Deacon Robert T. Yerhot

Look Back in Love

4 months ago Comments Off on Look Back in Love
As a psychotherapist, I discovered that many of my patients had what I would now call an unhealthy memory. These patients remembered traumatic events from their developmental years, that is, before their prefrontal cortex had fully matured, which happens at about age 25. These trauma memories were intrusive, destabilizing, confusing and seemingly meaningless to them. Read More

The Wind in Our Sails

8 months ago Comments Off on The Wind in Our Sails
God gives us three theological virtues at baptism: faith, hope and charity. Allow me to use an image to describe them. Life is a stormy sea, repeatedly challenging and threatening us. The ship, tossed to and fro in high waves, is faith, giving us buoyancy; as long as we have faith, we won’t sink. The Read More

Inner Healing

10 months ago Comments Off on Inner Healing
Who are you, and what are you to do? These are questions of identity and mission. We all can and must ask these questions. We pondered them at length during our diaconate formation. How well did we answer then? How well do we answer now? I believe it is only in freedom that we can Read More

Walking Wounded

12 months ago Comments Off on Walking Wounded
As a spiritual director for clergy and men in formation, I find a question invariably arises as I accompany them to a greater depth of self-awareness and interiority: “What is impeding my progress, Deacon?” While part of the answer to that question is specific to each individual, I find there is common ground into which Read More
Christian man praying in front of the cross

Contemplative Ministry

1 year ago Comments Off on Contemplative Ministry
We live with anxious hearts. Fundamental questions arise from within us. Who are we? What are we to do? We give answers often filtered through several shallow layers of protective responses. To answer deeply requires a freedom yet to be obtained. Our wounds bind us too tightly. We often identify with our wounds. We are Read More
Job

The Reality of Job

2 years ago Comments Off on The Reality of Job
For decades, I was a psychotherapist at a large medical facility in Wisconsin. Hundreds of patients came to me over the years, brokenhearted people, broken by the world, wounded by tragedies and events in life, and feeling very much alone. Perhaps you, too, have experienced this reality in your life. Few of us escape it. Read More
prayer

I Thirst!

2 years ago Comments Off on I Thirst!
As a spiritual director, I often ask my deacon directees, “What is your deepest desire in prayer?” Invariably, what I hear in response is a longing for greater intimacy with God and not knowing what impedes their spiritual growth. Deacons in spiritual direction long to be with God in prayer and to find him in Read More
pray

Desire and Capacity

2 years ago Comments Off on Desire and Capacity
Newly ordained deacons tend to approach prayer with fervor, only to soon suffer the emotional demands of a growing interior life within active ministry. Inevitably, tensions arise in seeking union with God, so we resolve to pray harder and work smarter. But something remains amiss. What is it? George Aschenbrenner, SJ, in “Stretched for Greater Read More
man praying

Psychological Asceticism

4 years ago 1
We often underestimate the experience of contemplative prayer. To be present to the Father’s love inevitably brings about a purification, which is both an intense joy and an equally intense suffering. Few of us are emotionally prepared for such a purification. It is more than our wounded humanity can sustain if we try to go Read More