Ep44 Dealing with Difficult People

"This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
~ John 13:35

It's time to be honest: we all have people in our lives that we don't particularly enjoy. Their personality or quirks might rub us the wrong way, or maybe we don't agree with their opinions or choices. They're not necessarily bad people, we just don't like being around them. And while we're being honest, we can also admit that we can be difficult to deal with ourselves. So what do we do, as Christians, when we don't like someone?

Pat & Fr. Nathan LaLiberte take on a heartfelt exploration of dealing with difficult people. They embrace the struggle of relatable hardships with family members, coworkers, and neighbors in a blend of faith, mental health, and the quest for constant charity and authentic joy. In drawing important distinctions between love and "liking" someone, and between kindness and "niceness", they highlight the Christian obligation to love challenging individuals. Don't miss this opportunity to gain a fresh perspective on loving difficult people, and to embrace authenticity and patience in the process!

Episode 44 Show Notes

Chapters:
0:00: Intro & This or That?
17:01: Defining "difficult people"
23:02: Christian love vs. "liking" someone
28:51: Examples of Jesus dealing with difficult people
39:42: Real life situations & choosing love
54:03: Challenge By Choice

Questions for Reflection & Discussion:

1. What is one thing that stuck out to you from this episode?
2. Being careful to avoid gossip or detraction, when have you found it difficult to be around someone? What did you recognize about yourself in that situation?
3. What are the differences between liking someone and loving them? How does the Christian understanding of these ideas differ from the world's understanding?
4. When have you been a difficult person in someone else's life? How might reflecting on those times help you grow in patience and mercy toward others?
5. Who is someone that you find it difficult to relate to right now? In what tangible ways can you love them by choosing their good?

Thank you for listening! Visit us online at thiswholelifepodcast.com, and send us an email with your thoughts, questions, or ideas.

Follow us on Instagram & Facebook

Interested in more faith-filled mental health resources? Check out the Martin Center for Integration

Music: "You're Not Alone" by Marie Miller. Used with permission.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro & This or That?
• 17:01 Defining "difficult people"
• 23:02 Christian love vs. "liking" someone
• 28:51 Examples of Jesus dealing with difficult people
• 39:42 Real life situations & choosing love
• 54:03 Challenge By Choice

Transcript

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:00:00]:
So literally to see a soul that doesn't have love in it, and they're usually the most difficult people, and to say, I want to plant love and let it grow. Because in the twilight of life, we will be judged on love.

Pat Millea [00:00:20]:
Welcome to This Whole Life, a podcast for all of us seeking sanity and sanctity, and a place to find joy and meaning through the integration of faith and mental health. I'm Pat Millea, a Catholic speaker, musician, and leader, and I'm happy to bring you this podcast along with my bride, Kenna, a licensed marriage and family therapist. This is the stuff she and I talk about all the time, doing dishes, in the car, on a date. We're excited to bring you this podcast for educational purposes. It's not therapy or a substitute for mental health care. So come on in. Have a seat at our dining room table and join the conversation with us. We are so glad you're here.

Pat Millea [00:01:10]:
Welcome back to This Whole Life friends. It is Pat Millea here with our good old friend, Father Nathan LaLiberte. Greetings, Father. How you doing?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:01:19]:
Thank you very much. Good to see you. Good to be with you.

Pat Millea [00:01:21]:
Great to see you, brother.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:01:21]:
I love what you've done with the studio. It's absolutely incredible.

Pat Millea [00:01:24]:
It's coming along. It's coming along bit by bit, little by little. It's gonna be a real professional recording studio by the year 2050. It's gonna be great. Yep.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:01:34]:
I love realistic dreams.

Pat Millea [00:01:37]:
Tangible and realistic. That's right. Super excited to be here with you. You got to record an episode right before this with Kenna, and I felt left out. So I'm really glad.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:01:46]:
Welcome to the party. And then you kicked her out, and now

Pat Millea [00:01:48]:
Correct. Yes. Yeah. No. This is the cool kids club now. No. It's where you and I just geek out the superhero thing. So it'll be great.

Pat Millea [00:01:56]:
Yep. I'm really excited to get into the episode today. It's a great topic, a really important super relevant topic. But before that, a few random kind of odds and ends practical things for all of our good listeners out there. Practical thing number 1 is to invite you to join us for our May 2024 episodes in a podcast book study of the book, The Love That Keeps Us Sane by Father Mark Foley, OCD. He's a discalced Carmelite priest. Father Mark Foley has written this beautiful book about the spirituality of Saint Therese of Lisieux, and the way that her spirituality is so psychologically healthy and accurate. And this book, The Love That Keeps Us Sane, frankly, is one of the main reasons that Kenna is a therapist.

Pat Millea [00:02:45]:
It's one of the great motivations behind the existence of the Martin Center For Integration, which is our organization that's bringing you this podcast. The Martin Center by the way is named after Saint Therese of Lisieux's family the, you know, what would you say in French? The Martins or something fancy like that. Yeah. So this book is really impactful. It's a beautiful book, and if you're listening and you're thinking to yourself, I don't feel like reading a book, let me encourage you by telling you that it is a short book, and that is the most important part for doing something over the course of, you know, 1 month, 2 episodes. So in the month of May, we're gonna have 2 episodes released. We're gonna split the book in half and the 3 of us, you, me, and Kenna are gonna have a conversation about The Love That Keeps Us Sane, Father, and, it's gonna be really fantastic.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:03:31]:
Yep. I love growing in sanity with the Martins. It's beautiful.

Pat Millea [00:03:35]:
I know it. Tell me about it. My favorite little detail too is that Father Mark Foley who's writing about being psychologically healthy, his religious initials are OCD, which is just too good to be true. It's fantastic. I as far as I know he does not have OCD although you can listen to our episode with Dr. Katherine Posch about that he is a discalced Carmelite and those are his religious initials. So month of May 2024, look forward to it. If you're listening to this after May 2024, go back to it. Check it out and read along with us.

Pat Millea [00:04:05]:
It's gonna be great. Number 2, Kenna and I were pleasantly surprised, and Father maybe you'll be interested by this too, that in the so the past few episodes of this whole life, the past 5 episodes that we've released we have garnered listeners from the nations of India, the UK, which doesn't feel like too much of a stretch right, Germany, that's still Europe. You know, Canada, in Minnesota, we're like a stone's throw up from Canada. So that's new too not too far off. The United Arab Emirates

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:04:34]:
That's cool.

Pat Millea [00:04:34]:
Which is one of my favorites. Our Dubai friends are listening. And, Dubai? Is that yeah. That's in the UAE. Right? Okay. Philippines Austria Malta

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:04:43]:
wow oh cool you got Malta

Pat Millea [00:04:45]:
yeah exactly so if you are listening from one of those nations we just wanna give you a verbal shout out and say hello in whatever language you speak. Clearly, you speak English because you're listening to me right now, and I don't speak whatever you do. So howdy, hello, greetings, bonjour.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:05:02]:
How you doing?

