SPEAKER_00 0:00

In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. At the Savior's command and formed by divine teaching, we dare to say, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen. St. Louis. In the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen. Father O'Hare wants to say something.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Remember, we talked about this, this is uh basically uh like a master's level course in theology. This is not OCIA, this is not learning the basics, this is going deeper into the life of or the faith that we we know and we practice. So I think this is our first time having a teacher with a doctorate. So we're we're we're keeping our promise. This is master's level theology today for sure. And also what I'm doing is delaying it because it's not 10 o'clock yet.

unknown 1:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

So, Father, tell us about your background um academically so that people can be impressed, and then your class will start at 10.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Oh, that's right. I have a different, for some reason, my T-Mobile is three minutes ahead of Father O'Hare's. I don't know what that is, but on the same network. Anyway, hi everyone, Father McGott. I teach uh graduate theology at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, California for the Archdiocese of San Francisco. And um my particular, I guess, discipline is moral theology. So um I went to Mount St. Mary's for seminary, and I did the regular Masters in Divinity, Master's in Arts and Theology. Then I worked at a diocese here for 11 years, and then I was uh moved over to seminary work in 2013. Yeah, it's almost 14 years ago now, and um I've taught in Mendel Park. This is my second stint. Um I've taught at St. Mary's in Baltimore and Assumption Seminary in San Antonio, Texas. And I did my graduate work at the Academia Alfonsiana, which is the moral theology faculty of the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. So I did that for four years, so license and doctorate. My area of specialty is human rights and immigration, and non-controversial, as you can imagine. Um anyway, yeah. So I went in the seminary, I teach bioethics, I teach fundamental moral theology, which is the moral theology your priests need to know to hear confessions, and I also teach Catholic social teaching. So, and then I also teach the core course in homiletics, which is preaching. So I teach our guys how to give homels. So some of them are really good, and some of them pray for them. Okay, so I think we're at time. Yeah, just about. All right. So today I'm covering pages 118 to 125. That's the assignment I was given by our beloved pastor. Okay, now um, if you notice this section of the chapter you're in, which basically basically is the conclusion, there's just one little section here, Christ's hidden years, and then the conclusion. But if you look at the um on page 122, you'll notice that um most of the vocabulary terms are very Marian. All right, so it's about our Blessed Mother. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just do a review of some of these terms, but I'm gonna do it through the lens of the four Marian dogmas that are necessary for Catholic faith. Which, by the way, a lot of Catholics don't even know there are four Marian dogmas that are necessary for Catholic faith. It has nothing to do with apparitions. Okay, so the the dogmas are not Guadalupe, Lourdes, and Fatima. Okay, those are all private revelations. And by the way, if you didn't believe in any of those private revelations, that doesn't make you any less of a Catholic. Private revelations are not necessary for Catholic faith per se. Okay, but if they're approved, they're worthy of belief. All right, we'll get back into that in a second. So let's just, so that's the menu for today, just 45 minutes as you know. So let's just spend a moment here on page 118 on Christ's hidden years. So, generally speaking, in the tradition, you'll notice that we lose track of Jesus for about 18 years, from about the time he's 12, the time of the finding of the Lord Jesus of the temple, the fifth joyful mystery, until the time he begins his public