Learning to Listen

0:05Good evening, everyone, and welcome to this, spiritual direction certificate program, webinar. This is father Robert Persueti, with Divine Mercy University. Let's begin this evening with a prayer. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. We'll take our prayer from the liturgy of the day. Impart to your servants, we pray, oh lord, the gift of heavenly grace, that the feast of the nativity of the blessed virgin we bring deeper peace for those for whom the birth of her son was the dawning of salvation. Through Christ our lord. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

1:07Amen. Saint Joseph, pray for us in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, good evening, and thank you for joining us for this webinar. This webinar will be taped for a future reference. So this is the beginning of this academic year's series of webinars, starting, I guess, with the September school year. We had a few over the summer, including August. And we have a kind of an interesting series this entire year, which we'll be able to publish and make available, for all of you. This evening, we're gonna pick up on a theme that we've touched on from various angles, and perhaps the fact that we come back to it maybe between the lines tells us of its of its importance and also its depth and of its many nuances.

1:57So we're gonna go at it from a particular angle, this evening. This evening's webinar is going to be, in many ways, directed towards those that are already spiritual directors, those that are training to be spiritual directors, those in spiritual direction, or anyone with any kind of maybe general theological curiosity, particularly in the area of maybe of spiritual, theology. So we entitled this Learning to Listen. The particular angle we're gonna take here is are from some words in the gospel, which are very, very telling. So we're gonna speak about this and also the role of spiritual direction. And then towards the end, we'll spend a little bit of time speaking about the the program, the spiritual direction certificate program, and, maybe kinda what's behind it and how what might, help in many ways kind of frame, the question that we're presenting today.

3:00This beautiful little painting that's in back, you've probably been able to make it out, and you could probably guess what it is. It's Samuel. Samuel is a young boy as we read in the book of Samuel, one Samuel, where sleeping in the temple of the Lord well, not the temple. The temple didn't exist back then, but it must have been the, the meeting tent, or something akin to the meeting tent where the ark of the covenant was housed. And the ark, of course, which housed the Shekinah, the glory of Israel, the presence of the Lord God. And from that glorious presence, the Lord called Samuel by name. And this is the moment, I guess, this, image is depicting one of the moments when Samuel, hears that voice.

3:49It's probably the last one, the third one, because the first couple of times, Samuel got up and ran to Eli. You know, here I am. He called me. And finally, Eli realized the third or fourth time that, when Samuel, did that, that, you know, the Lord was calling to the to to the boy. And so he instructed Samuel to whenever he he heard that voice again, he was waking up in the middle of the night just to speak, Lord, your servant is listening. And this seems to capture that moment of speak, Lord, your servant is listening. There's actually a lot of spirituality depicted in this image, which might maybe start as a sort of framework for our going into the theme. Notice the open hands, which are emblematic of what the priest does in mass or what has become accustomed to do in prayer, the sense of upwardness, the sense of empty hands, the sense of receptivity, this look of boyish and child childlike and innocent anticipation on his face, the sense of longing in his eyes, really in many ways, he really is ready to hear what the Lord God has to say, something very, very beautiful.

5:08And I think we could recognize in what this image portrays, just incredible spiritual beauty, don't we? Maybe something we'd all like to have and continue to cultivate in our life. So let's delve into the theme. By the way, kind of by way inter introduction, father Robert Prasuti with the spiritual direction certificate program. You probably already know that by now, so we'll kinda gloss over this section here. And let's delve into the description, which will be maybe our point of entry. What we listen to and how we hear are an important and often overlooked part of our spiritual journey and development. Maybe not maybe not so overlooked and maybe not so underappreciated. I mean, here you are in this, in this webinar.

6:06You obviously value it. But there may be more depth here than we realize. The Lord tells us, beware of how you hear. Very interesting phrase. I don't know if it's ever captured your attention. It's recounted by Matthew and also, Luke. Beware of how of how you hear. What we hear and how we hear it can either foster our relationship with the living God or it can become an obstacle. This webinar will explore the different ways we can hear or not hear, and a spiritual direction can cultivate an ear for the things of God. Okay, let's delve into that. Let's go to the gospel passage. By the way, I misquoted there. It says Matthew should be Mark, the gospel of Mark. This is what we have here from the gospel of Mark.

