#338 Cardinal Burke - The New Testament

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Cardinal Burke, welcome back for day two. Good to be back. So much better night last night. Good. Thanks be to God. 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 thank you again for coming and now start 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 Signature, the church's highest judicial court. Pope Benedict the 16th elevated you to the College of Cardinals in 2010. You are known internationally for your defense of traditional Catholic doctrine and sacred liturgy, marriage, family and the sacraments. You also are the founder of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Cross, Wisconsin, which you established as a place of pilgrimage, prayer and spiritual renewal. Once again, welcome, welcome today too. Thank you very much. And so before we get started, I was just hoping we could start in prayer again. Really, 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, the sacred scriptures. And most especially in the New Testament, the account of the fullness of the revelation of your love for us in our Lord Jesus Christ, we ask you to grant us a great wisdom in understanding everything that you wish to teach us through the Holy Scriptures. And we ask this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who is with you in the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, Amen, and the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. So the New Testament, so we left off yesterday with, 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 basically the overall arc of the New Testament. So where do we begin? 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 forty days after his resurrection and his resurrected body and his glorious body before his ascension to heaven, to the right hand of the Father. And these accounts are historical. All the claims that have been made to question the history of the gospels have been proven to be false. And 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 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 Saint Paul. Paul was a Pharisee, a very ardent Jew who persecuted aggressively the church and believers. He was present at the stoning to death of Saint Stephen, the first martyr, the Saint 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. Saint 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 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 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 one for us. What this? means for us. He has to 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 drink and excess and so forth, and not paying attention to the heart of the Eucharist, which is the renew of the Lord's Supper. And so Saint Paul, in confronting them, said, "I hand on to you that, which I have first received, that are lured on the night before I died, and then he gives a whole account of the," and then says in very clear language, he said, "Ewe eats and drinks. The body and blood of our Lord without recognizing our Lord eats and drinks is on condemnation." In other words, to approach sacrilegiously, the Holy Eucharist is a most grievous sin. But anyway, that's another proof is Saint 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. And with our Lord's apparitions after his resurrection and then after he ascended to the right end of the Father and Son, 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 Saint John, but Saint 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, 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. Some two claim that the gospels were written very late, but there's evidence now that they were written very close to the time after our Lord died. There wasn't something that was written a century or so later. What is the evidence? The evidence is done to 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 earlier. So they were written less than a century? Yes, they were written less than a century after our Lord died. They were written in that period after his death when they were the initial preaching of the gospel because we must remember too that in those times, in that culture, people are accustomed to memorize long accounts and very accurately so. There was 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 apostles and the disciples of our Lord. With that, then the gospels were written. There are four gospels, as you know, and three of them are called synoptic because they're very similar. St. John's is distinct and that it has a much more elaborate theological presentation of our Lord. That wasn't because it was later. It simply was a particular gift that he had, especially being the Lord's beloved disciple and also taking the care of his mother. So through these oral traditions, then people began to write down these accounts. Many of the accounts, for instance, in the synoptic gospels are exactly the same with the accounts of healings, miracles, parables. Some of you find in one gospel, you don't find in another, but that shouldn't surprise us that one gospel writer would have taken down in the count that perhaps another one did not, depending on who their sources were. Were those any of this written down as a journal and ongoing journal during the life of Christ? There would have been people would have been writing down his sayings. And I suppose to a certain extent, who we hear, for instance, when he hears people that the people 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 emerged for 30 years, and she just touched the camel of his garment, and she was healed because she had strong faith. She believed that he could heal her, and then he cured the son of the servant of the Centurion that account. That's a very, an account that's remembered every day at mass because when the Centurion came to ask our Lord to come to heal his son or servant, 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. Oh, you have to do a say the word, and my son will be healed and indeed that's what happened. Our Lord recognized his strong faith, 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 the healing took place. So the Gospels are simply rich with all of these accounts, and I mentioned this latest translation with such ample notes, but there are also studies of each of the Gospels, and there's just a richness there, and the Gospels are historically authentic. There's also an expert in philosophy and Aristotle, a layman by the name of Michael Picolic, he teaches to Catholic University of America, but he's very knowledgeable in Greek, the language in which the Gospels were written, and he has written a new translation also with a commentary. He did the one 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 tax collector, and then also the commentary. I believe it's on St. Mark, because of his, or is it Luke? I'm sorry, I'm not certain about that, and I think you'll have one on all four Gospels, but I recommend them very highly. 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. But his translation is new and fresh, but it's very faithful. 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And those are letters of St. Peter, two letters of St. Peter, St. James, a letter, St. Jude letter, and three letters of St. John. And it sometimes do they distinguish in St. Paul you have these large letters that are written to a whole group that letter to the Romans, two letters to the Corinthians, two letters to the Thessalonians, the Colossians, people of Colossae. But then there are what are called the pastoral epistles. And those he wrote to St. Timothy and St. Titus who were early bishops to instruct them on how to be good bishops. And they're really quite wonderful meditations for our bishops today. And then the conclusion of the Bible is the book of Revelation or what's called the Apocalypse. And this is a vision that St. John has is 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 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, the Lamb of God. And it's and finally, on the last day, our Lord restores everything to the Father. You were asking yesterday why did God permit 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 St. Paul said, "We have to fill out in our lives the sufferings of Christ as his members. 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 and restores everything to the Father." And St. The Apocalypse merits are reading. It's just more difficult, a little more challenging to read. And that completes then the New Testament. So if the books were written even close to a century later, 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? Because they're handed on from those who knew our Lord. And St. 