IIC 145: Dr. Edward Sri on Personal Formation and FOCUS

Dr. Peter: [00:00:00] In this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, we are entering into, yet again, in another episode, this exploration of the integration of formation. And today we are looking at the integration of personal formation in one of the most widely known and one of the most successful apostolic ministries in our Catholic Church today. I’m talking about FOCUS, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, which has grown in leaps and bounds from its founding in 1998 at Benedictine College. FOCUS has nearly 1000 missionaries, with tens of thousands of college and university students whom they serve. They have 234 locations on college and university campuses in the 48 states. And they’re also in parishes, and they conduct mission trips all around the world, conferences like the SEEK Conference, which draws more than 19,000 people in attendance. Retreats as well. And here’s an amazing statistic: more than 1200 religious vocations have been inspired by FOCUS, former FOCUS missionaries. And there is just so much energy, so much intensity that FOCUS brings through its missionaries, through its staff. And I’m sure that nearly every one of you in the audience has come across at least one FOCUS missionary in the last two decades.

Dr. Peter: [00:01:25] So just a little anecdote to that point. It’s also a shout-out to FOCUS missionary Sophie Zelle at the Indiana University in Bloomington. Hi, Sophie! Just nine days before this episode released on August 19th, 2024, Sophie came up to me at The Hive. It’s a great restaurant in Bloomington, Indiana, and she introduced herself as a listener to this podcast. And many of our Resilient Catholics Community retreatants were having our farewell lunch at the end of our annual retreat in Bloomington, and it was great to connect with Sophie, who just happened to run across our group. And I’ve come across so many FOCUS missionaries in ways like that. And so, as we begin, a special thank-you to all FOCUS missionaries, to all the FOCUS staff for all the beautiful and wonderful work you do.

Dr. Peter: [00:02:17] I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, also known as Dr. Peter. I am your host and guide in this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, and I am so glad to be with you. I’m a clinical psychologist, a trauma therapist, a podcaster, writer, co-founder and president of Souls and Hearts, but most of all, I am a beloved little son of God, a passionate Catholic who wants to help you to taste and see the height and depth and breadth and warmth and the light of the love of God, especially God your father. And I also want you to be able to taste the love of Mary, your mother, God, your father and Mary your mother, your spiritual parents, your primary parents. And I’m here to help you, in this podcast, embrace your identity as a beloved little child of God, of Mary.

Dr. Peter: [00:03:06] And as I noted, we are in the midst of a whole series on the integration of personal formation, bringing in the best, the brightest, the most creative and influential Catholic thought leaders in the personal formation space in our Catholic Church. And today, in episode 145 of this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, titled Dr. Edward Sri on Personal Formation and FOCUS. Again, it releases on August 19th, 2024. I am so pleased to bring you Dr. Sri, Dr. Sri of FOCUS to discuss his seasoned perspective over the last more than a quarter century on the integration of personal formation in young Catholic adults. Just so glad to have him with us today. Dr. Edward Sri is a theologian and author. He’s a well-known Catholic speaker who presents to tens of thousands of people from around the world each year, including clergy, parish leaders, catechists and laity. He’s written several best-selling books, including The Art of Living, No Greater Love: A Biblical Walk Through Christ’s Passion, Walking with Mary, Who Am I to Judge? Responding to Relativism with Logic and Love — that’s one of my favorites — and Into His Likeness: Be Transformed as a Disciple. Dr. Sri is also the presenter of several Ascension Press faith formation film series, including A Biblical Walk Through the Mass, Mary: A Biblical Walk with the Blessed Mother, and When You Pray: A Clear Path to a Deeper Relationship with God.

Dr. Peter: [00:04:37] He was also the presenter for Symbolon. Many of you know him through that, and The Catholic Faith Explained, and that was from the Augustine Institute. He’s also a founding leader with Curtis Martin of FOCUS, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, where he currently serves as the senior vice president of apostolic outreach. Now, in addition to all of those credentials, he has one more that’s particularly important to me,  in that Dr. Edward Sri is a dear friend. And I met him more than 30 years ago, more than three decades ago, not long after we both graduated from college, when he was living and working in Michigan. And our friendship has developed over the past three decades. He and his wife, Beth, are the godparents of my daughter Rose, and so just so excited to have him here. Now, this interview was filmed at the National Eucharistic Congress in July 2024, so let’s get right to it.

