#338 Cardinal Burke - The New 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. - https://theglacierapp.com Live better longer with BUBS Naturals. Get 20% OFF on collagen, MCT creamers, and more with code SHAWN at https://bubsnaturals.com/srs Go to https://moinkbox.com/SRS to get free chicken wings in every box for a year as long as you're a paying customer. Don’t sleep on [@ultrapouches]. New customers get 15% Off with code SRS at https://takeultra.com! #UltraPouches #ad Sign up at DraftKings in all 50 states with code SRS, spend $5, and get $200 in rewards within 21 days. Go to https://calderalab.com/SRS and use code SRS for 20% off your first order. 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

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• 1:05Speaker 02

  Cardinal Burke, welcome back for day two.

• 1:08Speaker 03

  Good to be back.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  It's a much better night last night.

• 1:11Speaker 03

  Good, thanks be to God.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  But, um, so yesterday, we spent all day going over the Old Testament and a very brief overview of it. And today, we will be going over the New Testament. Brief overview again. So, um, thank you again for coming.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  You're welcome.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  Start you off with the same introduction as yesterday, just in case anybody didn't hear it. 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 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 in sacred liturgy, marriage, family, and the sacraments. You also are the founder of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin,

• 2:18Speaker 02

  which you established as a place of pilgrimage, prayer, and spiritual renewal. Once again, welcome. Welcome to day two.

• 2:25Speaker 03

  Thank you very much.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  And, um, so before we get started, I was just hoping we could start in prayer again.

• 2:33Speaker 03

  Surely, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Almighty God, we ask your blessing upon our conversation today as we seek to understand more deeply your Holy Word transmitted to us in the Holy Bible and the sacred scriptures, and most especially in the New Testament, the account of the fulness of the revelation of your love for us in our Lord Jesus Christ. We ask you to grant us great wisdom and understanding everything that you wish to teach us through the Holy Scriptures.

• 3:15Speaker 03

  And we ask this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who is with you in the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever, amen.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Amen.

• 3:26Speaker 03

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

• 3:32Speaker 02

  So, the New Testament. So, we left off yesterday with, um, I think we kind of left off with some covenants that weren't yet fulfilled in the Old Testament. But I think that the biggest, most controversial question about the Old Testament is, did Jesus resurrect from the dead? Seems to be the ongoing argument and, um, and basically the overall arc of the New Testament. So where do we begin?

• 4:11Speaker 03

  Well, the resurrection is first of all testified to by a host of witnesses. We have the four Gospels, which all have an account of the resurrection of our Lord and of his appearance for 40 days after his resurrection in his resurrected body, in his glorious body, before his ascension to heaven, to the right hand of the Father. And these accounts are historical.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  All the claims that have been made to question the historicity of the Gospels have been proven to be false. And the, there are other arguments apart from the direct testimony that we receive in the Gospels. The fact of the empty tomb of our Lord and his tomb was found completely empty. His body had been completely transformed and there are no relics of our Lord Jesus

• 5:32Speaker 03

  in the sense of hair or bones or anything because he was glorified in his whole body at his resurrection, and he now is at the right hand of the Father in his glorified body. We see too many other testimonies to the resurrection. One of the most striking ones is the conversion of St. Paul. Paul was a Pharisee, a very ardent Jew who persecuted aggressively the church and believers.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  He was present at the stoning to death of St. Stephen, the first martyr, St. Stephen, the deacon. The account tells us that the people were stoning him, throwing the stones that killed him, laid their garments at the foot of a young man named Saul. St. Paul's name was Saul, and after his conversion, he became known as Paul. And he was on his way to persecute the church further, had authorization to bring Christians into court for their condemnation, when he was thrown from his horse.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  And the Lord spoke to him, appeared to him, and said to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? And then he asked, and our Lord said, well, you're persecuting me and my members and those who are part of my mystical body. And at that, instructed him to go to Damascus, where he would find a Christian who would help him to be baptized. And at that, he was blind from the moment of the apparition.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  And as soon as he was baptized, something like scales fell from his eyes, and he could see again. And he becomes the great teacher of the faith. His letters in the New Testament are just an incredible treasure of teaching about the true nature of our Lord, the salvation he's won for us, what this means for us. He has too the oldest account of the institution of the Holy Eucharist because he had encountered in Corinth, where he was teaching the faith. The people were abusing the celebration of the Eucharist, using it as a time to eat and

• 8:24Speaker 03

  drink in excess and so forth, and not paying attention to the heart of the Eucharist, which is the renewal of the Lord's Supper. And so, St. Paul, in confronting them, said, I hand unto you that which I have first received, that our Lord on the night before I died. And then he gives the whole account of the, and then says in very clear language, he said, he who eats and drinks the body and blood of our Lord without recognizing our Lord, eats and drinks his own condemnation. In other words, to approach sacrilegiously the Holy Eucharist is a most grievous sin.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  And, but anyway, that's another proof is, is St. Paul, the miracle of his writings and the whole way in which the church went. The apostles, when our Lord was crucified, all but John fled, and Peter even denied our Lord three times when he was in the, Peter, our Lord was being questioned. He was warming himself at a fire, and the people said, weren't you also one of his? You speak like a Galilean. Our Lord was from Galilee. And he denied that he knew our Lord.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  And with our Lord's apparitions after his resurrection, and then after he ascended to the right hand of the Father and sent the Holy Spirit, these apostles, who were also fearful, they were hiding in the upper room, afraid to be arrested. They went out and boldly proclaimed the gospel, and all of them were martyrs, except St. John. But St. John, of course, gave us a most wonderful account of our Lord in his gospel. And he was the one who took the Blessed Mother into his home after our Lord's death.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  And he had very privileged knowledge of our Lord because our Blessed Mother would have recounted to him, she lived several years afterwards, would have recounted to him so many things about our Lord. So, and some too claim that the Gospels were written very late, but there's evidence now that they were written very close to the time that after our Lord died. It wasn't something that was written, you know, a century or so later.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  What is the evidence?

• 11:04Speaker 03

  The evidence is done, the study, the manuscripts, because we have manuscripts of the Gospels, and then also a study of the accounts themselves and comparing them with other writings of the same time, and they're able to fix the date much, much earlier.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  So, they were written?

• 11:28Speaker 02

  Less than a century?

• 11:29Speaker 03

  Yes, they were written less than a century after our Lord died. They were, they were, they were written in that period after his death, when they, the initial preaching of the gospel. Because we must remember too, that in that, in those times, in, in that culture, people were accustomed to memorize long accounts, and, and very accurately so. There was, there's what was called the oral tradition. And people would hand on long accounts of things that had happened. And this was true also, of course, with the, the apostles and the disciples of our Lord. And with that then, the Gospels were written.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  There are four Gospels, as you know, and three of them are called synoptic, because they're very similar. St. John's is a, is, is distinct in that it, it has a much more elaborate theological presentation of our Lord. And it isn't, and that isn't because it was later, it simply was a, a particular gift that he had, especially being the Lord's beloved disciple, and also taking the care of his, his mother. But, so through the, from these oral traditions, then people began to, to write down these accounts.

• 12:54Speaker 03

  And many of the accounts, for instance, in the synoptic Gospels are, are exactly the same, with the accounts of, of healings, miracles, parables. Some you find in one Gospel, you don't find in another, but that shouldn't surprise us that, that one Gospel writer would have taken down an account that perhaps another one did not, depending on who their sources were.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Were those, any of this written down as a journal? An ongoing journal during the life of Christ?

• 13:37Speaker 03

  That, a, there would have been, people would have been writing down his sayings. And, and I suppose to a certain extent, too, we, we hear, for instance, when he hears people who, that the people all were in wonderment about what he did. And one can imagine that somebody would have written down then an account of this healing of the, for instance, of the woman who had had hemorrhage for 30 years.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  And she just touched the hem of his garment, and she was, she was healed, because she had strong faith. She believed that he could heal her. Then, then he cured the son of the, of the servant of the centurion. That account, that's a very, an account that's remembered every day at Mass, because the, when the centurion came to ask our Lord to, to come, to, to heal his son, our servant, he, our Lord said, "Well, come and do it." And he said, "No, I'm not worthy that you should enter under my roof. Just say the word.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  All you have to do is say the word, and, and my son will be healed." And, and indeed, that's what happened. Our Lord recognized his strong faith, and, and he showed him, "Your son is healed." And the centurion, on his way home, met some of his servants, who told him that it was exactly at the hour that he met our Lord, that, that the healing took place.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  So their, their Gospels are simply rich with all of these accounts. And I mentioned this new, latest translation with such ample notes, but there are also studies of each of the Gospels. And they are, there's just a richness there. And the, the Gospels are historically authentic. There's a, also, he's an expert in, in philosophy, in Aristotle, a layman by the name of Michael Pecolic. He teaches to Catholic University of America.

• 16:14Speaker 03

  But he, he's very knowledgeable in the, in Greek, the language in which the Gospels were, were written. And he has written a new translation, also with a commentary. He has, he did the one on, on St. John already, drawing especially to our attention content in St. John's Gospel that reflects his relationship with the Virgin Mary. And he's done also the commentary on St. Matthew, entitled "God's Banker," because St. Matthew was a, was a, was a tax collector.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  And then also, a commentary, I believe it's on St. Mark, because of his, or is it Luke? I'm, I'm sorry, I'm not certain about that. But, and I think he'll, I think he'll, he'll have one on all four Gospels, but I, I recommend them very highly. The, he, as you know, that we don't, unless you read Greek, you're always relying on a translation. And translations are more or less accurate. And, but his translation, it's new and fresh, but it, it's very faithful.

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• 19:51Speaker 02

  So before we get too far into the Gospels, I wanted to just kind of do a brief overview of, of the New Testament. How many books are there?

• 20:02Speaker 03

  There are 27 books in the New Testament. There are the four Gospels. And then there are the, what are called the Epistles, or the Letters of St. Paul. And then there are what are called the, the Catholic Epistles. And those are letters of, of St. Peter, two letters of St. Peter, St. James, a letter, St. Jude, a letter, and three letters of St. John. And, and sometimes too, they distinguish in St. Paul, you have

• 20:43Speaker 03

  These large letters that are written to a whole group, the letter to the Romans, two letters to the Corinthians, two letters to the Thessalonians, the Colossians, the people of Colossae. But then there are what are called the pastoral epistles, and those he wrote to Saint Timothy and Saint Titus, who were early bishops, to instruct them on how to be good bishops. And they're really quite wonderful meditations for our bishop today.

• 21:17Speaker 03

  And then the conclusion of the Bible is the Book of Revelation, or what's called the Apocalypse. This is a vision that Saint John has his Gospel. He has three letters. And then the Apocalypse is a vision he had while living on the island of Patmos. And it's a vision of the final times. And it's probably one of the more, most challenging books of the Bible to read, to understand. But also very beautiful because he describes eternal life as a wedding feast, the wedding feast of the Lamb of Jesus,

• 22:02Speaker 03

  the Lamb of God. And it's a... And how finally, on the last day, our Lord restores everything to the Father.

