Glory to Jesus Christ, I'm Mother Natalia, a Byzantine Catholic nun from Christ the

brideger Monastery and this is Pines with Aquinas. This episode started with an

insecurity of mine but then as I kind of sat with it and prayed about whether or not it would be a good episode, it kind of progressed into something that I think we all need to hear, myself included, which is kind of the whole point.

So the insecurity that has come up is I'm a total hypocrite. I, you know, I'm a total hypocrite.

I, you know, I share these things, these reflections from my prayer that are genuinely from my prayer and genuinely from my heart on this, on what God is not, the

podcast I have with my spiritual father, in talks that I give, in spiritual

direction, so on and so forth. And I don't consistently live any of it.

So, you know, like, my poor mom and my poor sisters in community I go on and on about the need for gentleness in

relationship and repairing that which we've broken and so on and so forth.

And I don't do that well, any of it.

And I get snippy with my sisters and I get impatient with my mom and I've seen, you know,

I've seen, you know, I, when I meet, when I meet

listeners in person, I think genuinely the encounter is consistent with what they see online and that's typically what people tell me you know is you're just like you are in your talks and and whatever but

but I've also seen where you know a listener might be around and they'll see me get snipy with one of my sisters or

they'll see me lose my patients with someone and and I can see kind of the

disappointment or the the disillusionment on their face and this has

happened you know only a couple of times but it really is very heartbreaking for me to see.

Because I know that even the things

that I'm encouraging all of you to do, that I don't always live it myself.

And that makes me think of the ecos that we have, I don't know what that word means and it doesn't

probably matter what it means but it's part of our prayer at Matons after the

Kentuckyan which is another word that I don't know what it means.

...