Dr. Allen Hunt - The #1 Reason I Love Being Catholic - 2016 Defending the Faith

so my friend Sean grew up in Connecticut and Sean's father Henry was a world war two fighter pilot he was a World War two hero he was shot down spent a considerable amount of time in a powa camp and when he came back to the States the first thing that Henry did after the war was he bought a piece of land outside of their little home town in Connecticut in the woods because he had enough of being around people and he wanted to kind of be out in the woods and the second thing he did was he married his high-school girlfriend Mary he and Mary had four kids my friend Shawn was the youngest of those four and on that piece of property Henry built his house now I'm not talking about what we would describe in the suburbs of we're building a house I'm saying Henry built his house Henry poured the foundation Henry did the framing Henry did the electrical Henry did the plumbing Henry did it all it was his house and in that house for I don't know 50s years or so Henry and Mary raised their kids and enjoyed their life together several years ago Henry passed away my friend Shawn the youngest of the four went back up to help his mom because his mom being in Thomaston Connecticut and on her own decided to do what most people in Connecticut do when they retire and that is moved to Florida and she said you know Shawn I want to sell the home and I want to move to Fort Myers so Shawn went up he helped her get to get the house sold and it comes moving day and they have the van there and they load up the van with all the stuff and Shawn is ready to help his mom drive down to Fort Myers Florida and he says mom before before we leave do you mind if I walk through the house one last time because it's not a house it was a home and so Shawn walks through the through the home and he's just kind of reminiscing and all these memories come washing over him and of his childhood of him and his brother and his two sisters and his dad teaching him to throw a football and his dad teaching him to shoot a shoot a rifle and his dad showing him how to how to drive and he and his sisters fighting in the basement and he's just kind of remembering all that he goes upstairs to the main master bedroom and he's looking and he looks at the ceiling above where his parents bed had been for all those years and he noticed this little tiny screw in the ceiling and he looked at his mom and he said do you know what that is and she said no and he said you know dad was a really careful craftsman and if that was a mistake he would have fixed that I want to see what that's about so he goes down to the truck I reach them to the van he gets a stool and he gets a screwdriver and he brings it back up and he and he unscrews that little tiny screw that had been in the ceiling all those years and out of the ceiling comes a panel and on that panel is a Folgers coffee can and Shawn looks at his mom and she says I have no idea and Shawn peels off the the plastic lid or the cap on the folders coffee can and he looks inside and there's $500 in cash and he says you had no idea this was above your bed she goes no clue Shawn goes you know dad was a very careful guy and he was a very meticulous guy so if he if he hid one Folgers coffee can in the house who knows so he and his mom Mary spent the rest of the day and they scavenged and they scoured and they searched and they and they looked everywhere in the walls and the ceilings in the basement and by the end of the day they'd found twelve Folgers coffee cans hidden throughout that house filled with $5,000 in cash because Henry being a child of depression and being a world war two vet knew what we've all relearned in the last eight to ten years and that is you can't trust banks right and so Henry had his own private retirement plan going on in his own IRA if you will but the cool thing about those folders coffee cans wasn't just that there was cash in there but there were also stashed in their report cards from Shawn's childhood and pictures of his sisters and birthday cards that they made for their dad and Father's Day cards and Valentine's Day cards all these memories that his dad had socked away and stashed away and hidden in the walls of that old house Shawn says it was about that moment that I flashback to my childhood and I remembered as a kid six times maybe eight times wetting all the time but every once in a while my dad would take me by the hand and he'd walk me around and he'd look around and he'd say Shawn this we'll take care of you everything you need is in this house and he said I used to think that was the stupidest thing that any dad ever said to his son and now all of a sudden I realize he actually meant it that he had provided for us he hadn't told us but he had provided for us that in the event of an emergency we had resources I start with that story because in many ways that's my own spiritual journey as I mentioned yesterday in my little workshop my uncle was a Methodist pastor my parents worked at Methodist colleges my grandfather was a Methodist pastor and his father my great-grandfather was a Methodist pastor and his father was actually a Methodist pastor and his father surprisingly a great great grip my great-great great-grandfather he'd never guess what he was he he was a Methodist pastor I mean who