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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Come and See. So let's just start with prayer in the name of the Father, name of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful. Kindle them the fire of your love. Send forth your spirit, and they shall be created, and thou shalt into the face of the earth. Let us pray. Grant us in the same spirit to be truly wise and ever to rejoice in his consolation through Christ our Lord. Amen. Our Lady, seat of wisdom, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. So as we today is the feast of the Basilica, the Lateran Basilica, that's the Mother Church, Cathedral Church of Rome. So it's kind of a kind of an interesting. We have had a number of these feast days overlapping with Sunday. It's a little different. So that's so I it's really kind of a little disorienting because you're waiting for the ordinary time. Oh, we got this other thing. But you know, we're gonna wrap up chapter one in your book. So congratulations, everybody. Right? So we're all hope you're you've continued to read. So we're gonna, the last two topics is discipleship and evangelization. And then uh next week we'll we're gonna start chapter two. I believe Father Hare is coming back to do this. So um, so and then I go I can go to the cafe now. I'm just kidding. So, but then I'll sure I'll be back soon. So, so we're when we talk about um so I want to use uh an analogy. First of all, I'm gonna use this nice picture of my myself. I'm all the way to the uh to the right here. This is a I was a part of a royal wedding. Did you know that? So, Archduke Imre of Austria married the now Archduchess Catherine. She was actually she's actually from Ohio. She was in the working in the chancery at the Catholic charity. She was a communications person. They met at St. Mary's in D.C. when they were having the Latin Mass, because he, of course, the church there is also, they have relics of um Blessed Carl, right, of his relative. So I was doing tribunal work and I just was like hanging around. She said, Can you do help me with the mass? I was like, okay. So I got to be part of a royal wedding. How's that? It's fun. So you can see me with longer and less gray hair. Isn't that exciting? Okay. I got Monsignor Pope. They're using my vestment, so I have a solemn mass set for the Latin mass, which is kind of fun. So when we talk about our relationship with Christ, what analogy I'm going to use is marriage. Of course, we talk about that there's a nuptial relationship between Christ and the church. But as we know, marriage is a total commitment. You can't just halfway do marriage. It's either you're all in or you're not. So, you know, because of the goods of marriage, permanence, exclusivity, openness of children, good of the spouse. You have to be all in on all that. I love this, I love to tell the when I do these prenuptial investigations, you know, which is I have to ask couples funny questions. One of them is, are you guys related to each other? The West Virginia question. Hope not if he's from West Virginia. You know, Jeff Foxworthy, his little sidebar. He used to say, You might be a redneck if your family tree is in a straight line. So anyway. So there's no there's no halfsies on this thing, right? So you can't say to the some person you want to marry, hey, look, um I'm gonna love you completely, totally every day of the week except Thursdays and Saturdays. But you got me all the other days. No, that's not gonna work, right? That's not gonna work. What are you talking about? Right? That's not the nature of a marriage relationship. You know, we're we're we are accepting of the entire person. You know, in a marriage, of course, you know, that is it's all the good things and also some of the things that might be a little annoying at times. You guys all know. You've got most of the people here are married, so you guys can tell me. What I love about the prenuptial investigation and get back to that, is they have to sign on the dotted line to hear you sign your life away. Also, like to say, you ain't getting out of this, right? You know, as baptized people, we have become part of the covenant community of the church. We are now in a covenant bond with Christ. So we have been entered into this covenant. So the challenge for us is to live out that covenant, to live it completely. You know, to be a disciple of Christ, a follower of Jesus. So our faith means that we have to be totally commitment to Jesus' lordship in our lives. You might recall our evangelical brothers and sisters. They might ask you this question: Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus? Well, we're supposed to in the Catholic Church, right? Of course, we have the most deepest relationship you can have because we receive his body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist. That's a real deep personal relationship if I've ever heard one. But that's a total commitment. Just as a married couple has that total commitment to one another, you know, to live forever together, to be joined to join to be one another in marriage, then our covenant relationship with Christ, our relationship between