Pat Millea [00:05:02]:
How you doing? What's up? And we're so glad you're listening. And if you wanna share us with your friends in South America, I think that's the continent where we have the fewest listeners right now. So try to build up our Brazilian contingent, and we'll be in good shape. Alright? Number 3, like always, if you would just rate and review and subscribe, give us 5 stars if you think we earned it. If you didn't think we earned it, send us an email, tell us why, and we will either do what you tell us to or we will say thank you and ignore it, but out of love and charity. So please do that if you would. That'd be fantastic. We're gonna play a game in a second, Father, because I don't wanna sit in a room with you and not laugh a little bit.

Pat Millea [00:05:43]:
But before we do that, just for the sake of the rest of the episode, so you know what we're getting to, I would imagine that every single person listening to this podcast right now interacts with difficult people, and that probably happens pretty often. All of us from time to time deal with people that we have a hard time interacting with for whatever reason. We just have interpersonal difficulties with them. And if we're being honest, you and I are the difficult people from time to time. So this is not For other people. For other people. That's right. Exactly.

Pat Millea [00:06:16]:
So this is not like someone else's problem. It's not those people out there that are difficult. We are all difficult because we are different, and sometimes those differences really rub into each other and really create a lot of stress and tension. So how in the world are we supposed to love our enemies like Jesus says, when we can't even love our our coworkers, our neighbors, our uncles, our siblings, our roommates, you know? That's where we're going in the episode today, and it's gonna be great. So buckle up, get on board. You ready to have some fun, Father?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:06:47]:
Let's do it.

Pat Millea [00:06:47]:
It's gonna be great. Alright. So we're gonna play a little game. It's a game of This or That okay? Which is basically a game of me finding out what opinions of yours are just totally weird, and then we can talk about that for a minute. K? This is gonna be Movie This or That. Alright?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:07:04]:
K.

Pat Millea [00:07:04]:
So I know that you enjoy some movies. I suspect that as a priest, you don't have a lot of time to watch a lot of movies. So part of the game is gonna be if you haven't seen some of these movies, you just need to tell me, and I will tell you how I feel about the fact that you haven't seen those movies. Okay? But you still have to pick this or that. So it it you know, if you have not seen either movie, you gotta pick one and tell me which one you like better based on the actors and actresses, based on the title of the movie alone, based on what it's about. You gotta pick one. K.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:07:34]:
So I I feel like this is, like, how culturally relevant is the priest?

Pat Millea [00:07:37]:
That is probably the game. Okay. Great. Okay.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:07:41]:
Let's let's roll.

Pat Millea [00:07:42]:
We're gonna start off easy. K?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:07:44]:
K.

Pat Millea [00:07:44]:
Because I don't actually know the answer to this. Better MCU movie.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:07:49]:
Oh, easy. Okay. Cake.

Pat Millea [00:07:51]:
The original Avengers. K? Attack on New York, the first time they all get together, the whole thing. Or the Winter Soldier, Captain America, the Winter Soldier?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:08:02]:
I would choose the Winter Soldier. Really? Yeah. I so I love the Avengers. I love the action scene. I love seeing all of them together, but the character development and Captain America is hands down my favorite, and then to see the dynamic between him and Bucky. And I I don't wanna wreck the movie for anyone that hasn't seen it. It is exceptionally well done. And so believe it or not, it was my dad that got me hooked on that.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:08:24]:
That's his favorite movie.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:08:24]:
And he's watched it. I literally looked on his iPad has been streamed 25 times. And so I'm just like, I'm so proud of my father, but also to just, I wanna share in that. I wanna be a good son. And so that has been my favorite. Would you say the other way around?

Pat Millea [00:08:39]:
Living in your father's legacy?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:08:40]:
Yeah. Yes. Absolutely.

Pat Millea [00:08:38]:
They so it's tricky for me because I they are 2 of my probably top 5, definitely top 10, but maybe top 5 MCU movies. I would probably lean Winter Soldier by a nose. Okay. But it's really close. Sure.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:08:56]:
That's fair.

Pat Millea [00:08:56]:
Because Avengers has, like, the the nostalgia factor of, like, this was the beginning of this whole universe with all these multiple Avengers movies, and it gets to Endgame and all that, whatever. But Winter Soldier is just such a tight, really great movie. It's got, like, the the, like, spy thriller, like, not James Bond. Who's the other one? The Matt... Jason Bourne? Thank you. It's got, like, the Jason Bourne vibes to it. Like, that kind of feel, I like a lot. So I think it's Winter Soldier, but not by much. Yeah.

Pat Millea [00:09:24]:
Yeah. Yeah. So I agree. Good job. That's a good start. Thank you.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:09:26]:
Okay.

Pat Millea [00:09:24]:
The here's where the wheels might come off. You ready? Better rom com, romantic comedy movie. Okay? See if you've seen either of these, When Harry Met Sally or My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:09:39]:
I haven't seen either of them.

Pat Millea [00:09:40]:
Okay.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:09:42]:
I do know I think the first one's a Tom Hanks, though. Right?

Pat Millea [00:09:44]:
No. That was Billy Crystal. Okay. And, what's her face? Meg Ryan back in the day. Yeah.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:09:38]:
I would just choose My Big Fat Greek Wedding just because I was in Greece. That that literally is it. It has nothing to do with anything.

Pat Millea [00:09:58]:
That's that's perfectly acceptable criteria. Yes. I have. Yeah. I've seen both. Yeah. I think My Big Fat Greek Wedding too is what I would do.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:10:08]:
Is it worth watching, honestly?

Pat Millea [00:10:09]:
My Big Fat Greek Wedding, it's really good. I like it a lot. Alright.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:09:58]:
I'll put it down.

Pat Millea [00:10:12]:
It's cute. It's got a lot of really funny one liners. It's goofy, but it's, like, really entertaining throughout it too. Yeah. It's it's fun. I liked it a lot. Yeah. Okay. Better Tom Hanks movie.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:10:23]:
Oh, I mentioned Tom Hanks.

Pat Millea [00:10:24]:
Interesting. Look at you. See? Forrest Gump or Saving Private Ryan?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:10:28]:
Probably Forrest Gump.

Pat Millea [00:10:30]:
Okay. Yeah.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:10:30]:
I just but more so it has, like, memories for me of watching it when I watched it. Saving Private Ryan, beautifully done movie, but, like, I just I love the character development in Forrest Gump, and, I just I love how clueless he is in in a symptom stuff. So would you

Pat Millea [00:10:48]:
Yep. 100% agree?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:10:49]:
Yep.

Pat Millea [00:10:50]:
Yep. I I love Saving Private Ryan. It's one of the better movies ever made. But outside of Marvel movies, Forrest Gump is my stone cold favorite movie of all time. And there was a time period where I was in 8th grade, 9th grade, and I had very few friends where I watched Forrest Gump probably every Friday for about a year and a half. So, like, I've seen that movie. It's a long movie. I've seen a 3 hour movie, like, 50 times in my life, and

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:11:16]:
Impressive.