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 access the knowledge. And all of the writers, of course, a lot of good part of the New Testament, his writings of St. John, or also St. Luke, that only wrote his gospel, but he wrote the Acts of the Apostles. Well, I'm sorry, there I was deficient when I was describing the books of the New Testament. They're the four gospels. And then before the epistles of St. Paul are the Acts of the Apostles, a very important book. It's the account of the first years of the of the Church's life. And that is written by St. Luke. And then there we find, for instance, the accounts of Paul's journeys after being a persecuted of the Church, he was converted, became, we call them the Apostle of the Nations, but he traveled all the inhabited world at that time, a good part of it, preaching the gospel. And that's why you have, and then finally ended his days in Rome. Where did the New Testament start? The New Testament starts in the Holy Land in Judea and Galilee. And, well, Nazareth, Bethlehem, well, Nazareth, and our Lady receives the announcement that she's the mother of the Savior. She conceives in her womb, the God, the Son, and he unites divine nature to our human nature, taking human flesh from her, the father being the Holy Spirit, or the shadowing of the Holy Spirit, and then birth of our Lord and Bethlehem in Judea, but then the Nazareth, the hidden life of our Lord until he was 30. He was at home with this the bus of mother in St. Joseph. We have a couple of accounts, for instance, that 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 about the whole mystery of salvation, and it says that they were astounded by his knowledge, of course, he was God the Son, but for the rest, when he was 30 then, he St. 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 in 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 St. John and the Jordan, and St. John, the Baptist, 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 and Great Numbers because he was announcing the coming of the Messiah of 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." He said, "Behold the Lamb of God." That also is recalled every day at Mass when the priest shows the host. He says, "Behold the Lamb of God. Behold him who takes away the sins of the world." The Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb. That text from the Mass, we have from the Gospel. We also have the reference to the book of the Apocalypse to eternal life, and then we respond, "Lord, I'm not worthy that You should enter into my roof. Say but save the word of my soul shall be healed," in the way of the Gospel response of the Centurion who recognizes in Jesus God the Son incarnate. Why did God have to son his Holy Son? This is great mystery of his love for us. Obviously God can do all things, but how did He choose to restore the plan that He had from the beginning? When He created that, I believe, He wanted them to be His co-workers, to be stewards of this wonderful creation, Garden of Eden, and then they became proud. Just like we are today, no longer recognizing that we come from the hand of God, we get the idea, "Oh, I'm so high in mighty, either because of our talents or money or whatever, it might be our power." People, so they go off on their own, "Well, I had many of 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 become like Him." Why would they in the world would they want to become God? 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 send. So how does God choose to restore the friendship, which could have done in a number of ways, but He does it in the 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. He never committed a sin. I read, 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 pretty incomprehensible way to 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. 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 the flagulations, the beatings, the so much loss of blood, the carrying of the cross, the crucifixion itself, which was a horrible form of death by its fixation. But in any case, get back to the point. All of this was so that we might finally get it through our thick skulls. How much God loves us, who we are because He's created in His own image and likeness, and therefore His Son 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 desires that we should be forever with Him in the Kingdom of Heaven. So if Christ was God the Son, was God, and God is the beginning and the end and everything in between. Exactly. Did they have the same thoughts at the same time? Yes, he was at one mind. Yes, there's a beautiful passage in the gospels in which our Lord prays that we might all be one, as He is one with the Father. And even, and that is the great mystery of the 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 our Lord Himself, as He was dying on the cross, He, first of all, in the agony of the garden, 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 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, He cried out in those words. But then He was at peace. 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 so He did have His own individual thoughts as well. Oh, yes, yes. Well, He had a human nature, a connect link to His divine nature, and while the divine nature permitted Him always to understand the Father's will and to pursue relentlessly, and at various points in the gospel, He will say, "I've come to do the will of the Father. It's not I, but my Father." He's always referring us to the Father, but He suffered in our human nature, of course, and that would have led Him to cry out in those words, but of the Scriptures, but at the same time to accept His death. So they shared thoughts in Christ's individual thoughts? Yes. Is there any indications of when He knew He was the Son of God? We understand that He would have known that from the very beginning, that He's twelve years old, He's in the temple, and when Mary and Joseph, blessed mother in St. 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 the true human nature, but at the same time with the consciousness that came from His divine nature of being incarnate to carry out a mission. 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 justice which desires to be fulfilled in His great act of love, but also in the deeds and the miracles. We see, for instance, wonderful miracle, the feeding of the 5,000, and the prefigurement of the Holy Eucharist. I mentioned about the healing of the woman who had suffered for so many years of the hammerage, the healing of the manborn blind, this wonderful accountant 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 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. 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, it's of our sins forgiven. And then he also then healed them physically, but at the conference of the woman caught in adultery, adultery in the Jewish religion was punished by being stoned, by being put to death. And so he finds the people ready to stoned this woman who had been caught in adultery. 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 us they're 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 being stoned but at the same time instructed her very clearly that she should stop a life of adulterous behavior. Would you say that does the New Testament make the Old Testament's rules obsolete? Is this a new way to live? No, the New Testament brings to fulfillment everything that is taught and everything that happened in the Old Testament finds its fulfillment that that's not a cancellation or lured himself said in the sermon on the Mount, "You're not think that I have come to abolish the law on 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 I order, not even one die of the law or the prophets who will be destroyed until all is but rather fulfilled in him." And that's 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. The Covenant of love between God and man. So when you say earlier you said, "When I asked if Christ and God share the mind and if they have the same thoughts at the same time," and it sounds like yes and no. Well, Christ has His own individual thoughts but they also share thoughts and you brought up unity, a oneness, the God wants us all to be. Is that the message? Is that the message in the New Testament? Yes, but it's just to be clear when I said, Christ has His own thoughts, yes, He had His own thoughts as it's God the Son and the Covenant, but they were always in harmony with the Father. 