ministry, and we know he'd have to at least have been 30. Now, why is that? Because rabbinical law required rabbis, and he they call him rabbi right off the bat. Okay, rabbinical law required that the rabbi be at least 30. Now, this gives you a little bit of insight in sort of like life expectancy in the Holy Land at the time, because they thought by 30 you had accrued at least sufficient wisdom to teach the word of God. Alright? So, but of course, if you're only living to be about 45 or 50 or so, sure, 30 sounds about right. Okay? So rabbinical law requires you to be at least 30, and then if you trace the movements of Christ to the Holy Land, we know that he goes to the major feasts in Jerusalem thrice. The third time, of course, is Holy Bew, the end of his life here on earth. Okay? So that's sort of what gives us the number 30 as the beginning of his public ministry. So for those 18 years, that's what page 118 and 119 are talking about. Okay. So I'm not going to read what you can read, but I just wanted to give you a little bit of insight into what you know is at really at the heart of this. So one of the things that I don't think the chapter mentions, I think I didn't remember seeing this, yeah, is um, well, it does mention that the Lord worked in carpentry with St. Joseph, which would have made sense because that was Saint Joseph's profession. Now, I like today, um, I mean, I don't know if you've ever had to hire a carpenter to do woodworking at your house, and especially if they're highly skilled carpenters, they can command a pretty nice wage. In Jesus' time, carpenters were not considered to be prestigious workers. So when they complain about Jesus' capacity to teach other scriptures in Luke chapter 4, they say, is this not the carpenter's son? That was an insult. Alright? It's not like, oh yeah, you know, St. Joseph is a really good artisan. No. It's just like saying, you know, is this a is this the janitor's son? Okay, so when you get to have to put the context together, but just to say that for those 18 years at least, from the time Jesus was 12 to the time he was 30, we don't know how old Jesus was when Saint Joseph died. But we do know that by the time Jesus begins his public ministry, the last we heard of Joseph was in the temple when Jesus was 12. So we don't know when he died. There's no indication in scripture, and there's not even a tradition as to when he died, but there is a tradition, small tea, as to why he was dead before Jesus began his public ministry. That simply is about the idea that Joseph would not have given Jesus permission for the crucifixion. Joseph would have asserted himself to protect his son from such an ignominious death. Regardless, Joseph and Jesus spend time in the carpenter shop. And I think one of the more idyllic scenes that we can kind of reflect upon in our own prayer about Jesus' hidden years is that it was customary for uh Jewish fathers and sons to work together in their trade. That could have been not just carpentry, but it could have been out of the fields, whatever. Okay. And it was very customary for the men as they went about their day in the work space to recite the psalms, 150 of the psalms. And they and they basically memorized, they had this the Psalms memorized by heart. Okay, so Saint Joseph would have taught our blessed Lord the Psalms. Okay, um, which I think is a really interesting way to think about their relationship. Also, um, I think another dimension of this, which is worth noting, is that Saint Joseph teaches Jesus how to work with wood. And of course, that's a wonderful preamble to the greatest work Jesus would do, which is on the wood of the cross. So, you know, as hammers were taken to Jesus at Calvary, I wonder how much of that was a flashback to his own life in the carpenter shop in St. Joseph. Alright? Now, the other dimension of Christ's hidden life worth mentioning too is Our Lady. So we joke in my line of work that Our Lady was the first seminary rector, and the first seminary was the holy house of Nazareth. Okay. So another way to think about Joseph and Mary in the life of the holy family of Nazareth is to think about, for instance, um, Jesus biographically describes his heart as meek and humble.

