Called to Communion with Doctor David Anders - April 28, 2021

it's the strongest reading since before the pandemic hit for more news with a catholic perspective visit ewtnnews.com 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 1-833-288 ewtn i don't understand why i have to earn salvation why do i need to 1-833-288-3986 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 hey everybody welcome again to call to communion here on ewtn you may have heard about this program maybe you've been listening for a while but if not this is a program on catholic radio for non-catholics the voice you just heard at the beginning there what's stopping you from becoming a catholic that's kind of the marching orders of this program if you would like to talk to us about what is stopping you from becoming a catholic maybe something happened to you years ago maybe you've never been a catholic but you're examining it now let's chat here's our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 if you're listening to us outside of north america please dial the u.s country code and then 205-271-2985 you can also text the letters ewtn to 5500 wait for our response and then text us your first name and your brief question message and data rates may apply for some folks anyway we're also going to get to some emails and you can do that by sending us an email ctc at ewtn.com is the address ctc ewtn.com all right charles berry is our producer ryan penny our phone screener jeff burson is on social media we're also streaming right now on facebook and youtube live as we speak so if you want to ask a question uh there listening there well look for the comments section that's where you want to put your question to us and jeff will shoot that to us here in studio one i'm tom price along with dr david anders tom price how are you today very well how are you my friend uh you know i'm doing decent i'm glad to hear that we're going to lead off here and it kind of made me smile today because it seems like every show that we do there's something in there about purgatory so we need to fulfill our daily uh allotment our daily quota you know minimum daily requirement of of uh purgatory questions so we're going to lead off with this question from lori b in janesville california who says hi dr anders i'm curious to know why the orthodox who are apostolic in their tradition have not developed the idea of purgatory as has the western church okay thanks so let's let's really clarify this question the orthodox absolutely have a doctrine of an intermediate state oh okay okay they also have the view that the church should pray for the dead okay so they recognize there's an intermediate state that you don't just die and go straight to heaven or hell and that in that intermediate state you can benefit from the prayers of the faithful so far so good um if you've got that much i'd say like we're we're 99 there you're on the green yeah we're i mean that is so close now um the oddly and orthodox themselves are not of one mind on whether the following should be considered a dogma of their faith but it is a commonly held opinion among many orthodox theologians that after death the soul passes through what are called toll houses the toll houses of the dead catholic church has no such doctrine and uh and that they are exposed to certain temptations at these toll houses of the dead by demons and that the prayers of the faithful can help them uh negotiate those trials if you will on their way to to heaven um now uh that's not the faith of the catholic church but it does suggest that at least in the sort of the the collective orthodox imagination that there's some sort of progressive detachment from sin that has to be realized after death and this this sort of fanciful legendary notion of the toll house is the occasion for doing that and the soul needs strengthening so that it can be perfected and purified in a manner of speaking right on its way to heaven so uh they didn't formulate purgatory as a dogma the way the latin church did and and i think there are different reasons for that one of them is that the orthodox have historically resisted the forensic and judicial language that the latin church uses to describe the process of salvation and uh even though they also use this language but it's muted in their tradition um you know language of merit and demerit and satisfaction you can find that language in orthodoxy but they prefer other language and other metaphors other idiom to express the drama of salvation and and so the fact that the latin church formulated its understanding of the intermediate state in precisely that language of satisfaction and merit and so forth in its in the sort of very judicial idiom of latin christianity i think is distasteful to a lot of orthodox and then finally like the orthodox are resistant to any dogma that was formulated you know by a latin council or the pope uh you know and not in an ecumenical council in which the eastern bishops themselves were were you know were were active collaborators and participants right so they uh like filioque would be emblematic of this right uh while there are orthodox theologians that dispute the felio koi claws in the creed there are others that accept it theologically but just take offense at the fact that the pope would promulgate it on his own authority and something like that also goes on with the doctrine of purgatory so you know i i don't think this is a this is needs to be a make or break issue for orthodox catholic unity i think there's enough commonality um in in our understanding of the intermediate state and the afterlife and the church's administration on behalf of the dead that you know we get a lot of common ground all right very good thank you uh so much for your question lori i must say though if if there's a connection between uh this uh toll house concept and toll house cookies i'm now i might be in for that uh yeah i somehow don't think that they're no imagining unless you imagine like uh uh what