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, one one reads the Gospels, this comes across very clearly and He always 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 soul, mission and any thoughts that He had, of course, they were His own, but they were always in harmony with the Father. That's why in that prayer that I mentioned that you just alluded 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. This is something that many times we don't think about, but we are called to share in the life of the Holy Trinity, not that we are God, but that we are participants through divine grace in the life of God Himself, and the more we cooperate with divine grace, the more we draw closer to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Why was Mary chosen? That's all a mystery of God's love. It's wonderful. That's why I smile, because when you think about it, Mary was chosen from all time, because God knew from all time that He would save us and so in that it would come, even as He spoke to the serpent, made the first promise of salvation that a woman would bear a son who would crush the head of Satan. 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. You know, people say, "Well, God could have just sent our Lord directly on the 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 to repair her from the moment of her conception, she shared already in Christ 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. 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, is God not at all." In fact, the more one knows and loves the mother of God, the more one knows and loves are only be God and 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 to be the mother of God. This is something, only one person. had that gift and that was the blessed Virgin Mary. That's why 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 invest disciple. Is she the mother of that all mother should aspire to be? Absolutely. She is every mother should desire most of all that Christ be, that their children be alive in Christ, their eternal salvation. Every mother should desire most of all to bring our Lord to her children, the most important thing. That's why when parents receive the great gift of a new human life, excuse me, the first thing they want for their children, of course, they're nourishing them and keeping them warm and clean and everything that may be, 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 which we say the full man in Christ, that we're all called to be. Does God suffer? Yes, God suffered in all you have to do is look at the crucifix and you see how God suffered in our human nature. Does it make me guess what I mean? Does he feel 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? 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. So God is all compassionate, I suppose that would be the best way to discover the suffering of God is full of compassion for us and wants to draw us to Himself. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know this is something I care about. We've had regenerative farmers and health experts on. We've talked about soil health, clean water, glyphosate, food security, and how disconnected most Americans are from where their food actually comes from. Might be time to start paying some attention. We've talked about foreign ownership of American farmland, China. We even did an episode that called out the government for selling off public lands in Utah. And when you start looking at all of it together, you realize there's a lot going on between the land, the food supply, and the people who are actually trying to produce real food in this country. And that's why I trust Moink. Moink was started by Lissenda, 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. 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. Is Christ and Mary the new Adam and Eve? Yes, in the church, we refer to Christ as the new Adam. He was the father of us all. There are first parents. He failed in his mission, but that mission was finally accomplished in our Lord Jesus Christ and his co-operator was Eve as his bride, the companion that God gave to him, and creation. So she too, who had failed, it's bus of Virgin Mary. It's the woman who restores then the dignity of woman restores the woman to her place in God's plan. That's why we call our Lord the new Adam and the bus of Virgin Mary, the new Eve. We believe that this is depicted in some religious art, but after 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, and we believe that Adam and Eve too repented of their sin and strove then to live in communion with God. 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. Some of the sacred art, especially in the Eastern churches, 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. It said in the scriptures that the graves, many 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. How many were supposed to live forever, correct? Yes, they would have lived forever in the friendship of God. It was through their sin that death came into the world. When Christ came, it was to forgive us, forgive us for all of our sins. All sins can be made so that we could live forever. So why are we not living forever? We do, if we die in him, when we die, our soul goes immediately for judgment. If we repented of our sins and made satisfaction for them, we received directly into heaven. If not, we spent time in purgatory, a place in which we were prepared for heaven by fulfilling the satisfactions. People who we say have an untimely death who die without being able to through their suffering and be ready to enter heaven, they go to purgatory and they are purified of any sinfulness in their lives. We call the temporal punishment due to their sins and then they go to heaven too, where we talk about the churches, the church, glorious saints in heaven, the church suffering those in purgatory who are being purified and when the air purified to go to heaven, then the church militant, those of us who are here still fighting the battle and waiting for our Lord to call us home. of if we say. he will come again to judge both the living and the dead. Yes. What does that mean if our souls immediately go to judgment even we die? 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'll judge those. But then he will also then judge those that are still in in in purgatory and of course those who have gone to heaven already, they they have been judged and been found worthy to to be in the company of the blessed Trinity with the angels and all the saints. We believe that on that last day and the day of the Lord's final coming that the bodies of all that 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 those who have already gone to heaven, the 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 when she died. She was assumed body and soul and to heaven. And so she enjoys that that life already. And there are some people think also for instance that St Joseph was one of those who would have had 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 and to 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. When we're talking about purgatory, is there any mention of purgatory in the Bible in the scriptures? 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 amulets or little statues or whatever on them, which would of course be a serious sin. What do you mean by tattoos? These weren't tattoos. They were like statues, little objects like you were, like a way where metal, for instance, we do today, but it wasn't something holy. It was of a pagan is connected with the pagan gods. In other words, it would have been an act of idolatry. You'd agree to sin. And so they took up a collection to have prayers said for them and took sent to Jerusalem and in the scriptures very clear that it's a good thing to pray for the dead, that they might be freed from any sins that they had committed, and that they might be received into eternal life. And the church has understood this from the very beginning 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 asking them to pray for us. 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. The whole month of November is studicated to what we call the poor souls, the souls in purgatory, to pray for them to honor the dead, to pray for eternal life for them. And there's also the possibility that we know the merits of our Lord by his passion and that are infinite. And also the saints who lead such holy lives, 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 others who are struggling or some great suffering or for the souls in purgatory. And the church then we're able through the church to gain indulgences for 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. 