Becoming Catholic (RCIA) #3 - "Why Do You Do That?" (2017-2018)

but don't do things that we do until you understand it and you can say I think I'm in ok because again that's why we want to take time we do this for a couple reasons one of the things that you we're gonna say over and over again about being Catholic is that it's intensely sensual because of how we're made which is to say that we're not just spirits we're bodies in fact in Hebrew there is no word the word that's used to describe the human person is a word that combines body and spirit into one the words nephesh that most of us not knowing it perhaps but we're deeply shaped by kind of Greek philosophy and thinking which sees a split between matter and spirit so some of us are old enough to remember the police remember the song ghost in the machine but the album goes to the machine we are spirits in an invisible world that's not a Christian way of thinking I'm not a I'm not a spirit trapped in a body we actually believe in the resurrection of the body in heaven we will have bodies glorified bodies what that would be like not a clue but we're not gonna be floating spirits you know just kind of like these amoebas randomly bumping into each other on a microscopic you know film so because of the fact that we are intensely bodily what we do with our bodies matters including when we worship so just think of everyday experience you know somebody you meet you shake their hand right it's a way of expressing hi welcome and it's appropriate because that's how we're made you know high five in a football game a hug a kiss whatever the gesture might be we express ourselves that way so in a certain sense we would say that the body is the sacrament of the person will talk about sacraments a long time from now but what that basically means is you see you learned something about Who I am by what I do does that make sense so we express ourselves with our bodies a man gets down on his knees and proposes to the woman he wants to marry we don't think that's stupid we think now that's actually really beautiful why because it's a gesture with with a posture that says I'm inviting you into this relationship into this covenant okay so we would say that's an appropriate gesture so the same kind of reasoning goes into play when we think about church that our bought what we do with our bodies matters and so we express ourselves bodily that's the reason behind the gestures but this is one of them so we use our bodies to make what for us as Christians is now a symbol which has become unless you live in the Middle East it's lost its shock value but we've turned that into a beautiful piece of jewelry but that's not a beautiful piece of jewelry that's a horrific method of execution which Jesus embraced as a way to display God's love and so we sign ourselves as Catholics with the sign of the Cross because the the cross is the instrument with which Jesus conquered hell and routed Satan and made possible our salvation even in things like the Old Testament so some of us who know Scripture this might be familiar others of us it's okay we'll get to it later in a we'll talk about this next week when we talk a little bit about an event in the Old Testament which is central which helps us understand the mass but the the Jewish people at a particular time in their history when God was breaking into their lives powerfully were instructed by God to make a sign on their doorposts with blood animal blood and the sign by the time it was done being made would look an awful lot like a cross on the threshold of their houses that's actually something that helps us understand this I do this on the front of my body to show that this person is claimed by the cross of Jesus and he's my Lord okay I'll tell you a quick story on that I have a friend of mine who was used to do some work in Saudi Arabia where it's forbidden to practice Christianity except for this one little you know American Enclave which they allow but you cannot build a church in Saudi Arabia and so those who live there who are native there cannot openly practice the faith and so he was involved and doing some expatriate work over there and he would come in every couple of months and they would smuggle priests into the country so they get a priest in every four or five months and the priest would come in and when he came they would have baptisms weddings mass confessions and because of the fact that they were watched they had to do it all clandestinely and so there would be signs to tip people off so this guy would drive the priest that was his responsibility and so he'd be driving through the town or whatnot he'd have one guy in his car another guy to have another guy in his car and there would be lookouts and you know maybe the sign was a guy in a phone on a corner the guy at his phone on the corner that meant keep going they know you're here or if the guy didn't have his phone up it meant we're safe we can get together and then if it was safe they would get together and they would celebrate Mass so this guy was at an event one time and there was a guy there who didn't have a right hand and so he asked him he says can I ask what happened and the guy smiled at him he says yeah I uh I lost my hand I mean he says actually it was taken from me and he says what happened and he says well I was reported for having publicly done this to the police and they arrested him brought him down to the police station and said you were seen publicly making the sign of the Cross so either tell us that you will never do that again or we will make it so that you cannot and the man went and he lost his hand I try to think of him every time I do this so our gestures though we might take them for granted are done by brothers and sisters in other parts of the world where trust me they do not take them from granted and they may actually end up on one of those what I'm about to do I want to show you how a Catholic would walk into a Catholic Church and in the process of doing that show you why we do the gestures that we do and try to explain it okay so some of them are things that we just asked so no one asked about holy water fonts but so imagine you're watching you're observing somebody come into church I'm gonna give you how many people have never seen Saving Private Ryan ok 1 2 3 Saving Private Ryan is a movie which is actually based on the true story of a man who's in he's landed at Normandy he's one of four brothers his three brothers have all died in the middle of World War two and so the War Department tries to rescue the last brother so that the