unknown 10:00

Right?

SPEAKER_00 10:00

He says, Come to me, all of you who are burdened, and I will give you rest. Learn from me. Discite amen in Latin, for I am meek and humble of heart. So many scholars think that when Jesus thought of meekness, he was attributing that to Saint Joseph. And when he was thinking about humility, he was attributing that to our lady. Now, we know a little bit about humility, it's from the Latin humus, not hummus, which is excellent with warm pita bread. But humus is Latin for dirt. That's why we say that humble people are grounded. Okay? That's one of the reasons why we use that idiomatic expression in American English. But um, meekness is often misunderstood. It's one of the beatitudes. Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land, or they shall possess the kingdom, depending on what translation you're reading. So meekness, if you're thinking about Saint Joseph here, is the virtue of self-possession, not timidity. That's not a biblical value. Timidity is not a biblical value, but meekness is. So a meek person is not milk toast, timid. A meek person is self-possessed, meaning to say that a meek person is neither too hot nor too cold. They're kind of steady-freddy. They're not easily given to anger, but they're also not easily given to sadness. And in fact, they're not really easily given to any extreme emotion. They're generally in a very, very sort of steady-freddy kind of denwin. Now, the reason this is attributed in the tradition to St. Joseph is because if you notice in Joseph's life, he's basically asked to uproot his life, move the Holy Family to Bethlehem for the birth of Christ, then to Egypt, then back to Nazareth. Nowhere do you find Joseph complaining. Meek people don't complain. They don't feel entitled to anything, they don't feel they ought to be treated in a particular way. They're just, they just roll with it. Okay? So, and you notice by the way, everything that Joseph's asked to do, he's always asked to do in a dream. Alright? Everything comes to Joseph in dreams. Alright, this is why Pope Francis liked to keep an image of sleeping Saint Joseph on his desk. Okay, because the Lord spoke to, or God spoke to Joseph through dreams. So Pope Francis used to say that when he had a difficult thing to resolve or situation to handle, he would write it down on a piece of paper and put it under his statue of sleeping Saint Joseph, asking for some insight into what to do. Anyway, just to say that Saint Joseph's meekness also extends to his agreement to take on the blessed mother, even though she's pregnant, not by him. Now remember, they're betrothed, which is not engaged, by the way. Betrothal is not engagement. We tend to impose our Western understandings of these things on the Semitic world. Betrothal was the first step of marriage in the Semitic world. So when couples were betrothed, they actually already exchanged consent. So they were married. This is why the angel says to Joseph, do not be afraid to take Mary, your wife, into your home. Because they're already married. But between the betrothal and the woman moving in with the man, usually about a year elapsed, and the man has a year to construct a home, start developing a nest egg of money, so that the moment that she moves in with him, they can start a family. Okay, so you at least have to give that nine months more. So he's got a year plus nine months, perhaps before the baby's born. So Mary is already married to Joseph. It's just that before they live together, and this is what creates sort of this controversy because they're not living together and yet she's pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Okay? And you notice the story that Joseph decided to divorce Mary quietly. Okay. And the tradition there too is not simply because he didn't think Mary was up to no good, but the greater tradition is that Joseph did not feel himself worthy to be espoused to the Immaculate Conception. And it's like, this is above my pay break. Okay. I mean, I'm out. Because this is she's she's way beyond me. Okay. Unfortunately, a lot of the preaching around this makes two mistakes. One, it assumes that they were not married when Mary conceived, they already were, that they were engaged. In fact, the brevery, our Liturgy of the Hours, talks about them being engaged. I've been complaining about this for as long as I've been a seminarian. And also that the reason Joseph wanted to divorce Mary quietly was because he suspected our lady was up to no good, that she was unfaithful. Okay. That would never have crossed Joseph's mind, at least in my read. Okay. So let me just stop there for one second. Any questions about any of that so far? Yes, sir. Yeah, so the question for those who are listening to the recording is one of the other possibilities why Joseph was no longer in the picture by the time Jesus began is that there would be no ambiguity about who is Jesus' father. I think that's quite possible. I mean, I I generally don't discount a lot of these theories because there's nothing definitive that's ever been said by the church. So sure, that's I think very plausible. Why not? No, well, there's this there's this um controversy about your brothers and your sisters are outside waiting for you. Okay, well, if you look at the original Greek and then you also look at the Hebrew, the the distinction between cousins and siblings was kind of fuzzy. Not genetically, but just in terms of like the relationship. Okay, so I've heard this uh purported that Joseph may have had another wife from another marriage, but uh John Paul II rules this out in Redum Torus Custos, his document on Saint Joseph in the early 80s, because he said, Do you really think that the Immaculate Conception would have been like, I mean, I don't call her leftovers, but you know, I mean, yeah, come on. Yeah, I mean, this is the this is the Redeemer of the world, okay? So he kind of rules that out. All right, and again, this idea of brothers and sisters outside would be more like basically like your relatives are outside. So, for instance, if you were at the 730 Mass today, I was talking about my relationship with my cousins. My my my relationship with my male cousins is like we're brothers, and I mean I call them brother. All right, you know, like I'll write a text, you know, say guys going through a hard time and said, Hey man, praying for your brother, love your brother. You know, you see what I'm saying? But we know we're not brothers. Okay, we joke we're brothers from a different mother. Okay, kind of thing. So I've heard that purported, but I generally I generally dismiss it, and so does John Paul II, so I think that's pretty good authority.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

