#337 Cardinal Burke - The Old Testament

Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke is an American cardinal, canon lawyer, and one of the Catholic Church’s most prominent defenders of traditional doctrine and liturgy. He previously served as Archbishop of St. Louis and as Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the Church’s highest judicial court, before being elevated to the College of Cardinals by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. He is also the founder of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Privacy Isn't Paranoia. It's Protection. Download Glacier today: https://srs.site/glacierapp Babbel is offering listeners up to 60% off. Go to https://Babbel.com/SRS Buy American at https://SnakestaffSystems.com and now on Amazon. Tell your family and friends Upgrade your eyewear at https://roka.com and use code SRS for 20% off sitewide at checkout. Try Gusto today at https://gusto.com/SRS and get three months free when you run your first payroll. Get started with Claude at https://claude.ai/srs. Get 30% off your first subscription order at ⁠https://armra.com/srs⁠ or enter code SRS at checkout. Cardinal Burke Links: Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe Website - https://guadalupeshrine.org Five Years with Mary - https://sempervirgo.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:49Shawn Ryan

  Cardinal Burke.

• 0:51Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 0:52Shawn Ryan

  Welcome to the show.

• 0:53Speaker 04

  Thank you, Sean. I'm glad to be with you.

• 0:55Shawn Ryan

  Thank you for coming. I've, uh... This is extremely surreal for me, so we took a long shot. And I didn't think there was a chance we would get you here. And here you are, sitting here. And it's an honor. It's an honor to do this. So, thank you for making the trip.

• 1:17Speaker 04

  Not at all. I respect very much what you're doing and you're reaching out to a great number of people and with important messages for them. And so I'm happy to be some little part of it.

• 1:35Shawn Ryan

  Well, let me start you out with an introduction.

• 1:41Shawn Ryan

  Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke. You're an American Cardinal widely respected for your expertise in canon law and church governance. You previously served as Archbishop of St. Louis and as a prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the Church's highest judicial court. Pope Benedict XVI elevated you to the College of Cardinals in 2010. You are known internationally for your defense of traditional Catholic doctrine, the sacred liturgy, marriage, family, and the sacraments. You are also the founder of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin, which you established as a place of pilgrimage, prayer, and spiritual renewal.

• 2:26Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:29Shawn Ryan

  And Cardinal, I was hoping you could lead us in prayer before we get started here.

• 2:35Speaker 04

  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Almighty God, we ask you to guide us in our conversation to remove from our minds all distractions and from our hearts any wrong affections that we might understand more perfectly your will for us and have the courage to carry out whatever it is you ask of us. We ask all this in the name of your only begotten Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who is with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

• 3:10Shawn Ryan

  Amen.

• 3:11Speaker 04

  We ask especially the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe on our conversation today and also St. Lawrence, whose feast, the deacon and martyr, whose feast we celebrate today. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

• 3:30Shawn Ryan

  So, like I said, I've been really nervous about this. And I'm gonna be honest. It's been, uh... I'm gonna be a little vague here, but...

• 3:43Shawn Ryan

  I did a psychedelic experience about a month ago, little over a month ago. And I've done these a couple of times. And the first one I found to be very healing. It actually took me off alcohol. I've been four and a half years now off of alcohol.

• 4:04Shawn Ryan

  And then I went to do it again. And I believe I was shown hell.

• 4:14Shawn Ryan

  And there was nothing there.

• 4:18Shawn Ryan

  There was no sense of God or Christ or anything good. It was vacant. And all I could feel in my body was extreme fear and extreme anxiety. And this went on for an hour and a half.

• 4:43Shawn Ryan

  And actually, I did one two days before that, and I met demonic entities. And we'll kind of keep it at that.

• 4:54Shawn Ryan

  I don't know exactly what that all meant, but I did get a clear message from God

• 5:01Shawn Ryan

  a few days after I returned home.

• 5:09Shawn Ryan

  Things have been

• 5:13Shawn Ryan

  very odd around the house, around my family.

• 5:18Shawn Ryan

  Supernatural things have been happening.

• 5:23Shawn Ryan

  I've been through four exorcisms with two different priests. It's not going away.

• 5:33Shawn Ryan

  And I feel this

• 5:37Shawn Ryan

  strong urge to

• 5:42Shawn Ryan

  use my platform,

• 5:45Shawn Ryan

  my channel, my audience, not my audience, but deliver my audience a understanding of the Bible and everything that's in it.

• 6:00Shawn Ryan

  I've had picture frames fly off the wall. I've had manifestations happen inside of my body. I've had all kinds of weird stuff happen.

• 6:12Shawn Ryan

  And last night,

• 6:19Shawn Ryan

  it all kind of resurfaced. It'd been about a week since anything had happened, and it all kind of resurfaced. And around 12:45, every smoke alarm and the smoke detector in the house went off, went off numerous times, all night long. I felt these manifestations come back into my stomach and into my body. And I started having the same nightmare over and over again last night about... It was basically nightmares

• 6:53Shawn Ryan

  that were extremely vivid, trying to rip my family apart, me and my wife and my children.

• 7:01Shawn Ryan

  And I think that this is happening because something doesn't want me to do what we're about to do today.

• 7:10Speaker 04

  I would think so, too.

• 7:14Speaker 04

  The devil absolutely hates anyone who brings the truth to others. And of course, the Bible is all truth.

• 7:26Speaker 04

  Finally, fully in our Lord Jesus Christ. But the word of God is, uh... Leads us to Him. And that's what the devil can't stand. And our Lord Himself told us. He said, "The devil is a murderer from the beginning. So he does all kinds of things to try to destroy people. Attack the family principally is one of his principal attacks, but attack individuals." And then our Lord went on to say, "He's a murderer from the beginning, a liar and the father of lies." And so, the more you come to understand the truth, the more you're attracted to the truth, the more you seek the truth in our Lord Jesus Christ,

• 8:11Speaker 04

  He's going to give you trouble. And He likes especially, I find, to get into electronics and those kind of things and to frustrate us, to divert us, discourage us. I often say, I think His principal temptation is discouragement. He can convince you that what you're trying to do is not possible or it's just gonna bring you harm. And so you abandon it. Then He's achieved His purpose. And so it's very important for you to have courage, which I know you have,

• 8:51Speaker 04

  and not let Him work this kind of rightly called devilment, in other words, His little tricks and so forth, to lead us astray.

• 9:05Shawn Ryan

  I used to look for signs that were good, that made me feel good. I had, um... Without going into too much detail, I used to see the number 444 all the time. And I would take that as, "I'm on the right path. I'm doing something good." Supposedly, that number means your guardian angels are looking out for you.

• 9:31Shawn Ryan

  Sometimes I think that maybe those signs have led me astray, or maybe were deceptive.

• 9:43Shawn Ryan

  But these ones that I'm getting now is horrific that experience was. And as much as I want all of this to stop, I'm also thankful for it because it has immensely strengthened my faith in Christ.

• 10:04Shawn Ryan

  And it absolutely lets me know that I'm on the right track here.

• 10:08Speaker 04

  Yes. You know, it's interesting with what you just recounted to me about the vision of hell. When Our Lady appeared to the three children in Fatima in 1917, the world was in a terrible state, the First World War and the rise of communism. And she appeared to these little children to call for reparation for sins, to devotion to her immaculate heart and through her immaculate heart to the sacred heart of Jesus. And she, and then of course, the Holy Eucharist. But she gave the children a vision of hell.

• 10:48Speaker 04

  And in order for them to understand fully what is the alternative. In other words, we either convert our lives to Christ, we either turn to God, purify our lives of everything that's not of God, or we go in that direction. And of course, as you said, it's empty. It's, it's, there's nothing good there. There's nothing that's lasting, that's beautiful, nothing true. And so it's a terrible thing to have such a vision. But it can be a real grace too, because we never forget that. And then when we're tempted to veer from the way of Christ,

• 11:32Speaker 04

  then we remember that and we want to get back on the right path.

• 11:39Shawn Ryan

  I've had things speak to me through white noise machines. I've had two pretty severe allergic reactions right after communion.

• 11:57Shawn Ryan

  I know you've been spiritually attacked, probably much, much, much more than I ever have been or will be.

• 12:09Shawn Ryan

  How did it stop?

• 12:12Speaker 04

  The only answer there is to persevere, Saint Plossus, to stay the course, fight the good fights, stay the course, keep the faith. And sometimes these, well, it never really ends until our Lord finally takes us home to himself. Throughout our life, he told us, he said, "If you will follow me, take up your cross daily." And that's what we have to do. And that means also fighting our own inclination to evil, fighting the evil influences that are around us

• 12:53Speaker 04

  that want to draw us away from life, which is in our Lord Jesus Christ. And so it's, I say this, that as long as we're striving with all our heart to love Him and serve Him, then we remain at peace even amongst the so many lies that can be told about us, harm done to us by others and so forth. But we remain serene because we know that we're with our Lord and that that's all that ultimately really matters.

