliment you take it like a man. You receive it as a gift from God and you give God the glory, right? These things aren't bad things but it's the it's the desire for them, it's the reality distorting desire for them that we we're praying deliverance from and so too with the fears.

If we turn to the third part of the prayer, what's interesting, right, is if we've we've prayed for God to deliver us from these reality distorting fears and these these reality distorting desires, Then in the third part of the prayer, we're praying for a spiritual heart transplant. We're asking God in place of these, Lord, replace these with true charitable desires. Right? Replace these with desires for my neighbor's good. That's not really in reference to me.

Right? And that takes some that takes some doing because we have a lot of a lot of me in my own heart. It takes a lot of heart transplanting for God to remove me from my own heart. But that's what we're praying for in that third part. We're praying that in place of these reality distorting fears and desires, place a desire for the good of my neighbor.

To see my neighbor praise, to see him successful. Right? Because that's it's from that place that we too we can receive gifts from God. Right? I love that last line there, that others may be holier than I provided that I may become as holy as I should.

It's not till I can really love my neighbor that I can actually return to myself and love myself in an in an authentic way. It's not till I have charity for my neighbor that I can love myself. It's interesting in the gospel we have this exhortation from Christ to love your neighbor as yourself. And of course that's an interesting formulation because it implies that you are to love yourself, right. There's some sort of standard that you're you're measuring back and forth.

And you can almost flip it and and and see it in reverse as well in the sense that, like, how how do you really love yourself? Well, you love yourself the way that you truly love your neighbor when you do love them, when you really wanna see their good. And not their selfish good, not their vice, but their true virtuous good, their true success that would make them actually happy in God. When you love them like that, then you begin to get a glimpse of how God loves you, and you get begin to maybe have an inkling of what it would mean to love yourself like that. And so again, the point here is, this is such an interesting prayer because we we're praying for deliverance from these fears and desires that that make us unable to see truth.

And we're praying for this virtue of humility by which we we turn, we convert to truth. And as I mentioned at the beginning here, humility is counter to both pride and sloth. Right? These lies of our of thinking so highly of ourselves or too lowly of ourselves. It's turning away from both of those and saying no, my identity is in God.

It is in him that I learn who I am. And here's the reality, if you turn to God in humility, you discover both things. You discover the counter to both those vices. You discover, yes, I am a creature. I cannot do anything without God.

I did not make myself, I do not sustain myself, I cannot save myself without Jesus Christ. I'm I'm little, I'm weak, I am a sinner, I am in need of of my father. But you also find again in God if you're accepting the whole truth, if you're turning to God and trying to receive the whole truth from him you also receive the reality that you are a chosen and cherished son or daughter of the most high god. You are that prodigal son who has returned and the father does not look at you with disdain. He throws his arms around you.

He puts his robe on your back, he puts his ring on your finger, he kills the fatted calf because he loves you. And not only that, he invites you back into his household and he entrusts you again with his work. And that brings us to the virtue, the the additional virtue that lays on the on the other side of humility. We can't really access it without humility. And this is the virtue of magnanimity, which means great heartedness and Peter Creef, Doctor.

Peter Creef describes it as this holy ambition to do great things for God. It it can seem a little bit on the surface similar to pride but really it's nothing like pride because pride wants to be good, to be great apart from God, without God and for one's own purposes and in one's own distorted reality. Whereas magnanimity is this holy ambition of a son or a daughter to please their heavenly father. To go out in his mission field and to do great things in his name for the glory of his name and for the good of your brothers and sisters. That magnanimity, that virtue lies on the other side of of humility because it's only in turning away from our lives and turning to God that we discover in him the truth that he loves us and he calls us to do great things.

He calls us upward and onward. Further on further up and further in as it says, you know, in the last battle there as Aslan calls the children back into the new Narnia. I'll pause again and see if you have any thoughts or reflections or comments there.

Shannon: Well, you mentioned doctor Peter Kreeft, one of my favorite, Catholic philosophers and authors. He's amazing. He said I think he's in his late eighties. He's written something like 90 books.

JonMarc : Yeah.

Shannon: They're all fantastic. But, I remember he was giving, he there's a lot of, Peter Kreeft on YouTube. If you ever wanna see some great Catholic talks, there's especially one called The Truth About the Eucharist. Go to YouTube. I wanna say Google that, but YouTube that and, and watch that.

