Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
Saint Catherine of Siena said "Become who you are and you would set the world on fire".
Become Who You Are
# 565 Getting Real With Kevin Wells; "The Hermit" A Powerful True Story
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Kevin Wells opens up about his wife Krista's battle with alcoholism and the miraculous events following his own brain surgery that put him on a profound spiritual journey...then when all seems lost, "The Hermit" is sent into their lives.
The Hermit is a book that should go into the Christmas Stockings of your loved ones! It will change lives.
Bishop Strickland Wrote, The Hermit is "A Modern tale of pain, redemption, and gospel yeast, set in the devastation that COVID wrought. It illustrates the tremendous power that a little leaven of faith yields when a priest of Jesus Christ mixes it in."
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I'm excited and grateful to be with a somebody that's become a good friend of mine, kevin wells. Kevin, how are you, brother? Hey, jack doing great. So kevin's a former sports writer. He was in his family's mason business construction business for a long time, but he turns out to be an incredible writer.
Speaker 1:And you were writing early, kevin. I know that already and I could tell from the way that your prose is that you have a wonderful way to put books together, but you get into some meaty subjects. One of my favorites, the Priest and Beggar, about Venerable Aloysius Schwartz. If you haven't got that book, everybody should be reading that one. The Priests we Need to Save the Church another incredible book. But if people haven't read anything yet Priest and Beggar, but this last one, this one is powerful, kevin.
Speaker 1:I was going to read for an hour or so today, hadn't finished it yet and really started to plow through it, and I just stopped a couple of times just to meditate on the power of that. I had some similar experiences in different ways than you. So here's a couple of things, kevin, before I bring you on that struck me. This is a spiritual journey which I think people were going to read about that and see for themselves, like the spiritual journey that we're all on to a certain degree, right, and what prompts someone to go deep. This is obviously a marital journey, right? This vocation to marriage, what that looks like, and you know it's going to be different for different people, but, man, we're still on that same journey of the sacrificial love. And then it becomes a God story, and it was always supposed to be like that. I'm a theology, the body guy, right. So in the beginning, right, we've got Adam in a solitude, getting to know God this part of this book. Then he's called into a relationship, right, a marriage, to express this beauty of God's love. But we know we're fallen, aren't we? And so we need that tie-in, coming back into this relationship with God.
Speaker 1:So you've got all these pieces in there, kevin. You've got these incredible priests that walk into your life and you also, by contrast, can show what happens to a church when we have weak priests. And that's the last thing I'll say. I promise, kevin, and I'm going to open it up to you, but I had Father Gannon on earlier, who is the executive director for Courage, you know, and we were talking about the priests we need. Again, you know, when you're into all these sexual problems and stuff. You know, with young people and with us, with marriages and stuff, we need fathers to take the place of our fathers, who are sometimes absent, and whatever, and we don't always have them. So you've got all these elements tied in, kevin, so I'm going to throw it in your thing. Thank you for writing this book. Again, you know somebody needs this for a Christmas present. It's a wonderful read regardless. And so, kevin, where do we start? I mean, you've got so much beauty in this book.
Speaker 2:Well, let's start. Jack, thank you for the warm intro. Let's start with the ugly part and what you spoke about last. It goes unspoken and it really shouldn't. So, jack, you know me well enough We've hung out together enough where I don't judge anyone. If I judge anyone, I you know I go to hell, I imperil my soul.
Speaker 2:So, but I do believe strongly, and I've believed for many, many, many years, that we have a massive identity crisis in the ministerial priesthood crisis. In the ministerial priesthood, the centerpiece, I imagine, of a Catholic priest identity would be the crucified Christ spread out on a cross. That's the love story. I pour out all of me to help save your soul.
Speaker 2:In a million different ways and in my travels, Jack, as an old journalist you mentioned I was a baseball writer or a sports writer I've interviewed hundreds of lay members, bishops, priests, exorcists, rectors, and I've come to believe that one of the reasons that a massive amount, tens of millions of Catholics are pouring out of the church is because the ministerial priesthood has re-engineered itself to be too comfortable.
