Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders - January 19 2022

tn that's 833-288-3986 this also goes for um people who have never been a catholic it it's okay to be an ex-catholic or a non-catholic or or really any classification there we would also ask you at the same time what is stopping you from becoming a catholic again the phone number 833 288 ewtn if you're listening outside of north america please dial the us 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 and of course you can always send us an email we're going to get to one of those in a moment ctc at ewtn.com is the address ctc at ewtn.com all right charles berry is our producer matt gabinski our phone screener jeff burson handles social media if you would like to ask a question via youtube or facebook live there's another way you can contact the show just put that in the comments box jeff will see it he'll shoot it to us here in the studio and hopefully we'll be able to answer it in today's show if not today's show then hopefully very soon i'm tom price along with dr david anders tom how are you today i'm well how are you i'm doing well thank you you know it's always interesting uh you know as as we're doing this show 2 p.m eastern 1 p.m central we you know to get to the studio you walk past the studio kitchen you walk past people in the break room having lunch the smells are just incredible um yes yes and they're you know they're we have ewtn in english and spanish and we have english and spanish teams yes sometimes the spanish team is in the break room having lunch when i walk through and i always look kind of enviously at what they're eating it just seems so much better than what you know sometimes what the english-speaking guys are eating oh well but i can't follow the conversations yeah oh well okay but i definitely follow the cuisine well speaking of uh foreign lands we're going to lead off here with an email from jared in singapore jared says good day david and tom i was wondering does everyone get a guardian angel or is it just christians or catholics thanks jared in singapore yeah thanks appreciate the question everybody does everybody does there were some of the church fathers who speculated that perhaps it was only the baptized but the but the dominant opinion in the tradition is that everyone gets a guardian angel all right there you go jared thanks for listening to us in singapore very cool now we're going to uh nova scotia and this question from john why does the catholic church have two creeds namely the nicene creed and the apostles creed actually we've got more than two but i'll we'll we'll go with two stars all right so the origin of creeds were um actually come from the practice of baptism and you remember in mark chapter 16 when jesus says whoever believes and is baptized will be saved uh it's probable that the text is actually referencing current christian practice mark 16 is a late addition to the original text of saint mark and reflects the what the church was actually doing in its sacramental initiation whereby when a person was admitted to baptized admitted to baptism they were required to affirm the faith that they were professing by their baptism and different local churches evolved different ways of doing that and the formula that were that were presented to baptismal candidates evolved into into these sort of nascent creeds the most important one the one that had the greatest prestige if you will was the baptismal creed that was used in rome because of the holy see and the prominence and the priority preeminence of of the roman city over the universal church and so it that that particular baptismal formula acquired a prestige throughout the entire catholic world but it began in this liturgical practice of affirming the faith as you were becoming catholic in baptism now in the 4th century when there was a major theological controversy that wracked the entire christian world it was the aryan controversy it was a question about the nature of christ's divinity and the fathers of the church in council decided that they needed to propose a statement of catholic belief that would eliminate the possibility of aryanism it'd be impossible for someone to be an aryan and yet affirm this creed you know without holding their fingers crossed behind their back and so they took uh the baptismal creeds the the old roman symbol apostles creed as a kind of base text if you will and then they added in the elaborations that were necessary to maintain the christology the doctrine of christ okay but the context you see of these two creeds was very very different one of them began as a as a baptismal formula uh one of them was adapted to to rule out the possibility of heresy and of course it was later incorporated into um into the liturgy so creeds and confessions are written for different reasons in in different historical contexts and circumstances and there you know several accounts of the catholic faith that have been composed here there in yonder for various particular reasons okay well we do appreciate that and thanks for checking in from nova scotia and uh one more quick as we're going to break here this is kate watching us on youtube this afternoon in eve in evangelicalism i learned who jesus was and who the holy spirit are but not really who god is presumably hear god the father who and what does the catholic church say god is yes thank you very much i appreciate the question so most importantly god is a trinity so if you if you know something about the identity of jesus and the identity of the holy spirit you also know something about the identity of god okay um now within the blessed trinity we have one god one essence three persons and that's kind of bizarre to us because all the persons that we know are just one concrete particular entity and one person but in god you have you have one nature and three persons and the father is actually the source or the principle of the blessed trinity so we speak about the holy spirit proceeding from the father and the son the son begotten by the father so while they are all co-eternal and all share common essence there is a relation of procession to proceeded or to to procession to that from