• 22:16Speaker 03

  You were asking yesterday, why did God permit

• 22:22Speaker 03

  our Lord to undergo what he underwent and other sufferings? And that is because we live in this time, the victory has been won by our Lord Jesus Christ. But now it must be realized in each of our lives. And Saint Paul said, "We have to fill out in our lives the sufferings of Christ as his members." We're living in, if we're living members of our Lord Jesus Christ, that means that, yes, we enjoy all the hope and confidence of the final victory. But we also share in the suffering until that day comes when our Lord returns in glory

• 23:05Speaker 03

  and restores everything to the Father. And Saint, the Apocalypse merits our reading. It's just more difficult, a little more challenging to read. And that completes then the New Testament.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  So if the books were written even close to a century later,

• 23:33Speaker 02

  how, who, how long were people living back then? How do we know those accounts were so accurate? If they were not written during the time of Jesus?

• 23:45Speaker 03

  Because they're handed on from those who did, who knew our Lord. And Saint Luke, for instance, he was not one of the apostles, but he knew our Lord and he knew the apostles. And so he was able to

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  had access to all of them.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Extract the knowledge.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  Exactly. And all of the writers. Well, of course, a lot of, a good part of the New Testament is writings of Saint John. Also, Saint Luke definitely wrote his Gospel, but he wrote the Acts of the Apostles. Oh, I'm sorry, there I was deficient when I was describing the books of the New Testament. There are the four Gospels. And then before the epistles of Saint Paul are the Acts of the Apostles, a very important book. It's the account of the first years of the church's life. And that is written by Saint Luke.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  And then there we find, for instance, the accounts of Paul's journeys. After being a persecutor of the church, he was converted, became, we call him the Apostle of the Nations. But he traveled all the inhabited world of that time, a good part of it, preaching the Gospel. And that's why you have, and then finally ended his days in Rome.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  Where did the New Testament start?

• 25:19Speaker 03

  The New Testament starts in the Holy Land, in Judea and Galilee. And, well, Nazareth, Bethlehem.

• 25:33Speaker 03

  Well, Nazareth. And our lady receives the announcement that she's to be the mother of the Savior. She conceives in her womb that God, the Son, he unites his divine nature to our human nature, taking human flesh from her, the Father being the Holy Spirit, or the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. And then birth of our Lord in Bethlehem, in Judea. But then the Nazareth, the hidden life of our Lord until he was 30. He was at home with his, with the Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph. We have a couple of accounts.

• 26:17Speaker 03

  For instance, when he was 12, they went for the annual pilgrimage to the temple. And that would be a big pilgrimage, all kinds of relatives and so forth. And his parents thought that he was with some relatives as they were heading back home. And it turns out he wasn't. And they went back to Jerusalem then, and they found him in the temple. He was only 12 years old, but he was conversing with the rabbis, the great doctors of the Jewish faith,

• 26:57Speaker 03

  about the whole mystery of salvation. And it says that they were astounded by his knowledge. Of course, he was God the Son.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  And, but for the rest, when he was 30 then, he, Saint Luke recounts, he went into the synagogue and he opened the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. This is another indication for us too, about the power of the Word of God. And he read the account, the Prophet Isaiah, about the coming of the Messiah. And then he closed the parchment and said, "Today this is fulfilled in your midst." In other words, he identified himself as the anointed of the Lord. And then, of course, he was baptized by Saint John in the Jordan.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  And Saint John, the Baptist,

• 28:03Speaker 03

  announced to the people that this is the one whom we've been awaiting. He says, "I must decrease." Because people were going to John in great numbers because he was announcing the coming of the Messiah, the Savior. Then when he baptized our Lord, he said, "He must increase, I must decrease. I'm not worthy to tie the strings on his sandals." And then, so, he said, "Behold, the Lamb of God." And that also is recalled every day at Mass

• 28:46Speaker 03

  when the priest shows the host. He says, "Behold, the Lamb of God. Behold him who takes away the sins of the world. And blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb." And that text from the Mass we have from the Gospel. We also have the reference to the Book of Apocalypse to eternal life. And then we respond, "Lord, I'm not worthy that you should enter into my roof. Save but the word and my soul shall be healed." And the way of the Gospel response of the centurion, who recognizes in Jesus God the Son incarnate.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Why did God have to send his holy son?

• 29:32Speaker 03

  This is the great mystery of his love for us. Obviously, God can do all things. But how did he choose to restore the...

• 29:46Speaker 03

  Restore the plan that he had from the beginning. When he created Adam and Eve, he wanted them to be, to be his coworkers, to be stewards of this wonderful creation, Garden of Eden. And then they became proud, just like we are today, you know? No longer recognizing that we come from the hand of God. We get the idea, oh, I'm so high and mighty, either because of our talents, or money, or whatever it might be, or power. People, so they go off on their own. Well, Adam and Eve, the serpent came along and said, oh, God told you not to eat from that tree, because he knows if you eat from that tree, you'll become like him.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Well, why would they, in the world, would they want to become God? You know, that's, there's an act of pride. They no longer want to be the son and daughter of God, but they want to be God himself. And so they fall for the trick, and they sin. So how does God choose to restore the friendship, which could have done in any number of ways, but he does it in this most marvelous way, by coming himself, sending God the Son in our human nature to redeem it? So that we, by being incorporated in Christ, could share that victory. So Christ wins the victory.

• 31:15Speaker 03

  He never committed a sin. Our Lord, obviously, he's God the Son, but he took all our sins upon himself and to restore, and died for them, to restore our communion with God the Father. And so it's just this, it's really incomprehensible. We spend our whole lives trying to understand how great God's love is for us, that he would have his own son suffer a really cruel passion and death. I'm sure you've probably seen The Passion, Mel Gibson's film.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  He did a great service because he brought out, sometimes people can have a kind of sanitized understanding of the passion and death of our Lord. But in that film, it shows how cruel it was, the flagellations, the beatings, the so much loss of blood, the carrying of the cross, the crucifixion itself, which was a horrible form of death by asphyxiation. And, but in any case, get back to the point. All of this was so that we might finally get it through our thick skulls,

• 32:42Speaker 03

  how much God loves us, who we are, because he's created in his own image and likeness, and therefore has sent his Son to give us the spiritual power to overcome sin and death in our lives, to be forever with him. And his great desire is that we should be forever with him in the kingdom of heaven.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  So if Christ was God the Son, it was God?

• 33:17Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  And God is the beginning and the end, and everything in between?

• 33:22Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  Did they have the same thoughts at the same time?

• 33:29Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  Was it, is it one mind?

• 33:33Speaker 03

  Yes, there's a beautiful passage in the Gospels, which are, "Lord, praise that we might all be one, as he is one with the Father." And even, and that is, the great mystery of redemption, is that it is possible for us, with the help of God's grace, to attain an ever greater union of mind and heart with God himself, and to find, therefore, our perfect happiness. But the, our Lord himself, as he was dying on the cross, he, first of all, in the agony in the garden,

• 34:18Speaker 03

  he prayed to, it was terrible. He saw what was coming. They say that he was in such agony that he was sweating blood. And he prayed to the Father to take this, the chalice of his suffering away. But then he concluded the prayer, "But not my will, but thy will be done." And so too, hanging on the cross, he cried out in the words of the Psalm, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" We see the agony. Not that he thought that the Father had forsaken him, but that his suffering was so great that he cried out in those words. But then he was at peace.

• 35:03Speaker 03

  He gave us the Blessed Mothers, our mother, and breathed this last, he said, "It's consummated." He had accomplished the great work, and then...

• 35:17Speaker 02

  So he did have his own individual thoughts as well?

• 35:19Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, yes. Well, he was, he had a human nature, linked to his divine nature. And while the divine nature permitted him always to understand the Father's will and to pursue relentlessly. At various points in the Gospel, he will say, "I have come to do the will of the Father. It's not I, but my Father." He's always referring us to the Father. And, but he suffered in our human nature, of course. And that would have led him to cry out in those, in those words,

• 36:03Speaker 03

  but of the Scriptures. But at the same time, to accept, to accept his death.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  So they shared, they shared thoughts, and Christ had individual thoughts?

• 36:26Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Is there any indications of when he knew he was the Son of God?

• 36:34Speaker 03

  We understand that he would have known that from the very beginning, that even, he's 12 years old, he's in the temple. And when Mary and Joseph, Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph, arrive, and she says to him, "Son, why have you done this to us? My father and I have been searching for you. Your father and I have been searching you for three days." And he says to her, "Did you not know that I must be in my father's house?" And this is clearly an indication of his consciousness of who he was. Yes, with a true human nature, but at the same time, with a consciousness

• 37:17Speaker 03

  that came from his divine nature of being incarnate to carry out a mission. And of course, he shows God's love throughout his public ministry in words and deeds, we say, in the parables, these wonderful teachings, for instance, the parable of the good shepherd of the prodigal son. He teaches us always about God's infinite love and mercy, his justice, but a justice which desires to be fulfilled in his great act of love.

• 38:01Speaker 03

  But also in the deeds and the miracles. We see, for instance, a wonderful miracle, the feeding of the 5,000, and prefigurement of the Holy Eucharist. I mentioned about the healing of the woman who had suffered for so many years of the hemorrhage, the healing of the man born blind, this wonderful account in St. John's Gospel. But there are any number of these miracles, which are, we could say this, that the truth announced in the teaching,

• 38:42Speaker 03

  then is actuated in the goodness of all his actions, always healing, restoring people. Of course, even more importantly, freeing people from demons. We find this in the Gospel, that the people who in some way had been, Satan had taken hold of them, they encountered our Lord. They immediately knew that he had power over them, he was God. And so there are various accounts too, of where our Lord freed individuals from the demons.

• 39:24Speaker 03

  And always too, when he was going to heal someone or save them, he always said, "Your sins are forgiven." And that this is the most important healing, is that our sins forgiven. And then he also then healed them physically. But the account, for instance, of the woman caught in adultery. The adultery in the Jewish religion was punished by being stoned, by being put to death. And so he finds the people ready to stone this woman who had been caught in adultery.

• 40:08Speaker 03

  And he says that he was without sin, throw the first stone. And the people all reflect on that, and they gradually, they're all gone. It's just him with the woman. And he says to her, "Is there no one here to accuse you?" And she said, "No, Lord." And he said, "Go thy way, but sin no more." In other words, he saved her from this, from being stoned, but at the same time instructed her very clearly that she should stop a life of adulterous behavior.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Would you say that...

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Does the New Testament

• 41:02Speaker 02

  make the Old Testament's rules obsolete? Is this a new way to live?

• 41:09Speaker 03

  No. The New Testament brings to fulfillment everything that is taught and everything that happened in the Old Testament finds its fulfillment. That's not a cancellation. Our Lord Himself said in the Sermon on the Mount, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets." That would be a way of referring to the Old Testament, "Not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them." And then He says, "And not even one iota, not even one dot of the law or the prophets will be destroyed until all is but rather fulfilled in Him."

• 41:53Speaker 03

  And that is His understanding. We never find our Lord speaking against the Old Covenant, but always in terms of its fulfillment in Him. The New Covenant in His body and blood and through His suffering and death on Calvary, He establishes the New and then it is the Covenant. There can't be anything more than that. That is the covenant of love between God and man.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  So when you say... Earlier, you said, when I asked if Christ and God shared a mind and if they have the same thoughts at the same time. And it sounds like yes and no. They'll... Christ has His own individual thoughts, but they also share thoughts. And you had brought up

• 42:48Speaker 02

  unity, oneness, that God wants us all to be. Is that the message? Is that the message in the New Testament?

• 42:54Speaker 03

  Yes, but when I... Yes, just to be clear, when I said, "Does Christ have His own thoughts?" Yes, He had His own thoughts as...