Speaker 2:We're just like for me as a father and a husband if I'm too comfortable, my wife shouldn't respect me, my kids shouldn't respect me. There's a certain authority there as the father, as the husband, where they're depending on me to shepherd them, to lead them, to give them a sense of peace that I'm going to take care of them, to do whatever I can really to take a bullet for them. And I do think that the reason so many of the Catholic youth are pouring out of the church like the Israelites from Pharaoh is because they don't see the muscular, self-emptying priest and I only bring it up because of the book that I've written, called the Hermit, that we'll speak about today where this priest and Father Martin Flume, who is now a consecrated hermit this is the father in spades. This is the father that will take spiral staircases into souls to try and get out the wounds and the shame and the diseases and all the little lions and wolves and demons, pluck them all out to bring that person to heaven. And that's what the book really gets into.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and man, do we need that? You know you. You know part of this, of course, is is your journey with your wife and man. Do we need that? You know, part of this, of course, is your journey with your wife, krista, who ends up with a drinking problem. Of course and I've gone through that with a number of people that's a brutal battle that we get into and we need both.
Speaker 1:You know you need good people around you, but you need the sacraments and you've got to bring those together, kevin. But you need the sacraments and you got to bring those, those together, kevin. And you're exactly right, you know. Uh, talk a little bit about, tell the audience a little bit about Krista, and then I'd like to back up and and you know, sometimes people are looking at that person, that's, you know that's that needs help and don't realize, especially in a marriage, that this is going to be a spiritual journey for both of us and also a spiritual journey for both individually. Huh, we all have to go on our spiritual journey and then bring this together. So talk a little bit about that, will you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Jack, I'll try and capsize it here. So in 2000, about 10 or 11 years ago, I had capsize it here. So in 2000, about 10 or 11 years ago, I had failed invasive brain surgery. I had a brain aneurysm and by the grace of God I shouldn't have lived. The surgery failed. It was a good day for Kevin to die, and then a priest and his assistant came into my neuro ICU room and something supernatural took place. If the priest and his assistant were on this podcast, Jack, right now, they would tell you what they experienced, and it was not of this world.
Speaker 1:Well, let's talk a little bit about that because this is coming from your uncle, monsignor Thomas Wells, and he was a well-known priest in the Washington DC area. He had passed, he had been murdered. Actually, now this is a friend of his that comes into the room, so tell us, look, without you know, I want to get to the hermit, of course, but this is all part of it, isn't it? This is all in your story, this is all in the book and it's important, I think, to tell.
Speaker 2:Thanks, jack. Yeah, well, it's a big part of it. So it wasn't a friend, it was his best friend. So after my invasive brain surgery they couldn't get to the malformation. It's called an arterio venous malformation, you know, it's basically it's tangled blood vessels that are releasing blood into your brain and they can't stop it and they couldn't get to it.
Speaker 1:The surgeons couldn't, so you know they actually went in right. It was an invasive surgery and still couldn't stop it and they couldn't get to it. The surgeons couldn't. They actually went in right, it was invasive surgery and still couldn't get it to stop.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I got a big old, huge scar on the back of my head. Hair is covered up, thank goodness. But yeah, they couldn't get in. They were in there for seven or eight hours. And so, krista, my wife, called up Father Jim Stack, who had just started healing ministry, and that's a story in itself. But she said, hey, can you come to Baltimore? Kevin's dying. What? Yeah, come to Baltimore. And he said I'll be there in an hour. So he drove up and I was incapacitated because I just had the surgery. And if he was looking at the camera now, what he would say is he came into my neuro ICU room.
Speaker 2:The seventh floor of the University of Maryland Medical Center is not where you want to be. That's where people go to die. My wife just continually watched people carted out with sheets over them it's not a good place to be and came in, knelt down on my bedside and said hey, kevin, we've been calling on the saints, and on the way up we prayed the divine chaplet and we know that saints intercede now, and is there a saint that we can call on for you? And he said, somehow, in my incapacitated state, I said, yeah, I need Tommy now.
