Wonderment, Contemplation, and Friendship with God | Fr. Cassian Derbes, O.P.

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4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This lecture was given on January 18th, 2025, at Cedarbrake Catholic Retreat Center.

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About the Speaker:

Fr. Cassian Derbes, O.P. is a priest of the Dominican Province of Saint Joseph. He is currently a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame in the Mendoza College of Business. Father Cassian served recently as vice dean and professor of theology at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome. His previous teaching positions include as adjunct professor of theology at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Ohio. Father Cassian earned his Doctorate in Sacred Theology (S.T.D.) from the Angelicum. He has a Licentiate in Sacred Theology (S.T.L.) from the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, a Bachelor’s degree (B.A.) from New York University (N.Y.U.), and he is a graduate of Jesuit High School in New Orleans, Louisiana. From 2014-2020, Father Cassian served as director of an initiative at the Vatican under Pope Francis to design, implement, and teach an executive leadership development program for the Cardinals, Bishops, and senior lay officials of the Roman Curia. Father Cassian is a Missionary of Mercy, having been appointed by Pope Francis in 2015.

This project/publication was made possible through the support of Grant 63391 from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.
0:06.0	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:12.0	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.0	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at
0:21.9	Thomisticinstitute.org. St. Thomas Aquinas, when listing six personal qualities of
0:28.3	friendship in book four of the Sumicontro Gentiles, list three that will be useful for this
0:34.2	presentation on wonderment, contemplation, and friendship with God.
0:38.9	One quality of friendship with God, above all, is the exchange of personal knowledge, St. Thomas
0:45.4	says. Now, it is proper to friendship that a man reveal his secrets to his friends, because friendship
0:52.7	unites their affections, and the two hearts make one.
0:57.8	And consequently, when a man reveals something to his friend, he would seem not to have taken it out of his own heart.
1:07.0	Secondly, but not in order, interior joy.
1:11.9	It also belongs to friendship that a man delight in the presence of his friend and rejoice
1:15.8	in his words and deeds, and also that he find in him consolation in all his troubles.
1:23.8	Hence it is especially to our friends that we have recourse in time of sorrow, St. Thomas says.
1:31.4	And thirdly, and you might not have been expecting this one, contemplation is a characteristic of friendship with God.
1:40.1	Thomas says, since the Holy Spirit makes us to be lovers of God, it follows that by him we are made contemplators, contemplators of God.
1:53.5	So this exchange of personal knowledge, joy, and contemplation.
1:58.4	In today's talk, I'd like to show how wonderment, contemplation, and friendship
2:02.7	with God form an essential aspect of the Christian life. St. Thomas follows Aristotle.
2:09.5	All human knowledge begins with the senses. Attraction to sense things. Think of little children
2:15.3	fascinated by shiny objects. Our intellect and our mind
	...

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