• 43:05Speaker 03

  It's God the Son Incarnate, but they were always in harmony with the Father. And that's probably... I wasn't clear enough about that. Our Lord is never thinking in a way contrary to the Father's will. And He... If one reads the Gospels, this comes across very clearly. And He always... When He began His public ministry, He said, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel." And that's His sole mission. And any thoughts that He had,

• 43:50Speaker 03

  of course, they were His own, but they were always in harmony with the Father. And that's why, in that prayer that I mentioned that you just alluded to, to which you just alluded, He says that His great gift to us is that we should be of one mind and heart with Him, who is always one mind and heart with the Father, that we would enjoy that communion between the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit. And so we... This is something that many times we don't think about, but we are called to share

• 44:33Speaker 03

  in the life of the Holy Trinity. Not that we are God, but that we are participants through the Divine Grace in the life of God Himself. And the more we cooperate with Divine Grace, the more we get closer to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Why was Mary chosen?

• 45:10Speaker 03

  That's all a mystery of God's love. It's wonderful. That's why I smile. Because when you think about it, that Mary was chosen from all time because God knew from all time that He would save us and that it would come, even as He spoke to the serpent and made the first promise of salvation, that a woman would bear a son who would crush the head of Satan.

• 45:48Speaker 03

  Why was she chosen? Because in this great mystery of God's love, He wanted to be redeemed by one of us, one like us. And the only way you can be like us is to be born of a woman.

• 46:09Speaker 03

  People say, "Well, God could have just sent our Lord directly on earth." But no, He wanted... Then Christ wouldn't have been a human. He would have been something else. But no, He wanted us to be saved by someone like us in everything but sin. And so Mary, and to be one like us in everything, you have to be born of a woman. So He chose Mary to be the mother. And then He,

• 46:45Speaker 03

  to prepare her, from the moment of her conception, she shared already in Christ's saving work in the redemption that He would accomplish, she was preserved from any stain of sin. Only a sinless virgin could be the mother of God, could carry out this great mission. And all of that is for the glory of God. It only makes us love God more and want to praise Him more. People say, "Well, if you believe that about the Blessed Mother, you're diminishing who Jesus is." It's God not at all, in fact. It's...

• 47:29Speaker 03

  The more one knows and loves the mother of God, the more one knows and loves her only begotten Son. Because she... Mary is all for Jesus. Her whole life is nothing but directed toward Jesus and His saving mission. And so when we get close to her, she draws us into that great mystery in which she participated in a unique way.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  To be the mother of God, this is something

• 48:04Speaker 03

  only one person

• 48:08Speaker 03

  had that gift. And that was the Blessed Virgin Mary.

• 48:15Speaker 03

  And that's why we are so... We love our Blessed Mother so much and we have so much devotion to her. But we understand that the Savior is her Son. But we love her for the part that she played in bringing Him into the world. And of course, she was His first and best disciple.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  Is she the mother that all mothers should aspire to be?

• 48:41Speaker 03

  Absolutely. She is...

• 48:46Speaker 03

  Every mother

• 48:49Speaker 03

  should desire most of all that Christ be... That their children be alive in Christ to their eternal salvation. Every mother should desire most of all to bring our Lord to her children. It's the most important thing. That's why when parents receive the great gift of a new human life... Excuse me.

• 49:19Speaker 03

  The first thing they want for their children, of course, they're nourishing them and keeping them warm and clean and everything, the baby. But the first thing they want is to bring the child to the church to receive the grace of baptism, to become alive in Christ and to begin to grow and develop into, as we say, the full man in Christ that we're all called to be.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  Does God suffer?

• 49:49Speaker 03

  Yes, God suffered in... All you have to do is look at the crucifix and you see

• 49:58Speaker 03

  how God suffered in our human nature.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Does He... I guess what I mean, does He feel

• 50:06Speaker 02

  emotion? Does He suffer today? Does He look at humanity today? Does He suffer? Did He look at it before Christ was born, before His suffering, and suffer?

• 50:16Speaker 03

  Well, yes. God knows all things. He sees that His children are going astray and He's trying to reach them, calling all of us to be His messengers, to reach out to others. He's trying, most of all, in the church, through the sacraments, trying to bring His children back to Him and to their eternal salvation. God doesn't want anybody to live in sin or to suffer eternal death. And so God is all compassionate. I suppose that would be the best way to discover the suffering of God is

• 51:01Speaker 03

  He's full of compassion for us and wants to draw us to Himself.

• 51:09Shawn Ryan?

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• 51:54Shawn Ryan?

  Moink was started by Lucenda, an eighth-generation family farmer, to help small, independent, family farms ship high-quality meat directly to your door. We're talking wild-caught salmon, grass-fed and grass-finished beef, pasture-raised pork, grass-fed lamb, and pasture-raised chicken. And this is the kind of meat you actually want to feed your family. It's antibiotic-free, they do not use growth hormones, and they do not feed GMO grains. And they're not adding solutions to the chicken or sugar to the bacon. Moink connects you back to the source. You're not just buying meat from some giant supply chain and hoping for the best.

• 52:39Shawn Ryan?

  You're supporting independent, family farms that care about the land, the animals, and the quality of the food they produce. When you purchase from Moink, you're not just getting better meat for your family. You're making a real, meaningful impact on family farms all across America. Please, give it a try. Join the mission to fight for the family farm, because you know what? They fight for us. Go to moinkbox.com/srs and get free chicken wings in every box for a year, as long as you're a paying customer. That's moinkbox.com/srs.

• 53:21Shawn Ryan?

  Is Christ and Mary the new Adam and Eve?

• 53:26Speaker 03

  Yes, in the church, we refer to Christ as the new Adam. He was the Father of us all. They're our first parents. And He failed in His mission, but that mission was finally accomplished in our Lord Jesus Christ. And His cooperator was Eve, as His bride, the companion that God gave to Him in creation. And so, she too, who had failed, Blessed Virgin Mary is the woman who restores then,

• 54:08Speaker 03

  the dignity of woman restores the woman to her place in God's plan. And so, that's why we call our Lord the new Adam and the Blessed Virgin Mary the new Eve. And we believe that when, and this is depicted in some religious art, but after our Lord died on the cross and was buried, He descended into hell, but not hell in the sense of the place of eternal punishment, but what is sometimes referred to as Hades. In other words, all the people who had died, all the just people in the Old Testament.

• 54:49Speaker 03

  And we believe that Adam and Eve do repentant of their sin and strove then to live in communion with God. And we have, you know, we have King David, we have Moses, all the great figures, that they were in this place waiting for the Savior and that our Lord descended to that place and brought them to heaven. And in some of the sacred art, especially in the eastern churches,

• 55:31Speaker 03

  it shows Him taking Adam and Eve by the hand and leading them out of this place of waiting for redemption, to share in the redemption. And it's said in the Scriptures that the graves, many of the graves of the just, when, at the moment of Christ's death, were opened and we understand that these souls, then, body and soul, were taken to heaven.

• 56:06Shawn Ryan?

  Adam and Eve were supposed to live forever, correct? Were they supposed to live forever?

• 56:11Speaker 03

  Yes, they would have lived forever in the friendship of God. It was through their sin that death came into the world.

• 56:19Shawn Ryan?

  So if, when Christ came, it was to forgive us? It was to forgive us for all of our sins? All sins can be forgiven?

• 56:28Speaker 03

  Right, and so that we could live forever.

• 56:30Shawn Ryan?

  So why are we not living forever?

• 56:32Speaker 03

  Well, we do if we die in Him. When we die, our soul goes immediately for judgment. And if we are repentant of our sins and made satisfaction for them, we're received directly into heaven. If not, we spend time in purgatory, a place in which we're prepared for heaven by fulfilling the satisfactions. People, we say, have an untimely death, who die without being able to, through their suffering,

• 57:16Speaker 03

  and be ready to enter heaven. They go to purgatory, and there they're purified of any sinfulness in their lives. We call the temporal punishment due to their sins. And then they go to heaven too. We talk about the church as the church glorious saints in heaven, the church suffering, those in purgatory who are being purified and when they are purified, to go to heaven. And then the church militant, those of us who are here still fighting the battle

• 57:59Speaker 03

  and waiting for our Lord to call us home.

• 58:05Shawn Ryan?

  So if we say He will come again to judge both the living and the dead?

• 58:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 58:12Shawn Ryan?

  What does that mean if our souls immediately go to judgment when we die?

• 58:17Speaker 03

  What it means is that He will judge the living, those who are still, when He comes at the end of the time, some people will still be on earth. And so He will judge those. But then He will also then judge those that are still in purgatory. And of course, those who have gone to heaven already, they have been judged and been found worthy to be in the company of the Blessed Trinity with the angels and all the saints. We believe that on that last day, on the day of our Lord's final coming,

• 59:01Speaker 03

  that the bodies of all the just will be restored to them in glory, like our Lord's own glorious body. We call that the resurrection of the body. And so, those who have already gone to heaven, their souls have gone to heaven, their bodies will be restored to them. They will be in glory with our Lord. Our Blessed Mother already enjoys that privilege. When she died, she was assumed body and soul into heaven. And so, she enjoys that life already. And there are some people think also, for instance, that Saint Joseph

• 59:45Speaker 03

  was one of those who would have, at the Lord's death and resurrection, would have come out from the tomb and that in that moment, he would have been assumed body and soul into heaven too. That's not church. Church doesn't teach that formally, but it also doesn't condemn that thought that that could be possible.

• 1:00:06Shawn Ryan?

  When we're talking about purgatory, is there any mention of purgatory in the Bible, in the Scriptures?

• 1:00:12Speaker 03

  We find a very strong message of it in the two books of the Maccabees in the Old Testament, in which there is an account of a battle and a number of soldiers were killed of the Maccabees. And when they took their bodies to bury them, they discovered that some of them had pagan...

• 1:00:45Speaker 03

  Amulets or little statues or whatever on them, which would of course be a serious sin. And so.

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  What do you mean by tattoos?

• 1:00:59Speaker 03

  These weren't tattoos. They were like statues, little objects. Like you might like where we wear metal, for instance, we do today. But it wouldn't wasn't something holy. It was of a pagan.

• 1:01:15Speaker 03

  Connected with the pagan gods. In other words, it would have been an an act of of idolatry. A grievous sin. And so the they took up a collection to have prayers said for them and took sent to Jerusalem that to. And the scripture is very clear. It's a good thing to pray for the dead. That they're that they might be freed from any sins that they had committed and that they might be received into eternal life. And we, the Church has understood this from the very beginning. That

• 1:02:00Speaker 03

  that it was that we are one in communion, not only with the saints in heaven, but also with the deceased who have not gone to heaven. And that therefore we should help them by praying for them. And then also

• 1:02:25Speaker 03

  asking them to to pray for us. They they have an ability to pray and help us, even as we're called to help them by our prayers. And so that is a very serious part of our Christian life. We, the whole month of November is is dedicated to what we call the poor souls, the souls in purgatory, to pray for them, to honor the dead, to pray for for eternal life for them. And

• 1:02:55Speaker 03

  there's also the possibility we know the merits of our Lord by his passion and death are infinite. And also the the saints who have who led such holy lives, they they they merit graces for others. We always say to people when they're suffering something terrible, don't forget to offer this for the souls in purgatory or for others in the Church who are suffering. Because our sufferings, when we accept them, unite them to those of Christ, that can be meritorious for for others who are who are struggling

• 1:03:38Speaker 03

  or have some great suffering or for the souls in purgatory. And and the Church then

• 1:03:46Speaker 03

  were able through the Church to gain indulgences for the for the ourselves and also for the faithful departed to hasten their arrival in heaven. This is all a very beautiful aspect of our life in the Church. Too often we don't think about that, that the communion of saints includes not only us, and we're saints in the making. But also those souls in purgatory, and so we all work to help one another to to

• 1:04:26Speaker 03

  to attain eternal life in heaven.