which it proceeds from principle within the blessed trinity and so the father has that preeminence in the sense of being the principle okay um now that's pretty philosophical we can kind of bring it down to a more affective and relatable language maybe after the break all right sit tight kate we'll continue this conversation in just a moment here on ewtn's call to communion with dr david anders pursue what matters most in 2022 life liberty truth from the capital to the classroom from the pulpit to the pew ewtn's national catholic register delivers in-depth news analysis and commentary through the lens of the catholic faith with so much at stake in our country there's never been a more important time to read the register and with award-winning catholic journalism that goes beyond what you'll find from any secular news service you'll get the real story behind the events that unfold over the course of the year try the register for free today and get it delivered to your home office or parish get six free issues today online at ncregister.com forward slash radio or call 800-421-3230 and mention code radio the national catholic register read faithfully ewtn offers listeners and viewers the daily readings to enable you to accompany the mass of the day our catholic daily readings include the readings of the day along with online videos it's a great resource for all who desire to live a life of faith that is pleasing to our lord visit ewtn.com and click catholicism ewtn the global catholic network [Music] it's called communion with dr david anders on this wednesday afternoon here on ewtn radio our phone number eight three three two eight eight ewtn that's eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six we have a couple of lines open at the moment if you wanna call now uh we can probably get your your call on today's program we'll get back to that question from kate checking in on youtube in just a moment first of all let me tell you about a new book now available from ewtn publishing graceful living meditations to help you grow closer to god day by day john ed williams shares pearls of wisdoms from the saints doctors of the church holy men and women all designed to help you grow closer to god each daily reflection will prompt you to delve deeper into your prayer life and self-examination so explore the timeless wisdom of the church with graceful living meditations to help you grow closer to god day by day it's available right now at ewtnrt by catholic shop ewtnrc.com so before the break we were unpacking a question from kate checking in on youtube this afternoon let me recap that she says in evangelicalism i learned who jesus and the holy spirit are but not who god the father is who and what does the catholic church say god is yeah thank you appreciate the question so i talked about the doctrine of the blessed trinity before the break and that there is there are relations within the godhead of father son and holy spirit now i want to bring that home and make that relatable to the question that you asked in your own spirituality so it's jesus who really reveals to us god's identity as a father he relates to god as a father teaches us to pray to god as a father and because christ is the son he is the eternal son of god he has a filial intimacy with god i mean he is god but he's a field intimacy with the father and he invites us into that intimacy and so you know i know things about my dad my human dad that nobody else knows right and it's delightful to me to have that intimacy that i had with my father before he died and uh and and it is one of my great pleasures to invite other people into my intimate knowledge of my own father yeah and i share about him on the show all the time for that reason well that's what jesus does with us uh you know i never has ever seen god god is invisible and eternal and without a body uh but jesus christ the son of god has made him known has made him manifest and so by coming to know christ and also by coming to participate in christ's own way of knowing by coming to share his intimacy with god the father we get to participate and have that father in heaven who loves us all right well there you go kate thank you so much for your question if you're ready now let's go to the phones at 833 288 ewtn we begin with gordon in southern new hampshire listing on siriusxm channel 130. hello gordon what's on your mind today sir yes dr anders i had called uh several weeks ago my wife and i are presbyterian and we have been listening to your show we've been listening to uh catholic radio and dr scott hahn and we are very close to becoming catholic but this is my big question to you that seems to supervise all the others that could be asking let me tell you why i've listened to one of the hosts on catholic radio who finds his young daughter two and a half years old at the bottom of the swimming pool i jumps in gives her cpr praise to god god please save my daughter's life and i will devote my life to you and he does but as i listen to him tell that story i think about somewhere across the country somewhere across the world some other father or mother is holding their young daughter or son and that young daughter son dies in his arms and in my own life my wife's sister was in a terrible car accident when she was in her 20s she ended up being basically a vegetable lived for over 35 years in a nursing home and i would go visit her and i would see her sitting in this wheelchair amongst the 80 and 90 year old people in these nursing homes and it was just i asked myself every time i went in god what what have you done here and in my own life i'm a 42 year old excuse me i'm a 70 year old but i'm 42 years in dentistry i'm retired now but one of my assistants was a young woman a wonderful young woman but she was a dwarf and her daughter was a dwarf and i would ask her every now and then i say do you believe in god where do you go to church you look at me and she'd say to me why would i believe in god who would do something like this to me and my daughter so that's my question dr anders how do we as christians especially catholics answer the question that people say how can you believe in a god who would do these