SPEAKER_01 0:00

Yeah, just remember to start the recording when you're all side. Okay. Name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Come, Holy Spirit, for the hearts of your faithful. Kind on them the fire of your love, send forth your spirit, and they shall be created, and thou shalt renew the face of the earth. Let us pray. O God, shut the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit. Grant us in the same spirit to be truly wise, never to rejoice in his consolation through Christ our Lord. Amen. Our Lady, seat of wisdom, pray for us. In the name of the Father and name of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So my understanding is that we're if we're tracking the book, it's uh pages 42 to 44, which is interpreting scripture. So the last time we talked about the books of the Bible and how that we came to 46 books of the Old Testament, right? And um and how many in the books in the New Testament and how we got there. Um, but I think there's an the question is how do we interpret the Bible or how do we use it? Now I I think as we know, I think as a I guess a Catholic church in America, we we seem, you know, Bible knowledge isn't always the best, I think. Um, you know, primarily because I think going through Catholic school, what are we, we're really focused on sacramental prep to a large extent. So but I think one effort that we're trying to work on as we improve our delivery of catechesis is how do we connect things to the Bible? You know, one of our parishioners, um, she's a fervent Catholic now, but she um kind of fell prey to the fundamentalist arguments for quite some time and and kind of strayed away from the church and practiced a form of uh of you know um, you might say a fundamentalist Protestantism, and then she made her way back to the Catholic Church. Um because, of course, we have a lot of great resources now through Catholic answers, um, some really great scripture scholars like Scott Hahn, for example, he's he's been amazing in that area. Um other apologists like Patrick Madrid, Jimmy Aiken, uh, Carl Keating. Um, and recently, of course, we've had Brant Petrie, uh Dr. John Bergma. So we have a lot of fantastic scripture scholars in the Catholic Church who are doing phenomenal work now to help us connect what we believe and what we've been taught in the catechism of the Catholic Church and the Baltimore Catechism, what we've been raised on, how does this all connect with sacred scripture? You know, I like to joke with our young people when I go to the middle school and I ask them a Bible question and I hear nothing. I get, you know, it's like crickets, chirp, chirp, you know, you know, and then I launch it, you kids gotta get to know your Bible, right? You know, because that's that's uh that's a thing, right? Is I think that's been somewhat of a and a lot of times that's what Catholics are accused of, that we don't know our Bible. And a lot of you know really well-meaning Catholics get get picked off from evangelical Protestant communities because they're shooting Bible passages at them, rapid fire, and they don't know how to respond. And so seeds of doubt about about the the church, about you know, the the sacraments and everything, okay. So I think first because what's one of the things that, of course, evangelical Protestantism is based on is okay, the doctrines that Martin Luther proposed back in the 16th century, because he was trying to, his project was he's breaking off of the Catholic Church. Once he decided to break off of the Catholic Church, then he had to come up with new principles for which authority could be founded. And one of which, of course, was sola scriptura, the Bible alone as a single rule of faith. In addition to that is a doctrine which uh I think is called perpiscuity of sacred scripture, that the idea that the Holy Spirit, any baptized believer, should be able to interpret the Bible and the meaning of the Bible should be immediately apparent to the reader. And so the idea would be that if it's the same Holy Spirit inspiring all the believers to read the Bible, they should all come to the same conclusion. But as we've seen, that's problematic just by looking at how many Protestant churches you can see, right, and how many times they break off and divide.

unknown 4:58

Right?