7:00Here Jesus is teaching to the crowds, this particular image looks like it's the crowds in the temple, very mixed crowd, some young, some old, men and women, learning, maybe not so learned, temple guard looks like they're in the background. And Jesus in the course of his teaching says, he said to them, is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket or under a bed enough to be placed on a lampstand? For there is nothing hidden except to be made visible, nothing in secret except to come to light. Anyone who has ears to hear ought to hear. He also told them, take care of what you hear. The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you and still more will be given to you. To the one who has, more will be given.

7:48From the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. What what do we have here? Well, we have here kind of a a number of teachings, and the gospels have a way of kind of putting together in one place, maybe series of the teachings of Jesus. Maybe this was a particular moment when Jesus was teaching. What does his aside here mean when he says take care of what you hear? It can mean a couple of things. One, it could be that Jesus is inviting them to pay attention. I'm I'm teaching you, and I'm teaching you words of everlasting life, as he would say in in different places. I have the words of everlasting life, that he speaks and his words are true because he tells us what he sees from the father.

8:38So maybe he's inviting us to an act of faith. But in most there might also be this kind of angle to take care of how we hear what comes from the Lord and preserve it in a special place. That is what our Lord says to us occupies a very unique place in our life of listening, which no other, words occupy. In other words, the words of our Lord invite a special credence, a special openness, an act of faith, which no other words that we can possibly hear, can come to us. And So our Lord is inviting us to faith. It could also mean that there are a lot of things that people are now beginning to hear. Maybe they're beginning to hear from the scribes and the Pharisees, some not so good things about Jesus, and Jesus is inviting them to a discerning type of hearing.

9:45You know, of what you hear, be discerning, and take care what you hear because what you let in might actually predispose you not to take in the truth. What you take in might actually predispose you not to hear my words. So there's something very telling here, and I think, it could be very helpful for us to sit with this for a moment that in our life and hear Christ telling his disciples, in life, you're gonna hear a lot of different things. You're gonna hear a lot of messages. You might even hear a lot of noise. Beware of what you hear. Beware of what you take in. Beware of what you let in because we are shaped by what we hear. We are shaped by what we let come in. And anyone who hears my words and puts them into practice is the one who will be saved.

10:50So what is that about our hearing that means taken into our spirit? Let's kinda sit with that because we're gonna kind of continue to maybe to go around this a little bit. But what are the types of things we can hear in life? The world, I guess, you could say the world and life are constantly bringing us messages. And what does it mean to become to have to develop a selective hearing, to really learn to hold the words of our Lord? We recall in one of the moments in Jesus' life, when a woman in the crowd, after Jesus was teaching some incredible things, said, Blessed is the womb that bore you, and blessed are the breasts I give you suck. And Jesus responds, blessed rather are they who hear the word of God and keep it.

11:53This hearing and keeping, this hearing and keeping, allowing the word to resonate, allowing the word to keep. In the passage in the gospels where Jesus's mother and brothers come to visit him, And again, a person from the crowd says, Your mother and your brother are outside and they're asking to speak with you. And Jesus responds, Who are my mother and my brothers? And he points to his disciples, Here are my mother and brother. Whoever hears the word of God and puts it into practice are my mother, my brother, and my sister. So this hearing and holding on, putting into practice. So this is why Jesus might be saying, take care of what you hear. What do we hear? Especially as men and women of God who are seeking to, to be faithful to the Lord, there are certain things that we might hear that can unsettle us, that can maybe undermine?

13:09Can we use that term? Our act of faith in the Lord, our hope, our trust. And what does it mean to take care of what we hear? What do we hold on to? What do we ruminate? What do we turn over in our heart? What are the different messages? What are the different things that are communicated to us? It's interesting that here, Jesus, still in verse 24, says, the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you, and still more will be given to you. Is this connected or not with that take care of what you hear? To hear with an open, a generous heart, a giving heart, one that's very receptive. To the one who has, more will be given. For the one who has not, even what he has will be taken Obviously, there's much more there than we can unpack here, but perhaps there there is an invitation to do what I think the looks of many of the faces of the people in this image, of this intent of hearing, this wondering, this turning over, this ruminating, the spiritual ruminating, wondering at the words of the Lord, letting him turn our heart over and over.

