SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: Just a couple of announcements before I give the homily on the Word of God today.
SPEAKER_00: Yesterday, as you heard, the past uh several weeks, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the founding of our diocese at the event at the Honda Center, There's More.
SPEAKER_00: And it was an amazing event.
SPEAKER_00: I want to share with you a few of the pictures that we have from the event.
SPEAKER_00: The first one is from St.
SPEAKER_00: Joseph.
SPEAKER_00: That sea of blue that you see there.
SPEAKER_00: That's us, St.
SPEAKER_00: Joseph Church.
SPEAKER_00: We had 500 people who registered to come to this event.
SPEAKER_00: And so we took up that whole section of uh, I was gonna say pews, but those aren't pews, those are uh seats at the uh Honda Center.
SPEAKER_00: And then there was somebody that you may know that wanted to say hi to you guys.
SPEAKER_00: Do you guys remember him?
SPEAKER_00: Father Carlos was there, he wanted to say hello to uh his peeps at uh St.
SPEAKER_00: Joseph Church.
SPEAKER_00: There's another person who wanted to say hi to you, too.
SPEAKER_00: You know that guy?
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it was such a beautiful event uh celebrating the past 50 years of our Diocese of Orange and really looking forward to what God is going to do uh in the years ahead.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh for those who went to that celebration yesterday, thank you for coming.
SPEAKER_00: And we look forward to all that God is gonna continue to do in our diocese and also in our parish.
SPEAKER_00: Now, speaking of our parish, it leads me to my second announcement.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is working in very powerful ways in our community, and in one of those ways is Alpha.
SPEAKER_00: Um, now for those of you who are new here and don't know what Alpha is, uh Alpha is a relaxed and welcoming space to explore the big questions about life and faith and meaning.
SPEAKER_00: And we're about to launch our Alpha this Wednesday, September 2nd, and running for 11 weeks, every Wednesday uh for 11 weeks until November 11th.
SPEAKER_00: Um, how many people, I'm just out of curiosity, in this mass here, how many people have have experienced alpha at this mass already?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: All right, okay, good.
SPEAKER_00: Um now for those of you who haven't experienced alpha, every week begins with a beautiful dinner, like a banquet.
SPEAKER_00: And this season we are having like international food.
SPEAKER_00: Like one week will be American food, another week will be Mexican food, another week will be Filipino food, another week will be Vietnamese food.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, now that Father Arun's here, we will also have Indian food.
SPEAKER_00: He's he's gathering some Indian families together to do that for us.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, we also have wine at Alpha as well for those who are above uh 21 years old or over.
SPEAKER_00: And this is just a beautiful space to explore big questions of life.
SPEAKER_00: You know, is there more to life than this?
SPEAKER_00: Who's Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: What's the Bible?
SPEAKER_00: How can I have faith?
SPEAKER_00: What do I do in the midst of suffering?
SPEAKER_00: How do I forgive somebody who's hurt me?
SPEAKER_00: Big questions of life and faith and meaning.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you haven't had a chance to experience Alpha, I would love to encourage you to try it out.
SPEAKER_00: Like I mentioned, there was 500 who registered for the Honda Center event.
SPEAKER_00: Between the two courses that we've had of Alpha since January, we've had nearly 500 people who've gone through our Alpha course here at St.
SPEAKER_00: Joseph's Church.
SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of people, right?
SPEAKER_00: If you haven't had that chance to experience it, I'd love to invite you to experience it as well.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you have gone through the experience of Alpha, I would love to invite you to come back to either serve, invite somebody to come with you, uh, and to come along with them.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, two new things we're doing for Alpha this season, uh, the third season of Alpha.
SPEAKER_00: Our confirmation teens will be going through Alpha as well.
SPEAKER_00: At the same time, we're gonna have about a hundred teens that'll be going through it.
SPEAKER_00: They'll be upstairs and the adults will be downstairs, and we're also offering child care for parents who have little ones but aren't able to uh have a place to have them cared for, we're gonna offer child care as well.
SPEAKER_00: So I invite you to please pray and consider you know, is the Lord inviting me to experience Alpha, to come back and serve, or to bring someone along with me?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, those are the two announcements for today.
SPEAKER_00: And now I'm gonna share with you a brief homily on the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Theme of my homily today is Did Jesus establish a church?
SPEAKER_00: Or did he just come to teach us about God and salvation and love?
SPEAKER_00: What do you guys think?
SPEAKER_00: Did Jesus come to establish a church?
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Catholic Church makes a very bold claim.
SPEAKER_00: And the claim is this Jesus came to establish a church, that church lasts even until this day.
SPEAKER_00: And all of you um very handsome and beautiful looking people here.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, you're welcome.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Belong to that church, the Catholic Church.
SPEAKER_00: That's the that's the claim of the Catholic Church.
SPEAKER_00: Now, where does that claim come from?
SPEAKER_00: Where how can we substantiate that?
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna dive into the Word of God to see uh how we can substantiate that today.
SPEAKER_00: From our gospel of Matthew and what that means for us, practically speaking.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Could I invite us to read this together from Matthew chapter 16?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to them, But who do you say that I am?