SPEAKER_01 4:59

So for example, you know, I I uh I spent some time living in Fredericksburg, Virginia, before, it was right before I about I lived there for about six years before I entered the seminary. Um it's a it's like the the border of like southern culture, right? It's right so as you're going down 95, as soon as you hit Fredericksburg, you you find the real South because Northern Virginia is not the real Virginia, right? This is the fake Virginia, is where people like me, the Northerners, live in Virginia, okay? That's why it's Northern Virginia, right? Okay. If you look on the map, Northern Virginia is actually Winchester. Just look at it on the map. You know, when you look, so when you look, it's because of 95 and DC and all that. So that's my little sidebar joke about Northern Virginia. Um, you know, because hey, how are you doing? I'm here, you know. So sorry, you know, so um because around here you don't see too many people who are speaking, you know, real good southern accent, so you have to push south. So and so I I remember there's a there's a I remember at the um on Route 3 and Salem Church Road, there were there were like a Baptist church across the street from a Baptist church. And then you could drive west on Route 3 just a little while longer and be another Baptist church. And I'm thinking to myself, well, well, wait a minute, why don't you guys, can't you all get together and have like one big Baptist church? But I don't think that's the way it works, right? Um because, you know, of course, you know, because there are St. Mary's is there, St. Patrick's is over here, you know, and I'm thinking, well, there are all these Baptist churches everywhere. There's all these little churches. Um of course when we have big, we have these mega churches, right? You have McLean, McLean Bible Church, you know, not a sermon, just a thought, that guy, right? You know? Oh, this is going on online, I'm in trouble now. Um, I don't get sued, right? I didn't mention his name, though. Okay. Yeah, you know, that guy, right? So we have all these places. So, um, and what are all these places that are based on these these principles of sola scriptura and the idea that the scripture is immediately apparent to the reader? And we find, of course, this is not happening in reality. Right? We're seeing these multiplicity of churches who come up with different doctrines because there's not a unity of understanding of where the Bible comes from, right, and and what what how where these things are coming from. Um we're relying on, because every church outside of the Catholic Church is founded by a person, right, who is not divine. Like quote, Lutherism is founded by Luther. Presbyterianism is John Calvin, right? John Wesley for Methodist, for example. Henry VIII for the Anglican Communion. You can point to these folks here, and you can identify a human founder. And we, of course, as the Catholic Church, our claim is that the Catholic Church is founded by Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God. So we have a divine founder of the Catholic Church. Sorry, I'm getting a little messed up here with the setup. So we need to make sure that we are understand sacred scripture and that we're able to uh interpret it in the light of what has been established. Because, of course, we know the sacred tradition is very important. Because we remember that the gospel was not first written down, right, that it was orally proclaimed, that Jesus taught the apostles at the day of Pentecost, the apostles were sent out to proclaim the good news. And it was only until later on that what we call the sacred scriptures began to be set down in terms of the New Testament. The Gospels, the letters of Paul, etc. We've talked about this. So the content of the gospel was first orally transmitted. So, because the Bible didn't just sort of, the New Testament didn't sort of drop down from heaven on the day of Pentecost. You know, it's like boom, there it is. And that's not the way it worked. It was compiled over the years, and of course, what the criteria for what was eligible for read but to be read in the liturgy was what those documents that were of apostolic origin. Because what the so the Bible is also sort of a an outgrowth of the sacred liturgy. So that the people who were in the early days of the church, as the gospels began to be written by the by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as the letters of Paul, right, were he sending those letters to Corinth and Thessalonica and to Rome, that these letters were preserved, held on to, and these were probably read at the sacred liturgy and preserved for our instruction. So it's important for us to understand, first of all, that when we mean the Word of God, that sacred Scripture is first and foremost divinely inspired. So that the primary author