Theory 2 Action Podcast
Theory 2 Action Podcast
MM#404--A Holy Week House Cleaning is Needed
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Bishop Robert Barron's compact 138-page book "An Introduction to Prayer" delivers profound spiritual wisdom that far exceeds its modest length. Exploring the concept of contrition—literally "crushing" from Latin—we're guided through an unflinching examination of conscience using the Ten Commandments as our framework.
The journey begins with confronting our fundamental spiritual orientation: Who or what do we truly worship? Everyone has an ultimate concern, but when that concern is anything other than God—whether sex, money, power, status, or our ego—we experience spiritual fragmentation. The examination becomes increasingly challenging as we move through commandments addressing speech about God, concrete worship practices, family relationships, and how we handle violence in our lives.
As we progress deeper, the questions become more uncomfortable. How does sexuality serve as gift rather than self-indulgence in our lives? Do we steal, even in small ways? What is the quality of our speech—how often do we tear others down? Do we covet what others have, feeding the competitive conflicts that Rene Girard identified as the source of so much human suffering? Just as Jesus cleared the temple in Jerusalem, we're invited to identify what needs clearing from the temple of our souls.
Holy Week provides the perfect opportunity for this spiritual inventory and house cleaning. For Catholics, the increased availability of the Sacrament of Reconciliation during this sacred time offers a concrete way to express contrition and experience God's mercy. Whether through formal confession or personal prayer, this spiritual exercise prepares us to fully celebrate the resurrection with renewed hearts. Remember, Christ waits for us, rich in mercy, ready to transform our brokenness into Easter joy.
Key Points from the Episode:
• The prayer of contrition involves honestly confronting our sins and their impact
• The first commandments challenge us to examine what we truly worship
• Honoring family relationships serves as a foundation for all other relationships
• Questions about violence extend beyond physical harm to our speech and impact on others
• Sexual ethics should center on gift and authentic love, not self-indulgence
• Our speech patterns often reveal our tendency to tear others down
• Coveting leads to competitive conflicts that damage human relationships
• Jesus clearing the temple serves as a metaphor for spiritual house cleaning
• Regular examination of conscience reorients our souls toward God
This Holy Week, take time for honest self-examination and, for Catholics, visit the sacrament of reconciliation. Our Lord is waiting for you and is rich in mercy.
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Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser.
Speaker 2:Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute and welcome to Holy Week 2025. I hope it is going well for you and your using this week to faithfully fulfill your Lenten journey and are preparing for our Lord's passion, death and resurrection this coming weekend. For today's podcast, we're going to turn to a short little book that is helping me along my Lenten journey, so I wanted to share it with you too. Bishop Robert Barron's An Introduction to Prayer Clocks in at a very short 138 pages, but in the words of boxing greats down through the ages, it punches above its weight, meaning it's a very good but short book. That's why I love it, because there's tons of little spiritual nuggets of wisdom all throughout and contained in it. As an example, let's grab our first pull quote from An Introduction to Prayer by Bishop Robert Barron. Go on to the book.
Speaker 2:One of the great forms of prayer is contrition, literally crushing, from the Latin word contricio. In the hard grinding work of contrition, the sinner feels the pain that is his sin has caused himself and others. Quote the sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. O God, you will not despise Palm 51.17. This involves, of course, a stark confrontation with the reality of sin. We must see ourselves with clarity and uncompromising honesty, and one of the best ways into this searching moral inventory is by extending to the by inventory is by attending to the account of the Ten Commandments, exodus 21 through 17. The first three commandments have to do with the question of one's fundamental spiritual orientation, and so we need to hear the very first commandment I am the Lord, your God. You shall not have other gods before me. There's nothing more fundamental.
Speaker 2:Everyone worships something or someone. Everyone has an ultimate concern. Who, or what precisely, is the object of your worship? What do you hold to be spiritually basic? If we're honest, a lot of us would say something like sex, money, power, status or, to sum all of this up, our own egos. The basic intuition of the Bible is that having an ultimate concern other than God leads to disaster, to a falling apart of the self. Oh yes, how often do we forget that we are creatures in this world and we are not God? How easily do we forget that we are creatures in this world and not God?
