A Show of Faith
Millennial, Priest, Minister, and Rabbi walk into a radio station...
A Show of Faith
December 7, 2025 Songs For The Soul
Ancient songs still know our names. We open a wide-ranging conversation on why the Psalms continue to steady hearts across Jewish and Christian traditions, moving from the comfort of Psalm 23 to the moral clarity of Psalm 1 and the sheltering promise of Psalm 91. Along the way, we dig into how Hebrew parallelism makes ideas sing, why familiar translations carry deep emotional ties, and how music—old and new—turns prayer into something you can hold when grief blurs the edges.
Rudy shares how Psalm 91 became a daily anchor during the pandemic, a sung reminder of refuge when headlines felt like storms. David walks us through Psalm 1’s rooted life versus weightless chaff, showing how wisdom and Torah shape character over time. We don’t shy away from hard texts either: Psalm 137’s love for Jerusalem and its shocking final verse reveal scripture’s unfiltered honesty about rage and loss, giving voice to emotions we’d rather edit out yet need to bring before God.
We also explore the living tradition: blues and jazz adaptations that make lament feel contemporary, country renditions that carry prayer to new ears, and the Liturgy of the Hours that threads psalms through morning and night around the world. With All Saints and All Souls on the calendar, we reflect on memory, purification, and the communal ways faith holds us in every season. Whether you’re a lifelong psalm-reader or just curious, you’ll leave with a simple promise: there is a psalm for what you’re facing today, and singing it might be the beginning of healing.
If this conversation moved you, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a word of comfort, and leave a review to help others find us. What psalm has carried you lately?
There's something happening here. But what it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man with a gun over there. Tellin' me I got to beware. I think it's time we stop. Children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down.
SPEAKER_02:Welcome to a show of faith where Professor Priest Millennial and Rabbi discuss theology, philosophy, morality, ethics, and anything else we feel like talking about.
SPEAKER_16:Did you say polist? Did you say policed? Pleased? Pleased.
SPEAKER_02:No, I said priest.
SPEAKER_16:Oh, you did. Sound like please, it was priest. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, if it pleases you as priest. Right. If you have any response to our topics, any comments regarding what we say, we would love to hear from you. Email us at ashow of faith1070 at gmail.com, ashowoffaith1070 at gmail.com. You can hear our shows again and again by listening pretty much anywhere podcasts are heard. Our professor is David Capes, Protestant Minister, Director of Academic Programming for the Lanier Theological Library.
SPEAKER_17:Hey, great to see you, guys. Glad to be with you.
SPEAKER_02:Our priest is Father Mario Arroyo, retired pastor of St. Cyril of Alexandria, and then 10,000 Block of Westheimer.
SPEAKER_11:Gloriously here.
SPEAKER_02:Rudy Kong is our millennial. He's a systems engineer, master's degree in theology from the University of St. Thomas. Somewhere.
unknown:Rudy.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I'm Stuart Federal, retired rabbi of Congregation Sha'ar Hushalo in the Clear Lake area of Houston, Texas. Crystal is our uh board operator, and uh she is the one who makes us sound fantastic. And today, lucky all of you people, I am the show director. And my topic tonight are the Psalms. Psalms. Uh why are they so powerful? Why do you think that there's not a single funeral I have ever been to, Christian or Jewish, Christian of any kind, where they haven't used the 23rd Psalm? Like, can you imagine going to a funeral service and not hearing the 23rd Psalm? I can't. So, why is that psalm in particular so prevalent? And why is it so comforting? Why are the psalms so comforting? My question will be: do you have a favorite psalm? And do you have a psalm you really don't like that you find to be problematic? So let me begin by saying the following. And the word translated as psalm is a word that also means song. So we have to remember that the psalms were sung. They were meant to be sung. Sung in the to sung in the temple. And you know, music goes straight to the soul. You know, as church sermons go to our minds, but but music goes to our souls. I think straight to our souls. And I think that's what one thing that the psalms do. They go straight to our souls. We and we have to remember that this the genre of psalms in the temple are not the same thing as narrative, like in the five books of Moses. They are from the human soul, they are written by people about real human emotions, and I think that that's one reason why the psalms become so powerful. Because they are written from the heart and therefore they go straight to the heart. So, David, I'd like to start with you. Do you have a favorite psalm?
