The Beauty of Our Catholic Heritage - Lent: It's Not Too Late!

Fr. Jacob Hsieh is a Norbertine priest of St. Michael’s Abbey teaching religion and Latin at Mary Star of the Sea High School in San Pedro and chant at Ss. Peter and Paul Church in Wilmington. He is a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College and was ordained a priest in 2015.  As we continue the Holy Season of Lent, Fr. Jacob talks with us about Lenten traditions and what they teach us.  In this episode, he speaks about finishing our last few weeks of Lent strong!

Transcript

announcement: 0:34

Welcome to the beauty of our Catholic heritage. Our host is father Jacob Shea, a Norbertine father of St. Michael's Abbey in Orange County, California. Father Shea has a great love for our church's heritage, the beauty of our Catholic heritage with father Jacob Shea

Fr. Jacob Hsieh: 0:53

Welcome back to the beauty of our Catholic heritage here with father Jacob Shea. Let's begin in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Glory be to the Father into the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end. Amen. St. Joseph, pray for us, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Our Lent is almost over. And so we have to really make sure that we use all of our time that we have left and really intensify our deep love for the crucified Christ, and liken our hearts to the sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. It's always like this, that at the beginning of Lent, you think, Oh, I have so many days to go through I have such a long time to go through lead i How am I going to make it through all of Lent with all of my different penances. And then at this time, we think oh, my goodness, lead has passed so quickly. I can't believe that it's almost Holy Week and the tritium already, this is super important that we realize that no matter what has happened in our lens, if we kept up our penances Good job, right, that's the power of God working in you. And you said yes, to God. But if you have failed, that's okay, we all fails. So we just said Jesus in this rest of the land, I give everything to you. I am humble, I know that I'm weak. That's why my lead hasn't gone so well. But I will try again, we always get beautiful fresh starts. And so in the last part of lead, we have the most intense preparation, it actually just crescendos and gets even more powerful. And so we have passion tied. Passiontide is the time of the passion. And this is a very important distinction in the old mass versus the new mass that we have in the fifth week of Lent, we have what is called Passion tide. Okay. And then the week after that, we have Palm Sunday. And then of course, we have the Trudeau him right inside of that week, Palm Sunday always begins Holy Week. And so we must really remember that here there is a distinction between Passiontide and then Holy Week. And we are actually making sure that we are really preparing for Holy Week. In other words, we have a period of preparation, or right before holy week, the week before Holy Week, we already in that mode of the passion. And in the new mass. It's a little bit confusing, because they called Palm Sunday, also Passion Sunday, because you read the passion of St. Matthew, Mark, or Luke. And so they also say that Palm Sunday is called Passion Sunday. And so that confuses things, because then people think that passion tide starts on Palm Sunday, if that's not confusing already. So that was not the tradition. It was really Passiontide was the week of preparation before Palm Sunday. So you got a week to really rev up your engines and really gather up all your spiritual penances and really increase your love and increase your penances more and pray even more during lat. And so here this was to make sure that when Holy Week came along that we weren't just hit with a bag of bricks and unprepared to engage in the deepest mysteries of the faith in the most beautiful and the holiest time of the year. And so what happened on passion, tie tide or on Passion Sunday, which begins Passiontide remember, we'll use the older terminology. Again, Passion Sunday begins Passiontide and this will be a week before Holy Week. What happens is that the images are covered in the church. So we cover all the images with a purple cloth. And this symbolizes many things. First, assemble lies is that we are fasting from the beauty of church. And now it's being covered over because of our sins. Here, the claws represent the fact that we cannot see things clearly in our lives because we have sinned. And this is a very important consideration to make in our world today, because we have so many people who are spiritually blind. If somebody doesn't believe in God, they are spiritually blind, they cannot see what is so clear in front of the How can you look at nature? And how can you look at the beauty of the universe and the stars and things like this, and see the order of the universe that stars are not just random, they always do the same thing right in the sky, they're rotating, you know, in their orbits, or whatever it is, right. And they're doing all of these things, and always in an ordered way, the sun rises and sets and then the moon also has its phases, and it always does it in a beautiful order. All of these things are not random. Or, for example, a tree right always grows in this particular way the roots grow down, the branches grow up. And that's not by accident. It's not an accident, that trees are always like this, or that pine trees are always like this. Something is in control. And so you really are able to be led from the creation that you see around you to the Create Tor. Here. When we really have the eyes of faith, we begin to see things more clearly. When we see things with the eyes of Jesus, especially suffering and anything that comes our way, death, suffering, any kind of thing that gives us pain. When we see it with spiritual eyes, we see that God wants us to use it, to help others grow into saints, and then also to make us into saints and make us more humble and more trusting in Him. Thus, we need to see everything with spiritual eyes. And when we don't we sin we complain, we get angry, we get bitter, we hold revenge in our hearts, we hold those grudges, which just chain us down to the ground and fill our hearts with such darkness. We really put these veils over our eyes. And here we see that what sin does is it does not let us see things clearly. It obscures our vision. And so the more that we sin, the more we cannot see things in this world clearly, we only see what we want to see. And we even make up what we want to see many times and it's not even really what's the case. And so what looks to be happiness many times is actually something that causes us the deepest of pain. Here we must see with the eyes of Jesus and Mary, we must see our sufferings in everything that is happening in this world, with the eyes of Jesus and Mary, constantly with their eyes, not ours because our eyes are farsighted, near sighted. We have such bad vision right for me, I have really bad vision. I'm just practically blind, right? And so here we have to really see with the eyes of Jesus and Mary. Thus when we see in Passiontide when we see in Passiontide the veils go over the statues reminded of our sins. And we reminded that it is