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Ordinary Mysticism with Fr. Robert Williams | The Catholic Man Show
Lady Pamela's text was short: the pigs are out. Dave was somewhere on the road to Clear Creek Abbey, so Adam took the call, with Dave's son Davey riding along under orders to stay quiet while Adam phoned Brandon Sheard of Farmstead Meatsmith for coaching. Don't chase them, Brandon said. Shake the feed bucket and let them follow you. It worked right up to the gate, where Adam's borrowed boot sank eight inches into the mud and a 300-pound hog, still chasing the bucket, ran straight through him. He'd braced like it was the Oklahoma drill. He lost. The pigs are back in, Dave is grateful, and the bill is coming. Sponsors: OréMoose Leather goods made by real craftsmen, built to be handed down to your kids and grandkids instead of tossed in a drawer. Code TCMS takes 30% off everything at oremoose.com. Made in America for the glory of God. Alto by Ascension If the Liturgy of the Hours has ever felt intimidating, Alto is the easy way in. Morning and Night Prayer, the daily Mass readings and short reflections come in one printed book every month, so you can keep it on your desk and just open it. Code TCMS10 gets you 10% off. Select International Tours When Adam and Dave planned their first pilgrimage, Select was the name everyone gave them, and having traveled with them, they'd say the same. Leading a group or joining one, start at selectinternationaltours.com. Dave got to Clear Creek on foot. He and this week's guest walked the Three Hearts Pilgrimage, about 35 miles from Tahlequah to the abbey in two days, with something like 2,500 other pilgrims. Dave's three oldest girls walked every step, minus a ten-yard carry when Bernadette got rocks in her shoe. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone offered the Traditional Latin Mass outdoors at the finish. Adam plans to walk it next year. The guest is Fr. Robert Williams, last on the show as a seminarian and now the associate pastor at St. Benedict in Broken Arrow, which puts him around Adam and Dave every week. He figures that was the Lord's fastest route to his holiness. Adam poured Blue Note's new Small Batch Wheated Bourbon, 101 proof and unfiltered, and Dave, who grows an heirloom wheat called Purple Straw, enjoyed seeing two of his hobbies meet. Jim gave it a 4.98. Asked what's been hardest since ordination, Father said it's saying no, and protecting his prayer when the to-do list insists the parish will collapse without him. It won't. Ordinary mysticism sounds like a contradiction. Adam opened with the Catechism, which teaches that God calls all of us to mystical union with Him, even if the extraordinary signs go only to some (CCC 2014). Fr. Williams, who borrowed the phrase from John Eldredge, laid out the map. The ascetical life is our work: rooting out sin and making space for prayer. The mystical life is God's work, giving Himself to us through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And because God made everything, He can meet you anywhere, including the checkout line at Reasor's if you leave the phone in your pocket. That union doesn't stay private. Grow like the God who is love and you start loving like Him, whether you're feeding pigs or disciplining a kid. Levitation and the stigmata are given for other people's sake, so wanting the sign more than God is like parking at the road sign that says Tulsa, this way. As for the young man praying for the heaviest cross he can find, Father's answer is that a mature man asks for the right one and lets Christ help him carry it. Life isn't about avoiding suffering, he said. It's about finding a love worth suffering for. The podcast extra gets practical, starting with the 15 and 5 rule: fifteen minutes of silent prayer a day, plus five moments of telling the Lord this is for You. Read the day's Gospel twice and sit there. Bring Him whatever has moved your heart lately. And if something has you stuck, drag it into the light with your brothers, because good things don't grow in the dark. Local? St. Benedict is building up its Adoration schedule. Sign up for an hour at saintben.com. Raise your glass. TOPICS COVEREDThe Three Hearts Pilgrimage: about 35 miles from Tahlequah to Clear Creek Abbey in two daysHow a few dads and sons offering something hard for the restoration of the family grew into a pilgrimage of thousandsWalking it with kids, and why you can't stop to fix a shoeEscaped pigs, quick mud, and Brandon Sheard's advice on getting hogs back in the penBlue Note Small Batch Wheated Bourbon and the soft winter wheat behind itPurple Straw, the heirloom Southern wheat brought back from near extinctionTulsa tied for the most fruitful diocese in AmericaThe hardest part of being a new priest: discerning when a request is really his to doWhy "not yet" is underrated (in a parish, if not in a marriage)Guarding daily prayer when the enemy says everything will fall apart without youHow a priest prepares a homily, and why people only remember one imageEvery Mass as a wedding feast between the soul and GodWhy a great line in a homily belongs to the Holy SpiritCCC 2014 and the call of every Christian to mystical union with GodThe ascetical and mystical stages of the spiritual lifeVatican II and the universal call to holinessMeeting God in the checkout line instead of on your phoneHow mystical union overflows into charity toward your neighborWhy extraordinary graces like levitation and the stigmata are given for the sake of othersA love you can't put in a formula, for God or for your wifeThe fear that if you say yes to God, He'll leave you miserableSaying yes to a game of catch when you're worn outHow the mystical life differs from the contemplative vocationWhy a mystic father can reach people a priest never willWhether it's disordered to want mystical experiencesPraying for a heavy cross, pride, and real magnanimitySimon of Cyrene and refusing to carry your cross aloneThe 15 and 5 rule for building a prayer lifeSilence as a Marian disposition of open hands and a fiatWhy devotions should feed the relationship, not replace itEncountering the Lord in silence for the first time during Exodus 90Less ESPN and doom-scrolling, more of what's true, good and beautifulAccountability with your brothers: good things don't grow in the darkFeasting on heaven now, so we get what we already have an appetite for REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODEGuest: Fr. Robert Williams, parochial vicar at the Church of St. Benedict, Broken Arrow (Diocese of Tulsa) Church teaching: Catechism of the Catholic Church 2014: "God calls us all to this intimate union with him, even if the special graces or extraordinary signs of this mystical life are granted only to some for the sake of manifesting the gratuitous gift given to all"The Catechism's section on prayer (Part Four)Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, ch. 5, on the universal call to holinessThe Baltimore Catechism's answer on why God made us: to know, love and serve Him in this life and be happy with Him forever in the next (paraphrased on air) Saints and spiritual writers: Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP ("the caribou"), on the stages of the spiritual life; The Three Ages of the Interior Life is his standard work on itFr. Thomas Dubay, SM, Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel on Prayer (Ignatius Press), recommended as the more approachable starting pointSt. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life (Dave's current reading)St. Teresa of AvilaSt. Padre PioJohn Eldredge, the Christian writer Fr. Williams credits with the phrase "ordinary mystic" (see his Experience Jesus. Really.) Scripture: The parable of the wedding feast, Matthew 22:1-14 (Father's homily on the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time)Simon of Cyrene, Mark 15:21The fruits of the Holy Spirit, Galatians 5:22-23 Programs and places: The Three Hearts Pilgrimage, Tahlequah to Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey, October 15-17, 2026Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, celebrant of the closing MassExodus 90Adoration sign-ups at St. Benedict: saintben.comCatholic World Report's "America's most fruitful dioceses" (Nov. 2025), which tied Tulsa and Nashville for first Farm and friends: Brandon Sheard of...
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