• 13:33Speaker 04

  We can suffer many hardships, both in our bodies and mentally and spiritually. But if we can offer it all with Christ, even can we imagine someone, the God, the Son in our human flesh, what His passion meant for Him, or what all the lies that were said during His public ministry? Sometimes we hear our Lord say some pretty hard words. Because like those words where He told those who were denying who He was,

• 14:18Speaker 04

  invoking their own Jewish faith, but not understanding that He was the fulfillment of their faith. I mean, He said to them, "You follow Satan. You're not following the God of Isaac, Abraham, and Jacob. You're Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You're following Satan." And so I think we can't ever hope that we won't have to suffer, that we won't have to endure hardships. And even, and you've had some unusual experiences,

• 14:57Speaker 04

  which no doubt are connected by the richness of the life that you've led, even in its really difficult aspects. Those attacks that will continue to come, but we gain serenity. And the Eucharist, of course, is the principal source of that serenity. It is Christ Himself who comes to nourish His life in us. And also a great help is the Sacrament of Penance confession, where we meet our Lord through His minister.

• 15:41Speaker 04

  But the encounter is with our Lord Himself. For instance, now they want to try to force priests to reveal what's said in confession. Rightly priests could never do that because the conversation of the penitent is with God. The priest is just an instrument. And the priest has never any license or permission to ever reveal anything that is said to God through Him. And so, but that sacrament, it's also called the Sacrament of reconciliation, the Sacrament of peace. But it is a powerful help to us to know that we can open our lives to God in a very concrete way, confessing our sins

• 16:25Speaker 04

  and then knowing that in His mercy forgives us and gives us grace to begin again. And I suppose when we say it is, every day is a new beginning for us. We set forth again on the way. This life is a pilgrimage. That's why pilgrimage to holy places has always been a major devotion, because it reveals to us that this life is not our real home. Our real home is with God in heaven. This is for us to be on the way to Him, our pilgrimage of life.

• 17:06Speaker 04

  And so we set out every day and go and try to stay on the path. And pilgrimages are not easy, and neither is life. But our Lord is with us. He's promised us that. He doesn't lie. He said He would be with us in the church until the last day. And we stick with Him, and then we are at peace.

• 17:32Shawn Ryan?

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• 18:56Shawn Ryan

  This is happening, I just found out this is happening to somebody else on my team this morning.

• 19:03Shawn Ryan

  I know it's happened to you, from the very top of the Catholic Church.

• 19:10Shawn Ryan

  Why does he allow this to happen?

• 19:13Speaker 04

  This is the question that, that everyone asks, and I think we have to look to our Lord himself. Why, why did the Father permit that evil people should unjustly condemn him? And then put him through the cruelest passion and, and death that was imaginable at that time, horrible. Why did God the Father permit it? It was for, for, for the purification of sin and for the,

• 19:47Speaker 04

  the offering of life completely to God. Nothing, nothing that is not of God should be any part of us. And so, we, when we accept these sufferings, it, unite them with those of Christ. There's a purification that takes place in, in us, and, and, and all of us need that. And, and at the same time, our hearts expand to, to be more Christ-like, to, to let His love enter more fully into our lives, so we can bring His love to, to the world, to others, do our best.

• 20:29Speaker 04

  You know, we live in a, in a culture of society which is, is, is so terribly misguided. People are doing horrible things to themselves and so forth. Some people give up on it. No, we, we have to try. You, you mentioned the word "family" before, and that is essential. We have to, in our families, in our homes, make Christ the King, make, have Christ rule in our lives and in our families. And that will transform those around us, or transform society itself. We, and the other thing is, we have no right to see the, the direct results of our, giving ourselves more fully to Christ.

• 21:13Speaker 04

  But we know that if we do, it will bear its fruit. And, and, maybe in a time when we'll already be, be, have gone to the Lord, it will have died. But, that is the kind, that's what grace is. It continues its work, and we, we know that, that we will have done then what our Lord asked us to do. And, I mean, when He was hanging on the cross, He died on the cross. A soldier pierced His heart with a spear. They thought, that they finally put an end to this troublemaker, to this insurgent or whatever they wanted to call him.

• 21:54Speaker 04

  But in, in fact, and that's a great symbolism of the piercing of His heart, this blood and water that flowed out were, were signs of the, the life of grace. By that death, He brought the, the life of grace of the Holy Spirit, unceasingly and immeasurably into the world. And, and who, who is better known today, to, who is more important today? Who is better known, who's, who's more loved than our Lord Jesus Christ? Our Lord Jesus Christ, and they thought, by that ignominious death, that they, you know, had destroyed. And that's our, one of our principal objects, that devotion is the crucifix.

• 22:39Speaker 04

  And people would say, that's a, what would you, how could that be the symbol of your religion? This, our Lord with all these wounds and, and dying or dead on the cross? And it's because, that is the way. The, the cross is our only hope. That is our way to, to really become of God and to, to live in His, His company and His communion.

• 23:11Shawn Ryan

  Thank you. Well...

• 23:14Speaker 04

  But you shouldn't be surprised either, that others, others on your staff, especially to the degree that they're united with you in this spiritual combat, which it really is. It's a, it's a warfare. And it's not by accident that in the Scriptures oftentimes, the, our, our Christian life, our life in God is, the metaphors are, are either of athletic, athletic challenges or of, of war against, the good against evil. And so, it shouldn't surprise you that others will be, and that's important for us too, to encourage one another, so that people don't get destroyed by that

• 23:56Speaker 04

  or, or go off and say, "Well, I don't want anything more to do with that."

• 24:02Shawn Ryan

  I've never asked my audience to do anything for me personally, but I'm gonna ask them today to please pray for me, my family, my team, and for you.

• 24:15Speaker 04

  Well, thank you very much, and, and I can assure you, I as one will, I have been and will continue to pray for you and, and for your family and for this work that you are, are doing.

• 24:27Shawn Ryan

  Thank you, thank you.

• 24:31Shawn Ryan

  I was hoping you could pray over us after this.

• 24:34Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 24:34Shawn Ryan

  Thank you.

• 24:37Shawn Ryan

  So let's move into the Bible.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 24:39Shawn Ryan

  The first episode of this new journey.

• 24:43Shawn Ryan

  A overview of the Old Testament.

• 24:48Speaker 04

  Well, I think...

• 24:49Shawn Ryan

  What is the Bible?

• 24:51Speaker 04

  The Bible is the Word of God, given to us in human language. That's the, that's why the Bible is treated with the greatest respect. Saint Francis of Assys, he said, "If he found even a scrap of paper that had a verse of the Bible from it, it should be..." If we, if we find such a piece of paper, we should treat it with the greatest respect. And why? Because God inspires human authors to write what He wants us to know. And, our Lord himself quoted the Scriptures from the Old Testament, and of course, the Gospel writers were inspired to, to write His teaching,

• 25:31Speaker 04

  the story of His saving work, and then of the Church in, in the, in those days after His ascension, as the Church was in its first days of life. So the Bible is, is the Word of God, given to us through human authors. And the, the books of the Bible, we have 45 books in the Old Testament, and 27 in the New Testament. The Old Testament, sometimes they say there are 44. Some people put two books together, but that's, it's not, it's not really important. So we have 72 books, all inspired by God, that over the centuries, the Church has recognized as truly the Word of God, and therefore should be treated as most sacred.

• 26:16Speaker 04

  The Bible came to birth in the Church, the first in the Old Testament, through the covenants that God formed. First with Adam and Eve, when He expelled them from the Garden of Eden after their sin. He promised to send a Savior, the, the, the Son of a woman, who would crush the head of Satan. Of course, that is our Lord Jesus Christ and our Blessed Mother. And then, that covenant was renewed with Noah after the flood. It was a covenant renewed with King, King David, and of course, found its fulfillment in, in the incarnation,

• 27:00Speaker 04

  in God the Son taking human flesh in, in Virgin Mary. God the Son is called the Word in the Old Testament. It's understood in the Trinity that, that God the Son is, is the wisdom of God, the Word of God. He reflects the mystery of God to us, and, and this is seen then in the most believable way in the, in the mystery of the redemptive incarnation, that God the Son took our human nature, united it to His divine nature, to be the fullness of all that God was striving, trying to reveal to us in, in the Scriptures.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  And so we can, so it's important to understand the inspiration of the Word of God, and that nothing in the Bible can, can lead us astray. That every word that's in the Bible, even the most minute details, and in some way can lead us closer to God. And, and that the Scriptures are those that the Church has recognized over the centuries, that are handed down to us. Before we began the show, I was happy to give you the latest English translation of the edition of the Bible, produced by the St. Paul Center and Ignatius Press.

