CALLED TO COMMUNION - Dr. David Anders - October 22 , 2019

of the perspective visit EWTN news comm I'm Teresa Tomeo and call to communion with dr. David Anders starts now what's stopping you from becoming a Catholic why can't women become priests one eighty three three two eight eight EWTN I don't understand why I have to earn salvation one eighty three two eight eight three nine eight six why do I need to confess my sins to a priest what's stopping you this is called to communion with dr. David Anders on the EWTN global Catholic radio network everybody happy Tuesday to you welcome again to call to Communion this is the program for our non Catholic brothers and sisters those of you who have questions about the Catholic faith trying to get those questions answered figure out where you stand with the Lord we are here to help you here's our phone number eight three three two eight eight EWTN that is eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six if you're listening to us outside of North America you'll want to dial the u.s. country code and then two oh five two seven one two nine eight five and as always you can text the letters EWTN to five five zero zero zero wait for our response and then text us your first name and your brief question message and data rates may apply again the phone number eight three three two eight eight EWTN you can always shoot us an email CTC at ewtn.com we give you all different kinds of ways to contact the program because this is an important show people want to know the truth they want to know what's going on and they want to know why the Catholic Church teaches this but doesn't teach this other thing over here we can help you with that Charles berry is our producer Ryan penny as our phone screener we also have Jeff person on social media he'll pass on any questions you may want to pose via YouTube or Facebook live we're streaming there right now along with all of our other great platforms I'm Tom price along with dr. David Anders some how are you today you know what feeling kind of mellow I got some chocolate orange decaf tea going here it's it's pretty nice I'm a mellow fellow they get quite quite rightly all right and you're doing well I'm hoping you know I'm hanging in there looking forward to the radio conference always after our program tomorrow I'm gonna be taking some gear over to the hotel venue getting that set up and we'll be broadcasting pretty much all day on Thursday and a big chunk of Friday as well so people get to see and hear us it'll be fun antastic all right let's uh begin here with an email from Tracy I was wondering if you could recommend a book that I could give to my son who is a floundering father spouse and Catholic he has a good heart but was raised as the only son of a widowed mother and didn't have a strong father figure growing up any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated God is in his life but not the focus and he can't see why he struggles when to me it is obvious thanks Tracy yeah so one book that comes to mind is by the Catholic writer James Stenson the title is father the family protector and it's about the role of fathers in families and Catholic fathers in particular but I the books really helpful whether or not you're Catholic let me give you a bit of background Stenson was a school administrator headmaster at a few Catholic private schools and he spent his whole career in this business and he noticed after he'd been in there for several decades that certain families and their children seemed to come through and thrive and do well and others didn't didn't do as well didn't rive and he began to consider systematically what is it about the families where children thrive and do well and take more advantage of what we have to offer in the school and in the church and culture and so forth and he began to kind of discern some commonalities and and basically he found that in the families where children tended to do well the family had a sense of purpose right the family was ordered towards some good end and they worked collaboratively for that and they thought about building virtues and skills and resilience in the children for the accomplishment of those ends and in families that saw life more as a series of random events or traumas to be suffered or endured and they tended to have a more disorganized or understanding of their life or less purpose driven it was more like just kind of insulating themselves from pain or suffering through diversion or whatnot kids didn't do as well and he also found that the children of entrepreneurs tended to do better than the children of professionals because they tended to spend more time with their parents observing them practicing the virtues you know so that the actual business of getting down and living life and and building on those signature strengths and competences and virtues to accomplish positive ends and and living that kind of Purpose Driven Life with your parents built the kind of people who did well well that that's obviously our faith is all about building a life of virtue and the faith is is the greatest help in that that we can possibly have but that message about what does it take to be an effective parent what kind of things ought I to be aiming at that's a message that's universal in its application so even if he's not deeply engaged in his way think he can benefit from that book sounds good Tracy thank you so much for your email here's a text here from Paulo who is watching us right now on YouTube hey Paulo Paulo says please explain why we cannot call God Jehovah well I mean when you say cannot that's not what God calls himself and it's not what scripture calls God the name the English word Jehovah is actually kind of an amalgam of two different Hebrew words Nylund kind of a blend 91 of