the pillsbury doughboy coming after you in the afterlife okay one more question here about taking us to break from carol years ago as a protestant i heard something i believe to this day the phrase morality affects theology i still believe that do you of course morality affects everything how can it not yeah so there's a there's a social psychologist named jonathan height who has a book called the righteous mind analyzing the dynamic of religious and political disagreement in society and he argues and attempts to document with some empirical science a thesis that i find very compelling namely that most most moral theories are just an attempt at post-hoc rationalization of prejudice and passion wow in other words like you know there's between intellectuals and everybody else's intellectuals use big words to try to get what they want [Laughter] like that very good carol hope that's helpful for you in a moment we're going to go to greg in amherst new hampshire also kelly in fort worth and there's a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn for call to communion stay with us we need to pray because god says to pray we don't need to pray to change god's mind we pray because that is our big connection to the almighty do we need it like we need air like we need water yep because if in fact god is the ultimate reality more reality than air and water then we do need to pray as much as we need to breathe [Music] my wife and i are former protestants who are considering converting to the catholic church and we wanted to ask you about what the catholic view of purgatory would these i have a religious teacher who tells us women should be priests how long do you have to be in that school mother angelica answering the call sunday 2 and 8 p.m eastern exclusively on ewtn radio [Music] check out ewtn's official youtube channel just follow the link on our home page at ewtn.com or go to youtube.com ewtn watch ewtn's live shows or today's homily from the daily mass click the upload button to see our most recent clips you can also find all of ewtn youtube content by clicking the playlist button it's all on the official ewtn youtube channel at youtube.com ewtn [Music] it's called a communion on this wednesday afternoon here on ewtn our phone number eight three three two eight eight ewtn that's eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six you know a journalism i think is kind of taking it on the chin these days but there is a phrase called redemptive catholic journalism now is this a play on words is this an oxymoron is this a contradiction uh in it in and of itself i don't think so the folks at ewtn news help advance the gospel and teachings of the church every day through redemptive catholic journalism once you've looked at the register once you've watched ewtn news in depth or the catholic sphere or any of the other great programs we present on radio or television i think you'll understand what i'm talking about and right now you can get our trusted catholic news in your email inbox how about that visit ewtn.com and click on subscribe by the way when you do and i just checked that out during the break when you uh do that when you go to ewtn.com and click on subscribe you'll come up with a dozen different things that you can subscribe to whether it's the world over or the register all sorts of things you can subscribe to uh to hit your email inbox it is a wonderful feature provided for us by here at ewtn if you're ready now let's go to the phones at 833 288 ewtn we begin with kelly kelly is in fort worth listening to us via podcasting a first-time listener hello there kelly what's on your mind today hi thanks for taking my call you're me okay yeah yeah go right ahead good um i have two family members who have really stepped away from the faith um my husband i've been married to you for almost 30 years he went through rcia before we were married and he had been an extremely faithful catholic very involved in the church and ministries and had decided just in the past year or more to really back away from the faith because all the corruption that has happened and then my daughter i'm sorry my son um has decided you know that the catholic faith is not for her in college and has really backed away from the faith and has told me mom i don't need to go to church to have a relationship with god and didn't even come home for easter because he knew he'd be going to mass and he didn't want to be faced with disappointment from us or um having to have to go to math he said he didn't want to so he didn't even come for easter from college um and i'm just wondering i have heartbreak on both sides from my husband and my son and i'm still going to mass i'm still living my faith yeah thank you kelly i appreciate the call and uh i'm sympathetic uh i know how painful this can be i really do um and my heart goes out to you um so there's uh there's kind of a good side to this and a bad side to this uh the good side has to do with your own spirituality right now none of us want suffering none of us want to be alienated in any way from those we love the most uh there's hardly any worse suffering you know when the psalmist laments in psalm 88 that his life is not going well one of his complaints against god one of his principal complaints is you've taken away my every friend you've taken everybody away from me and uh and like i'm not feeling all that close to you right now either i mean this is where i am right now god that's what so go read it psalm 88. and and many of us go through this in the life of faith and it's extremely painful and none of us would want it um the good side is that this is jesus's experience and you as a faithful catholic are called above all things to bear christ's wounds and his sufferings and his cross and that means that even as jesus was alienated from those closest to him because of his fidelity to the father those closest to him abandoned him and and repudiated him denied him publicly and the pain of that rejection he felt