of sacred scripture is God Himself. And that our Lord uses the faculties of the author of the sacred book, the author, the human authors of this, uses all their faculties, their intentions, all of that for the purposes of putting down everything that the Lord wishes to reveal about himself. So that's first. So divine inspiration is first and foremost, is important. We also want to say that the Bible is without error. Now, when we mean this, now let's remember that when we're, for example, reading Genesis, we're not reading Genesis chapter 1 as a science book. That we're talking about, we're talking about the doctrines of salvation. So as a professor uh once quipped in my in the seminary, you know, the Bible doesn't tell you how the heavens go, the Bible tells you how to go to heaven. So, so and so that we want to, so that there's a unity of sacred scripture, so everything reinforces itself. All right, so there there is so about the doctrines of God, there is no such thing as an inerrant. So that's really important. That the interpretation the interpretation of the Bible has to be in accord with sacred tradition, of course. Now remember we have, and we'll be covering this later on. We talk about the church, the three legs sort of of the church, which we have the magisterium, that is the Pope and the bishops in union with him, sacred tradition and sacred scripture, all forming this unity of the transmission of the doctrines of the faith for our salvation. So Scripture is in harmony with what has been handed down from Jesus to the apostles, okay? And that the church, as that guarantee, the authority of the church is the guarantee that what we have is true for our salvation. So when we're reading the Bible, we want to keep these things, we're trying to keep these things in mind. That, you know, as it says in 2 Peter, that, you know, there's no private interpretation of sacred scripture in a sense. Right? So when we're reading the Bible, we're looking at it in the light of sake of sacred scripture. Another thing to be looking, I think is important and a great book to reference is Scott Hahn's book, A Father Who Keeps His Promises. I can't recommend this book enough. This book outlines sort of a covenant kingdom biblical theology. And we need to use that as our sort of lens through which we interpret the Bible. Um, is that he really does connect from Genesis to Revelation, like this sort of the scope of what God is doing through sacred scripture. Starting with Adam and Eve, right? Adam and Eve are sort of the king and queen of Eden paradise, right? Which is like a walled city kind of a thing, or just harmony with God, right? That they have dominion over creation. We see how that that is broken by sin. What is the plan of God is to restore that relationship with himself and even doing a even greater, even doing something even greater by uniting himself to our human flesh, that Jesus would become the Son of God, the new Adam. So, and we see how through God now intervening in human history, right, we see how Israel becomes a kingdom with David, right? We see how that kingdom falls apart and how now there's a new covenant, and a that the kingdom of God is now based on the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ, the church as the new Israel, and what's the new Israel moving towards, right? We're moving towards the new Jerusalem, right? The consummation of history when the new Jerusalem, right, the resurrection of the dead, those who rise to the resurrection to life, to eternal uh union with God in that new in that fullness of the kingdom. There's a whole there's it is in a in a whole sentence. There you go. Well, if you read that book, I think that explains that and helps you understand that paradigm of covenant and kingdom. Remember that covenant is an exchange of persons who relate to each other as a family. So we see throughout the Bible how covenants are established by God, we see with Abraham, we see with Moses, we see with David, and eventually we have the new covenant in Christ, seeing sort of this gradual revelation of God into our lives, and ultimately the fullness of that revelation is Jesus Christ. So then if we're looking at individual books of the Bible, then we can now, by having the whole picture, now we can see we can see this in its proper context. So we see the unity of scripture and we see the unity of of doctrine there, um, that we see how everything is fitting together. Even though sometimes things seem a little off or a little weird at times in the Bible, you know, um, and there's different questions that pop up, um, I can address some of those um in a little bit. So is that is how's that when any questions on that so far? Well, I would I would venture a guess, and that would be um just if we can think about what the state of humanity would have been.