Pat Millea [00:11:17]:
I can quote a bunch of it to you. But it's, like, it's goofy and fun. It hits it, like, these beautifully deep human levels. The the, like, gut wrenching part for me, like, it was one of the early parts, I think, in my life maybe where I started to get the sense in my life that love is the greatest good, that that greater than intelligence, greater than wealth, greater than success, greater than fame and popularity and power that, like so here's this guy who is unintelligent by the way he's born. He stumbles into all this amazing good fortune, but his main priority is love. Right? So he tells Jenny at the end of the movie, I do know what love is. Right? Like, you don't have to be smart to know what love is Jenny. And to live in love.

Pat Millea [00:11:59]:
Oh, gosh. It's just so good. Oh, thank you. Okay. Thank you for letting me go back to that. Okay. Better movie with a significant plot twist. The Matrix or The sixth Sense?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:12:12]:
Oh, man, dude. For the plot twist, it's gonna be Sixth Sense. I did not see that coming.

Pat Millea [00:12:17]:
Really?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:12:17]:
No. And I'm not I like, no one should be able to ruin that movie. So if you have not seen it, I will not mention anything of why. But the plot test was absolutely insane. And M. Night Shalamadong, is that what it is?

Pat Millea [00:12:28]:
Shyamalan. Shamalamadingdong. Yeah. Right.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:12:31]:
That was, like, his, like, one of his best movies. For sure. But Matrix, hands down, man. That movie was there's another AI movie, but I didn't I didn't I didn't bristle at that one as much. Right. Because I I just feel like that's actually more of an AI attack of, like, lulling you into sleep Yep. To the point where, like, you think reality's not reality Totally. Whatnot.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:12:51]:
That's how I could imagine because AI is supposed to be smarter than us. Right?

Pat Millea [00:12:53]:
Yeah. Right. That's the idea. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:12:55]:
So a full on war doesn't make sense because

Pat Millea [00:12:58]:
Yep.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:12:58]:
They just wanna allow us to sleep and

Pat Millea [00:13:00]:
use us as batteries. Totally. Right. Right. Right. I think I would go with the Matrix just on the rewatch factor. Like, the Sixth Sense was amazing. It was it was one of the better plot twist moments in American history.

Pat Millea [00:13:13]:
Right? But once you've seen it once and you know that that's the deal, you could you could maybe watch it a second time and and look for all the clues, you know. But after that, you just kind of know what's happening, and it's not as scary as it used to be, things like that. Right? But I rewatched the Matrix again probably, like, 2 months ago or something like that, and it's still so good. Yeah. Like, the action scenes are still good. I don't know how they did that kind of CGI 20 years ago, but that's still really good. It just it's really, really cool. Yeah.

Pat Millea [00:13:42]:
And it plays into Keanu Reeves' acting stability, which is, just no emotion. It really Yep.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:13:47]:
John Wick.

Pat Millea [00:13:48]:
He does a great job. That's right. Final one. K? Better movie directed by Christopher Nolan. Oh. Memento or The Prestige?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:13:58]:
Memento. Yeah. It was so brilliant. Yeah. Just going from, you know, rewind forward. It was just so well done with, like, the snapshots. I I honestly I I watched that first time in seminary.

Pat Millea [00:14:10]:
Oh, no kidding. Okay.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:14:10]:
And, like, I I remember it was just silent in in the, lounge where we were watching it because everyone was just so enraptured by it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Same way.

Pat Millea [00:14:19]:
The Prestige is great. Okay. It's great, but I think Memento too.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:14:22]:
It's it was groundbreaking, really.

Pat Millea [00:14:24]:
I mean, I did

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:14:24]:
it. Right. So I'm gonna throw one nerd one at you.

Pat Millea [00:14:26]:
Well, let me let me explain my Memento situation first. So this is how much Memento messed with my head. Okay? I watched that sophomore year of college in the dorm with a bunch of buddies. Okay? We watched it on, I don't know what, like, Friday night at, like, 8 o'clock or something. The movie gets over at, like, 10:30 or whatever, and all of us sit in total silence trying to figure out what in the name of goodness has just happened because it's so confusing, it's so throws, you're trying to track with what's even happening and what order things are going in the movie first. Right? Everyone gets up and all the other guys leave to go to a party. I stay there and watch the entire movie all by myself again just to piece together this insanity that I had just seen. It's so good.

Pat Millea [00:15:06]:
I love it.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:15:07]:
Your dedication is just amazing, Pat. I just

Pat Millea [00:15:10]:
Dedication, obsession, I don't know.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:15:12]:
Whatever is manifesting

Pat Millea [00:15:14]:
You be the judge. Alright.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:15:14]:
K. So the nerd one. Right? This is a classic nerd.

Pat Millea [00:15:17]:
K.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:15:18]:
Labyrinth or Princess Bride?

Pat Millea [00:15:22]:
Okay. I have very strong feelings about this because Labyrinth scared the bejesus out of me when I was a kid. They the the weird David Bowie steals a baby and is holding it in this weird castle. Like, I was not cool with that. I I went and saw that in the theaters when I was, like, 8 years old or something like that, and I was horrified. It was so scary. All the weird Muppets dancing and stuff, Princess Bride is one of the better movies ever made. It's just so good.

Pat Millea [00:15:49]:
I loved one of my great fatherly moments was having our older kids watch The Princess Bride and having them get all the goofy, nerdy, like, pun jokes that are in there, and it's just it's so great. I was literally just thinking about that movie the other day because I was remembering how much I was afraid of quicksand when I was a kid, and I don't know if it was part of that movie too. Like, I just imagined that quicksand was everywhere out in the world, and you never knew when it was gonna hit. Anyway, a great movie.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:16:15]:
I love when I'm doing a rehearsal for a wedding. Yeah.

Pat Millea [00:16:18]:
And

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:16:18]:
I will always drop mawwage

Pat Millea [00:16:20]:
Classic. And, like, kills it every time.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:16:22]:
Right? Every single time you see, like, the people crawling up, they're like, oh my gosh. Did the priest just say that?

Pat Millea [00:16:29]:
That's hilarious. There's gonna be not many jokes that you have as a priest that you know are just crowd pleasers 100% of the time. Right?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:16:36]:
That would be it.

Pat Millea [00:16:37]:
This is a 10 out of 10 success rate. Yeah. Oh, man. Well, thank you for playing along. Thank you for the game.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:16:44]:
Appreciate it.

Pat Millea [00:16:45]:
For admitting, when you have not seen movies and

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:16:48]:
Yep. The rom coms failed me.