who'd have thunk it and so I grew up in this in this very rich Methodist environment for which I'm very deeply grateful but also I grew up in the mountains in North Carolina in my little hometown for many years we didn't even have a Catholic Church I didn't know what Catholics were and so when I was in high school we moved to Florida Lakeland Florida home of the Detroit Tigers spring training center in case you care that's right so I'm talking about it's good to see some smart people in this crowd and so and good-looking I just want to point that out and so we moved to Florida and I had all these friends who were Catholic a lot of them were of Cuban descent and and I began to discover this thing of Catholicism but I really didn't know that much and so I want to share a little this morning about that because of a couple of things that happened in my life I began to discover that I was wrong about Catholicism because I used to think that Catholicism was just like an old house and all churches were like an old house I mean my town the Presbyterian Church was an old house Methodist Church was an old house the Baptist Church was a lot of old houses the Lutheran Church was an old house and the Catholic Church was just I mean churches were old houses but there came a couple of moments in my life where I discovered that the Catholic Church in the church God has socked away treasures that as I've discovered in my eight and a half years since becoming Catholic many converts discover and that many cradle Catholics oftentimes have either overlooked or forgotten or grown immune to or taken for granted but that God has socked away in this old house that we call the church life-changing treasures Church and when I say life-changing I mean life-changing as a friend of mine says when you're when you have a life-changing moment it tends to be life-changing and and so I had a few of those because of the treasures that God has socked away and so I want to share with you one of those special treasures this morning as we gather together as God's people in this place and I'm not talking about the obvious treasures of being Catholic I mean it mean let's just be honest it's good to be Catholic it is and I don't care what Anderson Cooper or dr. Phil or Oprah or Joy Behar say it's good to be Catholic it is and and I'm not talking about the obvious treasures because there's a lot of obvious treasures for being Catholic and I know that I'm preaching to most of you are Catholic and most of you are devoted Catholics they'll let me just remind you I mean there's a lot of obvious treasures to be in Catholic when you got up this morning and maybe you're in a dorm room here at Franciscan and you got up and you went in and you brushed your teeth because you were going to come and be a good Catholic and you want that fresh breath and you're looking at yourself in the in the little mirror there in the bathroom and I hope you looked at yourself you want I am one good-looking Catholic man I'm a part of the people that will I'm a part of the group of people that will feed more people on planet Earth today than any other group I'm a Catholic and then as you headed headed toward breakfast which I really wish you to brush your teeth after breakfast but you went ahead and headed to breakfast and he ate bacon and sausage not that we can smell it and in as you were there and you kind of look down at your reflection in the plate before you filled it up I hope that you as you saw your reflection you probably pause for a minute because I watched you and you went I'm a good-looking Catholic I may be some of God's best work because I'm a part of the group of people on planet Earth today that will house more people today than any other group on planet Earth I'm a Catholic and then as you made your way here today into the into the field into Finnegan Fieldhouse Finnegan Fieldhouse and as you as you came in and you open the door you saw your reflection in the door and you pause for just a minute you straightened your hair which is I was I was a little late because that took me a little a little longer the hairdryers that the BEST WESTERN do not work that has a problem it took me forever to get here this morning and so you can't you came in and you look at yourself in the in the in the reflection on the door and you stopping just went man seriously look at looking Catholic I may be the best-looking Catholic in North America because I'm so excited I'm proud that I'm a part of the group of people that will not only feed more folks and house more folks but will educate more young uns than any other group on planet Earth I'm a Catholic and so you came in and much to your surprise you discovered that there were fifteen hundred and fifty other people that were as good-looking as you and went man I'm a part of this really good-looking people these really handsome folks and some of them are really intelligent Tiger fans I'm a part of this really good-looking group of people that will feed more folks and educate and we're young as and house more people and clothe more people than anybody else on planet Earth we're Catholic and those are the obvious treasures now it's important to remind ourselves of those obvious treasures because we're not very good at telling our story are we amen in fact we're usually bashful we like to call it modest but we're