unknown 16:41

Like they weren't ready for the messiah.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Well, think think of it this we we are so we have to kind of get out of our 21st century kind of understanding of humanity, right? Our experience is we are we we we're living the high life, right? We're living the high life. I mean, even like if you think about this, like a person who is um who we might consider lower middle class, for example, working a blue-collar job, probably lives better than David the King when you think about it. Did David De King have a toilet, you know, um, a car, um, or even access, and he didn't have, well, I guess he had access to public transportation, he had a chair, or I guess he had a he had a mule, right? Or is I guess you know, but we have to think about what is the state of humanity? Um, you know, as we we could think about you know archaeological, you know, digs about men and you know, about ancient humanity, what that was like, what's it like to live in an ancient world? That's a whole different thing. Like their understanding of the universe is and that that I I can't really I maybe I need someone smarter than me need to explain that part. But you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Do you understand that? Like so like the people who were not prepared. Yeah, so it's a way introducing into the culture, into introducing himself in a way that's understandable to the people who are existing. Like I'll give you example. So let's talk about, like, for example, Genesis chapter one, like the seven days of creation. When you think about that, first of all, um you're communicating a truth, a couple fundamental truths. One, that creation is intentional. Because other you know, religious or you know, pagan cultures might talk about the world happening as a result of two gods fighting each other, and then this is just the you know, kind of like the byproduct. That that's not really a great thing. It's like a kind of we're just kind of accidents, right? Whereas the Bible is saying that creation is intentional because it's because it says, and God said, right? Let there be light, all the and God said. When it says and God said, He's speaking, we so we see kind of a hint of you know the the Trinity, right? And the Spirit hovers over the waters, right? So, but what we're seeing is that there's an intentionality to creation. God intended creation to exist, and the pinnacle of that creation is the creations of man and woman. So, and also identifying things like the stars and the sun and the moon, not as gods or deities to be worshipped, but as created objects for the benefit of man. Those principles are buried in or are at fundamental in that story. Now, if you were trying to explain to you know someone you know to someone 4,000 years ago that God created this singularity that he threw a particle into the singularity that it exploded into a into the big the Big Bang, right? Father George's Lemaitre, you might want to look him up. He's a Belgian physicist who's a priest who came he came up with the Big Bang Theory, not referencing the uh television show. It's a whole other thing, right? So um, yeah, so that aside. Um so you know, to try to explain like the like a particle physics to someone 4,000 years ago, if you had you know a time machine like Doctor Who, the TARDIS, you know, oh right, we're gonna explain to you the Big Bang, it's fantastic. There was a singularity, and there's this like Spock, and then boom, right? No, they're not going, what? That's not, you know, whatever what is in Hebrew, I don't know, or ancient Aramaic, I don't know, or even well, ancient Hebrew. Right, so that's not that's not how how the human the human mind is intelligent, obviously, but not going to, in that level of culture, be able to understand that sort of thing. Does that make sense? Yeah. The aqueduct? Right? Okay. Yeah, because you see the fullness of time. What you're seeing in divine providence, and this is a sidebar thing, is that when at the fullness of time, right, the Son of God becomes incarnate when the Roman Empire exists. So what's great about the Roman Empire at that time is yeah, there's technology in which the roads, there's there's uh people read being able to read and write, right? So there's a lot of things when you think of divine providence, you know, um, yeah, you can see you can see where um you know eventually, when you think about it, it took it took 300 years for Christianity to basically take over the Roman Empire. Which is pretty remarkable when you think about it. Started as, you know, the Son of God with 12 apostles, and they spread the then the whole the gospel spread to the enough to the entire Mediterranean that eventually. Constantine the Great would have a vision and this sign you will be victorious, and then the Edict of Milan happens, and then basically Christianity, Catholicism takes over the Roman Empire, even becomes like the official religion to a certain. That's a miracle of a of a you know, which we really can't understand when you think about it. Because what was interesting is that at least getting off subject a little bit, that actually Catholicism attracted women very much so because they were treated with dignity under Christianity than they were under like pagan religion. Because like if you were explaining Ephesians chapter to chapter 5, you know, the big shocker of that was husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. That's what got the guys upset in church. Not the ladies getting upset that husband women uh husband wives be dismissive of your husbands. They were probably okay with that. It was the husbands love your wives. Then the guys were like, what? What are you talking about? You mean I thought my wife is a slave. No, you're supposed to love her and lay her down life or what? I gotta do that? Oh, so when Ephesians 5 comes up, that's another thing. But anyway, um, yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