Pat Millea [00:16:50]:
Embracing your humility. Is that right? A single celibate man doesn't, doesn't power through the rom coms Friday after Friday? Oh my gosh. Well, I'm really excited for this conversation because you and I as Catholic men, anybody out there who is of any background whatsoever, we all have experience with difficult people, and all of us in some capacity struggle to deal with difficult people in a loving way. So how are the ways that we are supposed to engage in these relationships, to work with people that we just have a really hard time interacting with? Maybe, Father, if you can start us off with just kind of helping define what we mean when we say difficult people because that's a really broad definition. What what are we kinda getting at here at first?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:17:43]:
Yeah. So the the the goal, I think, in us pursuing this is there are people that just kind of make us bristle or that we avoid or that we get frustrated or impatient with very quickly. And we would label those people as difficult because they're not enjoyable for us to be around. So really at at the crux of this is really a distinction between liking stuff, and not liking stuff. Mhmm. I think that's where, like, the difficulty arises. And then when we hold that in tandem with Christ's commandment to love, in particular, he says you'll be known as my disciples by how you love. Mhmm.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:18:22]:
So this is why this topic actually matters, especially for me as a priest. It's it's actually a topic about evangelization is if we interact with people who are difficult and say, I just got to avoid them because they're annoying to me. I don't like them. It actually usurps the power of the Christian message where Christ is like, what good is it to love those who love you? Mhmm. Mhmm.

Pat Millea [00:18:44]:
So I guess what I'm hearing you say in part is maybe even being more specific about the topic, dealing with people that are difficult for me. Correct.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:18:55]:
Yes. Yeah. Because It's all in preference.

Pat Millea [00:18:58]:
Because no one in the world, I would say, probably almost no one, is difficult for everyone. Right?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:19:06]:
Challenge accepted. Alright.

Pat Millea [00:19:09]:
You're gonna try to be that person?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:19:11]:
No. No. No. No. I don't yeah. You're right. You're right. Cause there there's sometimes like there was, there's one priest that said, sometimes the rocks in someone's head match the holes in another.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:19:21]:
And you just just just the reality is some people that you'd find difficult are loved by others and vice versa. So Yeah. I think you're probably right.

Pat Millea [00:19:28]:
Yeah. So the so the the truth is that there are people wandering around the world for whom it is difficult for me to interact with, And it doesn't mean that they are objectively difficult, that they are impossible to be in a relationship with. It's just that for whatever reason, the way that I was made, the way that they were made do not click together, doesn't work like a jigsaw puzzle.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:19:49]:
Yeah. Let me give you, like, a prime example. Right? So, like, the the temperaments, I think, are oftentimes what kind of underline this. Mhmm. So if someone is introverted or extroverted

Pat Millea [00:19:58]:
Right.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:19:59]:
Oftentimes, we'll actually have a preference for that. So if someone's at a social event and they're holding court, the introvert loves that because they will never have to share anything. They'll never be asked a question. They can just go to the party, eat, be around people, and leave. And, like, thank God for the extroverts. But people who are either, like, moderate or also extroverts, they hate that person because like, oh, they're so arrogant. They're always talking. They're never shutting up.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:20:23]:
They're never listening.

Pat Millea [00:20:23]:
Yeah.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:20:24]:
And they're like, they can't stand them. So it's interesting that here's this one person, but the temperament is oftentimes what is the issue, which is not a moral issue.

Pat Millea [00:20:34]:
Right.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:20:35]:
Temperaments are just character aspects. Mhmm. They're they're who we are, personality. And so, like, it's not like someone is evil or good.

Pat Millea [00:20:43]:
Right. Right.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:20:43]:
It's just someone is someone that I enjoy being with or someone that I don't.

Pat Millea [00:20:47]:
We've done so much work in in our family with this book, The Temperament God Gave You. Right? That there are these 4 kind of, like, classical temperaments that you could break it down in into sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic, and choleric. And someday we'll do an episode on that too because it's a whole different really fascinating kind of characteristic type process. But, it's really helped me and Kenna just know how we relate to each other, the things that we do that are not moral issues. They're not issues of of sin or virtue. They're just the ways that we function in the world, the ways that we were built, and sometimes those ways really don't work well together. Yep. And it really has helped us just in our own little kind of microcosm of a marriage to look at each other grace and patience and to say, alright.

Pat Millea [00:21:32]:
You did not specifically choose to annoy the heck out of me today. That's just the way you see the world. Right? And vice versa. You know?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:21:41]:
Father Jeff Huard would always tell us at the seminary, you can't put into someone what God himself left out, which basically is just a way of saying, like, someone's temperament is them. And if you're frustrated because they're not more like something you enjoy or like, you have to check yourself to say, hey. Maybe God didn't put this in them, and they're not capable of it. And I just have to learn to love and accept it how it is. Mhmm. I mean, I I like to actually draw people's attention to, like, food preferences Yeah. Because no one really box at those. Like, if someone says, like, hey.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:22:13]:
I like this. I don't like this. You're, like, okay. Whatever. Yeah. But, like, why doesn't that transition to people? Like, we just started with movies. Right? What's your preference between these two movies? Yeah. We're not talking about moral issues.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:22:26]:
What's your preference between, you know, what brand of clothing you wear or where you vacation or, what music you listen to. None of these things are balked at. We might have strong preferences, but at the end, we we allow for those realities to exist. But suddenly, when it comes to people, it is taboo and not okay to say, I just don't like that person.

Pat Millea [00:22:47]:
Mhmm. Mhmm.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:22:48]:
And somehow that makes me, like, not good or not Christian. Yeah. So it's just I think that that's really honestly in in a immature way to look at reality is, like, there are gonna be people we just don't like, and that's actually okay. And this is where we can shift gears to Christianity Yeah. And be like, oh my gosh. There's a solution to this problem. It's not making me have to like for I hate kimchi and sauerkraut. Hate them.

Pat Millea [00:23:13]:
Yeah. You and me both.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:23:14]:
They are products it's okay. If a food is rotten, rule of thumb, don't eat it.

Pat Millea [00:23:18]:
Thank you. But then throw pickles into that category too, but that's gonna really get controversial. Okay. That's fine. That's fine.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:23:24]:
That's fine. That's, like, fully rotten. That's kinda, like, yeah, pickled. But like, if Kenna was in here, she'd probably like throw it on cuffs. Right? Yeah. And so it's just, it's interesting where, okay. It's just a preference. So I can say I really do not like this person, and it doesn't necessarily put them in a negative light or even me in a negative light.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:23:43]:
It's just saying there's something that is not enjoyable. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Pat Millea [00:23:47]:
And what what's helpful, I think, is looking at people's characteristics, their temperaments, their personality traits, and distinguishing those from choices that are good or evil, you know. And I think that the temptation, like you mentioned, Father, for a lot of us is to look at someone's temperament, to look at their character traits, to look at their personality, and to say, well, that person is selfish because they always are the first one to tell a story at a dinner party because they just want the spotlight on themselves. They don't think about anyone else. Or this person is cowardly because they're not the ones to bring up the difficult conversation when it's what really needs to be said, you know. And we it's so easy for us to assign moral value Mhmm. To an amoral thing because frankly, sometimes those same actions are a sign of Correct. Self. Selfishness or cowardice.