which is actually found in Sacred Scripture yeah so so it's you know as you know Hebrew doesn't have Biblical Hebrew doesn't have vowels medieval Masoretic scribes rabbinical scribes added vowel pointings to the text but they didn't actually want to pronounce them because of the great reverence they held for the divine name when they came across the divine name yhw H they inserted the vowel they would pronounce the vowels that go with the name Adonai which means Lord and so the the English word Jehovah is kind of an amalgam of the consonants for the divine name in Scripture mm-hmm and the vowels for Adonai and it's it's like a fake name right it's not actually how God identifies himself to Moses at the burning bush yeah right and and so I mean God will know who you're talking to sure right but I mean like we're not gonna stand up in church and say you know the big guy in the sky I mean like that's just not how we refer to God for sure okay and Paulo thanks for watching us today on YouTube getting a call screened right now at eight three three two eight eight EWTN a lot of letter room for you we're just getting started here eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six it's the Tuesday edition of call to Communion he is honored by the church as a saint with the title of the angelic dr. Matthew Bunsen and the doctors of the church Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote a basic text book for young theology students that became the church's most famous guide to the faith the Summa Theologica it helped him earn the title doctor of the church he died in 1274 or more about the doctors of the church visit doctors of the church calm this is Mike and Alicia Hernan with a messy family minute my mother raised ten children and now she has over forty five grandchildren all over the country that's a lot of marriages children and relationships to be worried about but she's adopted a wise saying that we will give to you worrying is against my religion kids are absolutely unpredictable and the media tends to fill our minds with the latest crisis concerns for our kids is good because we want to protect them but we have to recognize that there are things we cannot control those things belong to God when we take responsibility from God for things that we can't control and that causes worry in Matthew 6 our Lord says to us very clearly that he knows all of our needs and he does not want us to worry about tomorrow he doesn't promise us an easy life of rainbows and sunshine but he does say he will always be with us no matter what difficulties we may encounter for more encouragement and insight visit us at messy family minute org [Music] we invite you to join us for the Holy Rosary we broadcast it every morning at 5:30 a.m. and every evening at 9:30 p.m. the morning is led by our own founders Mother Angelica and the evening is led by father Benedict Groeschel both of happy memory so check it out right here on EWTN radio if you're ready now let's get to the phones at eight three three two eight eight EWTN we begin with Shannon in Lynn Massachusetts listening on the station of the cross hello Shannon what's on your mind today hi how are you very good thanks for your salt sure thing I was just calling because I was wondering if you guys could please tell me a little bit more about like the Vatican to in your thoughts on the like revolution I guess so to speak that occurred back then in 1962 because I've been my husband's been doing some research and from what he tells me like prior to 1962 the way that we practiced was very traditional and it was more aligned with how Jesus taught us to practice and since he told me that I kind of feel like so duped like I feel like you know I just it's from what I've read basically like starting in 1962 this it was a New World Order quote-unquote and I just want to know like if there's any truth to that being part of what's revelation and from what I read to they say if if Pope Francis keeps on track with what he's doing everything that was intended for vatican ii will be kind of like summing it up okay thanks I think I can help you Shannon so if I might let me let me first talk about Christ and the gospel message presented to us by Jesus and by the lives of the saints pick your greatest Saints if you like like maybe Saint Francis of Assisi for example and you know in in Scripture God appeared to Abraham said I'm gonna make you a great nation your descendants will be a blessing to all nations and 400 years later he gives Moses the law the Ten Commandments and the rest of the mosaic code to help the Israelites show the world what righteousness looks like knowing all along that the letter of the law written on tablets was not enough to get the job done that what we really need was the law written on our hearts and that's the promise of the new covenant in Christ he prophesized this in Jeremiah and Ezekiel Deuteronomy chapter 30 in other places that in the time of the Messiah the Spirit would be poured out on God's people and the law no longer written on tablets of stone now be written on human hearts God's love pour it into our hearts so that we could love God and love neighbor and thus be saved and Jesus unpacks that law written on the heart in all of his teaching that's what his whole ministry is about right especially in the Sermon on the Mount the Beatitudes blessed are those who mourn blessed are the meek blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness blessed are the pure in heart blessed are the merciful blessed are you when people persecute you for Christ's sake I mean this is what the disposition of someone who has the Spirit of God is like we have this kind of humble faithful pure pursuit of God and holiness and forgiveness of our enemies and repentance for past faults and