• 28:27Speaker 04

  The St. Paul Center is in Steubenville, Ohio. Professor Scott Hahn, who is a great student of the Scriptures, and, together with others, put this translation together. And it's wonderful, because it has these notes that help us to understand words or, or events that might be confusing to us otherwise. But we, we should every day devote some time, if God gave us His Word, and of course, in its fullness, in our Lord Jesus Christ,

• 29:06Speaker 04

  and when we ought to, we ought to read His Word and to, to make it part of ourselves. And of course, the, all the books of the Bible...

• 29:19Speaker 04

  Are important, but the most important are the Gospels. Because they tell us the story of the Word becoming flesh, of the revelation of God reaching its fullness in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ into our midst. And so, we give a special attention to the Gospels. And of course, in every offering of the Holy Mass, a passage of the Gospel is proclaimed. First, a reading either from the Old Testament or from the New Testament, but then always the Gospel. And then, what actually happens in the Mass is that... So, we have this passage from the Old Testament,

• 30:04Speaker 04

  find its fulfillment in the Gospel, or if it's from the New Testament, St. Paul, drawing us more deeply into the mystery. And then, we have the Mass in which Christ descends from His place at the right hand of the Father to the altars of our churches and chapels, and makes new sacramentally His sacrifice in Calvary. And so, whatever is taught to us in the Scriptures becomes reality for us as our Lord is present on the altar and then comes to nourish us through the Sacred Host.

• 30:43Shawn Ryan

  How were the books chosen?

• 30:45Speaker 04

  They were chosen by the priests, by the faithful who read these books and realized, recognized that this was not ordinary writing. And sometimes, there was a controversy about one book or another, and then the authority, either in the Hebrew Jewish faith, the authorities decided which books were to be recognized as the Word of God, and others, perhaps good books, but not the Word of God. And you may know that there's a little difference

• 31:30Speaker 04

  between what's sometimes referred to as the Protestant Bible and the Catholic Bible. There are seven books that were part of a Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. And some branches of Judaism don't accept those as revealed. They accept them as holy books, but not as revealed. But the Church has accepted them, even though they were written in Greek and not Hebrew originally. The Church has accepted them as inspired. And there are some very beautiful books there, and we can understand why the Church understood it was the Word of God to the book of Tobit, for instance.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  And also, First and Second Maccabees, where it's a wonderful teaching on eternal life, the importance of praying for the dead, and that through our prayers, we can make expiation for the temporal punishment that the sins of the dead need yet to remit. And so, but in any case, it was through the... in the Church, through the ecclesiastical councils and so forth, that the books were defined as truly the Word of God. So, we can rely upon that.

• 33:00Shawn Ryan

  Do you know how many...

• 33:05Shawn Ryan

  How many books did they sift through to formulate the Bible?

• 33:10Speaker 04

  I don't, actually, I have to confess. I love the Scriptures, and I, of course, studied them intensely. I'm not what they call a Scripture scholar in the sense of an expert, but one thing that is very... How shall I say? Typical of the Scriptures is how many times the books of the Bible make reference to other books of the Bible. One sees the unity in the whole of the Scriptures, and there is a wonderful unity there. And there are things, for instance, that can seem to us less important.

• 33:54Speaker 04

  For instance, in the book of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, the Law of God, and God is giving very detailed instructions about worship, how the worship should take place, what the vestments of the priests should be, and so forth. And people can think of that as less important, but it's not really because God is manifesting Himself to us with His right that we worship Him in the way that He teaches us, so we don't end up worshiping ourselves or worshiping some demons. And so, all of those things have their importance.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  And of course, there are other things that are more immediately obvious. For instance, our Lord makes reference to the book of Genesis, how God made man and woman. God made man male and female, and what He intended that a man should take his wife, and wife take her husband for life. That the marriage is indissorable. What God has joined, man must not put asunder. And so, that's, of course, very fundamental, essential teaching.

• 35:23Speaker 04

  But we see a whole variety in the Scriptures, but each part has its importance. But I know a number of books. For instance, there are other Gospels than the ones that are in the Scriptures. And they can be read with profit, but they aren't part of the... The Church did not understand that they should be part of the canon, as we call it, the Canon of the Scriptures.

• 35:56Shawn Ryan

  What is the Canon of the Scriptures?

• 35:57Speaker 04

  Canon of the Scriptures is the list of those books of the Old Testament, 45 or 44, and then the 27 books of the New Testament that are declared by the Church to be divinely revealed to be the Word of God.

• 36:15Shawn Ryan

  What time spanned is the Old Testament? Does the Old Testament cover?

• 36:20Speaker 04

  Well, from the beginning, from creation, it starts with the book of Genesis right up into the coming of our Lord. The prophets foretold His coming and spoke about it. And then, John the Baptist is the last of the prophets. Now, he did not leave us a book, but he's the last of the Old Testament prophets. He points to our Lord Jesus Christ and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God."

• 37:03Shawn Ryan

  How do you think that... Before we move strictly to Old Testament, how do we... How do you think that... How many authors are there?

• 37:13Speaker 04

  Oh, that some of the books are written by the same author. There'd be more or less 40 or so authors. The five books, first five books, called the Pentateuch or the Law, those are often called the books of Moses, that Moses wrote them all. We don't necessarily think that Moses wrote all five books, but... And so, there could be the exact number of authors, I wouldn't be sure, but a number of authors.

• 37:46Shawn Ryan

  Well, I guess what I'm getting at is several different authors over thousands and thousands of years.

• 37:54Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 37:55Shawn Ryan

  And it formulates one story.

• 37:59Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 37:59Shawn Ryan

  That references itself over 62,000 times.

• 38:08Shawn Ryan

  But

• 38:11Shawn Ryan

  how do we know

• 38:15Shawn Ryan

  this is the Word of God? That it's been, because it's been written by man?

• 38:20Speaker 04

  Because our Lord himself

• 38:24Speaker 04

  teaches us that. He says that he has come to fulfill the law and the prophets, is referring to the to the Old Testament, and he tells us to do not think that I have come to destroy the the law and prophets, I've come to fulfill them, and insists on our attention to to the very detail of the Word of God. And then our Lord, acting through his church, has verified for us that these exact books are divinely inspired.

• 38:59Shawn Ryan

  And then one last question before we move on just to the Old Testament. Why does the God of the Old Testament seem so much different than the New Testament?

• 39:10Speaker 04

  Well, because God hadn't yet taken our our human flesh to

• 39:18Speaker 04

  to redeem us, he was bringing the people along. And we must not forget, and those people were not unlike ourselves, he refers to them as stiff-necked. Remember, we get various stories in the Bible, but take for instance, when God brought the people out of slavery in Egypt, and they were in the desert on their way to the promised land. Moses was called up by by God to receive the Ten Commandments. Down below, what are they doing? They're molding a a golden calf out of taking their jewelry to make a calf to worship. And you can imagine, God God brought them out

• 39:59Speaker 04

  slavery, brought them, is bringing them on the way to the promised land, and they turned to idolatry. So God is bringing the people along.

• 40:10Speaker 04

  And finally, and so, and the God of the Old Testament, rightly can seem a bit harsh to us, but he had to purify this people in order that they would be ready to receive the Savior. Our Lord comes, and of course, he is God himself, and you divine nature united to our human nature and the one person of God, the Son. And and of course, that gives us, that gives us all hope. That gives us assurance. People haven't ceased to be sinful, the effects of original sin continue.

• 40:54Speaker 04

  But we, we know now that we have the grace of Christ to help us in the, to overcome the temptations to sin, to to overcome the temptations to evil, to pursue that which is true and and good and and beautiful. And so it

• 41:13Speaker 04

  it, I should say, brings all of the the joy and positive aspect of God is revealing himself in the Old Testament. And so they, it isn't, God isn't different. It's simply that he has brought his plan to to its fullness.

• 41:33Shawn Ryan

  Let's move into strictly the Old Testament.

• 41:39Shawn Ryan

  What does Testament mean?

• 41:42Speaker 04

  Testament means covenant. And all the books of the Bible are an expression of the covenant that God made with man, covenant, an agreement, a sacred agreement, where God promises to be our God, to, to save us. And and we accepting that covenant, pledge ourselves to, to be his loyal sons and daughters to. And so every book of the Bible, beginning with with the story of Adam and Eve, with the creation, God confides to Adam and Eve

• 42:26Speaker 04

  the stewardship of the earth, he's created this beautiful world. And but he creates this creature. And the scriptures, the book of Genesis makes it clear. One creature, one earthly creature, is created in his own image and likeness. What does that mean? It means that God intends us to to be in communion with him, that we, we share in his own, his own life. And he says, let us make man in our own image and likeness. And so the

• 43:05Speaker 04

  from that moment, there is a bond between God and man. Now, Adam and Eve sinned. The serpent came, tempted Eve, and then she tempted Adam, they they both fell for the lie that the serpent told them.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  God had only asked him not to eat the fruit of a single tree. And it was, that was a sign of the trust. And they broke the trust. But even from that moment, they, they of course, lost their God's friendship, but he promised already that moment, he made a covenant with them that he would send. And he said to the serpent, now put enmity between you and the woman, between her seed and your seed. He will crush your head. In other words, the son of the, of the woman. And that indicates to us, to the central importance of the incarnation, that God

• 44:04Speaker 04

  united himself his divine nature to our human nature in the womb of a woman. And that's why the Blessed Virgin Mary is so important in our faith. Because she is that instrument through which God came into the, came into the world. She's not mother of God in the sense that she's mother is divine nature, no. But she, she is his mother when he unites his divine nature to our human nature. And then throughout the Old Testament, then this, this covenant is renewed. We know the story of Noah and the ark, we we know the story of, of, of King David.

