The Scourge of Comparison | Fr. Gregory Pine & Fr. Joseph-Anthony Kress

May 15, 2025

This transcription was generated using AI technology. Please note that there may be errors or inconsistencies.

“This is Father Joseph-Anthony Kress. And this is Father Gregory Pine. And welcome to Godsplaining. We thank you for listening. Please like, comment and subscribe wherever you are listening watching this podcast special thank you to our Patreon supporters. If you’d like to join our Patreon by supporting this podcast, please check the link in the description Show notes to take you to our Patreon page and become a Patreon or Patreon patron.”

“Paid patron. Anyway. A patriot, a patriot. Yeah, maybe I don’t know. Father Gregory, we’re back at it. Yeah. We are. If you were a road, what kind of road would you be? Would you be a boulevard? A terrace, a circle? A street. What are we talking about? What would. What kind of road would you be?”

“That’s a great question. So I, I usually base my response to questions off of recent memories. So I think I’d probably be a fire road. Oh, wow. Which is the type of road that you cut, usually in a national forest, usually around the mountains, because there, you know, times and seasons in which things burn and you want to have access to the interior of said national park or state forest.”

“So that way you can extinguish the flames. But also, you know, fire roads are just nice because when you’re on a hike, you might be kind of going over rough terrain because you might be bopping hither and thither with some uneven footing. But then often enough you’ll get like a little stretch of a mile or two on a fire road, which is nice, because that’s usually the point at which the conversations heat up, because you’re not thinking as much about whether you’re going to stumble and fall.”

“You can just cruise on down the line until such time as the sign gives indication of turn. So I want to be I want to be a road on which people can kind of, travel, unimpeded, unhindered, unconcerned, and where good conversation can arise. Or possibly. Yeah, I think I think that kind of sums up your personality, your aura, maybe in road form.”

“I’m not sure you could put that on, like a mailing address. Is there like Fire Road one? It’s hard to say. I think it depends upon the the particular. What do you say? Subdivision. Territory. Place? Yeah. It depends. Do you have a specific national park? You would want to be a fire road in? So I really like there are a lot of national parks that I like a lot, but I think I might have the biggest crush on Glacier National Park.”

“Because it’s just the best, because it’s so beautiful. Because the mountains are so sheer. I mean, it’s glacial carved, as you might expect. Because, like, the lakes are so electric, in some cases, you get that, like, fine powder, whatever kind of limestone it is that gets ground up, and then it turns the lake’s electric blue.”

“It’s delicious. Yeah. I was only there once. But it was a great experience, although it rained a lot. But that’s kind of true of every place in the mountains, so. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. How about you? Yeah. Boulevard of broken dreams. Thank you. I actually, I was going to say a boulevard. Yeah. I think there’s something beautiful about Boulevard.”

“There’s a top down drive in slow. Yeah, exactly. I can’t go on those layers. But no, there is something like there’s a boulevard. Tends to be like a major thoroughfare. Like it’s a well-traveled road. It’s dependable. You know where you’re going? Multi lanes. It’s it’s, you know, it’s big and imposing, like, you get to the boulevard and there’s a certain sense of like, okay, now we’re, you know, in, in the flow of things, we’re going to a decent clip.”

“There’s not a lot of, you know, yield signs or stoplights typically on a boulevard, maybe. Oh, yeah. I’m not not as bad as, like, a highway or anything like that, but, like, you know, you can have some nice little, you know, rest areas or, you know, things along the boulevard, you know? So I think there’s. Yeah, I want to be dependable.”

“I want to, you know, help as many people get to where they’re going as possible. Yeah, yeah. But also have the option for, you know, respite and see some, sees the scenery along the way. Okay. So here for it. Yeah. I grew up with streets and roads. And then you hit a boulevard like, oh, this is fancy.”

“Is is good. But yeah, I think I would end up wanting to be a boulevard. So as we look at all these different types of roads and they all, represent different aspects, you know, a, a cul de sac, a circle, terrace, street, boulevard, fire road, parkway, parkways. Yeah. You park, drive on parkways, Park on driveways. That’s. Yeah.”

“Explain that to me. Same language. So. But you could say, you know, a boulevard wants to be, a terrace or a circle or, you know, the street wants to be a fire road. You could say that. How does one choose that? And I think that gets us into the the meat of what we are dealing with today.”