and a sincere desire to be reconciled to God neighbor that's the essence of the gospel and of course Christ by His atoning death merits for us this grace of redemption and demonstrates by his own holy life how we are to live and the essence of holiness is to live Christ's life after him through the medium of the sacraments God's grace poured into our life demonstrated to us by the sacramental mysteries and then re-enacted within us in our interior life and we take this call to gospel living seriously and we take it up in our own lives through the dynamic of prayer especially the mystical life the contemplative life of letting God work in hearts and purify us from all that would be an impediment to holiness and in the Saints that life is made manifest and especially those great great Saints like Saint Francis of Assisi who give themselves radically to the pursuit of this kind of holy life and we see it in every age now was there anything in the Second Vatican Council that contradicted that picture of holiness which is like like the original traditional picture of holiness no absolutely not and I would encourage anybody who is queasy in the knees about or in the stomach about Vatican two to go read the documents and what you'll find is that this is the form of holy life that the documents and the fathers of the Second Vatican Council encouraged us to live so if that's if that's traditional and that's the picture and they restate it what why the need for a council okay well there's there's a lot of aspects to answer that question but let me let me give you a few to give you some perspective in the late Middle Ages it was not uncommon for laypeople to celebrate the faith in a way that was disconnected from the liturgical ministry of the church right and I mean I could document that claim and I I mean I did a lot of historical research on this I kind of know what I'm talking about like the priest does his thing at the altar the laypeople do their thing but they're not necessarily connected in the minds of the people right and there's a lot of anti-clericalism laypeople kind of like angry at the priests all the time and and and jealous of their prerogatives and a lot of social unrest and sometimes it broke out in destructive ways ideologies would break out you know whether it be radical poverty movements that would try to overthrow the social order or people that would be say on the end of the world is going to happen or folks run around flagellating themselves I mean weird stuff going on a lot of social unrest and disorder and not all of it attributable to our experience of the liturgy but like clearly the in the heart of the Christian people about how we relate to fundamental things like the mass of the sacraments played into that social unrest and it's well documented at the time and and the Council of Trent did a lot to address that but you'll find in the the documents of Trent and and the tritium ass promulgated in the late 16th century there are no rubrics for the laity in the mass of the Council of Trent no instructions about how the laypeople are explicitly to participate in the right mm-hmm and and so it wasn't uncommon for you know lay people go to mask how do their own thing they might pray the rosary might read the office might read a book go to confession right yeah right and the priest is over here doing his thing the mass is still valid and it still works but the the attempt the intent to actively involve the conscious participation of the laity in the right is not the thing that's foremost in the minds of the liturgical writing and in the 19th century there was a movement that arose in some Benedictine monasteries in particular to try to help laypeople have a more informed participation in the mass it's called the liturgical movement and all the Pope's of the 20th century got on board Pius the tenth who's you know often thought of is a kind of a pretty conservative traditional sort of guy gave his full consent to the liturgical movement I see 11th Pius the 12th all right all of them advocated a more informed participation by the laity in the rites of the mass and so when the Second Vatican Council comes along the first document they produce right in 1962 is on the liturgy and and what do they kind of what they call for they call for the informed active participation of the laypeople in the mass they don't overturn any traditional doctrine on the contrary they say we need to put the traditional doctrine of the mass front and center in the lines of God's faithful people and I'd encourage you to read it sacrosanct I'm conchiglie miss the first document second about council and in the that are the in the the Constitution on the church lumen gentium or on the church's pastoral ministry in the modern world yeah team it's best again what's really put front and center is how can the people of God better engage the central mysteries of our faith the holiness the universal call to holiness that God has provided for all of us and to engage in the liturgical rites of the church in a way that really engages that missionary and evangelistic zeal and that desire for holiness they are catechetical documents about how to more vigorously and generously live that spirit of conversion and call to holiness in the course of our daily life that's really the intent of the Second Vatican Council and look that that message is perennial right that's / that's perennial and and there have always been people in the church if you want to take the message of conversion and faith and holiness and life of virtue and co-opt it in the service of an ideological agenda Jesus talks about almost nothing else and all the parables right now all his teaching he warns against that kind of external isn't like reducing the moral life to to like belonging to a sectarian