Video: EWTN “Bookmark” Interview – The Ordinary Path to Holiness

This interview (around 2001 or so) for the book, The Ordinary Path to Holiness, by R. Thomas Richard, was led by Doug Keck in his EWTN program “Bookmark”. Doug Keck did a really masterful job! His questions, and discussion, showed me he really had read the book, understood it, and saw how the different parts of the book worked to bind the whole together. The result is a very easy to follow walk through the central spiritual reality I sought to communicate in the book: our journey to our human vocation, namely holiness in Christ, is found in stages. We Catholics have inherited a well-understood, experienced and mapped-out understanding of this spiritual journey in stages – and the Lord wants us to know of it, and be guided by it in our own personal religious lives in Christ. Our spirituality – our life of prayer and of grace – unfolds for us, it progresses toward our call in Christ, in a particular way that is designed for us by our Maker – a progression in stages of spiritual growth toward maturity in Christ.

St. Paul saw the work of those sent in Christ as nothing less than completing God’s intention for us. He would press on,

until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. (Eph 4:13)

Paul would communicate, and pass on, nothing less than Christ!

Him we proclaim, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man mature in Christ. (Col 1:28)

God wants us to attain maturity in Christ – holiness! He wants us to grow in a person-to-Person relationship with Him, a communion with Him, that uniquely and beautifully brings us to the happiness and peace we were made for. This book can be very helpful, showing us how we can actually grow, intentionally and purposefully, toward Him, on the path that He has designed and set before us.