• 44:49Speaker 04

  We know Abraham, of course, too, of course, is very important, the promise God made to Abraham, that his descendants would be as numerous as the, as the sands on the, on the, on the, on the shore.

• 45:03Shawn Ryan

  Why did he pick Noah?

• 45:07Speaker 04

  This is Noah was a faithful, was faithful to, to God. There was, people were acting in a very sinful way. But Noah and his family were striving to follow the law of God. And, and so they

• 45:28Speaker 04

  God told him what he planned to do, and instructed him to build the ark in order to save, God would never destroy what is good. And so this faithful family, Noah and his family, and then they took some of all the animals with them. So God, in punishing the people by the flood, punishing them for their sins, at the same time saves the goodness of his creation represented in Noah and his family.

• 46:02Shawn Ryan?

  I know I talk a lot about preparedness on this show. Most of the time, that conversation's about what gun you're carrying, what knife you have, what your EDC is. But here's the reality. People bleed out from injuries they could have survived all the time. And it's not because nobody wanted to help them. It's because nobody had a tourniquet on them when it happened. It's in the truck, it's in a kit at home, it's somewhere other than being on your person. And that does nothing for you in a parking lot or out on a trail. That's why if you've been watching this show for a while, you've seen me hand these, these tourniquets right here, out to guests. This is the ETQ Gen 2 from Snake Staff Systems.

• 46:48Shawn Ryan?

  And it's probably the most important thing I carry every day. It's about 65% smaller than a standard tourniquet. It rides in your pocket or on a belt, and you forget it's even there. And because of how it's built, it works on smaller limbs too. That matters if you've got kids, and it matters if you're out with your dog. I think everybody should carry a tourniquet. A bad bleed can take a life in minutes, faster than any ambulance is getting to you. And the only version of this that actually works is the one that's on you. One warning. I just want to tell you, the internet is full of cheap, Chinese-made tourniquets and counterfeits. They're on all the websites, they're cheap, they look legit.

• 47:34Shawn Ryan?

  They're not. And this isn't the type of thing you want to gamble with. Snake Staff is made in the USA. Get the real thing at snakestaffsystems.com. They're on Amazon now too. Get one for yourself and one for the people you love. Again, that's snakestaffsystems.com.

• 47:56Shawn Ryan

  How did he know? How did anybody know the law of God?

• 48:01Speaker 04

  Because already then, God was speaking to them through the patriarchs, through their religious leaders. We know about some of the figures from the scriptures themselves, but God was revealing Himself, speaking to them. And so, they knew and they trusted. I mean, Noah could have said, "Well, that's crazy", and not built the ark and so forth. But no, he prayed and he understood that God had this plan to save the people and that He was part of it.

• 48:46Speaker 04

  Same way too, that God instructed Abraham to leave Sodom and Gomorrah, to go away and to a land where they could live in fidelity to God. And Abraham trusted and his faith was always rewarded. The same way too, Abraham and Sarah are living in the land of Ur of the Chaldees. And they have these three visitors come to visit with Abraham, to renew the covenant with him.

• 49:28Speaker 04

  We always understand the three visitors to represent the three persons in the Holy Trinity. But there too, God promised Abraham he'd have all these descendants, but he didn't even have a son. His wife was sterile, Sarah. And the three visitors said, "No, your wife is going to conceive a child", and she overheard this. She was preparing some hospitality for them. And she laughed in the sense that she was way beyond the age of childbearing. And they reprimanded her.

• 50:12Speaker 04

  And she did indeed have a son, Abraham Isaac. And God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son, Isaac, as a sign of his fidelity, of his obedience. And Abraham was heartbroken, staking his son up to offer him in sacrifice. The sun is on his back, the wood, which he was to be immolated. We see it as a sign of the cross. And at the moment when he was going to do what he understood God's will,

• 50:56Speaker 04

  God intervened and said, "No", and Isaac was saved. And of course, he had Jacob and then the 12 sons of Jacob. And the story goes on, so to speak. But there's a... In all of it, we... The 12 sons of Jacob, the sons are envious of their brother Joseph because he was... The father had a special affection for him. So they sold him into slavery in Egypt. And then comes the famine. And they have to go to Egypt to try to get some food to live on.

• 51:39Speaker 04

  In the meantime, their brother Joseph, who had such extraordinary gifts, the Pharaoh of Egypt recognized them and he was practically the governor of the whole country. And so, these brothers come and Joseph's talking to them and they don't know... They don't recognize who he is. But he finally breaks down because he says to them, "You intended to do something evil, but God used what you did to save you. And then He gave them the food that they needed to survive." But...

• 52:23Speaker 04

  And so, he becomes a figure to us too. We see that how God is always at work and is always bringing good even out of evil situations. He's always at work to accomplish His salvation He wants for us.

• 52:47Shawn Ryan

  How does the Old Testament line up? Especially the creation? Does it line up at all with theories like the Big Bang? Dinosaurs, things like that?

• 52:58Speaker 04

  There can't be... Whatever is scientifically proven can never be in contradiction with the Bible. And so, that isn't a major concern of ours. Sometimes people, for instance, people say, "Well, evolution proves that the Book of Genesis is false." Well, that isn't true. First of all, evolution is a theory. This is not scientifically demonstrated. And the story of creation is... First of all, it is the Word of God. We know its truth. We interpret it according to the form of literature, which it is.

• 53:41Speaker 04

  But what it tells us is that all of creation, the order in it and so forth, comes from the hand of God. It's not some kind of accident that took place. And that in that creation, there's one creature who is radically distinct from the others. Because you can't... No creature evolves with a soul, which we have, with an intellect and will, which we have in all the scientific studies that are done. It's clear that this is a distinct gift

• 54:25Speaker 04

  which only God Himself could give. I remember when I was a young man and studying philosophy, there was a theory that there were... People have always tried to discover that some animal had intellect and will. And I remember there was a... Some people were saying that the bee, because the bee goes out and finds the nectar, comes back to the hive and communicates to the other bees where it is. And they go and it's a kind of instinctual behavior.

• 55:07Speaker 04

  But what they discovered was that even if there were no other bees there to communicate, whether the bee did this was just instinctual behavior. Went and then... And so, there wasn't intelligent communication. There was some kind of communication, but not intelligent and willful communication. I remember there was a famous book written at that time by... He was a Jewish philosopher, but I believe he became Catholic, if I'm not mistaken, a man by the name of Martin Adler. And he wrote a book, "The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes".

• 55:50Speaker 04

  And so, the difference of man is that we are essentially related to God and that makes all the difference. We could say in a certain way, the whole of the Old Testament is showing us this truth. And get back to your original question, that's why it's called a testament. It's the Old Covenant, the first covenant, which finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the new covenant, the new testament. And really, it's one covenant. It's always God's relationship with us from the moment of creation.

• 56:33Speaker 04

  He chose man for this very particular relationship with Him.

• 56:42Shawn Ryan

  How many covenants are in the Old Testament?

• 56:46Speaker 04

  At least four.

• 56:49Speaker 04

  It's the same covenant, but our Lord keeps renewing it.

• 56:54Speaker 04

  The first gospel or the first announcement is with Adam and Eve that you have Noah, you have Abraham,

• 57:06Speaker 04

  then you have the Mosaic Covenant and David.

• 57:11Speaker 04

  That's five. I think five would be the right, correct number.

• 57:16Shawn Ryan

  Who was David?

• 57:17Speaker 04

  David was, the people, at a certain point, they saw that the people around them had kings. And before, our Lord had always governed the people through judges. They were people endowed with special wisdom by God to lead the people, for instance Samuel. And then were also Judith, others.

• 57:49Speaker 04

  But, and so God gave them a king, Saul. And Saul's, excuse me. I'm getting mixed up. No, yes, Saul.

• 58:07Speaker 04

  In any case,

• 58:10Speaker 04

  but the king was corrupt.

• 58:15Speaker 04

  So David became king when he destroyed Goliath,

• 58:24Speaker 04

  the head of the Philistines who were coming to destroy the people. He killed him with a slingshot. He was a young man, but he, so he became very popular people. So he succeeded that king. And God promised him that it would be through his descendant that he would save the people, and that the people would become great in all the earth. And our Lord Jesus Christ, through,

• 59:04Speaker 04

  through St. Joseph, is a descendant of David. The Gospel of Matthew begins with a genealogy

• 59:19Speaker 04

  that shows all the generations from Adam and Eve down to our Lord Himself. And so that

• 59:33Speaker 04

  David himself sadly fell into sin too, but he repented of it.