Speaker 2:So it's my uncle, monsignor Thomas Wells, his best friend. I need Tommy now. Call Tommy down. And he stands up like a V8 moment and goes to the top of my bed and began to call on his best friend and said hey, tom bud, your nephew Kevin, he just asked you to save his life. You got to get to work, if you don't, he's dead. So thereafter he and his assistant said that lights began to pop in the room and the entire temperature of the room changed dramatically and they knew they were standing in front of something, in the midst of something supernatural. And father stack has told me this many times in the aftermath, like over the years, when you know he's a friend. He saved my life, he should be a friend, right jack.
Speaker 2:So yeah, he should be so, uh, he said, yeah, yeah, I knew it was a miracle when, when I was praying, in and around your bed, it was sort of a horseshoe of the heavenly court and and I sensed your uncle standing next to me smiling, and that's when I knew it was all gone. And and it was. You know, the next day they put me in one of those tubes and the blood and the fluids and the malformation, the AVM, it was all gone. They're like go home, you're good. We're like what? Yeah, you're good, it's all gone. So it's great, right, and Kevin's alive.
Speaker 2:But no story doesn't end there. So as I moved home, you know, three weeks later you know, brain surgery is a mess I had to relearn how to walk and talk and all that stuff and I began to really want to draw closer to God and do His will, because I was pretty close to death and I didn't really like where I stood. I mean, you know I wasn't bad, but I just knew there was more in my tank and I began to go to more weekday masses, adoration, prison ministries, all the things a guy would do and really to love more kids my wife just trying to follow God's will from sunup to sundown and it scared Krista and it opened up what she would tell you all these years later a mother wound of shame and rather than trying to say, hey, I want to try and walk with Kevin on this path, she filled her shame with red wine and she began to secretly bitch drink, and that led to a long, dark night of marriage.
Speaker 1:How long did that go on, Kevin?
Speaker 2:Eight years.
Speaker 1:Eight years, wow, wow. And so this is a journey that you're taking with Krista and in the midst of that journey, she rejects you because you're bringing up some wounds. But I know that I went through this and we go through this, and, as men, there's going to be men listening to this, that it may not be a drinking thing with their wife, it could be all kinds of different things, but at the end of the day, there's going to be a journey, just like there is in our individual life where we have that dark night. There's going to be a journey, just like there is in our individual life where we have that dark night. There's going to be a journey. There's going to be a part of that in marriages, too. How you came through that, kevin, is really something. Some of the things that you did, you decided not only to help Krista, but you decided to do it in a different way, kevin, with the self-sacrificial love and really digging into it. This is really a spiritual journey, wasn't it for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, jack, it was lonelier than hell. But when I figured out that—so I believe that Satan is directly involved with alcoholism, I'm not sure about pornography and drugs and all the rest, but that soul.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he is. I mean, I speak to priests like you do, and some of them are exorcists. And yeah, pornography too, just because there's a lot of people in pornography. An exorcist told me it opens a portal into your home, into your own heart. But if you're married, into your marriage, into your kids, it's opening those portals up. So, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And when you understand, whether it's pornography or alcohol, that your spouse or whomever almost presents themselves as a different entity it's not them. This isn't my wife, krista. She's acting different, she looks different. It's not sweet, krista. Then once you realize well, now I'm in a spiritual war. I'm not in a war, for you know, to stop the drinking. It's something far deeper.