party it's not you can't outsource the problem of moral responsibility on to your political agenda where are we in the church today are there are people in the church today on the left and on the right on the left and on the right who tried to co-opt the message of the gospel for their own agenda yes there always have been it's not limited I mean like and and the temptation is to think well I'm gonna give you my list of my list of priests or bishops or Cardinals or whoever that are the bad guys and then I'm going to give you my list of them that are the good guys sure and I'm a good guy because I've signed on to the right group all right that is a perennial temptation in the Christian life and and it too and I don't care which group you think is the right one and where you want to put yourself Jesus said take the log out of your own eye before you go after the splinter in your neighbor there's a priest in my diocese who told me this story that was a great story and um a fella accosted him after mass and he was all angry and aggressive and he runs up to the priest and he says what do you think of the Pope you don't know where that questions going that's right like does this guy how am I supposed to enter does he like the Pope does he'd not like the Pope what a priest gave a brilliant answer he said I think he's the Vicar of Christ like all the rest of them right we belong to the body of Christ which is the church the sacraments have always worked and will always work the truths of the gospel have always worked and will always work and the temptations against the call to holiness in particular the temptation to an ideological interpretation of the faith has always been there and will always impede us in the pursuit of God we have always had holy leaders and governors and we have always had unholy leaders and governors and the solution is to follow the saints st. Francis of Assisi did not get bent out of shape about the ideology of the pontificate he recognized that the church as Christ gave it to us like as it exists in the world today is the sign and instrument for handing on the deposit of faith that we've had for 2,000 years and the business of life is to get about being holy and that will never change and and to the extent that we think our fidelity to Christ requires us to pursue some ideological vision of the Christian life and I don't care if that vision is traditionalist or radically Marxist to the extent that we think our fidelity to Christ requires us to take up an ideological agenda and a align ourselves with a party to that extent we have lost the message of the gospel the message of the gospel is to do justice to love mercy and to walk humbly with God Shannon thank you so much for your call and that opens up a line for you now at eight three three two eight eight EWTN that's eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six it's called a communion on this Tuesday afternoon here on EWTN let's go to ed now in Melbourne Florida listening on divine mercy radio ed what's on your mind today good afternoon tom dr. hinders dr. Andrews I wanted to ask you to expand or run packets you guys like to say the reference he made to a caller last week the caller had a grandson who is severely mentally disabled who had passed away years before and he asked if saying a mask would be good beneficial and you encouraged him to do so on that that would be a wonderful thing to do and in your response you also said that God's grace works upon us you know is transcendent of our intellect and works on our will and I was worrying if you could expand upon that idea of our interaction with grace because we often say you know we need to cooperate with God's grace and the Catechism says in paragraph I think it's 2005 or 2006 somewhere there abouts that grace is a supernatural gift that is beyond our experience so could you come and upon that and cooperate absolutely now I've got about 30 seconds before the break so I'll start on this and we'll have to pick it up again on the other side so one way to think about this is to distinguish the way God can work on us from that angelic beings would work on us whether those angelic beings be fallen angels or holy angels when the devil presents a temptation to us what he can do is he can work at the level of our sense memory and our sensible the sensible images before our imagination all right he can he can propose to us delights that might distract us from the pursuit of holiness but he can't work directly on our will and that's the distinction I want to come to after the break setai dad will continue your question an excellent question in just a moment we'll also talk with Christie in Lancaster California we've got a line open for you right now at 8 3 3 2 8 8 ewtn al Kresta the secular press just doesn't get our story they don't even understand you and so it's been coming upon us get the story straight and get the story out the leading Catholic voices are on EWTN radio Bishop Robert Barron when you say well my ego is the center of my life my freedom ok it sounds great what I can envision what I can desire in the immediacy of the moment I mean what a dull prospect but to say that God's purposes are now my purposes well that opens up as Paul says in Ephesians you know this power already at work in me they can do infinitely more than I can ask or imagine or the Lord saying to Peter you know when you're a young man you tied your own belt and where you want it to go that's what young people do but don't get stuck there because then Lord says well you're an old man someone else will tie you and take you where you don't want to go well that's the Holy Spirit's you know don't read that as something terrible that's liberating that's wonderful some greater power will tie you up and take you maybe where you