• 59:42Speaker 04

  And our Lord forgave him, but through his line, our Lord was born in human flesh.

• 59:52Speaker 04

  Of course, as God, he is from all time, his divine nature.

• 59:58Shawn Ryan

  And back to Abraham. I believe, as you mentioned, that the covenant from Abraham was

• 1:00:08Shawn Ryan

  the promised people, the God-chosen people?

• 1:00:12Speaker 04

  Yes, yes. We, in fact,

• 1:00:17Speaker 04

  we refer to ourselves as sons of Abraham because of his faith in God's promise

• 1:00:26Speaker 04

  of a son, that God would continue to generate the family. And Abraham trusted in God's promise against, there was no reason for him to trust, no human reason, no earthly reason, but he trusted. And so Abraham is a very important figure to us. And of course, it's through Abraham that we arrive,

• 1:01:01Speaker 04

  through the genealogy and so forth, we arrive at our Lord. And it is our Lord who fulfills the promise that the children of Abraham are as numerous as

• 1:01:18Speaker 04

  the sand on the sea. In other words, through our Lord Jesus Christ, all men are called to be saved if only they

• 1:01:29Speaker 04

  accept from Him the gift of faith and follow Him.

• 1:01:38Shawn Ryan

  So are the descendants of Abraham the Jewish people?

• 1:01:43Speaker 04

  Yes, the Jewish people are the descendants of Abraham. And we ourselves, as Christians, we call ourselves spiritual Semites. Semite was another term used for the Jewish people. Because

• 1:02:02Speaker 04

  God chose the Jewish nation, the Hebrews, to present Him to the world. God chose Hebrews,

• 1:02:21Speaker 04

  the Hebrew Virgin Mary,

• 1:02:25Speaker 04

  to be the first tabernacle, the first place which He came to dwell in our human flesh. And so it is the vocation of the Jewish people to present the Savior to the world. And that is what our Blessed Mother does. That's what St. Joseph does. And so we have a great reverence. Of course, we share the Scriptures with the Jewish people. Now, when asked to understand the difference between the Jewish faith and what might be other political realities, and I don't intend to get into that at all,

• 1:03:09Speaker 04

  but the Jewish faith is contained in those books of the Old Testament. And that's part of our heritage, an essential part of our heritage, is the Old Testament fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ.

• 1:03:26Shawn Ryan

  At what point did, I mean, if we all came from Adam and Eve, at what point did the split happen? Or was it, it was just the descendants? There was no split until Abraham, and then it was his descendants? Was that the split?

• 1:03:43Speaker 04

  From Adam and Eve, there are two genealogies in the Gospels, one in Matthew and one in Luke. And one in Luke draws out more. Basically, there are infidelities, numerous infidelities in this long, long history. But basically, from Adam and Eve

• 1:04:11Speaker 04

  to John the Baptist and the coming of our Lord, there is no split. It's a constant handing down from one generation to the next. And that's how, and that really is from the time of Abraham.

• 1:04:28Shawn Ryan

  Okay.

• 1:04:31Shawn Ryan

  The Ten Commandments, what is the significance of those?

• 1:04:35Speaker 04

  They're of tremendous significance.

• 1:04:40Speaker 04

  So God, the people were in slavery in Egypt. And God sent them this tremendous leader, Moses, who brought them out by God's hand out of the land of Egypt, the famous story of the plagues. God had, Abraham, Moses, excuse me, went to Pharaoh and told him that God wanted his people freed. And Pharaoh equivocated. He said he would, then he wouldn't. And there were various plagues that God sent. And the last one was the Passover

• 1:05:23Speaker 04

  when the angel of death came and the firstborn of all the families was, those families that did not have the blood of the Paschal Lamb on their doorpost were killed. And at that, Pharaoh let them go. So they, and they came to the Red Sea.

• 1:05:47Speaker 04

  And God, by a miracle, dried the Red Sea so they could pass through it. And Pharaoh, at that point, decides that he made a mistake letting them go and sends his armies after him. And at that, the sea returns and all of Pharaoh's army is destroyed. And the people are free, so they're out, they're in the desert. And then God, in his desire to, for their salvation, to bring him in the promised land,

• 1:06:25Speaker 04

  he calls Moses up to the height of Mount Sinai and there gives him ten commandments. And they're basically, this is the order of our relationship with God, with one another and with the world. So the first three commandments all have to do with our relationship to God, that we worship Him alone, we don't have adultery, that we honor His holy name, we don't, we aren't blasphemers, that we keep holy His day.

• 1:07:08Speaker 04

  Even as, from the story of creation, the seventh day is a day of rest, of giving thanks to God for all of creation. So then the next commandments have to do with the family, honor your father and your mother, and by extension, our relationship in the wider community, the virtue of patriotism that we honor also our homeland as the place that makes it possible for families to exist and to prosper. Then the commandments, not to commit, not to kill, not to commit adultery, not to

• 1:07:52Speaker 04

  lie, not to covet your neighbor's wife or your neighbor's goods. And those commandments remain for us today. Our Lord Himself, when He had the Sermon on the Mount, this is found in this very significant passage in the Gospel, according to St. Matthew, chapters five to seven. Our Lord gives a sermon on the mount, beginning with the beatitudes, but in that sermon on the mount, He confirms the ten commandments, that He has come to fulfill them, not to eliminate

• 1:08:37Speaker 04

  them. Some people say, "Oh, now we have the love of Christ, therefore we don't have to worry about the sixth commandment, for instance, you not commit adultery, all this sins connected with the abuse of our human sexuality." But our Lord makes it clear, no, those commandments are as true today as ever, only that they should find their perfect expression in pure and selfless love. So the commandments, they're called the Decalogue, they are considered to be the rule for our

• 1:09:15Speaker 04

  lives, the rule that leads us to lead a good and holy life.

• 1:09:23Shawn Ryan

  If there've been any mistakes found in the Old Testament, any discrepancies?

• 1:09:29Speaker 04

  There are a couple of passages, they talk about having to do with natural phenomenon. I'm an old man and I can't, I'm not remembering exactly the passages. One is about the movement of the sun and so forth, but they are mistakes in the sense that the passages involved weren't meant to be teaching earth science. And so, no, we can say there are not mistakes in the Bible, no.

• 1:10:07Shawn Ryan

  How much of it does line up with science?

• 1:10:13Speaker 04

  It all does eventually, if you understand the Word of God correctly, interpret it correctly, and if the science is true science, we always have to keep in mind, sometimes somebody can come along and say they're a scientist, but they tell you things that are not true. So it has to be things that are scientifically demonstrated, there won't be any contradiction.

• 1:10:40Shawn Ryan

  Okay. Let's take a quick break.

• 1:10:49Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:11:34Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:12:17Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:13:36Shawn Ryan

  Okay, Cardinal Burke, we're back from the break. I wanted to kick this segment off with, why were some of the books removed for the Protestant Bible and the Old Testament?

• 1:13:50Speaker 04

  They were part of, they were, not for all the Jewish people. Some accepted these seven books, some did not. And the principal reason, in short, was that the whole Old Testament was written in Hebrew except for these books. And then, let me go back, the whole Testament was written in Hebrew, then there was a translation into Greek done by, they say, 72 scholars.

• 1:14:32Speaker 04

  It was called the Septuagint, and it's the Word of God, but translated into Greek. And in that edition of Septuagint, these seven books were included. But they don't, they don't have a Hebrew original, they were written originally in Greek. And so for some of the, for some of the Jewish people, they excluded them because they didn't have a Greek original, excuse me, a Hebrew original. But the church said, "No, they don't have a Hebrew original, but these are divinely

• 1:15:15Speaker 04

  inspired books." And so they were included in what is now what we call the canon. As I was saying before, these, the official list of the books of the Bible, these seven books are also included.

• 1:15:33Shawn Ryan

  Okay, okay.

• 1:15:38Shawn Ryan

  I wanted to dive a little bit more into the covenants.

• 1:15:41Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:15:41Shawn Ryan

  The covenants with Noah, Abraham, David, and Moses. And I wanted to start with Noah. And if you could explain it as if it's somebody's first time ever hearing this.

• 1:15:54Speaker 04

  Yes. Well, this is early on in the book of Genesis. Not, there was Christ, Adam, and Eve, and then the first generations. And then comes the time of Noah. And the scriptures tell us that God looked upon man in the way he was living. And he was doing everything but what God wanted. And the scriptures say that, not literally, it shouldn't be interpreted, but that it made God sorry that he had made man.