SPEAKER_17:Um let's see. I I I have lots of psalms.
SPEAKER_03:Right, exactly.
SPEAKER_17:It's hard to pin it down to. Um, and and I'm trying to think of the think of the one that I love the most. There's so many. I mean, I've taught for many years at the college university level. I've taught through the book of Psalms before. I've I've taught individual psalms and sermons and that kind of thing. But I love the way the very first psalm begins. Okay. And and it's it's uh it's often referred to as a Torah psalm, okay, or a wisdom psalm. It puts together the two ideas. It says, you know, blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the ungodly, nor stands in the seat of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditate today, and I to day. It says, and this person will be like a tree planted by rivers of living death that brings forth fruit in its seasons, its leaves will not perish, and whatever it does, it prospers. And then it switches to the other side for the ungodly, which is around so they are like the chaff, which is eternal left over for the wheat, which is like the wind can blow right through. So compared to the tree that is always blooming and always fruitful, the the ungodly are like the chaff. So I I love that sort of dialogue back and forth between on the one hand we have the wisdom of God, and in the other hand, we have folly. And then on the one hand we have God's Torah, and the other hand we have the God. It's a wonderful psalm. Some people believe that it was a psalm written to establish the collection when the psalms are collected. It was a psalm that was that was uh said, okay, what we need one at the very first. Let's write something sp specific about that. I don't know that that's true. Right, that's no way to know. That's one of the theories out there. But I love that song, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And you have it memorized. Well, you're a Baptist minister, so you got a whole thing memorized.
SPEAKER_17:Well, no, no, not the whole thing. It's been a while since I've recited it quite as well as I did it right there.
SPEAKER_02:See, that's another thing about the psalms.
SPEAKER_17:Very recitable.
SPEAKER_02:They are meant to be recited. Yes, they're meant to be musical. They it well in the Hebrew they have a poetry of sound, because Hebrew tends to do that, but also uh the biblical poetry is parallelism. So it's it's i i i it's saying the same thing but with different words. It's a rhyming of idea, not a rhyming of sound. But in the Hebrew you get the rhyming of the sound.
SPEAKER_17:Yeah. But you also have rhyming of the first letters, too.
SPEAKER_02:Right, yes. You have uh there's a word for that.
SPEAKER_17:Um acrostic. Acrostic. Is that the word? An acrostic, but it's not it's not really the rhyming of the first sound. That's the A, B, C, D, E, F, D. So that one line begins with A, the next line begins with B, but it's in Hebrew, between the two letters of the Hebrew. Right.
SPEAKER_02:But you're saying that there's but that's the kind of rhyming you mean.
SPEAKER_17:Well, that's a type of rhyming. Right. There are different kinds of rhyming.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_17:But uh alliteration is another kind of rhyming. So there's a reliteration of sound or uh but also of ideas, which I think is a brilliant way of putting what parallelism is. It's saying the same thing, just in a different way.
SPEAKER_02:Right. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul, the precepts of the Lord, which rhymes with by idea the law of the Lord. The precepts of the Lord are right delight in the mind. Delight in the mind is the same the same thing as reviving the soul. Right. It's a it's parallel. Yeah. Right.
SPEAKER_17:So I think these things are meant to be memorized. Going back to what you said a moment ago about Psalm 23, I think we we we like Psalms. We like what we know.
SPEAKER_02:Right, true.
SPEAKER_17:Right. So a lot of people know Psalm 23.
SPEAKER_02:And they know it in a very specific translation.
SPEAKER_17:Yeah, yeah. It goes back to the kingdom.
SPEAKER_02:And if they change the translation, they're not gonna be happy because it's not what they know.
SPEAKER_16:Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Yes. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall have no lack. But nobody wants to say I had no lack. I have no lack. They want to say, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, because that's what they know. That's what they grew up with. That's what their emotional attachment is to. Right. And that that's probably true for most of the Psalms.
SPEAKER_17:I think it's true for almost everybody of faith. You know, any person of faith. They grew up with a translation, they grew up with a rhythm, they grew up with a cadence, right? Exactly.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Now I don't I I know that there's a mass and therefore there's a specific text, but I don't think there is in the Baptist.