bashful about sharing our story and oftentimes we abdicate that and we give that to the media to tell our story and the media doesn't do a very good job of telling our story they do a good job of telling their story about our story and they like misinformation and like half information and they like half-truths and they like myths and they like outright fabricated lies and so we don't tell our story we let other people tell our story and sometimes it's important to remember our story it's good to be Catholic but I'm not talking about that today just wanted you to remember that in case you don't out for the rest of time and you're waiting for Kimberly's excellent talk on marriage in a few minutes just wanted to remind you who you were for a second I want to talk about a life-changing treasure treasures that will change you from the inside out and I want to share about one of those we gave you a free copy of my book in your bag I hope you got that and it shares six of those that was it's one of the best books that my wife has ever written and so it describes the six treasures that changed my life and I just want to share with you about one of those treasures this morning and it's to me it's the supreme life-changing treasure but before I do I want you to turn your neighbor one more time and say who are we and now now this time I want you I'm gonna again again I'm from Georgia so I'm going to teach you I'm going to teach you some Georgian I want you to turn back to them and say I don't know but we're fixing to find out all right here we go that's who we are here we go all right so to remember who to remember who we are some of y'all been eating grits I can tell it you get it because you it just kind of came right off of you but I'm fixing to find out it's kind of fun being Georgian in it that's right we could use you we're getting we're getting invaded by a lot of other folks right now and so I want to talk about one life-changing treasure and to do that I need to take us back in time back to the early 90s we back in the early 90s and to New Haven Connecticut I had just graduated from seminary at Emory University in Atlanta which is typically if you're going to be a Methodist pastor in the southeast you usually go to Emory and I'd graduated now I thought I was going to go pastor a church but I had a couple professors that really wanted me to go do a PhD and so they kind of use their influence and got me into the ph.d program in New Testament in ancient Christian history of Yale and so in Nate and I we packed up our we packed up our van and we moved to Beverly and so and we and we took we took our six-month-old in our two year old and with there was no oil in New Haven Connecticut I can assure you nor were there wealth and riches but we moved to New Haven and so we're going up there and there were only four people who were admitted into the program usually in any given year they would admit between two and four out of about 100 hundred applicants and so there was me who was a Methodist there was a Presbyterian there was a Jesuit and there was a Dominican friar and since I didn't know much about Catholicism I mean I didn't know what a Dominican was and a Jesuit I knew because I'd seen them that movie the mission you know and now that was about it so I figured that my closest ally Scott would be that would be the Presbyterian right and so I go to the orientation session that the first day at the Religious Studies department and I'm seated next to this guy in this really interesting outfit and I said hey man how are you and he goes how are you and he said I'm Alan he goes I am Steve and I said tell me a little bit about you know your garb and he said well I'm a Dominican friar and I went at school what you know what does that mean and he's saying I'm a priest and describing what Dominican wasn't and Steve I call him Steve because I knew him as Steve before I knew him his father Steve and he's kind of an intimate part of our family now still my best friend married our daughters and it just hangs out with us and so Anita and I had our twenty-fifth anniversary a couple years ago when somebody gave us a trip to Italy and Steve pointed out to us that in canon law you're not allowed to go to italy for your anniversary unless you take a priest with you and so so our are so we couldn't afford for three of us to go so he and Anita had a great time on her so actually we took him there were three was this is being recorded I know so so Steve and I became very very close friends immediately and the good that was that was good for me because Steve was the smartest person in our program and I'm from the mountains in North Carolina and Steve was the best prepared person in the program and I was not and so Steve became sort of my coach and courage or tutor particularly when it came to classical Greek and the things that we had to learn how to read that I had no clue what I was doing and so we just became very close friends so about two years into that friendship Steve comes to me and he says Alan got an idea for Lent I said great he said I want you and me to go out to a group of cloistered Dominican nuns in North Guilford which is about 30 ish minutes from New Haven and we're going to give them their Lindt and retreat I said okay I got a bunch of questions about that I said first of all what's a lint and