• 1:16:34Speaker 04

  In other words, not that he would ever be sorry for having created this wonderful creature, but because man has free will, he can go away from God. And at that time, clearly, people were living and doing very immoral things. Well, we shouldn't be so surprised because we have a lot of things going on today in our world that are pretty terrible. And...

• 1:17:08Shawn Ryan

  Are there similarities?

• 1:17:09Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:17:10Shawn Ryan

  What are some of those similarities?

• 1:17:12Speaker 04

  Those similarities would be violations of our, of our human nature as male and female. Violations of the...

• 1:17:25Shawn Ryan

  Transgenderism.

• 1:17:26Speaker 04

  That would be a clear example. They didn't, they didn't have the capacity to do all these terrible surgeries and so forth to try to, well, to mutilate somebody, try to make a man into a woman and vice versa. But the other, I guess, some way to put it, unnatural relationships.

• 1:17:52Shawn Ryan

  Oh, God.

• 1:17:52Speaker 04

  Or relationships that violated the unity and the indissolubility of the marital bond, adultery, or just sexual activity outside of marriage. Because sexual union is, is expression of the bond, the exclusive bond of marriage. And to, to have sexual union with someone who's not your wife, this is a grave sin. So God saw this, what was going on. And of course, other things too.

• 1:18:29Speaker 04

  People, dishonesty, abusing people for one's own gratification and so forth could be also done in economic affairs and so forth. So the, God saw this. And, but he saw that Noah and his family were, were living rightly. Were living in, in truth, according to the way God made us. And so he called upon Noah to build the ark and to save us.

• 1:19:09Speaker 04

  I was saying before, what, what is, what was good, the good that he had created. Now, of course, this was before the Ten Commandments. Noah comes before Moses. But this is, I would like to make a point here, if I may. And that is that God made us in his own image and likeness, with intelligence and free will. And he wrote on the human heart, we use that image, his law. In other words, if he made us in that way, he made us to, to live in accord with our true nature

• 1:19:53Speaker 04

  and not in accord with idolatry or sinfulness. And so that, we call that the natural law. That the, and that its expression is found in the, in the Ten Commandments. But that every man, even if he doesn't know the Ten Commandments, if he is in communication with his heart, with the, with the deepest being, he knows, for instance, that human life is inviolable. He knows that, that the human sexuality is intended for the, to form the bond of marriage

• 1:20:37Speaker 04

  and for the family. And he knows that God is to be worshipped in, as our Lord says, in spirit and in truth. And we see this, that people, eventually, when they're told about the faith and so forth, they understand that this is the truth about themselves. And so, in any case, Noah and his sons, they were living according to the natural law, to that law that God had written on their hearts. And so God called upon them to, to, to build the ark and to save his people. And, and so the, the people of God continued,

• 1:21:17Speaker 04

  even though this flood destroyed everything, including all the people who, who continued, even when Moses was building the ark and so forth. They continued to carry on, as, as we say, as if there were no tomorrow. And, and they were all killed by the flood.

• 1:21:36Shawn Ryan

  So the natural law is God is to be worshipped.

• 1:21:42Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:21:42Shawn Ryan

  Human life is invaluable, and sexuality is for procreation in the family unit.

• 1:21:48Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:21:49Shawn Ryan

  And so what did God promise Noah?

• 1:21:52Speaker 04

  God promised him that he, his descendants, that he would have descendants and that they would have life and that, and that they would enjoy his, his friendship forever. And, and in fact, he, he kept that promise.

• 1:22:07Shawn Ryan

  He did keep that promise. What about the covenant with Abraham?

• 1:22:15Speaker 04

  There, we have, Abraham was, was living in the land of Sodom and Gomorrah. And there...

• 1:22:28Shawn Ryan

  What was Sodom and Gomorrah?

• 1:22:30Speaker 04

  Sodom and Gomorrah were, were two cities. And the people there began to live in a godless way. And especially, there, there was homosexual activity. They were unnatural attraction between people of the same sex. And then, when they would even abuse people who would come, people would be passing through, offer them hospitality, but with the intention to, to abuse them sexually, to, to have relations, unnatural relations with them. And so God told Abraham to, to leave Sodom and Gomorrah

• 1:23:14Speaker 04

  and with his, with Lot. And so they, they, they fled. And God lent, led him into the land of Ura, the Chaldees. The, his present situation in Iraq is so sad for us because that's where they, where they went. You know, the Chaldeans became the Chaldean, Chaldea, today is Iraq. But then there, God promised Abraham a son, which he didn't have. Lot was his nephew.

• 1:23:58Speaker 04

  And, and that from that son would come a people, a people a greater number than anyone could imagine. And so, as I was mentioning, Abraham's wife, who was far beyond childbearing age, she, she thought that this was some kind of joke, if you might say. But no, it wasn't. She did, she had a son, Isaac. And, and Isaac had a son, Jacob. The covenant keeps coming through.

• 1:24:42Speaker 04

  And then Jacob had 12 sons. And, and it was, anyway, the whole genealogy continues. And indeed, from Abraham, it comes this, what today is the church. All those who have come to life in Christ through baptism and who, who, who become more numerous than, than we can, we can imagine. Now there, there are still a lot of people who do not yet know Christ.

• 1:25:22Speaker 04

  And there are sadly people who have known Christ and then have gone away from him. And so the, the church is essentially missionary in the sense that she's constantly wanting to bring Christ, to bring that to fulfillment, that promise of God, to make a great nation that Christ, who is the King of the universe, by his saving work, would reign in the hearts of, of all men.

• 1:25:55Shawn Ryan

  How did he appear to Abraham?

• 1:25:57Speaker 04

  He appeared as three visitors, mysterious visitors that often, there's a famous Russian icon of the, of the three visitors to Abraham, and they, they say they were three angels. We, in some way, they represented the Holy Trinity, and they came to Abraham. He showed them hospitality, and he recognized them as truly unusual visitors. And it was through them that God promised him the Son, and who was Isaac.

• 1:26:38Shawn Ryan

  How did he appear to Noah?

• 1:26:40Speaker 04

  With Noah, I, the scriptures simply say God spoke to him. They don't, as far, I don't recall that it was more than that, that, that God spoke to him, and it didn't say that he appeared to him in the sense, in some kind of particular way, but in some way, he, he communicated to him what he needed to do.

• 1:27:06Shawn Ryan

  Did he fulfill his promise to Abraham?

• 1:27:09Speaker 04

  Yes, we, we see in the descendants of, of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, we refer to, in fact, to, we refer to God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because through that line came then David, who was the house of Judah, and then through the house of David came our Lord.

• 1:27:48Shawn Ryan

  Are you seeing similarities in today as they did in Son of Amun Gomorrah as well?

• 1:27:56Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, it's, it's very clear to us, or to me, I should say, but I'm, and to, to others as well, that in this rebellion that has set into society, really centuries ago, but in our day, is represented by the idea that I am the author of my own being,

• 1:28:30Speaker 04

  that I have a right to decide whether I should live or not, you know, if I, and that I have a right to, to change the identity which was given to me at my birth, and then in all kinds of other ways in which evil is exalted as good, and then evil actions of men are exalted as good, and in defiance of God's law.

• 1:29:05Speaker 04

  And we see a good example is, is atheistic materialism, communism, and to deny that, the law of God by enslaving people to an ideology which is contrary to the, to the Christian faith. But we see it too in the whole, the homosexual agenda, to, to say that, that you can have a marriage.

• 1:29:43Speaker 04

  There are countries, the country of my own ancestors, Ireland, they put in their constitution that you can have marriage between two people of the same sex.

• 1:29:57Speaker 04

  I say this is, this is a heresy, not only against the faith, what the scriptures teaches, but against reason itself. It's clear that God made man for woman and woman for man, and that he didn't make us to, to have genital relationships with a person of the same sex, and so, but we see various phenomena in this whole transgender business too. Someone gets an idea that, that he's a woman captured in a, in a male body, so he, and

• 1:30:41Speaker 04

  this is where too, I have to say, we need to think about medicine. Medicine is the art of healing, of curing, it's not to be used for other ends. But sadly, the medical profession has then taken up the work of, of really mutilating people so that they can somehow realize this idea that they have, that, that the, the sex assigned to them by nature is wrong, and they may want to change it to what their ideas.

• 1:31:24Speaker 04

  It turns out, of course, no one can be happy that way. And now already, we, we hear of the cases of people who've had all these surgeries and so forth, making lawsuits against those that mutilate them, mutilated them, and as I say here too, it's a question of, this just isn't reasonable, how anyone could think that, that you could change your, your sexual identity. It's just, and certainly, God, from the creation of Adam and Eve, he's, it's that

• 1:32:07Speaker 04

  us create man, and then it's his male and female, he created them. And so, God creates us either as a male or a female. We should be very grateful for our sexual identity, and strive to, to live out the particular gifts that come to us from our sexual identity. And we know that, that man and woman also, in their, the way of thinking and so forth, are very distinctive gifts, and those, that's what makes for a good marriage, it makes for good family life, and those are the things we ought to, for instance, instill in our

• 1:32:48Speaker 04

  children, and the qualities of a gentleman, the qualities of a lady, as we say, which is something we all recognize as, as a real gift, and as something very beautiful in our, in human life.