Dr. Peter: [00:05:32] Well, I am super excited because a dear friend, someone who’s been working in this little corner of the vineyard with us in human formation, amongst other types of formation, today here at the National Eucharistic Congress on day three, I have with me Dr. Edward Sri. And it is so good to see you and it’s so good to be with you this morning. Now there’s a bit of history between us. We go back more than 30 years.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:06:01] More than 30 years. More than 30. Good history. A history, the viewers, may be, oh, what’s that all about? There’s a history, a good history.

Dr. Peter: [00:06:08] Yeah, no, it’s a really, really good history. And as many of you know, Dr. Sri was instrumental in the foundation of FOCUS. And again, tell me, because I’m blanking on what FOCUS stands for. What is the acronym?

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:06:26] The original acronym, we actually just call it, we focus on FOCUS. That’s easy for everyone to remember, but originally it was Fellowship of Catholic University Students. That’s the official name. But we do so much more than what we’re doing on campus. We are serving in over 50 parishes across the country. We do a lot of work with seminarians, with pastors, even. We were just here in Indianapolis the week leading up to this. We had like almost 30 pastors and four bishops with us for three days on a kind of a retreat workshop on evangelization and how do you revitalize parish life. So we focus on evangelization.

Dr. Peter: [00:06:59] So actually, you’ve changed your name to FOCUS.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:07:01] Well, I mean, no, the official name, you go look it up legally is Fellowship of Catholic University Students, but it’s a mouthful and I think FOCUS is what everyone knows.

Dr. Peter: [00:07:10] That’s what everybody knows. So you are the senior vice president for apostolic outreach. All right, I got it. And I know you’ve been involved with FOCUS for decades now. I’m just really curious. Tell us about like how it started, what the vision is, you know, for FOCUS, maybe how that evolved. And then the mission.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:07:33] Sure. Well, it started, I’ll tell you about when I met my good friend Curtis Martin. So he was the one that’s the founder of the vision behind all this. We were in graduate school together, and the first 30 seconds I met him, literally when my roommate said, oh, this is my friend. This is Curtis Martin. You got to meet him. He wants to start a Catholic Campus Crusade for Christ. Now, Campus Crusade, known as Cru today, does a lot of evangelization on college campuses. And in my first 30-second conversation with Curtis, he says, oh, yeah, I got the name. It’s called FOCUS, Fellowship of Catholic University Students. He said, we’re gonna do Bible study and outreach and evangelization, discipleship. He had this whole, it was great. I was like, that’s awesome. I’m really glad that someone’s going to do that for the church. And then we finished graduate school. He went and worked with an apostolate for a while. I went overseas to Rome and did my doctorate. We were great friends. And then I started teaching at a small little college in nowhere, Kansas that nobody ever heard of back then. It’s since then, become this, you know, one of the top Catholic schools in the country. But back then, little Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas was, you know, not really known for its Catholic vibrancy. Many people would go there and lose their faith. They’d get, you know, swept away in the drunkenness and party culture that was there. But I started teaching there, and I did meet a couple students that were, you know, really excited about their faith. And they had seen Curtis and Scott Hahn go on Mother Angelica live on EWTN.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:08:54] And they were talking about that one day they’re going to start this thing called FOCUS. And some of my students knew I knew them and said, do you think we can bring that Mr. Martin on campus? And I said, sure. So, Curtis, you want to come give a talk and maybe you could start your FOCUS thing here sometime down the road. You could just plant some seeds. So I helped organize a retreat. He gave some talks, I gave some of the talks. And at the end of the retreat, the students said, we want to start FOCUS now. And Curtis says, well, I live in Ohio, so I can’t do it, but Professor Sri’s here. He’ll help you get it started. That’s how I got roped in. And this is January 1998. So last year we celebrated the conclusion of our 25th anniversary. So that January, we just, Curtis and I were on the phone writing Bible studies till like 1 or 2 in the morning. I would give those Bible studies the next day to a group of students, then I’d meet with some of them one-on-one later in the week to train them so they can go lead others later that week. So it kind of just started like shotgun. But I saw firsthand at Benedictine how it transformed the college. And there are many factors, but everyone there would say FOCUS was one of the biggest instruments God used to transform it. It wasn’t a top-down transformation. It really was a groundswell where within just a few years, one out of four students on campus were in Bible study. They were having perpetual adoration.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:10:09] You know, they used to have just one holy hour a week, and sometimes nobody would go. And then now you have perpetual adoration. You have about hundreds of students going to daily Mass. Theology department becomes the second largest theology department in the country, like boom, explosion. So I saw back then, wow, I have a feeling this is going to make a big impact. I remember saying to Curtis one year, we were driving through downtown Denver, and we passed by the place where the Denver Nuggets NBA team plays. I said, one day we’re going to do a conference there. And it wasn’t because I thought like, oh, because we’re so good, or we’ve got the right answer. It was just I saw firsthand young people looking. They’re starving. And you think about the topic we’re looking at with human formation. They’re starving in this secular age. Many of them are coming from a relativistic mindset, an empty vision for life. A lot of brokenness from maybe their own upbringing or different addictions they fallen into. Like they are starving for love and they don’t even know it. And when we had missionaries going across our campus and not just Benedictine, but those early campuses, you could just see. You know, when you’re in the desert and someone says, here’s some water. And they taste the water, they want more and it just, it transformed. Benedictine has transformed many other kinds of college campus ministry settings. And so early on, I had a sense, I think this is going to get really big. And sure enough, the last two years we’ve been doing our big SEEK conference in an NFL football stadium. Which is kind of crazy. Yeah.