One last question. Or he wouldn't have given he wouldn't have consented to it. How does that well I just a natural it's a natural desire? I mean, the two things that most that dads are interested in are to provide and protect. I mean, that's the natural male instinct as a dad. Those are the two things that men really instinctively feel called to as fathers, to provide and to protect. I mean, this is why, like, for instance, just as a sidebar, why unemployment hits men harder than it hits women. Okay, even single women who are just raising, single mothers who are raising a family. Okay, dads really take unemployment very it's very emasculing for men not to be able to provide. It's very hard, psychologically.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

So again, this is nothing, this is not church teaching. I'm just saying this is tradition, small T. I'm not excluding any possibilities. I mean, anything wild I'll exclude, but those are all within the realm of possibilities. Again, there's nothing that's ever been definitively said about these things. In fact, that's kind of the point of this section, is that we're talking about Christ's hidden years. So much of this stuff is quite speculative. Okay, so it's important not to go around saying, well, the church teaches that Joseph would not have permitted the crucifixion. Well, but the church does not teach that actually. It's just these are these are theological opinions that have been purported by different scholars and saints over the centuries. Sort of like the same thing that why did St. Joseph want to divorce Mary quietly? Well, some people interpret it as because he suspected our lady was up to no good. I prefer the church fathers, the Western Church fathers, who say, no, St. Joseph knew who she was and said, uh, I am not up for this task. This is you are I mean, imagine St. Joseph at the dinner table in Nazareth, right? You're married to the Immaculate Conception, and your foster son is the son of God. I mean, I wonder how often St. Joseph was comfortable saying something. You know, I mean, our lady's like, that's nice here. You know, or our Lord saying, Oh, dad.

unknown 20:21

Come on, you know.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Yeah, right. I mean, I mean, you know, poor St. Joseph, right? I mean, that's that's a tough slot to be in. I mean, you're you're kind of outclassed on your left and your right. Okay, so. That's just why I love Saint Joseph, because this is part of his meekness. This is part of his self-possession. So the beatitude to go back to that is that you can possess yourself, you can possess heaven. Interesting, right? So self-possession, self-control, is already a preamble to possessing God. Not that you're God, but you say that's an analogy.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

So if you think people who, you know, if you know people who are really in control, I mean they're not prone to extreme either behaviors or reactions to things, it's very admirable. You know, like I mean, I I work with a lot of priests who have mastered this virtue. You know, they're so I would I would say your pastor is a very meek man. He's not really quite given to, you know, he doesn't fly off the handle here and there. It's very easy to live with, very easygoing. Okay. I mean, you know, he has principles and commitments, but he's not. I don't, I've never met anyone who said, well, Father O'Hare really flew off the handle. I mean, I've never heard that one. It's kind of not sort of like his his way. Okay? Can I move on? Okay. So in our remaining time, for the 25 minutes we're left together here, um, if we want to flip the page over to the conclusion, that's fine. Okay, but I just want to move over to the um section 120, pages 122 to 1. Okay, so what I want to talk about here for the remaining time is I want to talk about the four Marian dogmas that are necessary for Catholic faith. Okay. So the first is the Theotokos, which is on page 123, Greek for God-bearer. As the definition says in the book, it is the title formally given to the Blessed Virgin Mary at Ephesus. It's 431, which is in modern-day Turkey. Anyone been to Ephesus? Show of hands, no? Okay. You can go there and visit the Blessed Mother's home. This is where she would have spent her years post ascension before her assumption. Okay? And then so this, of course, the Theotokos doctrine, the dogma, raised massive controversies, mainly the Nestorian controversy, which denied essentially that God had a mother. Okay, and you can imagine sort of the discussion, right? How can all the eternal God who has no beginning and no end have a mother? Okay, but so the Nestorian controversy is really a controversy about Christology, which is a study of Christ. So, yes, it's true. The second person of the Trinity exists from all time. There's no beginning or no end, he's eternal. But in the fullness of time, God sent his only Son, the person of Christ. So Jesus is a divine person, not a human person. Jesus is a divine person, second person of the Trinity, who assumes human nature. Which means he has a true human body and a true human soul. Jesus is not two persons. If that were true, we wouldn't have a Trinity anymore, would we? We'd have four people in the Godhead. We only have two, three people. Jesus is a divine person who assumes human nature. Which means he has a true human body and a true human soul. Jesus is not a human person. This is why, by the way, I get very nervous when people refer to Jesus as a human being. Because I'm not sure whether or not they understand the distinction between person and being. Now, if they're indicating to me that they understand the difference, good. I prefer just to keep the language safer, to say he's a divine person with a human nature. Of course, being a divine person, he also has a divine nature. Okay, that should go without saying. So this is the controversy that was surrounding the priest Nestorius, who led this rebellion against Mary, the mother of God. And you may know the story at the Council of Ephesus. There was a bishop from Bari in Puglia in Italy. You can go visit his tomb. He was so incensed at Nestorius, the priest, the notorious Nestorius, we call him, that he literally slugged him and knocked him out. You know what I'm talking about? St. Nicholas. Santa Claus. Santa Claus, manipyad, Muhammad Ali, Nestorius, over this controversy. Talk about the church militant. Really taking it to taking it to heart. The church physical. I call it St. Nicholas the church belligerent. He probably went to confession afterwards, okay.