ourselves, the church, and him, is a total supposed to be a total commitment. We are following our relationship is with Jesus Christ through the church. Because sometimes we we think of the church in terms of philosophy and things of, and we're thinking about doctrine and things like that. That's all true and good, but it's pointing to a relationship with a person of Jesus Christ. So we see in John, do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God, have faith also in me, and my father's house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you to have prepared a going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going, you know the way. Thomas said to him, Master, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. As a little sidebar note, there's a lot of I am statements in John's gospel. That is a call back to Exodus. Remember when Jesus when he in front of the burning bush, right, the Lord is having a conversation with Moses. He says, you know, that he says reveals his name as I am who am. So whenever you see that I am the bread of life, I am the way, the truth, and the life, I am the light of the world, it's a callback. Call back to Exodus. Okay? But notice no one comes to the Father except through me. That's a definitive statement. There's no other way to God the Father except through Jesus Christ. That is important. And that's a very controversial thing. We live in a society in which we love to have, you know, we want to be inclusive, right? We're all want to be, you know, we want to all that. But this is this is hard stuff to say that Jesus is the savior of the world, the only savior of the world. There is only one way in which we are saved, and that is through the cross. Tough stuff. And that can be, you know, we may have friends and other faiths and everything, but this is it. This is what we believe, and that we're asking the whole world, we're proposing the whole world, that this is the way to salvation, this is the way to eternal life. It is through Jesus Christ and Him alone. In Galatians, I'm amazed that you are quickly forsaking the one who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel. Not there that there is another, but there are some who are disturbing you and wish to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel of heaven should preach you a gospel other than the one we preach to you, let that one be accursed. As we have said before, now I say again, if anyone preaches you a gospel other than the one you've received, let that one be accursed. So Paul is very, very hard on this point. Now, what he's referring to is one of the struggles of the early church was did you have to be a practicing Jew before you became a Christian? Did you have to follow the Mosaic law and all the ritual things and all the sacrificial precepts? Did you have to follow all that? And Paul is emphatic and saying no. There was an ecumenical council, the first one, the council of Jerusalem. It's in Acts of the Apostles. This was the big question. And the answer was no. You didn't have to make the Gentiles go through the Jewish stuff. We don't have to go, I don't want to get too much into that right now. So, but this just to kind of let you know that. So, question are we cafeteria Catholics? Don't you like my picture of the cafeteria I found? It's very lovely. Lots of different items you can choose from. Looks like there's some nice orange juices at the top there, that picture. But but you know, this is what we talk about when people like to um decide what they like and then hold back on other doctrines. And because what we're doing is that we're not allowing Christ to then be our Lord and Savior. We're then kind of taking on to ourselves authority. Now, the word authority in Greek is exousia. It's from one's own being. When you think about it, we compare ourselves to Jesus, right? From his being is, right? He's divine. Son of God is divine. So he has the authority par excellence, right? Because he is God. He's united to the Father in the unity, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity. Right? We are a created creature. So how is it that from our being, from our limited being, we are now taking authority that we don't have? So, because authority, of course, for for us, for Americans, of course, is kind of we have a tenuous relationship, right? Because we're a country founded on rebellion, right? We're founded on the revolution, American revolution. So it's always a question for us. And they're all because in this day and age, there are so many different teachings that are controverted, even within the church. And I think it's important for us to make sure that we understand that what's in the catechism, what's in the Nicene Creed, that is what we believe. And we can't go following different people and different things who have other ideas, you know. Just as St. Paul's saying, if someone comes to you with another gospel, let him be accursed. That's uh tough stuff from from Paul. Okay? So we don't want to be a cafeteria Catholic. That's a challenge. And it's it's not a it's not an easy one, right? So let's look at the cost of discipleship. If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Another