Speaker 2:Let's go back to the book for another gem. Relatedly quote you shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord, your God. It is one thing to claim that God is the ultimate good in your life. It is quite another to insatiate it through speech. Do you speak of God in a derogatory or denigrating way? This leads rather quickly to a denigration of God and to a coarsening of the soul. Ah yes, I'm guilty as charged. I'm always struggling with my speech. So I will need to make a good confession to ask forgiveness of our Lord for these sins. But don't we see a culture where we see offending speech being normalized, almost to the point where good speech is frowned upon? I guess Now I'm usually convicted, very often right after I commit these sins. So to see a culture that is running headlong towards the cliff with these traits without even looking back and pausing seems alarming. At the least, I would think a culture would want to be self-reflective and would want to try and be a little bit better. But that is the culture we see at the quarter pole of the 21st century. But let's press on.
Speaker 2:Going back to the book, the third commandment is even more telling Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. One must insatiate one's commitment to God through definite acts of worship. Otherwise that commitment becomes an abstraction and then an irrelevancy. Worship cannot be simply an interior disposition. It must express itself through action. There is no place for an attitude of I am all right with God, I just have no time for going to Mass or I get nothing out of Mass. Do you meet your obligation to concretize your worship on Sundays and Holy Days? Admonitize your worship on Sundays and Holy Days.
Speaker 2:Following from this basic form of worship, there comes a whole series of commandments dealing with our relations to other people. To love God is to love everyone whom God loves, so the love of God spills over into love of neighbor. First, honor your father and your mother. Most biblical commentators have seen this as a command to attend to the obligations of one's family, the people closest to you. If you claim to be a person of love but fail to honor your parents, your siblings and your children, something is seriously off. And if things are off there, they're probably off everywhere else. What is the quality of your relationship with those who are nearest to you? Do we think our culture has a self-awareness of any sin, or perhaps wrongful actions? Would then have the self-awareness to see the obligation to one's family and of those closest to you as of most importance. One can clearly look at the social demographic of fathers abandoning their families and their children.
Speaker 2:Let's go back to the book for another gem you shall not murder. I suppose that very few murderers are reading this book right now. Nevertheless, killing is not a minor problem in our world. From the tens of millions of unborn children killed since Roe v Wade to the almost casual murder of young people on the streets of our cities, killing is everywhere. A basic biblical intuition is that God is the Lord and giver of life. We have no business, except in the case of self-defense and of just war, interfering with that prerogative.
Speaker 2:But broaden the commandment out a bit. What is the role that violence plays in your life? What is the quality of your temper? Have you effectively killed people, that is to say rendered them lifeless because of your speech? Do you enhance the lives of those around you, or are people less alive after they've been with you? These questions are becoming harder and harder, aren't they? Things are starting to get uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:The church has called this an examination of conscience based on the Ten Commandments, and there are other forms of examination, such as using the seven deadly sins to confront your conscience. But let's take a step back and simply ask when was our last examination of conscience? That's a good place to start. When was our last act of contrition? A prayer that follows this type of examination and, more importantly, one that should be prayed often, would be very good to memorize it Now. For Catholics, it's one of the final prayers you speak as a penitent in the confessional after receiving your penance and absolution from the priest. But let's finish our exercise with our book on prayer from Bishop Robert Barron and to keep the questions remaining hard, because our soul requires the truth to live fully.
Speaker 2:Going back to the book, you shall not commit adultery. Does anyone doubt that the violation of the marriage vow is a major problem in our society or that marriage itself is in serious trouble in our world? The family is the fundamental building block of society and thus, when the family goes bad, the whole society goes bad. But again, broaden. Whole society goes bad. But again, broaden the commandment out. Is your sex life self-indulgent for the sake of its own pleasure? Do you lust after others, using them for your own sexual satisfaction? Do you practice forms of sex that falls outside of its proper setting in marriage, a union of one man and one woman in lifelong fidelity and openness to children.