“You saw that transition come in seamlessly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this brings up an issue in our spiritual life, which is the scourge, the plague of comparison. Yeah. You know, as one said, the comparison is a thief of joy. Wow. You know that? But easier said that, right? No, no, Tertullian totally said that. Jump on the second.”

“Yeah, yeah. Was that Wayne Gretzky? Yeah. Oprah. No. So but there’s a there’s a reality that you see this a lot with our, modern society that is a very comparative society, which is I think is different than competitive. But I think comparison is its own scourge, and it can spiral into a lot of different, poisons in the spiritual life.”

“But, let’s open this up and say, like, okay, our dealings with comparison, where does that originate? Is it worth comparing, like or, how does this play in our spiritual life when we find ourselves kind of comparing ourselves either to the saints or to our peers or, you know, anybody else in this life? Yeah. So I see the word Paris, you know, which is at the heart of comparison means like or equal.”

“So typically a comparison is a kind of relative evaluation, okay. And in comparison, we, we typically undertake comparisons is a way by which to set standards or meet benchmarks or kind of determine where we are. Okay. All right. And you might do that with respect to an absolute standard. You might do it with respect to a relative standard.”

“I think that we would say comparison is healthy insofar as we have for ourselves the right standards, and we do it with the right dispositions. Okay. But it’s unhealthy insofar as we have for ourselves the wrong standards and do it with the wrong dispositions. And so I think that like a kind of question to have at the outset is to whom do we compare ourselves?”

“Right. And I think that, you know, every Christian knows that you can compare yourself profitably to Christ, right? Not in the sense that we’re like trying to be, you know, the second person of the Most Blessed Trinity, because that won’t happen. But insofar as he’s the natural Son of God, we are adopted sons and daughters of God, and we aim to appropriate in our lives his grace, virtues, gifts of the Holy Spirit, Beatitudes, fruits of the spirit.”

“So we’re trying to live something of his life in a real way. Not just metaphorical, not just poetical, but in a real way. So I think that that’s a fruitful comparison. But Christ often appears in our midst in distressing disguises, like he appears in our midst in veiled face. And so we have to determine, like which of these people whom he has brought into my life are profitable standards or profitable points of comparison.”

“Because if we stray from that, then we can find ourselves in all kind of like seemingly endless mind games, which can be really disastrous. So. So maybe that I don’t know if you want to do first, like the standard, or if you want to do the kind of judgment and the dispositions with which we do the judgment.”

“But I think that’s a, yeah, some something of a sketch. I think that’s exactly the best place to start. It’s like, okay, to whom or to what? Are we comparing ourselves. Right. Like there there is this understanding that there is a standard through which that we either say, okay, that’s the expectation, then am I meeting that expectation exceeding that?”

“Am I failing in that? Right. So there has to be a standard through which we have an expectation of I can attain that I that is possible for me. And I think a lot of times, maybe we end up comparing ourselves to things that are not realistic. And this is the beauty of Christ taking on our humanity, in our incarnate, in his incarnation, taking on our humanity.”

“Because up to that point, it was like God was at this distance and we were trying to become like gods, right? But we didn’t have a realistic expectation of what that looks like, you know? And then he takes on our humanity and says, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like this thing of sanctification and holiness looks like this, right?”

“And now we have a real, tangible expectation or standard through which we can compare ourselves. And he even breaks it down in a beautiful sense, in the beatitude and say, like, this is the standard, this is what it means. You know, blessed are the meek, you know, in this way. So having that kind of guiding light of saying, like, okay, you know, is it healthy to compare ourselves to other people?”

“Is it healthy to compare ourselves to this kind of, standard that maybe is just, an idea or something like that, but Christ actually gives a face to it and he gives a direction to it in that way. Now, to think that we can do that of our own accord. Right. Once again. Yeah. You know, left to our own devices, we’re going to spiral out of control.”

“But he also not only gives us the standard, but the ways to attain that in the graces that he gives us. And, you know, the ways to approach him in that. So I think it’s important to say, like, okay, what is our standard of comparison? To whom should we be comparing ourselves? Well, I think ultimately it’s Christ who, you know, took on our humanity and then redeemed it, and that it is possible.”