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  When did the when did the ridiculing, the persecution, the harassing, Jesus began?

• 1:04:39Speaker 03

  Oh, practically from the from the very beginning of his public ministry, there were those who said, who is who is?

• 1:04:48Speaker 03

  He forgives sins. Only God forgives sins. He's a blasphemer. They tried to, one point they were going to throw him off a cliff, but he slipped through their their midst. And there were

• 1:05:05Speaker 03

  many complicated reasons why people opposed him. But mostly, they they didn't want to accept that the Messiah was not an earthly ruler. He wasn't somebody who had come to to make everybody rich or to to make everybody politically free, but that he'd come to to save us from sin, that his his victory was the was over sin and and over evil. And so they they rejected him. And

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

  and so they, and of course, we see the culmination of it.

• 1:05:49Speaker 03

  He enters Jerusalem for the last his last Passover. He's 33 years old.

• 1:05:56Speaker 03

  And

• 1:05:59Speaker 03

  as he enters Jerusalem, the people are all cheering him.

• 1:06:04Speaker 03

  But then the the high priest and others who were plotting against him had found one of his apostles, who was a traitor, Judas Iscariot, and and then plotted for his arrest and and and his condemnation. And they went, Pontius Pilate was a Roman. He he wanted to release Jesus. But he had this mob on his hands. Those who had first been hailing our Lord as he came into Jerusalem, then turned and

• 1:06:46Speaker 03

  so Pilate tried in every way to release Jesus. Even there was a custom every year. He would release one one prisoner. And he he suggested to people that he would release Jesus. And they said, they yelled, crucify him, crucify him. And

• 1:07:07Speaker 03

  and so he finally.

• 1:07:11Speaker 03

  That's what he did. He he let him he let him be crucified.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  But that was the culmination of of all the hatred toward our Lord.

• 1:07:31Speaker 03

  Just the stubborn refusal to accept him as

• 1:07:37Speaker 03

  as our Lord and Savior.

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  Did anybody realize that the prophecies were coming true from the Old Testament?

• 1:07:44Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, there were very, there were just people. For instance, two, two individuals we know about from the Gospels are Nicodemus, who who was a Pharisee and who came to Jesus, as as scripture says, in the night. He he realized who Jesus was, but he couldn't. If he had been known among the other high priests, he would have

• 1:08:12Speaker 03

  he would have been in trouble. So he came to, but when our Lord died,

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  he and and Joseph of Arimathea, who was another just man, who recognized that our Lord was was truly the Messiah. They came and and and took care that he had a reverent burial, because normally would have just been

• 1:08:37Speaker 03

  thrown in a common grave. But Joseph of Arimathea had a tomb that

• 1:08:45Speaker 03

  our Lord was buried there. But and and there were others as well. Of course, the holy women, our Blessed Mother, but also Mary Magdalene and and other holy women who were with our Lord. And Saint John, of course, was was always with them. And then the the other apostles, they they they received. Finally, our Lord had told them why he'd come. But their minds were eventually, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, they understood and they remained faithful. But but even at the moment of his death itself,

• 1:09:24Speaker 03

  there were those who understood that that he was the fulfillment of all the the prophecies. And well, the after his resurrection and ascension, the sending of the Holy Spirit, the Church spread very rapidly.

• 1:09:44Speaker 03

  The power of the risen Christ was clearly visible in the conversions and the spread of the of the faith. Saint Paul's letters are especially wonderful in that regard, because we read, not that there weren't troubles. Sometimes people think that the early years of the Church, that everything was was just perfect. No, there were people who who also were up to mischief in the Church in those days. And Saint Paul had to confront it. We find the teachings with regard to sexual morality and honesty and so forth.

• 1:10:26Speaker 03

  And that what he he had to he had to address. But nevertheless, notwithstanding these faults, which are always going to be present as long as man suffers from the effects of original sin and does not cooperate with God's grace. Notwithstanding that, the Church spread in a in a most wonderful way. And the whole history of the Church and the evangelization of the nations is just replete. And then the catalog of saints, many of many of whom are martyrs, who in fidelity to Christ and giving witness to Christ to others

• 1:11:08Speaker 03

  actually died or put to death. But just coming, it's interesting. Very soon, there will be beatified some martyrs who were in what is present day Georgia, the diocese of Savannah. But they were Franciscan friars who came to preach to the Indians, the Native Americans in that area. I think it was called at that time Old Florida.

• 1:11:38Speaker 03

  But in any case, they came in, of course, as part of the teaching of the faith. They taught that that marriage is between one man and one woman. And there was a practice amongst some of the Indians of of men taking more than one wife. And so they taught this to the people. And the people were seemingly accepting it and were baptized, including this chief.

• 1:12:05Speaker 03

  But then, he wanted to take a second wife. And of course, he wanted the priests to bless us. He had been baptized, and the priest told him, "No. You can't do that. Marriage is, our Lord Jesus taught, that a man takes to himself a wife, and the two of them become one flesh. And so, the chief then had killed him, and then went to the other Franciscans who were with him. I think the total number, I should remember this, I think it was five,

• 1:12:50Speaker 03

  and tried to get one of them to say, "No, no, this is all right. You can take a second wife." And they all said, "No, too." So they all gave their lives to be faithful to Christ with regard to marriage. And this is one example. Of course, it's very close to home here. But it's an example of the grace of the risen Christ, which is immeasurable and unceasing. There's no limit to it, and it's timeless until his final coming. Who were the apostles? The apostles were the first bishops.

• 1:13:34Speaker 03

  Our Lord, we see from, this is a very good question, by the way. Our Lord, from the very beginning of his public ministry, he chooses 12 men. And for what purpose? He gives them a more intense teaching, so that when he died, just a minute, I'll talk about the Last Supper. That when he died, before he died, the night before he died, at the Last Supper, he conferred on them the grace to be able to act in his person, to be priests, priests, bishops,

• 1:14:14Speaker 03

  in order to, first of all, to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass, but also to forgive sins, to be his pastoral presence in the church, even as his love expressed in the Last Supper, and its crucifixion and death is the Holy Eucharist. Divine love made flesh, we say. So also, his pastoral love, offering the Last Supper,

• 1:14:55Speaker 03

  forgiving sins, is in his priests. And so, we have in the church what we call hierarchical communion. All of us are one, but that communion is served by those who are charged to be the priests, the teachers of the faith, the celebrants of the sacred mysteries, and the guides, the moral guides for the faithful. And so, that is, those are the apostles.

• 1:15:34Speaker 03

  And they were recognized from the very moment of our Lord's, throughout his public ministry, they were recognized as being chosen for a very special service. And then after our Lord's bashing and death, and the coming of the Holy Spirit, they were the ones who went out, for instance, baptizing, confirming, giving the sacrament of confirmation, celebrating the Eucharist, anointing the sick. General teaching, teaching the faith with authority. We talk about the apostolic tradition,

• 1:16:19Speaker 03

  and also, teaching the good morals that are required of a Christian. How were they chosen? Chosen directly by our Lord. Well, how did he make the decision to choose them? Well, I wouldn't presume to know his mind. It's interesting, because he chose, there were a various lot. They weren't all, you know, they weren't all like John the Evangelist, but Peter was a tax collector. And then there were two brothers.

• 1:17:04Speaker 03

  James and John were called the boanergis. They were very zealous. They were the sons of thunder, they called them. But he saw in each of these men gifts that would serve his pastoral mission. And then he chose them, and he formed them. He had to instruct them, teach them, sometimes admonish them. When he announced that he would have to suffer and die to save us, Saint Peter said, "Oh, no, that can't happen," and so forth. Our Lord said to him, "Get behind me, Satan. You're thinking like men and not like God."

• 1:17:47Speaker 03

  And so, and then the mother of James and John was also asking, she didn't understand correctly, and obviously, they didn't either, that he wasn't going to establish an earthy kingdom where he would have power and money. And so, she's asking if her two sons can be on his right and his left as he, in his kingdom. And he tells her, "Well, that's not mine to decide, but God the Father." But they will, he asked her, were they willing to share

• 1:18:24Speaker 03

  in his suffering, in the bitter chalice that he would, from which he would drink? And they say, "Yes, of course." And he says, "Well, you will." But they only later came to understand what this meant, the suffering that they would, and both of them died. Well, John did not. John died a natural death, but James was bishop of Jerusalem, and he was, that was James the Greater,

• 1:19:06Speaker 03

  and he was martyred in fidelity to Christ. So. Were they all chosen at once? In very short time. And early on in the Gospel, there is an account of the choosing of the 12. And it talks about, particularly, he chose James and John, and then Philip goes to get Nathanae, wants to bring him to say our Lord.

• 1:19:52Speaker 03

  But it's like, within a short period of time, he has the 12 together, and the Gospel announces their names. Was Judas an apostle? Yes. Why would God choose somebody that would betray him? Well, perhaps, it's a lesson to all the apostles and their successors, that being chosen to be apostle doesn't mean that you can't betray our Lord. And Judas is a meditation for all of us who are priests and bishops,

• 1:20:35Speaker 03

  that we must be faithful to our Lord in all things. What happened to Judas? He hung himself. He sold Jesus for 30 coins. He betrayed him. And then he went back to, tried to, he apparently realized what he had done. And they tried to give the money back, but they took it, and they bought a plot of land called the Potter's Field. But he then despaired. And he hung himself. And that's very, very sad.

• 1:21:18Speaker 03

  We talk about sin against the Holy Spirit. And what is that sin? It's the despair of God's mercy. And that's what happened with Judas. Peter to betray our Lord in the sense he denied that he knew him. Now, he didn't take money to, Judas was much more heinous betrayal in the sense that he took money to hand over our Lord to those that would kill him. I mean, that's, that's very repugnant. But Peter denied him. But the Gospel tells us that then he wept,

• 1:22:01Speaker 03

  and he was sorrowful, and he trusted in God's mercy. Who were the disciples? The disciples were all those who came to follow Jesus. They, the disheep, they are students of the Master. Oh, God. And the disciples, and so they... But the apostles are also students? Yes, they were. They're the chosen. You could say, in a way, the apostles were part of the, they were among the disciples, but who had been called to exercise this particular office in the church as shepherds of the flock, as leaders. Oh, God.

• 1:22:47Speaker 02

  Would you say that the Gospels are the most important part of the New Testament?

• 1:22:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  Why?

• 1:22:53Speaker 03

  Because they are the account of the saving work of our Lord Jesus Christ, of His words and deeds by which we are saved. And I'm a big fan of St. Paul, obviously, and also the other epistles and so forth. They all have wonderful things in them. But everything that they have that's wonderful is pointing to the heart of the redemption, which is Jesus Christ incarnate, God the Son incarnate, who suffered, died, rose from the dead, ascended to the right hand of the Father, and sent the Holy Spirit upon the Church.

• 1:23:33Speaker 02

  And so the Gospels is Matthew?