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 attain eternal life in heaven. When did the ridiculing, the persecution, the rassing, Jesus began? Oh, practically from the very beginning of his public ministry, there were those who said who is, who is, who he forgives sins, who 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, there's really complicated reasons why people opposed him, but mostly they didn't want to accept that the Messiah was not an earthly ruler. It wasn't somebody who would come to make everybody richer, to make everybody politically free, but that he'd come to save us from sin that his victory was over sin and over evil. And so they rejected him. And so they, and of course we see the culmination of it. He enters Jerusalem for the last, his last Passover, he's 33 years old. He's, and is he enters Jerusalem, the people are all cheering him, but then the high priest and others who were plotting against him had found one of his apostles, who was a traitor, Judas, a scarier and then plotted for his arrest and, and his, his condemnation. And they went, bunch of spy that was a Roman, he, he wanted to release Jesus, but he had this mob in his hands, those who had first been healing our Lord as he came into Jerusalem, then turned, and so Pilate tried never way to release Jesus. Even the, there was a custom every year he would release one, one prisoner, and he suggested the people that he would release Jesus, and they said, they yelled crucify him, crucify him. And so he finally, that's what he did. He, he let him, he let him be crucified and, but that was the culmination of the wall, the hatred toward our Lord, just the stubborn refusal to accept him as, as our Lord and Savior. Did anybody realize that the prophecies were coming true from the Old Testament? Yes, there were very, there were just people, for instance, two, two individuals we know about from the gospels, our Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee, and who came to Jesus, as a scripture says, in the night he realized who Jesus was, but he couldn't, If he had been known among the other high priests, he would have been in trouble. So he came to—but when our Lord died, he and Joseph of Arimathea, who was another just man, who recognized that our Lord was truly the Messiah, they came and took care that he had a reverend burial because normally would have just been thrown in a common grave. But Joseph of Arimathea had a tomb that, in that regard, was buried there, but there were others as well. Of course, the Holy Women are blessed mother, but also Mary Magdalene and other Holy Women who were with our Lord and St. John, of course, was always with them, and then the other apostles, they received—finally our Lord had told them why it had come, but their minds were eventually through the grace of the Holy Spirit. They understood and they remained faithful, but even at the moment of his death itself, there were those who understood that he was the fulfillment of all the prophecies. Well, after his resurrection and ascension, the sending of the Holy Spirit, the church spread very rapidly. The power of the risen Christ was clearly visible in the conversions and the spread of the faith. And 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 just perfect. No, there were people who also were up to mischief in the church in those days in St. Paul had to confront it. We find teachings with regard to sexual morality and honesty, and so forth, and that what 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 it's not cooperate with God's grace, notwithstanding that, the church spread in a most wonderful way, and the history of the church and the evangelization of the nations is just replete. And then the catalog of saints, many of whom are martyrs who infidelity to Christ and giving witness to Christ to others, who actually died or put to death. But just coming, it's interesting, very soon there will be be edified some martyrs who were in, but as President Day George of the diocese of Savannah, but they were Franciscan friars who came to preach to the Indian, the Native Americans in that area. I think it was called at that time Old Florida, but in any case, they came in, of course, a part of the teaching of the faith. They taught that marriages between one man and one woman, and there was a practice among some of the Indians of men taking more than one wife. And so they taught this to the people, and people were saving the accepting it, and were baptized, including this chief. But then he wanted to take a second wife. And of course, he wanted the priest to bless us. He had been baptized, and the priest told him, "No, you can't do that. Marriage is in our Lord Jesus' thought. 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, and tried to get one of them to say, "No, no, this is the right. You can take a second wife," and they all said, "No, two," so they all gave their lives to be faithful to Christ with regard to marriage. 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 Pishops. 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 twelve 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, bishops, 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 in the crucifixion and death is the Holy Eucharist, divine love made flesh, we say. So also, his pastoral love, offering the last supper, forgiving sins, is in his priests, and so we have in the church what we call a 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. So those are the apostles, and they were recognized from the very moment of our Lord. Throughout his public ministry, they were recognized as being chosen for a very special service, and then after our Lord's passion 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. So we talk about the apostolic tradition and also teaching the good morals that are required of a Christian. How were they chosen? Tosem directly by our Lord. Well, how did he make the decision to choose them? Well, I wouldn't presume to know his mind, and it's interesting because he chose, they were a various lot, they weren't all, you know, they weren't all like John the Evangelist, but Peter was a tax collector, there were two brothers, James and John were called the Boenergies, they were very zealous, they were the sons of thunder, they called them, but he saw on 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, St. Peter said, "Oh, no, that can't happen," and so forth, our Lord said to him, "Get behind me, Satan, you are thinking like men and not like God," and so 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 you would have power. power and money. So she's asking if her two sons can be on his right and his left in his kingdom. He tells her, "Well, that's not mine to decide, but God the Father, but they will." He asked her, "Where are they willing to share in his suffering and in the bitter chalice from which you would drink?" They say, "Yes, of course." He says, "Well, you will, but they only later came to understand what this meant with the suffering that they would, and both of them died. Hujan did not die at an actual death, but James was a bishop of Jerusalem, and he was James the greater, and he was martyred in fidelity to Christ. So, are they all chosen at once?" In very short time, early on in the gospel, there is an account of the choosing of the Twelve, and he talks about particularly James and John, and Philip goes to get Nathaniel once to bring him to say, "Lord, but it's like within a short period of time he has the Twelve together, and the gospel announces their names. Was you just 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 a 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, that we must be faithful to our Lord in all things what happened to Judas?" He hung himself. He sold Jesus for thirty coins, he betrayed him, and then he went back to try to, he apparently realized what he had done, and they tried to give the money back, but they took it, and they bought a plotter of land called the Pottersfield, but he then dispaired. He hung himself, and that's very sad. We talk about sin against the Holy Spirit, and what is that sin? It's the despair of God's mercy. That's what happened with Judas. Peter, too, betrayed our Lord in the sense. He denied that he knew him. Now, he didn't take money to, Judas was much more heinous. He betrayed our Lord in the sense that he took money to hand over our Lord to those that would kill him. I mean, that's very repugnant, but Peter denied him, but the gospel tells us that he wept, and he was sorrowful and he trusted in God's mercy. Who are the disciples? The disciples were all those who came to follow Jesus. The disciple, they are students of the master and the disciples, but the apostles are also students. Yes, they were. 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. Would you say that the Gospels are the most important part of the New Testament? Yes, absolutely. Why? Because they are the account of the 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 apostles and so for the all of wonderful things in them. But everything that they have that's wonderful is pointing to the heart of the redemption, which is Jesus Christ and God the Son and Karnat, who suffered died, rose from the dead, ascended to the right hand of the Father, and sent the Holy Spirit upon the church. And so the Gospels is Matthew, Mark, Luke, Luke, and John and John. What happened to the other eight apostles? Why? Why did they? They were gospel writers, are not all apostles? They're not. No. Mark was not a apostle, neither was Luke. 