Red Dirt Catholics
Join Jayce, James and guests from "Red Dirt" Oklahoma as they discuss what evangelization and discipleship looks like in real life.
Red Dirt Catholics
Living Eucharistically
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Father Jerome Krug joined Jayce and James to discuss how one can live every day as a living sacrifice.
Register now for the 2025 Discipleship Conference for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City! This full-day, bilingual event will feature amazing speakers, breakout sessions, adoration, Mass, confessions, vendors and more at the Oklahoma City Convention Center on Saturday, August 9. Register now to get the early-bird price at OKDisciple.org.
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Links and other stuff from the show:
Pastoral Letter, "On the Unity of the Body and Soul:" archokc.org/pastoral-letters
Red Dirt Catholics Email Address: reddirtcatholics@archokc.org
The Book "From Christendom to Apostolic Mission" (Digital and Print): Amazon
The Social Dilemma: https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224
Daily Examen Prayer: https://bit.ly/309As8z
Lectio Divina How-To: https://bit.ly/3fp8UTa
So I was playing kickball earlier this week with the eighth graders from St Elizabeth and Seton. They're there. We were there at a camp for outdoor labs and I feel like you'd be really good at kickball right now. I normally am. I normally am. Yeah, this is traumatic for me, but so I line up, start with the trauma. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I line it up and man, just right, field it's open, like I kick it there, I kick it there.
Speaker 1:I kick it there. I'm walking around the bases rubbing it in their faces, their little eighth-grade faces. So I'm already celebrating in my brain as I walk up. These kids don't know how to defend or shift or anything. So that's what I'm thinking, I line up. I think first pitch is like a dud way off to the right. They're scared. It's okay, they might try to walk me, I guess.
Speaker 1:Then the second pitch comes and it's perfect, it's just right down the middle Right down the middle and I line up to kick it and I like kick the ground instead of the ball and it like shot up, a pain like all the way up my back a kicking pain, yeah like okay, I've never felt that before it's a new thing yeah, it was a new thing. It was like being a 30 year old thing it felt like and I'm like and like I nicked the ball away and get on base still, but avery was just like. We're gonna talk about this on the podcast because he was.
Speaker 3:He was right behind. Did you get on video?
Speaker 1:no, no, it would have been pretty funny, but it was just. It was just the lousy, it was the lousiest kick. But I did some other great things like I. I did some. I had some at like, a ball was hit to one of the guys on my team and it went off his fingers and then I like, I like grabbed it on the second chance thing. So I mean I still got game, but that moment wasn't great you realized you were in your 30s in that moment yeah, I was like I was hobbling all the way to the first pace back.
Speaker 1:I was like what is, what is what is this? Like I it just it hurt. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't like it at all. I didn't like it at all. Did the kids laugh like it at?
Speaker 2:all. Did the kids laugh at you? No, no, just Avery. Good sports, just Avery.
Speaker 1:Just that big kid, just producer Avery.
Speaker 3:Honestly, with this setup, I thought it was going to be worse. I thought it was going to be like you kicked the ground or you kicked on top of the ball and tripped and fell on your back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, honestly, I wish it had been that the ball and tripped and fell on your back. Yeah, that would. Honestly I wish it had been that I kicked it straight to the assistant principal instead, just radiating nerve pain yeah I don't think even avery knew about that part. I was like. I was like, ah, this hurts, but I wasn't talking about it. But yeah, yeah, but my team won.
Speaker 2:You should come out to summer camp and lead kickball.
Speaker 1:I will be out there, Redeem the trauma. I will redeem it Like.
Speaker 3:I will. It'd be fun to get a bunch of adults together and have an adult kickball tournament or something.
Speaker 1:We had a league, oh seriously, yeah, the adult sports league.
Speaker 3:We've done it before no, kickball was part of the league. That's awesome, yeah, part of the sport. What other sports did that does or did the catholic young adult sports league?
Speaker 1:volleyball, yeah, volleyball. Basketball um dodgeball, dodgeball, oh heck, yeah, uh, there's others what's your favorite non-traditional sport guys like, like intramural.
Speaker 3:It might be an intramural sport but not a professional sport or not a mainstream sport curling, curling that is one of the most fun to watch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, me and my dad like it would come on on nbc. It's saturday at 11'clock, so no one's watching TV. So what do they put on? They throw curling on. But we came across it. It was like the Swedish team versus Canadians and them screaming and I go ah, you know, trying to think, trying to sweep the puck, get it where it needs to go. I loved doing that growing. I even played curling, for they have.
Speaker 3:They're the oklahoma city curling club and I did that for about a year because you did hockey right, so you would have been comfortable around the rink yeah, oklahoma city curling club. Yes, sir no way, that's amazing look at that Wow, I'm impressed.
Speaker 2:What about you? I don't really know. Yeah, I don't. What is a non-mainstream sport?
Speaker 1:Spike ball. Cornhole, oh, spike ball can be fun.
Speaker 3:I really enjoyed in college Pickle ball, Handball, so not the racquetball Like a racquetball, Not the racquetball type one that you're doing, but it's played on an indoor soccer field and in the Olympics there's like a special regulation field for it. But I think it combines the best of like basketball hockey and baseball Only take a few steps.
Speaker 2:When you have the ball, it's like ultimate Frisbee, but with a ball and indoors, yeah.
Speaker 1:And with a goal.