things to wonderful kind people if he's all loving and all powerful and i don't know how to answer it and i hope you do yeah i do think so that that you of course you put your finger on the biggie of all the apologetical questions that can be put to a believer this is the the biggest the most important and the hardest to answer right so it really is you really put your finger right on the key question i have several things to say about it first of all i can give you a logical answer that is logically airtight i mean it works it solves the problem philosophically but it does not solve the problem existentially so here's the logical answer god allows evil because he intends to bring out of it a greater good now we don't have to necessarily be cognizant of that greater good for god to be justified in allowing evil and in fact often we are not usually we are not aware of what the good god intends in fact is and we may not be aware until the next life sometimes we can perceive it and usually when i'm asked this question on the show i point to a good friend of mine bob lujano who dreamed of being a professional baseball player when he was a kid until he was struck with meningitis and uh his heart stopped he stopped breathing and they revived him took him to the hospital he was about seven eight nine years old i forget exactly how much and uh doctor said the only way we can save his life is to amputate all four limbs and so he you know woke up one morning wanted to be a pro baseball player and he woke up the next morning as a quad amputee and i would never presume to say to somebody like that you know well this has obviously happened to you for some good reason and and you know you need to just shape up and figure that out but bob says of his own life i'm not saying this he's saying it he's forming the judgment that this was a good to me because it afforded me so many opportunities not least of which was to grow in my relationship with god and he's a deeply spiritual man a catholic man today one of my dear friends and author of the book no arms no legs no problem all right and so that's a case of somebody who was able to discern meaning in their own horrific suffering particularly in so far as it united them more closely to god josephine bakita one of my favorite saints a sudanese slave who lived a life of horrific abuse but because of the circumstances of her enslavement actually was exposed not through her uh abusers but through a catholic diplomat that met her exposed to the catholic faith it was later emancipated by this diplomat taken to italy she became a catholic religious and died in great holiness and she said of her own life um that i i um how did she put it she said i am awaited no oh i'm gonna miss the quote it's a beautiful quote but the idea was that she knew that god loved her that she was awaited by that love and so her life even with all its attendant sufferings was good and had she not gone through the trials and tribulations that she had she wouldn't have come into the great good of knowing god and entering into fellowship with him and have living in expectation of his return rewards so she was able to pass the judgment on her own life that it was a good one even though someone else you know christopher hitchens the atheist would never have been able to look at her life and and judge that it was a good one but of course it's not his judgment that matters she's the one that has to live it right you know so there are instances where we can discern this kind of thing but i grant to you that in many cases that's not the case particularly the suffering of children of animals uh of those who lack the gift of faith and we may not be able to assign a reason and so that's why i say that the logical answer solves the problem philosophically but doesn't solve the problem existentially so i think it's very important pastorally in confronting somebody first of all to admit i don't know why this happened to you and i will not presume i mean i can abstractly defend god but i'm not going to in this instance and and there are enough psalms in the psalter of people railing against god uh you know quite virulently to justify that attitude uh psalm 88 i think is it the the um the preeminent example where the psalmist basically says god you've just knocked the stuffing out of us you've taken away everything we care about no friends no family no hope no future no health no money no nothing my one companion is darkness amen you know no no ex just that was it just blank book of ecclesiastes everything is meaningful i'm done i'm out of here check god yeah you know and that sentiment we find it in sacred scripture so it's a it it is a i think we have to wrestle with the fact that that is what human experience is going to be like very often so what can the catholic faith offer us when it doesn't offer us specific explanations of our own particular sufferings well one thing that it can offer us is the companionship of christ who was a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering and so one who draws in intimacy to the person of christ can relate to one who has gone through the worst and most horrific human suffering imaginable and redeemed it um and hopefully we can be christ to those in suffering we can be christ to those in suffering um and uh you know there's a song christ has no body now but yours no eyes no arms you know except yours that was mother teresa's way right that she she wanted to be christ the eyes and ears and hands of jesus to the poor and pope benedict wrote that the act of faith is more than just believing in jesus abstractly it's a participation in his way of seeing so christ sends the church out into the world to accompany the lost and the fallen and the hurting and the suffering it's what we hear echoed all the time in pope francis's admonitions that the church should not be about maintenance but mission go to the margins be with those who are marginalized and those who are hurting and those who are alienated from the church's present ministry and to reach out to them find ways of accompanying them uh and so these are what this is what we have to offer um now you know is that is that necessarily gonna solve