more deeply than any human person and so when we are alienated from those we love the most because of or in our practice of the faith we learn to say with jesus not my will but thine be done lord i don't know why this is happening i don't want this suffering this is bad stuff take it away from me but not my will but thing be done and and as as you come to cope with your own experience of loss here um it is a it's a profound opportunity to greatly deepen your relationship with god um and and ultimately that's the way you're gonna be the best witness to your husband and to your child you know if if your response to this is is anger and you know you you you try to reason them back into the faith or manipulate them back into the faith and i'm not saying you would do that but somebody would you know argue with them about it um you're likely to build resistance in them you know they'll double down they'll come up with reasons yeah right and uh and if you put as you push on them they're going to push back twice as hard um but as you say you know i love god i'm going to church i'm going to pray for you all uh and and you you really just lean into jesus in this moment of pain um you you are going to be living the truth that we all say we believe which is that this whole thing is in god's hands like we say that we don't we don't want it to be true like i want to do something i've got loved ones that i've got issues with and golly if they would just do what i said yeah you know but i don't have that power and i've got to put it in god's hands that is the hardest thing in the world to do but it is it is the everything and the only thing that we put it in god's hands and we say it is good i am grateful god is good he's in control he's got this i don't have to and i know how painful that is but it was painful for jesus too all right um now um you know with respect to your husband in terms of his reasons these aren't the reasons i don't think they're the reasons i really don't i think because because like you have 10 catholics in a room every one of them learns about the same corrupt bishop one of them walks out of the room did the others not here they heard why did the nine stay right there's something else pastorally or spiritually going on in his life that has made this a particularly neurologic point for him right it doesn't have to be you know look none of us want to have bad bishops none of us want to have bad priests now personally i've been blessed with some really good bishops from some really good priests but up you know i've known some humdingers too right but you just don't become catholic because you think that father so-and-so is a great guy he may or may not be a great god but if that's why if that's what motivates you to be catholic you're becoming catholic for the wrong reason i don't become catholic because i'm priest i become catholic because of jesus christ you know augustine of hippo who you know is one of my favorite guys on all the planet wrote a book on called on the teacher dave mcgistro and it's about it's about learning and pedagogy and education and theory of knowledge but he says someplace in demogistra he says who would be so foolish as to send their child to school to learn what the teacher thinks i don't send my kid to learn what the teacher thinks i go to learn i go so my kid learns how to think yeah right i don't send my child to church to learn what the priest thinks i send my child to church to learn how the church thinks i don't send my child to church so that he can necessarily absorb that priest's holiness maybe but maybe not but so that he can be holy right and uh and so there's something else going on that the pastoral outreach of the church has failed to reach him for some reason and uh and and again you know grace in your own life is the best antidote to that kelly i'm going to point this out since uh our screener pointed out that you're a first-time listener so you may not be aware of this uh both dr anders and myself were both converts and david came into the church in 2002 and there was some horrible stuff going on in the church in that era as well as the more recent era oh and i came in at the height of the media outrage about you know what was going on in boston in particular what a mess and uh but see i'm a i'm a medievalist by training i came to the church through mine through my reading of church history and my response was i'm not surprised when i find corruption in the church i'm surprised by holiness right like corruption is we've had corruption from day one and it's endemic to the human condition i'm not surprised when people are people i'm surprised when they're saints there you go kelly hope that's helpful for you and thank you so much for your call we will certainly keep you and your family in our prayers that opens up a line for you right now in fact we have three of them open right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 call to communion on this wednesday afternoon here on ewtn greg is listening in amherst new hampshire on youtube a first-time caller hey greg what's on your mind today hey dave and tom it's so nice to see you guys sitting across from one another again um i'd like to get your thought uh dr andrews real quick on regarding adam and eve when i sometimes have a discourse with different protestants or people who take the bible literally what's the best way to have a discourse and explain to them a lot of times that was perhaps they were real individuals sometimes they may have been somebody who or some a way of using a story to get a point across i wanted to get your take on that real quick if you would please yeah thanks so this is a great question and and if you would allow me to broaden it a little bit beyond adam and eve to the larger question how do we as catholics read the old testament the whole thing like not just out of me but the whole thing and uh and the best way to to get at that is to like actually look at how the church reads the bible like like