Category Archives: Uncategorized

Ep66 Curing Shame

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:38 — 27.1MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | iHeartRadio | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More

Father Len shares his favorite method for the difficult and necessary job of curing shame.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Shame can control you and make your life and the lives of those around you miserable.
  • Shame is that voice inside your head that constantly tells you that you are worthless.
  • Self-esteem programs are not effective for curing shame.
  • You have to learn how to love yourself in order to cure shame.
  • The practice of self-compassion is the antidote to shame.
  • Father Len introduces his version of the St. Ignatius Daily Examen that he uses and recommends to cultivate self-compassion and conquer shame.
  • People who are controlled by shame are usually less compassionate.
  • People who are able to change the shaming voices in their heads are more likely to develop grit and determination and overcome failures.
  • Father Len demonstrates how he used the St. Ignatius Daily Examen to avoid shame and produce self-compassion and personal growth after being a “jerk” to a homeless man and his dog.
  • Father Len tells the story of Oprah Winfrey using a daily gratitude journal to help overcome the shame of being raped, having a child out of wedlock and to learn that it’s the simple things in life, not her money, that bring her joy.
  • “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou
  • “What I Know for Sure” by Oprah Winfrey
  • You can pray as much as you want, but it will be hard to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit if the loud voices of shame are playing in your head.
  • Shame is connected with low grade physical pain.
  • If you are controlled by shame, every failure reminds you what a piece of trash you are.
  • If you are controlled by self-compassion, every failure says I’m going to get better and better.

Ep63 Bible Symbols Revealed and Explained-Part 3 Oils

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:39 — 16.2MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | iHeartRadio | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More

Father Len reveals how oils and their fragrances help fulfill God’s intention for religion and worship to be carnal and sensuous experiences.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Previous Bible symbols episodes: Ep45 Water, Ep56 Trees

Ep62 The Dangers of Anger

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:20 — 24.1MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | iHeartRadio | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More

Father Len reveals his 30 year battle with anger and explains why it’s like a cancer that can destroy you unless you learn how to respond to it.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Father Len responds to an email from the mother of a 15-year-old daughter who became depressed and filled with rage over the death of George Floyd.
  • Father Len reveals that anger has been one of his most common sins throughout his life.
  • Research has shown that nothing rots your body like anger.
  • “Anger is rottenness to your bones.” – Proverbs
  • “Anger disintegrates community.” – Proverbs
  • “A hot tempered man stirs up dissension.” – Proverbs
  • Anger destroys wisdom and the ability to make wise choices.
  • “A patient man has great understanding, but a quick tempered man displays foolishness, even after he cools down.” – Proverbs
  • Anger is blinding. When you’re angry, you always think you’re completely right.
  • Anger distorts your view of situations, yourself, your view of the world, and your view of your family. It can make you really stupid.
  • “A hot tempered man must pay a penalty. If you rescue him, you’ll just have to do it again and again and again.” – Proverbs
  • Anger is very addictive. It’s like the cocaine of emotions.
  • Anger feeds on itself. Anger begets anger.
  • Anger often obscures truth and leads to denial.
  • COVID 19 has become an excuse for anger about almost everything.
  • When you’re angry, it’s very difficult to recognize that you may be the problem.
  • Sometimes anger is love in motion to a threat to someone you love.
  • “Be angry, but sin not.” – St. Paul
  • “He that is angry without cause, sins. He who is not angry when there is cause, sins.” – St. John Chrysostom
  • The best response to anger is prayer, self-examination, self-discipline, and sacrifice.
  • Unreasonable impatience is the hotbed of vices.
  • Anger tends to focus you on the problem and obscures the solution.
  • Studies have shown that compassionate people are better at defining boundaries of unacceptable behavior.
  • “Compassion is the strong man’s tool. Anger is the weak man’s tool.” – Father Len

Ep61 True Friendship

Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:46 — 33.7MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | iHeartRadio | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More

Father Len takes a deep and challenging dive into the nature of true friendship and its profound effects on us throughout our lives. 