“It’s not just an ideal, and it’s not just a fictitious or long, longing for something hypothetical. But no, we see in the incarnation, this is a real possibility. Now, the next thing that I that to those I think that we’re going to talk eventually about the mystical body and the place that we occupy, the role that we play in the Mystical Body.”

“But if it isn’t, if it is a body, then I think there are kind of comparisons which take place not just between members and head, but among members. Yes, but the question is like who or whom? And then on what standards? So I think, I think the Lord does want us comparing ourselves to certain people. But, but I think that we’re supposed to compare ourselves to the saints.”

“So if Christ is the ultimate standard, yes. Then we look for that standard as it’s kind of translated to us, maybe in this contemporary time, or maybe within the charism of the order that we’ve joined, or maybe on the basis of some affinity. I think we look to the saints as other Christs, so that what we know of our Lord and what we love of our Lord is thereby made easier, nearer, somehow, human or not, that he’s in any way lacking in nearness, ease and humanness or humanity, but in the sense that, like it translates those insights in a way that makes them somehow more approachable.”

“Because the idea of the comparison is to liken ourselves to become, in turn, like those whom we model or after whom we model our behavior. But I think that there’s a risk there of kind of a contextual comparison. You’ll hear people say, you know, like this Saint said this quote and that saint said that quote, Saint said things right.”

“They saw words. They didn’t say quotes for one quotation. Never mind. I have the whole thing, but I but but I but I think that oftentimes we find ourselves in a contextual or non contextual comparison. We have like some vague sense that some holy person said some holy thing, and then we hold ourselves to a dread standard.”

“Yeah, I think the comparison healthy comparison always takes place within a community in the setting of a shared life. Right. If it’s just impossible standards at a distance by which we feel ourselves judged inadequate, not just is that like probably unhealthy in terms of like physical health, mental health, but I think it’s unhealthy in terms of spiritual health because it doesn’t reflect like the life of the body.”

“It doesn’t reflect organic connection to those who have gone before us. And the fact that it’s the same life, you know, same grace, virtues, gifts of the Holy Spirit, Beatitudes, fruits of the spirit, etc.. So I think that we’re looking to Christ. We’re looking to the saints whom he has given us, with whom he has been so generous.”

“And then we’re looking to do it in a way that’s organic or in a way that’s contextual. Yeah. So that because we’re trying to live something of the same life as it transpires in our own members, and I think there’s, there’s a beauty to when we look to the saints in that way, in even Christ, by extension of that, and we compare it, it maybe creates a longing in us or a desire in us not to cut and paste that into our life.”

“Like, I think there’s a way that we can speak of imitating the saints. We can speak of being encouraged or edified by their life, their words, their actions, their their own story, their biographies. But there’s never a sense of I, I want to lose myself so that I can become this other, you know, now, granted, there’s, you know, you can look at Saint Paul, you know, it’s it’s no longer I that live, but Christ who lives in me.”

“But the Lord never annihilates our own humanity. He actually gives us our unique iteration of humanity as a gift and to embrace that, knowing it’s different than you. But I can be edified by your life. I can be edified by your story. I can kind of imitate you in certain regards, but I’m not trying to be another clone like I.”

“I never want to lose my humanity in that way. And when I quote unquote compare myself to another, it’s not in a way to destroy or be destructive to my uniqueness of who I am, and the uniqueness of what I was created, but in a way, is supposed to, kind of, amplify my own life in my own story, of who I am.”

“And so we don’t want to say that, like, okay, when we compare and we’re edified or we hear another saint or even Christ, that we want to become a clone of them and lose all that I am, but it’s supposed to amplify me in my own humanity and understanding that when we talk about this whole body of Christ, that it’s where the comparison in I mentioned this a little earlier isn’t to be competitive of this, that like your goodness, your glory, your union with Christ doesn’t take away from my union with Christ.”

“And I can rejoice in that while recognizing that there’s a tremendous difference in their well being edified and wanting to imitate it to a certain degree. But it doesn’t take away your your union with Christ doesn’t take away from my union with him either, you know. Yeah. It’s I think that transitions us into certain negative aspects of comparison that we can seek to avoid, because I think the premise of what you just described is God is infinite.”