look at some historical examples um here's one go read gregory of nissa saint gregory of nissa the life of moses is a popular spiritual text you find paperback copies of it for a couple bucks it's easy to get a hold of you might even be able to find it online and the reason i recommend this book in particular is because when you read gregory of nessa's life of moses you're scratching your head going how did he get that out of the life of moses you know um and his use of allegorical interpretation is so free and so creative but also illuminating that you recognize okay all right this is like five million miles away from fundamentalism i mean it's profoundly respectful of the text yes it's a sacred text but he is just not reading this as some sort of straightforward historical narrative that's giving me like just just factual chronicle of ancient history or biology or geology or anything like that the issues that he's raising the questions he's raising the answers he's he's raising are are completely different saint augustine when augustine reads the book of genesis and you find this in book 13 of the confessions he sees the creation narratives as an allegory for god's creation of the church and it's another example of what i'm talking about like when he's engaging this book like the questions he's putting to the text they are not the questions that a modern fundamentalist who's trying to engage darwinism puts to the text it's a completely different set of interests and origin of alexandria who's really kind of the the main puba of allegorical exegesis writes a book called on a peri-archon on first principles and what i like about in the in the front matter he says here is the catholic faith you believe in god you gotta believe in the trinity i believe in christ you gotta believe in the church and you gotta believe in allegorical exegesis like he makes it he almost packs it into the apostles creed almost he makes it an article of faith it's this is what's constitutive of being a catholic approaching the old testament this way now some modern resources a really helpful book by matthew ramage called the dark passages of the old testament and pope benedict uh it's a verbum domini on the word of the lord it's a post-another exhortation he wrote on using the bible in the catholic church all of these are going to give you a way of looking at the old testament that you're not familiar with because we don't talk about it so much in modern catholicism but it is actually part of the tradition it's integral to the tradition it's taught in the catechism catechism of the catholic church says you cannot dispense with allegory moral interpretation anagogical interpretation what is anagogical anagogical is when we read the bible in such a manner that saint paul says don't have your eyes set on things of earth but the things of heaven where christ is seated at the right hand of god that's anagogical when engaging the text elevates me it lifts me up and points my eyes towards heaven and i and i begin with the help of grace to kind of transcend myself i have a spiritual awakening it evokes in something in me that's transformative right that's enagical um and uh these are the ways that catholics engage the old testament so when i look to the story of adam and eve first and foremost i'm not concerned with geology or anthropology i'm concerned with anagogy and allegory and morality and i'm and i'm looking at okay what's what kind of temptation are they exposed to what's the what's the moral fault here what's the consequence how is that reproduced in my own life right what are the pitfalls to be avoided say in the quest for knowledge for experiential knowledge of evil which is what adam and eve are seeking right every teenager knows this temptation it's not enough for my parents to tell me that's bad or wrong or dangerous i have to taste it we all recapitulate this experience every day to our devastation just like adam and eve these are the kinds of concerns i'm bringing to the sacred text not what i would learn in an anthropology textbook when i'm looking at a bunch of skulls of you know early hominids or something um and uh and so they're just reading the bible the wrong way now pope pius xii actually wrote an encyclical on this question of darwinism and science and geology and anthropology and how it interacts with our understanding of adam and eve and interestingly he says genesis isn't the issue it's it's second corinthians that the issue first corinthians is the issue it's the doctrine of christ as the second atom if there's a second atom there has to be a first one now how you work that out you know theologically in concert with the sciences is something that i've just run out of time to talk about hey greg thanks so much for your call appreciate hearing from you in amherst in a moment we'll talk with pat in st louis aaron and wheeling there's a line with your name on it right now at ewtn's call to communion 833 288 ewtn call now [Music] the words of blessed carlos ocoutis when we face the sun we get a tan but when we stand before jesus in the eucharist we become saints by standing before the eucharistic christ we become holy 60 on 10 with monsignor charles pope the sixth commandment you shall not commit adultery this commandment is wide-ranging in its implications it forbids us not only from committing the very act of adultery but also other sexual sins such as fornication or premarital sex watching pornography and speaking lewdly likewise homosexual acts and acts of masturbation are also forbidden us and the lord himself even joins us to a purity of mind that we should not freely entertain lustful thoughts so it's wide ranging is challenging but it's in service of the great sacredness of human life which comes from sexual activity so we thank god for this great gift of sexuality and we ask for his grace to live it with great reverence the sixth commandment you shall not commit adultery for more about the ten commandments visit ewtnrc.com i would