14:33Let's hold on to this. So what does it mean to take care of what we hear? It's interesting that one of the greatest activities the disciples did with our Lord was to be with him, to listen to him. What does it mean to listen to the Lord? What did it mean for the disciples to hear him? Many ways, it was to take him in, to take in his person, to receive his person. And this is what it means to hear somebody, to listen to someone that we're actually taking in their person. It's more than just hearing words. So perhaps there's something about hearing and listening that is to take and to receive, to create an inner space for. So what does it mean to hear God? It means to create a space for God. How do you create a space for God?

15:42Well, within traditional Catholic spirituality, we've often heard of silence, interior silence. The great searchers for God in the history of the church, the monastic communities, not only the monastic communities. You know, what the monastic communities do is a rule of life in their vocation. We're all called to do as a virtue according to our own specific calling in life. So the monks used to have this thing called grand silence that they would create moments during the day in which they would not speak. And that not speak was a precondition to creating a place of silence in their soul where the noise cannot enter. And the term interior silence, often today, we hear of a type of fasting from the media.

16:52That's a type of silence, of interior silence. Why? What we receive and what we create an inner space for, we become pregnant with. Excuse the image, but it is in the Psalms. The evil man, according to the Psalms, conceives evil and brings forth lies. So what we allow to come in tends to gestate in us, and we tend to give birth to it. So what does it mean to take care of what we hear? What are we allowing to become? And again, excuse the image. What are we taking into our spirit? What are we allowing to grow there if we wanna use the image of, of the seed and the way Jesus speaks about? What type of fruit will it bear? So to take care of what you hear, take care be be aware of what we're taking in, what we're receiving, what we're creating in our space for.

17:56What are what is what are the noise noises of my own thoughts, my own interpretations, my own kind of ways of seeing things, and what comes from God? This is where discernment is important. And what do we mean by discernment? To distinguish, to discriminate in the language, the etymological language. And in this sense, discernment is not so much a decision making algorithm as it is an awareness of what's coming in, an awareness of where it's coming from. So this take care of what you hear means, what are we opening ourselves up to to influence us? And what does it mean in our life to allow ourselves to be deeply influenced by the word of God? Wouldn't that be something so great? What's the number one influence in my life?

18:52It's my god. It's the holy spirit stirring in my heart and soul. So take care of what you hear, beware of what you allow to come into you, take root in you, and to grow. And what are the fruits of what would I allow to grow in me? In many ways, to take care of what we hear remember the Latin word obedience? You know where it comes from etymologically? Ab audide, and what's the word audide in Latin is to hear. So obedience, we become obedient, ipso facto, by what we hear or to what we listen to. So if in many ways, popular news, popular culture, popular interpretation of things, you know, the political back and forth, this is what we're constantly hearing and listening to and taking in. We become obedient to that.

19:53Our framework of seeing the world, we become obedient to that. For constantly listening to the word of God and prayer and through events. Right? We do look at the media, but there's a discerning of how I take it in. What does it mean that my life becomes obedient to the word of God and the truth? You know, those who hear the truth will be set free. Do I find myself being constricted in my freedom? What am I listening to? How do I frame questions? How do I look at situations in life? Do I frame difficulties within a language scheme that I get from listening to the world or worse to the evil one? Or are my reference points of how I see myself, my own identity, and other things from the narrative of God?

20:51And to hear his word, to obey his word, brings me to freedom. So Jesus very beautifully tells us, take care of what you hear, take care of what you allow to come in. It's beautiful here, one thing that strikes me about this image, it looks like those who are in this inner circle of disciples are the apostles. The ones who are closest to listening are the ones who become the best apostles. We will be sent by what we hear. We will become apostles, messengers of what we hear. This is why the disciple who sits at the feet of the Lord will become an apostle of what he or she hears. If we're listening to the the discourses of the world and other things, you will become we will become an apostle of that.