• 1:33:10Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:35:15Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:36:34Shawn Ryan?

  Let's move to David. What was the covenant with David?

• 1:36:38Speaker 04

  Well, David, of course, was king. God saved the people from the phillies, from their enemies, through King David. And as he was dying, he had committed a terrible sin with the wife of Uriah, one of the great generals of his army. He had one day seen her bathing, and was overcome with lust, and so Uriah was out fighting a battle, and he had sexual

• 1:37:20Speaker 04

  relationships with her, and they conceived a son. And then he had Uriah killed, because he didn't want Uriah to discover what had happened. And so, the Lord punished him for his sin, but he repented, and God promised him, before he died, that through his family

• 1:37:57Speaker 04

  would come a king, who would rule forever. And that, of course, that king is our Lord Jesus Christ.

• 1:38:11Shawn Ryan?

  So that covenant was fulfilled?

• 1:38:13Speaker 04

  It was fulfilled, too.

• 1:38:15Shawn Ryan?

  And how about Moses?

• 1:38:17Speaker 04

  Moses, likewise. Moses himself became upset with the people, and famous account of the people were always complaining about things, and so they complained that they didn't have any water, and our Lord told them to take his staff and strike this rock, and that water would come. And Moses, before he struck the rock, made a rather angry speech, and then he struck the rock twice. And God saw that he didn't reflect the holiness of God in the way he responded to the people. And so Moses did not enter the Promised Land.

• 1:39:02Speaker 04

  It was through Joshua that the people entered the Promised Land. He was able to, from Mount Nebo, he could view the Holy Land from afar, but he didn't enter the Holy Land. Now, Moses was a very good person, but God and His plan for our salvation requires that we imitate as perfectly as possible His holiness, His qualities. And so Moses rightly accepted that he had failed in that regard. But Moses was a great figure. There's a wonderful tribute

• 1:39:45Speaker 04

  to him in the Scriptures. And so, there, too, God kept the promise. He brought the people into the Promised Land, and of course, that Promised Land eventually is the Church.

• 1:40:08Shawn Ryan?

  Are there any covenants that God did not keep, or has not fulfilled yet in the Old Testament?

• 1:40:13Speaker 04

  It's not possible that God would make a covenant and not keep it. We say of God that He is ever faithful, His love is enduring, and so it never fails. And we can, the Scriptures testify to that.

• 1:40:37Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:40:41Shawn Ryan?

  In Genesis 3:15, God promises that the offspring of the woman will crush the serpent.

• 1:40:51Shawn Ryan?

  What conflict does this set in motion, and how far does it run through Scripture?

• 1:40:56Speaker 04

  Well, it runs through the whole of Scripture. Satan succeeded in tempting Adam and Eve, and he will, of course, he doesn't rest, he doesn't sleep. He continues to tempt man to turn against God, to think, basically for man to think that he is God. And we see manifestations of this immediately. For instance, the Tower of Babel. People thought that they could build some kind of physical structure, uniting heaven to earth, on their own, not

• 1:41:35Speaker 04

  according to God's plan. And so, in the whole Scriptures, we see that people are waiting for the fulfillment of this promise, through the whole Old Testament. And the prophets speak about, for instance, connected with Genesis 3:15 is Isaiah 7:14, and where God promises that a virgin will conceive and bear a son, who will save the people. And

• 1:42:14Speaker 04

  that, of course, is a prophecy in Isaiah, but it's a prophecy of this man born of a woman, who crushes the head of Satan. And that opposition continues. Our Lord comes. He is incarnate in the womb of Mary, he's born at Bethlehem. He carries out His public ministry, which is fundamentally a confrontation of the goodness of God with the evil of sin, the powers of darkness. And so, our Lord comes, and He crushes Satan's head by His

• 1:42:59Speaker 04

  suffering and His death, His resurrection, and He sends the hand of the Father, and sends the Holy Spirit in the Church. And so, that victory is won. Now, what remains is that the victory which Christ achieved in His human nature is to be achieved in each one of us. St. Paul uses the image, he said that he rejoices to fill out in his body what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. Now, there's nothing lacking in the sufferings of Christ. He's the Redeemer perfectly. But what is lacking is that each one of us incorporate

• 1:43:38Speaker 04

  the life of Christ into our lives, and that we resist the temptations of Satan, until our Lord comes at the end of the time and restores everything to the Father. And so, this is so important for us to realize that we're all called to cooperate with Christ in His saving work, and that that saving work should be the story of our lives. And even as, in Genesis 3:15, this was through a woman, we also, through our devotion to

• 1:44:17Speaker 04

  the Blessed Virgin Mary, understand what our Lord is asking each one of us to do, according to our vocation in life, according to our particular gifts. And the image of this is in the wedding feast at Cana. Our Lord and our Blessed Mother were invited to a wedding feast at Cana, and at the wedding feast, through some miscalculation, they ran out of wine. And the wine stewards were extremely distressed, and it was our Blessed Mother who took them to Jesus, her divine Son, and said to them, "Do whatever He tells you."

• 1:45:01Speaker 04

  And of course, they do. He told them, "Fill these water jars," and the water was transformed into wine. So, we take that, what she said there, for each of us, we're trying to do whatever Christ tells us. And in doing that, we cooperate in his saving work. Even as our Blessed Mother cooperated by saying, when the Archangel Gabriel appeared to her to tell her that she was to be the mother of the Redeemer. She didn't understand it first. She said, "How can this be? Because I know not men." She was married to Saint Joseph. They were fully married, but that was a virginal marriage.

• 1:45:46Speaker 04

  They had not come to live together. And they had intended, we know this, that they had intended to lead their married life respecting her vow of virginity. And Saint Joseph accepted this. So, she said, "I know not men." She was married, but she knew not men in the sense she had no sexual relation with Joseph. And the angel tells her not to fear, but to trust God's word. And she says, "Fiat, let it be done to me according to what you've said." And so, we...

• 1:46:29Speaker 04

  She became the mother of us all by that fiat. And then, of course, she, that "let it be done," fiat is the Latin for "let it be done to me according to your word." And then, throughout her, our Lord's public ministry, Our Lady is always at her side. But most importantly, as he's dying on the cross, she's at the foot of the cross with Saint John the Evangelist. The other apostles sadly were cowards and had run away. They didn't want to risk being arrested and punished.

• 1:47:11Speaker 04

  But Saint John was there, and our Lord, just moments before he died, he said to Our Lady, "Woman, behold your son." Saint John, of course, represents us all, the Church. And then he said to John, "Behold your mother." And so, we see that our Blessed Lady's role in the redemption, which Christ alone, of course, accomplishes. But all of us have some part to play. Our Lord is calling upon us to be, as in the third letter of Saint John, cooperators of the truth.

• 1:47:53Speaker 04

  All of us are called to be coworkers of the truth. That, by the way, was the motto of Pope Benik the 16th. He chose that "Cooperadores Veritatis," cooperators of the truth, as his motto for his Episcopal ministry.

• 1:48:14Shawn Ryan

  I have a question. If God promises that the offspring of the woman will crush the serpent, but the serpent is Satan. Satan is obviously alive.

• 1:48:29Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:48:31Shawn Ryan

  And working.

• 1:48:32Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:48:34Shawn Ryan

  How has that prophecy, that promise, that prophecy, how has that promise been fulfilled?

• 1:48:39Speaker 04

  Because we receive divine grace. We receive from Christ himself the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit to combat Satan. And that wasn't true until he came. Yes, people received grace from God, but not the gift of the Holy Spirit, as is given through baptism and through the sacraments and through our whole life in the Church. And so, yes, Satan is still around. He'll be... And he'll always be in hell.

• 1:49:22Speaker 04

  But eventually, our Lord will come to restore us, the whole Church become the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly Church. And then, of course, Satan won't be able anymore to tempt and bother anybody. But up till then, we have to, as Saint Paul says, "Fight the good fight, stay the course, and keep the faith." We keep... God keeps his covenant with us. He gives us divine grace. We need to keep our covenant with him and cooperate with that grace.

• 1:50:03Shawn Ryan

  Oh, God.

• 1:50:09Shawn Ryan

  "The blood of the Passover lamb saves Israel from death." What does this point forward to?

• 1:50:16Speaker 04

  Well, this, I was mentioning before, when the people were enslaved in Egypt, God wanted to set them free. And he chose Moses, because they were killing all the first... The Egyptians were killing all the firstborn of the Israelites, because they were becoming so numerous and they were becoming very powerful. And so, but Moses was saved. The daughter Pharaoh discovered him, and his mother hid him in a reed basket in Amash. And she found him and took him and raised him. And of course, this was all in the providence of God. He became then a great leader.