always hear from different people at non-catholic churches that catholics were going to hell or that they really didn't know who the lord was the catholic church is not all what people say it is i mean it's completely different there's so many stereotypes it's very possible to know the lord and it's very possible to have a relationship with god in the catholic church i believe i was born into the catholic church and that's where i belong if you've been away from the catholic church visit catholicscomehome.org hi this is scikil i got questions about divorce or the pro-life position later today on catholic ants who's live rose sweet and stephanie gray connors catholic answers live 6 p.m eastern on ewtn radio now back to call of the communion with dr david anderson it's called a communion here on ewtn our phone number eight three three two eight eight ewtn what's uh what's stopping you from becoming a catholic let's talk about it on call to communion eight three three two eight eight three eight we're going to get to aaron and wheeling in just a moment first a question from albert watching us on youtube today this is actually a question regarding a document of vatican ii called nostra etate yes and albert says in view of this document is it correct to maintain that if a catholic becomes let's say a buddhist and therefore rejects jesus christ is he not putting his salvation at risk well yeah he's putting a salvation at risk sure um so what the church teaches not only nostra tauto but in lumen gentium is that anyone who knows that the church was instituted by christ as the sign and instrument of the salvation of the world and as god's appointed means for sanctification and who willingly rejects that well look look at look at it this way you're disobeying your conscience and you know luther martin luther himself the protestant said to disobey conscience is neither right nor safe well that's true how can you possibly think you're living right if you disobey your own conscience yeah you know i had to face this decision myself like when i became convinced of the truth of the catholic faith i announced to the people around me hey i think i want to become catholic and that went over like a lead balloon and i thought huh maybe i won't maybe i won't here was the problem i went back to the presbyterian church and i sat there and didn't believe any of it i sat there in the pew utterly spiritually inert because i had come to catholic faith and refused to join the church and it left me a spiritual orphan with nowhere to go for grace for faith for hope and i sat there in a kind of quiet despair basically to satisfy my family and and it's it made me spiritually impotent it it sapped me of all spiritual initiative and finally my wife herself who did not want me to be catholic looked at me one day and she said like you lump you're good for nothing you might as well go join that terrible catholic church because until you do you're just going to be this miserable sop wow and uh and so that's that was what kicks me out the door to go see father muller you know that's something and uh and i was like well thanks yeah you know i appreciate that now eventually she decided hey there's something to that miserable stop after all right i'm going to go join too and she came and followed me but there was a period there where you know it left me impotent spiritually speaking and uh and so if that's your situation like if you know the church is true and you walk away from it well i mean what are you doing okay now there's another situation most of the people who walk away from the catholic church do so because they say their spiritual needs weren't being met now that's code language for me and what it means is i don't know how to be catholic i don't know how to make this stuff work for me i'm not i'm not figuring out how to make catholic life intelligible and meaningful to myself and that res that represents a pastoral failure on the part of the church it could be a moral failure on the heart of the individual too but it could very well be a pastoral failure on the part of the church but i'm fortunately i don't have the job of judging that question right so there might be someone who walks away because they just flat out want to sin like i am just tired of being accountable to the church for my moral activity i just want to go do evil dog on it yeah that that happens okay but there's also this the case of someone who who has a good will who wants to do the right thing who wants to grow in holiness and they're not knowledge and love of god or of something and and doesn't know how can't make sense of the catholic faith because they've never been taught and is lured away by something flashy and tempting and uh god not me will be the judge of that soul sure all right well thank you so much uh for that great question there albert and before we go to the phones i just got to put in this little ps there was a an employee here at ewtn um now retired great guy uh but back in the day he was a methodist minister i know that guy and great guy and he started coming to the network to you know go to the gift shop and talk to people here and at one point he he said well i i think i recognize the the truth of the catholic faith so so when i retire from being this methodist minister then i guess i'll become a catholic and whoever he was talking to said think about what you just said if this is what you believe to be true how can you live this double life you know you're almost like a secret agent you're a double agent and that kind of motivated him and he actually left off left that very lucrative position as a methodist minister and became a catholic and eventually actually became an employee here at the network do you know that was the first person from ewtn i ever spoke to no kidding i i was living in birmingham yeah and i needed to meet some people who had been protestant that became catholic and i didn't know how to meet those people and i called up the coming home network marcus