your existential problem you know i don't know but it's a way it's a path and it's one that when you see those who have lived it heroically you recognize the transformative power of the gospel and you see something beautiful in it gordon god bless you thank you so so much for your call today we hope that's helpful for you and uh for your wife that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 call to communion with dr david anders on this wednesday afternoon here on ewtn radio let's go now to nancy in seattle checking us out today on youtube nancy what's on your mind today oh yes um hello dr anders and tom price i watch the show every day and i just love your show and um thank you anyway my question is about infant death and um you know i i'm a consecrated religious and uh my devotion to the blessed mother is did we just you still there yeah well we lost you for a second sorry you i lost you at my devotion to the blessed mother please continue oh keep going you're here you're with us oh okay um that um i'm uh i'm in devotion with the blessed mother and my thought was while i was reading and do and have been embracing you know the mother of god as the queen of angels the queen of heaven and her powerful intercession and uh in relation to the the stories of the particular the police officer that um had experienced the death of a child and just the sorrowful loss of infants in so many ways that it just seemed to me that i wanted to ask dr anders if he would feel as i do that perhaps it would be strongly fitting that the mother of god and her powerful intercession would be able to embrace the infants that um have died and ensure them a place in heaven yeah thanks i really appreciate the question so it is the common opinion of theologians today including the pope's recent popes that unbaptized infants are saved now that's not a dogma of the catholic faith the necessity of baptism is a dogma of the catholic faith and so this well grounded and and very common theological opinion presumes that god extends grace to those unbaptized infant infants in some way known only to himself obviously not through the sacraments um now it's also a common opinion of theologians that that mary is is uh the intercessor of all graces that she is willing the will of god that she is more intimately united to god than any other creature and so there's nothing that god wills that mary is not there cooperating with through her powerful intercession and so you know when we the saints agency in the distribution of grace is um you know god can certainly extend grace to people without a saint asking for it but he likes to do it with saints asking you know it's like when dad is you know pushing a wheelbarrow up the hill he doesn't really need his child to come help him but he likes the child to come help him because he likes to participate so that's the way god is towards the church he he incorporates the church chooses to use the church as an instrument to distribute whatever graces he intends to distribute and uh and of course there's there's no more powerful instrument of intercession than the blessed virgin mary so if god has decided to save these little ones it seems to me completely fitting and utterly reasonable to to suppose that she is interceding for them and that her intercession is efficacious to that end nancy is that helpful for you oh yes thank you very much i just love hearing that thank you and that gives me great comfort i appreciate that you are most welcome thank you so much for your call and uh for all that you do it's a call to communion with dr david anders here on ewtn we have a couple of lines open for you right now if you'd like to join us perhaps uh you know tell us what is stopping you from becoming a catholic love to talk about that here's our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 or if you have a question about the catholic faith that has been bugging you you'd love to get that thing answered 833 288 ewtn back in a flash with lots more call to communion with dr david anders here on ewtn do stay with us [Music] ewtn live truth live catholic when i pray there should be a change worked in me why because when i converse with god i receive a part of god that's the essence of prayer but when i pray i receive grace i share in god's own life i'm conversing with god you never converse with god that you don't share god what does prayer do it pours living water into your heart why because i am conversing with the holy one and now the ewtn family prayer with father joseph family a prayer that we pray together is a powerful prayer so please pray together with me our ewtn family prayer [Music] today we pray for those who are addicted lord jesus christ we praise you you revealed yourself as the good shepherd who goes in search of the lost sheep we pray for those who are suffering the chains of addiction [Music] break those chains of self-destruction by the power of your cross which destroyed sin and death help our brothers and sisters who are addicted to find their way to freedom peace and joy you are the way you are the truth you are the life lord jesus amen want to be notified when called to communion goes live on facebook follow ewtn radio's facebook page and click the bell icon to be notified i'm jerry usher and i'm debbie giorgiani join us for take two with jerry and debbie at noon eastern with an encore at midnight eastern now back to more of call to communion [Music] so what's stopping you from becoming a catholic let's talk about that here on ewtn's call to communion with dr david anders our phone number is 833 288 ewtn three lines open at the moment eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six corey's watching us on youtube right now corey says is there a list of dogmatic statements that mon that one must believe in order to be a catholic and if so where do i find such a list with sources and councils listed yeah thanks i appreciate the question sure yes there have been different accounts of the the dogmatic teachings of the church that proclaimed by the extraordinary magisterium collected in various sources kind of the authoritative one is denzinger's in caribbean um it's not an easy read at all the