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 the St. James, but they're not part of the, they're not recognized as, as Gospels by the Church. And so, but Mark had a special connection with St. Peter and Luke, they were, they were closely associated, but they were not apostles. Oh, God. And the, the other is, well, Jude left us in a pistle and, and James, but the other apostles did not leave us writings. Oh, God. Do the Gospels contradict each other at all? No, there's no contradiction. In the Gospels, they, over time, people have also put the Gospels together in one, one text to, and there you see certain accounts are found in all the Gospels, some found in two Gospels, three Gospels, but there is no contradiction. Were the apostles with him all the time, all 12 of them? Yes, but, 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, was sitting at the text collector's place, he called them, and they, and they, they followed him, and from that moment on, they were completely at his service. Let's talk about the last supper. What was the significance? 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, where was the Passover meal? It was the, 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, he said things that, and his power is God, that instituted two sacraments, the sacrament of all sacraments, as we say, the Holy Eucharist, he took the bread and the wine, and said, this is my body, which will be given up for you. This is the cup of my blood, which we poured out for you. And 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 life blood, 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. That, so in that moment, he anticipated the salvation that he would win for us on Calvary by instituting the Holy Eucharist. And at the same time, he commanded the Twelve to do this in memory of me, in the Institute of the Holy Priesthood, so that because Christ, he was going to die, and 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. So the last supper Holy Thursday is for us. Easter Sunday is the great victory, but it's inseparably connected with the last supper because the gift of Easter Sunday, 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, and 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 know. This is a Christ wielded 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, and also it's a pledge of eternal life. And St. Thomas is a beautiful text, "Oh, sacrament, convivium, oh, holy banquet in which Christ is received, the memory of his passion is renewed, and we are given the pledge of eternal life with everything 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. 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, soul and body blood, soul and divinity of Christ, and so we put the blessed sacrament in the beautiful, what we call monstrance or ostensorium, and we pray before the Holy Eucharist. Also, when we pass a church, if it's possible for us we're going to 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 ost, goes to them 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. This is a 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 priest stood in separately connected to it. So is it a symbol of the body and blood of Christ, or is it the body and blood of Christ? 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. 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 a teaching, the word that was found at the Council of Trent to express this transubstantiation, that the very substance of the bread is changed into the body of Christ, Christ himself coming to feed us. And the the accidents, it looks like bread, but the substance by the action of divine grace is the body of Christ. And the last supper was on Friday. It was on Thursday. It was on Thursday. Christ stayed for us on Good Friday, and the evening of Holy Thursday, we call it. He celebrated the his last supper, the the Passover meal, which was transformed. And we call it another large supper. It's the it's the first Eucharist. Is that considered the first mass? Yes. I'm always looking for things that helped me stay focused without feeling wired or packed with questionable ingredients. I like clean products, simple, intentional, and something that actually fits into the day. That's why I've been using ultra pouches. Ultra gives you the pouch experience built with zero nicotine and zero caffeine. And you're probably thinking, if there's no nicotine and no caffeine, what's actually in it? Ultra partnered with leading neuroscientists to design these pouches with clinically proven new tropics and smooth energy that lasts one to two hours. Calm, steady, flow state focus without the crash. For me, these are perfect to keep it my desk or my gym bag. 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Glacier security and S cuts those calls off before they connect. Not after, before. It's the same grade of protection people with clearance is carried, built by the guys who used to build it for them. And you don't manage it. Open the app once, hit the button, close it. Glacier. Download it today on the app store. And remember, privacy isn't paranoia. It's protection. All right, back from the break. Let's get into the crucifixion. 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? Well, he went out to pray in the garden of Gisemony with Peter, James, and John. And they came to get him because they've, well, it's a comp to get put, but it's simply they said that he was stirring up trouble that the Romans then would, in some way, crush them where their idea was to get him away. That's the seem to be a threat to do the Roman government. 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. What did the Roman government believe at the time? The Roman said they occupied Palestine, Holy Land today. And they had a Roman governor there by the name of Pontius Pilot. And he, and that's why they they brought our Lord. When they arrested him, they took him to And just by let to ask that he be condemned to death. But first, after the last supper, he went out directly to the Garden of Gethsemane. He prayed there, and he prayed. His prayer was so intense that they say, "Perspired blood," he knew that the Passion was at hand. 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 enough to him, and in that culture, it wouldn't be unusual to give somebody a kiss. We're not talking about some passionate kiss, but 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, but that's what happened. So they took him before a Pontius pilot, and he eventually condemned him to death by crucifixion. It's clear that he said to the people, he said, "I find nothing in this man to condemn him," but the people even said that he presented to them Christ to the mess, their king, and the people responded, "We have no king but Caesar," they're the king of the Romans. So then develops the whole story of the Passion and our Lord is scourged, he's mocked, and then has to take up this arduous walk from the Praetorian where he was condemned to Calvary to this hill nearby, dragging the wood of the cross on his shoulders, and then eventually they arrive at Calvary, and then he's nailed to the cross, and the cross is lifted, and this is particularly agonizing in form of death because the way to the body, pulling down in the chest, the person eventually dies of asphyxiation, he has to keep pushing himself up to get a breath, and at a certain point the body is so weak that we have the account in the Gospels of our Lord's Passion and Death, and in the Gospel of John, it's particularly rich, and our Lord 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 put the cross with Mary, and Mary Magdalene, woman behold your son, he says 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 of care, the blessed mother, and then he dies. Where were the Apostles at this time? They had all scattered except for John, they were around but hiding, they didn't want to fear, fear. They were all afraid. We had to say they were a cowardly lot, except for John. So he, and after his death, there was very significant, our Lord permits that the Roman soldier, while they came, and 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 "Dismiss," the good thief. He said, he recommended his cohort, saying, "We're here dying because we've segmented 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, and our Lord said, "Today, you would 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 the Christ one. But anyway, what I wanted to get to was our Lord had died, and so the soldiers came and what they did to make sure that these criminals were dead, they'd break their legs, so they did that with the two thieves that were buried with them, the two criminals. When they came to him, he was clearly already dead. So they didn't break his legs, but what the Roman soldier pierced his side, going into his heart with the spear, and the scripture says, 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 blood of Christ. 