never imagined you'd go when you get beyond that little narrow space of your own ego and your open up now into the great space that's what happens when Jesus becomes Lord now you're living EWTN live truth live Catholic unplanned the true story of Abbey Johnson I would be the youngest director in Planned Parenthood history she believed in a woman's right to choose I've had an abortion myself so I don't have any problem with another woman making the same decision until the day she saw something that changed everything [Music] now she's pulling back the curtain on the abortion industry unplayable at EWTN our sitcom and the EWTN app hi this is Janet Williams we embrace the essence of feminine spirituality on women of grace tomorrow at 11 a.m. Eastern here on EWTN radio now back to called to communion with dr. David Anders it's the Tuesday afternoon edition of call to communion here on EWTN looks like we have three lines open how about that 8 3 3 2 8 8 ewtn if you have a question for dr. David Andrews here is your chance eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six before the break we were talking with Edie in Florida and it was a very interesting question that you began to answer yeah the question was how how does God's grace work on us mm-hmm and how do we cooperate and the distinction I began to draw was between say the way either Holy Angels or evil angels might influence our activity right they can operate on us at the level of presenting like sensible images sensible imagination to us so am I proposed in the case of a holy angel he might help me to recognize some some like actual good that I could perform evil angel might propose to me some eat some evil that I might do that he knows will be a temptation for me an area of weakness for me and then make those suggestions and hope that I comply that I consent but the but but the angel can't work and then of course humans can suggest things to me in the same way but like from the external world I can like it put physical images or or you know verbal descriptions in front of body to either and encourage them to good or entice them to evil but God can work on us at a much deeper level right God can God can actually work directly on our will and will is when when I am able to conceptualize something as a good to actually think rationally about something as a good and then deliberate between Goods and then make a choice that ability is what we call will God can actually work directly on my will to cause me to incline me towards a particular good or - or to good in an absolute sense and but I retain the ability to resist the movement of grace in my soul so let's look at that in the like the course of a human life what does that look like so here's a guy maybe he's you know he's he's working the job he's got it all money's coming in you got the women coming in he's got the Fame coming in he's got all the allure mats of the world thrust at him and he's he's really enjoying that and then one day he wakes up in all of a sudden it all seems hollow to him he didn't know where that realization came from and he feels this this strange compulsion to pray well he didn't he didn't make that happen all right that that's something's actually happened at the level of his will and his intellect to cause him to see reality in a new light and actually set before him the goods of eternal life as a real possibility and a desirable possibility what that's the action of God in him maybe his Catholic grammar mother was praying for him for the last eight years kind of like kicked in on this day so that's how that's how that's the action of God no but in that moment he can say nay hand me my cell phone you know and he can he can actively resist it right I remember in my own life a time when all of a sudden like the calf things suddenly made sense it made sense and I was like that's the way forward that is the way forward and then I realized what it was going to cost me to become Catholic mmm he was not gonna be an easy thing for me to become Catholic I had some serious impediments to Catholicism in my life so you know what I didn't I resisted grace I said I'm gonna put this out of my head it's I don't want to go there I can't afford to go there and we'll put it out of my head I did yeah it didn't go well for me I lasted about another year and then I finally I poked as they say right became Catholic homes of heaven exactly but you can resist that grace or you can say yes to that supernatural inclination acting directly on your will right and you can cooperate very good and we thank you to us thank you so much for your call add glad that you're listening to us on Divine Mercy radio it is called a communion here on EWTN we have a line open for you right now at eight three three two eight eight EWTN that's eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six Christie he is living in listening in Lancaster California on Sirius XM 130 a first-time caller hello Christie what's on your mind today hello my question is well thank you for taking my call sure my question is I was listening to some writings from their early fathers and doctors of the church Justin Martyr and John Chrysostom and in their writings they spoke so ugly and vulgar towards the Jewish people and I was wondering how is it we're supposed to respect their writings and look at them in a wholly respectful manner when they had such ugly vulgar writings towards God's chosen people how do we I mean we don't praise them but what light do we look at them yeah thanks I appreciate the question so they're couple things we can do one is and I'm not saying this is sufficient that's not the whole story right but but many of them were writing about Judaism as an ideology and as an ideology like Judaism is not true right the position that they're