“Yes. He is the wellspring of infinite graces. He’s the wellspring of infinite gifts. And if we can see that and assent to that, and partake of that, then we’re not so much worried about what’s given to another no, and what’s not given to me, because we have a sense that, like what’s given to me, these graces, these gifts are excellent.”

“They were down to his glory, to our salvation. Boom! I can reconcile myself to that. I can even celebrate that. Yeah, because I find myself there at the heart of his will for me. But when we worry that God isn’t infinite, that his grace is insufficient, then there’s this kind of logic of scarcity which enters into our comparison.”

“Yeah. So when comparing myself to you or to whomever else I see something you have and that I don’t have, and it’s almost as if, like, I don’t want you to have it because I don’t have it, or I want to have it and deprive you of it. Because there are only so many good things to go around.”

“And insofar as you have some of them, I have less of them. Right. I’m thereby left out. I’m thereby, you know, kind of skipped over or otherwise forgot. I’m less than. Yeah. You know, and that’s, one of our, staff members. When I was in campus ministry. Grace, she used to use this phrase, A win for the kingdom is a win for me.”

“And I think that, like, represents this kind of desire for the unity of the body of Christ, knowing that you’re going to be, you know, you’re evangelizing, you’re you’re growing in different ways and in the work, in the activity, in your even prayer that you do, if it’s helping to build the kingdom wherever you may be. I share in that.”

“And that’s a I can rejoice in that. That’s a that’s also a win for me. But I don’t have to look at you. You’re like, and you leave five Bible studies. I only get one person at mine. Like, I need your people. Like, quit hogging them all. Like, share the wealth. Because, like, I can share in your a win for the Kingdom because we are a unified body in this sense.”

“But this is not a set. Like you said, the logic is scarcity. That that’s a poison. I can destroy so many other things. Yeah. You know, and when we think about it too, like ideally we’re in relationships or we’re in interactions characterized by charity. And the logic of charity is a logic of abundance, you know, like God loves us, and he loves us by the self-same love.”

“Nevertheless, he loves us differently. All very different, preciously. But you look at these various sins opposed to charity. The one that’s like, kind of chemically opposed to charity is hatred. Yes. Which we don’t have to go into. But there are two sins which grow sad at recognition of a distant good. So you have sloth or a shadow which looks at the good of God and sees it as so far off, so high up as to be practically impossible.”

“And then you grow sad. So that’s a that’s a kind of false comparison. And then there’s the sin of envy, which sees the good of another and recognize like that good is not my good. And as a result of which I feel less then and as a result, you know, grow sad. So I think that like when we see goodness, you know, within this understanding of Christian charity, we’re supposed to rejoice in it, right?”

“Right. Because remember, it’s found exactly every good and perfect gift comes down to us from the father of lights. And all of it is ultimately meant for his glory and for our salvation. And so in love, you know, like we love God with his own love of himself. It’s premised on the divine beatitude, right? But we can include others in that love.”

“So like this idea of it’s a win for the kingdom, it’s a win for me. It’s I see how all things are drawn together and ultimately unified or united in the love of God as finding their in their term. And I can I can sign up for that, or I should be able to sign up for that, insofar as I see it as more so my good than my individual good.”

“Like this. Common good is more so my good than my individual good because it’s surpassing, it’s transcending, it’s including all that’s excellent and drawing it in its wake. Yeah. I love this understands like we have to recognize there’s a certain aspect, the comparison. We’re always going to do it like we don’t live in isolation. I don’t live in a simulation land.”

“I’m not. I’m the main character of this, and nobody else exists. Like, we live in relationships. There are other people involved in this. And so it’s I don’t want to say natural, but there’s a certain like, you can’t escape comparison. You’re looking at somebody else and say, oh my gosh, I don’t have that, or I, I have this and they don’t have whatever I have.”

“Like there’s a certain aspect of it, but how do we then engage with it? When I hear it, comparison in the confessional, one of the things I tend to talk about is I think the experience of, of comparison is one of these things where you’re so overly concerned with everybody else around you, it’s like you’re always putting everybody else’s actions, words under a microscope.”

“You’re putting their successes. You’re so overly concerned with all of these things outside of you and everybody else’s role. Right. And I think there’s this maybe fallacy there that you’re just constantly concerned about everybody else. But unfortunately with comparison, you see all that’s happening in to everybody else. But only with reference back to yourself, you know, how does this make me feel?”