Speaker 3:That's a good description. Yeah, there's like an, the arc that is similar to three point arc or whatever on a. That's on an indoor soccer field. You can't. You can jump from that point but you can't like go. No one defense or offense other than the goalie can go in there. So it makes for some high action stuff because you might be someone might be be lined up for a charge in basketball to block that arc. But you could be sprinting at it, jumping and basically be almost face-to-face with the goalie and kind of psych him out and then you dribble like you do in basketball, or you can Wait, can you dribble?
Speaker 1:I've not played. I've watched clips of people saucing on goalies like spinning the ball so that it makes it look here and goes over here.
Speaker 3:I don't remember if you can drill, but the travel rule is like you get one extra step.
Speaker 1:We'll find out this summer. It's almost like an NBA Summer Olympics. Is this summer right? Oh nice yeah.
Speaker 3:I'd love to watch it. It's almost like an NBA travel in some sense. Three steps and a half, and so you can be at like half court with that step and go into your jump over the arc. It's just, I'm no good at hockey because I can't skate very well. I broke my arm's wife one time skating holding her hand.
Speaker 1:I remember talking about that, or just like in her shoulder or something.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's so funny.
Speaker 3:But it combines some of that. You know, field or rink presence you would have to have. You know, it's pretty fun, Pretty fun game.
Speaker 2:Broke her arm.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I actually dislocated her collarbone.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Just an AC joint. Yeah, Probably worse. So you say cornhole, which made me think of last month. I did a let it come and see trip to the seminary down in Dallas and one of the nights we were there, the seminary is like, okay, you guys need to go do a fun group activity, you can't stay here. I'm like, okay, I'm not from Dallas. And what should we do? Like well, you could take them rock climbing. Well, like most of the guys more than half the guys were like deathly afraid of climbing up a wall and falling to their death, I guess.
Speaker 1:Are we sure we want them? I don't know as priests.
Speaker 3:That's what seminary is eight years for learning to climb up walls.
Speaker 2:So I just Googled like what's a place I could take them that you know in budget and could not take a ton of time but be fun and engaging. So we found this place okay. This place this place and they have this game. It's a combination of football, bowling and cornhole. Okay, Sounds wild.
Speaker 3:Almost like what I might see at Chuck E Cheese, like I'm throwing it.
Speaker 2:No, no, no. So imagine the setup like cornhole. Okay, you're across from each other, except instead of the wood box that you use for cornhole, there are bowling pins, and so bowling pins. You're facing the other guy and you're not throwing bean bags, you're throwing footballs and you alternate like you do in cornhole, and whoever can knock down all the bowling pins first wins. It is tons of fun. Sounds pretty fun tons of fun.
Speaker 1:I was hoping there was some physical contact, yeah yeah, that's in the, that's in the. Uh the next version I guess the next version whenever we open up something like that in oklahoma city. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha right next to something, there's something that forces a waiver.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm all not all the guys were totally into it at first. They were like this is weird, this is new. And by the end of it everybody was like totally into it. I can see that getting pretty competitive.
Speaker 3:Super competitive. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Love it.
Speaker 3:That seems like something you could set up too, at like a camp or a gathering you could set up. You just need the bowling pins.
Speaker 2:That's it Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Awesome, I like that.
Speaker 1:Well we're here.
Speaker 2:Here we are.
Speaker 1:So Father Jerome Krug is here. All of you are familiar with Father Krug. We're excited to have you here today to talk about living as Eucharistic sacrifices and what that means for us, cause I'm us Because I barely know what it means. I'm excited to hear from him on what that means. But, father, would you lead us in a prayer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen, come Holy Spirit. Come through Mary. Father, we thank you, we love you, we praise you For every good gift that you give us, but most especially for the gift of Jesus, your son, who has come to show us what it truly means to live and to worship and to live communion. We pray that, as we embark on this discussion, and all those who accompany us as listeners may be enlightened by the Holy Spirit, so that what we talk about might not just be theory or ideas, but might make it so that we worship in spirit and in truth. Thank you for James and Jason for this time, and I ask that you would bless it abundantly. We pray this confidently, for we pray in the name of Jesus and in the hands of his mother and ours.
Speaker 2:Amen, amen In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. So, living as a Eucharistic sacrifice, we're in these years of Eucharistic revival and we're invited by the church to allow the Eucharist to transform our lives, to transform how we live, how we pray and how those things are interacting our prayer, our worship, but our living too.
Speaker 1:Um yeah, I'm excited to talk about it with you guys. I'm excited to hear about it. You know, like we were talking earlier and you said, well, we need to learn to live. How do you live Eucharistically? And I was like, um, does that mean receiving the Eucharist daily or a lot, or what is that like? What does living Eucharistically even mean?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think there's a verse that I'd love to use to kind of frame our conversation today, and it comes from Paul's letter to the Romans, the beginning of the 12th chapter. He says I appeal to you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. I appeal to you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Yeah, and I think that that encapsulates what it means to live in the manner of the Eucharist, to live Eucharistically. Another way of phrasing that is to live in the manner of the Eucharist, or to let the Eucharist become the pattern of your life, that what the Eucharist traces in sign and symbol and sacrament might be lived in our flesh, in our bodies, like Paul says, in spirit and in truth. In spirit and in truth. Jesus says true worshipers worship in spirit and in truth.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, does it mean we go to Mass every day? Does it mean we go to Mass every week? Obviously, we go to Mass for the Sunday Eucharist. The Sunday Eucharist is the first day of creation, the day God started creation, and the eighth day when he started a new creation on the day of the resurrection, on Easter Sunday, and that we are inaugurated in a new way of living. Yeah, but actually, before we get too far into this, I've got something I shared with you guys before, but I'd love to share with our listeners too. It's actually an excerpt of a homily from St Peter Chrysologus. He's a bishop in the early centuries of the church in a diocese in Italy, but I think it'll help give us a direction to go with this Awesome Sweet. All right, it's a little bit long, so I apologize to our listeners but it's not too long.