Highlights, Ideas and Wisdom

  • In Greek, the word friend or friendship is another word for love.
  • The word love in English is just another word for sex, not friendship.
  • Greeks believe there are four types of love. Love of one’s family, love of one’s friends, romantic love, and unconditional love.
  • Catholics believe friendship love prepares us for heaven.
  • Catholics believe all types of love speak about the great mystery of God.
  • Father Len explains why he believes the United States has a crisis of friendship.
  • Father Len describes much of the friendship present in the United States as what he calls cultural friendship. Relationships based not on reciprocal love, but on getting some sort of advantage, either economically or socially.
  • “Amen with many companions comes to ruin, but there’s a friend who sticks closer to you than a brother.” – Book of Proverbs
  • Today the word friend has been turned into a verb. We “friend” people we don’t really know on social media.
  • Friendship brings something into your life that family and romance can’t.
  • True friendship helps form us.
  • We are formed by God and the community of our family and friends.
  • “One can perish for lack of true friends or for making the wrong friends.” – Book of Proverbs
  • True friendship has a foundation that you discover. Some common interest, love, passion, vision, or truth.
  • Father Len explains the difference between friendship love and romantic love.

Ep60 The History of Marriage and What Makes It Work

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:36 — 42.7MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | iHeartRadio | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More

Father Len explores the history of marriage, our changing attitudes and expectations about it, God’s expectations for marriage, and what makes marriage so difficult yet so worthwhile.

Highlights, Ideas and Wisdom

  • Ancient marriages were rarely about love and had little to do with religion. Marriages were pragmatic contracts between families about such things as wealth, political alliances, childbearing, and, for poor and working-class families, acquiring a work partner.
  • Christ revolutionized expectations for marriage. Declaring it to be about unity, love, and becoming a true human being, having nothing to do with legal rights.
  • Modern expectations for marriage revolve around happiness. Finding the one person that’s going to make me happy until they don’t. Then, it’s time to find a new partner.
  • Marriage is a pathway to becoming the image of God, the image of love.
  • Marriage involves a death, dying to ego and selfishness.
  • “True love doesn’t make up for all your faults. True love exposes all your faults.” – Dante Alighieri
  • You can’t work on your faults until they’re exposed.
  • True love demands constant sacrifice.
  • Marriage is about sacrificing your ego and learning to think as two rather than one.
  • Unmarried people often have difficulty thinking about other people because they don’t have to.
  • Marriage is a way to holiness because it is about the way of self-sacrificing love.
  • God can save you, but your spouse gets you in the best shape to be saved.
  • Marriage gets you ready for heaven.
  • Marriage is about sacrificing everything for the sake of love.

Ep59 Understanding the Language of God

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:03 — 20.2MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | iHeartRadio | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More

Responding to a listener’s question about whether God’s teachings are black and white, Father Len explains why it’s difficult for us to fully understand the language of God’s love.

Highlights, Ideas and Wisdom

  • God’s morality and teachings are black and white and pure because God is love, without ego and without corruption.
  • Our interpretation of God’s morality and teachings is often wrong because it is viewed through the prisms of our egos and agendas.
  • Father Len illustrates the dangers of interpreting God’s word through ego by pointing out how wrong the Jews were in their interpretations of the Bible’s prophecies about Christ’s purpose on earth.
  • Jesus interprets morality and laws from the perspective of love.
  • Father Len points out that Jesus welcomed prostitutes and adulterers in his life knowing that prostitution and adultery are wrong because that’s what love does.
  • Love perfects us.
  • The Bible tells us that anyone who does not love and proclaims that they know God is a liar.
  • Our black and white view of morality often errs on the side of being harsh and judgmental, void of love.
  • Black and white morality can be very seductive because we can proclaim it to be justice, but without compassion it can be very wrong.
  • There are two kinds of moral extremes: black and white and relativism. Both are based a lot on ego.
  • Moral relativism is morality based solely on personal feelings and choice usually driven by ego or agenda.
  • Reacting to immoral behavior with love forces us to have empathy and compassion.
  • Father Len uses the Bible’s various perspectives on slavery to illustrate how God is constantly trying to help us evolve in our morality understanding we can’t always accept the whole truth all at once.
  • Fully understanding God’s language of love and morality is a lifelong process.