mother doesn't lose all of her children and it actually is a true story although it's embellished like crazy in the movie so the movie is the the description in a really powerful way of this man being rescued and it begins and it ends in modern times so it begins with this man who was a world war two veteran who's now in his 80s because it was 20 years old going with his wife and his children and his grandchildren to Normandy in France so to the place where they all landed on June 6 1944 and so the movie begins with him kind of you know he's he's an older guy shuffling along and he's on this path all you can see is the path and it's following him and his family's kind of behind him walking with him and then all of a sudden he gets to a certain spot and he turns and he looks out and he's in the the threshold if you will of the cemetery and if you've ever seen Normandy if you've ever been there if you've ever seen pictures it's just row after row after row of graves most of which are crosses some of which are Stars of David so for the Jewish brothers and sisters and the Christians who died there and so he gets to this place he clearly turns sees this whole field of graves and then he starts looking and then he just starts walking very intentionally towards a particular grave and he gets to the grave which is a cross and he's staring at it and the camera zooms into his eyes and the pulls out and and all of a sudden it's Normandy 1944 the rest of the movie is how he gets rescued and then it ends with him back at the grave talking to the grave the man who it turns out saved his life I say that - because I can't encourage you actually have this scene on one of our videos you can find it easily I think on our website so if you go to the rerouting tab on our website which is a series we did last year it's week three of rerouting it's entitled emergency vehicle entrance don't ask why and there's a clip of this scene I still think it's the best visual I can offer you of how you should walk into mass because the man walks into this area if you've ever gone to Normandy like when you get to this point where he starts looking at the graves like people don't walk into Normandy going wow so cool how neat yet they're not gabbing as soon as they walk in it's like this hush comes over everybody and they talk really lowly to each other because these people here they were there and they died so there's this amazing reverential way about people a hush comes over them and usually people who go there often people who go there are going to visit particular graves that's what this guy was doing that day so if you were to walk into church here's how I would suggest you walk in so right in here there's one of these I don't mean this flippantly but it's true this might be one of the least sanitary things in the entire building okay it's a bowl of water which has been blessed and so you would typically walk in and the first thing you would do so it's holy water and the water that we baptize her so are baptized with and we would typically say in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit as we come into the building itself why couple reasons one it immediately reminds me of my baptism and it being reminded of my baptism it reminds me of my identity Who am I well I'm a I'm a son an adopted son of God the one who made everything and even as I do this I'm reminded of his love for me which is displayed on the cross but I'm also reminded like since the last time I was in church I haven't always acted like his son or like his daughter and so it immediately just it's a powerful way because it's tangible right it's water I can feel it right it's wet and so it has a a sensual way again of just bringing to mind Who I am which often times because we live out in the middle of this culture and all the different ways that it assaults us and tries to offer us all these other identities it's it's a stark reminder to me so that's the first thing that a Catholic would do so enter the door make the sign of the Cross with holy water and then just like Private Ryan when ryan gets in to this cemetery his eyes are glued to a particular cross because that cross is the grave of the man who offered up his life so that ryan could still be living that's that's how it is that Ryan's alive if you've seen the movie he's alive because this guy Captain James Miller died saving right and Ryan never forgets it he says as much at one point in the movie at the end when he says I have thought about what you said to me every single day of my life so with him here's here's the point as we walk in it's almost like we're walking into Normandy except it's much more powerful than Normandy and so you walk in and just like that hush comes across him because he realizes this is not a living room it's not a mall it's not an auditorium it's a place where we've come to worship the one who's laid down his life so that we can live not just for like another ten years forever and so just like his eyes go to that one cross our eyes go right up there and it's almost like as soon as you just transfixed it's like Here I am and I'm I'm alive again today and I have hope again today and there's mercy for me again today because of you and of what you've done so we're just staring at the Lord okay is that visual make some sense and I understand some of us I still even know that Jesus is real so much like I said last week if that's true for us we just want to say Lord if that's real if you've done that for me and that means that I matter that much to the one who created everything that is this universe that's 46 billion light years across and ever-expanding if it could possibly be true that I matter so much to you who made this and I don't want to know that so I'm inviting you into my life and then the last thing that a person would do a Catholic would do before they sit down are two gestures they bow to the altar okay who asks what we bout to yeah so we bounded the altar why anybody ever been to Mexico anybody ever seen Aztec ruins so go to outside Mexico City you see the pyramids Pyramid of Sun pyramid of the moon right so on these pyramids there are altars what happens on an altar now things die right so you don't have an altar in your house this is not a table this is an altar God doesn't die here we'll talk about that next week Jesus has died once and for all Catholics know the Bible they actually gave it to the world we're familiar with that passage in Hebrews and we wrote it but the sacrifice that Jesus offered on the cross we will hold actually becomes present again in