tough statement. Now, when Jesus says hating, he's not literally meaning hatred of your heart, like I despise my parents. No, you can't despise your parents. But meaning we set aside, he's using a Hebraism, you know, an extreme example to make a point. The idea is we have to set aside these things for the sake of the gospel. Now, again, I can't help but think of St. Thomas More whenever I read this, you know, who for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of the truth about marriage, for the sake of the truth of the headship of the church as the vicar of Christ in Rome, the Pope, that he gave up his family, you know, being he could have easily just signed a document that says King Henry VIII was head of the Church of England, led a nice, peaceful life in Chelsea, raised his kids, been fine. But what would he have sacrificed? He would have sacrificed his integrity, he would have sacrificed his faith in the church and his faith in Christ, and he didn't want to do that, and he laid his life down for that purpose. But notice he said, whoever does not carry his own cross to come after me cannot meet my disciple. When Jesus says this, this was probably very shocking to people. We when we hear the word cross, we're very accustomed to it because we have crucifixes on our walls in our homes and in our churches, and we're accustomed to the idea that Jesus died for us on a cross. This is prior to his passion, death, and resurrection. And the people he's talking to would have understood that the cross was a form of the punishment of slaves. Remember how brutal the Roman Empire was. They would line the roads of on the in into towns and villages with crucified people if they were rebellious against the Roman Empire. You know, if you ever see the uh Kirk Douglas and Spartacus, right? You could see the end of the movies, like he's on the cross. They lined the roads of these people. It was basically a way of saying, if you mess with us, this is what happens to you. So this is what Jesus is saying is this has got to be a bit shocking to the when people hear this. It's an anticipation of his passion and what he will do for us. But to say this, meaning because you have to carry your cross. You have to carry the instrument of your own self-denial. To die to yourself. To follow Jesus is to die, right? To die to our passions, to die to ourselves, to die for our whatever, you know, these sorts of things. This is this is hard stuff. This is this is Jesus says some things that are really, really poignant. And, you know, the gospel is not as easy sometimes as we think. I'm sure there are times in all of our lives where we could have made compromises. And maybe sometimes we have, and hopefully we've gone to confession for that. Um but we're striving for, right, being on that, on the narrow road, the narrow gate. We want to be on that path, the narrow gate. And that's that's what even Jesus says, you know, to go through, you know, to get into heaven's like going through the eye of a needle, right? It's and that's only through grace, which we talked about previously. Of course, our relationship with Christ is mediated through the church. So sometimes people will say, Well, I'm a spiritual person. I don't need the church. Well, that's a problem because Christ and his church are inseparable. It's it Jesus is head of the church. So the church, of course, this is the incipient kingdom. It is, right, the kingdom of God on earth. Jesus is the righteous Davidic king of the new Israel, which is the church. The Pope is the vicar of Christ on earth. And of course, you know, with the mystical body of Christ, right, that we are all in this together. Because it's, first of all, as we know, the teachings of Christ, that the all that comes down from the apostles to the present day. Okay. Children of God over there. So remind me to punish them later. I guess we'll do that. I'm just gonna tell their parents. Do you know what your children did? Okay. So that's something sometimes people will say that I'm a spiritual person, and you know, we that well, what does that mean to be a spiritual person? You know? Um I think that's sometimes I think that's just a thinly veiled excuse to not be spiritual, right? Be able to say, well, I'm a spiritual person, right? Um because it's not because how is it that one person can say that they have the truth about everything? Because the truth is something that, of course, as fallen humanity, right? We need we we needed the authority of the church. We need revelation to help us understand that. So we can't be our own authority. And I and I that that's so when we so everything the church has comes from Christ. Sometimes we think that the teachings of the church might come from some theologian in the Middle Ages that's trying to make us miserable. That's not the truth. Everything the church proposes for us is for our human fulfillment. We went back to faith and reason. That our human fulfillment, right, and supernatural fulfillment come through following the gospel. It's not over and against our nature, it is in accordance with the nature we've been given. So when we're in union with the church, we're in union