But I think it's in that speech that he gives this quote from Saint Augustine, the great doctor of the church, who wrote, if you ask me what is the most essential element in the teaching and morality of Jesus Christ, I would answer you. The first is humility. The second is humility. And the third is humility. And he mentions that humility is praised 25 different times in in scripture.

So it's, something that is important that god wants us to focus on.

JonMarc : Right. Right. Yeah. Throughout scripture and and even throughout our our secular, you know, sayings and maxims. Right?

We have some of the truths of these of these things. Like, obviously, you know, he who humbles himself will be exalted. But he who exalts himself will be humbled. Right? We have this this paradox in scripture.

You know, we also have the familiar, you know, the pride come pride comes before the fall. Right? And you know what's an interesting dynamic here with pride and with magnanimity, with any vice in life, right, one way to avoid the danger of falling into a vice is to stay home and to just sit on your couch and do nothing with your life. Right? You can avoid pride, you you can avoid the sin of pride if you just, you know, hide in your home and never put yourself out in front of people.

Right? You you might be able to avoid some of the dangers of pride. Now there are other vices that you're gonna fall into by doing that. But but the point here is that when we try to do anything with our life, you know, when you begin to try to make changes in your life, you begin to try to pray, put your life together, you know, get on a workout routine, eat healthy, start sleeping, start going to mass more, going to sacraments, trying to do something with your life in obedience to Christ. You're gonna discover the pride in your soul.

It's gonna come out in many of these ways that we just prayed about in the litany of humility. You're gonna find yourself desiring to be loved and extolled and honored and praised for the good that you're doing. You're gonna fear being found out or being forgotten or ridiculed or wronged or suspected. That's gonna come out. Right?

When you try to do something with your with your life, when you try to follow God, follow Christ, this stuff's gonna come out of your heart. And that's a good thing because when it comes to the surface and you can see it, when you can feel it, when you pray this litany of humility and you feel the pinch of of praying deliverance for these fears and desires, that's a good thing. Cause that was always there, it was always deep down in your heart but now it's been brought to the surface and now you can give it to God, now you can pray for deliverance from it. And and and so you know pride's gonna go through that, for that fall. When you do something in your life that pride's gonna come out but that pride also comes before humility.

You have to bring that pride out into the open and slay it, you know give it to God before you can turn into humility. And so you know again that the magnanimity which is what is left when that pride is burned away is this great heartedness, this true purified desire to do great things in love and obedience to God, that's there. But you can only get there by, you know, doing something with your life, by getting off the couch, by taking steps forward, and just accepting that this is gonna draw some of this vice out of your heart. You're gonna feel it. You're gonna it's gonna pinch a little bit, but that's a good thing because now god can give you a heart transplant that you so desperately need.

Shannon: It's funny. I'd never heard of this, you mentioned that at the end of this space, we might do this litany of magnanimity, which I'd never heard of. But when I googled it Okay. When I when I googled it, your post is, like, the number one search result in Google. So

JonMarc : Okay. Well, I wanted to share that. I I said I might share that with you. That I wrote that, actually. Okay.

So I I wasn't I wasn't sure if I'm gonna share that or not. I I yeah. So if you're interested in in the virtue of magnanimity, right, it's this kind of on the other side of humility. I did write sort of a follow-up the litany of humility called the litany of magnanimity and I don't, you know, I actually didn't bring it in front of me here. If you if you go to my profile or go to my sub stack you can get it.

I mean do you

Shannon: I can put it in the I can put it in the

JonMarc : Yeah. You can just put a link there. You know, but that's it's it's interesting to to kinda contrast the two because in one really important logical sense, the litany of humility, humility must come before magnanimity logically because it's it's one is built on the other. But in another sense, it's really helpful to reflect on the litany of magnanimity or just these op the, you know, there are things in the litany of magnanimity like from the desire for a comfortable life deliver me Jesus. Right?