what we would call a sacramental way on that altar so we bow to that altar because it's a way of saying okay this is where something really remarkable happens like that becomes contemporary to us now so that's what we do we bow to the altar when the priest comes in he actually kisses the altar so you see us come in so me and D convinced this morning we come in and the words I say when I kiss the altar are the altar is Christ so Christ is the priest he is the altar he is the sacrifice he's all those things but so we just kiss it and I always say the altar is Christ it's a way of reminding me what this is and what will happen here for us okay that makes sense so you bow it to the altar the last thing you do before you get into the pew is you genuflect okay so for lots of reasons most of which are cultural but we still do them anyway the church favors the right for everything if you're left-handed doesn't mean you go into hell although if you speak a Romance language you know that laugh is sinister butts in Italian it's less sinistra so there's always a preference for the right so typically you would genuflect with your right knee some of us can't genuflect that's okay so you just bow okay but if you can genuflect what's your knee hit the ground and your genuflect to the tabernacle which is this back here so just like in the Jewish first of all in of Jews and we'll talk about this next week when the Jewish people were making their way out of slavery in Egypt and into what becomes the Holy Land they build a tent or a tabernacle which is the sign of God's dwelling with them his presence with them when they finally get to Jerusalem they build a temple and the temple has within it just like the tent had within it what was called the Holy of Holies which had all sorts of furniture connected to it including amazingly strong vigil lamp and what was called the Ark of the Covenant inside of which which was a golden box inside of which were a set of things so it was a sign of God's presence amongst them the tabernacle that's in a Catholic Church goes directly back to the Old Testament and the red candle is lit to tell you that inside the tappan tabernacle is the Eucharist which we would also call the real presence of Jesus that's not to say that he's not present anywhere else it's to say that he's present there in a unique way there is one day actually two days in the year when the candle is not lit and the tabernacle is empty on those days you don't genuflect so that there's a red light anytime you walk into a Catholic Church when you see a red candle you know that's where the Bucharest is the Blessed Sacrament is which as Catholics we believe doesn't you can't say this yet perhaps so I don't want you to but we believe is the body blood soul and divinity of Jesus hidden under the appearance of bread it's not bread so I love just like a man gets down on his knee proposes to the woman he's gonna marry out of love we Bend our knee to Jesus which is exactly what scripture says that every knee unhappy in heaven on the earth and under the earth will bend the knee at the name of Jesus because he is Lord so it's a way of reminding ourselves of that does that make sense okay and then you sit down and are you ready for mass but ideally I didn't design this church ideally you would design a church like this because the the focus of the liturgy is supposed to take you up because when we come into mass we believe we're actually will say this next week too but we believe we're actually entering into heaven in a real way and we get to be present there in a real way and then we have to go out and tell people about who it is that we met who's offered up his life for us and you've spoken to us in the scriptures and he was given himself to us in the Eucharist so our focus goes up this church it goes down it's built like a it's built like an amphitheater this is not a concert hall this is not what performances take place we don't staged events here we worship God here and so if we were to build it again we would build it actually going that way like going upwards so that our eyes would be keep going up towards the altar and then up to the crucifix and then up into heaven when you go into churches that were built say especially in Europe you'll see there's one main aisle in the church typically whereas ours is built like a fan most churches are built especially in ancient times in the shape of a cross so architectural it looks like a cross is of one huge aisle and then there's another aisle that comes across this way this main aisle is called a nave anybody here speak Romance languages when you think the root of Mavis Center no it's a great guess so it's the same that's how we get Navy not this naval like Academy mr. Naval Academy ship so a need is the Latin word for ship so this is this is not some cute little detail it's actually really significant so here's the point what it's trying to say is that all of us in this life here we're a journey life is a journey and the ancients would often use sailing across the sea as an image for life like we're all heading somewhere promised voyage some of us know where we're goin some of us don't and so we're on this ship together the church would say we're in the ship that is the boat of Peter which is a favorite image in the Gospels Jesus is in the boat sometimes he's asleep but he's in the boat but we're there with him and worship we're sailing somewhere we're going somewhere what we're going is into heaven that's the journey that were headed towards to be with the Lord one day forever to be transformed to share in his own divine life and so this is supposed to be it's not here but it's supposed to be a visual for hey here we are again brothers and sisters on the journey all together we got our eyes firmly fixed on him and what he's done for us and maybe this week the sailing was particularly rough and the seas were fierce and the winds were really bad but where he minded were in the boat with the Lord and we're in it together and he wins because that's not the end so that's what this is supposed to represent and then increasingly so in most churches there's more and more and more light as you get closer and closer into the altar pagan temples were very ornate on the outside very dark and boring on the inside when Christianity begins to be able to build churches they were very plain on the outside and incredibly ornate on the inside they were also huge pagan temples were very small they were for the privileged few churches are massive why because the gospel is for everybody it's not for