only through Christ's Passion, death and resurrection, that those veils will be lifted and removed. And that's exactly what happened. liturgically on Easter vigil at the Gloria right when the ringing of the bells finally happens again. All of the veils will be removed from the statues and everything will be unveiled so beautifully, so powerfully. And we will be able to see because of the power of Christ's Passion, death and ultimately, His resurrection. Right? When we are able, especially with the resurrection of Christ, we're able to see that we're not made for this world. We're made for heaven, and we're made for our bodies to be in heaven with God eternally. Right? We will treat our bodies purely and beautifully when we realize that our bodies are supposed to be glorified in heaven with Jesus and Mary. And so Here we see that the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord will give us the true lens through which we are to see everything. Do you see everything in terms of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus? When you look at your family, your children, do you see the resurrection of their body? By faith, right? You hope we hope that we all experienced the resurrection of our bodies? Right? The glorified body, that all of us will receive a glorified body? Do we see everything in terms of that? Or do we treat our bodies like trash? Do we treat them as temples of iniquity instead of temples of sanctity? Here, we must indeed see everything in terms of the resurrection of Jesus, also his passion and death, but indeed, the resurrection, and that's when the veils are removed. So what that's why in churches we have to keep this tradition it's very important. Many people say that oh, it looks like ghosts. When the church when you put these claws over the statues, it looks like ghosts. I'm so scared right? Here we have a such a beautifully liturgically deep, dramatic right? Tradition of covering the statues. We should do this because all the saints saw this, right? St. Paul JPO saw this scene to Reza LIS, you saw this, they all saw the church cover the statues a week before Palm Sunday. Right? This was the time of the passion, you're already meditating on the passion. Remember, the only things that you don't cover in the church are the Stations of the Cross because they're you're meditating on the passion, the statues, the crucifix, all of the paintings, all of those things, they are covered. The only things not covered is the Stations of the Cross. Thus, during Passiontide, we meditate more deeply on the Passion of Our Lord, which is the reason right? Why did Christ come, the reason why he came, was to blot our sins so that that veil can be taken away that covering that purple covering can be taken away. So again, because of Christ's passion, that is His suffering, His death, and resurrection, our veil or the veil of sin can be taken away from our eyes. Now, the other thing is that in the Gospel for passion, Sunday, that's the Sunday before Palm Sunday, one more time. In that gospel, the people hated Jesus for telling the truth, basically, right. They hated Jesus for telling the truth, and then there were going to throw them off a cliff. And so what did he do? He hid himself. That's what the Gospel says, Our Lord Himself. And so this is what happens on passion. Sunday. Our Lord tells the truth that people don't like it, they're going to kill him. But he hides himself because it's not yet his time. And again, this brings to mind the reality that sins make Jesus hide. In other words, we can't find him when we commit sins. Right? It's not that Jesus hides, but really, that we cover our eyes and he's gone. Thus, we must remember that our sins caused Jesus to depart from us, right instead, right, we must do good things, and we must go to Jesus, we must go to Jesus and not let them hide from us. But we must indeed open our lives in good works. Another beautiful signification of the veils, is of course, the temple veil. Now the temple veil was a very beautiful cloth that separated the inner sanctuary from the Holy of Holies. And remember, the Holy of Holies was where the Ark of the Covenant was put an only one time of year, on the Day of Atonement, could the priest go into the holy Holies, Holy of Holies, goes through this heavy veil, this heavy curtain, go through it and then witness the glory of the Ark of the Covenant. Remember, the ark of the covenant represents Mary, because inside the Ark of the Covenant is the manor the pieces of manna, right that represents the Eucharist, the foreshadowing of the Eucharist. The 10 commandments in this will represent the law of God both old but also new, especially the new law of grace, right, not the Old Testament. But now The new law of grace, grace is in the new law. Here God wants to write his law on our hearts in this is done through grace. When we are able to do what God commands, this is only now because God gives us grace that is God gives us help. Remember, grace means divine help. And so inside the Ark of the Covenant is the 10 commandments. And then this is where, of course, we are being reminded that this is a foreshadowing of the law of grace that is to be written on our hearts. And then you have the rod of Aaron, Aaron is a priest. And so here we will see the high priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this is the rod of Aaron, which will blossom. And so in the Ark of the Covenant, we see our Lord as Eucharist. As a victim, you can say, as high priest and as divine law maker, and the one who gives us grace. So those three items are in there. And so the Ark of the Covenant again, prefigures, our lady who has within her holy womb, our Lord Jesus Christ, just like the Ark of the Covenant has those three objects, the man, the 10 commandments, and then the rod of Aaron, the brother of Moses, then remember, we're talking about the veil, that's the beautiful, beautiful Ark of the Covenant inside, adorned with gold, right, beautiful wood and gold. And so the priests, the high priest only could go into the Holy of Holies, once a year on the Day of Atonement, and when the high priest goes in there, right, this is to atone for the people's sin. That's why it's called the Day of Atonement. Here, we see that with regards to the Old Testament, that curtain represents the barrier. And so that barrier exists. And it was a very thick curtain, it was probably several inches thick, and it could not be ripped easily at all, just like when you put lots of fabric together and you sew it together, it's going to be very strong. And this was a very thick fabric. So in other words, nobody could break this fabric. Nobody could rip this fabric except God. Nobody could rip this fabric so that we could go into the Holy of Holies until God ripped it open for us. And when was the Holy of Holies, right exposed for us, when were we able to go into the Holy of Holies when our Lord died, and then there was a huge earthquake, and then the temple veil was ripped, from top to bottom. This is the beauty of our Lord's death that it opens up the holy of holies to us. And so this is why, at the Easter vigil at the Gloria in Excelsis Dale Glory to God in the highest, you will see all the veils ripped away, they're taken off. That's so beautiful, the divine drama comes alive. We really