unknown 25:37

Alright.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

But anyway, whatever. So that's the first Marian doctrine. And that's the primary Marian doctrine. Okay, and everything else flows from that. Okay. Second Marian doctrine is the Immaculate Conception. So the first one is Mary, the mother of God, the tokos. Number two is the Immaculate Conception. Okay. To me, this is the wildest of all the doctrines, of the dogmas, okay? Because it really gives you an insight into the notion of God and time. So this is why my students in the seminary have to learn philosophy, especially metaphysics, before they can understand this. Okay, so let me just break this down. Listen to what the dogma says about the Immaculate Conception. And everyone remembers 1854, 1856, Pius II.

unknown 26:30

54.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

54, all right. So I can never keep those numbers straight. Okay, 54. So this is what the doc the dogma says, okay? It says Immaculate Conception. December 8th, we celebrate on December 8th. The whole, by the way, the whole hemisphere that we're in is consecrated to the Immaculate Conception. That's why the shrine downtown is the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. By the way, the Mississippi was once unmapped. You can still find maps that referred to the Mississippi by the French as the river of the Immaculate Conception. Same with the Chesapeake Bay, the Bay of the Immaculate Conception. You can still find maps, let's say that. Okay? Okay. So what they decided to do eventually was to return the names to the Native American names, Mississippi and Chesapeake. Okay. So the dogma says this about the Immaculate Conception. At the moment of her conception, Mary enjoyed the merits of her son's redemptive act at Calvary. Now think about that for a moment, okay? At the moment of Mary's conception, Jesus' mother, she already enjoyed the merits of the redemption, the crucifixion. Is that wild? Timing-wise, right? In chronology, it's a little bit off, isn't it? Jesus hasn't been conceived, let alone born, let grown to manhood, to die on the cross. And the merits of the redemption are already applied to Mary's soul. So that she is conceived without sin. Now, why is she conceived without sin goes back to the first doctrine. So she can pass on perfect humanity to the perfect victim and the perfect priest who is to die at Calvary. See that? So the Immaculate Conception is about the Theotophos. Because remember, as the perfect victim and the perfect priest, Jesus has to have perfect humanity without original sin, without the taint of original sin. So Mary is preserved from original sin, enjoying the merits of the redemption at her conception. Chronologically, we would say impossible. But this is precisely where God can act outside of time. Because for God, time, all of time for God is now. God is pure actuality. I am who am, he says in the burning bush. So your whole life for God, like your life is unfolding before you. And you can think about your past, you can think about where you are right now, and you can project what your life will be like in the future with some perhaps you know accuracy. But for God, your whole life, your whole, the whole history of the world is now. So he can apply the merits of a chronological future event now. And the now in this moment was Mary's conception. Make sense? I mean that's a lot, right? I mean, that's a lot of speeches of 10, not at 8. At least we have a couple cups of coffee before then, okay? So that's the Immaculate Conception. And the Immaculate Conception is only a dogma because of the Theotokos. Mary's the mother of God. Otherwise, there's no need. Now the next doctrine, dogma, assumption. Mary, when her life ended on earth, is assumed body and soul into heaven. Okay? So it's interesting how they phrase this. The document by Pius XII in 1950 is when he