Speaker 2:And once I began to realize that I went through a lot of different machinations of, okay, well, how do you? Because the devil's so damn smart, you know, he has so many wiles in his medicine cabinet and he's always pulling out a different trick. So once I was able to sort of overcome one of his little nasty tricks, he would pull out another. So he was always coming at me with new sort of I'll say it again machinations. But when I finally sort of got my head around how to confront it, it wasn't going to be through intensive fasts or three rogeries a day or daily mass or begging the litany of saints or all of that. It was going to come through sort of resting my head against Christ's heart and falling into deeper measures of meditative prayer with him and speak to him almost as a child, saying God, this is way above my pay grade. I don't know how to handle it, but you do, you know. So I'm just going to come to you as a child and I trust you because you know this far better than I what Krista's going through, my marriage, kids, everything. So I'm just going to rest my head against your heart and I'm going to wait for you to sort of elucidate in my own mind, in my own soul, how to handle this dark night. You know how to actually enter into this desert even deeper, trusting you, where the desert almost became like a palace, because God was in the desert, and I think the Old Testament prophets understood this as well.
Speaker 2:The further they went into the desert, the more they encountered God. So, as a matter of really, I guess it all hinged on one thing Was I going to fully trust God, that God was going to take care of this? Like my whole life hinged on that. So I always tried to say, yeah, of course I mean God, is God, god's going to take care of this? Just go to him. And I guess your viewer would have to read the Hermit. But there's countless ways that I went to God during those dark times and they were tough. I mean just tough.
Speaker 1:But when I presented myself close to Christ, almost like he was a millimeter away, I always had peace because I knew he was going to take care of it eventually that you're talking about, that God drawing you in, is a call for each of us, that each person you know, you write in the book, in the Hermit, you know, and she's talking to, krista is talking. Your wife is talking to some of the priests that she meets later on, which was not easy either to get their. You know, it's quite a story which we won't go into right now. Just for you to bring this right, to bring this alive now, for her to actually be open now to seeing these priests, who are incredible priests I mean Monsignor Essex, oh my gosh, right, I mean he's amazing. Father Dan Leary, who I know from you through you amazing priest, right, these are the priests that we're talking about. These are holy priests, these are priests that can read into your soul and it's amazing how they do that, you know. But we're called into this intimacy, into this closeness, and it's amazing that the journey that you took, closer and closer to God, is a journey that we're all called to do in one fashion or another, that we have this temporal life and we're called to that. So many of the problems, kevin and it's so beautifully told in your book will just come because one or the other spouse or person has drifted away, or maybe right, and now we start to come close.
Speaker 1:I remember when I came back into the church there was a time where my marriage was on the rocks and I had three small children at that time and I remember getting on my knees and saying God, do you have a plan? I was gone from the church for 20 years and when I got up it was one of my brothers was dying of AIDS. He had gotten into. It was sexually abused as a kid, we just found out. I come back into the church. Who was sexually abused as a kid? We just found out. Anyway, see, I come back into the church.
Speaker 1:That next eight, 10 years, kevin, just like you, was an incredible battle. I would never recommend it to anybody. Until you feel those constellations In the midst of this crazy battle, you go. I can't even go home right now. I don't even want. The tension was so bad in my house.
Speaker 1:And yet God calls you and he says hey, no, you got to bring this love story into your wife's life. Right that you're receiving this divine life and love. Now you have to become that divine life and love. I remember one time, kevin, saying to God you know, what are you going to do about her? I'm getting it, but what are you going to do about her? Right, you have plan B. And I remember God the Father saying it so clearly I'm not going to do it. You're going to do it. And I said what do you mean? I'm going to do it. Well, my wife had an alcoholic father that was abusive and she thought, man, if he's anything like my father, I don't need God the Father. It was only through my love, right, loving her in all these things that you were writing about, kevin, that finally the door started to open. But my gosh, john Paul would call it. That's the battlefield of the heart, huh, to become a person of love. You know it's a battle, huh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the things that I think so many of us forget and I'm sure many times I have and I will in the future is of me to remember that God loved me ferociously during that time. He loved me so intimately throughout the saddest, loneliest nights, the weirdest fights, the different manifestations of the demons, Like he loved me. And that, the understanding of receiving that love and it's really about reception, receiving His love for me, reading Scripture where Jesus explains his father's love that helped me so much Just that little pivot to know that God was with me. God the Father, god the loving Father, was with me throughout this dark night.