Dr. Peter: [00:11:34] Wow. So from the very first moments of FOCUS, like live, in action, at Benedictine, you’ve been involved in formation. And in 1992, Saint John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis, four dimensions of formation, human, spiritual, intellectual, pastoral. We’re in this series where we’re discussing what those are, lived out in different Catholic organizations, different outreaches, and I really want to know how you guys over at FOCUS and ladies over at FOCUS, you know, how you live that out in the formation of your missionaries. Give me an idea of, what does that look like? Because I know you’ve been spending a lot of time and resources, especially in the last… well, since I’ve been a little bit more aware of what you’ve actually been doing the last six years or so, I know there’s been a lot going on.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:12:29] Yeah, I think everything we’re doing is ultimately formative. I think FOCUS is different than other great Catholic apostolates, in the sense that there are many apostolates that are providing books and videos and resources, and I’ve been blessed to work with many of those different Catholic organizations, and they do a great thing. Many of them, you know, put on conferences, retreats. Okay. That’s all great. But I look at FOCUS as a little bit different. FOCUS is not an ecclesial lay movement, but there’s an element of, you know, we’re passing on a vision for life. That was one of Curtis’s early slogans, was “A Vision for Life.” And it was, yes, a vision for how to live a human life and how to live a Christian life, how to live as a missionary disciple, how to evangelize. And so that requires extra attention on formation. You know, when people have asked, Dr. Sri, you’ve written a lot of books. You’ve been a part of a lot of video programs. What’s it like, you know, with your work at FOCUS? And I say, it’s easy to write a book, you know? I mean, you’re just typing, the words go right there, right? But raising kids, you can’t write kids.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:13:27] You know what I mean? As a dad, you know, like I press the key. Oh, wait, they don’t want to do, you know? And there’s free will and there’s drama, there’s relational issues. There’s how you look at the world. And that comes into play not just in fatherhood, in the home, but in what we’re doing with bringing young people into a vision for life, a way of a missionary disciple. There’s a lot of attention, extra attention we have to give for formation. So it’s a lot more work, but I think you have to be very intentional about it. So I think that’s always been there. But as we’ve been growing, I think Curtis wisely saw that we really need to plant deep roots on the formative side of things so that if we continue to grow in scale, you know, we’ve got the right foundations. And so there’s been a little extra push on these fronts the last six years or so.

Dr. Peter: [00:14:14] Yeah. Beautiful. So tell me, FOCUS missionaries, typically 22 years old to 25, they start out usually? Or is it older than that?

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:14:23] I mean, we have people that go into their even young 30s, you know, and now we have them, because of the work we’re doing in parishes, many of them are like, they said, we just want to do this the rest of our lives, you know? So we have some in their 40s that are working in parishes as missionaries. And so yeah.