Speaker 1:Grab your popcorn, get comfortable listen to the sweet, sweet sounds.
Speaker 2:Jerome reading saint peter a dramatic interpretation. So he's preaching on the same verse we just read, so you'll hear echoes of it throughout this excerpt to be loved rather than feared, to be a father rather than a Lord, god appeals to us in his mercy to avoid having to punish us in his severity. Listen to the Lord's appeal In me. I want you to see your own body, your members, your heart, your bones, your blood, blood. You may fear what is divine, but why not love what is human? You may run away from me as the lord, but why not run to me as your father? Perhaps you are filled with shame for causing my bitter passion. Do not be afraid. This cross inflicts a mortal injury, not on me, but on death. These nails no longer pain me, but only deepen your love for me. I do not cry out because of these wounds, but through them I draw you into my heart. My body was stretched on the cross as a symbol, not of how much I suffered, but of my all-embracing love. I count it no less to shed my blood. It is the price I have paid for your ransom. Come then, return to me and learn to know me as your Father, who repays good for evil, love for injury and boundless charity for piercing wounds.
Speaker 2:Listen now to what the apostle urges us to do. I appeal to you, he says, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. By this exhortation of his, paul has raised all men to priestly status. How marvelous is the priesthood of the Christian, for he is both the victim that is offered on his own behalf and the priest who makes the offering. He does not need to go beyond himself to seek what he is to immolate to God. With himself and in himself. He brings the sacrifice he is to offer God for himself. The victim remains and the priest remains always one and the same Immolated. The victim lives. The priest who immolates cannot kill. Truly, it is an amazing sacrifice in which a body is offered without being slain and blood is offered without being shed. The apostle says I appeal to you, by the mercy of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, brethren. This sacrifice follows the pattern of Christ's sacrifice, by which he gave his body as a living immolation for the life of the world. He really made his body a living sacrifice because, though slain, he continues to live In such a victim. Death receives its ransom, but the victim remains alive. Death itself suffers the punishment. This is why death for the martyrs is actually a birth and their end a beginning. Their execution is the door to life, and those who are thought to have been blotted out from the earth shine brilliantly in heaven. Paul says I appeal to you, by the mercy of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice, living and holy. The prophet said the same thing Sacrifice and offering. You did not desire, but you have prepared a body for me.
Speaker 2:Each of us is called to be both a sacrifice to God and his priest. Do not forfeit what divine authority confers on you. Put on the garment of holiness, gird yourself with the belt of chastity. Let Christ be your helmet. Let the cross on your forehead be your unfailing protection. Your breastplate should be the knowledge of god that he himself has given you. Keep burning continually the sweet, smelling incense of prayer. Take up the sword of the spirit. Let Let your heart be an altar. Then, with full confidence in God, present your body for sacrifice. God desires not death but faith. God thirsts not for blood but for self-surrender. God is appeased not by slaughter, but by the offering of your free will. This has been a reading from St Peter Chrysologus.
Speaker 3:You're meant to be a sacrifice, avery, can you send that to Hallow? Yeah, let's get a partnership for Hallow with Red Dirt.
Speaker 1:Catholics We'll get one of them. Little buttons We'll get one of those little more modern cartoon things. Like you know how they have a Father Mike Schmitz. Like you know the no eyes or face, it's just like their outline. We'll get one for Father Jerome.
Speaker 2:A little avatar.
Speaker 3:A little avatar, there you go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so anything stand out to you guys.
Speaker 3:Lots of it. I just had the first like a question. The title of the homily was each of us is called to be both a sacrifice to God and a priest. Can you define priesthood for us? Like what's a priest? Like even, obviously we have the Catholic understanding of our baptism, but also just like, generally across time, what's the role of a priest do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so a priest is meant to be a mediator between God and humanity, meant to be somebody who stands between and connects, almost like an outlet that you can plug into right, and that's in every culture, but does that through sacrifice, through sacrifice. And so then you see, in the Old Testament, right, the priests are the ones that you bring your ox or your sheep or your turtle doves to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, your best one.
Speaker 2:That's right, the best one, without blemish, without spot. And the priest is the one that slaughters, literally slaughtered the animal. It was a bloody sacrifice. And then fast forward to the New Testament and you hear in the letter to the Hebrews, the author talks about how Jesus is the great high priest. And it's strange because he's not offering a sacrifice separate from himself, but he becomes the priest and that which is sacrificed.
Speaker 2:And we believe, you know, in a baptism, right after the water is poured, right. I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. There's an anointing with chrism, and three people in the Old Testament were anointed with chrism priests for the temple, prophets who were meant to call the people to greater fidelity to the lord and to his covenant, and the king, the king, priest, prophet and king. And so in baptism we are anointed with christ as priest, prophet and king and king, being members of his body, so sharing in his priesthood, his prophetic word and his kingly governance, and that's something shared by every baptized person. And so what does it mean to be a priest? It means to offer sacrifice, and the sacrifice that we are called to offer is in the model of our high priest Jesus, that sacrifice is meant to be ourselves or, as St Paul says, our bodies. It's not just an abstract idea, it's not just like your heart or it's like what is the sacrifice.