Question, Father. Um, you mentioned the uh the New Jerusalem and the and uh New Israel. A couple of months back you talked about the the place that's now occupied by Israelis, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Are those people have nothing to do with that nation as a yeah, that's a whole you could you could do a five-part series on on the history of you see, that's a that that's the history, that's a modern democratic state. Okay? That's not that's that we that's not really connected to the scripture at all. Because it's it it started with the um in the in the 19th century, European Jews were debating the question, how do we can we get ourselves a place to live where we're not discriminating against? Essentially, that that's the short form. And eventually what that movement built into was they began to think we need to go back to the ancient homeland of Israel or Palestine, all right, which was then under the Ottoman Empire, and you had actually illegal immigration to from Europe to living in that area. Then, of course, you had uh World War I and the British take over, right? And then World War II happened, the Holocaust happens, and then of course, you know, as a response to the Holocaust in 1948, Israel becomes a state. And that's and one of the issues why there's a Palestinian conflict is because you know European Jews, you know, moved into areas and pushed out Arab Palestinians from their land, which creates this conflict. And so that's why this thing has happened. So that makes things very that's a very that's like that's like we need to bring in a script, a professor of history who specialized in that, talk about that. That's a short form. So when people are talking about Israel currently, remember we're not talking about that specifically. We're talking about the covenant, right? And the covenant, right, the Davidic kingship, right, is that is what is common to the new Old Testament and the New, because Jesus is a descendant of David, right? In Romans and Galatians, right, Paul is very specific that he is a descendant of David, right? Jesus is the son of David and the Son of God, right? Joseph is the would have been the righteous heir to the kingship of Israel, and then and then you know, because he's adopted by Joseph, he would inherits the crown, okay, of Israel. So Jesus is you know, son of God, son of man, son of David, in in one package. Okay. So that's why the covenant, right, really the New Testament covenant, right, is an is a fulfillment of the old. Okay. So that's so yeah, the state of Israel, that that's a whole different, that's a more of a political thing than a theological thing. Okay? That helps make a distinction, right? But it's it's not a um, it could be a precursor or or you know, that kind of is working behind you know as a precursor to what would happen later. That could be a that could be that could be true. Right? God works in history, and I think that's important to remember that God works in history, because you think about um the Cold War and the fact that we could have very easily had a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union at any point from the late 40s to you know 1989. Um it didn't happen. There are some close calls, you know. Um I mean, you think about movies like um Dr. Strangelove, I know that's a comedy, but it's a pretty scary film when you really think about it. Um it's a comedy, and but it it's really what that's about is what if something were to go wrong? What if one of those fail-safe flights, you know, a B-52 gets the wrong signal, keeps on going. What happens? There's also another movie called Failsafe. Uh Larry Hagman's in it, you know, I think um from Dallas. Remember him? Um, yeah, so that's another another film. I apparently failsafe came after um uh Dr. Strangelove, and there was like a lawsuit involved. So that's a little trivia, I think. So saw that somewhere. Um, but so you see, that's that's how God's involved in history, and it could be a precursor to something like you know, kind of clearing the road for the gospel to be, you know. So those kinds of things do happen, if that makes sense. Okay. So um so one of the things that um uh referring to the Nicey Nice book, um, what I like is that they talk about the senses of sacred scripture. So I want to kind of talk about that. Um when we're talking about what when we read the Bible, like okay, we want it, there's a literal, literal sense, right? That's right on page 43, the literal sense. So now we have to be careful, we have to understand the genre of what we're reading and the context. So, for example, you know, Jesus says, if your eye causes you to sin, cut it out. What do you do with that? I like my eyes, you know, and I want to see. Um, what is Jesus saying? Well, it's we have to understand the culture and the context of that, right? Right? If your eye causes you to cut out, right? If you'd better go blind into heaven rather than you know be seeing into Gehenna, basically. Right? So what is that's a Hebraism, right? It's an extra it's a form. It's like, okay, if if you're gonna deal with sin, you can't play with it. You can't toy with it, you can't go up to the line, right? And and you you you need to cut out from the start, you know, for