grodi in ohio i said i'm in birmingham alabama and i need to meet ex-protestants who have become catholic do you know any and they were like you know it's pretty funny and they said you live in birmingham i said yes they said have you ever heard of ewtn i said never heard of it wow i lived five miles away amazing and they said well there's this little place in your backyard go out there and this guy will meet you and that was my first trip to uw-town fantastic call to communion here on ewtn 833 288 ewtn is our phone number 833-288-3986 what's stopping you from becoming a catholic let's go to aaron now in wheeling west virginia listening on youtube a first time caller hey aaron what's on your mind today hi thanks for taking my call um i'm i've been in the process of joining the catholic church for a couple months now um i met with the priest and at first he seemed like a little standoffish like asking me why i wouldn't just go and look to join maybe like an easier to join like protestant church but he ended up getting me in contact with one of the church workers to meet up and talk about things and we met up a couple times the guy gave me his phone number he's like hey text me we'll set up times to meet once or twice a week and we'll keep talking about these things and he said you know if you want to become a catholic you will become a catholic and he told me no i need to start going to math so i've gone to a few of those and now it's like i'm not getting any return text so basically my question is i don't know what what should i do next because it's getting frustrating yes i'm frustrated listening to you yeah really i'm very frustrated so i i know this story unfortunately and my heart goes out to you so simplest piece of advice i can get you change parishes change parishes yeah all right um you know it is uh personal opinion personal opinion a priest should not try to set up obstacles to you becoming catholic okay um and uh what his answer it really upsets me well why would why would you want to join this church why don't you go join another one like i'm sorry that's not the attitude a catholic priest ought to have nope we've got the fullness of the truth and the fullness of the means of grace and any catholic priest who became a priest supposedly believes that and has committed his life to preaching that truth to preaching the gospel of jesus christ in the catholic church and administering the sacraments because it's true because this is the way to god because this is the way to holiness and uh and that sort of lackadaisical half-hearted response like i wonder about like does he is he committed to the faith that he's that he's sworn to to present right and um and so my please find another parish there's a there's at least three in wheeling that we know of yeah absolutely and um and uh and parishes can have different parish cultures you know while the church is one catholic and holy uh you know catholics can be anything but you know and and and it's it's okay to find a parish that has a parish culture that's uh maybe more responsive to your pastoral needs so um now so yeah if you were if you're absolutely stuck and there are people in some communities where there's just one catholic church in town and that's it and they don't have any options well you know then god bless you all right god will reward your perseverance yeah but if you've got an option change parishes yeah absolutely aaron thank you so much for your call um eventually he's probably going to get turned on to the rcia program uh for adults who wish to convert to to look to their yeah and that's what he should have been put in immediately yeah and the fact that he wasn't makes me question if that parish is even hosting an rca class i don't know you know so in my own passage to the catholic faith i i knocked on several doors on the way in and i got like tepid response antagonistic response enthusiastic response and uh you know i had priests that were like eh eh and then there was martin muller who said how about thursday yeah pretty awesome come on in yeah aaron thank you so much again for your call call to communion here on ewtn we have a line open for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 pat is listening in st louis on covenant radio our longtime partner there hello pat what's on your mind today yes thank you for taking my call um okay so sometimes like i will struggle with uh like you know that you're gonna have to do some suffering say for an example you know like you you've got an upset stomach and you know you're going to get sick from your stomach and you don't want that and you pray to god you know can you take this away from me so is that really sinful or if you say you know god if it i want i don't want this but if it's your will i still don't want it but anyway so you know am i being sinful a wimp or what yes thank you so much i really appreciate the question so uh you're not sinful and both jesus and saint paul did exactly what you're talking about christ in the garden of gethsemane was in a bad way and he said lord take this cup from me but not my will but thine be done so jesus asked for god to take the suffering away yeah saint paul tells us in second corinthians chapter 12 that he experienced what he calls a thorn in the flesh we don't know what that thorn was we don't know if it was physical suffering emotional suffering spiritual suffering relational suffering we don't know but he had some major trauma that was deeply deeply painful to him and he asked god three times to remove that cross from his life and he said the word of the lord to him was my grace is sufficient for you now i just mentioned my pastor martin muller he has a beautiful saying i love it he says god has three answers three possible answers to any prayer yes not yet and i have a better plan that's beautiful it is lay all of your requests before god whatever they may be understanding that god may answer yes not yet or i have a better plan not my will but thine be done