Speaker 1:Your body. Yeah, that was the thing that stood out to me as he was describing. Like you know, your best mate should be the knowledge of god. Keep burning that sweet smelling incense, let your heart be an altar and then get on.
Speaker 1:It is essentially what it, what it said here and I was like imagining that and I was like, how do I get my body on my heart, you know? So it's not like it's physical, but it's not. It's this isn't like as literally here like, is it? Is it just like our free will, specifically like is that a representation of what we mean when we say body here as an offering, or do we mean something else? Is it?
Speaker 3:everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The first image that came to my mind is a mama who's nine months pregnant and her back's being thrown out as she sacrifices herself for this human that she's bringing into the world, in collaboration with god, you know, um. Or the dad who, uh, is literally working himself into the ground, not in a sense of like, not being present to his family, but to enable um, his ability to be with his family, sacrificing his body for that. You know, and you know, in the Eucharist, the host is broken and the blood is poured out. Those are very Eucharistic images. Even though everybody receives an individual host, we're required in the celebration of the Mass, to break a host, and the pouring has to happen. That's a part of the Mass.
Speaker 2:Those images aren't just practical functions. Those are images that instruct us about what Jesus did and then what we are being called to do. Really. Think about it this way. Think about the sacrifice of the Mass, the Eucharist, as the laboratory or the classroom for living. So what we're doing there, it's the source and the summit, it's the most important thing, but it's not meant to just be set apart from life and be left on its own, like it becomes the pattern that we repeat in our living, that we repeat in our living. So living Eucharistically, making your body a living sacrifice spiritual worship means living the same love that Jesus lived.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a breaking, a pouring out of what are the words the the priest says when, when the host is broken or like before after.
Speaker 2:So, right after he breaks the host, he breaks off a tiny piece and puts it in the chalice and he says bye. Well, now I'm out of. I'm out of context right now. Okay, you guys start chanting the Anyus Dei. It's like anybody can sing the Gloria, but you can't recite it on your own.
Speaker 1:It's so true.
Speaker 2:It's so funny. Because I'm thinking of by the mystery of this water and wine we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity. But that's earlier, that's at the offertory May the mingling of this Shoot can't think of it? A little embarrassing. I'm a good priest, I promise.
Speaker 1:I say Mass every day. I said Mass this morning, you just read it.
Speaker 3:Every day Is there something about the lamb that was slain, or no? No, there is in the Eastern liturgies.
Speaker 2:Okay, they actually call the bread that's consecrated, the lamb.
Speaker 3:Oh really.
Speaker 1:Which is kind of cool. It is cool.
Speaker 3:I love the Eastern liturgy. I like the challenge that you give us, that the Eucharistic rite of the Mass is the classroom for us to know what it's like, what it means to live eucharistically like. I think that's a great challenge, like, as we're present at mass, even though we're doing a poor job of recalling some of the things, like to pay attention to the actions and the words that are there and and then ask how do we take that upon ourselves? I mean, I think that I could probably get quite a bit out of the next few masses if I have that in mind. Like, jesus, teach me how to be sacrificed and how to be priest.
Speaker 3:I wrote down one thing that moved me was I changed the words a little bit but I wrote I am victim and I am priest. I am the victim to be offered and I am the priest. I am the victim to be offered and I am the priest. That makes the offering.
Speaker 3:It's kind of crazy when you think about what Jesus did becoming our high priest, right, like he deepened and transformed the definition of what it was to be a priest and then kind of scandalously like invited us to be the priest as well, like if I were a first century Jew, like that's a total, that's a big paradigm shift, massive. I feel like it's huge, like it changes everything. And yeah, I'm challenged that Like I don't view. Sometimes I view that I'm the offering or the victim. Sometimes I view, I think very often, if we're honest, we view victim as something we need to run from or fix or cure or avoid, and I think that might be if we can't think of what the invitation is. It might be to ask ourselves like where do you feel like you're a victim?
Speaker 2:ask ourselves like where do you feel? Like you're a victim? Well, but, but keep in mind the victim. I think we're using the same word in multiple ways agreed because victim in this, in the sacrificial sense or the cultic sense, the sense of like sacrificial worship isn't, isn't like, uh, something that's been wrong, it's not ruined or wronged it's perfect, right, it's actually perfect. So which is the? It's a spotless lamb. All through the liturgical law, the lamb has to be spotless.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess I understand the distinction there, but I'm wondering if it's worth thinking about when I view my victimhood in the worldly lens. But could I view it in the Eucharistic lens, so like, if I'm invited at a moment, let's say a moment, I would tend to want to be a victim, play victim would be amidst a disagreement with my wife, but if, if I'm trying to be both the offering and the priest that very moment, I can choose to be the spotless victim that jesus asked me to be, as opposed to the, the victim of who's concerned with my own will. I don't know if that makes sense yeah and so like for me.
Speaker 3:When my counselor says life has plenty of material like you don't need, if that makes sense, yeah, and so like for me. My counselor says life has plenty of material Like you don't need to go find new material necessarily for your own transformation. And so for me, like some of that material would be when I'm invited to view suffering in a way that's the very human tendency or the way the world would invite me to, and I get to view it in the way that Christ invites me to. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Am I going down a good road, and the way Christ invites us to is our suffering as a sacrifice?
Speaker 3:And not just like a like I'm so strong sacrifice. I'm doing it right, but even in this like very surrendered way.