Pat Millea [00:24:45]:
Right? So, the first step, I think, is to work do the work internally to distinguish is this something that is, a genuine moral issue that needs to be addressed in some way, or is this a call for me to love this person in spite of a character trait, a personality trait that I don't necessarily get along with or appreciate?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:25:08]:
Yeah. I think that's allowing ourselves to have the ability to say I just don't really like someone is actually very freeing because sometimes we try to force ourselves to see something that's not there or to value something that might not be valuable to us. And then that's okay, but this is where I think we short circuit love. And can I just talk about the love aspect a little bit? So, I mean, when when Christ encourages us to love, I mean, I think that the the show, The Chosen, does a remarkable job of showing how Christ's disciples, they didn't always like each other. Yeah. And it even shows that, like, I mean, sometimes, right, they were Christ pulled them by the scruff of their neck to say, like, look, you need to love your brother. Mhmm. And you don't need to like them.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:25:52]:
Like he didn't try to go into, like, here's what you should enjoy about this person. And here's the values of their culture. And here's their perspectives. You should appreciate. Yeah. He was like, I don't care if you don't reconcile any of those things. You just need to show them love. Mhmm.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:26:06]:
And and how this honestly looks is we look past preferences and choose the person. And there there was something one of the most helpful things, again, came from Father Jeff Huard, the spiritual director in the seminary. God rest him. He he would tell us he's like, you gotta balance your life with easy people and hard people. And he said there's certain people that you just you naturally get along with. Like, they're just really enjoyable. Like, they're the people you would call to go out to a movie or a fun night Right. Or did you invite out to a meal or you'd spend your time off with? These are the easy friends, and they fill your cup.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:26:40]:
There's a reciprocity. Whereas hard friends or hard people are maybe people that you just have to interact with based on either work situation, even parish life. Maybe it's family, and you have to actually bounce to say, okay. That's gonna take so much energy out of my cup. So I need to make sure that I'm surrounding those meetings with hard friends or hard people with easy friends or easy people that will fill the cups so that I'm not completely drained. Mhmm. And this is oftentimes where sometimes the people that are most difficult, they don't always know how much they're taking. Mhmm.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:27:17]:
And so sometimes we will just let our schedules and our lives be consumed by the difficult that keeps sucking out life, and we don't do the responsible thing of saying, hey. What's actually gonna pour something back into my cup?

Pat Millea [00:27:30]:
And what I love about that is being able to draw out that really crucial distinction between liking somebody and loving somebody. That at no point in any of the scriptures in any of our Christian tradition are we commanded to like people ever because that is impossible in some situations, you know. Liking somebody is just like you said, an easy relationship and easy friendship. Love is this active gift of self, loving the other, choosing their good simply because they are a person. Right? And that can be with people that we don't like all the way down to our literal enemies, like Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5, to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. So if we're called to love our enemies, the ones who are actively trying to hurt us and there is sin there, then might be being honest about the relationship, of being honest with ourselves.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:28:30]:
To them. I was just gonna say yeah. Exactly.

Pat Millea [00:28:33]:
Yeah. Being honest with ourselves and admitting, you know what? I just don't like spending time with this person, but stopping there and not telling the whole office

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:28:40]:
Yep.

Pat Millea [00:28:41]:
That I don't like Bob.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:28:42]:
You know? Or or just even removing yourself completely. Like, okay. Then I'm just gonna avoid them.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:28:46]:
It's just say, right. Okay. Here's what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna actively show some sort of, kindness to him. So this the prime example from the life of Christ, this is literally from the gospels Mhmm. Is the story of Zaccheus. So it's literally documented in the gospel that the people of Jericho hated Zaccheus. Right.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:29:05]:
Like, they hated him with passion, and so he was objectively the most difficult person in Jericho. Christ comes in, and, again, everyone is hedging Zaccheus out. He's in the background. He can't even get through to see Jesus coming.

Pat Millea [00:29:22]:
Right.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:29:22]:
So he climbs up the sycamore tree, and he's just looking on, and suddenly Jesus stops and says, Zaccheus, I must stay with you. Now I don't think that Jesus was like, oh, man. This guy is gonna be awesome with parties. Right? Is is he probably heard the reputation before he came in there? People like, hey, Jesus. There's this person named Zacchaeus. He's terrible. Stay away from him. Mhmm.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:29:43]:
And Jesus looks at him with love and says, I gotta stay at your house today, and it just melts Zacchaeus. And so I I just I see Christ modeling that, that here's one of the most difficult people that he moves towards with love, and it transforms this guy's love. And this is how the gospel is meant to actually transform. This is why Christ says, we don't move away from people we don't like as we have to go in it to love them because it actually plants seeds. Like, John of the Cross has this great quote. He says, the goal of the Christian life is to plant seeds of love in places where it does not exist. So literally to see a soul that doesn't have love in it, and they're usually the most difficult people, and to say, I want to plant love and let it grow. Because in the twilight of life, we will be judged on love.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:30:34]:
Mhmm.

Pat Millea [00:30:35]:
And what's so beautiful about that is I think that the temptation is so I I'm thinking of, like, 5 different situations in my life where all I want to do is, like, cut a person out, you know, because it's so tempting. It a relationship is difficult because it's hard. It it takes effort and strain and it drains your cup like you were saying it. It takes energy to be in a relationship with this person to maybe talk about things that we don't agree on, and to to sit in that hardship, or to to listen to the same story for the 19th time in a row, and to deal with that small but genuine form of suffering. You know? Like, there are all these different things that are all difficult, and the temptation is just to say, well, it's not worth it. Forget it. I'm out. Like, I just I'm not coming home for Christmas.

Pat Millea [00:31:23]:
I'm not going to the staff meeting. I'm not like, you name it. You know? And, the beautiful opportunity to plant seeds of love and to stay in contact, in relationship with these difficult people who are equally beloved by God. Right? This is not a matter of, like, well, God thinks that guy is kinda the worst too. Like, no. No. No. Like, God made that child on purpose with a purpose and being able to plant seeds of love in their life.

Pat Millea [00:31:51]:
And it it doesn't mean planting seeds of even truth necessary right off the bat. Like, if I disagree with a relative about something, it's not the call to come into Thanksgiving dinner guns blazing ready to show them how right I am about some political issue, you know. What are the seeds of truth that I plant? Now truth and love are always related, so obviously there's a little bit of both there. But man, what a great opportunity to to stay in contact in communion with folks that we find challenging so that we can give love to them. And I I'm sure almost a 100% of the time, we can receive love from them as well when we take that chance.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:32:33]:
And so I think a little asterisk just to put on that is the language of boundaries. Mhmm. Because I mean, just even, like, the the imagery of filling your cup or depleting your cup. Right? There are certain times where you may look at your life and say, running thin. Like, I am not gonna be able to love as I should in this. Like, I just need to kinda tap out for a season because I'm not gonna respond well right now. I just I have too many strong opinions, preferences, and I'm exhausted.

Pat Millea [00:32:59]:
Yep.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:32:59]:
And and we actually even see Jesus do this in a way when he's called to Simon Peter's mother in law's house to heal. He heals her. Word goes around. Everyone starts coming to the door.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:33:10]:
And then Jesus just vanishes in the dead of night, and the disciples don't know where. So now you can imagine. Right? The disciples, this is early in the discipleship.