rejecting is in fact erroneous right we don't we don't come into relationship with God by circumcision the laws of kashrut and obedience to the other Mosaic Commandments and and that ideology the position that says yes that's exactly how you come into relationship with God all right was a live option particularly in the era of the first century and and constituted a temptation for Christians in a way that is not the case today and when you read for example the book of Hebrews here are Christians baptized believing communing Christians within the Catholic faith who are seriously considering apostasy they're thinking about leaving the church and going back to Judaism or you have Gentile Christians like in Galatia who received the word of the gospel with joy they received the spirit they received the fruits and gifts of the Spirit and and they're they're growing in the Christian life and then people who would seem to have come from the Apostles themselves from James in Jerusalem come and present to them the requirement or what is purported to be the requirement that they circumcise themselves and their children and follow the other regulations of Mosaic law and they begin to they are tempted to adopt for themselves the entire yoke of mosaic obligation and what comes along with it the the radical differentiation of Jew and Gentile that the Gospels meant to overturn and so st. Paul writes a whole letter about in book of Galatians about like no no no the part of the gospel is we're not obligated in this way and and through faith in Christ God's gonna reconcile Jew and Gentile so that constituted a real temptation and a real problem and in some of those people of course were persecuting the Apostles and and putting Christians to death Paul was one of them until he was converted where that's not our situation today by a longshot but it was a live memory in in the minds of the Apostolic fathers and in some of the Church Fathers and so that's that's part of the answer that that they are responding to this as an ideology in a way that we're not confronting today now to the extent that they generalize about individuals you know and say well this you know this person is bad or something because they're a Jew or they're a practitioner of Judaism well that was that was that was an egregious egregious misjudgment on their part and one that the church is corrected and you know I mean the church fathers were men of their time riding in their own historical circumstances and with you know the benefit of 2,000 years of church history we can see a few things in a broader perspective now that they weren't capable to see they had other errors - I mean clement of alexandria seems to actually believe that there was an animal called a phoenix right he'd heard legends about the phoenix you know the bird that immolates itself you know he'd never seen one right but somebody told him they were around you get on to egypt and find him and he's like well maybe those exist well he was right there are no Phoenix's right you don't have to believe everything you find in the writings of the truth fathers so so like how do we think about them as a class well first of all some of the church fathers were saying it's not all of them right well I gave the fathers were all Saints some of the early Christian Rogers I should say we're saying since some of them were the fathers were sayings meaning that like they were genuinely motivated by a heroic concern to be united to God and to fulfill the commandments and to love love God and neighbors I mean that's what motivated them even with their human failures they were most all of them people of tremendous insight and when they address those topics that they were competent to address they did so with great sophistication and depth and and their writings are uh you know tremendously useful to us now and then taken as a whole they're a witness to the universal aspects of the Catholic faith that are that are perennial and so you know one guy gets this thing wrong one guy gets that thing wrong but but where they kind of provide a united front mm-hmm right it's a genuine witness to the gospel as it has always come down for us let me give you an example of that right so another temptation for early Christians that was anti-semitic was to separate the old New Testaments radically and to claim that the god of Jesus with the god of the New Testament was different from the Jewish god of the Old Testament Marcy a night Marcy anism that is one form of that heresy all of the Church Fathers rejected Marcy anism they said no the god of the Old Testament got a new on the same God right and that's that's that's the the totality of the Church Fathers agreeing in that ordinary teaching of the gospel that's been handed out for 2,000 years there you know another place where they all agree they it's also anti-jewish they think that they rejected some people like Marcion or antinomian like in throwing away the Old Testament they also threw away the law of God and said you don't have to obey the commandments to be saved all of the Church Fathers tell us the other the opposite no you do have to hope hey the Ten Commandments and the law of God to be safe not the ritual prescriptions of the mosaic code but the moral content of the Mosaic Covenant is is just a description of the interior life that saves they all kept that right and and you know and we can but we can unpack even more although I won't do so now how they present Christ as the fulfillment of Jewish expectation and Old Testament expectation and and the mystery of the Gospel according to Saint Paul is that we who were once alienated from God and the covenants of Israel we Gentiles are now brought into that covenant through faith in Christ and that's a message that all of the church fathers adhere