Speaker 2:I would say suffering is one of the forms of sacrifice. Right, but I wouldn't want to get so that that's the only way Right. Right that it's only in our sufferings that we are offering something.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, there's our free. It says like our free will and what our hearts want that's what I was trying to drill into earlier was like what is that? What are our sacrifices that we can be a part of as priests? It's you you're the sacrifice oh yeah, it's me, it's not just our suffering.
Speaker 3:It's our. It's not our. It's not our parts. It's not our pieces.
Speaker 2:It's not. It's not like, it's not your striving for virtue, it's not your avoidance of sin. I mean it. It is those things, but it's only those things, in a subordinate way, because those are parts of your experience and the sacrifice that's being offered is you. Is you right, like in a in a mix between vice and virtue, in a mix between sin and grace, on a path of conversion, like what is being offered is none of those circumstances. What's being offered is you.
Speaker 3:Well, that's interesting, like I mean, what am I at my core through god's eyes?
Speaker 3:Right, I'm a son, I'm an heir, I'm invited to be perfect. And so, like I don't even, like I'm feeling like I understand it, but I don't think I could articulate it. But like the Chapel of Divine Mercy feels so beautiful because we're like offering the words there, we're like offering Jesus back to the Father, and so in some sense, like I'm offering who God made me to be, I'm offering how God looks at me as a child, as a son, as an heir, as a priest, as a prophet, as a king, like I'm just giving that perfect desire he has for me back to him. And so in some sense, like the beautiful thing, how I feel when I pray, the child with divine mercy, is like I'm giving to God the thing he did, you know I'm giving to him. So in some sense, like if I'm victim, and this spotless victim is who God really made me to be, right, so I'm like giving the perfect gift he gave to me, just right, back to him. You know, it's a very, almost mystical thought when you.
Speaker 2:And we want to abstract it like I'm going to offer my, like we say, the morning offering, right, my joys, my sorrows, right, a whole list of things. And it Like we say, the morning offering, right, my joys, my sorrows, right, a whole list of things. And it's like, yes, we want to offer those things, but really it's you. But really it's you, like those mediate you, but you are the gift, like you are both you are offering yourself to God.
Speaker 1:Why is that hard? Like I'm just trying to think, think that through, like why, why do we keep? Why do I keep wanting to think of all these different pieces or parcel it out? Is it? Is it just like I'm trying to think that through of? Like I think I feel like we do that a lot, everybody does, and this is like that's why this was been hard to get through our skulls a little bit. We've read this passage over and over again, james, and we're still like run it for us again. But why is that?
Speaker 2:hard. I think it's hard because I think when we say hard, we think complicated, and the thing is, it's actually incredibly simple and the complexity of the world, of a fallen world, makes us think that or not, makes us think, makes something that's simple, hard, right. The simplicity of it is like well, what do you mean? God only wants me. Like, what do you mean? Like that doesn't make any sense. What about all the stuff?
Speaker 2:you know, and uh, it's like yeah god doesn't care about this stuff nearly as much as you do. Um, I love telling people. Um, I love telling people like the sin you're trying to overcome or the crisis you're trying to work through, or, um, the, the habit you're trying to develop is not the most important thing in your spiritual life right now, and people are always like what, what is, and I'm always like they don't sound like that. I'm always like Jesus, your heart, right, yeah, like you are, and God is the one who's ultimately doing it right.
Speaker 2:We participate, we cooperate.
Speaker 1:We're there, but even and, in fact, all of those things you said are methods that he uses to further sanctify us. These things that we're like hyper-focused on that we really shouldn't be or that we're trying to even get rid of. That's not the point, Although growing in virtue and all those things is good, but that isn't. They're secondary.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's interesting. This is in some sense a part of why it's so beautiful that priesthood and the sacrifice was transformed from being this thing that's separate from me, that's important to me, that has some worth that I can collect or measure, like the ox, or even the burnt offering, like some of my harvest or whatever. I'm tempted to actually apply old thought, ancient thought, to the pieces of me, like I'm going to give some of my worth, like I'm going to fast, which is good, or I'm going to give some of my money, or I'm going to sacrifice some of my selfish desires or whatever. Like I'm trying to give material things to the lord, much like I would give a spotless lamb to the lord, um but. But the invitation is I'm to emulate christ and give my very self to the Lord, because that's what he desires, that's what he made, that's whom he made, that's whom he wants to be with.
Speaker 2:And we do that sacramentally in the mass. We do that through sign and symbol that aren't just empty ritual but are instituted by Christ and imbued with his own life. And in the Eucharist. It's particularly his paschal mystery, his passion, death and resurrection that what is happening in the mass, sacramentally, through sign and symbol, then becomes the pattern that we live and that becomes our spiritual worship, like Paul says, as a living sacrifice we worship, or like Jesus says to the Samaritan woman and that you would worship in spirit and in truth and spirit, and that true worship is really charity, it is agape love, it is loving as he first loves us, and that becomes all-encompassing. And some people are going to be like, oh, wow, that kind of devalues the eucharist and I'm like no, no, it actually puts the Eucharist in its true place, at the center of our lives, as the source and the summit. But it doesn't just stay there, it radiates from there.
Speaker 2:It's not only the bread and the wine that become the body and blood of Christ, but it's also the church the mystical body, the body and blood of Christ, but it's also the church, the mystical body, but that's meant to be then patterned or repatterned or retraced in all of the other moments of our living.
Speaker 1:Right. Can you give an example of what a retracing in our daily living could be? Just like any example? Living could be just like any example. It can look like anything. I'm not anything, but I can't with this man it when?