21:50And so here, what does it mean to be close to Jesus? And not kind of the fellows on the outside, just kinda constantly checking them out, being a little bit guarded. So what are we hearing? What are we taking in? What are we receiving? What are we creating space for in in our life? Perhaps a very, a very telling question there. I don't know if we may call this a theology of of the word or theology of communication. When we open ourselves up to hearing, what do we hear? Sounds? We certainly hear sounds, but we're also aware of being able to hear without airwaves. A message? Yeah. A message? So perhaps it can be spoken in many different ways. Can we read the message through events? Can we hear events?

22:59Can we hear situations? Can we isn't this what discernment is? Learning to piece together the characters, that life presents to me into a the message that comes from the living God. Maybe this is in a certain sense what discernment and prophecy are about. So we hear a message. In the end, maybe we're hearing a person who communicates himself. Maybe the word is actually communication of a person. And so when receiving a person's words, we're actually receiving our person. And can words come from various depths? Maybe there are words which come superficially and, you know, the person communicates themselves superficially, conventionally. How are you doing today? Yeah. I'm doing alright. You know, a conventional communication, and there's not much person there to receive.

23:59But if the person is deeper, how are you doing today? Well, let me tell you. I'm going to make myself vulnerable and tell you what's in the depth of my heart. Wow. You're receiving a depth of person there. So where is the word coming from? Is the word coming from up here, from here, from deep within? How much of the person is being communicated? When God communicates, he communicates from his very core, from his heart, his totality in Christ. Here, obviously, we do have something about listening to God. In this image, you see kind of a dialogue, what looks like to be a Pharisee, one of the Pharisees with Jesus. If we were to read maybe the body language of the Pharisee, to me, maybe not a great reader of body language, but he seems to be open.

24:52He's engaged in our Lord. He's authentically questioning. And Jesus was beautiful to see how in his dealing with the Pharisees too, even at times when he had to be very strong, he communicates what's deep in his heart. And a number of them, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and others, and, eventually, in the acts of the apostles, it says that a large number of priests were added to the company of believers. So Jesus has a way of always giving us from his very depth. So what is the ultimate object of hearing? Well, we know there's only one word, and it's Christ Jesus. And every other word that's meaningful captures a piece of Christ. And Genesis one twenty six, when God spoke the word of dialogue, let us make man in our image, man and woman in our own image, in our likeness, the trinitarian dialogue is that which became the this the seedbed of the being of the human person.

26:07We are a a and we in our very being, in our very identity are a word of the Father to the Son, the Son to the Father. Let us make man in our own image. And Christ came to us, remain in me as I remain in you, to be united with Christ is to receive the word. Isn't our communication and charity, communication of Christ, the eternal Word himself? There's obviously a lot to ponder here. Let's kinda make a transition here because this is where spiritual direction can, speak a lot to us. Yeah. Maybe before going to spiritual direction, let me just share with you this image, being the birthday of our lady. Mary is the listener, the hearer par excellence. She is the listening version. Here, you see her in the moment in which Fra Angelico pictures her as receiving the eternal word.

27:20Do you notice that ray that comes from heaven? With the holy spirit. May notice the holy spirit here. And when Mary is saying, behold, the handmade of the Lord be done unto me according to your word, and the word is literally coming to her that moment. She's becoming pregnant with the word. Saint Augustine is a very beautiful saying that Mary conceived in her heart before she conceived in her womb because of her listening. You notice the book on her lap, Sacred Scripture, she's constantly meditating and listening. She's the one who bless, she's blessed because she believed the words spoken to her. She is the one who is blessed because she turns over the word, the events in her heart, and she is the one who is blessed because she does not let any one of the words escape her.