those who've you know got some new mystical insights no it's for everybody so you build huge churches that can accommodate people with me so far all right that's the bowing and the I got it don't worry I'll keep this up so that's the bowing and the genuflecting why a crucifix well clearly we know Jesus is alive right but if we're sensual beings what helps you better understand God's love to see him on it first of all there are crucifixion was and unfortunately is again very common it's not the cross that's significant it's the fact that God's on it that's what makes it significant that's what makes it holy but jesus embraced it to prove his love for us and to pay the price that was mine which I could never repay and so a cross without him on it is just a cross which countless people endured the cross with him on it which allows me to see what he's done now especially if you like me anyway I don't feel God's love often times in my life I walk out of hospitals at 3 in the morning after anointing people who are about to die who are 22 years old and I wonder where in the world are you Lord so my feelings don't always tell me that God loves me but I can see it I have so many crucifixes in my house that I mean I could build a house out of them because I need to see it that often because there are so many threats around me that can shake me or tempt me to think that he doesn't care which is this the Devils constant temptation he doesn't care he's not good he's not listening chest and look and so the Lord leaves me this image where I can see oh no he does care I may not feel it right now but I know it I can see it right does that make sense does that help with why we have a crucifix let me try to walk through and we'll get to some as we do this we'll get to questions so we begin we all stand why we all stand because the Lord is coming in not because I am because the Lord is and the priest actually is standing there in the person of Jesus and no one's more bewildered by that trust me than a priest okay because I know who I am but sacramentally just like God uses really ordinary things like bread and wine so he uses really ordinary things like people like me to become present and so we stand to greet the king as he comes in who's broody here he's gonna speak to us in his word he's gonna give us himself in the Eucharist so we stand for that we have an opening prayer and then we sit down we sit because seating or being seated as a position of just kind of reflective listening and so it's a posture where we listen to the first reading from the Old Testament we sing the psalm from the Old Testament we listen to a reading from the New Testament usually from Paul's letters but not always we sit for that we sit just to be leisurely listening and then we stand and we stand because the gospel unlike the rest of the scriptures the gospel is where the Lord speaks to us directly he speaks to us indirectly through the prophets or Paul or Peter or John or James or Jude but he speaks to us directly in Matthew Mark Luke and John okay so we stand for that to be attentive to him the Deek if there is a deacon and there's not always a Deacon the Deacon comes over to me and he asks father may I have your blessing and then I place my hands on a night and I pray may the Lord be in you on your mind and on your lips and in your heart that you might worthily and well proclaim the gospel now I can fly through that or I can say it like I mean it and he can bow and just pretend like he cares or he can do it like he means it a lot of us might think about Catholicism or have heard about Catholicism thinking of Jesus's words where he rebukes people for their vain repetition but note what he says he doesn't say for the repetition he says for their vain repetition Jesus himself prayed the Psalms over and over and over and over again he wasn't doing it vainly in an empty fashion but he was clearly repeating himself there's nothing wrong with repeating yourself most of us are just not that creative to come up with new ways of saying things all the time it's only vain repetition that's dangerous meaning I'm not thinking about what I'm saying our challenge as Catholics and I'll acknowledge it is to always try to be thinking about what I'm saying of what I'm doing and not just do it rote Lee okay so he asked for that blessing well he does that then he'll come over we stand to be attentive to the Lord's word he says what he says about the gospel and then we do this thing alright so you make the sign of the Cross I trace it with my fingernail so I can feel it on my forehead on my lips and on my heart and there's a couple of different things that you would you can do here may the Lord be in my mind and on my lips and in my heart and what I always do the best thing I've ever heard someone say is is this this is a much more powerful prayer I find may everything that is in my thoughts on my mouth and in my heart that is not gospel may it be crucified well that's not Danan road so it's away from me again to think to acknowledge okay sometimes my thoughts they need to go and some of the things that I say with my mouth they don't belong and some of the things that are in my heart the hearts that the center of feelings and Scripture it's the center of decision-making some of those things they need to go so that's what we do when we just do that okay then after the gospel we all sit down again and we sit again so that we can listen reflectively to the Scriptures being broken open okay that's the first part of the mass and again we'll say more about that next week the second part of the mass is focused on this the altar and it has to do with the sacrifice and so our our postures take on a new demeanor for that as well and so at a certain point we all kneel in the mass it's not so that we can you know like get into new postures and move the body around to get a workout while we're here it's because as we get closer and closer to the sacrifice of Jesus made once and for all becoming present again to us now just like Private Ryan when he walks into Normandy not only does a hush come over us but a sense of reverence comes over us and we just get down in our knees not as slaves anymore than a man gets on his knees as a slave in front of his wife when he proposes to her about a grateful affection and kneeling is a posture which is over and over and over again a posture which is encountered especially in the New Testament when people encounter Jesus they kneel in front of him we see it in the book of Revelation and what's going on in heaven people kneel before the