format of it is is literally to just pull propositions out of magisterial texts over 2000 years and and to line them up it's readily available online in english and latin this could be your next book no way no way all right it's cumbersome and honestly i i i think i appreciate the question right i appreciate the question and i think i understand what motivates it because i have the same disposition right like let me know all the facts like i want to be able to yeah but i do think it's kind of the wrong way at getting at the question of the intelligibility of the catholic faith and whether or not one wants to sign up and here's why here's why i think that this sort of maybe is coming at this thing the wrong way the church teaches that there is a hierarchy of truths now hierarchy of truth doesn't mean that something is more true than something else it means that like this morning i had kale and a whole wheat muffin for breakfast that's true but it's trivially true okay it's not very central to anything let alone the catholic faith that i had kale for breakfast all right god exists that's also true but it's just way more important than what i had for breakfast oh yes okay and so even within the faith we can hierarchically rank truths in this way i see okay and of course that the the the truest and and most important of all the truths of the catholic faith is that there is a god that god is triune that jesus is the incarnate son of god that he is both true god and true man that he founded the church established the sacraments etc etc etc and so when one thinks about what do i need to affirm to be a catholic one can quite reasonably select what are the the highest truths in the hierarchy of truths and uh and and begin with something like the nicene creed and these are the essential essential essential truths um or something like the statement of faith that's in the profession the profession of faith that priests and people who take up official capacity of the catholic faith have to profess this kind of thing and when you make the profession of faith there is there's a qualification in there to the effect that you know i believe this this this this and this and everything that the catholic church declares to be revealed by god that gets the job done you know exactly and then and then you know so you're entering it sort of like if i make a profession of faith in the bible you know i i believed that the bible was the word of god long before i had ever read every word of it you know i learned that the bible was the word of god from my parents on my mother's knee so to speak and then i set about finding out what was in it and and that's an okay attitude to take towards divine revelation not towards bills in congress no but okay towards the divine revelation you know you can you assume in in advance this is divinely authoritative i have the rest of my life to figure out all that that entails and sometimes when you find these lists of catholic dogmas you will think to yourself why on earth was that ever proclaimed a dogma it seems so remote from my concerns and sometimes the church would intervene in very very abstract and arcane philosophical debates in the 13th century that impinged on you know how do we how do we bring catholicism into conversation with latin of veroism and arabian philosophy and aristotle and things like this and and there were opinions circulating that were dangerous and so the church would intervene and goes no it can't be that it's got to be this we don't live in that era anymore and so you know i don't i you know i don't really think a lot of people are getting up in the morning worrying about like the unity of substantial form probably not you should you follow me but you can find the denzinger and any other number of lists out there there you go corey thanks so much for your question uh we're going to go back to the phones in a moment here 833 288 ewtn is that number 833 288 3986 lulu is watching us on youtube today lulu says can you talk about saying i'm saved as a way to encourage yourself i have heard protestants use this technique yeah i appreciate the question i advise against it because we can't know that and it's a dogma of the catholic faith that we do not know with certainty that we are in the state of grace and we don't know with certainty that we will persevere in the state of grace and so to it so to affirm to myself i know for sure that i will be in heaven when i die is to affirm something that you cannot know to be true and uh so it's it's presumptuous to do that um and i think that it's spiritually harmful because since you can't know it and at some level you know you don't know that you are involved in kind of deceiving yourself such that you tend to vacillate between presumption and despair and you know i used to be in this kind of camp where i use that kind of language to myself and i would say you know i know for sure i'm going to heaven in case i'm unless i'm not you know a former presbyterian aquinas of mine once said the elect know for sure they're going to heaven and i might be one of them you know you see and so and so it really doesn't end up encouraging you um if it does it's because you've decided to deliberately ignore things about yourself and your state of consciousness and that's not rational right so i don't think it's a good idea here's a better way of going about it in my judgment god loves me god desires me to be saved i profess the catholic faith i am a catholic i am i am i'm a catholic i really i know i am it's not endowed it's not in question i just got absolved in the confessional i went to confession the priest said i absolve you he speaks the authority of christ i'm absolved i'm absolved i'm just like totally absolved i just went to communion i communed in christ's body and blood jesus whoever eats my flesh drinks my blood has life he says whoever perseveres to the end will be saved so all i got to do is just keep on just just keep going to confession just keep going to communion keep professing the catholic faith keep trying to keep trying to keep my nose clean so to speak you know stay on the straight and narrow do what i'm do what i'm doing now or trying to do now keep