Speaker 1:One of the things, Kevin, that I was alluding to right before I went off on some crazy tangent there for a second, was exactly what you're describing I went off on some crazy tangent there for a second it was exactly what you're describing, except I was going to say that one of the priests said it to Christa.
Speaker 1:It reminded her from Jeremiah. Of course we know this from the first chapter, right off the bat. In Jeremiah God says I knew you before you were even formed in the womb. But then one of them said he knew you, christa, before he even brought adam and eve into the world. I mean, if you think about that, kevin, that manifestation, was that monsignor essek, maybe that said that to her?
Speaker 1:that was actually father flume that was father father flume and so so. So one of them, essek probably said it, you know, the first time and now flew him toward the end of the book is reminding her again and saying almost the same thing, only even going deeper. He not only knew you before you were formed, he knew you before you even started creation. Which is pretty wild, kevin. It's pretty wild and it's really that call again to this holiness, this intimacy with God, we almost can't believe it ourselves, can we?
Speaker 2:No, and again it's that aspect that I think we tend to forget. I'll just say, as Catholics is so. We have our Catholic customs, we strive to be holy, pious, et cetera, and we have our heirlooms, but at the root of it all, god is madly in love with all of us, and he does. As you said, jack, god knew us from the beginning of time, and what Father Flume I think had mentioned to Krista was he loves you and he loves you so much that he wants you to step away from this shame. So I know you're comfortable there and you found this unhealthy way of dealing with your shame through wine. But God doesn't want you there, krista, because he loves you too much.
Speaker 2:And so it was the teasing out of her shame that Father Flume was trying to show Krista that God wants you as he envisioned you before the beginning of time. And once Krista understood that the fact that she was loved way back then as the healthy Krista that he envisioned in her mind, that really resonated. So it was easy for Krista to sort of understand Our Lady's love for her, because she kind of took over for maybe the love she didn't get from her own earthly mother as a young child or Jesus. But when she understood the Father's love for her, that truly was the game changer that started to peel out the shame that was causing her to drink for all those years things are starting to go pretty well, right, and then something happened.
Speaker 1:Kevin and I remember this so well, this event because I was up in Alaska. I was presenting parish missions. I was up there for about 10 days, 11 days outside of Anchorage, in Anchorage and outside of Anchorage doing a women's retreat. I was doing parish missions, some other talks, and on the way home in early March of 2020, I'm flying home I hit Seattle and there was an outbreak of COVID, and then my phone starts lighting up and, all of a sudden, all the calendar events I had lined up for months ahead of time, right, I mean, you spend months and months loading up calendars. I'm going to be traveling all over the country and boom, everything starts to unravel.
Speaker 2:And just when you start to think, Krista and you're getting a handle on this thing. Covid comes what happens. Kevin, I was scared to death. I mean truly well.
Speaker 2:So, for your viewer, when Krista started to heal in 2017, 18, 19,. She was healing through daily mass, through as many as one, two, even three hours of adoration a day. You know daily rosaries, intensive spiritual direction rosary. And she had the peace. She had that peace of the girl I married on our wedding day. I could see it in her eyes, I could see it in the way she just presented herself. She was home again and so she was crescendoing to almost kicking the habit entirely.
Speaker 2:Every now and then, like once a month, the shame monster would come and snap her back into the tomb. And then COVID came and the moratorium was put on the worldwide church of the sacraments and the mass, and I knew that these very efficacious graces given to us through the sacraments were healing Krista. She would tell you. I mean, everyone knew it. Father Flume knew it, priests knew it, my kids knew it. Everyone knew it was the Catholic church and the graces that were saving her. And when that bark came from Anthony Fauci and medical panels and television anchors and even the Catholic Church and houses of worship throughout the world, isolate, isolate, isolate.
Speaker 1:I knew it was the most dangerous word in the world, because that was the very thing, isolate, that caused her to drink yeah.