Lord you may or may not be aware of this but you're a creature God is not a creature God is the omnipotent lord of heaven and earth the fact that he even Alexis come into his presence is a pounding and he doesn't want us to be slaves he made us for friendship he made us for love and we expressed our love again by what we do with our bodies does that make sense then you'll see people when they approach the altar I'm so just going through gestures that you'll see at mass so we're kneeling at a certain point we stand for the Lord's Prayer to prepare ourselves to to pray together this prayer which Jesus himself taught us and then to be able to come forward to receive him in the Eucharist so you'll see people come forward for the Eucharist there is one correct posture actually for preparing to receive the Lord in the Eucharist and that's the bow you'll see people here genuflect you'll see people kneel but that's not forbidden but it's not the posture the posture is simply to bow and then either to receive the Lord in your hands or in your tongue for those of you who are not Catholic and you get two choices here and I'll get to why it is about communion you can either stay seated but I wouldn't encourage that actually that would encourage you to come forward and to come forward some of us did it today and just cross your hands like this that says I want a blessing so some people will come forward with their hands like this who are Catholic but they need to go to confession they're aware of some serious sin in their life which is serious enough to keep them from receiving the Eucharist and so they'll just ask for blessing and serious enough meaning it's against the commandments first condition I knew it second condition I just freely did it anyway so when I violate the commandments which is really easy to do if you're me um you shouldn't receive the Eucharist so you'll see Catholics go like this or those who are not Catholic go like this can come forward to receive or to receive a blessing I encourage people to come forward because I want you to get as close to Jesus as you can and to let him just create a longing in you to receive him the reason for who can receive Communion is because the Eucharist is is is not a gesture of hospitality that might be an odd way to say it but that's one of the most helpful ways I notice it so what we do here with our bodies says something it expresses a reality so just like shaking your hand means something it means welcome when you in a Catholic Church and I can't speak about any other place but I can tell you what it means in a Catholic Church when you come forward in a Catholic Church to receive the Eucharist you're saying at least two things you're saying everything these people here believe I believe and second you're saying I'm in grace me I'm free from what first John calls deadly sin which is sin which meets three conditions that we just said seriously wrong I knew it freely didn't anyway those two things everything these people here believe and I'm in grace they're either true or they're not true if they're true receive if they're not true then this would be a lie so rather than saying it it in no way is like well you're just not good enough cuz you're not careful to come you can't have this that's not what this is about it's about making sure that the people that us when we come forward we really are in a visible unity with each other and with the Lord does that help a little bit about communion yeah so if in fact I do believe what everybody here believes that should be public which is why I should be baptized because you cannot be a private Christian because so Jesus says in the Gospels no one lights a lamp and puts it underneath a basket why that would be stupid that's why would be nonsensical right so you light a lamp so that darkness can get illuminated for us we'd say no one turns on the lights and then covers the lights with duct tape that would be stupid he means a lot of things but that but here's one of the things he means I did not come into your life so that no one would know about it I came into your life to shine brightly through it so that everybody that you encounter implicitly or explicitly doesn't matter would know I'm alive because of you and so you cannot be a private Christian okay that makes sense so that's why we make such a big deal about especially the baptism of adults and then bringing people into full communion because because the unity the unity that God wants is not a tangent you know like a little tiny unity it's like big unity he wants us to be united in all things even as diverse as we are and we are obviously really diverse okay know the one thing I missed was the chest bump alright so um so we so it seems kind of bizarre right we come into mass and one of the first things we do is we acknowledge how bad we are and this is not because Catholics are masochists it's just because it's reality but just ask the people you live with or you work with it might be newsflash to you but you have issues right as do i and so it's just a it's a gesture of humility we just acknowledge before before we do anything else at mass we call to mind God is the all Holy One and I ain't and it's a good thing to be reminded that I aimed and so we do this particular prayer and in the prayer we repeat three times through my fault through my fault through my most grievous fault and once while we do that we strike our heart why because the hearts the center of my decision-making again and again because I'm a bodily person so that's the reason behind it it's one thing to say it it's another thing to actually remind myself it's a way of just ingraining into my person oh yeah this is true now again I can do that wrote Li without thought or I can do it with thought the challenge for us is to do it with thought but that's why we do it let me say something quickly about these so why do we have statues because there's a commandment about making graven images there's also a command given by God to make a graven image so the commandment clearly can't be universal God tells Moses for example to make a golden serpent or a bronze serpent and I mounted on a pole okay graven just means carved so the same God who says don't make a graven image of me or if anything also tells Moses make a graven image so what do you do when you got two things you're trying to understand why does he say this we'll get to that when we do a little discussion on the commandments but this the point is just to say the same God who says don't make graven images says make a graven image he also commands