fenced Visimus Deus. Four Jesuits wrote it. You can read the original. It's in the Ignatian apartments in Rome, right next to the bed where St. Ignatius died. Okay, the founder of the Jesuits. Four Jesuits wrote the dogma or the assumption for Pius XII when he pronounced it in 1950. Okay, so 1854, right? His Immaculate Conception, 1950. About a hundred years later, not quite a hundred years later, we have the assumption. And by the way, this of course raises a sidebar question. Catholics already believed this before 1950. Yes. The Church operates almost in the exact opposite way that sort of English common law traditions operate. In English common law traditions, like constitutional republics like ours, for instance, normally what we do is we set out a document to enumerate and delineate the parameters of the project. And then from there, like for instance, right, we know in the Constitution, they immediately added the Bill of Rights, right? That's the first Ten Amendments. Okay? So this already forms like a structure. And we do this all the time in companies, right? When we form corporations, we write bylaws. Okay, the church is the opposite. We only define those things as controversies forces to. The reverse. Okay, so like for instance, we just celebrated in 2025 the Nicene Constantinople Creed. 1700 years. It took us 300 and years 300 and change of years to write out the Creed. America's 250 years this year week. The first thing we did was write a document. Really, to the Declaration of Independence to start the movement and in the Constitution to frame the whole project. The church is a reverse. 300 years, yeah, maybe we should write this down. Now. Put your bylaws down, put your rules down, make the rules of the game, and then we'll play the game. And the church is like, well, we know how to play the game. We know what we believe. So uh give me one second. Okay, so where was I? Um assumption is written in 1950. So it says essentially when Mary's life on earth ended. Okay, so what's the theological definition of death? The theological definition of death is the separation of the body and the soul. That's not a biological definition, okay? That's not, you know, look, when when the when the nursing nurse practitioner or the attending nurse or the physician calls time of death in a hospital, it's not theological. Right? They don't know when the body leaves the soul. I mean, how could they? Alright, none of us actually know that. Only God knows that. So that's why sometimes, you know, I called in the hospital and someone's just died, they've been declared dead medically, biologically. The question is, can I still give them anointing to the sick? Or the last rites, because the sacraments are for the living, not the dead. And generally speaking, the common practice is that if they just died or the body's still warm, it's possible that while they may be biologically dead, the soul is still in the body and therefore could benefit from the sacraments. So, sure, I'll anoint, I'll anoint them just in case. And if they're not, if they're already gone, okay. If the soul's already gone to God, fine. But you know, sometimes it just happens, like I'm trying to get to the hospital, but there's traffic. And my biocation skills are zero. So I can't quite get there, okay? And there's no drone picking me up from my car stranded on 95 getting me there, okay? So, yeah, sometimes I think, okay, God, well, if you know the soul's still there, we'll do the anointing. If they're not there, okay. That's up to God to figure out.

unknown 34:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

So when Mary's life on earth ended, her body and her soul were assumed into heaven. That's a doctrine. The doctrine. Alright. Now that's a byproduct of the Immaculate Conception. Because if she's not without original sin, and one of the effects of original sin is death.

unknown 34:47

Okay?