on doing it and he who began a good work in me will carry it on to completion till the day of christ jesus as long as i don't bail yeah if i hang in there i'll that's what perseverance means hang on in there and he wants me to and he's making it easy his burden is easy his yoke is light hard to get that backwards yoke is easy burden light there you go you got it that's the stuff well our friend barbara mcguigan would say we got to keep fighting the good fight fight the good fight there you go all right back to the phones right now we're going to uh matthew in oklahoma listening on the great oklahoma catholic radio hey there matthew what's on your mind today well hello i was wondering about how do we know and how do catholics know when when we read the bible that it's we're interpreting it uh correctly what a great example there's some there's some things about like prophecies for example and how do we know whether it was meant for that day or whether it's meant for the future and that sort of thing yes thank you so in a in a simple way any interpretation of the bible that conduces to charity is a good one and that's absolutely what saint augustine said isla as long as your reading of the bible moves you to charity uh then then it's valid it's a valid interpretation all right now we can drill down more you know obviously a lot more and there catholic theologians typically assign four senses to every scriptural text there is the literal historical sense of the text which is the subject of really scientific investigation and so it requires some level of expertise to get at that and and the best way to do this is you know consult your best bible critical scholarship and the commentaries and all this kind of stuff and you can rely on scholars and experts and you can learn greek in hebrew and you can go to all that kind of effort and you can read outstanding catholic biblical scholars and their arguments and you can gain a lot of insight uh never arriving at you know a place where there's nothing left to be learned and you're always open to correction but but there's a you know continual sort of critical engagement in the text of scripture and historical circumstances and archaeology and languages and all that so that's fun and a lot of people spend their lives on it and we lay people can benefit if you go out and read their research then built on the literal historical sense of the text the church also assigns a moral significance to the text um and sometimes uh you know the moral sense will it will cohere with but not be sort of one-to-one identical with the literal sense or you know the sort of the narrative sense for example uh when the levites strap on their swords and go off and kill thirty thousand israelites is the moral of that story strap on your sword and go kill people no that doesn't conduce to charity the moral the moral sense of that text is sin has consequences you see how the moral says the spiritual sense there of the text is grounded in the literal narrative but not reducible to the literal narrative in fact it runs somewhat contrary to the literal narrative that's exactly what jesus would do with the old testament when he found a text that seemed to not lead to charity he would spin it like the command like the permission to divorce your wives jesus said not we're not doing that and here's how and he offers a hermeneutic that actually secures a woman's position and doesn't allow her husband to just neatly see caster assign um so get the moral sense now there's another sense this one is my favorite it's the anagogical sense this is the sense that when we read the bible we can sort of inter-imaginatively into the world of the text and derive a hope in god's agency in our lives and his promises of eternal life our own expectation of eternal reward and we can be drawn out of ourselves and above ourselves jesus says that when the son of man is lifted up he'll draw all men unto himself and saint paul says set your heart not on things below but things above where christ is seated at the right hand of god when we enter into the text in such a way that we feel our spirits elevated above our circumstances and are filled with hope and longing and expectation and aspiration that changes us and makes us more like christ now we're reading the text anagogically and you just can't go wrong doing that right you just can't go wrong and then finally there's the allegorical sense and this is the way in which the whole bible is fulfilled and culminates in and points to jesus and so saint paul reads the old testament this way when he when he encounters a story of the rock in the desert that moses strikes and and water comes out paul says well that rock was actually jesus our ancestors drank from the same spiritual rock and that rock was christ now does he think that jesus put on a rock suit you know like one of the fantastic four it was trudging around in the in the desert with no he doesn't think that jesus put on a rock suit right he's reading the text allegorically symbolically to be fulfilled and point towards jesus or when saint peter says that the waters of the flood symbolize baptism that is not washing sinners off of the earth but washes the stain of sin from your soul we're reading we're reading the old testament allegorically so four senses of the bible and to do this well of course requires a certain extent a certain degree of expertise and training uh it's not always for the uninitiated and so we we need to rely on scholarship but also on the guidance and the traditions of the church and the magisterium that we read the bible in a way that's consistent with the totality of the whole canon and of the catholic faith matthew thanks so much for your call call to communion here on ewtn radio tom price here reminding you that we've got a great program for you tonight at 6 pm eastern that would be the one and only catholic answers live tonight carlo broussard will be on the air for both hours of the show with the whys of catholic belief i think you really get a kick out of this carlo broussard tonight on ewtn's catholic answers live the exclusive radio home for catholic answers live very proud to be doing that for many many years