SPEAKER_17:Well, in Protestant churches, depends upon the Protestant church. In Anglican churches, for example, yeah, there's a text every part of the lectionary. Right. But in in uh in Pentecostal churches and Baptist churches, and a lot of church or Christ churches, uh, it's it's free-flowing. There's not a particular reading designated for that particular subject.
SPEAKER_02:Right. But if you fooled around with the translation to like the 23rd Psalm, they're not going to be happy. And the same thing I've seen in the Jewish community, because every so often, 10, 20, whatever years, the the Hebrew may not change, but the translations may be brought up to more modern usage, you know. And there's always a rebellion that some of the older families have.
SPEAKER_17:We talked about that a long a while back with Father Father Mario when they changed the mass to eat, you know, the Lord be with you. And it's also with you, but now it's and also with your spirit, or or and with your spirit, I think. Right. So and and there's always a little bit of pushback because again, we like what we know. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02:Because it tells us who we are, it makes us feel we belong, it makes us part of the community, the group. So by keeping it one translation, what we're used to, what we grew up with, it it it it helps us feel connected. And I would argue connected to God, connected to the spirit, the the community, the the the f people who are sitting near you, by you, you know, with you. It's a connection there.
SPEAKER_13:It really is.
SPEAKER_02:Mario, do you have a No I don't. You don't have a favorite psalm? Because I know it's really hard. There's so many of them.
SPEAKER_11:Oh see, it if uh it's interesting because I have just been r recently reconnected really deeply to the psalms, but through this, I discovered this this what is that? Okay, I discovered it's I'm holding my iPhone. And I discovered this this uh thing in iTunes, and it it it's it's called um uh the holy groove. If you look up in in iTunes, look up holy groove. The holy groove. G-R-O-O-V-E. And it's all the psalms, but put into music. It modern music into blues music. Blues music. Like let me just uh let you listen to it. Just a little listen. Which one is this? Psalm 59.
SPEAKER_24:Okay.
SPEAKER_11:Okay, listen to this.
SPEAKER_02:You know, the translations may alter a little bit or become more useful within the song, the literary license or whatever they call that. Yeah. But the music. The music is beautiful. Is first of all is beautiful, yeah, but also enhances the meaning. You know, when he's moaning about enemies, the music shows he's moaning about enemies.
SPEAKER_11:Oh, yeah. And and see, that's what I have loved about this. I've discovered you'd look to look up literally, um, and there's three uh two or three volumes of this, because this one I just played is from Psalm and Blues, volume two. Oh, wow. So it's a holy groove and and it's got holy groove.
SPEAKER_17:I get it, I get it. However, only one-third of the psalms are laments or blues. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_10:I agree.
SPEAKER_17:But what about the psalms that are joyful and and excited and and praising God and you know going up to the temple and oh, like for example?
SPEAKER_07:Joyful stuff.
SPEAKER_02:David, would you guess on what song this is? That's what it says. Yeah. Psalm 47. Right. Would that have rung a bell? I mean, if you listen to the words carefully.
SPEAKER_17:The words, yeah, but but it's still set to a blues.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah. Right. We need to come back and we'll keep talking about this. This is Tan TH 1070, and we'll be right back.
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SPEAKER_08:Johnny Angel. You're an angel to shake. Johnny Angel, how I love him.
SPEAKER_09:How I jingle when he passes by every Johnny says hello. Johnny know how I want him. He's got something. But he doesn't even know that. I'm an heaven. I carry away. I came up every night. It's gonna be other fellows. But I've just said I'd rather concentrate on Johnny. And I pray that you love me. And together we will see how lovely will be.
SPEAKER_02:Rudy, do you have a favorite psalm?
SPEAKER_04:I am here.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Do you have a favor? Go ahead.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. I do have a favorite psalm. I uh this this is one I uh I I was almost saying uh daily, especially during um COVID times and It was uh it's a pretty popular psalm among um battles and and sort of um uh difficult moment. It's Psalm ninety-one. Um You who dwell in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shade of the Almighty, say to the Lord, My refuge and fortress, my God in whom I trust And then it kinda um it kinda goes on like that and it's it's um I don't know, I just I really always found it just like a comforting song, right? Because so much of life and and our reality is is is suffering and we suffer, we see suffering, and we have difficult times making sense of that. And and I think it's one of these songs that that kind of touches on that suffering but still throws you back to to to a recital of of protection and showing um it really kind of almost reminds me of the story of Joe, but just endurance, right? Of of of all this chaos and hectic hecticness and death that you could see around you.