Dr. Peter: [00:14:36] So let’s talk about human formation. Pope John Paul II said that’s the basis of all formation. This was in Pastores Dabo Vobis. And you were telling me about this idea of a pyramid that’s coming to FOCUS that I’m really interested in. So lay that out for us. Help us understand.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:14:55] One of the men I get to work with and he’s just great. His name is Brian McAdam. He’s actually the vice president of formation for FOCUS. And he’s just great. And he saw early on, because he wanted to model our training based off of what we saw from JPII’s document there and other ecclesial documents on formation. But he saw the danger of, these could easily be seen as isolated things.

Dr. Peter: [00:15:17] The four silos of formation.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:15:18] Exactly. Yeah. Hey, okay, so go on your retreat. That’s your spiritual formation now. Now, go take this class on Aquinas and Augustine. That’s your intellectual formation, you know, and then we’re going to do practical training on how to evangelize. And it’s all separated. And he was very cognizant of, well, you know, you have to give special attention to these moments, right, but you don’t want them to be silos. That would be really dangerous, actually, fragmented. So he came up with this vision of a pyramid. And they communicate this at our new staff trainings. Whenever we bring in new missionaries, we think of like the first two years, you’re a new missionary. It’s like a novice, you know. So you go through, like this intensive formation in those first two years. And that’s where they all come together, we go to different locations and we’re all together for five weeks or four weeks in the summer for this. But this pyramid he came up with is the idea of just simply saying, well, you know, as you expressed, JPII describes the human formation as the foundation. So that’s the base of the pyramid. And then you’ve got the spiritual foundation. So you can think of the, you know, the grace building on the nature.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:16:18] And then you’ve got the intellectual formation. And then the tip of the spear at the top is the pastoral. And so FOCUS very much, you know, we’re an organization about evangelization, but we know we can’t do evangelization well unless we do the basic parts well. Another thing that we talk about a lot in FOCUS is, it’s interesting. We did, I think it was maybe 2014 or so, FOCUS hired an external organization to do a study on like where we were seeing the most effectiveness, like with students that were leading Bible studies, they maybe join missionary life. Like what was going on in their experience? And we found that there were like three key factors that seemed to really stand out. And two of them, I think, really directly relate to this. Well, all of them relate to the pyramid. The first one is what FOCUS has since then called divine intimacy. You know the famous book, but the idea is that, like the student grew in their own interior life, they grew in the habit of daily prayer, consistent prayer, not just saying devotions and rosaries, but that quiet time and the missionary was fully committed to it.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:17:24] And we’re talking about this was like crucial, like in the sacramental life, adoration, things like that. But then the second one, and I think this one relates more to human formation, although the name, FOCUS calls it authentic friendship. And the idea was that the students experienced that their missionary there wasn’t just a Bible study leader. We meet for Wednesdays. They experienced them as a friend. That they were doing true accompaniment, that they were involved in their life. They didn’t just teach, you know, but they hung out with me. They came to my games, they invested in my life, and they were there when I needed help. And so we always highlight this, like how important it is for evangelization. Even when we were just with our pastors earlier this week — it’s not just you preaching, it’s do you take on the smell of the sheep? You know, but I think part of that, we can come back to this is, I think, do you have the capacity in your own human formation to really be able to lean in and support someone in being with them in the midst of whatever they may be.

Dr. Peter: [00:18:21] It sounds like, in a word, you’re trying to foster an authentic love between the missionary and the one that the missionary accompanies. And that’s a loaded word, obviously, in the culture today. But it’s like, how can I bring the fullness of my being into loving the other?

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:18:41] Yes. And that requires a lot of human formation, virtue, healing of your own wounds and things like that, right, so that you could be there for the other one. And then the third piece was, is the missionary convicted and really prioritizing the idea of, I’m not just here to serve this person, but we’re trying to also, as this person grows as a disciple and grows in following Jesus, we’re equipping them to go out and reach others. Sometimes you get a missionary go, oh, I just love this one-on-one time I get with the student. And you get a sense it’s maybe more about what I get out of it, right? No, no, no, no. The full, as you know, from the church teaching. Like when you are truly transformed by Christ, you can’t help but want to go out and share Him with others. And we want to help lead people and FOCUS calls that spiritual multiplication. You know where multiple people are going out now. So I train you and then you’re training a set of people, and those people are training others. And we’re seeing parishes and campuses, seeing this kind of multiplication happening.

