For our listeners today, I just want to say good morning from Rome. The pilgrims have finally arrived and we are settled into kind of a daily routine of activities and sightseeing along with some very beautiful prayers and moments of just real closeness to God. So just so as you know how we got here, we left Portland at about 10 o’clock in the morning. We had to fly to San Francisco. After a short layover in San Francisco, we boarded and we flew all the way to Rome. It was about a 12 hour flight. So we were a little tired when we got to the hotel, but we went straight into seeing some really beautiful things. And of course, we had to fly 12 hours all the way to Rome to meet up with Mount Angel in the beautiful hilltop. Father Israel Sanchez from Mount Angel is doing some additional study here in Rome. And he’s joining me today to talk a little bit about being on pilgrimage. Good morning, Father Israel. It’s great to see you. It’s good to be here. It’s been a little while since you and I got to talk. It’s been a few years. I think yeah, we talked about the Benedict Festival. Of course, back then you were at Mount Angel.

I was in Mount Angel. I was in seminary formation and I think I might not have actually made solemn vows at that point. So yeah, a lot has happened in these in these few years.

So remind our listeners then how you came then from Mount Angel, where you hadn’t taken your vows, to now you’re a priest studying in Rome.

Yeah, so having completed my monastic formation, I made my solemn vows as a month of Mount Angel, vowed to live a life of work and prayer there in the community. And so you might be wondering, well, if I vowed to live my life there for the rest of my life, what am I doing in Rome? Well, as maybe your listeners will know, at Mount Angel, one of our principal ministries is that of forming priests. So we have a seminary and that involves quite a bit of academic work. And in order to prepare me to in a future moment teach in the seminary, have a Jeremy asked that I go to Rome and do some further studies in petristics. And so soon after I was ordained in 2021, I got a flight not unlike yours and made my way to Rome and I’ve been here for about three years now.

So how many more years does it seem like you’ll be studying here in Rome?

Yeah, so we’re looking at at least one more full year after I complete the current academic year. It could be possibly two years, but certainly one more full year.

Wow, exciting. And when we’ll all be excited to have you back at the hilltop for sure, it’s such a wonderful place to be near the Lord there. And so it’s wonderful to see you. I think it’s really funny that we had to fly 6,000 miles to meet up with you here, but it’s been a wonderful opportunity for all of us pilgrims who are traveling to have you on as our spiritual guide. So the first day that we were we got here, we got right off of the airplane, we got to our hotel, you were here in the lobby waiting for us. After a quick change, we walked to Sacred Heart Church and you held mass for us. And there’s something that you said in there and I wanted to ask you about. You said, why go on pilgrimage?

Yeah.

If God is everywhere, if God was with us in Vancouver, Washington or in Portland, Oregon or at Mount Angel, why did we go on pilgrimage to Rome? And what would you say to us?

Yeah, you know, I wanted to begin the pilgrimage in this manner. It’s a bit of a challenge, right? Because it’s a good question to ask. The kingdom of God is within why? I might go on pilgrimage. And so I even left a few seconds of pause in the middle of the homily just to let that question really sink in. And of course, in the gospel, we often find people seeking Jesus. And so I was hoping that this would be a way that we could begin this pilgrimage never forgetting that we’re here seeking Christ above all. That’s the point of this pilgrimage. And what makes the pilgrimage special, especially a pilgrimage in Italy in Rome, which is where we’re starting, is that when we go on pilgrimage, we realize we’re not alone because there’s crowds of people seeking Jesus. We see this in the gospel and we experience this in Sacred Heart Church when we were gathered for mass. There we were a few minutes before mass started. We were strangers. But then once mass began, our pilgrimage began and all of a sudden we were disciples of Christ looking for him. And when we did that, we discovered, well, there have been men and women seeking Christ for centuries. And Italy is a country that is marked, that is blessed by a history of men and women seeking Christ. And so now we’re joining them on this pilgrimage. We’re visiting their shrines. We’re witnessing their faith all these centuries later. And now we’re joining our search for Christ to theirs. And so all of a sudden, this group of 20 people grew through a countless number of seekers of Christ, all the saints in heaven, whose shrines we are visiting, and in those many other saints whose names we don’t know. And now we’re all on this big pilgrimage in Italy seeking Christ. And so that’s how we began our pilgrimage.

Fathers, as a deacon, I recall the great commitment of obedience to the Archbishop that I committed to at my ordination. And as you made your solemn vows and you continue to be obedient to the Abbot as you described in terms of his ask of you, how can you share insight for a pilgrim to maybe recall that need to be obedient to the gospel, to be obedient to the Ten Commandments as we as we hear Christ say just on Divine Mercy Sunday to follow the commandments that I that my father has given. Can you speak to obedience because I think for for lady that that’s a challenge they are quite clear, do they have to be obedient and what should they be obedient to?