“Oh my gosh, they got that, accolade. They got that award. I didn’t, you know, it’s like not seen. That’s not as concerned with the others, but it’s concerned with the other’s life only with respect back to me. So it’s this weird, like navel gazing, action. Whereas Charity is concerned with the other person and their goodness has other.”

“And that’s it kind of stops there. And that’s you. I have the freedom and the, Yeah. I think you have the freedom to see another person’s good and thus step into that and rejoice and not have this like return effect and say, well, okay, what about me now? What about me? What about me? So oddly enough, comparison is concerned with everybody else.”

“But in the selfish mode that with reference back to me. Yeah. Whereas if you look at everybody else and you become concerned with those in your in your life, because we don’t live in isolation, but you’re able to be concerned with them for their own good, then you have freedom to step into the joys or to step into the sorrows.”

“In a legitimate way. Yeah. Yeah, it’s I think you’re, you know, there are various virtues that we can identify. I’ve tried to identify charity for one, but another that features in is humility. Right. So with humility you recognize from whence the grace from whence the gift. And you also recognize those same gifts and graces in other individuals and you’re able to rejoice in them.”

“Yeah. I think about this like in a competitive like so I live at the Dominican House of studies. It’s somewhat intense environment. And it can tend to be competitive because you just got, like, a lot of driven dudes, many of whom are intelligent and, and it’s, you know, you kind of have to get in the spiritual practice of identifying and affirming good things and the other less this disposition creeps in.”

“And lest others kind of alienate themselves, whether consciously or unconsciously, within the setting in the community. So it’s like I like to repeat and because I think it’s true and because I think it’s fruitful, you know, like I live with a lot of people who are smarter than me, you know, and I live with some men who are like much better preachers than I am and much better teachers than I am.”

“And when I’m privy to that, or when I witness that, I try to identify like I try to call it out. Thank you, Guy, for his homily. Tell him it was beautiful. Thank you Guy for his contribution in whatever way and tell him it was. Yeah, it was wonderful because otherwise, like we’re we’re always kind of jockeying, you know, but in a disposition of humility, you can pray that others become holier than I, provided that I become as holy as I should.”

“Like. The Lord has a definite plan for me. Yeah, that plan is good, and I should try to respond to the graces, the gifts that he’s actually giving for the fulfillment of that plan. But he’s also got a definite plan for this guy and for that guy and the other guy, and I should I should be in service of that.”

“I should seek to help cultivate that within the setting of the mystical body, so that when for the kingdom, when for me, not just in the kind of spiritual hedonist way. Yeah. But in like a genuine recognition of what’s actually taking place in my life. And this humility is such a key. I mean, I was going to get to like, okay, well, how do we then fight against comparison?”

“But humility, once again, is, I mean, the hardest. I find it the hardest because maybe I just struggle so much with pride, but like, I find it’s one of the hardest, because it’s a little bit misunderstood. But I think one of the aspects is humility is also recognizing your own gifts and thus being confident in that. Like, oh my gosh, I’m really good at leading or administration and maybe I’m not as good in, in preaching or these other things, but knowing your own goodness, knowing your own gifts and how the Lord has, like we said, he loves everybody tremendously and with an absolute abundance.”

“But he he loves us differently. And knowing the way that the Lord has gifted me his love, I should be confident that unafraid of that. But once again, that doesn’t mean I beat people over the head with my own goodness, but I can then support them in theirs, knowing that their gifts, their talents, how the Lord has loved them specifically is very different than mine.”

“But I can support them in that. And I think you’re right. Like that humility is going to be recognizing that, making it know not only just recognizing it and, you know, saying like, oh, I see that in this person, but I actually need to make that known to them. I say all the time that, most people don’t know their own goodness until it’s spoken to them by another.”

“Like, it’s just as part of our frailty that we don’t we don’t we’re not convinced of our own goodness until somebody else speaks it to us. Yeah. And we can step into that and help that. That’s different than competition. That’s different than comparison. That’s a total recognition of the unique gifts. And in ways that the Lord has loved my brother, my sister, and to to speak them, speak that goodness to them while still being radically confident of the ways he’s loved me, too.”