other images to be made at other times and the Old Testament so there's nothing wrong with images the church back in the eighth century definitively answered the question can we do can we make graven images or can we carve images and the ultimate reason behind it was the fact that God Himself took flesh and gave us an image of himself and in doing so he forever changed revelation so Jesus is the image of the invisible God to see him is to see God okay so flowing from the principle the fact that God himself has taken an image for himself and communicated to us the church back in the 8th century began to or not began to it definitively answer the question about images so who are these that's Mary as in the mother of Jesus this is John who's one of the first four disciples of Jesus so John that's his brother James and then the first statue over here is Joseph that's the husband of Mary and then the two brothers over there are Peter and Andrew Andrew Peter John and James had a fishing cone together they were business partners they worked together they're amongst the first four that Jesus calls so that's who those are that's Matthew another one of the apostles this woman is Teresa bless sue she was a young French girl who was a Carmelite that's the name of a religious community so she lived in France dies at a very young age I want to get lost in her details she's an amazing person to ask to pray with this is st. Mary Magdalene who gets a lot of different descriptions from people the only thing that we know for certain about Mary Magdalene is that she had seven demons she was a messed up woman she owes it she's the first witness to the resurrection she's known as the apostle to the Apostles she was not Jesus his wife despite what Dan Brown might think this is st. Monica so Monica is the mother of a man named Saint Agustin who might be familiar to some of us Augustine's one of the greatest persons who ever lived in human history one of the most prolific authors in human history his first 33 years were spent in a relentless search for truth and for beauty his mother was a very devout Christian for all his life she prayed for his conversion he finally converts and comes son to become one of the greatest of Christians so she's here any time you crossed the tabernacle you genuflect that's why I just did that this is a woman named st. Faustina Faustina was a Polish woman who dies in the 1930s some of us might have heard of what's called the Divine Mercy chaplet or devotion that really flows in a particular way from Faustina there's lots more you say about her - this is st. Thomas another one of the Apostles Thomas has his finger out because Thomas is the one on Easter Sunday when the disciples say we've seen Jesus he says I don't believe it I'll believe it when I put my finger into the hole in his side and my finger into his hands and my finger into the nail marks in his feet so that's why his fingers out it's worth noting Thomas was a twin so Thomas deserves some slack because Thomas if you're a twin was often confused with being his brother and I don't mean that to be flip I mean that to be true um this here is st. Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles who himself hated Christians until he encountered Jesus after Jesus had already risen from the dead and then we mentioned Andrew and Peter and Joseph so those are the Saints there are other Saints back behind the sanctuary and the other Saints back there are all men and women who served in one capacity or another in our country it's a way of reminding us that Saints didn't just live a long time ago in other places they live here and in fact if you don't become a saint you failed life what's that it's a really low bar yeah I'm cuz cuz win not if when you die you're gonna stand face to face in front of God he's gonna judge you we're saved by grace I'm judged by my works saved by grace I didn't earn that but Jesus makes it abundantly clear in the Gospels that when I died books will be opened and I will be judged according to my life and what I've done thankfully one of the things I can do is repent say I'm sorry ask forgiveness and so when you die when you die God's gonna say one of two things he's either gonna say depart from me which you don't want to hear and I don't want to hear where he's gonna say well done good and faithful servant wait till you see what I have waiting for you and if he says well done then you're a saint so you either become a saint or you are a complete and utter loser all right God's desire is that no one would be an utter loser because he's desires that everybody would get home okay that's the statues does that make sense folks yeah the relics let me just relax a bizarre to a lot of people but direction so a simple way to think of it anybody here like sports memorabilia or war memorabilia or people have like all sorts of collections in their houses at times I've seen people with stones from all over significant places in the world I've got you know my brother and I used to have all sorts of baseball cards and baseball jerseys from all sorts of guys who played all throughout history right so why do we have that we have I have things from my dad who's gone now that I love to have why cuz I love my dad and it's a tangible reminder of my dad right so this is what we do as human beings like that was my brother's ping I want it alright cuz my brother loved penguins and it reminds me of my brother's life so might sound really stupid to you but it doesn't sound stupid to me so it's a touch of him the Saints are our family so to have things from our family members it means something now what we have are not like hats and penguins we have bones which is a little weird alright if you have remains of your family members in your house you should not they should be buried don't put grime on the mantle okay please don't put grandma on the mantle she deserves to be buried so that people can visit her and because that's what should happen so if that's the case why do we have these here these are here to venerate not to worship to venerate to acknowledge and the roots of that just comes right out of the scriptures whether it's in the New Testament when you'll see handkerchiefs being brought to to Peter to touch him or to Paul to touch him and then take back to the sick or whether it's people standing in the streets hoping that the shadow of Peter would fall on them as they walk by or whether it's someone being thrown into a grave in the Old Testament of a holy man who comes to life because he touched the bones of a man who was a holy