to and Talt Christie thank you so much for your call it is called a communion here on EWTN I want to make something very clear to everybody who's listening right now and that is you are always welcome here at EWTN if you would like to come visit us you're always welcome you are always welcome for a retreat at the shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament to come visit to pay your respects whatever you want to do you're always welcome but right now in the month of October the weather is just spectacular here I think the high today is going to be like 65 or 68 something like that it is just awesome so if you're thinking about heading to Alabama for a little getaway a little retreat we would love to see you please come see us and start your Catholic pilgrimage today with EWTN you know it's we're very close actually the shrine is only about an hour away from EWTN so if you're in the area please stop by and say hello here's how you get started call 205 two seven one two nine six six I'll give you that again two oh five two seven one two nine six six or you can go to ewtn.com slash pilgrimage back to the phone now for Renetta in Houston Texas a first-time caller hey Renetta what's on your mind today well I was just wondering if Jesus was the first to rise from the dead I thought the three days that he spent before he went into heaven was taking the souls that had died before him like Moses and Noah and them and bringing them up to heaven so to teach my catechism class but I was thinking if Jesus was the first to rise from the dead why was he seen with Moses and Elijah I said I don't know if it was the Transfiguration can you explain that to me yeah thanks so we have to distinguish a couple of things here christ was not the first person to be revivified there are dead bodies that are revivified before the resurrection of jesus and multiple accounts in the Old Testament of the prophets praying for people who died them coming back to life and of course Christ raised a number of people from the dead in his own ministry right the son of the widow right in Luke chapter 7 Lazarus come forth from the tomb a lot of people rise from the dead or instance of being revivified before Christ but when they're revivified they they come back to an enjoyment of the natural life that is the normal human experience Jesus's resurrection is is fundamentally different from that because when Christ is raised from the dead he's glorified and so his body is is still a body it's still material you can touch it and it has dimension and spatial extension and weight and it can digest fish and bread and other things but it is a different kind of body from the bodies of revivified people and st. Paul describes this really vividly in first Corinthians 15 and he talks about how the resurrection body that is of the likeness of Christ's resurrection body will be as different in kind as as different animal species are are different from one another in flush like he actually says like the flesh of fish and the flesh of birds is different from the flesh of mammals and in the same way the resurrected flesh will be qualitatively different from our current state of human experience Jesus is the first person to enjoy that kind of resurrection now when Christ appears with Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration it is highly unlikely I I'm it's impossible actually that Moses and Elijah are participating in that kind of Resurrection experience and they may not even have had physical bodies as we understand right so there are other instances in the Old Testament where spiritual beings appear to have physical form for the sake of human beings that are witnessing them think about angels appear for example angels don't have bodies so what what when we see an angel we're not really seeing an angel we're seeing a kind of anthropomorphic representation that God permits us to experience so we can interact with an otherwise spiritual being and that's probably what we have going on with Moses and Elijah right that this is not a case of resurrection this is a case of the souls of Moses and Elijah being visible to human being human witnesses under some kind of simulacrum of physical existence and the state of the holy dead in the Old Covenant was that they went to the bosom of Abraham they went to the limbus of the fathers waiting for the resurrection of Jesus and the Ascension of Christ so that they could be admitted into the beatific vision into heaven which they hadn't experienced until Christ's ascension okay and rillette thank you so much for your call it is called a communion here on EWTN let's go to Monica now in Greeley Colorado listening on Catholic radio network a first-time caller hey Monica what's on your mind today I yes hi dr. David Anders I had a question about if I am praying the rosary out loud and I'm asking the Blessed Mother a question and if I see a sign and I'm thinking it it could be the Blessed Mother is Satan able to intervene or when you know that's with me at that point yeah thanks I appreciate the question so if we want to think about what Satan is capable of we can look at what Satan was capable of in the life of the Son of God because the son of God never ceased to live a life of intimate union with the father a life of prayer in fact the teaching of st. Thomas is that Jesus enjoyed the beatific vision in is human soul from the moment of his conception so the closest possible union with God the Father closer than any human person could ever hope to enjoy because we're not the Incarnate son of God the human soul of Christ experienced that and yet even then Satan was able to present really specific temptations to Christ and when Jesus goes into the desert and is tempted by the devil whether by gluttony or by pride or vainglory