with Christ, we're in union with Christ, we're really, we should, we are union with the church. It's not, it should not be an either-or kind of thing. We're talking of when we're talking about our discipleship. So it requires us to believe that in the revealed word of God, the Bible, the Nicene Krane and the Catechism, the deposit of faith. That leads us to that relationship with the person of Jesus Christ. I can't emphasize that enough. That, yes, there's philosophy and theology and all this, but what is it about? It is about living a relationship with Jesus Christ. So as it says in the chapter in the book, practice of a sacramental life, post-baptism, weekly mass, frequent confession, living the moral teachings of the church, being a people that's you know, faith working through love, through charity, fervent prayer, embracing the sufferings of the day. But sometimes we have to, we have to, suffering comes in various ways. You know, living a Catholic life is not always easy, having to make sometimes very difficult decisions based on morality, based on what we teach. Because we we can always take the easy road, is sometimes right there for us to take, to compromise ourselves, to compromise our integrity for some other good. To make more money, for example, to have a better job, a more prestige, you know, or an easier path. That's always that that's the temptation to sort of go in that direction when we know that we need to follow the path of Christ. You know, I can't help but think of St. Francis, right? We're a parish, of course, we have the poor Claire, so we have kind of a little bit of a Franciscan flavor to our church. And think of St. Francis how he gave up living, right, in the nobility of Assisi, gave up that all to live a life of humility and poverty. He chose a difficult path. Of course, I think that was kind of summed up in his receiving the stigmata, right? Kind of uniting himself, you know, through that, through that experience, being given that gift, that spiritual gift, a way of uniting himself more completely to Christ in his poverty, humility, and in suffering. So one thing that we wanted to avoid too is thinking of the church in terms of a really nice social club. Um we we we we come to mass every Sunday, and yeah, we have pancakes, we have a cafe, right? But the nature of the church is to be missionary, which means to expand beyond the borders, right? The apostles, right, go out. Right? So Jesus approached in Matthew chapter 28. Then Jesus approached and said to them, All power in heaven and on earth have been given to me. Go therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son, of the Holy Spirit, teaching them all that I have commanded you. So it was it that the apostles were in the, you know, and of course I think I have Pentecost here. Yeah, so when the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together, and suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim. There were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. At this sound they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Because this moment of Pentecost, of course, is of course the feast of the giving of Mosaic Law. It's now the giving of the new law of the church, the law of the Spirit. And the gospel is proclaimed, and we see that the apostles have been given the gift of tongues that is speaking different languages. People from all over the world have gathered for the purpose. Now, this is a sort of the we see the mission already in place that they are to go out and proclaim to the nations. To go out to peoples who are of different languages, different nationalities. They're going to go out to the world, proclaim the good news. So here. And Catechism 863, the whole church is apostolic, and that she remains with the successors of St. Peter and the other apostles, communion of faith and life with her origin, and that she is sent out into the whole world. All members of the church share in this mission, though in various ways. The Christian vocation is of its nature a vocation to the apostolate as well. Indeed, we call an apostolate every activity of the mystical body to aim to spread the kingdom of Christ over all the earth. So if you're not Catholic, you're a potential Catholic, is the idea. So they're not, like I said, it's not a social club in that we all have a nice little thing. You know, the apostles didn't just stay in the upper room and have a good time with the Holy Spirit. Okay, we're good. They boom, right? They're going out to all the world. The apostles all eventually spread themselves out, going to different places of the world. You know, St. Matthew apparently went as far as India, for example, or St. Thomas, I'm sorry, went as far as India. St. Thomas the Apostle, as far as India, right? All kinds of places that the apostles went. Peter ended up in Antioch of Syria and made his way to Rome. And St. Paul, we know it all over the Eastern Mediterranean. That's where we get all those letters to different communities. He was in Corinth and Ephesus, and eventually he ended up in Rome. So by virtue of the sacrament of confirmation, right, that sacrament is ordained for the purpose of strengthening