example, right? It's that's what he's what he's saying, right? If your hand causes and cut it off, oh you know, these are extreme, you know, these sound extreme, but what he what he's using is he's using a cultural cult cultural language to talk about a spiritual principle. So so we want to be we want to know what is the intent of the author, what is the intent of the of the speaker in the passage when we talk about what Jesus is saying, for example. So what is the meaning that is to be conveyed, right? And we do have our different genres. Of course, we have historical books, okay? So for example, in the in the we have in the Old Testament, we have you know the Torah, Genesis, through Deuteronomy, we have you know Joshua, Judges, 1 to 2 Samuel, 1 to 2 Kings, we have you know Ezra, Nehemiah, right? We have the Maccabees, the books, 1 to 2 Maccabees. So we have these historical books. There's wisdom literature like the Psalms, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach. There's prophetic books like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel. We have uh uh literature, uh, you know, uh a uh we have you know books about you know the end times, right? We have Revelation, you have part portions of Daniel, right? Um there are there's different there's different genres in the sacred scriptures, right? The Job is like a like a Job, is that a historical event or is this like a fable kind of a thing, but it's for our instruction. So what is the intent of the author, what is the intent trying to trying to convey? Okay, I think that's important for us to have the context of that. When we talk again, even within the historical books, we talk about Genesis, or we're talking about you know the creation, for example. Is that a literal description of how creation could have happened? Sure, it could be. We could also interpret that seven days just means the fullness of time, the perfection of creation, some period of perfect of time, right? It just represents the a passage of some time in which at a certain point God perfects that creation, right? So we have even within those books, sometimes we can see these, we can we can see these things. But then, of course, right, there are spiritual senses of scripture, right? Um and we it the allegorical, moral, and anagogical. So let's talk about allegorical, allegory, you know, things can represent like, or talk about something or represent something else. We talk about typology as an important principle of interpreting scripture. We see that the New Testament fulfills the old, the Old Testament is a foretaste of the new. So we'll see figures in the Old Testament that are types of figures in the new. So, for example, we have Moses as like we have as a type of Christ, for example, Jeremiah is a type because he proclaims the word, he is uh persecuted, he is you know imprisoned, these sorts of things. We see we see these sorts of things. Or we see um, you know, we'll maybe a type of Mary, right, in different figures. You know, for example, you know, Samuel's mom, right, who brings him to uh the Shiloh, right? And she she offers her her son to the temple, for example. Like we see women in the in the Old Testament foreshadowing Mary, for example. So these types that we find in the Old Testament, we see we see like the Davidic Kingdom as a as a type, right, preparing for the new. So we see that if we understand the whole of scripture, as we're reading, we can see this typology playing itself out. The early church fathers, you know, are masters of typology. So if you're reading like St. John Chrysostom, you know, for example, you know, these are these are the are origin, you know, ancient Christian writers that they come to see what God is doing in human history, what he's doing in salvation history, which is building to the point where Jesus will come. Okay. Moral, of course, as we know, is what do they teach us about how to live as people? Like we have the Ten Commandments, for example, that we just had the Beatitudes today in the gospel, right? That then that we can have direct instruction on how to live. Like the wisdom literature, if you think about Sirach, the book Wisdom of Solomon, like these are things that we're reading that inform us about how to live a godly life. All right. Anagogical meaning that we are is something that is pointing us towards heaven, right? That the when Jesus is going around establishing the kingdom of God, what is he pointing towards? He's pointing towards the new Jerusalem, the heavenly kingdom, right? That will, that in which we will, well, God will be all in all. So it's a foretaste of what we're looking forward to. Okay. So if we're seeing, if we're reading the Bible and seeing, of course, the the covenant kingdom paradigm, we see how tradition, how we can interpret the scripture based on tradition, that with all of these tools, then we can come to more a more accurate understanding of what the Bible is conveying to us. Um practice, of course, which can be very helpful in for prayer is called Lexio Divina. Many of you are familiar with it, where you it's a method of reading the Bible in a very deliberate way, maybe a passage that means something to us, and that the Holy Spirit is communicating some kind of word, a personal word to us. And if we do think we have a personal word from the Bible, then it's something that should match up with the teachings of the church, right? The magisterium, right? It shouldn't be something that's outside of that. Okay, if that makes any sense. Um, there is a last bit on here about private revelation. There's a we do have a number of devotions