SPEAKER_02:And so um Rudy, which which song was that? 91. 91.
SPEAKER_04:90, 91, yeah.
SPEAKER_11:You wanna you wanna just listen to a few minutes, a few seconds of it?
SPEAKER_02:Sure.
SPEAKER_11:Let's listen to the new version. The the version the jazzy version, the blues.
SPEAKER_07:The street place of a mouse the show fenced in one keeps growing.
SPEAKER_17:I'm not free, what what happens what happens on these psalms is that it's not the whole psalm that is generated. It is it is the it is a part of it, part of the psalm, like verse one there, and then you skip to verse four, and it skipped down a little bit further. But but the whole idea of the psalm is being expressed beautifully through the side.
SPEAKER_11:It's very explicit because of the you I was listening to it on the way back from San Antonio where I went, and it was amazing just to be able you can almost pray with it because he it's being sung so beautifully.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_11:You know, I I just really love these. I've downloaded both albums so far.
SPEAKER_03:Cool. See what you Jews have done?
SPEAKER_02:What? See what you Jews have done? Yes, I know. The the uh there's a singer who has done okay, this is AI according, you know, what David said, but uh and their uh mode was jazz. This is a Jewish singer who takes psalms and other prayers, and it's uh country.
SPEAKER_10:Interesting.
SPEAKER_02:Country music.
SPEAKER_10:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Joe Buchanan. You can you can find Joe Buchanan probably the same place as you can find uh holy groove. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_04:Didn't didn't we listen to him when I think Father Morrow, you and I, we went to visit the rabbi at the at his synagogue a couple years back.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, quite a few years back. We had him uh singing from our pulpit, as a matter of fact, yeah. Yes, he is.
SPEAKER_17:He's a tremendous tremendous musician. Yeah, yeah. Joe Buchanan. He's not AI, I don't think. Uh no, he's definitely not. One of the one of the things, I mean, as growing up Christian, um our Bible is both the Old Testament and the New, the Hebrew Bible, New Testament. And when you open the mid very middle of the Bible in in in the Christian Testament, it's Psalms, you find Psalms first. It's the very thing in the middle of the the way it's organized. I know it's organized differently uh uh for Christian. Yeah, the Christians changed it, but the Christians changed it, yeah, yeah. For good reason, I think. But anyway, anyway, that it's right in the very center. So I think we easily sort of found that because uh it's just there. But there are 150 of these psalms, right? 150. I don't know how many it's the way you count it.
SPEAKER_02:150, but there are some who will add an additional 151. Yeah. But I don't I don't know the history of that last one.
SPEAKER_17:Yeah, I think it's in the Catholic Bible, but it's not in the Protestant version of it. But um that they they were sung, and you're right, it's a hymn book. They were sung in all different occasions. Like sometimes when a king was was coronated, right?
SPEAKER_02:When a king was in coronation psalms, right.
SPEAKER_17:There are coronation psalms.
SPEAKER_02:Thanksgiving psalms.
SPEAKER_17:Sometimes uh, you know, there are pilgrimage uh pilgrimages in in in the history of of faith, right? So people would be traveling to the traveling to Jerusalem, and they would sing some of these psalms on the way to the temple. Not even at the temple, maybe before they even got to the temple, because they were on the journey, on the road that they were doing. So there's all kinds of different psalms there.
SPEAKER_02:First of all, I must say that the psalms are not only hims, they're also for hers, too.
SPEAKER_15:Ah, yes.
SPEAKER_02:You know, I you know that was gonna come out. Yes. Right. But didn't you do like your PhD thesis in early services, early prayer services?
SPEAKER_17:Well, I I did a lot of research in that. I didn't do my PhD thing. So what's that wasn't? Oh no, I did my PhD in something else. But I know you did a lot of booking. I've written some other uh books and articles in relationships uh to early Christian worship and such. So I know we gotta go.