Speaker 3:what are we wait? What are we retracing? We're retracing passion, death, resurrection yeah, but it looks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not good with examples sorry, cool, then let's keep talking about it well hmm, no, I think Sorry.
Speaker 3:Cool, then let's keep talking about it. Well, let me just try an example and you tell me how I'm off. You help bring it forward.
Speaker 3:Okay. So let's say a man has a difficult day of work ahead of him we could call that the passion and amidst the day he willingly undergoes it, albeit he'd rather stay on social media or distract himself with the easier parts of the day. He chooses to go into that with the Lord and to do it to his best, and in fact he gives it his all. He empties himself into it, thereby dying, and probably amidst it he's not enough for the task, or there's other things that are needed of him that he can't fulfill, and so his only path is to surrender that he can't be enough for that and he'll do what he can and rely on god for the rest. Would that be a way to retrace?
Speaker 2:yeah, absolutely, and that's what I'm, along the lines of what I meant when I said it can be anything, yeah, but but obviously not anything. It's not sin, but that's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:Yeah so so that could be an example, right? I mean, you could do it with the temptation to sin right, sure, oh, no doubt, let's say. And the moment to sin right, sure, oh, no doubt, let's say. A man and the moment after sin. Oh.
Speaker 2:The most crucial moment of conversion is not the betterment of yourself down the road, it's where does your heart turn after having sinned, you know? Because that becomes far more crucial, far more crucial. Uh, someone who's on the path of conversion and discipleship eventually will repent, but their heart may remain cold because of their sin. And so, in my mind, it's it's. The reason I was hesitant to give an example is because every example I could think of was too big, not too big Doesn't get to the heart of it, because it's not just in one little area, it's all encompassing. But that's not very helpful. One of my pre-sprints always tells me yeah, the question that I'm asking myself is all right.
Speaker 1:I go to Mass, I'm paying attention and wanting to live more intentionally into the life, death and resurrection, and my monkey brain just wants to like, Like, is it? I just need to like, is it changing the lens of which I'm viewing all of these things? And like, oh, this is like passion I'm gonna, I'm gonna enter fully in and like being mindful of that. Is it just this, this mindfulness of that? I'm living eucharistically and then leaning into that reality and in every moment as I'm going through it was like oh, this is like the resurrection. Is it just having that be a the way that I? Is it just like putting on the lens or the mind with which I'm thinking everything in the world, or is it? Or or is it more simple than that?
Speaker 2:yes to all of it, and so it it is. It's all of that, it's all of that, but you are not the protagonist right. You are not in the driver's seat and you don't have to be. The Holy Spirit is already bringing this about. We're not the main character. We're not the main character and you don't have to be. The Holy Spirit is already bringing this about in the baptized and people who have a regular sacramental life. So it's like, well, what do I need to do? And it's like it's already being done.
Speaker 3:We need to surrender, we need to decrease our will and let it be done to us right.
Speaker 2:And he does that too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:But yes, yes, can I? Oh, go ahead, but there's not a Rubik's Cube to be solved or a certain combination that needs to be set to unlock something. The Holy Spirit is already doing it, and what is being asked of us is a greater attentiveness to the fact that this is being done.
Speaker 1:That this is happening.
Speaker 2:Have you grown in holiness over the course of your life?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can say yes for both of you, because I know you okay.
Speaker 2:Maybe you guys don't want to say yes, but I was going to say yeah, I was like yeah, I just had to think about it for a minute.
Speaker 3:He didn't say the course of your life, not the last week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, is it true.
Speaker 2:From point A to point B. Is it true? Yes, and has that often happened as something you only notice in retrospect? Yes, notice in retrospect, yes. And so is holiness the same thing as love, as charity, as agape, self-giving love is it that's the same thing as holiness? Then this is something the Holy Spirit's already doing in you. This is not a homework assignment. This is a spotlight that's highlighting what's been happening to you through your baptism, through every single mass you participate in.
Speaker 1:So this is just a moment where we're saying, hey, when we tell someone you need to live more Eucharistically, that happens to you, given you're living a sacramental life. Right, it happens to you, but you want to pay attention to how that's happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So one of the big phrases for the Eucharistic revival, at least in the beginning days, was a Eucharistic wonder and amazement. Revival, at least in the beginning days, was a Eucharistic wonder and amazement, you know. And sometimes that would just stop at the moment of saying like that's Jesus in the real presence. Wow, right, I'm amazed and that's beautiful and good and true. But then how does that radically transform us? How is it radically transforming us?
Speaker 2:And I think the real wonder and amazement is whenever we can look upon and be like, wow, despite myself I've been on a progression of growth and holiness and conversion throughout my life and sure, I'm fully aware of all the times I've failed and I'm fully aware of my imperfection. Now I've failed and I'm fully aware of my imperfection now. But if I can see that God is transforming me into himself, like he did with the bread and the wine, and that he's making of me a living sacrifice and that I am presenting myself to him by presenting myself to a sacramental life, regular confession, an integral confession, regular reception of the Eucharist, living my vocation, if it's a sacrament and in that over the course of a life, you can see the transformation that occurs, so I wouldn't even say it's like you have to live Eucharistically or you should live Eucharistically. I think it's what's happening in you is the same thing that's happening in the Mass.
Speaker 3:Could I contrast three ways of acting, and the third one being what I think might be living Eucharistically amidst it? Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Spoiler alert. The answer is all of it.
Speaker 2:That was pretty good. That's pretty good. He figured out my one answer.