now all right ewtn's a call to communion with dr david anders let's go now to jeff in tulsa listening on st michael radio hey jeff what's on your mind today uh good afternoon gentlemen uh kind of cloudy and cold here where we are i hope it's better where is where you are i've got a question we know what happened to peter and we and tradition tells us that thomas went to india and started churches there but what happened to the other ken apostle um yes thank you so much so eusebius in his ecclesiastical history you see it as a fourth century church historian gives an account of the fate of all of the disciples it has been a long time since i read eusebius and to be honest with you i can't i could not give you the list of what happened to every single one of them thanks for your candor but i have read such a list okay right and i know that it exists so that's where i would point you to um and uh you know honestly pope benedict's wednesday audiences when he lectured on the disciples on the apostles i'm sure he references that that's to be a lot quicker to read then and those are all about available on the vatican website than than dipping into eusebius all right appreciate your call there jeff let's go to rodrigo now in illinois listening on the great wsfi hey there rodrigo what's on your mind today yes i was asking uh good afternoon first of all um i was asking your stand uh i just parked you for a while about the the book of job uh it says in the new american bible which is the catholic bible it says there in the prologue it's a literary masterpiece is poetic it's a point so although it doesn't have any rhyme my question is what's your sin it doesn't mean that i don't believe and follow the rule the wisdom and the message of the book the only real there was the land of poor uh what's your stance yeah thank you i appreciate the question so um pope gregory the great wrote one of the most important commentaries on job ever the moralia and job is massively long work full of allegory and even though pope gregory considered the book to be highly symbolic and full of allegorical significance interestingly he also seems to have believed that job was a historical person okay and i point that out because one can believe that the text is literal history and assign no symbolic or allegorical significance to it one could also believe that it is a symbolic text full of allegorical significance and not be overly concerned with the question of the historicity and and the two could go together or not as the case may be you see my own opinion on the matter is that the text is written in a poetic form and you're correct there's no rhyme in english and actually hebrew poetry didn't use rhyme used different different tools to affect beauty of the language okay but it's written in a poetic way to convey in a narrative form a message about the justice of god in the face of suffering and so very much like the parables of jesus i don't think that it is necessary for us to believe that there was a particular prodigal son that jesus knew you know i know this kid over here in this neighborhood that's what he did you know i think he's telling us a parable because he wants to illustrate a moral point and change our perspective on things the significance is not that there was an historical prodigal son but that we draw the moral of the story i think the same thing is true of job i think the point of the text is to get us thinking a certain way about divine justice and in human suffering not to give us a history of some ancient character named job now was there in fact a job behind the story i don't think it's possible for us to know that i don't see how we would have the historical tools that would make that available to us it is entirely possible that there was some wealthy person known to the hebrew people who was remembered as having gone through horrific suffering and yet kept his faith sure that could have been passed down in historical memory until such time as a hebrew poet decided to make great art out of it you know in the same way that uh you know the renaissance artists would paint you know pictures from the biblical narrative they take a theme that's familiar to them and they turn it into art or or you know milton writes paradise lost uh he takes a biblical theme and turns it into a poem you know but you're probably not going to find him on ancestry.com exactly so i just don't think it matters one way or the other and i don't think we can know the answer directly rodrigo thanks so much for your call good to hear from you listening on wsfi what a great radio station that is called a communion here on ewtn radio ron is listening to us on facebook this afternoon ron says why do we need an exorcist when scripture tells us we can drive out demons and have nothing to fear scripture doesn't actually say that scripture doesn't actually say that so christ specifically commissioned the apostles as exorcists and gave them the command to drive out demons in in mark chapter 16 christ said that these signs will accompany those who believe in my name they'll perform miracles and heal the sick and cast out demons he doesn't say that every individual christian will do all of those things just that those signs will accompany those who believe in his name as they continue to do in acts chapter 19 we find an instance of some non-christians some some jews who were aware that the name of jesus was powerful in exorcism they'd seen christians doing this business who go out and attempt to cast out demons in the name of jesus and the demon responds and says jesus i know paul i've heard of but who are you and proceeds to proceeds to beat them up right now the one other instance of this that does come to my mind is when the disciples met people casting out demons in the name of jesus and they turned to jesus and said should we stop them and christ says leave them alone because if they're not if they're not against us then they're for us so what can we discern from all of this one is that it is theoretically possible it is theoretically possible that a person could engage in a kind of spiritual combat with uh with the demonic without having the direct approbation of the