relive that moment. We are mystically living the mysteries of Christ, right. That's why the liturgy is so important. We can't just dumb it down. Right, we have to have it in all its beautiful glory. We have to have the bells ringing, the Oregon blaring and all of the veils being ripped off. It's so powerful, so that you can see clearly everything on the altar. There's a really amazing YouTube of the Holy Week for the Institute of Christ, the King. It's an amazing congregation of priests, and they do the old maths. And for Easter Vigil, they covered all these flowers, there are so many flowers on the altar. So they had to cover them all right, because it's too difficult to just put all the flowers onto the altar during the Gloria. And so what happens is that all the flowers are already put on the altar, and they cover them in all of these purple claws. And as soon as the Gloria comes for the Easter Vigil, then all the coverings have to come off and so they uncover all of the flowers during the beautiful Oregon solo. So the call the Oregon is at full blast and all of the veils are just being ripped off so you really get this amazing power of God ripping the veil off because he wants us to be right there with him in the Holy of Holies This is the powerful signification that's why we have to have all these veils. It's so powerful when we just have all the time traditions of the church live to their full glory and grander. Now in some places, in the medieval times, they would also have the coverings the purple coverings covering everything, they would have it at the beginning of Lent already. Okay, so it was kind of interesting that some places already had the purple coverings already at the beginning of Lent. In most places, the coverings the purple veils come at Passiontide. And then we see that some of them covered a lot. So for example, in the Norbertine tradition, in my orders, tradition, some places would cover the entire sanctuary from top to bottom, so you couldn't even see into the altar. And so you'd have this huge purple veil, just cover everything. And then when the temple veil was torn into, then they would release that veil, they would let it fall down dramatically, all this amazing fabric, and then you could see the beauty of the altar there revealed, it's just so amazing to see all those very powerful liturgical practices. And so you can see how much they wanted to relive the liturgy, you know, none of this plain stuff, but here, maximum beauty for the God of Everything good, right. And so here we see the beauty of Passiontide. Thus, we must increase our penances. Right? The more that we see these veiled statues, the more we must turn from sin, even to the point of shedding our blood, as St. Paul says, Have we resisted sin, even to the point of shedding our blood, we must even shed our blood, or rather than commit any sin whatsoever, that's how much we love Jesus, okay, then we get into Holy Week. Now, Holy Week, indeed, we should even intensify our love for God, even more. And so we begin with, of course, Palm Sunday. And we have this the Gospel of St. Matthew, the passion of St. Matthew, that is read, or is really should be song. And all of these beautiful traditions, he was really, really see that you should read all of the Passion accounts during Holy Week, this is what would happen, you would read on the beginning of Holy Week, of course, Sunday, that is Palm Sunday, you would read the passion of St. Matthew, all the time, in the new maths, you know, people say that all the new maths is richer, because it has more readings. Well, actually, you only read either Matthew, Mark, or Luke on Palm Sunday. And then you always have St. John on Good Friday. But in the old mass, you always read every single passion throughout all of holy weeks, you always read st Matthew's passion on Palm Sunday, or sing it, we want to sing it to okay. But then on the rest of the week, you would read the god, the passion of St. Mark and the passion of St. Luke. And then on Good Friday, you would have passion of St. John. So in the entire week of Holy Week, you go through all of the passions of Christ, and you go through all of the accounts of Christ's passion. And this is the way that we should do it. And so here, we should sit down with the Bible, if you want to intensify your Holy Week, or read all of the passions, or you can go to a Latin Mass, where you can go to and listen to all of the passions. And you will also hear the beauty of the Passion if you can at a sun mass and missa cantata, or you can go to a solemn high mass for the beautiful event of Palm Sunday. And they're really here, the ancient chants, and really let your for your soul be formed by these ancient chants. And so here, we will eventually go into the glory of Holy Week and the magnificence of Holy Week, and all the power that is contained there in and we will delve into all of the symbolism that is contained in Holy Week. And so here, let's not doubt the mercy of God. Let's not doubt the power of God, to really use these last days of Lent with all of our hearts with every single thing that we have every ounce of energy, really ramp up the penances rev up those spiritual engines, get ready to even give more to Jesus during passion chi and The beautiful festivities of Holy Week, and to even increase our penances and to do even more. So if we promised 30 minutes a prayer. Let's move it up to 40 minutes of prayer. If we prayed one rosary, let's move it up to two. If we prayed three rosaries, okay, let's do another rosary on top of it. If we have any other prayers we want to add now we can add that add another spiritual reading on top right, we got to keep on building those spiritual muscles, we cannot get lacks. In these periods where the penance intensifies, we have to stay on top of our game and make sure we don't get lacks. We can't, we can't stay the same. Remember to stay the same in the spiritual life is to move backwards. We always have to constantly be moving up, up, up up for the glory of Jesus, up, up up, never the same. And this is what Passion Week does for us, and especially holding me the liturgy has become even more beautiful. And we also see that we begin fasting from the beauty of the statues. And also in the old mass, certain prayers are also taken out. So for example, the beauty of the prayers of the foot of the altar are abbreviated. So the priest says, Intro evil out Otani day I will go to the altar of the Lord, and then a day and quite difficult even to the ma'am to the God who makes happy my youth. Then after that, usually the psalm follows Psalm 42. Right. However, in Passiontide, the Psalms, the Psalms speaks of hope, and you know, hoping God and the enemies being destroyed, the Psalm is actually taken out, and it's becomes like a requiem, right, that is a mass for the dead. So the mass for the dead you do not say the UD come in Psalm. And so that is a shortened in the old math. So it kind of becomes like a funeral. You're preparing for the funeral of our Lord Jesus Christ. So let's pray for one another, that we may have an intense period of Lent even more, the lesser time that we have during Lent, left, right. The more that the days are numbered. The more we get to Jesus with a bigger smile, and looking forward to the glory of His resurrection. Amen.