us to tell other people about Jesus. And that so that mission to spread the good news isn't just restricted to people like myself who vow themselves to the church, right? It's not just sort of now, there's religious orders dedicated to missionary work, but every person is called to have some form of missionary work. And evangelization can happen in different contexts. It could be within a family, it could be amongst friends, it could be, you know, in workplaces or other places of our creatures, all kinds of opportunities for us to build relationships and evangelize. And the we have the uh have is still going like some of those evangelical Catholic small groups, and hopefully those are people who are pulling other people in. The idea is you have a small group, and then you have somebody who's kind of you build a friendship with, hey, why don't you come join our small group? Right? The idea is that we have an opportunity to evangelize. You know, I have one um you know, an experience of someone even in our own parish where somebody, um, not even a member of our church, right, evangelized another person, now that person's practicing the faith. Because this person was a witness to the other person, knew that this person was a fallen away Catholic. Hey, you know, they built a friendship with this person, and now this person's practicing the faith. It was just I was a it was a it's an amazing thing to watch that this person was in a, and not in, and this wasn't even their person, they weren't in a cat like working in a Catholic context or anything. It was this one person witnessing to another person brought them in, brought them to the fullness of faith. So there's the there it is. There's someone who is not a priest, not a nun doing the work of evangelization. Someone who takes that evangelization seriously and can lead to the salvation of this person and other people in that person's life. Okay. So the power of the gospel radically orients us towards a relationship with Christ and the church. It's a radical, radical change, right? And the cumulative effect of evangelization is transformation of society and culture. So when we think about if we if you're we have the transformation of individuals, and we and then we we are looking to transforming our society. And we can we know that we've had a degradation of societal life. We talk to people like what was what we used to have was sort of a very stable environment in which there was an overall reinforcement of Christianity. Yeah, I know. I remember um when I was when I was working before I entered seminary, I worked in Richmond. I worked for the bus system there, believe, and that's that was my private previous career. I was in public transportation. Uh I was working for Greater Richmond Transit, and I used to go to a, there's a uh there was a grocery store, no longer, no longer it's it's been bought out by Martins. It was called UCrop, some of you might remember it. Remember going to UCrops on Carey Street for lunch, and I would pick up a lunch item. And you'd see on the wall, you know, have you gone, have you gone to your house of worship this Sunday? On like a big mural on the wall. So that was sort of a homage to that idea that there was an overall kind of Christian culture in which that grocery store had been part of. And that seems to have, that's we we don't live in that world anymore. You know, we're we're in another we're in another era where we need to go at apostolic mission. We've seen sort of already kind of a kind of a resurgence amongst some sections of young people who are kind of tired of not being tethered to anything. Uh we've seen a little bit of this happening. You know, if you go to the Latin Mass of St. Rita's I joke with Father Christensen, that's like the young adult mass. I told him to advertise it as that. He's not going to do that, obviously, you know. But there's something there, and there's good there's potential for transformation of society when young people are starting to look towards the Catholic Church. And they want to be tied to something solid instead of being blown each and every direction. Because as we know, when we're not tied to anything, we're just lost. And it's that's hard feeling. It's our place to be when we feel lost. So when we think of what what how can our train our culture be transformed when we affirm the right to life from conception to natural death, when we affirm marriage and family as the building blocks of society, and we care for the poor and disadvantaged, that's a transformation of charity and love. And that can come from the work of evangelization. So if we ourselves are working through our own salvation in fear and trembling, as St. Paul would talk about, that we are through the allowing the Holy Spirit to touch our lives, hopefully we are touching other people's lives. And that those people, you know, when we talk about, right, we're that instrument of prevenient grace from some other person, hopefully bringing them to the church, bringing them to in contact with the gospel, and contact with you know the sacraments of the church eventually, maybe through, you know, the OCIA class, Order of Christian Nation for