Speaker 2:The Bible is not obsessed with sex, but it does recognize the importance of sexuality in the moral sphere. Much of our popular culture wants to teach us that sex is basically amoral, a matter, finally, of indifference as long as you're not hurting anyone, anything goes. But sex, like everything else in us, is meant to serve love, to become a gift. Are we as a society, losing that sense of gift? Have we already lost that sense of gift? Have we already lost that sense of gift to one another in marriage, and have we lost that sense of real, authentic love? Those are questions to meditate on, to pray about. To our Lord, god, let's keep going Back to the book.
Speaker 2:You shall not steal. There is something uniquely depressing and violating about being robbed. It is a particularly awful violation of one's rights and personhood. Do you steal others' property, even very small things or little amounts of money? Do you perhaps steal on a grand scale? How dispiriting corporate scandals are. White-collar crime negotiated through computers is no less a crime. Have you made restitution after stealing something? You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. How we love tearing each other down. It is a function of the ego's need to be superior, to feel protected.
Speaker 2:Our favorite indoor pastime is critiquing others. What is the quality of your speech? How much time do you spend invading against your neighbor, even making things up to make him look bad? How much time do you spend scapegoating, blaming and accusing others? One of my professors at Mundelein, jack Shea, offered this admonition Say all you want in criticism of another, as long as you are willing to commit yourself to helping the person deal with the problem you have named. Oh, I'm guilty on this one too. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Perhaps you are too. So now things are getting very uncomfortable at this point. We are creatures in this world. We are not God. Let's keep going. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.
Speaker 2:The Catholic anthropologist Rene Girard constructed a complex theory that hinges on this tendency to desire what our neighbor has. Desire is memetic. We want something, not because it's intrinsic merits, but because someone else wants it. Just watch little children at play, advertising techniques or romantic relationships. This competitive coveting leads, gerard argues. This competitive coveting leads, girard argues, to most of the conflicts that bedevil human societies. Do you play these games of conflict? Do you fuss about what other people have and what other people desire.
Speaker 2:In the Gospels we hear how Jesus entered the great temple in Jerusalem and began to turn over the tables of the money changers, tearing the place apart. From the earliest days, christian writers and spiritual teachers saw the temple as symbolic of the human person, your very self is meant to be a temple where God's spirit dwells and where prayer, communion with God, is central. But what happens to us sinners? The money changers and the merchants enter in. What is supposed to be a place of prayer becomes a den of thieves, holy smokes. That was a hard journey through the Ten Commandments, not to intellectualize them but to convict ourselves through them. An examination of conscience is a good exercise. It's a good, thorough going through the hard questions and answering them honestly and truthfully. The hard questions and answering them honestly and truthfully. It helps to reorient the soul towards God and to do it in regular fashion.
Speaker 2:For the Christian, a heartfelt act of contrition, of prayer is needed. For the Catholic, one more step is needed to physically visit the sacrament of reconciliation, or otherwise known as confession. It is a sacrament for a reason. Now you will find many churches during this Holy Week offering more times for the Sacrament of Confession or Reconciliation. And our Lord is waiting there for you, especially this week. Use your time wisely. This week it's one of the most important weeks in all of Christianity. It's our holiest week. Now, if I see you standing in line awaiting the sacrament of confession, I will surely give you a knuckle bump and a small smile and will appreciate you leading a life of virtue and being a good example. So thank you.
Speaker 2:So in today's Mojo Minute, let us gather one more quote from the bishop's last paragraph, from this really fruitful ninth chapter in a short book, an Introduction to Prayer. Going back to the book. And so the Lord must do in us now what he did in the temple. Then a little house cleaning. What shape is the temple of your soul in?
Speaker 2:Suppose that Jesus has made a whip of cords knotted with the Ten Commandments. What would he clear out of you? What, through the prayer of contrition, is it time to crush within you? And, as always, keep fighting the good fight. Do not despair, and be sure to complete this exercise before Easter, before Sunday resurrection of our Lord. This week, our Lord is waiting for you and he is rich in mercy. So let us close in quoting a prayer with an act of charity. Special prayer. Oh my God, I love you above all things with my whole heart and soul, because you are all good and worthy of all my love. I love my neighbor as myself for the love of you, and I forgive all who have injured me and I ask pardon for all whom I have injured, amen.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us. Amen, Until next time. Keep getting your mojo on.