SPEAKER_00: Simon Peter said in reply, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
SPEAKER_00: Begins with a question, and now let's go to our next verse.
SPEAKER_00: Together?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to him in reply, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly father.
SPEAKER_00: Notice his name there.
SPEAKER_00: What's his name there in this passage?
SPEAKER_00: Simon.
SPEAKER_00: But in the next verse, Jesus changes his name.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, together?
SPEAKER_00: And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the nether world shall not prevail against it.
SPEAKER_00: So he changes his name from Simon to Peter.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody here know what the word or the name Peter means?
SPEAKER_00: It means rock.
SPEAKER_00: Peter means rock.
SPEAKER_00: In the Greek of the New Testament, it's Petros, and in the Aramaic, which is the language that Jesus would have spoken, it would have been Kephah.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus would have said to Peter, you are Kepha, and upon this Kepha, I will build my church.
SPEAKER_00: But when you translate it to English, you lose the word play, right?
SPEAKER_00: You are Peter, and upon this rock, and he's saying, You are a rock.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you can translate, you are rocky, not the rock.
SPEAKER_00: And upon this rock, I will build my church.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came and he established a church, and he established it on the rock, the foundation of Peter.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came and he established a church.
SPEAKER_00: And then check out this next verse and how it connects with our first reading from Isaiah together.
SPEAKER_00: I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember our first reading from Isaiah chapter 22?
SPEAKER_00: The Lord says, Eliakim, I will give you the keys to the kingdom of David.
SPEAKER_00: David is still the king, but you receive the keys.
SPEAKER_00: You're like the prime minister.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna serve him, you still have a position of authority.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus does the same thing here.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is saying to Peter, I'm the king.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the king, but I give to you the keys.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be my prime minister, you're gonna be the head of this church that I'm going to found, Peter.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So we've just established from Matthew chapter 16.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came, he established a church.
SPEAKER_00: And he established it on the rock and the foundation of Peter, which means rock.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Now how do we get from there to say that this church is the Catholic Church?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, see if you can follow with me, alright?
SPEAKER_00: After Peter, he had his successors, the people who came after him.
SPEAKER_00: We know their names.
SPEAKER_00: Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixus.
SPEAKER_00: We know the people that came after Peter.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a beautiful depiction of this.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many people here have ever been to Rome.
SPEAKER_00: How many people here have ever been to Rome before?
SPEAKER_00: There's this church in Rome called St.
SPEAKER_00: Paul outside the walls.
SPEAKER_00: And at this church, there's this depiction of all of the successors of Peter, all the way down to the current successor of an unbroken lineage.
SPEAKER_00: Who's the current successor of Peter today?
SPEAKER_00: Pope Leo.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to show you a few pictures to demonstrate this connection.
SPEAKER_00: So here we have Pope Leo, right?
SPEAKER_00: Our current Pope.
SPEAKER_00: And the one before him?
SPEAKER_00: Francis.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's go to the next one.
SPEAKER_00: Before Francis, we had Benedict.
SPEAKER_00: Before Benedict, we had John Paul II, the great charismatic Pope, right?
SPEAKER_00: And here's more popes down through the ages.
SPEAKER_00: And then you finally go around the church and you get to the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: To the very beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Now, can you read the names?
SPEAKER_00: I guess maybe if you're closer, you can probably read it.
SPEAKER_00: Who's the first one?
SPEAKER_00: Peter.
SPEAKER_00: Petrus in the Latin.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's there.
SPEAKER_00: Then second, Linus.
SPEAKER_00: Cletus.
SPEAKER_00: Clemens.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you're you're you're following my line of argumentation here.
SPEAKER_00: Our church can trace our lineage.
SPEAKER_00: From Pope Leo.
SPEAKER_00: Down through the ages.
SPEAKER_00: All the way to Peter.
SPEAKER_00: And to the words that Jesus spoke to Peter.
SPEAKER_00: You are Peter, you are the rock! And upon this rock, I will build my church.
SPEAKER_00: Are you aware?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus established the Catholic Church.
SPEAKER_00: And we can trace the lineage all the way back to Peter, our first Pope, our first Papa, our first father.
SPEAKER_00: That blows me away.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that blows you away.
SPEAKER_00: That we can trace it all the way back.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: None of this is to say, oh wow, look, look how great we are.
SPEAKER_00: Look how wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's not about that.
SPEAKER_00: It's about this.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus is faithful to his church and to his promises.
SPEAKER_00: You know, when you were married, you say, I promise to be faithful to you.
SPEAKER_00: In good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life.
SPEAKER_00: That's Jesus' promise of faithfulness to his church, to you and to me.
SPEAKER_00: Every time we come to Mass, we're coming into the church that Jesus founded.
SPEAKER_00: And that means Jesus has something for you.
SPEAKER_00: Whether that's in the Word of God you hear, the homily, the Eucharist, the greeting, the music, whatever it is, Jesus has something for you and his church.
SPEAKER_00: So today, we want us to open our hearts to receive that grace from Jesus and to give thanks that we get to be in the church that Jesus Himself founded.
SPEAKER_00: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.