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You've been listening to the beauty of our Catholic heritage with father Jacob Shea. If this program has been a blessing to you, please encourage others to listen as well. For more information, visit spirit filled hearts.org That's spirit filled hearts.org May God be with you this day, and always. You are listening to the spirit filled Radio Network touching the world for God. Each and every day, powerful moments like this are heard on spirit filled radio. Listen to this exchange between Rick Howard of OC Catholic and Deacon Steve Greco have empowered by the Spirit,

Deacon Steve: 29:02

the mortality of one's life during this pandemic, and just in general. And of course, as you get older, that mortality is something that is ever present. And you just don't know the day an hour you don't know how long your life is going to be. But this life is so short versus eternity. People spend their life working and just slaving for money and slaving for everything else. But they don't really understand that they need to be working

Unknown: 29:30

for God, man humiliate you for a moment. It doesn't take a lot to go ahead and remember that if you ask me to be humble. Number pleasant. Exactly. But you are going to die someday. And it's not that long from now all things considered. Yeah, considering that Jesus was here 2000 years ago, your date of death is probably sooner than that future, right. 1000s of years from now. There probably won't be anybody who remembers you mean what was radio mean? What What were these little books? My point is, nobody is going to remember you except God, a man and you're going to be a clear memory and a clear relationship and present with him forever. Why wouldn't we trade every thing in this momentary world?

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