Speaker 1:So she's gonna get isolated. You know this, you could see it coming. And also there's a dark force. You know we're talking about satanic forces. You know so many people today, kevin, and and, and we'll pick up back on your story right here but just to set the, I mean so many people today are getting picked off, I see it all the time. They think they came into a neutral world. We didn't come into a neutral world.
Speaker 1:Sister Lucia said it so well when she wrote to Cardinal Kaffar and John Paul II. She said the last great battle between our Lord and Satan is going to be over marriage and the family. This is the bedrock, this is the Imago Dei, this is our created, sacramental reflection of God's Trinitarian love. We're talking about a love story here. Not only does the individual person in a marriage get attacked, right but the whole structure starts to come down. And we see this with the sexual revolution. And now we're trying to put these pieces back together and now, boom, the whole church is going to come down.
Speaker 1:So, kevin, I felt the demonic come into this story. I mean and, and you know you, you write about I don't know if he was bishop at that time cardinal gregory how quick he was to shut down, and he wasn't the only one, but he was quick about shutting down the masses, pope Francis. I remember him turning off the lights pretty quick too, and I thought, wow, where's the courage? Where's the courage of these guys, where's the courage of these bishops? This was the opportune time. When everybody's scared, everything's shutting down. Except for abortion clinics and liquor stores and places to go smoke pot right, everything else is shutting down. And, man, if we would have kept the churches open, kevin, it would have been different, because not only would we have been pushed back some of that demonic but we would have been shown as this place to go for refuge. People would have found us and instead the opposite happens. But you really get affected by this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just two things I'll respond to with Jack. If church historians are honest 100 years from now and they look back at 2020 and how the church responded to COVID, I think they'll write that it was one of the worst displays of shepherding in the history of the Catholic Church. I really believe that the way they responded genuflected to the world, to COVID-19, a bodily sickness rather than the soul. It was a wide-sweeping abdication worldwide of the flock. But also, jack, you mentioned the demonic and we don't like to remember, we don't like to talk about what happened the summer of 2020.
Speaker 2:But we saw BLM, antifa streets on fire. We saw mayhem, chaos, statues of Christopher Columbus, saints, mary beheaded. We saw absolute anarchy, demonic anarchy, where it was almost like Satan whistled at his choruses of demons and said hey, man, they're not even trying anymore. Go in, it's all yours. Yeah, it's a pre-crisis. So, yeah, we see what happens on the spiritual dimension when the church betrays its identity. Feed the souls of your flock through the sacraments. We do not fear humanity. We fear the powers and principalities. So you must address them and that's what Father Flume did for Christa from day one, hour one and minute one of COVID-19 lockdown. He said I'm the shepherd of Christa's soul. I'm the shepherd of people like Christa who've got these ghosts in their past. I'm going nowhere, matter of fact, I'm going to intensify my priesthood, I'm going to open things wide open and I'm going to go deeper into folks' wounds because they've been betrayed.
Speaker 1:So this is where this strong priest comes back into the story. And I know other ones. Some of them got themselves in trouble that I know really well from bishops but they said, nope, we have to bring the sacraments. So as we start to think about the last 10, 15 minutes here, kevin, let's talk about Father Flum and how he did that, what he did, and the beauty of his priesthood. You talk a lot about that in the book. Beauty of his priesthood, you know, you talk a lot about that in the book. You know, when a priest steps up to the plate and it becomes a sacrificial lamb, huh and persona Christi.
Speaker 1:You know, priests today, kevin and I meet them all the time. They're in trouble. Priests are in trouble and they're in trouble for a number of different things, but one of the biggest things and you bring it up again they lost their focus, they lost their integrity, they lost the whole reason that they become priests. You know, too many of them are lazy today. You know they'll say mass, they'll do the sacraments, they'll do the smallest amount. And I always tell them, kevin, I said, go in and start teaching, go to the schools. If you don't have a school, go to the parish next door that has a school and start to work with those kids and those families. Spend your time right. You have too much time alone. But this was not Father Flume, was it?