SPEAKER_00 34:47

This is why the document's very clever. It does not say when Mary died, it says when Mary's life on earth ended. Now we can say she died, but in a qualified sense, because technically when you say death, body and soul are separated. The dogma is saying, no, at the moment her life here on earth ended, she was assumed body and soul into heaven. Because she was not going to experience the same. So, in my read, this is would be what Adam and Eve would have experienced had they not committed original sin. Their life here on earth ends, and then they go to God. Something like that. Okay, now, I just want to just make a little sidebar before we get to the end here. So we're only 10 minutes away from the end. And by the way, I'll stay after for QA if you want. So, you know, but if you need to go. I guess there's what time's the mass is at 10:30. Alright, you're not going to mass. Okay. You've got to wait until 12:30. Okay. So I just want us to consider this because we just celebrated this recently in the aftermath of uh Easter, but before Pentecost is the ascension. Okay. So who are the three people that we can two we know for sure, in fact, we could probably say all three, are in heaven, body and soul. Not Moses. Elijah. Elijah, the blessed mother and our Lord, right? So maybe not. Maybe not. But whatever. What? Okay. I mean, but whatever, okay? But my point is this the roster is irrelevant to me, except for our Lord and our lady. Those are the ones I'm really interested in. But I just want you to think about this. Bodies take up time and space. Right? We take up time, we take up space. And there are at least three. And if you want to add in the others, site five, okay, whatever. However long your list is, okay? Two for sure, our Lord and our lady. That's dogmatic. Okay? Whatever the number is, okay, at least two. Alright. And those two. The first thing to think about the ascension is this. Because of the incarnation, God becoming man, forever now, since that moment, humanity has a foothold in the Godhead. I just want you to think about that for a minute. Humanity has a foothold in the Godhead because of Christ. That is absolutely revolutionary in the history of world religion. This is the whole project, by the way, what we call divinization. That the Christian life is about becoming like God. Not God Himself and His nature, because only God is God, right? Okay? But to become like God. Irenaeus of Leon, who we would celebrate today, normally said, right? God became man so that man could become God. This is a radical, radical claim. Okay? So think about this. Because of the incarnation, God becomes man in Christ, forever now, humanity, human nature has a foothold in the Godhead, the Trinity. So when Christ ascends to the Father's right hand, this is not the completion of his earthly ministry, merely its continuation from a different place. Now, let's get back to time and space in the human bodies, given the list of five. Okay, we'll just give it the benefit of the doubt, that will say it's alright. We'll just say it's all five. Certainly two, maybe three more, okay? But here's the thing. Does that mean that heaven is a physical place? Alright. The catechism does not say that, it says a state of being. Now, why is that? Because here's the clue. Think about Jesus and his resurrected state, right? Thomas Aquinas goes through a list of four qualities that Jesus' body has. I won't go through all the technical terms, but just to say his human body, Jesus' human body, can walk through solid objects, he can disguise himself, Emmaus. He can appear and disappear at the blink of an eye. And he bears the marks of the passion that feels no pain. He's in a glorified state. So I'm just suggesting here that when we think about the assumption or the ascension, let's just say, take those two glorious mysteries. The existence of God and our Lady, and again, with all due respect to the other three, whoever, you know, okay, they're there, okay, their physical presence in heaven is in a fourth dimension of reality. It's a dimension of reality we do not, we cannot understand in our limited vision. Because we only live in three dimensions. Right? And remember, the evangelists go through some great measure to make us remember that Jesus was not a ghost. Remember, when he appears in the upper room on Easter Sunday night, they thought they were seeing a ghost. And he says, What's the first thing he says, besides peace be with you, give me a piece of fish. And by the way, Jesus likes baked fish. Okay, those details are not insignificant. I mean, he wanted to literally eat in their midst so that they realized he was not like a mirage. He's a physical body, yet living in a fourth dimension of reality. I'm just you know, just introducing this idea that we just cannot comprehend. Okay, but by the way, that's the fourth dimension I think we're all headed for in the life of the world to