o lord yeah pat you are clearly in good company thank you so much for your call today here on ewtn's called communion which is also the longtime home of our friend john ed williams you can join her for women of grace tomorrow morning at 11 a.m eastern she embraces the essence of feminine spirituality as she informs instructs and inspires listeners with the truth of the catholic faith that is not just words on paper that is the truth john ed lives it every day it's a great program women of grace tomorrow morning at 11 a.m eastern exclusively on ewtn radio call to communion in progress here on this wednesday afternoon our phone number 833-288-ewtn that's six 833-288-3986 question here from jake in arvada colorado who says you're gonna love the simplicity of this and it's simple and complex at the same time what is the human heart excuse me what is the human heart and how do we love god with all of it okay yeah thanks so in scripture uses the heart it uses it as a metaphor obviously yeah for the the deepest inclinations of the human person okay that's what it means and so when we talk about loving god with your whole heart we're talking about adhering to god uh entirely making god the most important thing to us and you know uh uh best analogy i can think of when i was 13 years old i was absolutely just completely gaga for this uh a hard rock band and um should i tell you which one it was sure i was nuts for van halen at age 13. i wanted to grow up and be eddie van halen it didn't turn out okay and uh they came through birmingham in 1984 on the 1984 tour and i wanted to see van halen basically more than i wanted to live and uh and my folks were like nope you're not going well i kept at them and bugged the stew out of them like under pain of torture right i was like they were like you asked one more time you know you're in big trouble and i was like okay can i go no and i'll take the consequences i'm not letting up i eventually was able to finagle a way of going okay and but it was just like i don't care what happens i don't care what i suffer i don't care who i offend like i am going to go see that concert if it kills me right i kind of think that that's that's having one mind you know that's like my whole heart now i directed it at the wrong object right like van halen was not what i needed to direct my attention to but the saints are like that about holiness the way i was about the van halen concert they say i'm gonna have holiness i'm gonna have god if it kills me if the world hates me if i lose everything i will not let go of jesus christ that's your whole heart okay appreciate that and thank you so much for your question call to communion here on ewtn let's go to william now right here in birmingham listening on the great guadalupe radio a first time caller hello william what's on your mind today greetings dr anders i really appreciate the call um i my question is on marion devotion the roots of marian devotion and the in the early church forward i'm a convert from methodism uh i you know with king henry and the anglicans i'm one third catholic so anyway i come from a long line father brothers sisters methodist missionaries the hardest thing i had through the rcia was the matter of marion devotion and i would really appreciate if you could answer uh that question as to the roots of marriage i got you okay so we need to distinguish two things one of them is veneration towards the saints in general and then veneration towards the blessed virgin mary and i find it for protestants like i used to be most helpful i understand mary better if i understand the first question better and then i get a context so if within the bible itself there's ample evidence that the the saints participate in god uh to a imminent degree and by their participation they are particularly effective mediators way back in the book of genesis chapter 18 abraham challenges god and says will you wipe away the righteous with the wicked and god says no for the sake of the righteous i'll spare the wicked like the holiness of a few will count against the wickedness of the many the last chapter of the book of job god says to job's companions you guys are in big trouble i don't like how you were talking ask my servant job to pray for you and i'll listen to him exodus what is it 32 god says i'm gonna wipe out israel moses says abraham i mean it says god don't forget your promise to abraham isaac and jacob god says okay for your sake and for theirs i'll spare everybody else second kings chapter 13 the bones of a dead man touch the relics of elisha the prophet and come back to life even the bodies of the zarakim the holy ones of the old testament are so imbued with the presence of god that they are effective for miracles in the life of the of the church right so this idea that the holiness of the few can can count for both by intercession and and by mere proximity count for the whole collective of the people of god right it's a biblical idea it carries over into the new testament saint paul says in colossians chapter 1 i fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of christ for the sake of his body the church that same principle is inevitable in that statement revelation chapter 5 the saints in heaven have the job of offering our prayers to god that's what the text says the angels do the same thing revelation 8 3 tobit chapter 12 archangel raphael says that his job is ministering our prayers before the throne of god so this this idea that the communion of saints that we share in one another's prayers and merits and that the holiest among us can intercede on behalf of the rest of us that's a very biblical idea saint james says the prayer of a righteous man availeth much you are the guys not so much but the prayer of a righteous man availeth much and it continues after death therefore in christian antiquity from the beginning the church was venerating the relics of the martyrs and seeking their intercession it goes back to the earliest strata of christian history