Dr. Peter: [00:19:34] Wow. All right. So let’s bring this in to the integration aspect. You said something earlier that really stayed with me, and that is that it’s actually dangerous to have these four dimensions siloed, right, independent from each other. So tell me a little bit about, and Pope John Paul II emphasizes this in paragraph 71 of Pastores Dabo Vobis, that these have to be integrated. So how do you foster or how do you help those four dimensions be integrated in a FOCUS missionary through the way that you work and mentor those missionaries?

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:20:04] Well, I’ll say, first of all, we’re still learning. 

Dr. Peter: [00:20:06] And well, 1992 is like yesterday in church time, right? So we’re just starting to figure these things out, right?

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:20:12] Yeah. But really, we partner with a lot of great people. I mean, I know we’ve had you come out and give presentations, but we’ve met with many rectors of seminaries because it’s the same generation and it’s a very similar kind of formation issues that we’re going after. So we seek a lot of counsel on this and still need to. But that being said, I think some things I’m really excited about, what we’ve done is, you know, we do give in our training that we do in the summer. We do have like a certain week where we’re saying, okay, hey, this week is going to be, you know, more focused on human formation. Doesn’t mean we’re not doing intellectual formation, we’re not looking toward evangelization or your prayer life. It’s just a little more attention here. And we’re constantly putting that diagram before them. So they see, this is your life. You want to be growing in all these things — we’re trying to overcommunicate that. And then we have the next week, you know, maybe as a spiritual formation, they get some classes on, you know, many of them have had a prayer life but haven’t been as deeply introduced to the spiritual traditions.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:21:02] We bring that in and then they have a retreat. So there are these emphases, but we’re constantly going back to that. I can say, like when I teach, I may have an emphasis in one area, but I kind of think whenever I’m teaching, all four are coming out in some way. But that idea of the human formation being the foundation, I think is a great insight from JPII, of course, and it’s just a tradition, but really crucial for our time because, as you know, I mean, we see this all the time with the young people coming in. And in fact, Curtis and I talked about with some of our more senior staff, we’ve all noticed a significant difference from early on, the early days of FOCUS. And I don’t want to idealize those days. There was messiness and addiction and lack of virtue, you know, in all of our lives, you know, in the 90s.

Dr. Peter: [00:21:45] This is a generation ago already, right? You know.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:21:49] But there were problems back then, right? But they are much more heightened, much more acute today. I mean, the kinds of things that we were facing. When you see the more widespread breakdown of family life, we have a lot of people coming in, you know, deeply wounded. You know, so a lot of our missionaries have gone on that retreat that, you know, my wife, Beth, is helping lead for adults who come from homes of divorce. 

Dr. Peter: [00:22:12] Yeah, Life-Giving Wounds?

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:22:12] Life-Giving Wounds. Yeah. So a lot of our FOCUS missionaries have gone on the online retreats or the personal retreats, because this is an issue as they’re entering their adult life now, they never had a chance to grieve and process and realize all of how that affected me. And that’s just one example, right? And then let’s say a family may have stayed intact, but there is a lot of dysfunction and manipulation and guilt. And a lot of them are coming with these heavy burdens. And so that’s just the family life being broken down. Then you add on this thing called the iPhone. And you know all the studies, right? Like once the iPhone like becomes critical mass at that point, you’re seeing the amount of people using iPhones, and then immediately at that point on college campuses, you know, dramatic drop in just psychological health. You know, the anxiety, the depression, the loneliness, all those things. That’s definitely, that’s not just correlated. There’s a lot of causation going on there. In fact, in FOCUS, some of the fun training, I don’t know if we’ve had a chance to talk about this before, but we did a lot the last couple of years on the impact of our devices and social media. And we’ve always had something there, but we did a deep dive. We were reading things from brain science, how it really, literally changes your brain to the sociological effects. We put it in dialogue with Aristotle and Aquinas on virtue. We brought in dialogue with John of the cross. You know, what our deep desires are and what happens when we are just going click, click, click. Even though he didn’t have click, click, click, he had other things in 16th century. So we really did a deep dive into that with our more senior leaders.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:23:40] And we started an invitation to a fast from social media from 8 p.m. at night to 8 a.m. every morning. So everyone who’s at least a team director and up, they’re required to do the 8 to 8 fast. And then we invite all the new missionaries as they’re coming on board. And so we’re not saying social media is bad. We’re not saying don’t have an iPhone. I have an iPhone. But we are also saying be careful, because especially at night and early in the morning is when people are spending a lot of time there. But that’s really, that’s really important stuff. Then you add on the addictions that are there, whether it’s, certainly pornography is the one everyone talks about, but we’re seeing even on college campuses today, with all the gambling.