Adults. Um, because we want we want people to know and love Jesus Christ and have a relationship with him. And it's and it involves persecution, it's sometimes involves suffering. To proclaim the word, because there's people there's people who are don't understand what we're about and what what Jesus will do for them, unfortunately. Because some people think that you know we're the no fun league, right? We're the NFL, right? We're like you can't have your fun, you know, but not understanding fulfillment, joy and happiness can come with being a follower of Jesus Christ. Okay? So that is all right, that's the we've now wrapped up our lectures, okay, for week for chapter one. So great, we wrap that up, okay? And then we'll be beginning chapter two next week. All right, so what really good questions do you have for me today? Stump the priest, okay? People are looking through their book right now on their notes, right? So we'll see. All right. That was so patently obvious. Okay. Okay, yeah, shoot. Yeah, you're you're number one on the runway, okay? Go ahead. I'd have to look up when it's projected that he was writing that. Because um remember that, well, so what the estimates are is that John's gospel would have been the last one, probably somewhere around 90 A.D. St. John lived a very long life. He was the only one apostle who wasn't who didn't undergo martyrdom. Okay. So the Gospel of Matthew probably goes, maybe we're talking about between some between 50 and 63 A.D., the other Gospels were probably written. So I'll have, I'm more favorable to earlier dating than later dating for that. Um so I don't know exactly, I have to look up when Paul was writing Galatians. I know that you know, 1 Corinthians could have been written maybe very early, like within um maybe in the mid-40s or later 40s, if that's the if that's an early estimate. In that case, he's writing only 10, well, 15 years after the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ. So from according to from a historical perspective, that's extremely close. And as you see, there's a creedal statement within the um within 1 Corinthians. So the Gospels might not have been assembled yet in terms of a written form, but at least those traditions were being preached. Because remember, he's writing at the same time the other apostles are alive. So, because the gospels were is is the is what the church knew to be from apostolic authorship. Because there's other gospels floating around, and those were rejected because they were not of apostolic origin. Many of them are uh by Gnostics, you know, other you know, religious groups, sort of an offshoot thing. So Gnosticism was a form of religion in which knowledge is the way to salvation. So they would have, these texts would have been or were suspect and were not considered apostolic and not from apostolic, so they were rejected by the church. Because these these traditions is what would have been related to them during the sacred liturgy. So when the sacred liturgy is celebrated in an early church in the house church, right, they would have they would have been relaying the tradition that they would have received, right? From from either we're talking about the apostle celebrating mass or the priest that they ordained, the received tradition of the church during the apostolic period. Is that is that helpful? Okay. Yep. Yeah, it's he's talking about right at this point. If I I have to look when Galatians is projected to be written, but if what he's talking about is the what was received, right? Remember, he had a revelation from Christ on the road to Damascus. And then later on, he would go to Peter and James and John the apostles, and he had them review what he was preaching to make sure it was in accordance with the word, what the apostles had received. So there was authority being exercised. Actually, in Galatians, it talks about that. I believe in Acts of the Apostles, right? We have his evidence of Paul going to Peter and saying, okay, lays out them, this is what I'm preaching, and they approved it. So this is because remember the first transmission of the gospel is passing on of oral tradition. And by the work of the Holy Spirit, that oral tradition is preserved. And that the gospels, right, and the letters and revelation, these are, and acts of the apostles, these are documents that come from the apostolic tradition, from the deposit of faith. Does that make sense? How we so the Holy Spirit is preserving the word, right? Because the apostles have the living memory. I forget which Father of the Church used that term, the living memory. And that living memory of what happened, right? And so, of course, you know, these were then later on written down. Okay. So that's that's how the Gospels came to be came to be formed. Is that is that helpful? Sounds a little, maybe it sounds because you know, we did the the four gospels didn't just drop down from the sky as soon as Pentecost hit. Okay, that that word was preached first and then and then written down later. Okay, we had another question in the middle, okay? Yeah, I just said what I was saying. It's not hatred as an active hatred of your parents. Like like and yeah, like it's not I hate