retreat and he said well we're going to go out we're going to give them four four or five maybe six weeks we'll go out and we'll talk for an hour and I said okay I can handle that and I said what are we going to talk about and he said well I'm going to talk about Thomas Aquinas and you're going to talk about John Wesley now if you're if you got friends who were Methodists god bless you if you got friends who were Memphis you know that John Wesley started the Methodist movement and and Wesley actually was very Catholic in many ways when it comes to the work of the Holy Spirit and the work of becoming holy and sanctification he said so you're going to talk about Wesley I'm going to talk about Aquinas we're going to compare them and what they had to say about becoming holy and about the work of the Holy Spirit in your life and we're going to use first Corinthians to do that I said great I said I just got one more question he said what's that and I said what's a cloistered nun and he said seriously I mean how small was your town and I said really really small and he said well there's this group of ladies back then there were about 50 of them and there they range in age from about 25 up to about 85 and they live on this piece of property I'm out in the woods and they take a vow of stability or constancy or community and they become a part of that community and most of them even in the event of medical emergency will never leave I said really I said now what do they do he said well they pray and I said what can I assume that they're nuns but I mean what do they do he said they pray that's what they do I went see her tell me there's 50 ladies they'll live on this piece of property and they don't ever leave and all they do is pray he said yeah I said I'm in man I am so I am so in so we go out there for the first Wednesday I guess was the first Wednesday or so I'm after Ash Wednesday and we go out there we pull into the into the parking lot and monastery of Our Lady of Grace North Guilford Connecticut and I will always remember this this vision we pull in and we walk across the little parking lot we go up to the door we knock at the door the little peephole opens lady opens the door I mean looks lute and then she opens the door she welcomes us his sister Diane god rest her soul and I looked at sister Diane and I thought to myself you may be the most beautiful woman I've ever seen and she welcomed us in and she got us through we went by the little sorta half wall I didn't know what that was where the family would come to visit on this son and sisters would say on that side I mean really I had no I mean I am a rube I had no idea what we were doing and I had Steve didn't tell me till later he had to get special permission for me to go behind the cloister wall to instruct the nuns that in fact I was the first male ever to do that who wasn't an ordained Catholic priest and he had to get permission from the provincial the Dominicans and from the bishop the Archbishop of Hartford so we go back there and we go into their community room and it was you know like about twice the size of this just kidding and so it was about the size of this and so there's there's the fifty ladies and Steve's gonna have me go first because he said that I was going to talk about Wesley he's going to talk about Aquinas we're going to talk about holiness that's what I heard but what he meant was I'm going to take in front of a group of fifty nuns and make you look really really stupid so you're going to go first and then I'm going to come up the white knight in my dominican garb and eviscerate you in front of these fifty nuns didn't tell me that right so so we would have been good to know so get up and there's there's fifty there's fifty sisters there and he introduces me and I go up and we had a little small lecture and I put my notes there and I looked up and first of all this was the most non Catholic audience of all time I mean it was unbelievable I looked at these ladies first of all they were all on time I that's what I thought that's what I thought you know I mean I had like a 15 minute warm-up act but because I was figuring people to kind of be straggling in and I was playing on land in 15 minutes early because I figure people will be straggling out and went so it's just only had 30 minutes all I had was warm-up in exit time I didn't have anything so they're all there on time and second of all to get this non-catholics this is weird they they were all smiling 50 punctual smiling Catholics I have actually personally witnessed this miracle I have I have but here's what just makes you realize this was a once in a lifetime you this is a unicorn experience was it they were not only punctual and smiling did get a load of this every single one of them had a Bible you can't make this stuff up man and so I look over at Steve and I said man you've been sandbagging me these are baptist nuns aren't they they really they are I said I this is going to be easy van and so so we do our talks and we come to the last week the fifth or sixth week I don't remember how many those we did and and we save time for question and answer which was other than yesterday the last time that I ever did question answer because I will never do that again and so we do the QA and the 59 there's a sister Sita over here and I call her sister Rose she's no