“And once again, it doesn’t. It’s all abundance. It’s not scarcity, and it doesn’t diminish it in any sense. So I think when we say, okay, well, how do we fight against comparison? I think the first is to recognize another person’s goodness and then to speak to it. Not as if it’s diminishing of any sense of this person my, my goodness or another’s.”

“But when we see goodness to speak to it in a real, genuine and authentic sense. Yeah. And I think in doing that you build a kind of interpersonal bridge, because I think that, like a lot of people who struggle with comparison are in fact isolated or alienated from the other or from, you know, their community. And that could be for any number of reasons.”

“But you do see a lot of insecurity there. Yeah. You know, like it can be a matter of I’m insecure and so I manifest in self-hatred or I’m insecure, so I manifest in condescension. People tend to go down or they tend to go up there. They tend to do one or the other. But comparison, as G.K. Chesterton wrote, breeds contempt.”

“Yeah. You know, and whether it’s contempt of self or contempt of the other, it tends to read contempt if it’s done in an unhealthy fashion. But when you can reach out and actually build up the other, contribute consciously to the common good, and live profitably within the mystical body, then you can, like, secure your life in something far more real than your self estimation.”

“Sure, you can actually build a common life together upon solid rock. You know, maybe natural goods or supernatural goods. Divine beatitude ultimately. And so I think it’s like kind of like throwing that interpersonal bridge across the chasm of comparison is unnecessary. First step, not just to like your own kind of self-realization, but to coming to coming to a proper relationship with your own self image.”

“Yeah. You know, because it’s like it’s a lot of these things we kind of figure out in conversation or we figure out in the midst of relationships and interactions because it’s like, how are you going to know where you stand in the world if you’re always standing alone? You know, because you’re not meant to stand alone. Know, right?”

“You’re a conjugal animal. You’re a social animal. You’re a political animal like you’re always. You’re made always and everywhere for relationship and interaction. And I think it’s within that setting that we come to an appreciation of who we are and what we’re for, and then can be reconciled to that. Yeah. This is a little bit of a risky suggestion.”

“So you can call me off if, if this doesn’t make sense. But I do find, you know, working in campus ministry and, and college setting that you find, people are comparing devotions and comparing, like, pieties, like, I’m not holy enough, you know, and I was I really, really wanted to show up to that retreat. But man, everybody that signed up, they’re just so much holier.”

“And I, I figured that was not my place. Or you know, I see this person praying in this manner or whatever it is, and I just didn’t feel like I was holy enough for, you know, I wasn’t there. I wasn’t like up to that standard. I do think that it can be helpful in the right settings sometimes if you find that this other individual, let’s say it’s, it’s a and an individual that you find yourself comparing yourself to a lot, you know, whether that’s their devotions or their manner of life or things like that, sometimes it can be helpful if you actually ask them questions and inquire about their devotions or why they pray”

“the way they do, or what fruit they’re receiving from that. Because I think we compare. We see with the eyes of men, we see the exteriors, but only the Lord sees to the heart. But we are to know each other intimately. The more we know each other intimately, the more we’re able to love each other. And so sometimes we may have, I don’t know, a story built up in our head or whatever about why this person is or how they, you know, they’re living their life and it’s it’s, you know, their singular presence is making me feel worse about myself.”

“But to kind of cut through that facade and say, hey, I noticed you. You pray all the time with the rosary. I struggle with that. I want to be like that. But like, can you tell me why you do that? Or what’s the fruit from praying that way? Or those types of things that kind of cuts through the facade, which once again, I think we compare more on the exterior of somebody’s life to the interior of my life.”

“And that’s apples and oranges. But to cut through that and like, build a little bit of a relationship there and sometimes inquiring or asking questions of somebody that you find yourself comparing yourself to, isn’t it can be helpful at times. Yeah. You know, it’s not for everybody, but it kind of breaks down that aspect of it all.”

“Yeah, I don’t remember the exact language before. People talk about the spotlight effect or maybe the spotlight paradox. Often enough, when we’re in the situation where we have to deliver the goods, we imagine that everyone is looking at us and everyone is kind of counting on us. But for the most part, no one really notices and no one really cares.”