Pat Millea [00:33:17]:
Right.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:33:18]:
People are like, where's Jesus? And they're like, we don't know. And they're like, you guys are idiots. You know? So then they're frantically looking for Christ. They find him and they're like, the whole town is looking for you.

Pat Millea [00:33:27]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:33:28]:
And Jesus unapologetically says, okay, I'm going to the next town. Like not my problem. And he literally moves to the next town. And like, this is part of the beauty of Christ as he models this to say, you know, sometimes I have people pressing on me for things, and I just I can't do it. Yeah. Yeah. And I I think that that verbiage is important because if we don't have if we don't have the phrase not my problem in our vocabulary, it's gonna be really hard to actually sift through to say, okay. When can I invest in a relationship, and when do I not be able to? Because sometimes the difficult people are like this whirlpool or quicksand as you mentioned earlier.

Pat Millea [00:34:08]:
Right.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:34:08]:
It just sucks you in, and it's like you can't get out. Mhmm. But at a certain point, we have to look at it and do exactly what Christ said is not my problem. There's another scene, actually, from the gospel where 2 brothers come up to Jesus and they say, you know, my brother won't share the inheritance. Mhmm. And Jesus looks at him and just says, what does that have to do with me? Mhmm. I'm not your arbitrator and judge. And then he goes on and gives a beautiful parable about greed.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:34:34]:
And doesn't even address the situation. So essentially saying, it's not my problem. Yeah. And so the fact that Jesus could actually say that gives us permission that there's gonna be certain difficult people that come into our life that wanna thrust stuff onto us, and we get to respond with love as Jesus always did, said, not my problem. Mhmm.

Pat Millea [00:34:52]:
And what I assume that you're at it or including in that phrase, that's not my problem, is not a lack of empathy either. So just because this is a problem that you have the agency and the capability to deal with and I do not have the bandwidth to deal with it, or it's not appropriate, it's not my place to deal with it, it doesn't mean that I don't care about you or about the struggle that you're going through. I'm more than happy to to to be empathetic about how your experience, but I am not here to solve all of your problems. Right? And even Jesus himself, I mean, like, it's not that he didn't care about the people involved. He has perfect love for everyone. One of the great mysteries is for all the lepers and blind people that he healed, he didn't heal all of them, and sometimes he left towns where there were people who were still sick and dying because because that was a good part of his mission, but it wasn't the ultimate mission, you know. His ultimate mission was salvation of souls, not necessarily eternal earthly life. You know? It's not to keep everyone from dying for the rest of

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:35:59]:
To fix everyone's problems is not why he came.

Pat Millea [00:36:00]:
To fix everyone's problems. Right?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:36:01]:
As he tells us, Judas, right before he goes to his last supper, right, is even if all the poor were here like, the poor will always be with you. Yeah. So what Mary Magdalene did in pouring the costly, oil over his feet, it's like, that's great. Yeah. The poor will always be with you. So there will always be issues.

Pat Millea [00:36:18]:
Right.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:36:18]:
And it's not always your problems to fix.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:36:20]:
And I think this is what actually depletes us so much that we can't be attentive to love. I mean, I think I I I've just heard so much, and I I don't know if it's directly spoken by Christians, but there's this, like, ethos that to be nice is the ultimate good.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:36:35]:
And I think that's even a cultural thing that's kind of infused into Christianity. It's, like, niceness is the best thing, but niceness isn't even once in the bible. Yeah. Kindness is plenty of times because niceness doesn't actually require virtue.

Pat Millea [00:36:51]:
Sure. Mhmm.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:36:49]:
And and, like, it's oftentimes just a suspicion. Like, this is how I actually like to refer to it when, like, I'm I'm teaching is niceness for the Christian is like makeup on a person. Mhmm. Like, it might just change the external experience, but it doesn't change the person. Kindness actually goes very, very deep into the person. It's not just a kind of shallow fickle thing.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:37:15]:
And this is why, like, we have the joke in Minnesota, like, Minnesota nice.

Pat Millea [00:37:18]:
I was just gonna say, yeah.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:37:20]:
I mean, because, because it's the whole thing. It's like, someone might say, like, you know, oh, it's really nice to meet you. Like, welcome to the neighborhood. We're gonna gossip about you for the next 20 years. I mean, like so they'll give you a casserole, and then they'll shred you to pieces. And it's like, that's not okay.

Pat Millea [00:37:34]:
It's Minnesota. They'll give you a hot dish.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:37:36]:
Hot dish.

Pat Millea [00:37:36]:
I'm sorry. Thank you very much.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:37:38]:
As a native Minnesota, I'm very I'm shameful. I'm sorry. Yes. Hot dish.

Pat Millea [00:37:43]:
Let your people down. That's okay. Yeah. But, no, that's that is true that I I think being nice to someone is easy because we want to be perceived as a good person. So putting on this, maybe a facade of

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:37:57]:
a veneer

Pat Millea [00:37:59]:
of kindness, that's a nice thing to be able to portray because someone will walk away from me thinking, oh, what a wonderful person that was. You know? It's much more difficult to be genuinely kind because kindness means that on a level of my soul, I am seeking what is best for this other person. Yeah. You know? Then I'm treating them with dignity and charity because God made them and they are worthy of dignity and charity, even if the dignity and charity means telling them things that are difficult to hear.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:38:26]:
I got a prime example.

Pat Millea [00:38:27]:
Yeah.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:38:27]:
Okay. So here here here's here's, like, a an example that I think is applicable to many people who have been in the working world, alright, and and social management. So niceness is keeping an employee in the job knowing he or she is no longer the right fit, and therefore failing him or her and the company because you don't have the courage to do the kind thing. Kindness would call you to tell him or her that they are not the person for the position and then dignify them in the transition to find where they belong.

Pat Millea [00:39:00]:
And I

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:39:01]:
think this is like the distinction is sometimes niceness tolerates things that are not okay, kindness actually directly talks about something that needs to be addressed and then assists with charity to carry it out in the right direction. So niceness you can see is act it's actually an evil in a lot of ways

Pat Millea [00:39:19]:
Right.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:39:19]:
Because it just I don't know. It just it's like fakeness that doesn't actually allow for virtue to flourish. Mhmm.

Pat Millea [00:39:25]:
If it's avoiding the truth, if it's not serving someone well because it's difficult for us, It's hard for me to stomach the tension so I don't tell someone something that they need to hear or is important for them to hear. Yeah, man. And I'm just thinking of so many times that I mean, it's easy, I think, to to categorize certain individuals in our life and put them in the difficult person category. Right? That every interaction I have with them is just a challenge, and there certainly are some of those people I can think of even genuinely, and I mean this, even really good people that I know are good and holy and nothing that they did was, you know, malicious or whatever, like people in ministry, like volunteers that I would work with over the years in in parishes. I could think of 1 in particular who was just the completely opposite personality for me. And I couldn't stand being in meetings with her because she would nitpick all the different things that were not good enough about the ministry yet, you know? Like, well, there was this, you know, lunch was a little bit too long, and they started getting antsy at the retreat, you know, and they're, we should have started confession 5 minutes earlier so we could have a better transition, things like that, And it just grated on my last nerve because what I was hearing was, like, critique and just hand pecking at this ministry that I love so much. What she was doing was just she loved the ministry too, and she wanted to make it as good as possible. So she wasn't comfortable just living through, like, a mediocre okay ministry.