Yeah, and of course it’s what what does obedience look like outside of the monastic or the religious or the clerical life. And at the heart of obedience, you can see I made this comment to you when we were in the sacristy getting ready for Mass. I love having liturgical books and in part it’s because the liturgical book and the missile, the electionary tells you, this is how you perform this work of God, this is how you perform it beautifully and well. We have this little joke in the seminary, do the red and say in the black. And it can seem like a bare minimum kind of approach to celebrating the Eucharist, celebrating the liturgy. But really what it is is it’s obedience to what’s written on the page, meaning it’s an obedience to the church, it’s an obedience to the bride of Christ. And because she’s the bride of Christ, she knows what pleases her Lord. And so in obeying the missile, the priest is performing this act of love in the life of the church. And it begins with I think at the heart of that, it’s letting go, right? It’s all of a sudden me as a monk in my relationship with my abbot, with my community, as a priest in my relationship with the bishop, with the missile, with the community that I serve, letting go of myself and saying, oh, this isn’t the father Israel party, this isn’t the me time, this is the time for the Lord to encounter his people. And so I think you can translate that dynamic of abandonment to pretty much any context, whether that’s married life, I think married life probably has the best parallel to that, because you are abandoning yourself into the hands of the spouse, right? Husband into the hands of the wife, the wife into the hands of her spouse. And so there, there’s an example of how abandonment can be practiced, right? In a dialogue as well, right? Because it’s not just, I’m going to close my eyes and pretend everything’s fine. Now there’s a conversation that happens, but at the end of the day, you’re trying to remove your ego, your selfish desire from the equation, and to really hear the other person. So there’s a abandonment in the relationship between husband and wife. But I think in all relationships, there’s this aspect of abandonment. If somebody tells me something, there’s a certain abandonment I have to perform to trust what they’re saying, to hear what they’re saying. And I think that can be instill a little bit of humility in us, because we have to submit to what the other is saying. And I think if we may be incorporated a little bit more of that abandonment into our lives, how different would our relationships be? How different would our communities be? Pilgrimage actually teaches us this, where you’re really having to abandon yourself as you’re being really raced through all these different places, right? You know, you’re moving around the city in a limited amount of time with large crowds. You know, there’s a temptation to be like, I don’t like this. Oh, am I so tired? Could we just, you know, we dozens of complaints? But I think if you let go, that opens you up to ask the question, oh, what am I supposed to be hearing in this moment, in this throng, in this crowd of people? Because there’s a word of God coming to me at that moment, but I could be so caught up in myself that I won’t let hear it. So if I were going to summarize it at the heart of obedience, it’s this abandonment. And it’s an abandonment that I think can be exercised in many different contexts. And so that’s what I would say to a pilgrim, a fellow pilgrim, as you are, my fellow pilgrims, is I think if we fix our eyes on this aspect of abandonment, there’s a growth that could happen there.

Amen to that. Thank you so much, Father Israel. It’s been a wonderful conversation, but I’m up against my break. Can we continue in the next half hour?

Certainly.

And we’re back again. We’re still in Rome and Father Israel, Sanchez is joining us. If you listen, if you missed our first hour, we’re talking on pilgrimage here in Rome or at the end of our second day. And Father Israel is our spiritual guide. It’s someone who spent many years at Mount Angel and now studying in Rome. Father Israel, thanks for staying with us this morning.

My pleasure.

So you talked in our first half hour a little bit about, you know, for me, it was kind of difficult to enter into this mind of pilgrimage when there were literally thousands of people around us as we toured St. Peter’s in the Vatican Museum and then into the Sistine Chapel and then out into the larger square. And it was difficult because there were so many cultures and at the same time, I look at our faith and the riches that we have. And of course, we would want to invite the whole world to be a part of that, right? And so there’s a part of that where you have to kind of like we talked about abandoned and just kind of take each moment as it is. But for me, I really felt like I had stepped into this pilgrimage journey because we went to the catacombs where we realized the history, those who had gone before us, the hundreds of thousands that they said were buried there. And from there, we celebrated Mass at St. Paul outside the wall. But more specifically, we were in the St. Benedict Chapel. I got to say, that was a really special moment for me to watch. But I imagine for you, that was a really special opportunity. Tell us what you felt about that.

Yeah, you know, maybe if we look at all the details that you would wonder, well, Father Roosevelt wasn’t doing anything unusual. I mean, I’d entered that chapel many times. I’ve said Mass many times. I’ve said Mass with people many times. I’ve said those words many times. I’ve prayed at the tomb of St. Paul many times. And this all, of course, thanks to the fact that I’m studying in Rome. And so there was a lot of ordinaryness about it all. But you’re right, there was something about the grace of being on pilgrimage and the grace of being there at the tomb of St. Paul with you all, with the pilgrims. Well, this family that has gathered to go on pilgrimage together. And to hear the word of God together, we read the scriptures as part of Mass. The blessing of preaching, which is always a frightening responsibility. And it’s when I began the Eucharistic prayer, the first one, and we begin that list of all the saints, right? Peter, Paul, James, John, and so on and so forth. And of course there, it’s St. Paul is like 50 feet away, right?