28:15That is the word of God. And, you know, that gesture of holding it in, of not letting any part of the experience of God. Notice on the far left there, Adam and Eve, they mistrust in the word of God. They disobeyed. They disawed it. They didn't hear the word of God. They believed a lie. They heard a lie, And that lie became a lie of their identity, a lie of their situation, a lie. So Let's speak about spiritual direction. Receiving spiritual direction and perhaps giving spiritual direction is director and a directee. Spiritual direction, well done and well received, what does it do? It helps create and hold the space for God. You know, very often we go to spiritual direction, we naturally start.

29:26What's happening? What's going on? And, you know, when we allow that to be our starting point and we don't kinda get bogged down or get distracted by the circumstances, but go into the heart of the person. Within and by helping the person hear and are hearing the person, are listening, are listening for the deep movements of their spirit. We can speak it in terms of emotion, but it's much more than what we typically speak about emotion. It's deep spiritual movements, pretty good for a person of faith, hope, and love. We're helping them, in a certain sense, create and hold the space for God, where they're going through a very difficult moment maybe, or a very good moment, or a very blah moment.

30:21What does it mean in our life to kinda hold the space for God? Meaning, what is God doing? Let's not be quick to give a too human an interpretation or too human a solution or put things in too human a narrative. Here in Luke one twenty nine, something very telling. When Mary received the word at the annunciation, scripture says she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. This is very telling. What troubles Mary's soul? The the Greek word for troubling here is being perturbed, being stirred, being moved. You can imagine the soul of Mary in this interior silence that we said, in that her soul is reserved for God and God alone. There is this stillness.

31:19She's not influenced. She's not not troubled by the circumstances of life, the things of the world. I mean, you know, we're all wrong in some way troubled by them, but there's a place in her soul where there's just this stillness, and it must be preserved in prayer, and we've all experienced this. Right? When we are able to live at a depth, what the catechism calls the depth of the heart, and that's preserved be it by prayer, by virtue. Mary was troubled by what she heard from the angel because she knew that was the word of God. What troubles Mary, what stirs Mary is the word of God. What's God want here? It's not these are the circumstances. What is this gonna mean in my relationship with Joseph?

32:04We'll colorize. I didn't expect this. I can't no. I can't believe it. You gotta get me no. No. No. What does it mean in spiritual direction that that's the place we try to go to? And what does it mean in spiritual direction, in our own giving or receiving the spiritual direction? Would that be the ordinary ambit in which the dialogue unfolds? Spiritual direction can help. Another way of looking at it can help normalize the background noise, and we can get away from it. There's a lot of noise in our life, isn't there? Situations, circumstances. What happens in one Kings 19? You remember the story, Elijah, has a lot of noise. He's troubled by Jezebel's threat that she's gonna kill him because of what she did to the what he did to the prophets of Baal, and he's afraid.

33:03He has all of this noise going on, so he goes into the desert, very beautiful, and God sends him on a forty days walk. You have to kinda get away from that noise. And then he goes to the mountain, and the word of the Lord comes to him and says, go and stand at the foot of at the entrance of the cave. The Lord will be passing by, and there was a violent wind, an earthquake, and crush, and and, and fire. Three manifestations of Yahweh in the Old Testament, yet God was not in them this time. What does this mean? We constantly have to keep listening to how our Lord speaks to us. We can't fully identify our lord with one experience. You know, wasn't the lord in that experience of consolation? Of course, he was.

34:01Because what? He continues to speak. Now he's using the language of dryness. Before, it was a fire. Remember the burning bush of Moses? Then it was an earthquake. Remember the theophany of Horeb and the 10 commandments? Then it was a fire. Remember Elijah, you know, when the fire came down on the sacrifice, but now it's none of those. What is God speaking now? This is important in spiritual direction so that we don't interpret God through our own experience of God, but we keep listening in the present to the lord god. This is important. We don't wanna be locked into a particular, but give God the freedom. Be detached even from our own spiritual experience. This is what spiritual direction does.