or or whatever it is that Satan possessed he presents this to Christ even though Christ is in a constant state of the deepest contemplative prayer that we could ever even imagine so there's nothing that would prevent the devil if God allows it from presenting a temptation to you even though you're praying the rosary now um let's say the devil presents a temptation to you while you're praying the rosary what do you do about it oh you just reject you that's all I'm not gonna do that temptation I'm not going there right and and similarly you know if I if I have what seems to be some kind of interior or exterior vision or locution or audible sound or whatnot that comes to me when I'm in the state of prayer st. John says don't believe every spirit but test every spirit and holes to what is good and my advice is never act never ever ever act on what you take to be a private revelation without submitting that revelation to the judgement of a spiritual director so if you think that the Blessed Virgin Mary has appeared to you and told you to do something but you're like is this the Blessed Virgin Mary this is the devil that's pretty big if it is best way to handle that is submit it to the authority of the church take that to your confessor to your spiritual director and say what do i what do I do with this right what do I do with this and don't ever ever ever make a decision to act on some Ontario locution like that especially if you're ambiguous about it without without the counsel of a spiritual director appreciate your call Monica here is Dennis now in Centralia Illinois also listening on Sirius XM 130 Dennis what's on your mind today right there enjoy your program thank you and a question about hel-hello to me is a perplexing thing to think about because number one our concept that held now is that the place of torture a terrible place where no one no soul ever wants to be my question is if God loves us how he could he send us to a place where we are tortured how there's torture and gods placement at the end of time melt together yeah thanks I understand the question and I will say right off the bat that hell is a mystery hell is a mystery there are many mysteries and Christian faith dogmas of the church that escape our intellect or escape our rational understanding Trinity is a mystery transubstantiation is a mystery the two nature's of Christ are a mystery for that matter heaven is a mystery the beatific vision is a mystery how on earth could God justly admit me to to an immediate intuitive experience of the divine essence that's everlasting and satisfies infinitely satisfies the infinite immensity of of the human will it's just beyond my rational capacity to grasp how I could how I could receive such a benefit I mean nothing I do is proportionate to that kind of benefit doesn't make any sense to me I sure am glad that's a possibility I don't understand it all right in hell's a mystery so the best we can do is to propose analogies to try to make it a little bit less mysterious um here's one so every day in our experience we encounter people maybe even on our own selves the situation of someone who knows what the right thing to do is moreover not only didn't know what the right thing to do is they know that doing the right thing is the only way for me to be happy there is some virtue some some some goodness some change of life that I need to make if I make this I will be blessed and if I don't I'll be wretched and some days I'm like yeah I choose wretched everyone of us has done that every single one of us has done that that's that's what you call sin mm-hmm we really and with our eyes wide open fully conscious sometimes we even know it's grave if I go this route I'm gonna be wretched if I don't I'll be blessed yeah I choose wretched if you can conceptualize that in your experience now you just extend that and you've got hell hell is the state of getting what we want when what we want is something other than God yikes Dennis thank you so much for your call Stephanie and Canada in Edmonton we only have about 30 seconds what's your question real quick Stephanie yes thank you for taking my call what is the significance of historically the church not the church before church times I guess the significance of moving from an oral culture into a written culture what is the significance of moving from an oral to a written culture I don't know that I can do this in five seconds but it would be the mode of the transmission of divine revelation when you have a predominantly oral culture the mode of transmission would be oral and when we have written documents were able to commit some of those things to writing and preserve them and and and thus the form of Christian worship can change a little bit and the and the way we hand it down okay Stephanie there you go we'll probably give you more time for that if you want to call back on a future show received a whole bunch of texts and people checking in via Facebook and YouTube that we could not get to but our producer Charles has captured those so we'll try to get those on a future program I'm looking forward to answering Diana's questions about denominations in heaven we'll get to that fun you better believe it dr. David Andrews thank you sir thanks Tom we do the program Monday through Friday 2:00 p.m. Eastern with an encore at 11:00 p.m. Eastern and a best of show on Sunday at 2:00 p.m. Eastern on behalf of Charl Ryan and Jeff I'm Tom price along with dr. David Andrews you have a great day see you tomorrow here on call to communion god bless hello friends this is father Weidman Ezio's I'm here to

Channel: EWTN

Views: 1,937

Rating: 4.7777777 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: xs08I16afgU

Length: 54min 12sec (3252 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 22 2019