Right.

Earlier in the day, we had been at the tomb of Peter. We had been in the tomb of the popes, some of whose names are mentioned in the canon as well. And so for some reason, that cloud of witness that often seemed so distant was present. And then when the second list came along, I was already a little discombobulated, because there was an emotional aspect to it at that point where the presence of these great saints was something now tangible. We heard about the death of Stephen in today’s readings. And so Stephen’s name gets mentioned in the canon as well. And so all of a sudden, these men were not just names on the missile that I was saying, you know, I mentioned before, do the red and say the black. The reason you say, do the red and say the black is because when you do it, and especially in this context of pilgrimage, the truth of our faith comes alive. It’s not just the name on the page. It’s the Apostle Peter. It’s the Apostle Paul without whom I would not be here doing this. You know, if they had not received the commandment to celebrate the Eucharist, and if that had not been handed down through these bishops whose names are listed, through the witness of these saints who gave their life for this, I would not be standing here before this altar saying these words. And more than saying these words holding in my hands, my Lord, that would not be happening. And so all of a sudden, again, they weren’t just words on a page. They weren’t even just like a memory from 2000 years ago, Peter and Paul were with us. But why? Because our Lord was there, right? Where else are they going to be if not where our Lord is? They’re the ones who followed it. So wherever he is, they go. And that was so, I’m getting emotional now. That was the grace of celebrating the liturgy with you all near the tomb of the Apostle Paul. As you pointed out, having just come from the catechones, having just come from the from the tomb of St. Peter as well. And I mean, as if that were it’s enough, we were doing this in the in the chapel dedicated to St. Benedict. We were literally at the feet of the statue of St. Benedict.

Yeah, you know, Father, and just hearing you say that because I was, you know, behind you in the pews, what you felt filled the room. And we all entered even more deeply. It was it was the distance between experience it in our minds, feeling it in our hearts. And Scott, you were standing right there with you and you could feel that.

Yeah. You know, how emotions can can flow from us and affect other people like grace can affect other people. So can our emotions, whether we’re maybe angry, whether we’re maybe joyful and in the ability to be joyful at that moment for what, as you described, having come just from the catechones and then coming to this place that is familiar to you, but is also a place of commitment for you. And for me to serve on behalf of the people there as deacon for the mass, it was powerful and palpable and I was crying.

Yeah.

It was beautiful. So entering into the fullness of our enjoyment and our awe of the faith and to be human in our ministry. To be clergy who are connected now is so much more, I think, speaking Christ crucified. And to be the theological wonders that we think we may be after so many years of having information crammed into our heads, that’s not what changes hearts. That’s not what transforms its Christ crucified. And St. Paul would say that, you know, clearly to the community if he were there to preach.

You said three words just now that I just want to like highlight because I think they really capture what was happening in that chapel palpable enjoyment and human. Just like the, I think you could touch it. You know, there was something in that chapel as we all were there in worship before our Lord, right? And it wasn’t, again, it wasn’t just because we know we have to say that we’re saying it, you could feel it, you know? And what a beautiful thing to know that we could feel that always if we were always there in that moment, right? Because we’re doing this in Rome. But to know that the Lord is offering us this when we go back home, you know, that it’s not going to stop just because we left Rome, that he’s always ready to give us that, you know, that we could feel him and enjoyment, right? What if we moved from just like, well, we always go to Mass, that’s why we go to Mass. To be just enjoying it, savoring it, that was happening in that chapel. And finally, that human aspect, right? Being human kind of gets a bad rap these days sometimes. But remember, our Lord became human to fill every aspect of our humanity with His divine life. And it’s only when He does that, that we’re truly human. And that’s what was happening in that, in that chapel, our emotions were being filled with God. And it was overflowing in tears. And I experienced what it was like to be human at the altar of God. Thanks be to God.

I’m filled with anticipation now because I really feel like we have stepped into it and we have so much more to do. We’re going on to the monastery of St. Benedict. We’ll be at Padre Pio and the church where he heard so many confessions where I hope that many of us will have an opportunity to go to confession. And then of course, on to a CC. So there’s a much more pilgrimage to go with many more opportunities to experience our humanity before the Lord. And it’s just a wonderful opportunity to have you guiding us there. And for our listeners, I think, have more opportunities to talk. So I think this was a great first experience to let everybody know what we’re doing. And have we’re going to continue that.

We’re bringing you all on pilgrimage with us.

Absolutely. Well, Father Israel, thank you so much. Before we go today, will you end us in a prayer and your blessings?

Certainly. The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Heavenly Father, you sent your Son to breathe out his Holy Spirit and yours to all the whole world, to gather to yourself a Holy people. As we stand before you in these days of pilgrimage, we ask to be truly gathered together, united, in love and devotion to you. Grant us this grace through Christ your Son, our Lord.

Amen. Father in the Son, Holy Spirit, amen. Father Israel, thank you so much for starting us on such a beautiful pilgrimage.

You’re welcome, Rhonda. It’s good to be here with you all.