• 1:23:37Speaker 03

  Mark.

• 1:23:38Speaker 02

  Mark.

• 1:23:38Speaker 03

  Luke.

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  Luke.

• 1:23:39Speaker 03

  And John.

• 1:23:40Speaker 02

  And John.

• 1:23:43Speaker 02

  What happened to the other eight apostles? Why didn't they write?

• 1:23:47Speaker 03

  The four Gospel writers are not all apostles.

• 1:23:49Speaker 02

  They're not?

• 1:23:50Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:23:51Speaker 03

  Mark was not an apostle, neither was Luke.

• 1:23:54Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:23:55Speaker 03

  So they, not all the Gospels, not all the apostles wrote a Gospel. There are some, what they call pseudo-Gospels. People came up with. One was attributed to St. James, but they're not part of the, they're not recognized as Gospels by the Church. And so, but Mark had a special connection with St. Peter, and Luke, they were closely associated, but they were not apostles.

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:24:33Speaker 03

  And the others, well, Jude left us an epistle and James.

• 1:24:44Speaker 03

  But the other apostles did not leave us writings.

• 1:24:48Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:24:52Speaker 02

  Do the Gospels contradict each other at all?

• 1:24:55Speaker 03

  No, there's no contradiction in the Gospels. They, over time, people have also put the Gospels together in one text. And there you see, certain accounts are found in all the Gospels. Some found in two Gospels, three Gospels, but there is no contradiction.

• 1:25:23Speaker 02

  Were the apostles with him all the time, all 12 of them?

• 1:25:27Speaker 03

  Yes, but we understand from the Gospels, they accompanied him everywhere. They left their nets and followed him. And they were fishermen mostly. But he called them. He called Matthew, who was sitting at the tax collector's place. He called them and they,

• 1:25:51Speaker 03

  and they followed him. And from that moment on, they were completely at his service.

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  Let's talk about the Last Supper.

• 1:26:02Speaker 02

  What was the significance?

• 1:26:04Speaker 03

  This is very important. Our Lord has come into Jerusalem. He came into Jerusalem knowing that it would, he would have to embrace his passion and death. So on the night before the passion began, he brought the disciples together, or was it the Passover meal? It was the annual celebration of the Passover, of the great liberation of God's people from slavery in Egypt. He brought them together. And in that meal,

• 1:26:47Speaker 03

  he said things in his power as God that instituted two sacraments. The sacrament of all sacraments, as we say, the Holy Eucharist. He took the bread and the wine

• 1:27:09Speaker 03

  and said, "This is my body, which will be given up for you.

• 1:27:15Speaker 03

  This is the cup of my blood, which we poured out for you." By that, he signified that we would share in the salvation that he won for us by giving his body up to death, by pouring out his lifeblood

• 1:27:38Speaker 03

  in a sacramental way, that he would make always present that salvation by a sacrament, which would be nothing less than a share in his very body and blood. In other words, to receive him, body, blood, soul, and divinity into our very being.

• 1:27:59Speaker 03

  That, so in that moment, he anticipated

• 1:28:06Speaker 03

  the salvation that he would win for us on Calvary by instituting the Holy Eucharist. And at the same time, he commanded the 12, "Do this in memory of me." And instituted the Holy priesthood so that, because Christ, he was going to die.

• 1:28:28Speaker 02

  And he knew that.

• 1:28:28Speaker 03

  He knew that. And he wanted to leave those who would perpetuate until the last day, the offering of the Holy Eucharist, so that he would always be able to feed a man in every age, in every place, with his saving body and blood. And so the Last Supper, Holy Thursday, is for us, you know, Easter Sunday is the great victory, but it's inseparably connected with the Last Supper because the gift of Easter Sunday,

• 1:29:11Speaker 03

  the gift of eternal life, comes to us sacramentally through the Holy Eucharist, offered by the priest who acts in Christ's person to bring us the sacrament. It's not something, you know, some people say, "Well, if there isn't a priest, the people can just come together and have the Eucharist." No. This is, Christ willed it in this way, that there should be a consecrated man who offers the Holy Eucharist for us so that we can be strengthened and with the gift of Christ's very life.

• 1:29:56Speaker 03

  And also, it's a pledge of eternal life.

• 1:30:03Speaker 03

  St. Thomas is a beautiful text, "O sacrum convivium o, holy banquet in which Christ is received, the memory of his passion is renewed, and we are given the pledge of eternal life." Everything in this most wonderful sacrament. That's why also we receive the Holy Eucharist in Holy Communion at Mass. But it's such a great mystery that we also worship the Holy Eucharist outside of Mass so that we never lose sight of the truth, that this is the body and blood, body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ.

• 1:30:46Speaker 03

  And so we put the Blessed Sacrament in a beautiful, what we call monstrum, ostensorium, and we pray before the Holy Eucharist. Also, when we pass a church, if it's possible for us, we go in and make a visit to our Lord in the tabernacle. Because the hosts are consecrated at Mass. Because our Lord wants to be with people at all times, even when the Mass is not being celebrated. The Eucharist is reserved in the tabernacle. People pray there. But then also, if someone is sick, if someone is dying, the priest takes the sacred oath, goes to them

• 1:31:28Speaker 03

  so that they can die with our Lord, with them on their way from this life to the life which is to come, or that they can be strengthened when they're weak and need that help. And so it's, this is the wonderful sacrament in the Church. There are seven sacraments, as you know, but the sacrament, the most Blessed Sacrament, as we call it, is the Holy Eucharist. And the priesthood inseparably connected to it.

• 1:32:05Speaker 02

  So is it a symbol of the body and blood of Christ?

• 1:32:08Speaker 03

  No, it is the body and blood of Christ.

• 1:32:10Speaker 02

  It is the body and blood of Christ.

• 1:32:11Speaker 03

  It is the body and blood of Christ. That's why we treat the Eucharist with such great reverence. If it were just a symbol, and there are Christians who are not Catholic who think that the Eucharist is just a symbolic meal. And so after the Eucharist, they just throw the hosts away that are not used. But we could never do that because we believe this is the teaching, the word that was found at the Council of Trent to express this transubstantiation, that the very substance of the bread

• 1:32:55Speaker 03

  is changed into the body of Christ, Christ himself coming to feed us. And the accidents, it looks like bread.

• 1:33:09Speaker 03

  But the substance, by the action of divine grace, is the body of Christ.

• 1:33:17Speaker 02

  And the Last Supper was on Friday?

• 1:33:20Speaker 03

  It was on Thursday.

• 1:33:21Speaker 02

  It was on Thursday.

• 1:33:22Speaker 03

  Christ died first on Good Friday. And on the evening of Holy Thursday, we call it, he celebrated his Last Supper, the Passover meal, which was transformed. We call it now the Lord's Supper. It's the first Eucharist.

• 1:33:39Speaker 02

  Is that considered the first Mass?

• 1:33:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

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• 1:36:20Shawn Ryan?

  All right, back from the break. Let's get into the crucifixion.

• 1:36:29Shawn Ryan?

  So we just covered the Last Supper and everything that that meant with the Eucharist. How long after the Last Supper did they come get him? And why did they come get him?

• 1:36:41Speaker 03

  Well, he went out to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane with Peter, James, and John. And they, they came to get him because they, well, it's complicated. Put it simply, they said that he was stirring up trouble that the Romans then would, in some way, crush them, or their idea was to get him away, lest he seem to be a threat to the Roman government.

• 1:37:24Speaker 03

  He wasn't, in fact, because there was no part of his public ministry where he was trying, for instance, to gather troops or to, you know, set up some kind of government. That just wasn't his mission.

• 1:37:36Shawn Ryan?

  What did the Roman government believe in at the time?

• 1:37:40Speaker 03

  The Romans said they occupied Palestine, the Holy Land today, and they had a Roman governor there by the name of Pontius Pilate. And he, that's why they brought our Lord, when they arrested him, they took him to Pontius Pilate to ask that he be condemned to death. And Pontius Pilate, first, after the Last Supper, he went out directly to the Garden of Gethsemane. He prayed there. And he's, he prayed, his prayer was so intense

• 1:38:25Speaker 03

  that they say perspired blood. He knew that the passion was at hand. And so, it was while he was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, that Judas arrived with the soldiers, and they arrested him. The famous sign, how did Judas indicate who he was? So the soldiers would arrest him. He kissed him, went up to him. And in that culture, it wouldn't be unusual for, to give somebody a kiss. We're not talking about some passionate kiss, but

• 1:39:09Speaker 03

  to kiss them on the cheek. This is a normal way of greeting. And our Lord said to Judas, "Judas, you would betray me with a kiss." In other words, a sign of a friendship, of bond. Instead, it was, but that's what happened. And they, so they took him, and took him before Pontius Pilate. And he eventually condemned him to death by crucifixion. It's clear that he, he said to the people, he said, "I find nothing in this man to condemn him." But

• 1:39:53Speaker 03

  the people even said that he presented to them Christ to them as their king. And the people responded, "We have no king but Caesar," the king of the Romans. So, then develops the whole story of the passion. And our, our Lord is scourged, he's mocked. And then has to take up this arduous walk from the praetorium where he was condemned to Calvary,

• 1:40:38Speaker 03

  to this hill nearby, dragging the wood of the cross on his shoulders. And eventually, they arrive at Calvary. And then they, he's nailed to the, to the cross, and the cross is lifted. And this is, it's particularly agonizing form of death, because the weight of the body pulling down on the chest, the person eventually dies of asphyxiation. He can't, he had to keep pushing himself up to get a breath. And then at a certain point,

• 1:41:17Speaker 03

  the body is so weak that, and we have the account in the Gospels of our Lord's passion and death. And in the Gospel of John is particularly rich. And our Lord gives, gives us what they call the seven last words of our Lord. But among them are the words by which he gave us the Blessed Mother. His mother, as our mother, said to John, the evangelist, to us, "To put to the cross with Mary, and Mary Magdalene, woman, behold your son," he says

• 1:41:58Speaker 03

  to his mother. And behold, and then he says to John, "Behold your mother." And so, we see that our Lord is confiding the church, and especially to the intercession, the care, the Blessed Mother. And then he dies.

• 1:42:15Shawn Ryan?

  Where were the apostles at this time?

• 1:42:17Speaker 03

  They had all scattered, except for John. They were, they were around but hiding. They didn't want to.

• 1:42:23Shawn Ryan?

  Fear?

• 1:42:24Speaker 03

  Fear. They were all afraid. They...

• 1:42:29Speaker 03

  We have to say they were a cowardly lot, except for John. So, he, and after his death, there's very significant,

• 1:42:47Speaker 03

  our Lord permits that the Roman soldier, well, they came, then he was crucified with two other men, who were real criminals. And one of them mocked our Lord, and the other one, when we called Ismus the good thief, he said, he reprimanded his cohort, saying, "We're here dying because we've committed crimes. He's not done anything. You should not mock him." And he said to Jesus, "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom," which was an expression of a belief in eternal life.

• 1:43:30Speaker 03

  And our Lord said, "Today you will be with me in paradise." And so we believe that that thief was actually one of the first to share in the grace of salvation that Christ won. But anyway, what I wanted to get to was,

• 1:43:47Speaker 03

  our Lord had died, and so the soldiers came, and what they did was, to make sure that these criminals were dead, they stayed, break their legs.