Because again, there's sort of this this interdynamic play between humility and magnanimity and that again you're you're pretty protected from pride if you are just merely living a comfortable cozy life. It's not really till you try to do something with your life, right? Until you you accept God's invitation to go out on the road and to build something or to fix something or to to hear his call and follow your vocation that that pride will start to rear its ugly head. And so, again, humility has to come first. But when we consider, when we set goals, when we dream about the future, when we we ask God what he's calling us to do and we accept his invitation to start moving forward, that's really when, again, that stuff comes out of our heart, and we we have the opportunity to pray perhaps more efficaciously the litany of humility because we we we have these wounds now up before our eyes that we can be praying for deliverance from.

Shannon: Well, it really is, so if I I did post it into the space. So you can see if you click on that at the top of the nest as they call it, you can click over to, John Mark's post. And it's a fantastic litany. And, you know, it's it's great because there's so many litany's in the church, and I love this. This this one should be well known.

So in fifty years, it might be said by millions of people. Who knows?

JonMarc : Well, yeah. We we shall see. It's again, the litanies are are great because they're just they're great fodder for reflection. Again, every time you pray the litany of humility, different different bullet points, you know, pop out to you based on what's going on in your life. And that's just that's part of the magic of them because it they identify where you're at and what you need healing in at that moment.

So, yeah, I really appreciate the great litany's of the church.

Shannon: You were talking about how when you when you you can stay home and avoid a lot of a lot of problems, so you avoid the sin of pride, perhaps, if you never left the house. When we go out and engage with people, it's sort of the same thing. Like like a lot of times when people You've heard of people that have road rage, right? There. They're in the car and somebody cuts them off and they just get so angry.

And it's not because you cutting me off with your Toyota Corolla is such a horrible thing. It's that I'm already angry. I've had some other repressed anger and it's like orange juice. When the orange is squeezed, what's inside is going to come out. And so even if you stayed home and didn't go out to to where your you were your pride was exposed or things you that that means that means it's it's still in there somewhere right?

Is it

JonMarc : still there? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I always share you know in relation to you're talking about, marriage and family life that, you know, I thought I was a very calm and gentle and patient person before I had children.

Right? And then I discovered that no. Up to this point, I've been living a very selfish inward mostly comfortable life on my own terms. And as soon as I stepped out on this journey of now living a life where I have small small people dependent upon me, I discovered that no no no no. I I was just again, I was just taking the easy road up to that point.

Now now what's coming to the surface is stuff that was always already there. Right? I I had anger in there. I had and I had pride that was kinda motivating that anger, and I had fear. Right?

One of the the main drivers of bad parenting is fear because, you know, your kid does something and you're you're imagining, oh, crap. He's gonna be on Jerry Springer someday because he, you know, he took an extra cookie or whatever it was. And you're afraid of it. So you you yell or you try to rush them or you try to to to hurry through discipline or you're too harsh. And it's because of it's because of fear.

Right? You know, you you can avoid the the sin of lust perhaps, you know, if you just, you know, hide in your closet and you never have to see people of the opposite sex, you know, or if you never go on the Internet or you never go to your job. But that's not what god calls us to. Right? He doesn't call us to avoid sin by not living life.

No. He's he calls us to live life knowing that we're gonna make some mistakes. So we have to be obedient there. This is where the structure of the virtues is helpful because justice comes before temperance and courage. Right?

We have to seek to do justice. And then of course, we're trying to do justice. We're gonna make some mistakes. We're gonna discover some difficult things from ourselves. We're gonna discover some fears that have to be mastered.

We're gonna gonna discover some some desires that are that are disorderedly disordered in their, in their relative strength compared to other desires and disordered because they're attached to the wrong things. Again, those need to be fixed but the fact that they're coming to light is a good thing. Right? Because now they can be prayed for. Now we can make, conscious acts of the will to push against them, you know, to master our fear, to begin to steer our desires back in the direction of what they were, made for by God in the first place.

Shannon: You mentioned some of those cardinal virtues. I I think was it you that commented? I I I ordered a challenge coin with the virtues on them, and I have it just kind of on my desk, kind of in front of me. And it's just always a great reminder. Prudence, courage, temperance, justice.

My lights are off. So that's why I'm struggling to read it. Yeah. It's always good to keep those things before your eyes.

JonMarc : Right. Right. Yeah. And the order is important. I don't know what where where they are in your on your coin, but the prudence and justice come before courage and temperance.