Dr. Peter: [00:24:19] Sports betting, yeah.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:24:20] The sports betting, and then the depression and suicidal thoughts afterwards. I mean, it is really bad. So we’re just living in a culture that is decimating the human person, and we need to give extra attention now on that human formation side.

Dr. Peter: [00:24:34] So one of the things I’m really liking about what I’m hearing here is how much FOCUS is networking with other organizations. You know, I think that’s really critical. I worry when ministries or outreaches get insular and they say, we’re going to take care of everything in-house, right? Because you can’t be an expert in everything. So that was one of the things that impressed me when I came out last, was just how much you guys are accessing and how open you are to being able to benefit from what other folks are doing, you know?

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:25:02] Oh, yeah, we are so grateful. I mean, again, so many people that we know, I can just pick up the phone personally, me, and call. But not just me, but the organization just tends to think this way of, okay, we got this stuff. A lot of stuff with SSA, you know, how do we address that? Well, we’re not experts in that area, you know? But these are our people and this is where they’re at. And we want to provide whatever we can for them.

Dr. Peter: [00:25:25] Well, I saw that last night with the FOCUS, just the gathering you had, and like there’s, I don’t know, 80 people or 70 people that came to that. I can’t remember exactly how many, but it was a lot.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:25:35] Yeah. From all different kinds of apostolates.

Dr. Peter: [00:25:36] Yeah, all different kinds of apostolates. It was just fascinating to be able to connect and then to talk. So I always like to get to, when a FOCUS missionary is in trouble. When something is, and I’m not talking so much about like some tragedy, some external thing that happened, you know, but when some kind of formational deficit is being revealed and it’s significant and it’s impacting not only the missionary but the work. How does FOCUS handle that? Like, what’s sort of the procedures for that or what’s available to FOCUS missionaries who sense that they’re struggling?

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:26:11] Yeah, I mean, multiple things. So I’ll say one thing, maybe 2018 or so. I remember, I mean, it was there, but we started actually bringing it out more to the open. I remember doing it in one of the classes I was teaching. So you get these brand-new missionaries that are coming in. They love the Lord. They’ve had some kind of initial conversion in their life, maybe pretty dramatic in their life, you know, in their college days. And they want to be a missionary now for two years. They come on board and they’ve prayed before, but now they’re going to do a holy hour every day. So that’s one of the things FOCUS does. They do a holy hour every day. They’re doing daily Mass. They’re doing, you know, a rosary, you know, so they’ve got these, you know, great devotional life growing. And they’re living in kind of an intense community like they’ve never lived before. They’re living with other missionaries. And I always say that, you know, being a missionary on a team with others and you’re living with them day to day is one of the best marriage preps. You know, because, you know, why is that person not taking care of the dishes? Or why is that person always on me about the dishes?