• 1:44:01Speaker 03

  And so they did that with the two thieves that were buried with him, the two criminals. When they came to him, he was clearly already dead. And so they didn't break his legs, but when the Roman soldier pierced his side, going into his heart with the spear, and the Scripture says that blood and water flowed out. And for us, this is a sign of the sacramental grace that comes to us in virtue of Christ, passion, and death. And it's the water of baptism, the blood of the Holy Eucharist, the body and blood of Christ.

• 1:44:44Speaker 03

  And that's also then at the heart of a great devotion in the Church to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We often, you've seen the image of our Lord, and he's holding his heart, showing his heart to us. And that's simply a reminder to us that our Lord is with us always in the Church. And his heart never ceases to beat with love for us. And that heart is now glorious after his resurrection.

• 1:45:21Speaker 03

  And that's, for us, is just such a wonderful truth.

• 1:45:26Speaker 02

  Do we have any idea of how big his discipleship was at the time of the crucifixion?

• 1:45:33Speaker 03

  It was large.

• 1:45:37Speaker 03

  We hear many accounts, for instance, at the Sermon on the Mount, that a large crowd followed him.

• 1:45:46Speaker 03

  People were, well, they had been going to John the Baptist before our Lord began his public ministry. And the people were looking for the Savior. So there, I wouldn't be able to put a numerical figure on it, but let us just say that there was a sizable group of people who were following him.

• 1:46:10Speaker 02

  But it wasn't, it was no match for the Roman army?

• 1:46:14Speaker 03

  No, no, no. And they, and he wasn't arming them physically. He was arming them spiritually. And so they were, they were, they wouldn't have been in any position to

• 1:46:32Speaker 03

  to fight the Romans. And the fact of the matter is that the high priests and the leaders of the Jewish people had whipped up a sizable crowd that were actually asking for our Lord's execution. Because it's clear that Pontius Pilate didn't want to, didn't want to have him executed. And even Pilate's wife sent a message to him that she'd had a dream about Jesus, and that he shouldn't,

• 1:47:13Speaker 03

  you know, he shouldn't condemn him to death. But when the people were shouting, and he saw that there was a riot at hand, this among the Jewish people, not, obviously, the followers of Jesus, then he succumbed, and he said, "Then, you know, take him and crucify him."

• 1:47:36Speaker 02

  What happened to him?

• 1:47:38Speaker 03

  What happened to Pontius Pilate?

• 1:47:41Speaker 03

  I can't remember what, how he ended his days. When he continued on there, he's mentioned in the creed that we pray every Sunday at Mass, suffered, our Lord suffered under Pontius Pilate. I seem to recall that he came to a sad end, but I, I don't, it's not coming clearly in my head what happened to him, but that's certainly able to be researched. And, but I have the recollection that he came to some kind of a sad end.

• 1:48:17Speaker 02

  How did the

• 1:48:22Speaker 02

  discipleship grow after?

• 1:48:27Speaker 03

  It was the

• 1:48:29Speaker 02

  Well, I guess maybe we should save that question until after the resurrection.

• 1:48:33Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:48:35Speaker 02

  So what happened in between?

• 1:48:36Speaker 03

  So our Lord, as I was mentioning before, Joseph of Arimathea was a just man. He was among the leaders of the Jewish people, but a just man who was a disciple of Jesus. He had, he went to Pilate and said, "I would like the body of Jesus." The very Pilate was surprised that he was already dead. But then, when he found out that he was, he gave the body to Joseph of Arimathea. And so he, together with Nicodemus, and then, of course, the Blessed Mother and the holy women, they prepared Jesus' body for burial, and they buried him in this tomb.

• 1:49:21Speaker 03

  It would have been carved into the hillside, a stone tomb.

• 1:49:29Speaker 02

  Why did he get his own tomb?

• 1:49:31Speaker 03

  Because he, for I suspect it was the one in which he intended himself to be buried in time, and that he gave it to Jesus.

• 1:49:41Speaker 03

  He was that

• 1:49:42Speaker 02

  Who gave it?

• 1:49:43Speaker 03

  Loved our Lord that much and was that dedicated to him.

• 1:49:47Speaker 02

  Who gave it to Jesus?

• 1:49:48Speaker 03

  Joseph of Arimathea.

• 1:49:49Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:49:51Speaker 03

  And so, our Lord is buried, it's on Friday.

• 1:49:58Speaker 03

  He died at 3:00 in the afternoon, buried that evening. And

• 1:50:07Speaker 03

  some time between his burial on Friday evening and the morning of Sunday, the resurrection took place. And the only way we can describe it is it's an explosion of light, or, because his bodily remains, his poor tortured body was glorified, was, he came back to life and

• 1:50:44Speaker 03

  in a wholly transformed way. And then began a series of his apparitions. For 40 days, then, he appeared to the apostles, who were hiding in the upper room, they're still scared. So they're hiding in the upper room, he appeared to them.

• 1:51:08Speaker 03

  Once, Thomas wasn't there. And the other apostles told Thomas, they'd seen the Lord. He said, "Unless I put my hand into his side and see these wounds, I won't believe it." And our Lord came back then, the following Sunday, and showed himself to Thomas. And Thomas

• 1:51:34Speaker 03

  was overcome, he's called my Lord and my God. He recognized Jesus immediately. He appeared to the apostles, were fishing, some of them had gone back to fishing. He appeared on the side of the sea with them and offered them

• 1:51:57Speaker 03

  Breakfast, and they recognized that it was the Lord who appeared to them. Then there's the very famous account of the two disciples, who, after our Lord's death on Friday, are walking to the neighboring town from Jerusalem to Emmaus. And they're lamenting that the demise of our Lord, and he appears to them, but they don't recognize him. And he says, "What are you talking about?" And they said, "Are you the only person in Jerusalem that doesn't know about what happened to Jesus of Nazareth?" And they then recount the whole thing to them. And then he said, "You haven't understood." And he explained to them.

• 1:52:41Speaker 03

  This gets back to the point we've made several times in our conversation. He then interpreted the whole Scriptures for them to show that he, in fact, was the fulfillment of the promise of salvation. And so they arrive where they're going to stay, and they sit down for a meal. And he breaks the bread in the same way he did at the Last Supper. And they recognize that it's him. And then he disappears. But it's very powerful. They said, "They recognized him in the Eucharist in the breaking of the bread." He disappeared right in front of them? Yes.

• 1:53:24Speaker 03

  And so, at the end of those 40 days, he called the apostles together and went on the Mount of the Ascension and instructed them to go forth. And first, he told them to wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit. And then he also instructed them to go out and to teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And then at that, he ascended into heaven. He was lifted up and away from their sight.

• 1:54:05Speaker 03

  And they went back then, that was on Ascension Thursday. They went back and they prayed for nine days, for the gift of the Holy Spirit that had been promised to them. That's where the practice comes of a novena in the church, nine days of prayer. The first novena was the nine days of prayer from Holy Thursday to Pentecost Sunday. And then on Pentecost, they're in the upper rooms, still hiding for fear of the Jews. And there's this tremendous wind, and then they see like little flames of fire above their heads. And it was ascending God the Father and God the Son,

• 1:54:50Speaker 03

  sending the Holy Spirit upon them. And these disciples, who up to that point were fearful and weak, becomes simply bold. Peter goes out and announces in a very forceful way the truth about our Lord, about the redemption he'd accomplished. And they say, that day alone, several thousand people were baptized. And from that Pentecost Sunday, it's just this constant flow of the grace of the Holy Spirit. As people are taught, they receive the gift of faith. They ask for baptism.

• 1:55:30Speaker 03

  They're baptized and become members of the Church's, the mystical body of Christ. So it grew exponentially after the resurrection? I'm sorry? It grew exponentially immediately after the resurrection? Completely incredible and under persecution. It wasn't as if they were free just to do whatever they wanted. Yes, they did go out and preach fearlessly, but they were persecuted for it. And there were many martyrs. I say all the apostles, except John, were put to death. But they went, we know that St. Thomas went as far as India. They went all over the world

• 1:56:12Speaker 03

  to bring the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And yes, it's really, that in itself is a miracle.

• 1:56:29Speaker 03

  How long after his death did the apostles live? Different, they lived to be different ages. Some were martyred earlier, some later. John, of course, wasn't martyred. He lived to a good age. And he's the one that didn't flee? He didn't flee. He remained always with our Lord. He seemed like maybe he was one of the younger apostles, and that he was particularly devoted to our Lord, and that our Lord called him his beloved disciple. He had a special closeness to our Lord.

• 1:57:14Speaker 03

  Somebody who, you can see from his gospel, who understood very deeply who our Lord was and what his mission was, and was completely invested in it.

• 1:57:30Speaker 03

  How many times did he reappear? That's a good question. Several times.

• 1:57:42Speaker 03

  Gosh, I don't know the exact number, but I would think that it must have been the ones, at least the accounts in the Gospels, I would say 10 or 15 times. 10 or 15 times? Yes. And the last time was when he? When he ascended. Okay. Into heaven, yes.

• 1:58:09Speaker 03

  We don't know that, because there are the accounts in the Gospels, but he clearly could have appeared more times, that not all the accounts are there. In fact, it says in the, that he appeared many times. And we, for instance, there's no direct account of an appearance to our Blessed Mother, but we can't help but think that he surely appeared to her. And first, the first appearance was probably to our Blessed Mother, and then the other ones that followed from it.

• 1:58:55Speaker 03

  Why do you think there's no writings from Mary in the New Testament? I think that, first of all, she's always presents herself as the handmaid of the Lord, the one who's serving him. And I think that her account of his life is the gospel according to St. John. That she confided him so many things about our Lord's public ministries, his passion, his death, his resurrection, that that's where we find the the last words we have from our Blessed Mother

• 1:59:40Speaker 03

  in the Gospel at the wedding feast of Cana, the last recorded words. Because we have beautiful, for instance, that her, when she visited Elizabeth, she had conceived our Lord, and she learned from the Archangel Gabriel that Elizabeth was pregnant with John the Baptist, already six months pregnant. So she went immediately to help her. And there's this beautiful, Elizabeth acknowledges her as the mother redeemer. And then she has this beautiful prayer, the Magnificat. But the last words is she's with Jesus at the supper at Cana, the wedding feast of Cana.

• 2:00:25Speaker 03

  And they ran out of wine for the guests. And she takes the wine stewards to our Lord and says to them, "Do whatever he tells you." And that's her, those are her last words. And those are beautiful words from our Blessed Mother. Just remember that. Do whatever our Lord tells us. That that's what she's leading us to do.

• 2:00:51Speaker 03

  When did we figure out he would come again? Did he tell us that? Yes. When he said, "I will be with you until the last day, to the end of the age, end of time." And so, yes, he's promised to return to us and in glory on the last day.

• 2:01:17Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:04:11Shawn Ryan?

  What does that mean, the end of time? I mean if...

• 2:04:14Speaker 03

  That means that there won't be any more time. In other words, when our Lord comes to restore everything to the Father, we'll be back in Eden. And as you were saying earlier on, Adam and Eve were meant to live forever. We will be in that state where we will live forever. There will be no more sin or death. And simply that joy, the eternal joy of being in the company of God.

• 2:04:49Shawn Ryan?

  How do we get the Book of Revelations?

• 2:04:52Speaker 03

  St. John the Apostle had these visions at Patmos, the island where he was living with our Blessed Mother. And he describes right at the beginning of it, how it happened that he received these visions, and he wrote them down.