Speaker 2:No. So I wrote a book about what you just said, called the Priests we Need to Save the Church, Encouraging After the Summer of Shame. But yeah, so, Jack, just as regards Father Flume and this will sort of address what you just mentioned even back in seminary, from his first year, he understood that to sort of mimic Jesus Christ in persona Christi as a priest, as in the ministerial priesthood, he needed to set himself right. So even in seminary he stopped eating meats. There was no more meats in his life. He stopped all alcohol. He began to shave off hours of sleep because he understood that any form of comfort, anything that could sort of soften him, would betray what he was about to do. He was about to be a custodian of souls as a priest. So when he did become a priest, six, seven years later, he was explosive, Like he was set right. He understood the burden of his identity and that was lead souls to heaven. Everything else was yeah, we'll take care of it.
Speaker 2:And Father Flynn was brilliant, like very book smart, very smart. So his office was filled with encyclopedias of the saints' early doctrines. So he studied the church down the millennia. So he knew how the greatest priests, saints, behaved and he wanted to emulate them, because it was all about souls. So when COVID-19 comes around, there's no like. So there's divine prudence and there's human prudence. I suspect that maybe human prudence was relied on too heavily during that time from bishops and priests. Well, Father Flynn was equipped with divine prudence. Hey God, what would you have me do? Oh, what Charles Bar-Rome Romeo did during the bubonic plague. Oh, what Gonzaga did? Aloysius Gonzaga, you want me to go out into the fields? Okay, then I'm going to do that, Because he was so tethered to God there was no second guessing. He knew what to do because he was attentive to the demons and he was attentive to souls and he knew it was a spiritual war. It wasn't about COVID-19 and getting sick for four days and I know it was a real sickness, we know that but this was about souls.
Speaker 1:What did he do for Christa exactly? So here's really the meat of the story here. And look, there's a lot going up to this point and there's a lot of wonderful priests coming in, but then it's kind of putting the flour, the icing on the story.
Speaker 2:So, jack, he knew that it was the Eucharist. It was the Eucharist that Christa was receiving every day. Unless she had a fall, then she wouldn't go to communion, she would go to confession. Then a fall meaning she wouldn't go to communion, she would go to confession, but in the fall that means she fell back to drinking, correct?
Speaker 2:So, father Flume, this would be interesting for your viewers to hear when the day that COVID was sort of the shutdown happened, he opened up adoration from 7 am till 9 at night and he had a small, small parish and his staff was like well, father, you can't do that because no one wants to leave their houses now and you can't fill the hours. And he said that's all right, I'll just fill all the hours until somebody comes. So Krista began to come and right away he sent me a text, like a few days after the lockdown. He said an address of a location I'd never been to meeting 2 pm, and he said bring Krista.
Speaker 2:So we ended up going and, what do you know, there's Mass. And thereafter he began to, let's just say, pray early at his parish at 6 am with the door you would say his private mass, but the door was unlocked. So if folks wanted to go by early in the morning to say their prayers, and Father Flume happened to be celebrating his death mass and there were eavesdroppers on, so we happened to catch word of the private mass and we never missed a day. So we drove every day 45, 50 minutes where we were able to receive the sacraments, and it was during 2020, during that year, as the months moved on that Christa became healed, where finally and this is why I wish your viewer would read the Hermit, because something miraculous does take place in the book.
Speaker 1:Let's not give the ending away here, yeah.
Speaker 2:But one of the worst years in American history ended up becoming our best year because Christa became healed. History ended up becoming our best year because Christi became healed.
Speaker 1:And we're on our honeymoon.