longer with us God rest her soul and she was a very short stout strong fire hydrant kind of a lady and and she she says Alan you know thank you so much for coming now I have to tell you after I realized that that at that first moment in all seriousness when I looked up at these ladies I had to take a step back because it was disorienting to me because I had never heard of anything remotely like this before I genuinely had no idea that this kind of person even existed there was no category for it in my background or my training and for those 50 ladies when I looked at them the first time it was disoriented because there was this joy that kind of left off their face and there was this radiance that seemed to emanate from their eyes and there was this ruddiness and this glow I mean I don't mean to over sentimentalize it but it was true and I took a step back because I realized that I was actually in the physical presence of holiness I had read about holiness I'd studied about holiness I'd written about holiness I'd preached about holiness but I was actually in the physical presence for the very first time in my life I was in the physical presence of holiness so we had these marvellous weeks sister Rose raises her hand and she says Alan thanks for coming I said it's been my pleasure she said you know for most of us you're the first Methodist pastor we've ever met I said hey right back at you quid pro quos sister rose and and she says and after listening to you I got to tell you you sound really Catholic and I said thank you I'm assuming that coming from a nun that's a good thing and she says so I got to ask you why aren't you a part of the church and I thought that's a weird question I said I'm sorry I don't understand the question she said well I said could you rephrase it and she said yeah okay why aren't you a part of the church now I'm from Appalachia alright and so I'm used to that you know the people think I'm stupid and they're probably right and so they think if you talk slower and louder he'll figure it out all right so I said why am I not a part of the church well you know that didn't really make sense to me because you know I got my little card here that says I'm an ordained pastor in the United Methodist Church and maybe there's like a special word for church that's different than our word for church but mine says Church and I'm a part of the church so I don't understand the question she said well let me put it to you this way why aren't you a part of the church shishi new house from Transylvania County and I said okay I think what you're asking me is why am I not Catholic and and I said I don't really know why I'm not Catholic I don't know that much about Catholic I didn't really know much until I got to be friends with Steve I've enjoyed being with y'all I said and I love you and I respect you but I have to tell you one of the reasons that I'm not Catholic is I don't really get what y'all believe about communion so I don't understand that I said as a Methodist it just seems patently obvious to me that the bread is bread and it symbolizes the body of Christ it's special it's holy it's sacred but it symbolizes it and the juice as Methodists we typically use grape juice not wine the the juice it symbolizes the blood of Christ it's special it's significant it's holy it's sacred but to somehow think that this becomes the body and blood of Christ in a real substantial way I don't understand that I said I love you I had a great time I've learned a lot and I respect you immensely I don't get that she said okay she said um now you're a New Testament scholar right now said well I'm working working on it and she said so do you mind taking out your Bible never good never good and there were 50 of them all right and I said yes ma'am and she said you mind opening to first Corinthians 11 because we have been talking about first Corinthians Allen with you and father Stephen I said yes ma'am she said would you open it to first Corinthians 11 because would you like to read this or would you prefer that I read it I said you're doing great sister rose once you keep going and she said let me read this for it cuz you know um so she opened up to the words of st. Paul where he writes for I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said this is my body and then she closed the Bible and she said Alan what don't you understand and and we all laugh kind of kinda like y'all just did they were they weren't laughing with me they were laughing at me and then we kind of moved on and I wish I could say that that at that moment the heavens parted and the hand of God came down and the voice of God struck me and said Alan I'm inviting you home into the into the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church I'm inviting you into the fullness of the truth I'm inviting you to enjoy the most deeply intimate relationship with me as I give myself to you personally and substantially in the real presence of Jesus's body and blood every time you receive communion but that didn't happen but as I look back now I do realize that the heavens did open and if the hand of God came down with a seed about the size of a mustard seed and planted that seed in the back of my soul and for the next 15 17 years or so God watered that seed and he prospered that seed and he fertilized that seed and he put Sun on