man so some of us may not be from especially for coming from other Christian traditions we may not be familiar with those passages but there in the scriptures it's just a continuity of what it is that God had revealed all throughout salvation history so we have relics here to not only remind us of the people who live great lives but to ask their intercession for us because the Saints aren't dead they're alive and that's why we have the Saints in the formation if you will that they are because when we walk into church what we've walked into as I said earlier is heaven it's clearly not heaven in its entirety but we get a taste of it which means we walk into the worship of those who are there all these people like my favorite image is it's like being in a stadium and we're on the field and they're in the stands they were once on the field but they already won and now they're in the stands and that watching us they're cheering us on and so they surround us in here to remind us that that there they're there for us they're praying for us that's the scriptural image and that one day we get to join them to be with the Lord but we can't join them yet so that's why they're there does that make sense yeah we're gonna say a lot more about that later on so prey yeah when we use the word prey most people use the word pray and they exclusively mean it as worship Catholics can get careless with that word I don't mean that no flippant way and we can use that word to mean a lot of things and then its most basic sense it means talk to so if by pray you mean worship we only worship God I mean don't worship anybody else I'm gonna worship Mary we don't worship the Saints but we talk to them so if I'm sick and I ask you to pray for me and you say no wow that was a really loving thing to do so people who care about each other if we ask one another to pray for each other we go of course I'll pray for you what's going on you know the response wouldn't be no just go to Jesus he'll take care of that yeah I know you will but I thought you thought you loved me but maybe you show some compassion or kindness you know and right now I need someone to pray with me so in the same way that we would ask people who are here to pray for us we ask people who are there to pray for us because in heaven you do what you do on earth you love God and you love your neighbor and we're their neighbor in addition to the people who are there that help all right one of the other questions with regards to Saints at the end of mass we pray here after mass is over a prayer which is somewhat of a new prayer in church history it's only a little bit more than hundred years old and it's the prayer of st. Michael so its projected on the walls for those who aren't familiar with it has somewhat of a dramatic history to it but it the short version is something like this Pope Leo the 13th who was the Holy Father back in towards the end of the 19th century was coming out of mass one days in the Vatican and he has a it gets told a couple of different ways either has a vision or he hears something and he's just as he's leaving Mass he stops and he's just kind of transfixed for a set of minutes doesn't move finally gets up goes in takes off his vestments and someone says what was up with that and he described a conversation that he had between or that he heard between two voices one which was he described his harsh and guttural which he discerned was Satan and the other was the voice which was gentle and warm which he discerned his gods and the conversation went something like this I will destroy the church and the other voice said something like really and Satan asked for time to do it and the Lord granted him time and then said I remember something to the effect of if at the end of that time you have not been able to do what you say you will do I will undo all of your works anecdotally the last hundred years have been arguably amongst the worst in human history with regards to simple number of deaths whether it's World War one to the abortion Holocaust Pol Pot in the killing fields Stalin you name it China and their forced abortions so leo xiii wrote the prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel because Michael is Satan's rifle not Jesus because Michael and Satan who was Lucifer were both angels so Satan and we'll talk a lot about this to come Satan's not a good you know like he's not a bad guy it's not like bad god good god there's just one God and Satan and God he's a creature an angelic creature but he's a creature and so his rival is that Prince of the heavenly host that's Michael when you read revelation you see Michael's the one who goes to war against Satan and the fallen angels so that's why we pray the prayer of st. Michael the Archangel it used to be prayed in every church after mass and then it was stopped in the 60s and 70s we pray it here because the it's a way to remind people of the reality of evil and the reality that the devil was real and that he has one goal that's to keep you from gettin to heaven and so we asked the intercession of Michael to pray for us that's why we do it but we'll talk a lot more about that as we go on okay we ring bells because though there was a time and there still is a time so like if you come to mass here on a Wednesday night I'll celebrate Mass standing here and we'll all be looking that way so sometimes you'll hear people say the priest head is back to us but I'm not turning my back to you when I do that what I'm what I'm trying to do is we're all trying to look the same direction and we're trying to be oriented to the Lord and to the Cross in every church except for st. Peter's in Rome up until not too long ago mass was celebrated that way and it was every church was built facing east that's what a dorians means because the Sun rises from the east which is a symbol of the resurrection over and over again so sometimes I will celebrate Mass every Wednesday actually we celebrate Mass this way when when we're all looking in the same direction it's hard to see what's happening at the altar because of that bells are rung the bells are rung when we asked the Holy Spirit to descend upon the bread and wine the bells are rung when we hold up the host the bells are rung we hold up the chalice and then the bells are rung when the priest receives communion so it's not like I'm supposed to tune out the rest of the mass and the only tune up when I hear the bells but it's a way to call my attention to what's happening at the altar music we actually have a lot of diversity in or if you ever come to five o'clock the