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 not glorious after his resurrection. And that's the presses. It's such a wonderful truth. Do we have any idea of how big his discipleship was at the time of the crucifixion? It was large. We hear many accounts, for instance, of Sermon on the Mount that the large crowd followed him. 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 I wouldn't be able to put a numerical figure on it, but let us just say that there were a sizable group of people who were following him. But it wasn't there was no match for the Roman army. No, no, no. And he wasn't arming them physically. He was arming them spiritually, so they wouldn't have been in any position 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 have him executed. And even Pilate's wife sent a message to him that she had a dream about Jesus and that 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 that he would take him and crucify him, put up on him. What happened to a Pontius Pilate? I can't remember 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 don't, it's not coming clearly in my head what happened to him, but that's certainly able to be researched. And I have the recollection that he came to us some kind of a of a sad end. How did the discipleship grow after, well, I guess maybe we should save that question until after the resurrection? Okay. So what happened in between? 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. It would have been carved into the, to the hillside, the stone tomb. Why did he get his own tomb? 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. He was that, who gave it? Club der Lord that much and was that dedicated to him, who gave it to Jesus? Joseph of Arimathea. And so Lord Lardus buried it on Friday. He died at three o'clock in the afternoon, buried that evening, and some time between his burial and Friday evening, and the morning of Sunday, the resurrection took place. And the only way we can describe it is that there's an explosion of light, because his bodily remains, his poor, tortured body, was glorified, was he came back to life and, you know, holy transformed way, and then began a series of his apparitions for forty 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. Once Thomas wasn't there, and the other apostles told Thomas, they'd seen the Lardys sit, unless I put my hand into his side and see these wounds, I won't believe it. And Lardy came back then following Sunday and showed himself to Thomas, and Thomas was overcome, he climbed 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 breakfast, and they recognized, and it was the Lard who appeared to them. And there's the very famous account of the two disciples who, after Lard's death on Friday, are walking to the neighboring town from Jerusalem to Amias, and they're lamenting that the demise of our Lard, and he appears to them, but they don't recognize him. And he says, what they're talking about, they say, "Are you the only person in Jerusalem? Does it 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, and this gets back to the point we've made several times in our conversation, even 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, or they're going to stay, and they said, "Dom, for me, and he breaks the bread in the same way, did it the last supper, and they recognize that it's him, and then he disappears." But it's very powerful. They said, "You recognized him in the Eucharist, in the breaking of the bread." He disappeared right in front of them. Yes. And so, at the end of those 40 days, he called the apostles together, and the foot of them mounted the ascension, and instructed them to go forth, and first he told them to wait for their 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 the Son of the Holy Spirit, and then at that he ascended into heaven. He was lifted up from away from their sight, and they went back then, that was a 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 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 to God the Father, and God the Son 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 had 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 there, baptized and become members of the church's mystical body of Christ. So grew exponentially after the resurrection. I'm sorry. It grew exponentially 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. He went all over the world to bring the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And yes, it's pretty. That in itself is a miracle. How long after his death do the apostles live? They lived to be different ages. Some were murdered earlier. Some later, John, of course, wasn't murdered. And 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 it 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. Somebody who you can see from his gospel to understood very deeply who our Lord was and what his mission was and was completely invested in it. How many times did he reappear? That's a good question. Several times. Gosh, I don't know the exact number, but I would think that there must have been the ones at least there, the Council and the Gospels. I would say 10 or 15 times. And the last time was when he ascended into heaven, yes. We don't know because there are the accounts in the gospels, but he clearly could have appeared more times than not all the accounts are there. In fact, it says that he appeared many times. 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. The first appearance was probably to our Blessed Mother and then the other ones that followed from it. Why do you think there's no writings for Mary and the New Testament? I think that, first of all, she's always presents herself as the handmade of the Lord, the one who's serving him. I think that her account of his life is the gospel according to St. John. She invited him so many things about our Lord's public ministry's fashion, his death, his resurrection. That's where we find the last words we have from our Blessed Mother in the gospel at the wedding feast of Kena, the last recorded words, because we have beautiful, for instance, 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, acknowledge us, her is the mother of a gamer, and then she has this beautiful prayer, the Magnificat, but the last words, she's with Jesus at the supper at Kena, the wedding feast of Kena, and they're on 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 we do whatever our Lord tells us, that that's what she's leading us to do. When did we figure out he would come again? Did he tell us? Yes. When he said, "I will be with you until the last day, to the end of the age, the end of time," and so, yes, he's promised to return to us in glory on the last day. There's nothing like fall and Tennessee. You can feel it coming the second the heat breaks. The air turns crisp, the flags go up on the porches, the grills fire up, and from Friday night under the lights to Saturday and Sunday afternoon, the whole state runs on one thing, football. Doesn't matter who you are, where you work, or what your week looked like. When game day hits, everybody's locked in. Neighbors you haven't seen all summer, are suddenly in your driveway. The group chats light up. Everybody's got an opinion, everybody's got to match up, they can't wait for, and the whole weekend gets planned around kickoff. It's the best time of year. And around here, it's about as close to a holiday as it gets. And the weight is over. Football is here, and so is Draft Kings. 