Pat Millea [00:40:59]:
She wanted to find ways to make God's ministry even better and and to make his glory even more pronounced. You know? It was so she was in my life, a difficult person that was really important for me to be in contact with because we balanced each other out really well in a ministry setting, you know. But then there are other people that I'm thinking of that they themselves are not difficult people, but I certainly go through difficult moments with them. Right? Like, literally, the people I love the most in the world. Sometimes Kenna's not here, so I can talk about her. Sometimes, just kidding. Sometimes Kenna is a difficult person for me to be around, and I love her more than any human being who will ever live. Right? But her differences to mine, her personality different from mine, means that some days we don't like each other at all, but we are commanded and we promise to love each other even on the days that we don't like each other.

Pat Millea [00:41:54]:
I have a house full of toddlers sometimes, and they are people that I love more than almost anyone else in the world just outside of Kenna. Sometimes I don't like them at all. Bedtime is one particular time lately that I do not like my toddler children because they are a hurricane and I'm not much better. So we grate on each other in those moments, but I like them almost every other time, and I love them all the time. Right? So there's this interesting interplay between liking and loving Yeah. That we're called to love always, and we just take the experience of enjoying someone when it's a gift.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:42:29]:
Yeah. And I I love the example you gave from your work too, Pat, just about this person who was not trying to hurt you Right. Or critique you, but it was taken as those things. And so she became a difficult person for you even though she was just kind of being authentic to her temperament of she's probably very detail oriented where you're big picture oriented. Right. And so this is oftentimes what happens is why if we remove ourselves from difficult people, we oftentimes don't grow either. And just pushing ourselves to kinda even with you and Kenna's example, right, of

Pat Millea [00:43:03]:
Mhmm.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:43:03]:
Sometimes I really do not like her, and yet I still choose to love her. And those are the moments in a relationship where depth happens because it's no longer just on surface compatibilities. But it's also even, like, going back to the work example of I'm trying to find out how is her perspective going to help youth ministry versus you're missing the big picture, girl. I mean, like, there's a very, very different thing. And sifting through like and love is actually very helpful for that because because like like is such a preferential thing, it's really hard to navigate. Like, let me can I give you an example from my past? So my dad just absolutely loved to rollerblade. He, would he always loved to rollerblade, and he wanted to bring us any moment we could around one of the lakes into rollerblade. I hated rollerblading, like, with a passion.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:43:54]:
I love to bike. I like to walk around. I like to do those things, skateboard even, rollerblade. I just hated it for some reason. I think I was probably afraid of, like, hitting rocks and flying. I watched, like, a YouTube video or something that's freaked me out. But, like, so my dad would always try to convince me of why I should like to rollerblade. And he'd be like, it's like this, and it's so much fun.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:44:12]:
And he'd bring me make me go rollerblades. Like, look at how much enjoyment we're having. I'm I'm I'm not I'm not exaggerating for 10 years. He was working on helping me to like rollerblade. It never happened. And, like, even skateville events, I would just sit and play video games. Like, I'm not skating. And so, like, the reason I bring this example up is no matter how hard my dad tried to make me like something that I didn't like, I didn't like it.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:44:38]:
Mhmm. If you would have shifted gears and say, okay. Clearly, Nate doesn't like this. What can we find another area to find common ground? Like, okay. Let's do you know, I liked paintball at that time. Maybe you like paintball or I liked, you know, going to the arboretum and walking around. Like, maybe we could do that. So to find something that wasn't trying to convince me was actually that middle ground where love could breed.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:45:01]:
Mhmm. And so both of us withheld love then from each other on those moments because it was, like, basically a preference war. Mhmm. This is oftentimes where we mess up in the ministry to difficult people is we make it into preference wars, opinion wars, and what we like and don't like, and having to convince people. Whereas love just shoots right through the center of it and says, I'm gonna take the person where they're at. How can we love in a new way?

Pat Millea [00:45:28]:
And there are probably some even more difficult moments, I would imagine, where somebody that we, that we used to enjoy a lot has become someone, or or we have become a duo of people who do not like being around each other anymore, you know. I I I'm sure there are lots of family of origin situations where people have, you know, parents that are getting older, they're becoming adults, and maybe that relationship with their parents is it doesn't come as easily as it used to when they were kids. Certainly as brothers and sisters age and they kind of start going their separate ways, they're living in different places maybe, they're having different experiences, They're coming to different conclusions. Maybe there are siblings that are really difficult for us to be around and to and to get along with now. And even something like in a marriage, you know, that a husband and wife who, you know, from the moment they got married, they have enjoyed each other's company, they love being around it, they couldn't get enough of each other, frankly. Like the 24 hours in a day were limiting, they wish there were 30 hours in a day to spend with each other back then. And maybe they're in a season now where it's really, really difficult.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:46:35]:
Like retirement. That happens a lot.

Pat Millea [00:46:37]:
Like retirement. All of a sudden, they're with each other maybe 24/7, and they weren't banking on that. Right? So all those personality quirks and and, you know, tensions that were present, they weren't amplified because they weren't around each other that often. But now all of those troubles and trials get turned up to 11 because they're with each other all the time. You know? So I I I think and I'd like to get your take on this too, Father. But I wonder if there's an opportunity in relationships that it would be unhelpful and maybe uncharitable to remove ourselves from. So, you know, I I don't have to necessarily, you know, be around my parents all the time, but it might be uncharitable in most situations for me to never talk to my parents again, for example, or my siblings. It would be uncharitable for me to just leave and abandon my spouse. Right? So I would imagine there's an opportunity to start to do some processing, maybe even journaling about how can I love this person even when I don't like them? And and maybe even getting really tangible and practical about it, you know.

Pat Millea [00:47:44]:
What am I able to do out of love for this person? So how can I show my spouse that I still that that how can I show them love even if we're in a really difficult spot in our marriage? How can I show my parents or my siblings some love that comes from God even if I have a hard time being around them? And and I'm using that that word able to on purpose because it does come back to really healthy boundaries like you mentioned, Father, that the question is always, what am I able to give? And if I try to give things that I'm unable to give, what it's gonna end up doing eventually is just creating resentment and exhaustion in me, and I'm gonna be less able to be loving than I was at the beginning, actually. So just doing some kind of, like, really practical processing of what am I able to do out of love for this person, even small things that maybe they don't they don't even notice or know about.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:48:42]:
It it is a really hard thing, especially with the boundaries piece and because every person is unique and relationships are unique, it's hard to have a paint all. I I think I think we just have to do that soul searching. Right? Am am I withdrawing from the situation? And then there's the whole punishing reality. Like, is this am I giving them the silent treatment? Am I trying to hurt them by withdrawing? Yeah. Or is it a matter of, like, at this season in my life, I can't? And, like, I wish I could, and, like, there's almost a humiliation that, like, I wish I could give more than I could, but I just can't. And so there there is a lot of soul searching. I love the idea that you gave of journaling, and it's that's not my favorite thing at all. I hate to journal.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:49:25]:
Yeah. But I just found sometimes when I put my thoughts out of, like, here's where I find this person difficult, it does kinda sometimes act as a road map to help me to kind of navigate. Okay. So what's really taxing me right now? Are they doing something that is, you know, offensive to me, or is it just against my preferences and opinions? And this is oftentimes where we find wells of endurance where we didn't know that they were before is when we start to label it as it is. It's like, oh, well, I just hate it when they are we sit down for dinner and they chew with their mouth open. And, like, it drives me crazy, and I don't even wanna be around them anymore. And so, like, I just stopped coming to dinner. It's like, I know it sounds stupid, but people make those decisions.