• 2:05:12Shawn Ryan?

  What were they, some of them?

• 2:05:15Speaker 03

  Well, for instance, the vision of the coming of the Lord in glory to inaugurate the wedding feast, his wedding feast at which all those who are saved would take part. There are other visions that are letters to the various important cities at that time in the church.

• 2:05:51Speaker 03

  So there's quite a variety, but the principal ones are of our Lord seated in glory, returning to consummate his saving work by turning over all being to the Father.

• 2:06:13Shawn Ryan?

  How does it end?

• 2:06:15Speaker 03

  It's simply,

• 2:06:19Speaker 03

  from what I understand of the vision is that our Lord himself descends to earth in his glory and...

• 2:06:29Shawn Ryan?

  In the flesh and blood?

• 2:06:31Speaker 03

  Yes, but glorified. Remember that from the time of his resurrection is, and this is something that's a mystery to us. We don't understand how it is that

• 2:06:44Speaker 03

  it is his body, but it's his glorified body. For instance, he can pass from one place to another without using a door. And this is recounted in the Scriptures. And so it's hard for us to understand that. Well, of course, it's beyond our comprehension. It's not something that we've experienced. But the Scriptures assure us that that is indeed what will happen.

• 2:07:15Shawn Ryan?

  You know, a lot of people are scared of the end times.

• 2:07:20Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:07:20Shawn Ryan?

  Should they be?

• 2:07:22Speaker 03

  No, if one is living, striving to live a good and just life, there's nothing about which to be afraid. Our Lord comes to save all that is good and to save the just. And so people, because we don't have an experience of this, people are afraid of it. But we have the promises of our Lord, and our Lord is never going to deceive us. He's never going to tell us lies.

• 2:08:04Speaker 03

  And so we know that he will come to save the living and the dead. And so we just have confidence. We don't know what it will be, how it will be, but we have confidence that our Lord will be true to his promises. And the people, people are oftentimes wanting to predict when the world will come to an end. And I'm sure you've heard this from time to time. People even say, you know, what's going to happen in 1984 or something like that? And they asked our Lord, and he said, basically, the response was,

• 2:08:48Speaker 03

  it's not, we shouldn't be worried about that. That's the concern of God the Father. He will bring the world to an end when the time is right. We just have to be watching and ready to receive him. Have to have our belts tightened and be looking for our Lord. Have our eyes fixed on him and waiting for his coming. And he tells about the good and faithful servants who, when the master returns, they're ready to receive him.

• 2:09:29Speaker 03

  And that's how we should be, not worrying about when it's going to happen, but only be concerned that every day, every moment of the day that we are ready to receive our Lord, that we're looking for him, and that we welcome him with...

• 2:09:48Speaker 03

  With all our hearts. I was quite sick a few years ago with this COVID. It was in August of 2021. And it had a very severe attack of an infection. I was taken to the hospital and the doctors told me that I was dying. And they asked, they wanted to put me on a ventilator. They said that was the only hope they could have to save me. And people had said to me, well, when they told you we're dying, weren't you terrified? And I said, no, to be honest, I wasn't because I'm a priest.

• 2:10:33Speaker 03

  I had been preparing at that time. I had been a priest for 46 years. I said, I've prepared so many people to die, assisted them in dying. And our Lord promises that those who die in him will pass from this life to eternal life. So I just understood that now my time had arrived. I said, the only thought I had was that I wasn't planning on dying. And I was thinking all the things that I left undone. But I wasn't terrified at the idea of dying,

• 2:11:14Speaker 03

  but simply that I wish I had been a little better organized, so to speak. But that's the way we should, I believe, that's the way we should live, that all of us, this life is a pilgrimage. We're not meant to be in this world forever. And so we should be at peace and live in a way that we're ready to meet our Lord.

• 2:11:44Speaker 02

  Is heaven here?

• 2:11:46Speaker 03

  No. Heaven, it will be a new heaven and a new earth according to the Holy Scriptures.

• 2:11:56Speaker 02

  So the earth will be transformed?

• 2:11:58Speaker 03

  Exactly. So it won't be this world that we know it, but transformed in a way that we can't know how that is. Sometimes artists have attempted to express it, but it's simply something beyond anything we could imagine. But we know that it will be, because it will be God in his fullness, that it will be completely beautiful and good and true.

• 2:12:28Speaker 02

  So if you're living, when it happens, does that mean you will not die?

• 2:12:33Speaker 03

  Yes, that means exactly that. You will be transformed as a living. And this comes up, and the people are asking our Lord about whether Saint John, whether John, the beloved disciple would be, whether he was going to die and so forth. And our Lord just simply says that when the, some will be alive at the time, but all will be caught up into heaven,

• 2:13:17Speaker 03

  into this new earth, which will be the new heavens and new earth, transformed, completely redeemed.

• 2:13:30Speaker 02

  So it might be here?

• 2:13:32Speaker 03

  Yes. But we have to say that our Lord, everything that he makes that is good is enduring. And so that in some way, he will make the goodness of his creation. And his creation is good. We appreciate so many good things. Even for instance, this beautiful place here in Tennessee and other. So somehow, all that goodness will endure, but in a transformed way.

• 2:14:05Speaker 02

  Do you think that the gateway to heaven is wide or narrow?

• 2:14:13Speaker 03

  Our Lord says it's narrow. And I think he says that to us because human beings have a tendency to be presumptuous and to think, oh, I'll do whatever I want. And God will forgive me. We can never presume upon the divine mercy. And so I always like to think that we should think that, you know, we'd better be on our best behavior. And be always striving for that. All of us have our faults, to be sure.

• 2:14:57Speaker 03

  But we shouldn't presume upon God's mercy, but always have that genuine sorrow for our sins and a desire to be more fully a reflection of the goodness of Christ. And in that sense, I think it's narrow. On the other hand, in the book of the Apocalypse, when it talks about the great assembly of those who are saved, it says that first are the 14,000 or 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel,

• 2:15:42Speaker 03

  so many thousand from each tribe of Israel. And then it says there was a crowd of the saved that's innumerable. And so I'm sure that our Lord's mercy will be very abundant, but we don't presume upon it. And it's your kind, but I don't presume upon your kindness by doing wicked things to you. In other words, and so the same way, even with our own parents, our parents are good to us. We have great reverence for them. We don't want in any way to displease them.

• 2:16:24Speaker 03

  We count upon them understanding and forgiving us for our faults. But at the same time, we have great reverence. What with regard to our Lord is called fear of the Lord, one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, that we recognize how infinitely good God is, how he has done for us more than is imaginable in his goodness. And therefore, we want to be our best. And we're sorry for the ways in which we fail our Lord.

• 2:17:00Speaker 02

  In a recent homily, you spoke about the call to martyrdom in the family, in the family life, particularly for men as husbands, fathers, and leaders of the home. What does it look like in practical terms to live out that kind of sacrificial love for our wives, marriages, and children?

• 2:17:20Speaker 03

  It means that a man has to strive to be as virtuous as he can be, be a model for his children. And in that way, to be a protector of his wife. And Saint Joseph is our great model of this, how he protected always Mary and the child Jesus, the flight into Egypt, the home of Nazareth. By his work, he was a carpenter, construction, constructing buildings.

• 2:17:58Speaker 03

  So for a man today, in a society which there's so much corruption, I think today, for instance, the young people are assaulted with this pornography, and it's so available to them. It's on the phones. They don't have to be particularly clever to be exposed to this. And so fathers have to be vigilant and insist with their children that, you know, what is good and right for them and to discipline them also.

• 2:18:42Speaker 03

  When a child needs to be disciplined, to correct them. And sometimes people, they want to be pals with their children. Well, a father is not called to be a buddy of his children. He's called to be the father, the secure guide, the protector. And so sometimes he has to say no. And the child might say, I hate you, and run off and hide in his room or something. But in the long run, he's going to be very grateful to that father who told him no before, something that was not for his good. And so we have to have the courage to say no.

• 2:19:25Speaker 03

  No, this is, and even when for a while, our child or whoever it is that we said no to dislikes us for it. And I've had the experience, because I've lived a long time as a priest and a bishop, of people writing to me and telling me that they didn't understand something that I did, especially as a bishop. But they wanted to write and tell me that now they understand. And they thanked me for insisting on whatever it was.

• 2:20:07Speaker 03

  And that's the way we should be as fathers too. We're in this for the long haul, for eternal life. And therefore, we're not looking for the immediate gratification of a child says, oh, I love you. And but we're looking for the long-term good of that child and that the child will eventually understand and be very grateful. And the important thing is that we've fulfilled our responsibility before God and in God to be a father of a family.

• 2:20:51Speaker 02

  I got a hot question for you.

• 2:20:54Speaker 02

  You ready?

• 2:20:55Speaker 03

  I'm as ready as I am able to be.

• 2:20:58Speaker 02

  Cardinal Burke, if demons are real, how can an ordinary person actually fight them?

• 2:21:05Speaker 03

  Only in Christ.

• 2:21:10Speaker 03

  Only Christ has the power to repel demons, to cast them out, to get them away from us. And in the Church, we have the formal prayers called exorcisms to drive away the demons. But those prayers are all said in the name of Christ. The priest never says "I." No, it's Christ who drives out the demons. We invoke St. Michael the Archangel and so forth. And in Christ, even as we saw in the Gospels, when our Lord cast out demons, demons can be cast out, but only in Him.

• 2:21:54Speaker 03

  If we would presume to battle the devil on our own, we will be defeated.

• 2:22:04Speaker 03

  This is a great temptation for exorcists. These are the priests who are charged with saying the prayers of the Church to free people from the evil one, either his obsession or his possession, even worse, of the person. There's always a temptation. The exorcist is fighting this fight with Christ, but he can be tempted to see it as his battle, and I'm going to drive that devil out. And that's fatal.

• 2:22:41Speaker 03

  Because we can't. They have powers that we don't. Preternatural powers, and only the supernatural power of Christ Himself can cast them out.

• 2:22:52Speaker 02

  Do you see that a lot?

• 2:22:54Speaker 03

  More than I would like. It seems in the present time, and I know this from talking to Brother Bishops and so forth, and exorcists, there's a lot of demonic activity going on.

• 2:23:11Speaker 03

  I think part of it is that for, there was a period,

• 2:23:17Speaker 03

  not in the so distant past, where people said, "Oh, Christ has conquered Satan and so forth. Nothing to worry about." Well, no, Christ has conquered him, and He continues to conquer him. But Satan continues to prowl about the world, as the letter of St. Peter says, "Seeking whom he may devour." And Satan hates us because we're made in the image and likeness of God, and we're destined to be with God. And he's rejected all that, and he's eternally damned. And so, he's coming after people.

• 2:24:00Speaker 03

  But if we pray, if we fortify ourselves with the sacraments, if we take all precautions with regard to the evil one, we can be sure that our Lord won't let Him have power over us. But it's when we begin to think, Satan is never happier than when we think he's not around, because then he can really do damage. We have to have our eyes wide open and see, no, this is something that's diabolical. And sadly, in the world today, and even sometimes in the Church, we see things that are diabolical.

• 2:24:46Speaker 03

  They're so evil that they could only come from the evil one Himself.

• 2:24:51Speaker 02

  Do you see a lot of exorcists that say, "I am the one that drove the demon out"?