in the second century one of the earliest martyrology in the church is that of saint polycarp of smyrna and the text tells us that when he was martyred the church gathered up his bones like so many treasures to keep them right the earliest physical structures of the church the actual church buildings were built on the tombs of the martyrs the veneration of the martyrs came first the shrines to the martyrs were the first sort of public expression of christian worship and faith saint jerome in the late fourth century writes a text entitled against vigilantes in which he poses the question does the bishop of rome do wrong when he offers the holy sacrifice of the mass over the bones of the martyrs peter and paul but not the bishop of rome only but all the bishops throughout the world um peter brown and ramsay mcmullen two historians of ancient christianity both testify you can track the progress of christianity in the ancient world by examining the advance in the cult of relics the two things are co-extensive you cannot separate ancient christianity from the veneration of saints and their relics like it is it is christian faith that we believe in the communion of saints that is the gospel it's not it's not it's not an adjunct to the gospel it's not an add-on it's integral to the gospel that we are saved in and through and by a community of saintly intercession baked in right that's baked in if you that that's what we are saved by all right in part and uh there was more dispute in antiquity over the divinity of jesus uh or his humanity for that matter than there was over the intercession of saints it is catholic with a big sea and a small sea in the fullest sense of the word now add in the blessed virgin what is the ancient christian belief about mary the the second century fathers of the church earliest theologians in church history unanimously declared mary is the second eve that's her job description that's who she is she's not just a conduit she's the second eve eve wasn't just a conduit she was an agent i won't mary said i will so the book of revelation associates her with eve whereas we have the first eve who falls to the serpent's wiles the second eve defeats the serpent in revelation chapter 12 and becomes the mother of all those who believe in jesus that's what the text says right so not only is she one of the saints who is holy and can pray for us but she does so with a particularly imminent role namely being the second eve and the mother of god so if it's okay for me to pray to saint polycarp if it's okay for me to pray to saint james if it's okay for me to pray to saint paul how much better is it for me to pray to the mother of god and all that you know all the holiness is packed into all those other marian dogmas so uh the earliest written marian prayer ex-stant not necessarily the earliest mary in prayer but they're always one that textually that we actually have is called the sub tomb and we have manuscript copies of this prayer from the third century in egypt so very early in the tradition and particularly in the context of persecution the persecution of roman emperor dishas around 250 wiped out a lot of of christians saint cyprian of carthage died in that persecution origen died as a result of that persecution and the egyptian church recorded their their invocation of the blessed virgin under your protection we fly o holy mother of god so then in the 5th century at the council of ephesus 4 30 when nestorius had said you know um mary's all right she's okay but we ought not to call her mother of god the whole church rose up in in in vehement protest enchanted mother of god mother of god mother of god let's have an ecumenical counsel yeah and they've declared that a dogma of the faith now in the middle ages of the latin church a lot of what you experience today is marian devotion emerged in a culture of courtly love so the kind of troubadour love poetry of the high middle ages and the culture of sort of courtly uh verbiage flows into the language of mary and devotion with that sort of you know flowery kind of business and you know the queen of heaven prayers and and all that the rosary this is a medieval development that shows the the the signs of medieval courtly culture those things are accidental meaning like they're not essential to the l to to mary and devotion you can certainly pray them in their pious and and and hallowed prayers but the core conviction is the saints pray for us their prayers are efficacious and mary is the second eve and the mother of god whose prayers are particularly efficacious it doesn't matter so much that you pray this or that marian devotion the important thing is just have some devotion to the mother of god okay you find the one that works for you just have some devotion to the mother of god william thank you so much for your call we don't have time enough to go to tommy in champaign illinois but let's ask his question when is it okay to switch parishes oh like any time depending on your circumstances yeah anytime there's no yeah you're not you're not just cuz you register at a parish you're not sort of canonically bound to that perish in any way i mean registration isn't even something indicated in the code of canon law it's just a convenience for the local community to keep track of who they need to send letters to yeah you go to whatever bearish you want to there you go tommy thank you so much for your call sorry we couldn't get you on the phone but at least we got your question answered hey dr david anders thank you sir thanks tom don't forget we do the program monday through friday here on ewtn radio excuse me 2 p.m eastern with an encore at 11 p.m eastern and check out the podcast anytime at ewtnradio.net on behalf of dr david andrews i'm tom price we'll see you tomorrow right here on ewtn's call to communion god bless

Channel: EWTN

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Id: r8ZUgjzOrFQ

Length: 54min 10sec (3250 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021