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:27:06] Yeah. You know, and you just have to learn. And they didn’t choose, you know, these weren’t preferential friendships. They were thrown together as a team by FOCUS. And you have to choose to love these people that you may not gravitate to. And, you know, and you just put that environment together. Just that alone is going to bring stuff up, right? Then imagine, then you’re sitting for an hour in silence every day. I remember we started just really highlighting for the missionaries, saying, you know, stuff is going to come up, and that’s normal. And it’s because God loves you. It’s God coming closer and closer to you because He has things in your soul that He wants to shed his light on, He wants to touch and heal. So I’m not saying everyone’s going to have like, you know, this in the first month, but most of you, probably sometime in this first year or two, something’s going to happen. You’re going to notice I’m not capable of running at this pace that I’ve been running at. There’s something going on on the inside, or I’m feeling a certain anxiety, or I’m feeling a certain sorrow, or I can’t function as well. And when that happens, and it’s going to happen in different ways to different degrees, but when it happens, know that that’s normal and you want to bring that to the people you can bring it to attention to. And we give different options, right. So we have, whether it’s the chaplain on campus, maybe you talk to. We have our own national chaplains that serve the different areas and they serve as like spiritual directors. You can bring it there. But if you’re in a good relationship with your team director, you can share it with them. And of course, but we also have a whole series of counselors that we recommend, and you can find your own. But there’s no shame in needing to go to counseling.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:28:41] In fact, my wife always says only the courageous really go to counseling because it’s hard to do that kind of work. But yet it will be very good for the missionary. So we wanted to like, destigmatize that space. Another one of the guys we work with named Josh Santo, he’s been really advocating for this kind of approach as well. He’s worked with and built up something we call the Bosco House at Saint John Bosco Project. I don’t know if you’ve heard about this one. You’re gonna love this, actually. And again, we’ve partnered with a number of seminaries to get their input and actually partnering even more directly in some places. But it started in Denver just a couple years ago. We opened our second house in Lincoln. This is for men who, you know, they’ve had some kind of conversion in their college years. They love the Lord. They love the church. They want to be a missionary. They come to interview and we see a lot of goodwill there. But maybe they’re just not ready on the human formation. You know, maybe there’s just like, because their conversion is fresh, there’s some character issues they still need to work with, you know, and it could be everything from their temper, it could be just how they manage their time, or it could be more serious things like addictions and pornography and things like that. And so what we used to, you know, we didn’t really have a mechanism for them. We would just say, you know, we think you’re a really great candidate, you know, but maybe not right now.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:29:58] Your conversion is fresh. You know, maybe take a year and come back. Well, that’s kind of dejecting for the young man. And they often don’t go do something and go find a program to help them and then come back the next year. And so this missionary Josh just had a great vision, he’s been with us for a long time, of, what if we put a house together for these men to live together? They live in intentional community. They’re getting ongoing formation, they’re in spiritual direction, and they do light apostolate. Like they work at maybe a local commuter school. They’re not full-time missionaries, but they’re doing some events and maybe leading some Bible studies and all. That’s been phenomenal. You know, we’re in our third year of doing this now, but we have seen men who came in with addictions have, you know, completed a year of sobriety and continue. The vast majority of them come out of this like, so much better and then ready to go serve on campus. Some of them have gone on and said, you know, thank you so much for this, FOCUS, but I actually feel called to the priesthood. And the seminaries are thanking us because they’re saying, you know, this is a great guy. We couldn’t have taken him where he was, but now where he is. So those are some of the things, again, we’re trying. You know, and we’ll see how that program continues to grow. But the human formation is so foundational today

Dr. Peter: [00:31:13] We’re going to have to land this really soon. But to find out more about FOCUS, where do people go?

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:31:18] Oh, just focus.org. Yeah, they can come check out our SEEK conference. We’re going to be in Salt Lake this upcoming January. It’s a great event to be with 20, 25 thousand young people. But there’s a lot of adults that come to this event as well. We have track for them. So they can check that out as well.

Dr. Peter: [00:31:35] And one parting thought in a line or two, something that you’d like to leave with our audience, that you just really want to emphasize, that should stay with them?

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:31:43] Oh, I don’t know. I mean, I just think all of these areas of formation are so great. We didn’t get to talk about how important is the interior life or the spiritual life. Intellectual formation sometimes gets a bad reputation. It’s seen as just like, oh, it’s just heady. Whereas I actually would argue that, well, human is the foundation, so the most critical. But the reasons we have a lot of these challenges is the ideologies of the modern age behind this. And we need to be able to be formed in a Catholic mind, and Catholics need to be really good at accompaniment and evangelization. So the pastoral, all of these, we need the foundations at the foundation.

Dr. Peter: [00:32:17] We need them all. We need them all. It’s been such a blessing to be with you, Dr. Sri. I really enjoy our time together, and it’s just been great to be able to spend this time and to be able to share with you what’s going on in FOCUS. I just really encourage people to check it out. So we consider you fellow workers in the vineyard. We know that you focus in on all four of these dimensions, right? Especially with the culmination in the pastoral, but definitely really appreciate the work you’re doing in this little corner of the vineyard that does include the human formation. So thank you so much.

Dr. Edward Sri: [00:32:48] Yeah, thanks for all you’re doing, Pete.