Pat Millea [00:50:06]:
Oh, yeah.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:50:07]:
Oh, yeah. And so just to say, okay. Either A, right, I've got to tell the person, hey. Can you treat your mouth closed? Or even just to say, okay. I'm gonna sit somewhere else. Or just to know, like, for the next hour and a half, I'm gonna be sick to my stomach because I'm hearing after every single bite. And just to continually say, okay. Well, I'm gonna love the person in the midst of it because there's nothing morally wrong they're doing.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:50:32]:
It's just grinding my preferences. Mhmm.

Pat Millea [00:50:35]:
And I think there's a a really great opportunity for humility with all this too that, I I I found a a point a few weeks ago where Mother Teresa would say to her Missionaries of Charity, her sisters, it is I'm paraphrasing, but, essentially, it is important for all of you to be patient with the sins and errors and failures of others, knowing that you will soon require their patience for your sins, failings, and errors. You know?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:51:05]:
I got it. So Bishop Cozzens would always do retreats for the Missionaries of Charity, and he said without fail, the novices would come to him at some point and say, Father, I've become a worse person since I've joined the Missionaries of Charity. And he would always respond, oh, sister, you've always been that bad. You just didn't know it. And there's truth. Like, that's a humility, self knowledge piece.

Pat Millea [00:51:29]:
And that's why he's a Bishop today.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:51:30]:
And that is why he's a Bishop today. Yep. It's it's we don't see it.

Pat Millea [00:51:34]:
I used to say all the time, and I remember talking to Ryan O'Hara in our episode about fostering and and parenthood and adoption, things like that, his his struggles with anger. I remember saying to him, I I was never angry until I had kids. And the truth is is that that seed was there, but it didn't have the circumstances to blossom into full blown angry outbursts, you know? And now it's become this real genuine character struggle that I continue to wrestle with because the opportunity is always there now. You know? That's really funny. I can't imagine telling a Missionary of Charity, you've always been this bad. But there is I mean, anyone who is honest and has any modicum of humility will acknowledge that, yes, there there are things about them that are probably really difficult for other people to handle. And it again, much of that, maybe even most of it, is not some sinful malicious act on our part. Some of it is, and we take that to confession, you know, but a lot of it is just the way that we are wired.

Pat Millea [00:52:42]:
It's the way we were raised by our family. It's the perspectives that we bring from the family of origin. A lot of it is frankly just natural, and it's in our DNA. It's the way that we're wired to see the world and to respond to it. A lot of it is what we've learned over years and years and years of being shown this type of behavior works for me and it helps me make friends and it gets a laugh. This type of behavior gets weird looks and it people don't like it when I do that, you know. All of that gets lumped together and we just do it. You know? But a lot of it's not a moral issue.

Pat Millea [00:53:14]:
It's just the way that we interact with the world, and that's really hard for other people around us sometimes.

Pat Millea [00:54:05]:
Man, so just, you know, easy. Get out there and love everyone.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:54:14]:
Even the people that are really hard to love. Yeah.

Pat Millea [00:54:18]:
And and, I mean, the beauty there, obviously, is that we know we know as Christians that love of neighbor is not an option. It's a command. It's obligatory for us.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:54:27]:
And they will not know you're a Christian without it.

Pat Millea [00:54:30]:
Right. Right. That that it's the define it's Forrest Gump. It's it's the highest virtue. Right? It's the the defining characteristic of Christians is the love of God poured out for us primarily on the cross and in the sacraments and the love of the love that we respond to God with toward him and toward our neighbor, the one great commandment. Right? So, it's been just really fruitful, really good to talk about this, father. How about a a challenge by choice that you might throw our way to kinda get, into living this out more?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:54:57]:
Sounds good, brother. I think that one of the things that would be most helpful is if we can just pause and make the distinction between being nice, being kind, liking, and loving. And if we don't have those categories kind of jumbling around in the back of our mind, it's gonna either kind of fall into I failed or I succeeded. But we can kind of parcel it out and to say, actually, I was just being nice there. There wasn't much kindness, or to say, like, well, I didn't really like them, but I loved them. This is how we actually make progress in the Christian life of virtue. So, think of times where you did did not like someone or something, but you were willing to love for the benefit of another. That would be the essential challenge.

Pat Millea [00:55:41]:
Love it. That's great. So being honest about who we like and don't like and moving in the direction regardless of kindness and love, this great virtue and the ultimate virtue of love. That's beautiful. I love that, father. Thanks for that. Would you pray with us, please?

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:55:56]:
I'd love to. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, we thank you for sending us the gift of your Son who loved us even in our weakness, who is not afraid to enter into our brokenness, and who came to us in our greatest need. May this love so penetrate our own hearts that we may, in return, not only respond, but also be willing to be your witness in this world, to love those who are broken, those who are wounded, and those who are suffering, and those who are most difficult. We ask all these things through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:56:32]:
Amen. Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pat Millea [00:56:34]:
Amen. Father, you will be hopefully grateful to know that I don't find you difficult at all.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:56:39]:
It's a mutual, actually. This is quite enjoyable.

Pat Millea [00:56:41]:
I do like you a lot.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:56:42]:
Thank you.

Pat Millea [00:56:42]:
And I love being around you, and I love having you with us to share your wisdom and your presence with the rest of our audience. So thanks so much for being here again as always. Friends, no matter where you live, whether it's Malta or the United Arab Emirates or Tennessee or wherever you find yourself, thank you so much for listening this to This Whole Life. Remember, if you're interested in joining us for that book study in May on The Love That Keeps Us Sane, you can check out the show notes for a link to that book to buy it and make sure you're ready for the month of May. And in the meantime, God bless you and we will see you next time on This Whole Life.

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:57:17]:
This Whole Life is a production of the Martin Center For Integration. Visit us online at thiswholelifepodcast.com.

Pat Millea [00:57:41]:
I was never really allowed to watch movies like that as a child, so I didn't it's not a part of my childhood,

Fr. Nathan LaLiberte [00:57:46]:
True Confessions of Pat Millea.

Pat Millea [00:57:47]:
Oh, yeah. There's a lot of things I wasn't allowed to do as a child. Mostly for my good mom and dad. Thank you.