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Event contract trading involves risk of loss. Predictions offer void in New York. Non-withdrawable rewards issued as $50 click to claims every seven days for 21 days. One single use boost per customer per day, expires at the end of the final select game when offered, valid for select football transactions on the platform for which it's been issued. Terms at dkng.co/offer, limited time offer, nationwide based on sportsbook predictions and free-to-play sports contest availability, varies by state. What does up in the end of time mean? There won't be any more time, and 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, had maneuverment 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. How do we get the Book of Revelations? St. John the Apostle had these visions at Patmos Island where he was living with our blessed mother, and he describes and read at the beginning of it how it happened that he received these visions and he wrote them down. Well, for instance, the vision of the coming of the Lord in glory to inaugurate the wedding feast, his wedding feast in which all those who are saved would take part. There are other visions that are letters to the very important cities at that time in the church, 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. How does it end? It's simply, from what we understand of the vision is that our Lord Himself descends to earth, and it is glory and the flush of blood. Yes, but glorified, remember, that the time is resurrection is when this is something as a mystery to us, we don't understand how it is, that 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, it's hard for us to understand that, well, of course, it's beyond our comprehension, it's not something we've experienced, but the Scriptures assure us that that is indeed what will happen. You know, a lot of people are scared of the untimes, yes, should they be? 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. So people, because you 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, so we know that if you come to save the living and the dead, and so we just have confidence. We don't know what it will be, but we have confidence that our Lord will be true to His promises. People are oftentimes wanting to predict when the world will come to an end. I'm sure you've heard this from time to time, and people even say, "What's going to happen in 1984?" or something like that, and they asked our Lord, and he said, basically the response was, "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 belt tightened, and be looking for our Lord, have our eyes fixed on Him and waiting for His coming. He tells about the good and faithful servants who, when the Master returns, they're ready to receive Him, and that's how we should be not worrying about when it's going to happen, but not to 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 all our hearts. I was quite sick a few years ago with this COVID. It was in August of 2021, and it's at 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 would have to save me." The people said to me, "Well, when they told you we were dying, we weren't you terrified." I said, "No, to be honest, I wasn't, because I'm a priest. 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. I assisted them in dying, and our God 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 of all the things that I left undone, but I wasn't terrified at the idea of dying, but simply that I wish I had been a little better organized, so to speak." That's the way we should live. All of us, this life as a pilgrimage, we're not meant to be in this world forever. We should be a peace and live in a way that we're ready to meet our Lord. Is heaven here? No. Heaven will be a new heaven and a new earth, according to the Holy Scriptures, so the earth will be transformed. Exactly. It won't be this world of what we know, 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. So if you're living, when it happens, does that mean you will not die? Yes, that means exactly that you will be transformed as a living life, and this comes up and the people are asking our Lord about whether St. 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, into this new earth, which will be the new heavens and new earth, transformed, completely redeemed. So it might be here. Yes. Well, 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. For instance, this beautiful place here in Tennessee and so somehow all that goodness will endure, but in a transformed way. Do you think that the gateway to heaven is wide or narrow? Our Lord says it's narrow. 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 ever presume upon the divine mercy." So I always like to think that we should think that we better be on our best behavior, and be always striving for that. All of us have our faults, to be sure. But we shouldn't presume upon God's mercy, but always have that genuine sorrow for our sins, and it is desired to be more fully reflection of the goodness of Christ, and 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 they 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, so many thousand from each tribe of Israel. Then it says there was a crowd of the save that's innumerable, and so I'm sure that our Lord's mercy will be very abundant, but we don't presume upon it. You're kind, but I don't presume upon your kindness by doing wicked things to you. In other words, so the same way, even their own parents, their parents are good to us. We have great reverence for them. We don't want in any way to displease them. We count upon them understanding and forgiving us for our faults, but at the same time we have great reverence. With regard to our Lord it's called fear of the Lord, one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, that we recognize how infinitely good God is. He is done for us more than who's 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. In a recent homily you spoke about the call to martyrdom in the family, 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? It means that a man has to strive to be as virtuous as he can be, to be a model for his children, and that way to be a protector of his wife. St. Joseph is our great model of this. He protected us, Mary and the child Jesus, the flight indeed of the home and Nazareth, because by his work he was a carpenter of construction, constructing buildings. 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 what is good and right for them, and to discipline them also when a child needs to be disciplined, to correct them. Sometimes people, they want to be, they want to be pals with their children. Well, if a father is not called to be a buddy of his children, he's called to be the father, the skewer guide, the protector, and so sometimes he has to say no, and the child might say, "I hate you," and run it 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. So we have to have the courage to say no, no, this is an even one, for a while, our child or wherever it is that we said no to dislikes us for it, and I've had the experience because I've lived the long time as a priest and a bishop, and 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 it and tell me that now they understand and they thank me for insisting on whatever it was, 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 aren't looking for the immediate gratification of a child says, "Oh, I love you," and 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. I've got a hot question for you. You ready? I'm ready as I would be able to be. If demons are real, how can an ordinary person actually fight them? Only in Christ says the power to repel demons, to cast them out, to get them away from us. In the church we have the pharmal 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, but in Christ, even as we saw in the Gospels when our Lord cast out demons, demons can be cast out, but only in him. If we would presume to battle the devil on our own, we will be defeated. 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, or even worse of the person. If they're always the 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. That's fatal. Because we can't. They have powers that we don't. Preter natural power is not only the supernatural power of Christ himself can cast them out. There you see that a lot. More than I would like. It seems in the present time, and I know this from talking to Brother Bishop and so forth, and exorcists, there's a lot of demonic activity going on. I think part of it is that there was a period, not in the so distant past, where people said, "Oh, Christ is 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 is seeking whom he made the power. 