hey everyone. God bless you. Thanks a lot for tuning in. I have a reflection for you today that I'm entitling The Virtue of Discipline. We could also maybe entitle it The Glory of Discipline, because I want to him all the great benefits that come to a person who is cultivating this magnificent Christian virtue. I'll start with an incredible story from my youth. When I was in college, I once was in my dorm room, and I got a knock on the door from my friend. He walked in, and he had a stopwatch. He gave me the stopwatch, and he said, Look, sit down. I'm going to start something. When I start, click the button. When I finish, click the button. So, I sat down, and he began to recite the entire Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, all 16 chapters from memory. 57 minutes later, I clicked the button, and I was just sitting in awe. I had no idea that someone could be so disciplined as to memorize the entire 16 chapters verbatim of St. Paul's epistle.

to the Roman. It caused me to have incredible enthusiasm, and my heart just leapt to see what my friend had done by the discipline that he showed a little bit every day to memorize such an important text. Is there any more important text? I was blown away. I was blown away. It was one of the most dramatic moments that I saw worked out, just what could be done if the virtue of discipline was cultivated. Of course, the issue of discipline, the virtue of discipline, is hymned throughout the scriptures, both in the outworking and incredible personalities that you see in scripture, but also in its teaching of scripture, especially the wisdom literature. Discipline is one of the central things of King Solomon in the Proverbs, all of the benefits that come to the disciplined man, and then of course the opposite as well, all the terrible curses that come to the sluggard or the person who was undisciplined. Of course, that all pales in comparison to the Magnificent.

brilliant presentation outworking of discipline in the life of our Lord Jesus himself. Jesus is the most disciplined man ever, and you see that worked out in the Holy gospels. You see our savior who was constantly keeping vigil, constantly serving, after serving, retreating to the mountains to pray, after he had just spent hours and hours feeding thousands and thousands of people. This is how our Lord lived, and of course, that discipline was shown to be climaxed at the end of his self-sacrificial Earthly life and Ministry. He came to the moment, the climactic moment of his saving work, which is when he approached gotha, and there in the incredible Garden of Gethsemane, in his agonia, he showed his incredible discipline by bowing to the father's will. He said, Lord, if this cup can pass from me, please, but not my will but thine be done. This discipline of our savior is what enabled him not to turn back when he

was confronted with incredible fear. The Lord also says manifesting again how disciplined he was that he did not speak. This always leaves me just dumbfounded. He did not speak a word except the words that the Father gave him to say. He was so disciplined in his mind, body, and soul that he never engaged in the human action of speech without yielding and collaborating with his Father's will so that everything he said was God's will. This Christlike discipline is something that is the destiny of every Christian because our destiny is to become by grace what Jesus is, and that is our future. St. Paul says it's already begun in our lives. For instance, in his epistle, Second Epistle to his spiritual son Timothy 1:6 and 7, he says, Timothy, rekindle the gift of God which was given to you by the laying on of my hand. So, he's referring to his ordination. He had ordained Timothy, and now he was telling Timothy, Be disciplined to stir up the remembrance.

and the reality of your ordination to the priesthood. Know who you are and be disciplined in renewing that so that you keep working this out. Don't let the gifts be dormant. And then he says, For God has not given to you a spirit, or to us rather, a spirit of timidity, of fear, which of course a young clergyman especially faces on the left and the right, above and below. He says, God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power and love and discipline. There it is, dear ones. Discipline is something that God is working out in the lives of all of his children, from the inside out, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit whom he has given to us. The love of God, the power of God, the discipline of God has been put into our hearts, and we have to collaborate with that, and we have to work that out. Of course, that has expressions in our life, bodily expressions. We have to learn to get up. We have to learn to be

disciplined to pray, to place our bodies before our icons every morning. We have to learn how to eat properly, lest we're gluttons. To keep the fast, we have to learn how to manage our finances, to be people of principled financial usage, such that we give our first fruits to God, we give at least a tithe to God. That is a basic discipline, and it holds great promise. Those types of things, we also need to be disciplined in our mind, learning to control our thoughts, learning to evaluate thoughts. Will I pay attention to that thought, or will I not? The Christian doesn't just allow any thought, even what we would call lois me, right? Dark thoughts, darts of the evil one sent to distract us and to keep us from prayer, or even to lead us into terrible sins. That's where sin starts, is the appearance of aisos that we, in an undisciplined way, collaborate with, instead of evaluating it and saying to ourselves, No, no, I won't have anything to do with that. We need to be

disciplined in body. We need to be disciplined in mind. We need to be disciplined in soul. One of the ways that we can be disciplined in our souls and our hearts is by the practice of esteeming every other person as more important than ourselves, learning to evaluate and appraise everyone as our superior, learning to serve practically, to serve from the heart of those who are around us, to cultivate self-sacrifice, to take the towel and to wash the feet of all who God has placed around us. The way to the kingdom of God, the road is through the people that God has assigned to your life: your parents, your grandparents, your cousins, your aunts, your uncles, your neighbors, your collaborators at work, the people who are on your sports teams, all the people in God's providence that he's put there, not to be avoided. These are the people whose lives you run through with love, and you learn to love, especially the discipline of the soul, to love enemies, which is the highest and the most

difficult of the Christian virtues, but the one that authenticates us the most. St. San says these paths, these paths of discipline, should be loved and cultivated, dear ones, loved and cultivated. If we do this, we will prosper greatly because discipline is a mother who is so generous. Discipline heaps upon us every kind of benefit and happiness. I'll end my reflection on the great glory of discipline with an example that is somewhat humiliating for me, but it's so special to me, and it is such a beautiful memory from the very early days of my marriage to Presida Katherine. When we first got married, we were young, and we were in college together, and we had a very early class. The person who was teaching the class, a fantastic man, he was a very accomplished businessman who owned a bank in town, and he was teaching a class called personal financial management, basically teaching us how to be disciplined in the area of finances, and he taught us in that class just

what the benefits were if we followed Christian principles of discipline with regards to finances. Well, he taught us also by not allowing any of us to be late. He only taught for one penny a year. He didn't. He did it out of love, not because he needed money as a professor. Uh, and so he expected the kids to respect what he was doing. And if they were, if you were late, you were going to fail the class. So we could just could not be late, period. And sometimes, uh, since the class was early, uh, President Cather would have a hard time getting me up. And so she would get herself going. She had always been a very, very disciplined person. She had her first job when she was 13. She was in a very diligent, uh, gymnast who practiced before and after school. She grew up with this great discipline. I was okay, but when it came to getting up for college classes, sometimes not the best. Shame on me. Anyway, so she would get herself ready, then she would go into the bathroom and

she would turn on the shower and get it all steaming, and then she would come and literally grab my arm, flip me over on the bed, move me to the edge. Then she would put me on her back. This is not a joke. She would carry me into the bathroom and then literally dump me on the commode. Now, it's a little embarrassing to say, but I think back of it with such happiness and respect. You know, I began this reflection on the glory of discipline with that story about my friend who remembered the epistle to the Romans. I'm ending it with the story of my best friend, my wife of 36 years, Pres Katherine. She was very disciplined and how I benefited from her discipline. This is what we can do for each other, dear ones. Not all of us are going to be super disciplined in all areas, right? We're going to have weaknesses to have Christian friends and to pursue that sacred kenonia of supporting one another in Godly disciplines.

Oh, this is one of the glories of Christian living. So, I wish you all good strength. Pursue discipline aggressively, dear ones. Kill all that is in you that is opposed to the disciplined life, and you will be so happy. God be with you. [Music]