SPEAKER_11:Oh, we gotta go. My God, we're late. I know.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's such a fascinating topic.
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SPEAKER_02:Actually, this brings up something else. Are there songs not psalms, but songs that we would know 50s, 60s, 70s? That's what we know the best, I think. Uh that might be a psalm. I wasn't I wasn't born in a David, maybe your left leg wasn't yet. But are there songs that could be used as psalms today in a service?
SPEAKER_10:In a service.
SPEAKER_02:In a service.
SPEAKER_10:I'd have to think.
SPEAKER_02:I was talking with uh no, this was on Facebook actually, and somebody made a reference to actually a Michael Jackson song, and I know he's lost a lot of favor. Uh, but and I use that song as like the epitome of what the high holy days and repentance are all around. That if you want to make the world what?
unknown:The man in the mirror.
SPEAKER_02:That's right. You want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that change. That change starts with you. And there's a very famous story, I don't know who started it about a guy who wanted to change the world, couldn't do it, wanted to change his neighborhood, couldn't do it, and he realized that if you want to change, you've got to start with yourself. And it was probably truly one of the best sermons I ever did. And I the Psalms I think also work the same way.
SPEAKER_11:They do. I I I I want to just give you an antithesis, though.
SPEAKER_10:Okay.
SPEAKER_11:Because what um what a lot of people, and you'd be surprised how many people in the middle of the service, especially weddings, they want to do John Lennon's Imagine. That song? Yes, because imagine all the people living life in peace. You might think I'm an idiot, whatever, you know. But they they don't realize they don't realize they said, imagine there's no heaven, right? No hell below us, above us, only sky. Imagine all the people living life in peace. You might say that's I think I'm a dreamer. That they consider that a very spiritual song, but they don't listen.
SPEAKER_02:No, they don't.
SPEAKER_11:They don't listen to the words that they're actually denying the very thing that they're thinking about.
SPEAKER_02:Mario, back when I had a congregation and I was working for a living, uh, I would teach confirmation, which for us, my synagogue is tenth grade. Yeah, my synagogue is tenth grade. And one of the things I did was I would ask them to bring a song that was popular on the radio at that time, a good favorite song of theirs. They had to bring the song, they had to bring the lyrics typed out with copies for everybody, and we would go over the song. And you would be stunned to find out how many of them had no idea what the words were, and when they read the words, they were appalled by their own choice, because they're the ones who brought the song, and they didn't know that that's what the sentiments in that song is what they were singing. It's amazing to me, but most people they get carried away by the music, which is fine. I mean, you know, that's yeah, whatever, but they don't know what they're singing.
SPEAKER_17:So I I don't I don't think we would we would add that to the to the book of Psalms. Yeah, no. Any of these things. No. Um, but we do, I think it's perfectly a good idea to take uh like a classic hymn of the Christian faith, speaking as a Christian now, a classic hymn of the Christian faith, and use that as part of a sermon to illustrate something. Exactly. Um I mean we have f uh 2,000 years of him writing. I mean, I know the psalms are written in the BC period. Canonized the BCE period, right? So and and canonized a long time ago. But we have been we've had people like Martin Luther and Charles Wesley and and uh Ira Sange and and other Sankey and other people writing songs for a long time. They're great songs, they're inspirational, and you know, but I wouldn't add them to the psalm book.
SPEAKER_02:Right, no, not to add them to the psalm book, the book of Psalms in the Bible, but they could and are used in the context of religious services in religious worship and in sermons.
SPEAKER_17:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_17:Well, I want to come back to something Rudy said. I don't know how about our times look at I'm gonna have to let you guys.
SPEAKER_02:No, go right ahead.
SPEAKER_17:One of the things that I wanted to come back to Rudy on is the fact that Rudy was talking and using Psalm 91. 91 was inspiration for him because he talked about the difficulties of life.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_17:Not that life is always you know, a barrel of monkeys and rainbows and lollipops. Exactly. But very often um life brings us very difficult times. And the psalms are a place that we can go to help us pray when we don't know how to pray for something. If we feel like that we're being beat up by some people at work, there are psalms for that. Right. If we feel like we are sick and we're never gonna get well again, there are psalms for that.
SPEAKER_24:Right.