that seed until it ultimately grew and grew and grew until I realized wow I have no choice but to come home into the church and didn't happen easily it didn't happen quickly it was a little inconvenient I got to tell you so we finished up in New Haven we moved to Rome Georgia Rome Georgia and we and it's always important to point that out in a Catholic audience I have discovered and and so we move we moved we moved to Rome I became pastor this church and I realize pretty quickly you know if you got to preach every week and the main highlight of worship is the sermon there's a lot riding on the sermon and there's a responsibility that comes with that and you better you better come to bring what you believe God has brought you to bring because people are that's why they're coming they're hoping to hear a word from the Lord through you and I realize pretty quickly well I better find ways to nourish my soul if I'm going to try to do what God's calling me to do and so I figured out pretty quickly that there was a Cistercian monastery not far from Atlanta started by the guys that it was a mission monastery I guess they called it from the guys at Gethsemane where Merton was in Kentucky and so they started one in Conyers Georgia and so I started to go to the Cistercian monastery as a Methodist pastor once a month for a day of retreat it's I would go and God god bless him I think he's deceased now Abbot the abbot was father Bernhard Johnson and an abbot burner would give me spiritual direction out of his generosity and graciousness now again you figured it out but I was it took me a while right so I would go and I'd spend some time there and I'd pray and I would attend Mass I didn't receive communion obviously about attend Mass and I'd walk and pray and I went to the to the monastery why brer e monastery the Holy Spirit I went to the library and man there's a lot of books in there in there a library I mean bunches of books there's a lot of Catholic books Catholics like to write books Scott they mean they like to write books they really do I mean Protestants they mean I'm kind of like Lou Holtz I'm the hello Lou Holtz says I'm the only person who's written more books than I've read you know and so so I go into and there's all these Catholic books and I said man you know I never read any of this stuff I wonder why I was never exposed to this stuff and so I started to read some of these Catholic books and I began to discover some things and most of you already know this I mean a lot of you have been to this conference and many of you been studying the faith far longer than I have but let me just remind you some things that I learned one of the things I learned is that in the early church there were a number of people who died for the Eucharist who died for the Eucharist who died for their conviction in their belief in the body and blood of Jesus they were martyred and I thought to myself wow how come I never knew this that must be a really big deal they're willing to die I mean I have to think of my to myself you know is there anything that if I was standing before and before an executioner who had a sword or or a lion and was getting ready to destroy me and said unless you renounce this we're gonna kill you is there anything so deep and would I do that for the for the body blood of Jesus heavens now are you kidding me I would say oh my gosh no it's a big a misunderstanding please let me live it's a symbol it's a symbol but these people died for the Eucharist and I began to think to myself this must be a really big deal then I came across that little book Jesus shocked by Peter Kreeft many of you know Peter Peter teaches it Peter Peter teaches at Boston College which we affectionately called the Franciscan of New England and and they don't have quite the spirit of hospitality that Franciscan does all right it's Boston they do the best they can but I mean this this week this week has been this weekend has been tremendous the hospitality here the excellence here thank you thank you all right this is an this is an extraordinary place and so I read this little book by Peter called Jesus shock it's a short little book you ought to read it's pretty good stuff that's all I got 120 pages and and a good chunky that's devoted to the Eucharist and one of the things I noticed that Peter taught me in that little book is that for the first eleven hundred years for the first eleven centuries 1100 years a millennium and a century for the first eleven hundred years of church history we don't have any evidence whatsoever that anybody ever disputed debated questioned or doubted the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist eleven hundred years okay then we got then we got one guy beringar of Tours and then we go 400 more years so 1500 years a millennium and a half 15 centuries 1500 years in a row and we only have evidence of one person ever questioning doubting or disputing that this was truly the body and blood of Christ and then we hit 16th century and now we've got more than 33,000 kinds of Protestant Christianity just in America alone each with their own understanding of what might may or may not be happening I thought to myself wow what happened for 1500 years a millennium and a half there was almost complete unity and conviction of the body and blood of Jesus people were willing to die for that