God. Please, God. Okay, last doctrine, because I'm at five minutes away. See? When you're a pro like me, you've got to keep track of time because the bell rings. Okay. I get bad emails if I don't cover all the material in the set amount of time. Okay, so the perpetual virginity of Mary is the last dogma. Mary was ever virgin before Jesus, after Jesus' birth, and during his birth. Virginitas in partu. Okay, let me explain. First, virginity. In the Western mind, a virgin is a woman who has not had relations with a man. In the ancient world, that was part of virginity. The other part of virginity, which of course we related, is that a child had never passed through the woman's birth canal. We call this in Latin virginitas intacta. Intact virginity. No passing of a child to the birth canal. So if you read the prayers of Christmas Eve, it does not say Mary gave birth to Christ. Read the prayers very carefully. It's very carefully worded. It says, when she bore forth a son. So here's the analogy. Mary is like the upper room on Easter Sunday. Jesus passes through solid objects. So, and people are like, that seems odd. Oh, you think that's odd? How about the Immaculate Conception? How about the Annunciation? You don't think that's odd? Okay, I mean, like, let's get over the if this is odd phase, okay? All of this is mysterious. I don't call it odd, it's just mysterious. Okay. So, don't think of virginity simply about sex, it's also about the fact that she is the intact vessel of the Holy Spirit. So the tradition is that Mary did not give birth to Jesus in the normal course. And one of the other reasons we know this scripturally is that she puts him in swaddling clothes, which no woman who was given birth could do. She'd be wiped out. The perpetual virginity of Mary, most people don't have any problems with before the birth of Christ and after the birth of Christ, it's the virginitas in part two, how she bore forth a savior. The church has preserved this language, virginitas in tapta in the Latin, because we want to delineate this idea that Mary's virginity is not a simple matter of having relations with Saint Joseph, but that her whole being was reserved for God's special purposes to bring forth his son. That is a profound mystery. But that's a dog, that's a dogma. Okay, those are the four dogmas necessary for. Catholic faith. So repeat, Mary the Mother of God, Immaculate Conception, Assumption, and Perpetual Virginity. Alright? And by the way, that covers pretty much everything on pages 122 and 123 without going into the question section. That's coming. Okay? Hold on for one second before questions. I hope that was clear. And if you have any questions and want to stick around for a little bit afterwards, I'm happy to take them. I'm trying to think if there's anything else. Oh, one last thing. If you look on page 122, okay, you notice here hypostatic union. Because remember, everything about our lady is ultimately about our Lord. Okay, I mean, there's nothing about Marian dogma that is standalone. All of it relates to Jesus. Okay, so as we always say in theology, good Mariology, the study of the Blessed Mother, has to have sound Christological roots. If you don't understand Jesus, you're not going to understand our lady. And I would also say vice versa. Okay? So if you notice a hypostatic union, what the hypostatic union is the joining of Christ's divine personhood with his divine nature to a human nature. To human, not a human nature, but to human nature. Human nature has characteristics: true human body and true human soul. The soul has capacities or what we call faculties. For instance, intellect, will, memory. Aquinas says that one of the signs of human intellect, for instance, is what's called risability, which is a capacity to laugh. Only humans can laugh. Your dog panting is just hot. They're not laughing at your stupid jokes. They're just hot. That's our pooling system. People think of the dog in the dog pants. That's not laughing. Okay? The dog is just hot. Okay? And hygenas don't laugh, that's her bark. Laughing is a sign of human intellect, which is, by the way, inferior to angelic intellect. But human intellect is the only type of intellect below the angels that can perceive humor. Humor requires the perception of irony. That's what makes things funny. See that? So in this world where we try to elevate animals to the level of children, it's bad anthropology. Bad anthropology. Dogs, I love dogs. I'm a dog guy. But they are not kids. So in Old Town, you have more dogs and children now. Have for years. Okay? Alright, so just want to give you a sense of these have real, extremely important ramifications, not only theologically, but sociologically as well. Okay, my union contract does not permit me to speak further than this. So I'm gonna stop here and then um we can take questions. Okay, our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Thanks for your attention. Hope it helped.