Because you can't be courageous unless you've previously been prudent and discerned what it is God's calling you to do. Right? The the man who just leaps into the fights but doesn't know what what he's fighting for or why he's fighting. Well, he just likes fighting. He's not courageous.

Right? But it's the person who's discerned what God is calling them to do and then in face of fear does it anyway. That's courage. Right? And so too with with temperance.

Right? Again, it would be it would be easy to temper ourselves perhaps, you know, in some in some impoverished way by just avoiding our duties. But, no, we have to do our duties. And in the course of doing our duties, we discover our intemperance and then becomes the task to to be fixing that and and, purifying our hearts. This this prayer, again, provides a lot of a lot of reflection.

It's a challenging one. Right? And then I again, we started with, you know, clarifying a little bit of the nature of humility because we I think this this prayer is, like, you know, it's explosive, And and it it could be almost too much for someone if they're not prepared for it. Right? If they if you got somebody who's already got a real negative self image, you know, they're, like, maybe caught up in slow through despair.

You you you gotta tread carefully with this prayer. We have to recognize that, again, humility is not about thinking badly of yourself. It's it's about thinking about thinking of yourself at all, as the main object of your mind. It's about turning to God and saying, lord, I wanna know from you what is true, What is true about you, what is true about this world you've made, what is true about me, and what is true about what you've called me to do. Oh, thank you so much.

Shannon: You have such a you have such a great way of of unwrapping these things. When we were doing Screwtape in July. You have such a great perspective. It's just so enjoyable to just sit and listen.

JonMarc : Oh, well, I thank you, Shannon. You know, there there's just certain topics I'm really interested in and they're all because they're they're ones that I, at some point, I had a very practical and still do have a very practical need to work through because they were they were my issues. I I return to this prayer frequently because I frequently need it. Go ahead, Susan.

Guest 1: Hello again, Shannon. And thank you for that for hosting this space, and thank you for that beautiful follow-up to the litany of humility. That's definitely gonna get printed out, and I think I'm going to be utilizing that prayer. So thank you.

JonMarc : You know, if I could just make a a very small plug here. I I've been writing for about a month over on Substack, and the cardinal virtues are my primary focus of my writing and teaching. And so I'm I'm in the midst of what will be a long series, just kinda walking very slowly through all the cardinal virtues and kind of, you know, cracking them open and and exploring the dynamics there. And so, again, if if if the virtues and their interconnections and their their flow, is something that anyone is interested in, they can go over there and and check that out.

Shannon: Well, we have to do this more often. I love our spaces.

JonMarc : Yeah, man.

Shannon: And, Yeah. I wanted to give you a chance to talk about, again, your digital fraternity for men to help them become better men. And I I did a space earlier. In fact, Susan was in that space where we're trying to promote this idea of rosary rallies. And there's a gentleman in Ireland, Owen Gallagher, who has promoted and gotten gotten many of these going, where where there'll be 50 men on their knees kneeling in front of a statue of Mary praying the rosary.

And there's something about I can't believe it. There's something about in the leadership of men, especially in the when they're humbling themselves in public like that. Mhmm. That is so powerful. And in your digital fraternity, tell us about that, about helping men be the leaders they're supposed to be.

JonMarc : Sure thing. Well, you know, part of the the reason for it is that men men grow and mature as men in collision with other men. Right? It is through challenge and encouragement from their fathers and from their brothers, their their physical fathers and brothers, but then later on by by their brothers in the faith, by their men in their squad or on their team, that men grow and mature. And and we have a lack of that in the modern world, and especially in the faith.

Even sometimes when we have very positive community in the faith around, around studying or around theology, we we don't always have men who who get together to pray and to challenge each other, again, to to step out as we talked about tonight, to step out and do something with your life. God's calling you not to be comfortable and cozy. He didn't make you for comfort as as pope Benedict said. He's made you for greatness. Right?

And we need we need to be around other men who who don't allow us to just remain comfortable, but who are, you know, encouraging and challenging us to step out on the road and to to take the next right step and to grow. And especially if if you're a husband or father or priest. Right? God has God has given you, people to watch over and to be a father for. Right?