how come I never knew either one of those two things with all of my education wow there's a lot going on here so I'm preaching every week and as a Methodist pastor I had four Sundays off every year and when you're a Protestant pastor at least when I was a Protestant pastor those four Sundays were really important to me because those were times when I could go to church and sit and receive rather than stand and deliver and so I would always try to find a church that I could go to where I would hope that I was going to hear a good sermon and the problem was we would vacation in different places where I didn't know any pastors I didn't know any churches and so I you know I'd get out the yellow pages and if you're under 40 the yellow pages are kind of like Craigslist but printed out right and so I try to I try to find I try to find a church that seems like a reasonable chance I get a good sermon and I'd come back and I need it would go well what do you think I could boy that was that was just horrible and I don't like now I've burned one I'm down to three you know and so there's a lot of pressure and so after a couple of years you know what I started to do I started to go to Mass when we were on vacation and you know why I went because I knew what I was going to get let's say not that we could but let's say we could vacation in Johannesburg Sydney Tokyo Dublin San Francisco or Honolulu no matter where I went I knew exactly what I was going to get I was going to be there in the stream of thousand years of liturgy of history and of the saints and celebrating that as we came before the altar of God and in Persona Christi as the Holy Spirit came upon the priest and he offered to us the body and blood of Christ and even though I wasn't able to receive that I was there and I was a part of that no matter where I went and I began to discover that as wonderful as this right here is it's not about this and as wonderful as this can be and has been for three days in the end it's not about that that I could go wherever I was and I knew what I was going to get I went on a mission trip a couple of years ago I went to Poland anybody have Polish descent man y'all are some of the best people on earth those folks are great Johnny what so I was on this I was on this mission trip and we were training young Polish Catholic leaders and and we had two Polish priest with us and so they celebrated Mass for us every day and I mean Polish publishes it's it's it's some language I don't know if you know that and it's its own language I'm here to impart wisdom to you and and I'm pretty good at languages and so I come back after two weeks in Poland and Anita says all right teach me some polish line with me I got nothing I said those people don't even know what they're saying I mean that is the that is that is the most complicated language I've ever seen in my life and I said but I did learn a good joke and the joke is when we get to heaven you know what language we're going to speak polish you know why because it takes forever to learn so that that's what I got so I'm there I can't speak I mean I can't speak a lick of Polish and so every day one of the priests who's Polish celebrates mass in Polish and I didn't understand a single word they said but I understood every single word they said so I come back one year from vacation actually I came back several years from vacation but I'm I'm a fairly stubborn sinful stiff necked hard-headed guy and so I just resisted and so after several years I came back from vacation with the same sense of man God is calling me to become Catholic and so for two or three years I just ignored that and resisted that and did nothing with it but finally after the third or fourth year I came home from vacation and I said this is just this is just this is too consistent for me to ignore this so I called up my friend my Dominican friend Steve and I called him I said hey man you got a second he goes yeah for you sure and I said I think God's calling me to be Catholic and I heard him set the phone down for a second and I heard him mixing a martini and sitting in his recliner and putting me on speakerphone and he said well tell me about that and I said bah blah blah blah blah he said tell me why you think you're being called to be Catholic and I said well there's this and there's this and there's this and there's this and he said okay those are all great things Alan and those are wonderful things about being Catholic but I haven't heard you mention the Eucharist do you believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and I said well almost I said you know that's one of the things that I'm kind of making my way there everything else I've kind of gotten there so I'm assuming it's going to come together and he goes and then he says perhaps some of the wisest words that any priest ever said to anybody he said Alan if you don't believe in the Eucharist don't become Catholic because for us it all rides on the Eucharist I said okay that alleviates a little bit of a problem I've got I'll go back you said yeah you got a congregation with 8,000 people you're serving 15,000 people in your ministries every week why don't you just keep doing what you're doing I said great I said now what am I supposed to do with this turbulence I've got because I want you to do two things he says the first thing I