music is really different you'll hear you might hear drums major string guitars or acoustic guitars might hear electric guitars you might hear piano organ so worship is diverse some churches limit itself to an organ some places limited selves to a piano and we want to be somewhat hard to boxer so not so that we can be unique and different but because I think we're supposed to bring out of the storehouse both the new and the old as we worship God so that's why we do that what I miss that you asked how high is mass so on there's no reason that mass is a particular length mass is over when it's over so no one walks out of a great movie and goes gosh that was so dang long right you walk out of a bad movie and say that but I would argue if once we really understand what's happening here and we'll talk about this next week you can spend all day here and until I understand that I'm watching something but to come to mass is not to be a spectator I'm not supposed to come to mass to watch something I'm supposed to come to match to mass to enter into the action and the prayer and that's gonna be what we talk about next week okay that helped yeah yeah yeah so one of the so the common is just in some churches there's a lot its worships a lot more lively and in Catholic churches it seems to be more reserved a couple reasons for that one would be that our worship isn't limited to mass so we do praise and worship here once a month on Wednesday nights it's gonna start we kind of take a break during the summer it'll start back up in October and on those nights it's not hymns so we turn off all the lights we fill this place with candles and we have a lot of worship so you might see a different Catholic Church than you've heard of if you come to that so the mass is kind of a ritualized play what we do when we come together for mass has a rhythm to it and a reason behind it and I'll say a lot more about that next week that's why most places not all places but most places the music is supposed is worshipful but it's supposed to complement and augment what's happening on the altar as opposed to be the focal point take the Eucharist away from mass and we don't have anything we only have preaching and music and so then you really need lively music put the Eucharist in the center of it and now everything goes around it and it's supposed to help me understand what's happening in the celebration of the Eucharist as opposed to take my attention away from it so make some sense yeah great question okay yeah so the question is do I have to be baptized Catholic and receive the Eucharist no but you have to be in full communion with the church so if you were baptized already not Catholic but it was with water in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit if you remember last week I said we would recognize that as valid but then to come into full communion with the church we would confirm you then you will receive the Eucharist that's what happens here at the Easter Vigil which is where this all goes towards okay all right and I know those are really uncomfortable pews so I'm not trying to keep you there but I've sat in them once awhile yeah the box those are relics too so there's a verse in the book of Revelation which is the last book of the Bible which is through and through a liturgical book you see altars vestments incense worship it's a really liturgical book as hard as it is to read and at one point know if it's revelation 5 or 6 Tom might remember or maybe Jenna somebody might but it talks about the prayers of the saints coming from under the altar so when Christian churches are first being built they would always build the church on top of the remains of a murder with a grave of a murderer because a martyr is someone whose life was taken from them not that's a big difference between Catholics and others some would look at a martyr as somebody who who dies perhaps killing other people and martyrs just the Greek word witness it's somebody whose life is taken from them refuses to renounce Jesus so the martyrs are those who are most closely conformed to Jesus because they know that we have their life taken from them but they died praying for those who take their lives which is pretty amazing so early churches were always built on top of the graves of the altars because of a martyr on top of the grave of the martyr because the murder most exemplified Jesus in this life and so they were always rectangular because it was built on top of the whole body that's why we have the relics under the altar when you stopped building them on top of an actual bodies the altar shape changed and it became square but you'll still see churches where the altars laying on top of the body and the altar there is rectangular because the body is underneath it so there's more relics down there we we put different Saints in and out of there at different times so and then sometimes you'll see me I have a small crucifix that I put on top of the altar I didn't have it today but it's black and I put it on top of the altar because inside that's a reliquary so it has a relic inside at the relic that's inside and is a relic of the true cross which it's not true that if you put all the relics of the true cross together you could build a skyscraper we actually the church has records of every single relic that we have and we know where all the relics of the true cross are so I have like a little sliver of it that was given to me years ago by somebody I don't even know who and so I put it on the altar as a reminder of just what it is that Jesus has done okay great yeah last one got to make it a great one no pressure can I touch on adoration how about that's actually a great question to come up next week because it flows directly from the mass um so why it is that Catholics might what I call waste time with Jesus in the Eucharist which I mean in a very positive way I think it's the best way to describe prayer prayer is wasting time with God not because it is a waste of time but because time is so precious for all of us and I don't waste it with just anybody I waste it with the people who mean the most to me so I love wasting time with people I really love and I love to waste time with God that's why I call it that so we'll talk about that next week okay it'd be great

Channel: OLGCPlymouth

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Keywords: OLGC, Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church, Catholic Church, Plymouth Michigan

Id: xhEfpD4wBGQ

Length: 67min 57sec (4077 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 19 2017