Dr. Peter: [00:32:50] And again, I just want to thank you, Dr. Sri, for such a great discussion. And I invite you to get in on the conversation. Feel free to leave a question or a comment in YouTube and I will get around to responding to it. Sometimes it takes me a little bit of time, but I’m still able to respond to all the comments that come up in YouTube. And please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Interior Integration for Catholics. Go ahead and like us. Also check us out on Apple Podcasts. Leave us a review. It helps us really to get the word out. And check out all the episodes in this series on the integration of personal formation, human, spiritual, intellectual and pastoral, starting with episode 133. You can find us wherever you listen to podcasts or again on YouTube.

Dr. Peter: [00:33:38] Join me over the next few weeks in writing your vision statement, your mission statement, and your values statement, these three personal statements. In my semi-monthly reflection from July 22nd, 2024, I describe these three statements and how they can help you focus your life, really get you dialed in on what you need to be doing, and to also hold you accountable to yourself. In the reflection released last week on August 12th, 2024, I went over how to write a personal vision statement with examples from the saints, and also an experiential exercise, it was 16 minutes long, to help you write yours.

Dr. Peter: [00:34:17] Check all that out at soulsandhearts.com/blog. You can also get on our mailing list. You can do that on our home page at soulsandhearts.com. Click the blue button. Also, I want to let you know that Dr. Gerry Crete, co-founder of Souls and Hearts, has started a new series called Parting Thoughts, in which he reviews movies, old ones, new ones, including the new Inside Out 2, and he looks at them from a parts and systems perspective. Check that out at soulsandhearts.com/parting-thoughts/. Or you can just go up to our header and find it there. If you are subscribed to us, you will get those automatically in your inbox on the first Monday of every month. If you are a Catholic who recognizes the need for structure in your human formation, if you are a Catholic who recognizes the need for structure in your life, and you want a structured program in a community of like-minded Catholics in relationship with other Catholics in small groups, all journeying together toward loving God wholeheartedly and our neighbors as ourselves, and if parts and systems thinking appeals to you — well, check out the Resilient Catholics Community. You can do an internet search, or you can go to our landing page at soulsandhearts.com/rcc.

Dr. Peter: [00:35:33] And we are up to now nearly 400 members. We’re onboarding our largest cohort ever. Get on the interest list for the next cohort at soulsandhearts.com/rcc. We will start accepting applications again on October 1st. And I’m just going to invite you to find out more, including all about the PartsFinder Pro, which helps you identify the roles that your parts have. All right, now just a little bit of Latin. Nemo dat quod non habet. What does that mean? It means you can’t give what you don’t have. And the truth of this old maxim rings loud and clear in the realm of personal formation. All right, now, let’s get serious. Let’s get real. Catholic formators. Catholic formators. Yes, I’m talking to you. That means you Catholic therapists, you Catholic spiritual directors, Catholic coaches, you seminarian formators, any other faithful Catholic who accompanies others professionally on an individual basis, on a one-on-one basis. I’m asking you, I’m begging you really, to consider how you are working on your own human formation. Human formation is the basis of all formation. It’s the foundation of all formation, according to Saint John Paul II in Pastores Dabo Vobis. And you need to get that right in your life, or there’s going to be bad consequences, both for yourself and for those you accompany, for those that you work with, for those that you form. I see it all the time.

Dr. Peter: [00:37:06] And so in response to this need in our church, I’ve created the Formation for Formators Community in Souls and Hearts, and it opens up right now. It’s open right now, in August of 2024. We are starting the process of setting up our fall Foundations Experiential Groups, or FEGs, which will begin in September. This is an excellent opportunity to engage in your own human formation. So critical that formators get their own human formation informed by internal family systems, by parts and systems thinking, all grounded in a Catholic anthropology, all grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person. And why? Why? Because we, as formators, need to remove the beams from our own eyes before we examine the specks in the eyes of those we accompany. To learn more about the FFF community and the FEGs, check out our landing page. That’s at members.soulsandhearts.com/fff. This is an opportunity to bring parts, work and systems thinking into your own human formation and personal development. Again, time slots are filling up. Check it out. members.soulsandhearts.com/fff. And with that we will invoke our patroness and our patrons. Our Lady, our Mother, Untier of Knots, pray for us. Saint Joseph, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Special thanks to the Human Formation Coalition, who provided the support to make this transcript available.