Ep58 The Big Mysteries of Christianity

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:56 — 26.5MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | iHeartRadio | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More

Father Len and Irish grapple with the mystery of the three big events that are the foundation of Christianity: God taking on human flesh and living among us, God being tortured and killed by us, and God’s miraculous resurrection from the dead.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Father Len explains why we should view these events as a whole, as one.
  • Father Len identifies three groups of Christians and their sensibilities: Christmas Christians, Good Friday Christians, and Easter Christians.
  • Christmas Christians love the idea of God becoming a human being and the practice of giving and receiving gifts as a way of showing appreciation for the gift of people in their lives.
  • God recognizes there’s a problem in creation and it’s us. We don’t realize that being a true human being means living a life of love. So God takes on human flesh to teach us the way of love.
  • Good Friday Christians see the brokenness in the world. They have a deep awareness of sin in the world. They recognize the fight between goodness and corruption and injustice, even in ourselves. They see and understand the need to “die” for what is right.
  • Atheists, like Richard Dawkins, believe that we can solve the problems of the world, on our own, with education and our intellect. Father Len explains why this is a big lie.
  • We have to be able to see sin and corruption in the world and realize that it’s not the world that needs to change, it’s us. We’re the ones that have to change.
  • Father Len uses the movie “The Help” to illustrate how Christ’s model for becoming a true human being and living a life of love actually works.
  • The struggle against injustice and oppression and dying to our ego purifies the soul. It gets us ready to enter the kingdom of God here and now.
  • Christ’s resurrection from the dead is not just a singular event. It represents a whole way of life that begins for us right here and now and is fulfilled in heaven when we die.
  • If Christ didn’t die, he couldn’t have been resurrected.
  • Resurrection for us is not returning back to our former life. That’s resuscitation. That’s continuing to live like zombies with half a conscience.
  • The resurrection for us is a whole new life. It’s Christ putting his life in our hearts. It’s freedom from all the shame and darkness in the world. It’s so extreme that in the early church those who were resurrected were called “new persons.”
  • Easter Christians live in the resurrection. Their hope is in them and beyond them. They live with love and joy inside them that can’t be taken away because they’ve died to anger and fear.
  • “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  • All our sins begin on the inside, in our hearts.
  • Our modern culture tells us that the problems in the world are outside of us. Therapists believe this is the result of a generation raised with the idea that self-esteem is all important. A generation constantly told, “you’re smart, you’re good, you’re beautiful, you’re special, you’re a winner, you can’t be the problem.”
  • If you’re not participating in the resurrection, right here and now, why do you think that you’ll be participating in it in heaven? If you spend your whole life denying your own brokenness, not becoming something new, better, and connected, what makes you think that you will be ready for heaven?

Ep57 The Real Story of St. Patrick’s Day

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:36 — 11.5MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | iHeartRadio | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More

Father Len explains how a Roman citizen named Patrick became a great saint and hero to Ireland and the real reason we celebrate him and his life.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

  • Patrick was the child of a very religious Roman family, but he had no use for religion until he was captured by pirates on a beach in England and sent to Ireland as a slave to care for sheep and dogs.
  • Patrick discovered and fell in love with God while caring for sheep.
  • A voice in St. Patrick’s head guided him to escape slavery and return to his homeland where he decided to become a priest. The same voice convinced him to accept an assignment as a missionary and return to Ireland though he knew most missionaries in Ireland were being killed at the time.
  • Father Len explains how the Roman named Patrick, who had no interest in religion as a young man, goes on to use a special talent to help evangelize Ireland and become a great saint.
  • Father Len muses about how our culture ends up taming religious celebrations into secular celebrations like Easter becoming about the Easter Bunny, Christmas becoming about Santa Claus, and Valentine’s Day becoming about chocolates and roses.