“And we can do that to other people too. We can kind of fix it, put them on a pedestal, or yeah, put them on a pedestal or kind of misperceived the relative importance of, you know, their thoughts, their feelings, their bearing. And I think in those instances, it’s like whether we put the spotlight on ourselves or whether we put the spotlight on another person, we’re meant to share the spotlight.”

“Yeah. And I think that things get weird when we imagine that one or the other is in the spotlight alone. And so as to how you host that kind of exchange, I don’t know that it matters too terribly much, but I think that you’ll realize that a lot of stuff that you thought matter doesn’t matter.”

“Right? A lot of people whom you thought cared don’t care, you know, and as, as it turns out, the people whom we thought we were holy, it’s not like we’re trying to, you know, kind of raise the bastions, tear down the statues, you know, you know, smash all idols or anything like that. But like, none of us are that holy, you know, like, until all sinners.”

“Yeah. And when God makes us that holy. And I just don’t think that there’s any real sense in pretending to be otherwise, you know, whether better or worse, just to kind of, like, live your life and help out when you can. And I think, you know, the reason why we the reason why we we’re talking about this on this episode, the reason why I think it’s an issue more more so today in our contemporary context is, you know, the aspects of social media and visual representations and how everything can be filtered or like curated to look perfect.”

“And you know, what is our response and experience to watching someone else live their life online and all these things? We have other episodes on social media and digital addictions or things like that. Look at those episodes. But I do think that one of the byproducts is a real strong uptick in the scourge of comparison. And so I think that’s kind of what motivated our conversation today, and hopefully that we can kind of put this underneath the light of Christ, through the lens of charity for each other and recognizing that we do share the spotlight because we share a baptismal union with each other and thus are all co-heirs in Jesus Christ, and that”

“he’s that standard, that we should be comparing ourselves to in not just how we approach, the father himself, but also how we approach each other and how we love each other as members of the same body, albeit very different members, but still members of the same body in Christ. So any last words? Last thoughts? Parting parting shots.”

“I’d say I read this article recently. It was sent to me by a friend and, it was an interview with blah blah blah, but this guy was telling a story about this prisoner that he met who had been at that point, in prison for 18 of a 25 year sentence. And the guy interviewing him was just impressed how this guy had just kind of come to live his life with a with a kind of beauty or with the kind of like wonder, and he’s like, how, you know, how is this?”

“It turns out the individual had committed a really, really heinous crime at a young age and had been sentenced to a long, long, long time in prison. And he said, yeah, when I first came, I was angry, I was dissolute, I was, you know, resentful and vengeful and all these things. And he’s like, but none of that did me any good.”

“None of that actually helped me. He said. I came to a kind of place in which I could embrace my punishment and see it as the penance that it, in fact, was when I learned to be the best prisoner that I could possibly be. And I think that there’s a sense in which, like all of us, are kind of caught in our own lives or we feel we feel ourselves prisoners of our own lives, like they’re limited in this way, or they’re circumscribed in that way, and they could be better in this way, or they could stand to improve in that way.”

“But it’s just like, it just doesn’t matter. Yeah. You know, you need to be the best prisoner you can be. That is to say, you need to live within the concrete, particular, peculiar details of your life as best as you know how, like you’ve been dealt a hand, played that hand. Don’t ask for another hand or look around at the hands dealt to other people.”

“We want to do within the mystical body what we are meant to do within the Mystical Body, which is to be small, to play our part, to know who we are and what we’re for, and to get to kind of get behind that. So I think that, yeah, we’re loved equally by the Most High God, but we’re loved differently, you know, and that difference is precious to him.”

“And it can be precious to us when we come to discover what it’s for, you know, because ultimately it’s for his glory and for our salvation. So, yeah, I love how differently the Lord’s love to you. For the for the record, to our listeners, thank you so much for joining us. Please follow the link in the description in show notes to and follow us on all of the social media platforms, that we are currently on.”

“You’ll find everything in the description. Once again, share this episode if you’ve enjoyed it. And if you think others will enjoy it as well. One, big announcement that we have coming up, we have our all comers retreat coming up this June. That is a weekend of June 20th through the 22nd. It will be, PC College in Providence, Rhode Island.”

“So that’s the home of the friars. And us Friars will be there and we invite you to join us. You can follow the links in the description to register for that retreat, or at least some more information on that. Always. As always, know that we are praying for you and please pray for us. God bless.