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. So he's coming after people, but if we pray, if we fortify ourselves with the sacraments, if we take all the 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 for me being 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, "Now, this is something that's diabolical." And sadly, in the world today, and even sometimes in the church, we see things that are diabolical. They're so evil that they can only come from the evil one himself. Do you see a lot of accessors that say, "I'm the one that drove the demon out?" I have not encountered that myself. I do have known exorcists who, but not because they were presumptuous, but because the work is so intense and difficult, who've suffered in their health, and it's a heroic thing. But no, I've really never known an exorcist who did that. What does scripture, particular Ephesians, particularly Ephesians 6 and the armor of God, teach us about spiritual warfare? And what prayers does the church give ordinary people to drive the devil out of their lives and homes? Well, the ordinary prayers are simply to call upon the Lord and mercy on us to invoke Saint Michael, the Archangel, who is especially our advocates, the devil, Saint Joseph, the terror of demons, of course, our blessed mother. These are all ways in which we armor ourselves. We put on the helmet of salvation in this what is spiritual warfare. There's another way to describe it. Saint Paul, at the end of his life, is writing to Saint Timothy, and he says, "Time is coming." And he said, "I have fought the good fight. I have stayed the course." So we have the military image. We have that athletic image. Then I've kept the faith. In other words, that he trusted under Lord, stayed close to our Lord, and therefore every day he soldiered on in his life. And then he says, "For the rest there is the glory that the Lord has reserved to those who love him." For the person watching who's never prayed of rosary in their life, walk them through it. What should they do tonight? 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. The first part of the Hail Mary is taken directly, Hail Mary full of grace are the words of our Archangel Gabriel to the blessed mother of the artist. We the blessed are Thalman 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, known at the hour of our death. This beautiful prayer, and we pray it, while meditating on a mystery of, in the life of our Lord, of our blessed mother. Traditionally, there were fifteen 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, stay on course with the prayer. We begin with the Apostles Creed. We say three, our Father in Three Hill Marries, or that 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 whatever, usually on Monday, on Sunday and Wednesday, we pray the glorious mysteries. And on Monday, joyful, Tuesday, the sorrowful mysteries, Thursday, these luminous mysteries, St. Pope St. John Paul II gave us, then Friday again, the sorrowful mysteries, and then on Saturday, the joyful mysteries again. But, and so we, let's take, for instance, the first glorious mystery is the resurrection of our Lord. And so we, we take into our mind the, 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, for we say 10 Hill Mary, and our Father in 10 Hill Marries, and 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 is queen of heaven and earth. So those are glorious mysteries. Then we have the joyful mysteries, the enunciation, Archangel Gabriel appearing to Mary, 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, wonderful this is because we're always, we're getting 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. Then the sorrowful mysteries, the agony in the garden, the scourging at the pillar, the crowning with thorns, caring of the cross and the crucifixion. And then the new luminous mysteries are the baptism of our Lord, 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, the Saint 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's helps, but absolutely helps. Okay, thank you. But get rose rebeds because that helps you to just account the prayers and so forth. But it's a very concrete, people, the rose rebeds are not magical, but many people are buried with the rosary in their hands. And it's not because it's some magic, but it's simply a concrete sign of the power of prayer. And so it's always good to have a rosary in your pocket. Makes sense. I got mine right here. Good for you. You've heard me talk about Caldera Lab before. And lately, the product I've been reaching for the most is the good between being a dad, hosting the show, traveling, training, and trying to keep up with everything else. 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Again, that's CalderaLab.com/SRS in UseCodeSRS for 20% off your first order. Looking for another way to support the Sean Ryan show? Head to SeanRyanShow.com and check out the latest drops from Vigilance Elite. We just released new gear including this beautiful moisture wicking VE performance hat and SRS campfire mugs and you guessed it. Vigilance Elite gummy bears. Oh shit! Every purchase directly supports the show and helps us continue bringing you independent conversations without compromise. Visit SeanRyanShow.com and grab yours today. Okay, we're getting into our final segment. Yes. Our Lady of Guadalupe. Yes, I wanted if I could to present you with a special gift to an honor of these conversations we've had. An image of our Lady of Guadalupe reproduction. This is done digitally, so it's very authentic. This is how our Lady appeared to Native American Juan Diego in 1531 and you can see that she appears as the woman in the apocalypse, the woman clothes with the sun, with the moon under her feet and with stars overhead and then in the honor of Garmin and so forth are all symbols from that ancient world but all who point to her 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 in Juan Diego. She says, I'm the mother of God. I want a little chapel to be built where I can bring my children to my divine son who alone is our hope and our salvation and of course we're coming now 1531, 2031, we 500 years. So we're preparing. I founded a shrine to our Lady whether we'll band across 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 maclit 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 attention to our blessed mother in order to draw closer to our Lord. I want to invite you in a special way to visit the shrine of our Lady of God, a little pain across. It's not so far from Tennessee and then eventually the visitors shrine in Mexico City where you can see the actual, the miracle of this too. There's so much to say and I don't want to go on a non, but the miracle of this apparition is, there are many miraculous aspects, but our Lord left the image on this mantle of Saint Juan Diego. He was wearing 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 we bring a sign for her lady, well she had roses, blue in the middle of winter on this craggie hill where you wouldn't find any flowers and so and our Lady put them in as mantle. When he opened the mantle up for the Bishop, the flowers fell out but then her image appeared and that image is still that garment today in the Basilic and Mexico City. And it's a cactus cloth garment. It should have disintegrated within 30 or 40 years, and instead it's still miraculously preserved. So why? Thank you. Well, you're most welcome. It's a -- 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. Millions of people. Yes, millions, literally millions. 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 started. Well, that would be wonderful. Anything we can do to help our lady, we call ourselves our lady's messengers, where the one Diego's were going out and bringing the message of our Lord that she wants us to deliver. This is beautiful. Thank you. Oh, you're most welcome. It'll be hanging up right in here. Okay. That's wonderful. She'll be a good protector. 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. Yep. I know that there is -- 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, but I hope it is as good. Next Easter, next Easter, next Easter, 2027 from what I understand. Yes. But that is -- and then 40, it's a two-part series. Oh. Then the next one is 40 days after that. All right. From what I understand. Well, the resurrection, of course, it's the moment of the resurrection, but then it's the the apparitions that follow and then the ascension. So that's very good if they're doing that. I hope that God -- I'm sure God will bless that work. 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. That's great. No. And people -- just I always say that people just sit down and start, for instance, with the gospels. And then 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. Thank you. I'll be praying for that that God bless that, and that all your listeners and their life will be enriched. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for being here. You're most welcome. Give me a hand with a prayer, surely. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Oh, mighty God, we give you thanks for this time, lesson time. We've had together to come to No more deeply. You're divinely inspired Word as it comes to us in the Holy Scriptures. When 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 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. Thank you. You're welcome. It was it all. 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