based in private revelation, is any kind of you know, apparition or appearances of our Lord or our lady after the public revelation has ceased. So public revelation cease with the death of the last apostle, St. John, probably sometime around 90 AD. So everything that we have in the Bible is what is, in in Shaker tradition, is what is willed by God for people to be saved. So we don't need any more information than that. All right, we don't need any more revelation in order to be saved. So devotions to apparitions like Our Lady of Fatima or Our Lady's Appearances at Lourdes or the Divine Mercy Chaplet, which is appearances of Jesus to St. Faustina Kowalska, or uh devotion to the sacred heart of Jesus based on appearances of Jesus to uh St. Margaret Mary. Um, those are all optional. Um, they can be encouraged. Usually, you know, there's kind of an approval given by the church, but they are complement, it should be complementary to what has been publicly revealed. When I was in seminary, uh I first entered seminary in 2000, and in Emmitsburg, there was all there was this there's this lady who was having revelations, apparently. The Archdiocese of Baltimore investigated it and shut it down because she was revealing saying things that weren't in line with with sacred tradition and sacred scripture. Um and and sometimes we can get too caught up in the latest thing, like if somebody's claiming some kind of apparition, and the medjugoria is controverted. There's people who love it, people who say it's fake. I don't have any judgment on that. Um with these with these private revelation things, you want to be careful because the principle is we have faith in Christ. And I think as we if we keep chasing private revelation, we start looking for certainty. Right? We want to have like this sort of certain sort of like experience of the divine on our terms rather than God revealing himself on his terms to us. So, and because we have the Eucharist, we have confession, right? We have Eucharistic adoration, like God presents himself to us. And I think sometimes we can get a little thrown off with people claiming these things. So it's always important to stay with the church. And the private revelation has been approved. We are obviously um able to follow, you know, read about uh the children at Fatima or read about St. Faustina, right? These saints that have had these rev revelations, private revelations, but they have been investigated and vetted and approved by the church as something that we can believe in and something that is complementary to what has been publicly revealed. Okay? All right, it's now uh 1040. Um other questions inquiring minds want to know? No, okay, shoot. Oh, did I mess up? I'm sorry. Are you not a happy customer? Do you need to call customer service? No, okay. Call Ignacio.

SPEAKER_03 39:26

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Yeah, that's accurate, yeah. Right, because what was because we the church was not in the mode in which that could occur. Because uh if you're fighting off persecution and you're you're trying to survive as a church, you don't have the time to sort of um have public, you know, even um ecumenical councils to to sort those things out. See what I'm saying? Because you know, if you get a bunch of bishops together, you know, the emperor's like, ooh, look, you know, target rich environment. You know. They wouldn't say that back then, but anyway, you know. Right, although they both would have, maybe that could have happened very early, but then as then as things begin to circulate, everybody's getting the same thing, I imagine. But very early, like, oh, you know, we've got this. Great, you know. Anyway. All right, I'm sure. Right. That's true. Yeah, so each yeah, so the authors of the gospels that would have been writing for, they would have a specific audience in mind. So you know, Luke is very specific. You know, even in he has a prologue, right, of the Acts of the Apostles and his gospel. And you can see he's very specific about what he's what his goal is, right? And he's kind of um, and he's he's sort of doing this almost as like a um uh kind of casting himself almost like an ancient historian, right? Kind of the way he he sets out, right? You see if you read those passages. Um, Matthew, it's speculated that he's writing to a primarily Jewish audience. Like if you read uh Matthew, he's making a lot of references to the Old Testament as you go through it. Like we kind of this is fulfilled, you know, in um in this event, right? Um you'll see that in Matthew. So you can see, I mean, uh Eusebius the historian uh says that there was like a Hebrew version of Matthew that was that we haven't, we have, of course, that was eventually translated into Greek, and that's in and then of course in the Gospels themselves, there's sort of a you can see there's a a um a sort of uh Hebrew undertones in the Greek kind of a thing. You know, it's like the so that that you see like Hebrew phraseology in Greek in the in the texts. So yeah, they're writing to different audiences, but then eventually those are all combined and approved and circulated. Yeah. Okay, we'll wrap up here. And if anybody wants to say hello, come on up. Okay. All right, name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit, amen. We give you thanks, Almighty God, for the affections, resolutions, inspirations given us during this time of education. We ask your help to put them into effect. Reminded Mother, Saint Joseph, our guardian angels, intercede for us. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. All right, have a happy day, stay warm.