church um that's possible but to do so would be foolish and be foolish and it would be foolish because uh this is a dean this is a extremely spiritually dangerous activity and not only scripture but also 2000 years of christian experience have demonstrated some people have an unhealthy interest in the occult and they're drawn to this kind of ministry uh for because they are um kind of sensationalists you know when they're interested in it for the wrong reason or they misjudge their own spiritual maturity that's that's probably even more common they're presumptuous about their power and they are they sort of get off on the idea of doing battle and being victorious none of these are adequate motives they're really deleterious motives for engaging this ministry it ought to be a ministry of of mercy and of service and of love for people and and one of of humility where it really is on it's immaterial to you who gets the job done as long as the job gets done yeah and then the church has because christ gave this commission to the apostles the church has a jurisdiction over the spiritual realm whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven that is not given indiscriminately to all but is at the judgment of the hierarchy and so bishops commission specific priests and give them faculties for this particular ministry who are known to be of sound mind and good character and humble and obedient and to have the right motives and not drawn in you know because they're sensationalists or have some kind of psychological instability and so forth there's a lot of training involved training and exorcists are austin often uh presented with rather grotesque and horrible temptations um and so it's not for it's not for the uh not for the uninitiated it really isn't it's just a dangerous activity there's not it's not that it's theoretically impossible it's just i mean like you know in a pinch i might be able to read a book and do surgery on you but you don't want me to you know what they used to say on tv kids don't try this out don't try this at home that's right all right appreciate that and uh did get a phone call from hilda in texas she couldn't stay on the phone but she did leave us with this question is the saint joseph bible good for adults i'm trying to find a good bible yeah thanks the best bible is the one you'll read yeah personally i like to read the nrsv catholic edition and i have the the volume the one that's published by ignatius press but i mean the one you'll read that's the best bible good stuff i remember before my my wife adrienne's uh dad lived to a very uh great age 92 and late in life rediscovered the bible and uh you know adrienne and i were saying dad you need to read this don't keep it in the gift box you've had this bible for at least 20 years it's still in the gift box well you know i i read the bible every day and i read it in different ways and these days there are so many helps available online yes to engage i'm always using the critical tools i can find online i mean it's been 30 years since i took greek so i don't really know greek much anymore but i i know enough that i can go and do the word searches and pull up the greek terms and look at the etymologies and see the cognates throughout scripture and kind of trace their usages and i just have a blast i have so much fun doing that i'll bet you know we're going to close out with a question here from zach who says dr andrews how was jesus able to forgive sins before his passion death and resurrection he's god next can you elaborate a little we got a minute and a half before the theme comes up yeah so you know i i mean i'm not sure if the question is meant how does jesus have authority or how was the how was the forgiveness efficacious how was it defecation i think that's it god forgave sins you know from the dawn of time in view ultimately of the atoning death of christ that would happen on calvary but it's like god didn't have to wait until the resurrection until he was able to forgive sins um you know so the the the saints of the old testament were saved in view of the passion of christ even as we're saved in the memory of the passion of christ i think maybe where he may be going off track a little bit is by using the word jesus here because you know there's forgiveness wound throughout the old that's exactly right that's exactly right so i'm a little bit i mean the question perplexes me a bit well well may you know maybe zach will uh hear this program hopefully this was an email that we got okay and so hopefully zach will hear this and he'll go oh let me tell you what exactly i mean there you go that would be very helpful all right very good well we got a whole bunch of questions answered we uh took phone calls a whole bunch of them got a whole bunch of emails there were some texts there people listening online uh able to call in or send their question via youtube via facebook so david i think we i think we got her done another one in the back definitely so so thank you so much uh for all that you do for ewtn and as we're going out here with the music tell us a little about the call to communion website called communion.com it's a great place to go to get questions answered about the catholic faith and i'm not the only person writing for it so go check it out called communion.com you got a whole phalanx of guys and gals don't you do answering questions we we do we do it we're not as active as we used to but there's a great uh just a great reservoir of material on there going back years very good and don't forget that we do this program monday through friday here on ewtn radio 2 pm eastern live with an encore at 11 pm eastern check out the podcast at ewtnradio.net we also have the best of call to communion saturday afternoons 2 p.m all right uh i'm out of here as well for all of us uh here on the show i'm tom price along with dr david anders see you tomorrow here on call to communion god bless the ewtn home video highlight for january is life journey with sean carney ford

Channel: EWTN

Views: 2,865

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: 88pAFfTitrU

Length: 53min 10sec (3190 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 19 2022