SPEAKER_17:If if we feel that uh our our country is falling apart around us, or we've had another 9-11 kind of event, a national tragedy. There are psalms for that.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_17:So there are these laments. Like I said earlier, about a third of the psalms are laments recognizing, and then there's a book of lamentations. Right. And then you've got which is also poetry. Which is also poetry. So a lot of a lot of text in there are to help us with the hard stuff of life.
SPEAKER_02:And and they will say in words that we may not be able to articulate, and they can help us say it, or they say it for us.
SPEAKER_17:Yeah, exactly. Rudy, Rudy, what what are your thoughts on that? I'm curious.
SPEAKER_04:As a younger You know, something that that um that I think about a lot is it's interesting because the psalms are I mean, to me, I'd like to think that it was David, right? Or or I mean that's we I know we don't know that, and there's no way to prove it, but um great composer, but it's it's the word of God in a very real sense spoken, spoken through the yearning of God through a human. I don't know if that makes any sense. Sure it does. Yeah, I but that's that's what to me is is fascinating because you see every single emotion in the Psalms, and and Rabbi, there you you made the question earlier. Th there's some difficult psalms to to talk about it.
SPEAKER_02:Right, and and there's there are psalms that we don't like, but they express a real emotion that someone had in the biblical period and expressed and was canonized. And it happens to be the part of the psalm that I chose that I love it, but the last verse isn't exactly nice. And for me, it's the 137th Psalm. And you know, people talk about uh well, we don't really do politics much, but uh they talk about Zionism and how horrible it is and how new it is and everything, but all they have to do is read the 137th Psalm and they will see the epitome of what Zionism is all about. It it's a psalm about the Jews being kicked out of the promised land and exiled into Babylonia.
SPEAKER_17:And so it's which, by the way, was a 900-mile journey all by walking. Think about that.
SPEAKER_02:That's like the people crossing the United States.
SPEAKER_17:Well, about a third of the way. Yeah. About a third of the way, 900 miles walking, and some people, I mean, people died on the way. They couldn't make it. Right, right. They weren't physically fit enough. I mean, this is a a ruinous, terrible kind of journey. Yes, march, death march.
SPEAKER_02:So, Psalm 137, it to me it states what Zionism is: by the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof, for there they that carried us away captive required us of a song, and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How should we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. That's what Zionism is, is going back to the promised land. It's a beautiful sentiment, it expresses this longing. But the last verse isn't exactly what you'd really want to sing or think about or feel. Because the last verse, verse 9, happy shall he be that taketh and dashes that dashes thy little ones against the stones. The image is picking up babies, children, and throwing them against the stone.
SPEAKER_17:And that's because that's exactly what had happened to them.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly.
SPEAKER_17:Children are terrible at death marches. Right. They make a lot of noise. And and they're they're they're they're all over the place. So a lot of those soldiers said, I'm done with this. They took the babies from their mamas and they just dashed them against the rock and killed them right there.
SPEAKER_02:But but that That shows, whoops, okay, but that shows that the Psalms come from the human soul.
SPEAKER_16:Exactly.
SPEAKER_02:They're not, they're that you could I don't know how you would say that that sentiment would be from God. Okay, but it's a genuine emotional response to their experience. It's an expression of the soul. And first part I love, last verse, not so much. Not so much.
SPEAKER_11:Well, you know the part that I love about the show is the commercials.
SPEAKER_02:Launch up right. But are are they as beautiful as the Psalms?
SPEAKER_11:No, in no way. But but we have to go to them because they allow us the time to be on the radio. Exactly. Okay, so this is 1070 KDH, and we'll be right back.
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SPEAKER_06:Oh yes, see, that was music when music was music.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, like the when they knew how to write a a song.
SPEAKER_17:And performance.
SPEAKER_11:And performances.
SPEAKER_02:Right. So does one say happy All Souls Day? No. No. Is there a greeting of any? No. No. Okay.
SPEAKER_11:No.
SPEAKER_02:And what is it exactly?
SPEAKER_11:Well, you gotta remember. Which is today. Which uh i it's really interesting because Halloween is actually Hollow All Saints Eve. All Hollows Eve. Right. Hollow is Saints, holy. Okay? So we get our Halloween from All Saints Day, which is the next day, because it was thought of that the night before the All Saints Day, the celebration of the men and women of the light, that especially the connection between the dead and the living was especially thin, and people would come, especially the evil spirits, were let loose until the saints came and conquered it with the light. And so that's where we got Halloween, all Hollows Eve.