them in terms of an emotional distaste for your parents. It's setting aside. It's setting aside your parents. I'll give you an example, okay? When I am doing marriage preparation and I'm working with the couple about their um their liturgy and the music and um you know all this stuff, who is you can tell me, who is the last person I want to hear from? Yeah. Yeah, I don't want to hear from them. Like the mother of the bride. I don't want to hear from these people. Right? I don't want to hear from them. It's their wedding, right? Right? And what is and what do what are what is a what is it like so when it ch when a child when a when a married couple's getting married, what do they do? That's what we talk about in Genesis, right? Leaving father and mother, right? So what do the children do when they get married, right? Well, in a certain sense, they're setting the parents aside, they're their parents aside to form a new family. Right? Because this is the vocation God willing Christ is calling the father. So it's does so when Jesus is saying that it's a Hebraism. Okay? You know when he says no one to call no one your father? It's another kind of Hebraism, right? Because we have this tradition of calling priests. He's trying to prove a point. Don't call these rabbis your father. You have one teacher that is Jesus. He's using that as an extreme example. We don't stop calling our dads father or dad, right? He's saying, don't go think that that other person is your end all be all. Only I am, right? Jesus is the end all be all, right? So he's using that as a Hebraism, an extreme example to prove a point. So it doesn't mean, you know, your kid should hate you, okay? Literally hate you. It doesn't mean I become a priest and set my dad aside. No, that doesn't mean I mean I hate him. No, it means that I am leaving the home, right? I'm setting. And people have done that. You know, St. John Newman, who's one of my favorite saints, leaves Bohemia in the middle of the night, in the early 19th century, become a missionary in the United States of America. Right? So he he there's no phones, internet, they can write letters. I mean, by boat. He he because by divine providence, they had too many priests in that area. Can you imagine that? He had too many, too many priests, too many seminaries, they had a room for them. So he he had this inspiration, he wanted to be a missionary in the United States. So he actually took, got on a boat, went to New York City, went to Bishop John Dubois, who was also the founder of Mount St. Mary's University, Seminary University, and he applied to the then diocese of New York, um, and became a priest of New York and became a missionary in the in the in the in the missionaries of then rural New York State, which was not what it is today, obviously. Eventually became a redemptorist, and so he only he came back to his hometown once after he got ordained. That was the only time he made it back to that part. That is setting aside your father and mother, because he pursued that missionary thing, and it's hard. The poor Claire's have done the same thing. You know, they give up those family relationships, right? They don't, they've set aside father and mother, right? Now, they don't ever the parents still have like a once-a-I think it's like a once-a-year visitation kind of thing, but they can't leave there to go visit their family. And some religious orders is possible is more is like the daughters, daughters of St. Paul in Old Town. They have a little they have a lot more relaxed kind of situation that way. But the poor cleric is a very extreme example of this kind of thing. Same thing with other religious communities. It is a sacrifice, you know, to have to, you know, make that make that decision. So is that helpful to you? It's okay. Hebrew is we're we're not used to the way, you know, think of the way that uh people like people from the northeast, like myself, like Philadelphia North talk, right? We use extreme examples for things. So we because I always think of um the wedding, I have a little shtick about the wedding at Cana. Like imagine if this they were in a New York Jew situation, right? And Jesus is, you know, and Mary's going to, they have no wine. You know, what does it do to you? My alma's not yet come, right? And that kind of a thing. That's kind of like the way I'm seeing that that conversation happen. It's like this is a this is like imagine a New York Jewish family in this situation. Like the wedding was in Schenectady and not in Cana, right? So that's a that's a little funny thing anyway. That's a little shtick I have. But anyway. Um but they that that that's an example. I'm trying to get the get across the example of a Hebraism. I don't know if that's a, you know. Okay. Any other, okay, we got recommen. Well, because he started it. Right? So let's go back to the Old Testament. Right? Abraham, he calls out of Ur, right? He calls out of, he calls Abraham, Abram, right, out of the land of the Chaldeans, right? He calls him out. That, and then the miracle, of course, is that Abraham and Sarah are not able to have children. And then, of course, they have the vision of the three angels, and God grants them