Speaker 3:Yes and yes. Okay. So let's say that one of us has a proclivity to sin or vice of a particular kind, or an addiction Either of those three. I could choose to grow in virtue around the area and take on new tasks and assert my will against it and grow through that. And assert my will against it and grow through that. I could see where some Eucharistic living would be there for the all of it answer. I could be aware of it and distraught of it and so not wanting to live this way, that I continually pray. Like God, please take this away from me.
Speaker 3:And I feel like I'm getting an invitation to the third, maybe more Eucharistic way, which would be I have this cross and I'm going to embrace it and I can't change that. It's here and I can't deliver. Deliver it or I can't make God deliver me of it, but I'm just going to receive the cross. I'm not perfect in my own right in it and I'm going to go that way with it, and when it gets too heavy, I'm going to surrender. Like Jesus, I can't handle this Yet all the while, I'm choosing to just be an offering. Like I have this cross, I'm offering it to you, lord, and I surrender that I'm not enough for it, and then I let the Lord act to give me what I need in some sense to resurrect me.
Speaker 3:But it didn't take the cross away per se, and so in some sense I get to relive that every week, every day, and I get to bring that back to the Eucharist. Am I progressing in my invitation to live Eucharistically? I think the first two had some components of it, but does that third way feel like a more Eucharistic approach to it? What do you think? I think so, because I'm actively working.
Speaker 3:Heck, yeah, you think so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and what is it that's actually?
Speaker 3:being offered in that moment is yourself. Yeah, I think it's me, because I think the first one, which is tempting, not tempting, the first one which actually has some good things and is like a first default path of like trying to work at it and like I think that's a part of the thing, but without relying on God it could be hard and just like a self-reliance exercise. The second way, I think, is almost trying to avoid it, which even Jesus asked for. So I don't know that it's a bad question. Oh, this is a human-y feeling, yeah, or a bad thing to tell to the Lord.
Speaker 2:But the third way is just like I am who I am and I'm going to receive what I have here as a way to, and that God's providential care for you is outside of time and space, which means his providential care for you, for your sanctification, for your perfection being made perfect, is not just a snapshot of where you are or what you've accomplished or how you've failed, but his providential care for you happens from the perspective of everything his grace will ever do for you. He provides for you even in the moment of your sin, from the perspective of the sanctification and perfection he is working to bring about and from the perspective of its fulfillment and being brought to fruition.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I feel like you're inviting us to view life Like if we're living Eucharistically.
Speaker 2:We need to view life through the eternal lens, the eternal lens, and also the lens that bread and wine do not become God's body and blood. The body and blood of somebody right, like this magnificent transformation of something so useless and common and cheap and in some senses brittle, right. And then it becomes, transformed apart from itself, into something totally different the body and blood of Christ.
Speaker 2:And in its being broken in its being poured, christ, and in its being broken in its being poured. And what we have the honor of doing is that we get to do that. But instead of with bread and wine and sign and symbol, we get to do it with our bodies and spirit and our very selves.
Speaker 1:Yes, that was a great example, thank you.
Speaker 3:I love that. I love examples. I love that one. You got it out of him Like, yeah, I did. It was like I just took some handholding.
Speaker 1:You did really Like yeah, we're like a host in a way. You know you look like James, but you're not James. Or you're actively working towards not being James, or really you're not James. Or you're actively working towards not being James, or really you're not. The Lord is working on you, becoming James. Becoming. Yeah, wow, that's fun, I got it.
Speaker 3:The light bulb finally, the light bulb went off with that one, like it's a yeah, eucharist In John 6, when Jesus says you know that if you don't eat of the flesh and drink of the blood of the Son of man, you don't have life within you.
Speaker 2:I feel, like you might know, but from the original language of that text.
Speaker 1:How is eat translated?
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know the Greek word. It was like the gnaw or whatever, like no, it's like the word, the word that we'd use for an animal. That would be like gnawing away on the flesh on a bone yeah, yeah, like to gnaw.
Speaker 3:I, I don't know, just as you. As we've talked through this and as you mentioned god's outside of time, like I don't know, it seems NAH feels more appropriate for living Eucharistically than just consume, than like inject or take in once or swallow I don't know if that makes sense Ruminate, yeah, yeah, that's what I came to. It almost feels like this constant.
Speaker 2:To feed on Christ constantly. Yeah, yeah that we're being invited in the Eucharist to feed on Christ constantly, to feed on his passion, death and resurrection in our living and in these coordinates in the universe. That is my body. Yeah like.
Speaker 3:the daily bread isn't just something I get once a week on Sunday or in the morning when I go to Mass, but it's something I'm continually being fed.
Speaker 2:You know how, when you're distracted at Mass, the transubstantiation doesn't happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I heard.
Speaker 2:And when I'm a priest and I'm distracted at Mass, the transubstantiation doesn't happen. No, it's a joke, right.
Speaker 2:I was like'm not, I'm not freaking, saying that quick pivot, but James was just like it is there some new hair no, right, I was. Don't invite father jerome it's like right? No, I was using it as like a ridiculous foil, right, like we would never say that my level of concentration at mass affects the transubstantiation, that that is something that's brought about by God, and I'm going to use that as an analogy which has similarities and dissimilarities that even in the midst of my own imperfect cooperation with God, my distraction in my living that God is ultimately You're still being transubstantiated Right.