34:49So spiritual direction not only brings us deep, but what does it not what does it mean to be in the here and now? To hear, h e a r, hear, h e r e, and now. The language of God. It's our Lord telling me now. This is where the sermon really comes in. And spiritual direction is very important for this because very often, we may wanna superimpose our own meaning. And learning to help a direct the kind of goal to this deep place, you know, what's the lord doing? And, you know, this is not gonna happen maybe one session, but over a period of time. And what does also spiritual direction do? It makes us hungry for the word of God. How's this? In Amos eight eleven, it says, see that these are coming oracle of the Lord God, when I will send a famine upon the land, not a hunger for bread or thirst for water, but for hearing the word of God.

35:52Isn't God constantly working in our life to make us hungry and thirsty for him? Deuteronomy eight, Moses reminds the people, remember how the Lord made you to feel hunger so that afterwards, he could feed you with the manna. Do we get an anticipation of that taking place in our soul? So we could kinda see between the lines here how spiritual direction is much more than advice giving. It's much more than pastoral counseling. It's much more than let me just give you a few counsels of how to get through these problems. It has to be much more than that. And in many ways, at times, we have to ignore the words to hear the person. At times, a person may kinda be stuck just in one way of seeing, of, I don't know, of maybe viewing, of imposing a certain narrative.

36:58You know? If I could just get my husband or my wife or if we could just get over this problem. Let's just kinda sit with it. Yeah. It might be important to take steps, and maybe we can refer you for pastoral counseling, but just kinda sit with us in the moment. This requires a lot of detachment for the director and the directee. Attachment because I don't know what our lord wants. I don't know. I don't I I can't pretend. Yeah. This is a tough situation. This is a tough experience of loss. But I'm not gonna try to give you a Band Aid. I'm not gonna try to give you, I don't know, just some cheap onions and leeks from Egypt to satisfy your your hunger. Let's listen for the word of God. And this is where holding and creating the space can be, can be very, very important.

37:56Just gonna kind of pause there. I mean, obviously, there's so much more there that we can can we we can go into. What we said, we've applied it to spiritual direction. You can see it between the lines that applies to the spiritual life generally. It also applies to the spiritual exercises, which is a particular living of the spiritual life and particular living. You know, and in some way, it is what the rules of the sermon of saint Ignatius the fourteen first and the eight and the eight second set of rules. It's, in many ways, with John of the cross speak about even in terms of detachment, creating space for the Lord, of being aware, not only being attached to bad things, which generally as we progress in spiritual life, that's not gonna be an issue because, yeah, our conscience will will will bring bring blink pretty brightly about those things.

38:54But very often, it's an attachment to good things, but which are not what God particularly wills at that moment. Are you called to be spiritual director? On one hand, it can sound very it could be very, very daunting, but to be a spiritual director actually means maybe becoming less rather than more, of doing less, to be able to do more. Do you have the desire to help people keep close to God through the ups and downs and ins and right outs of life? Are you moved to company others on their ongoing pilgrimage to the living God? Are you inspired when you discover the unshakable fidelity and closeness of God as he shares our joys and solos, hopes, and fears? And would you like to equip yourself with the spiritual tradition, skills, and virtues and coach to experience to serve others as a spiritual director.

39:53Let me just kinda state this for those, maybe on the webinar, who of you who are not too familiar with the spiritual direction certificate program. It's a program of Divine Mercy University, which began in 1999 as an institute offering clinical psychology degrees deeply imbued with a Catholic Christian view of the human person. So some of the very beginning, the Institute for the Psychological Sciences, then Divine Mercy University has always been engaged in this this work of integration, which is the work the church has always been doing, faith and reason, science and faith. And through various programs, and various online programs as well too. In 2014, we launched our very first online program.

40:47In 2015, we added a school of counseling, to offer counseling degrees, similar but different from psychology, hence, Divine Mercy University came into being. And couple years ago, we launched the spiritual direction certificate program. What are some of the characteristics of this program? This program integrates, as you would expect, the classic tradition of Catholics spiritual theology, which is very deep, very nuanced. It integrates that together with an awareness of what tradition has said is spiritual direction, how it's been practiced, also because grace builds on nature and forms nature. What does that nature look like? And here's where, maybe one of the strengths of the program being at the Divine Mercy University, we actually ask the human sciences to give us language and tools to understand that nature, that and what is it like for human development?