SPEAKER_02:Mario, did your church do what you always do?
SPEAKER_11:No, because that's not my church anymore.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I know how you feel. I know how you feel.
SPEAKER_11:We used to, we used to have on Halloween at at St. Cyril's, we used to have a a thing where I would invite all the children to come dressed as superheroes because their mommies don't like you know the evil stuff. Of course. But dressed as superheroes. And I always would say that the superheroes were the helpers of the angels. And so what we would do on Halloween was that before the light of Christ came on November 1st, which is the Hall Saints Day, that especially some of the evil tried to take over. And so I would invite all the kids, and we had all the kids make uh swords out of cardboard. And all the kids, I had about 50, 50, 100, 150 kids, and they were all dressed in superhero customs, and they would at the end of Mass at 7 o'clock on Halloween on Halloween, I would have them all come to the front of the altar after Mass and raise up their swords, and they would say a prayer to St. Michael. And Saint Michael is the is the angel that is considered to be, you know, against Satan, fighting Satan. And then as they finished the prayer from the back of the church would come several of our men dressed all in black with black capes, going, and the kids would all turn around and go, Let us defend the church of God. And then the men were were they were all uh instructed to run away, and all the kids would run after them, you know, trying to kill the presence of evil, and then they would all that we had a sp a jail set up in the parish hall, and they would chase all the evil spirits into the jail, and then we'd have a party.
SPEAKER_02:And I promise you, everybody there misses that. I I guarantee you they miss that.
SPEAKER_11:We had a we had a ball. I know. I bet you did.
SPEAKER_17:So All Saints Day is not about All Souls Day. Those are different days. All saints.
SPEAKER_11:All Saints. All Saints is the see in the Catholic Church, we have uh the well, the theology is that before you enter into heaven, um you must you have to be totally purified as to who you are as a human being. And so All Souls Day is a person when they die, they go to what we call purgatory. And purgatory is, listen to the words, purgatory. It's a place of cleansing. And if you enter into purgatory, you're already, you're in the period of cleansing, and then All Saints Day is to celebrate the people that are in heaven, and All Souls Day is to celebrate all the people who are in the church, some of them may be in purgatory.
SPEAKER_17:So it's like the waiting room of a doctor's office.
SPEAKER_11:Well, no. No.
SPEAKER_02:So the third the 31st is all Hollows Eve. Right. And then the first is all Saints Day. And then today being the second.
SPEAKER_11:All Soul's Day.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And how do you know that there is no substance to Halloween, that it's empty? Because it's hollow.
SPEAKER_11:Oh.
SPEAKER_02:Hollow. All it's Halloween. All Halloween.
SPEAKER_11:Didn't Jesus, didn't Jesus say something like, Father, forgive them?
SPEAKER_17:Exactly.
SPEAKER_03:Actually, I do.
SPEAKER_17:I do. You do know what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_03:Well, yes, I did.
SPEAKER_17:Alright, so uh do you have a psalm going back to the question that bothers you? Father Mario.
SPEAKER_11:No.
SPEAKER_17:And that I'm gonna go to pass.
SPEAKER_11:I am not, I I I have to admit this. Uh I uh the Psalms have not been a tremendously central piece of my prayer life.
SPEAKER_02:But but don't they make up a large chunk of the mass?
SPEAKER_11:Uh oh yeah. Yeah. Well, they make up a chunk of the mass, but they it's just never part been part of my uh spirituality. Right.
SPEAKER_17:So why he's grabbing the mic and shoving that thing on.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it was coming off, it was broken.
unknown:But you still don't touch the mic.
SPEAKER_02:That's you have very sensitive ears, David. You have very sensitive ears. Yes, Rudy, go ahead.
SPEAKER_04:I was gonna say also part part of the um what the church, the Catholic Church does on a daily basis is something called the liturgy of the hours.
SPEAKER_11:Yes.