Speaker 2:Transformed into him and again there's a thin line that we have to walk here, because I'm not saying like you just got to sit there. You just got to sit there and I'm not saying like you can go and do whatever you want as long as you go to confession and receive the Eucharist. You can go and do whatever you want, as long as you go to confession and receive the Eucharist.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the distinction once we come out of the sacramental Eucharist into ourselves is like. The action of God is such that he is constantly trying to give us the grace and transformation and invitation and promptings to become himself. That is always in motion, whether I am activated in it in some small way, some big way, or I'm blind to it, or even when I'm in separation from him in my own mortal death and mortal sin. God's act is still constantly trying towards that aim and even amidst my sin, my brokenness or whatever there are pieces of that that can affect me, whether I'm engaged Eucharistically through this lens we're discussing today, he's still acting on me and still pulling me to himself. Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we want to be. We want to make our imperfections and our failures and our sins almost like a rival God to God, like somehow that there's this cosmic battle happening between God and my own imperfections, as if God isn't able to use my imperfections and my sins and my failures for my own sanctification.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as if you're the main character and part of the deal, but the reality is that God I mean Jesus is pretty clear in our weakness we're made strong.
Speaker 3:This is the main character. I don't know if this was from I Believe in Love or if this is from a saint or James Just from James.
Speaker 3:It was told to me during my conversion. So I can't claim it, but it was kind of scandalous to me but it was like, hey, our sins, like we want to be so ashamed of them, we want to, you know, be so frustrated by them. But really we should hold our sins above our head like some trophy that we've won because they've married for us God's love and his mercy of one, because they've married for us, god's love and his mercy. And so in some way, like you know jesus talks about, like you know, opening, opening the door, like in some ways, like the keyhole to the door is our littleness, our impact, our imperfections, our weakness, like it's the, it's the reason I grab the handle, you know, um, and yeah, I don't know if that makes sense yeah, absolutely wow, I have a lot of praying to do about this and like and thinking about it and just like being more attentive, like that's the thing that I'm taking away more than anything.
Speaker 1:Like I've understood this on some level, but now I more so understand it and just like want to lean into that idea of like I've always thought of, like you're being transformed and whatnot, but the linking of it to the Eucharistic self from going from one thing to the other, really like connected, the dot for me of like, and that I'm not the active participant making it happen. I'm around, I'm saying yes and giving my yes to the cooperation, but much more so is just like watching it and consenting to it.
Speaker 3:Father Jacques-Philippe kind of chuckles out loud amidst his French when he's talking about being born into Jesus and he asks a question like can you stop a pregnancy from happening? Like, let's say, it's delivery day, like can you stop that? He's like the baby's gonna go down the canal. You know, and I think there's this reality that in some sense we have to realize, like we're in this process of being transformed into christ, like sure, there's some things like I mean, hell's possible, right, of course, but like generally, like if our is, even if it's not perfect to become like Christ, like a womb, he and the church is going to push us there, like we're going to get there, you know.
Speaker 3:And is it going to be painful? Yeah, yeah. Is it going to be totally new? Yeah, do we have any control over it? No, you new. Yeah. Do we have any control over it? No, you know. Yeah, it's like kind of a beautiful image when you think about that, like the Lord's so powerfully trying to make us into his new creation that like the best way to get there is just to let him.
Speaker 2:And that is a way of thinking and seeing that's informed by the eucharist, that is viewing moral conversion and sanctification through the lens of um, through the lens of a eucharistic faith that what is being played out for us in the holy sacrifice of the Mass then enables us to view these situations in a totally different light.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And going back a little bit to what like have we seen a growth in holiness over the course of our lives and ourselves and those around us? And I can say I can say the answer, for I have seen a growth in holiness. I'm not who I was five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and it's not just like a natural maturing, it's a. It's not just like a natural maturing, it's a, it's a holiness. Now am I also, at the same time, abundantly aware of my imperfection and where I can grow and what I need, and is it easier to pay attention to that?
Speaker 2:most of the time, sure, but another equally mystifying thing, the fact that I have grown in holiness, which is a strange thing to say, and and I can say the same thing of you, because I know you both well enough to say that which which has happened in spite of myself, and it's almost strange to me that I've grown in holiness.
Speaker 1:Right, right Right.
Speaker 2:In the midst of that, to also say it's also mystifying to me the fact that I believe in the first place. Why do I believe and somebody else does not? And that's gift. I'm'm not special. I didn't all of a sudden figure it out, I didn't convince myself, but something was given to me in order for me to believe, and in the same way, like something's been given to me that I've kept walking with the lord and ultimately you know that birthing analogy he's not asking us for constant progress, he's asking us for constant perseverance, and the only way we can fail is if we don't persevere. And persevere doesn't mean progress, and not that we're just sit in our sins and never grow, but by persevering, which is the only thing we have a choice over, we, we then are incorporated into god's saving action and are transformed in the midst of that.
Speaker 1:So, like to use paul's language, I would say that persevering and presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice is what we're being called to the amount of hope that viewing things in this way, eucharistically, can generate in a heart is powerful, like it's. We got to figure out a way to put this in a can and sell it. You know, let's make a podcast. No, I just like man, like wow.
Speaker 3:Jesus gives it away at the risk of being hidden, trampled and forgotten, dropped, desecrated, and you know, like in some sense it wasn't put in a can, but it was put in a cup. Yeah, put it in a cup, yeah, and on the tongue oh, that's awesome, Father Jerome.
Speaker 1:Thank you for taking us through that today. This has been Red Dirt Catholics. I'm Jace, I'm James and I'm Father Jerome. We'll see you next time, thank you.