41:53What is it like for a person to grow in their relationship with God? What is the development of human relationships look like? And then how to listen? Can there be a science of listening? And can the science of listening become a vehicle for theological listening? This is what we try to do in the program. And how do we kinda put it all together so that each one can kinda develop its style? One thing about this program, it follows a meta model approach, meaning, we don't teach just a specifically Ignatian model or a Carmelite model. We teach a model which goes back to the principles of anthropology, which can which underpin all of the models So that the particular spiritualities of the individual students and kind of maybe the ambit in which they'll be practicing spiritual direction, can kinda take form.

42:54So that's one of the beauties also of kind of this intellectual and spiritual undergirding, that Divine Mercy University provides. If you wanna know more about the program, there's our website. Our next start, our next cohort starts in January. The program comprises six courses, which which are offered three times a year. So each of those courses, is offered each one of them, each one of the terms we offer we offer all of the courses. So each one of the terms, students can start. And then if they take the classes sequentially one right after another, you could finish the certificate, in in two years. The certificate is a nondegree program, meaning it's, it's not intended to have the load, the heavier load of a degree program, yet it's, it's, it's rigorous, attending as you would expect and would hope.

43:57And yet at the same time, it tries to be, realistic just in terms of the actual load, and and all of the work is really geared towards helping acquire the very practical skills and know how that a spiritual director, will need. I'll stop here. We have an opportunity for some questions, which you might be able to send to me via chat, or you can also, email them to me. I'll send I'm sending you the email via the chat. I'm also sharing with you, the website. You saw the website in, their flash across the screen, but I'll send you a a link here, which is a we can just kinda click and go go to. So question, how do we practice this listening in spiritual direction? I mean, kind of a very good question.

44:58On the one hand, it's very simple. On the other hand, it's it's, how we get there might might require a little bit of of of work. Maybe begins with an awareness that in the life of your directee, this person in front of you, there's an incredible dialogue taking place between god and that soul, and it's taking place in the depth of that person's heart. That person may be more or less engaged in it. They may be more or less distracted from it. But our awareness that that's what's taking place, and our hearing into the person is what allows us to accompany the person to those deep places. And this is where, in many ways, we're teaching them without teaching them how to pray without teaching them how to pray simply by the way we conduct spiritual direction.

46:01And it's an interesting that we can directees will often pray the way, they do spiritual direction. If you receive spiritual direction in the problems solving sort of way, you might pray in a problem sort of way. You know, bring in the lord my petitions. Lord, this is what I'm going through. Please help this situation to change, which is good. But together with that is, lord, here I am in this situation. Give me patience. And what are you asking of me? What are your words to me? What is your purpose? What are you seeking to do in my soul? So I don't know if that's much of an answer, but maybe it's pointing you to it. A question here. Thank you, Emily. How old should someone be to start the spiritual direction program?

46:55It's a good question. There's not a hard kind of age. It would be one of sufficient maturity. Generally, we would say maybe about 30 years old or if somebody starts to program when they're younger. Though we would encourage if somebody's in their twenties and has had some experience, in spiritual direction, particularly if you've been in spiritual direction, you've been on a spiritual journey, feel free to apply, and we'll kind of end the discernment with you. Maybe maybe see. When we have we do have a number of students that are in their upper twenties, kinda going through the program and already. So But that's kind of a rule of thumb. So, you know, somebody who's, who's kind of on a track record of already of of spiritual life and spiritual, spiritual growth.

47:51So I'm hoping that that answers the question there, Emily. Great. Well, I wanna thank you all for being great listeners, and for, yeah, for being here. Let's end with a prayer. Feel free to email me afterwards, with any questions or any thoughts, any concerns, any any follow-up you may wish to have. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Lord, we thank you for your abundant goodness in this day of giving us the gift of the birth of our lady, the dawn of salvation of Christ our lord. May we have always in our own hearts a deep devotion to her, and that she might help create in our hearts a deep space for her son. Glory be to the father, and to the son, and to the holy spirit as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

49:01Amen. In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. God bless you. Thank you for joining us.