• 1:51:00Speaker 04

  And God, through him, asked Pharaoh to set the people free. And God sent various plagues to show that he wanted his people to be freed. And Pharaoh would... The plague would come. For instance, the water turned, all the water turned into blood. There was a terrible plague of locusts and so forth, destroying the crops, the source of food. And Pharaoh would say he was going to set them free, then he wouldn't. But finally, the last plague was that God took, through the angel of death,

• 1:51:44Speaker 04

  the firstborn of all the Egyptians died. And that, the night of the... That this happened, the Israelites were instructed to, with very strict instructions, to slay a lamb and to eat this Passover meal. Passover, the angel of God passes over the houses of... And to sprinkle, to slaughter the lamb, to sprinkle its blood on their doorpost.

• 1:52:23Speaker 04

  And in all the homes where the blood of the Paschal Lamb was sprinkled, the child was saved. And so, we see this as a very strong symbol of what our Lord has done for us by his saving passion and death. And we eat his flesh, we drink his blood in the Holy Eucharist. We are saved by his blood from everlasting death. And so, the Paschal Lamb is a very strong sign of that. And then, the people, through the blood of the lamb, they escape from Egypt and eventually arrive in the Promised Land.

• 1:53:09Shawn Ryan

  Are there any other prophecies in the Old Testament that came true other than the birth of Christ?

• 1:53:18Speaker 04

  They all center on that. They... All of them are directed toward the Savior, the Messiah, the Anointed of the Lord. These are all names for our Lord. They're all centered on that. But there may be some aspect or another that's reflected in one of the prophets. But it's always, everything is directed toward the coming of the Savior and that the people ought to be prepared. They ought to, by their way of life, be ready to welcome the Savior and his coming. And of course, John the Baptist expresses this most perfectly,

• 1:54:01Speaker 04

  because he's the last of the prophets, and he's preaching to the people the repentance for their sins and that they should make the language from the prophet Isaiah, make a straight pathway for God to enter their lives. And that, of course, is what happens when our Lord comes. But even as the prologue to Saint John's Gospel tells us, "Our Lord came unto his own, and his own received him not." In other words, our Lord came to save us, but many people who knew him, who met him, rejected him.

• 1:54:44Speaker 04

  And in fact, ultimately, they convinced the Roman government to put him to death. But that notwithstanding, he saves those who turn to him with faith, who embrace him with love. And so, we will find, get back to your point. All the prophets are very rich messages. I often think of the one in Prophet Zechariah, when he says, "Strike the shepherd and scatter the sheep." In other words, this is how the devil works. He corrupts the shepherds, and then the sheep are scattered.

• 1:55:28Speaker 04

  And then, don't we see that in the whole history of the Church too, where those come to, called to high office, in some way betray that office and therefore cause damage to innumerable souls? And there'd be other prophecies. The prophecy of Amos is very rich in the instruction about fidelity in the marriage bond and so forth. And so, there's a whole richness in the prophets.

• 1:56:06Speaker 04

  But it's all directed toward the coming of the Anointed, of the Savior, of the seed of the woman that crushes the head of Satan.

• 1:56:24Shawn Ryan?

  The only woman that could ever have a seed.

• 1:56:28Speaker 04

  Yes, it's because the seed is the Holy Spirit. She was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. And so it was the seed of God that, that's the miracle of the incarnation, is that she gave the human nature, but the divine nature, the union was accomplished by the Holy Spirit, by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit.

• 1:56:55Speaker 04

  But interesting, not to get away from your question, but what's beautiful, too, is how God prepared everything for the conception of our Lord Jesus. Sometimes people say today that Mary was the first unmarried mother.

• 1:57:24Speaker 04

  That's not true, because she was perfectly married to Joseph before the angel Gabriel arrived. In the Jewish law, there were two stages to marriage. And the first stage was the contract of marriage. And from that moment on, the couple were husband and wife. But then there was a period of time before the husband would lead the wife into his home, and the marriage was consummated. But the consummation didn't make the marriage. The marriage was already there.

• 1:58:05Speaker 04

  It simply was the consummation of it through the conjugal union. So Mary, when the Archangel appeared, was married to Joseph. And that's why in the Gospel of Matthew, for instance, when Joseph finds out that Mary's with child, he thinks to divorce her. Well, he wouldn't have thought that if it were a question of that they weren't married. So they were perfectly married. What's my point I want to make is that God made so His plan to save us, that the Savior, His God, the Son incarnate, would be born into a family with a husband and wife. And Saint Joseph is called the virginal Father of Jesus.

• 1:58:50Speaker 04

  He's called the beautiful Father of Jesus. But Jesus was in the home of Mary and Joseph. And that's where He grew up and so forth. And so you see how God is, His providence at work, and He's blessing the family and from the very beginning of His saving work. And so I always like to make that point, because many people don't understand that. They think that in the Gospels is that Mary was betrothed to Joseph. And people think that that's engaged. No, the betrothal was marriage. It wasn't just engagement.

• 1:59:31Speaker 04

  There was a legal bond so strong that, as I say, Saint Joseph would have thought that he had to divorce Mary.

• 1:59:42Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, I did not know that.

• 1:59:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's very important.

• 1:59:51Speaker 04

  And there have been all studies done on the Jewish practice of marriage. And this is just perfectly the case. And so we should, that should be a special inspiration for husbands and wives. And we always say that the husband should imitate Saint Joseph, not that every marriage should be virginal. That wouldn't work very well in terms of the propagation of the human race, but that the husband, like Saint Joseph, should have a very chaste love for his wife. In other words, that it's pure and solely for her good, and that it's not mixed in with any infidelity.

• 2:00:37Shawn Ryan?

  Can you describe, this is a little off topic, but can you describe the Holy Trinity?

• 2:00:43Speaker 04

  If I could describe the Holy Trinity, I would be God Himself. This is, this, we say that this is the great mystery, the three persons in one God. Our Lord Himself refers to His relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit. And we see in the whole of Scriptures that God is, there are three persons that share the same nature.

• 2:01:09Speaker 04

  And different images have been used to try to help us to understand that. I think the, if you ask me for a description, it would simply be this, that the nature of God is so rich that it is embodied in three distinct persons. And so they're perfectly one. There's only one God. They're not three gods. But that this, the fullness of God has this expression

• 2:01:48Speaker 04

  in the Son, who is the Word, and who comes to save us. And then in the Holy Spirit, who the Son and the Father send to us, into our hearts, into the church, so that we can be alive in God, that we can live in God. And Saint, they say that Saint Patrick used the shamrock to teach this, that it's a single stem, but it has these three leaves.

• 2:02:26Speaker 04

  There are other images, too, that are, you sometimes, a triangle, a single unit, very solid, but with three distinct, and those are all images. And we can never, I mean, only God can reveal the fullness of His nature to us. But He has, in various ways, shown us that, who He is, the three persons in one God.

• 2:03:08Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Cardinal, we'll wrap it up the interview. So what is the overall message of the Old Testament? And what should people take from it?

• 2:03:23Speaker 04

  The overall message of the Old Testament is, God saves us through Jesus, a name which means God saves. But the whole Old Testament is a preparation for this incredibly wonderful, indescribably wonderful act of God's love, that He comes Himself in the person of His only begotten Son to dwell with us, to be one with us. First during His public ministry, but then, as He was ascending to the Father,

• 2:04:08Speaker 04

  He sends to the Father to send us the Holy Spirit, so that we can continue to enjoy the grace of salvation until the end of time. So, and the Old Testament is, it just encourages so many beautiful things in the Old Testament. And we need to read it to understand how great is the mystery of God's love.

• 2:04:41Speaker 04

  I think of the story of the Exodus we've talked about. We've talked about King David. A book even like the Book of Tobit, this wonderful story about the care for the dead and so forth. They're all bringing out different aspects of God's love for us.

• 2:05:03Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 2:05:04Speaker 04

  You're welcome.

• 2:05:05Shawn Ryan?

  Can we end with a prayer?

• 2:05:06Speaker 04

  Yes. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. 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. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

• 2:05:36Shawn Ryan?

  Amen.

• 2:05:37Speaker 04

  Good.

• 2:05:38Shawn Ryan?

  Cardinal, God bless.

• 2:05:40Speaker 04

  Well, God bless you, too. We've worked hard this morning.

• 2:05:46Shawn Ryan?

  We'll start again tomorrow with the New Testament.

• 2:05:48Speaker 04

  Very good.

• 2:05:49Shawn Ryan?

  All right.

• 2:05:50Speaker 04

  Wonderful.

• 2:05:51Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 2:05:52Speaker 04

  Thank you for doing this. I'm sure it's going to reach countless souls. And so, God willing, it'll lead them to start to read the Bible and come to know our Lord through the Bible.

• 2:06:05Shawn Ryan?

  I hope so.

• 2:06:18Shawn Ryan?

  No matter where you're watching The Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.