Every man is called to fatherhood in one way, shape, or form. That's really the the the icon of fatherhood or of masculinity is is the good father. So men have to have to strive to be to be that role. Right? And that's that's, certainly, it it's founded in prayer.

That's always the root. That's always the the foundation of it. But it it flows into conversion in all areas of your life. Like, you need to there's no neutral territory in your life. Right?

There's just those parts of your life you haven't yet given over to God. So all this is to say, you know, we need to be around other men who are growing, who are striving, so that we, we can do that as well. We can be challenged in that. So, anyway, all that is to say, I started, beginning of last month, something I've been working toward for a long time, which is a digital fraternity, building Catholic men fraternity. There's about 20 men in it right now from all around the world.

We've got, you know, we've got a guy in Germany. We've got a guy in Ireland, a guy in Romania, a guy in Philippines, then guys throughout The United States. And we get together multiple times to week to pray, to talk about our goals and our habits. We have a a book study and I'm teaching a course on on the virtues right now, in that fraternity. And so there's just lots of opportunities, you know, even for for men with busy family lives, to to come to a meeting, to get to know some brothers, to to set some goals, and to be accountable for taking steps forward in their faith.

And so, yeah, if there are any men here who are interested in that or if you know anybody for whom that would be helpful to, they can send me a DM or or check out more information over on my Substack.

Shannon: Fantastic. Awesome. So, yeah. We did a space, I think, before we did the, Screwtape series, we we did a space on on how how men need brothers. Right?

They need that support system. Yeah. Because a lot of men get that support system from their wife. Maybe they have a couple of friends at work, but marriages end sometimes, unfortunately. People get fired and and they can find themselves totally alone without any kind of support system, which is not what anybody needs to do.

So if there if if you heard John Mark talk about that digital fraternity, check it out. If you're not following him, give him a follow. Follow Susan. She helps out in a lot of spaces. I do.

And I really appreciate you, Susan. So, well, did we wanna wrap it? Did we wanna do the litany of magnanimity? What do you wanna do?

JonMarc : Sure. If you'd be up for that, yeah. Alright. Let us pray in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit.

Shannon: Amen.

JonMarc : Amen. Lord Jesus Christ, priest, prophet, and king.

Shannon: Hear me.

JonMarc : From the desire for a comfortable life.

Shannon: Deliver me, Jesus.

JonMarc : From the desire for passing pleasures.

Shannon: Deliver me, Jesus.

JonMarc : From the desire to remain as a child.

Shannon: Deliver me, Jesus.

JonMarc : From the desire for wealth without work.

Shannon: Deliver me, Jesus.

JonMarc : From the desire for cheap grace.

Shannon: Deliver me, Jesus.

JonMarc : From the desire to live in unchallenging times.

Shannon: Deliver me, Jesus.

JonMarc : From the desire to wait until I am ready.

Shannon: Deliver me, Jesus.

JonMarc : From the desire for this worldly security.

Shannon: Deliver me, Jesus.

JonMarc : From the fear of being challenged.

Shannon: Deliver me, Jesus.

JonMarc : From the fear of just expectations.

Shannon: Deliver me, Jesus.

JonMarc : From the fear of hard work.

Shannon: Deliver me, Jesus.

JonMarc : From the fear of change.

Shannon: Deliver me, Jesus.

JonMarc : From the fear of being pushed from my comfort zone.

Shannon: Deliver me, Jesus.

JonMarc : From the fear of being depended upon.

Shannon: Deliver me, Jesus.

JonMarc : From the fear of shouldering responsibility.

Shannon: Deliver me, Jesus.

JonMarc : From the fear of being subject to the test.

Shannon: Deliver me, Jesus.

JonMarc : That the father's will be done rather than my own.

Shannon: Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

JonMarc : That great deeds may be asked of me for God's glory and my neighbor's good.

Shannon: Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

JonMarc : That I may suffer for the sake of the gospel.

Shannon: Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

JonMarc : That my life may consist of crosses in order that I may imitate my savior.

Shannon: Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

JonMarc : That I might be allowed to experience and endure evil so that others may be saved.

Shannon: Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

JonMarc : That all false humility might be expunged from my soul.

Shannon: Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

JonMarc : That my light may shine before others, that they may see my good deeds and glorify my father in heaven.

Shannon: Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.