• 2:24:58Speaker 03

  I have not encountered that myself. I do have known exorcists,

• 2:25:07Speaker 03

  but not because they were presumptuous, but because the work is so intense and difficult, who've suffered in their health.

• 2:25:20Speaker 03

  And it's a heroic thing. But no, I've really never known an exorcist who did that.

• 2:25:28Speaker 02

  What does Scripture, particularly Ephesians 6 and the Armor of God, teach us about spiritual warfare?

• 2:25:38Speaker 02

  In what prayers does the Church give ordinary people to drive the devil out of their lives and homes?

• 2:25:45Speaker 03

  Well, the ordinary prayers are simply to call upon the Lord, have mercy on us, to invoke St. Michael the Archangel, who is especially our advocate against the devil, St. Joseph, the terror of demons, and of course, our Blessed Mother.

• 2:26:09Speaker 03

  These are all ways in which we arm ourselves. We put on the helmet of salvation.

• 2:26:19Speaker 03

  What is spiritual warfare? There's no other way to describe it.

• 2:26:26Speaker 03

  St. Paul, at the end of his life, is writing to St. Timothy, and he says, "My time is coming."

• 2:26:38Speaker 03

  And he said, "I've fought the good fight. I've stayed the course."

• 2:26:46Speaker 03

  So we have the military image, we have the athletic image, then "I've kept the faith." In other words, that he trusted in our Lord, stayed close to our Lord, and therefore, every day, he soldiered on in his life. And then he says, "For the rest,

• 2:27:09Speaker 03

  it's the glory that the Lord has reserved to those who love Him."

• 2:27:16Speaker 02

  For the person watching who's never prayed a rosary in their life, walk them through it. What should they do tonight?

• 2:27:24Speaker 03

  Well, the first thing to do is to understand that the rosary is really a gospel prayer. It's the repetition of the Hail Mary. These are, the first part of the Hail Mary is taken directly, "Hail Mary, full of grace," are the words of the Archangel Gabriel to the Blessed Mother of the Lord, "Is with thee blessed our thome and women; blessed is the fruit of thy womb," the words of Elizabeth. And then we add, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death." It's a beautiful prayer.

• 2:28:06Speaker 03

  We pray it while meditating on a mystery

• 2:28:12Speaker 03

  in the life of our Lord, of our Blessed Mother. Traditionally, there were 15 mysteries. The joyful mysteries, sorrowful mysteries, and the glorious mysteries. And Pope St. John Paul II added five more. But anyway, so we take, and the beads are important because they help us to stay on course with the prayer. We begin with the Apostles' Creed. We say three, "Our Father," and three Hail Marys, for this prayer will increase in us faith, hope, and charity. And we always pray for our Holy Father, for the Pope. And then we begin, usually on Monday.

• 2:28:57Speaker 03

  On Sunday and Wednesday, we pray the glorious mysteries. Then on Monday, joyful. Tuesday, the sorrowful mysteries. Thursday, these luminous mysteries that Pope St. John Paul II gave us. Then Friday, again, the sorrowful mysteries. And then on Saturday, the joyful mysteries again. And so, let's take, for instance, the first glorious mystery is the resurrection of our Lord. And so, we take into our mind

• 2:29:37Speaker 03

  what is the resurrection. Sometimes people even read a little verse from the Scripture about it. And then we say this prayer, just trying to, we say, "Ten Hail Marys, and our Father, and ten Hail Marys, and a glory be," just simply reflecting on our life in Christ as we see it in His resurrection. Then the next mystery is the ascension, then the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. And you see how that fits in so much with our conversation about the Gospel today? You see how it's really a gospel prayer? And then the assumption of our Blessed Mother, and then her coronation as Queen of Heaven and Earth. So those are glorious mysteries.

• 2:30:22Speaker 03

  Then we have the joyful mysteries, the enunciation, Archangel Gabriel appearing to Mary,

• 2:30:29Speaker 03

  the visitation, Mary visits St. Elizabeth, the birth of our Lord, the nativity, His presentation in the temple, and then the finding of our Lord in the temple at the age of 12. You see how wonderful this is? Because we're drawing ever closer to the mystery of our Lord's saving work. And by repeating this prayer over and over, this strengthens us in that reflection. And then the sorrowful mysteries, the agony in the garden, the scourging at the pillar, the crowning with thorns, carrying of the cross, and the crucifixion. And then the new luminous mysteries are the baptism of our Lord,

• 2:31:14Speaker 03

  the wedding feast at Cana, His proclamation of the kingdom, the Transfiguration, and then the institution of the Holy Eucharist. And I always like to think, too, of the Holy priesthood, as we were talking about before. So this is a powerful prayer, given by Our Lady to St. Dominic, a powerful way for us to draw near to our Lord through the intercession of our Blessed Mother, so that we can live more fully in Him. I don't know if that helps.

• 2:31:51Speaker 02

  It absolutely helps. Thank you.

• 2:31:54Speaker 03

  But get rosary beads, because that helps you to count the prayers and so forth. But it's a very concrete.

• 2:32:04Speaker 03

  The rosary beads are not magical, but people like to, many people are buried with the rosary in their hands. And it's not because of some magic, but it's simply...

• 2:32:17Speaker 03

  A concrete sign of the power of prayer. And so it's always good to have a rosary in your pocket.

• 2:32:26Shawn Ryan?

  Makes sense. I got mine right here.

• 2:32:28Speaker 03

  Good for you.

• 2:32:33Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:33:16Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:34:41Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, we're getting into our final segment.

• 2:34:43Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:34:44Shawn Ryan?

  Our Lady of Guadalupe.

• 2:34:47Speaker 03

  Yes. I wanted, if I could, to present you with a special gift in honor of these conversations we've had, an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a reproduction. This is done digitally, so it's very authentic. And this is how Our Lady appeared to a Native American, Juan Diego, in 1531. And you can see that she appears as the woman in the apocalypse, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and with stars

• 2:35:24Speaker 03

  over her head. And then, on her garment and so forth, are all symbols from that ancient world, but all will point to the reality that she is the Mother of God. So it's a very powerful apparition that took place from December 9th to the 12th in 1531. And I wanted you to have this as a reminder of how close Our Lady is to you and how she wants to bring Christ. She says that she's come. She appears, St. Juan Diego, she says, "I'm the Mother of God. I want a little chapel to be built where I can bring my children

• 2:36:07Speaker 03

  to my Divine Son, who alone is our hope and our salvation." And of course, we're coming now, 1531, 2031 will be 500 years. So we're preparing. I founded a shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Cross, Wisconsin. We're doing a five-year preparation, and each year we're reflecting on one of the mysteries in the life of our Blessed Mother, starting with her Immaculate Conception, with her Perpetual Virginity, her Divine Maternity, her Assumption, and then her Mediation of All Graces. And so we'll be giving all this

• 2:36:51Speaker 03

  attention to our Blessed Mother in order to draw closer to our Lord. And I want to invite you in a special way to visit the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Cross. It's not so far from Tennessee. And then eventually, the visitor shrine in Mexico City, where you can see the actual, the miracle of this too. There's much to say, and I don't want to go on and on, but the miracle of this apparition is, there are many miraculous aspects, but our Lord left the image on this mantle of St. Juan Diego. He was wearing

• 2:37:32Speaker 03

  the typical dress of the time. And when the bishop asked him for a sign, he went and said, "Our Lady appeared to me. She wants this chapel." And he said, "Well, bring a sign for Our Lady." Well, she had roses bloom in the middle of winter on this craggy hill, where you wouldn't find any flowers. And so, and Our Lady put them in his mantle. When he opened the mantle up for the bishop, the flowers fell out, but then her image appeared. And that image is still on that garment today in the Basilica in Mexico City. And it's

• 2:38:11Speaker 03

  a cactus cloth garment. It should have disintegrated within 30 or 40 years, and instead, it's still miraculously preserved. So.

• 2:38:21Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Thank you.

• 2:38:23Speaker 03

  Oh, you're most welcome. And I brought a book to you about the shrine, but there are many wonderful accounts, and millions of people were converted to Christ as a result of her apparition.

• 2:38:39Shawn Ryan?

  Millions of people.

• 2:38:40Speaker 03

  Millions, literally millions.

• 2:38:42Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I think we are already working with your team to do your life story and talk all about this up at the shrine that you started.

• 2:38:50Speaker 03

  That would be wonderful. Anything we can do to help Our Lady, we call ourselves Our Ladies Messengers. We're the Juan Diego's who are going out and bringing the message of our Lord that she wants us to deliver.

• 2:39:07Shawn Ryan?

  This is beautiful. Thank you.

• 2:39:09Speaker 03

  Oh, you're most welcome.

• 2:39:10Shawn Ryan?

  It'll be hanging up right in here.

• 2:39:12Speaker 03

  Okay. That's wonderful. She'll be a good protector.

• 2:39:26Shawn Ryan?

  So Cardinal Burke, we've wrapped up the Old Testament, the New Testament. I think the overall arc of the New Testament is definitely The Resurrection.

• 2:39:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. I know that there's a, the passion is to be followed. There is to be a movie now coming out on The Resurrection, and I think it should be coming out soon, and I hope it is as good.

• 2:40:04Shawn Ryan?

  Next Easter.

• 2:40:05Speaker 03

  Next Easter, okay.

• 2:40:06Shawn Ryan?

  Easter of 2027, from what I understand.

• 2:40:08Speaker 03

  Yes. But that is.

• 2:40:11Shawn Ryan?

  And then 40, it's a two-part series.

• 2:40:13Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:40:14Shawn Ryan?

  Then the next one is 40 Days After That.

• 2:40:16Speaker 03

  All right.

• 2:40:18Shawn Ryan?

  From what I understand.

• 2:40:19Speaker 03

  Well, The Resurrection, of course, it's the moment of the resurrection, but then it's the apparitions that follow, and then the ascension. So that's very good if they're doing that. And so I hope that that, I'm sure God will bless that work.

• 2:40:47Shawn Ryan?

  So after this two-part interview series, the Bible can be very intimidating, you know, for a newbie like myself to get through it. And that's why I'm doing this series, starting, you know, it started yesterday, but as I mentioned, we'll go through every single book in the Bible.

• 2:41:08Speaker 03

  Oh, that's great. And people, I always say to people, just sit down and start, for instance, with the Gospels, and then, and just take it a little at a time. It's the Word of God. And people, if they do that, they get very much at home with it, and then they want to go more and more even into some of the books of the Bible that are more difficult. And so, yes, and that you're going to do every book of the Bible. I think that's wonderful.

• 2:41:41Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 2:41:42Speaker 03

  I'll be praying for that, that God bless that, and that all your here, all your listeners, and will their lives be enriched.

• 2:41:52Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 2:41:54Speaker 03

  You're welcome.

• 2:41:55Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for being here.

• 2:41:56Speaker 03

  You're most welcome.

• 2:41:57Shawn Ryan?

  Give me a hymn with a prayer.

• 2:41:58Speaker 03

  Surely. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Almighty God, we give you thanks for this time, blessed time we've had together to come to know more deeply your divinely inspired Word as it comes to us in the Holy Scriptures. And we ask you to bless us now as we strive to deepen our knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and therefore, our knowledge and love of you. We ask this in our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who is with you in the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen. Our Lady of

• 2:42:42Speaker 03

  Guadalupe, pray for us. St. Joseph, terror of demons, pray for us. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

• 2:42:54Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 2:42:55Speaker 03

  You're welcome.

• 2:43:09Shawn 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.