SPEAKER_04:And it's it's something where at specific time, early in the morning, 9 a.m., 12, 3 p.m., sunset and before bed, there's this is done daily, and during each liturgy of the hours, there are specific hymns, psalms, canticles, scripture readings, and response readings. So it it's really the Psalms really and and I guess this is kind of th there's a lot to this tradition, but it really is a central part of of the daily worship that the church goes into to to maintain that continual let's call it communion, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_11:You know, Rudy, uh I I was thinking that it's it's really it's really shame on me because yeah, the priests are supposed to sell to do the liturgy of the hours and I don't. Mainly because when I was a young priest, the bishop gave us uh uh permission to substitute uh uh forty-five minutes of uh scripture reading daily instead of doing the the liturgy of the hours. So that's what I've always done is do Lexio Div Lexio Divina. So I just wanted to explain that because Rudy is exactly right. The official prayer of the church is called the Divine Office, and it's chiefly made up of Psalms and readings.
SPEAKER_02:Rudy, I I'm not clear on something. The you you said the uh liturgy of the hours. Yeah. Okay. Well I'm not I'm not clear on it. Like, is that done every day, every certain time of day, or every single day. Really go ahead.
SPEAKER_04:Every single day at specific times of the day, all over the world, at the same time, in those particular time zones, it's it's and there's some um I normally fall into your bracket. It's it's it's not something that I pay a lot of attention to. Um recently, lately, and I would say within the last maybe two years, I've I've listened to more of the liturgy of the hours, especially the morning prayers. And frankly, before before I start, you know, getting on my phone and looking at emails, and it's just it's it really is a nice way to just listen to Psalms and canticles and and and the daily scriptures. It kind of at least to me it's helped me kind of put me into a into into into kind of like a good state of mind for the day, you know.
SPEAKER_02:It's meditative.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it's meditative. And there's a lot of research really behind and and I don't want to detract the conversation when we only have a couple minutes, but there's a lot of research done towards how healthy an individual is with particular music, with particular hymns, with particular canticles. I mean, music is is healing, and I know this isn't the Beatles, and it's not uh John Lennon, you know, singing craziness and and everybody thinking it's divine music there, but but I think there really is something sacred about it that connects spiritually to God. I mean, we may not feel it, we may not sense it, but it's definitely doing something to our soul.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. There's a prayer that we recite in the liturgy in Judaism. He who makes peace in the high heavens, may he also make peace. Uh here, we have two minutes. Okay. Uh and the most beautiful singing rendition I have ever heard of that song, of that prayer, was to the Beatles Blackbird. But in Hebrew. So it was taking the music of the Beatles Blackbird and the lyrics was the Osa Shalom. It was incredibly beautiful. Rudy, again with the with the liturgy of the hours, uh, is it the same? I know, is it the same for same verses, same liturgy everywhere you go? No. Oh.
SPEAKER_11:No, no, it would be different by No, it's the same, it's the same liturgy, but it's it it goes for an entire year. It's a cycle, it's a whole book.
SPEAKER_02:Correct. Right. It's a whole book. Which brings me to a question for all of you, real quick. Uh David, you were talking about how the Psalms, there's a Psalm for that. Yeah. For every emotion.
SPEAKER_14:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I I have seen it in in Jewish books. Are there like Christian books, Catholic books that'll say, you know, here's a psalm for this, here's a psalm for that?
SPEAKER_17:Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can find that pretty easily uh in the back of some of some of the books.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah. Who's the uh show director next week? Uh me me? No. Well, you just uh we'll figure it out. I think it's me. I think it's I think it's you, Dave. I think it's me, yes. I think you do we shouldn't you shouldn't shirk your responsibility.
SPEAKER_17:I I am not traveling the next two weeks.
SPEAKER_11:It's wonderful to have you home. It's good to be back. Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_17:And the bears from Gatlinburg are glad that I'm back too.
SPEAKER_11:Duh Bears.
SPEAKER_17:The Dah Bears.
SPEAKER_11:Dah Bears. Folks, you've been listening to the show of faith here on 1070 KNTH, and uh every week we bring to you some really interesting dialogue. So keep us in your prayers this week because you know what? You are going to be always in ours.
SPEAKER_13:Find us at am 1070 the answer.com. Download our apps, stream us 247, KNTH, and K two seventy seven D E F M.