the gift of their child, right? And it's from Isaac and then Jacob, right? There is the promise that I'll make your people as numerous as the stars of the sky. Okay, he said we were following now the people of Israel, because if Jacob's name was given as Israel, which means, I believe, strength of God, if I have it right. I don't know if I have that right. But his journey, of course, right, is that of course that becomes a family, right? Because God has interacted with a family, and then he's and that family becomes a nation, the people of Israel. And as we follow the people of Israel through the Old Testament, we see that eventually Israel splits in two. The northern kingdom of Israel, the the you know, ten of the tribes are exiled in 722 BC by the Assyrians, and then later Judah is exiled by Babylon, and as those Judahites, which we know as Jews, who returned to Judah, right? And as then it was out, and remember David is established as the king. Okay, so we so we need to be so if you need to, what I'd really suggest for you to do is um a couple different things. One would be to get a book by Dr. Scott Hahn called A Father Who Keeps His Promises. Right? The Father Who Keeps His Promises is talks is he talks about the covenant kingdom paradigm in the Bible. And so from Genesis to Revelation, what is God doing from Genesis to Revelation? Okay? And then you could also, any kind of uh Jeff Cavins has the Bible timeline. That might be very helpful too, the Bible timeline. Because what God is doing, he's he's he's he's you could see how he's intervening in our history in the smallest of ways, right? Starting with Abraham and how that expands over time. Okay. Is that helpful? That's so I want you to start seeing that because Jesus is the inheritor of the Davidic kingship of Israel. Right, you don't reject your your your cultural heritage where we're talking about the re religious any religious aspects that might be pagan of some sort, right? And pagan pagan practices that those have to be set aside. No, I didn't no I didn't no look, hold on a second. Let's get this straight now. We're not talking about hating on your parents or hating your ancestors from a emotional hatred. That's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about denying your cultural heritage. We're talking about to pursue your vocation is to right to set aside your parents. That's a different kind of thing.

unknown 44:55

So I think we uh leave the documents of Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_00 45:02

Yeah, we we we need to make a distinction between okay, your cultural heritage, okay. So your cultural heritage, we don't want to be, we're not talking about denying your cultural heritage. We're talking about your your faith, okay? So if there's aspects of cultural heritage which are pagan, then those aspects would have to be rejected. For example, um, you know, any anything for that would be it that would be an issue, okay? Um I know there's a like an ancient culture of like ancestor worship, for example, could be a practice. Well, we can pray for the dead, right? We pray for the reposer of the soul, we pray for saints to pray, pray to saints to pray for us, but we don't worship them, right? So we can honor our deceased relatives, but we don't quite worship them, we don't worship them, okay? So we have to purify those cultural heritage, uh purify our cultural heritage in order to align with the gospel, if that makes more sense. We're talking about maybe a purification of culture rather than a rejection of it, if that would be a better way of putting it. Okay? Yeah, that's up to you to decide. You'd have to ask whether, you know, if you go into confession regularly and you're getting what you need from regular confession, that's fine. If you have an issue, it's something that needs to be discerned, or you have questions, or maybe you want to pursue that, that's you'd have to uh what I highly what I think I would recommend if you're looking for a regular thing, um the prelature of Opus Day has evenings of recollection for women and evening of recollection for men, and they're priests available, and they're experts in spiritual direction. That could be so if you for the there's a umidc.org is for the women's as a women's apostolate, and of course, Rest and Study Center is also a place for a men's apostolate. So if you're looking for you know spiritual direction on a regular basis, that could be that's a really good, easy, accessible source for that. Okay, so we're at almost 10 of, and I gotta make sure I make it in time to help with communion. So let's um if you have any other questions, you can let's wrap up in prayer. In the name of the Father, name of the Son of the Holy Spirit, amen. Give you thanks, Almighty God, for all the affections, resolutions, inspirations you give in this during this time of education. We ask your help to put them into effect. Our Mecca Mother, Saint Joseph, our garden angels, intercede for us. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit, amen. Thanks for coming today. And I there's still free pancakes next door, I'm sure, if you want. If you if you're hungry, if you're hungry for more for more food.