Speaker 2:All these years since, because one priest said I'm not shutting down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's so important because first, we see the efficacy of the graces themselves, this intimacy God calls us into. You know, priests, there were priests going underground, you know, in different areas. You know, and you would hear about that. It's kind of sad, kevin, isn't it? I mean, just think you know. I know a priest that was taken out for allowing just a few too many people right and they got caught. You know, and you think you know, if nothing else, look the other way, bishop, right, wouldn't you just look the other way just to say, hey, look it. Okay, I'm taking my cues from the Vatican. I'm going to, you know, say we're shutting down. But you know, guys, whatever you want to do, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't want to respond to that, jack because it'll end up being an nr17 podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, brother, but anyways, hey, look at, this was a beautiful story. I I've gotten to know you. You know, since some of this stuff has gone on right, since most of this stuff is going on and and your heart has come out because of this, I mean you, you know the way you write, the way you speak, the direction of your life now is taking a much deeper level, and that deeper level comes from all of these things. You know, when you pick up the cross and you're going to go, you know, kevin, at the end of the day, you know, I remind people, you know we're a body and a soul, but in this fallen world without grace, our default position is sin and death. And they go, jack, that's your opinion. I said just have some patience, you're going to prove my point right. I mean, death is coming, and sometimes they pause because they haven't considered that we're going someplace.
Speaker 1:Kevin, it's a really beautiful thing in Scripture. Scripture starts in the first book with a marriage right, a marriage of Adam and Eve right, the sacramental sign of God's Trinitarian love. It ends in the book of Revelation, in the last book, with a marriage, but now that marriage is not between a man and a woman, that marriage, that sacramental sign in the first book and you and I are married right is pointing to the marriage of the Lamb, the bridegroom that climbs up on the cross and pours out his life for his bride, and that's what we're talking about here. You can't disconnect those two. Our whole lives are to be connected and then allow God to—look. We don't know the whole story in this temporal fallen world, but I'll tell you what you'll get guidance, won't you, kevin? I mean, you're going to know, have a sense of what I'm supposed to do today, at least today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's that marriage, it's the bridegroom and the bride and I'll circle back to something that was spoken about a short while ago is, if we ever took the time in meditation or in prayer or just pondered it, the love that God has for us we could spend the rest of our life and not even get one quarter inch into the profound measure of love. All he wants is that marriage like unite Jack with me, unite Kevin with me, krista with me and if we can just focus on that love and receive it, then everything changes and we're going to want to live for, hopefully, the one that we will be reunited with one day. So we live our lives for, for the bridegroom, and that that's where we are. It's all about, as you said, jack, it's all about love.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and once you're filled up, she. We can't give what we don't have, can we? You know, kevin, we're, we're trying. So many people I meet are trying to give what they don't have have. You know, you bring it out again in the Hermit. So well, look at, you knew instinctively that you needed to go to the well to draw deep so that you had something to pour out to Krista, and that's what you did. So the Hermit, you know, again, if people haven't I don't know if this comes in backwards probably Kevin, but it's the Priest and Beggar.
Speaker 1:This was an incredible read. This is another book I couldn't put down. We talked about this on a past podcast, but you come 2025, we're going to bring this book up again. And then the Priests we Need to Save the Church Again. These are all great books, but get the Hermit for right now. Start with the Hermit and buy some for Christmas presents, because I mean what a great time the last minute. The good thing about this is Ignatatius press. Where should they be buying this from kevin? What's the best place to go?
Speaker 2:yeah, I would go to ignatiuscom or amazon. And yeah, it's, is that? Okay if we go to amazon well, no, I mean go to it, but I mean, if we have to get it before christmas, we can do it.
Speaker 1:If you're going to wait for any reason, then go to ignatius, right, I? I.
Speaker 2:I would prefer Ignatiuscom, but I don't know how quickly you're going to get it, but it does make for, I believe, this one in particular, the Hermit. So, jack, I'll just say this and we'll end I don't know if I'll ever be able to write. I intend to write more books and I don't know if I'll ever be able to write something like this again, because it's probably the hardest thing I've done, because it is raw. Krista asked me to write the book. It goes into a wintertime place, it goes into a dark place, it ends up transcendent. But to write the book was extraordinarily difficult, nasty, but it's a good Christmas present because all's well that ends well. It ends with beautiful light.
Speaker 1:Kevin Wells, you're a gift, my friend. Thank you so much. Thanks everybody, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it, appreciate your time, kevin. Thank you very much, Jack.