want you to do is I want you to read the Catechism you know I gave you that and I said you know I've been reading it because I want you to go back and read the section on the Eucharist I said I can do that so what's the second thing he said well down the street from you about 300 yards from the church that you're the pastor of there's a Catholic Church and they've got a 24-hour Perpetual Adoration that's what Perpetual means is 24-hour again I'm here to shed light and to make you smart right and so he said they got his perpetual adoration Chapel why don't you just go by and sit in their Sun I said okay I said what am I gonna what's what's happening in there I mean do you mind if I ask a question I mean what's an adoration Chapel he goes seriously don't know what an adoration Chapel is I went No and he goes yeah where are you from I said what do people do there and he said well they pray I said what do they do he said they pray I'm well here we go again man I mean what is it with you Catholics let me just pray pray pray pray pray and he said so you're gonna go in and it's there's going to be somebody there sometimes they'll be multiple people there and sometimes that may be a group praying the rosary and sometimes there may be somebody who's laying and prostrate before the altar or before the Blessed Virgin and in the sacrament the Blessed Sacrament going to be exposed and on the altar there and and so I want you to go and just sit and just whatever you have have a few minutes go do that and let's see what happens so great so when to Walmart and I got a trench coat in one of those things with the glasses and the mustache and the big nose and I started to kind of go sit in the back like a creeper in the I was an adoration creeper in the in the in the back pew and so I'm there I'm there some and one day I'm there after going I don't know six eight ten times and it's and it's nine o'clock on a weekday it's daily Mass and I'm in senior Paul Reynolds God rest his soul Irish priest about seven ish pastor that parish missionary priest had answered the call as a twenty-five thirty year old man in Dublin and they said Georgia and Alabama need priests he said I'll go and so he came he gave himself away generously is a priest bringing the sacraments and the gospel of Jesus in the faith of the Jim the genius of the Catholic Church to the south as a missionary priest his whole life he died a couple years ago and I miss him every day possibly the holiest man I've ever known he celebrated Mass that day and he gets up insta homily and he said today's the the feast of st. Thomas Aquinas I want to gotta go and and he said I've only got a couple minutes I just want to tell you one thing about Aquinas he said no Aquinas was this big burly guy 300 400 pounds but bald as a cue ball I mean he was handsome and so he was he's perhaps the the brightest brightest mind the church has ever produced and so nearly seven eight hundred years later we're still processing and digesting his brilliance and what he had to say and this philosopher and theologian and preacher and writer and he said one day late in his life I think the Year memory may be off on this but I think it was 12 73 was the feast of Saint Nicholas and st. Thomas is celebrating the the mass and he comes to the moment where he's elevating the host and he places the host back on the altar and he's dumbstruck he's unable to speak and we don't know everything that happened that day is a little cryptic but we do know that later that day he talked to one of his close confidants and he said something like this he said at that moment I was dumbstruck and overcome because I realized that when I compared all of my writing and thinking and teaching and preaching and theologizing and philosophizing when I compare it to what happens at that moment in the Eucharist I realized that all of my work is but straw compared to that as I listen to min senior Reynolds I was overcome by the Holy Spirit and I said lord have mercy I do believe forgive my unbelief and I knew I had an ethical problem and I knew and I knew I had an ethical problem and I could no longer with any integrity serve as a pastor in the Methodist Church because I didn't believe what I needed to believe in order to fulfill that function and I needed to find my way home because church that's who we are that's who we are we are we are the people of the Eucharist that's who we are who are we stay with me stay with me who are we we are the people of the Eucharist once more we are the people of the Eucharist so the only thing I want you to understand today is when I was a kid second grade Brevard North Carolina Straus elementary school miss Blythe class I was in there working on handwriting somebody comes from the principal's office and they say Alan hunts needed in the principal's office now this was not an uncommon occurrence hey so I got up and I go down with the messenger to the principal's office and there was my mom and I knew something was up because my mom never came to school she signed me out we got into the car my dad was driving my mama's in the passenger side my brother James who's six years older than I am was seated in the other side of the passenger I mean of the rear seat of the rear seat and he had on like a coat and tie and on my side there was a little coat and tie and mom said put on the coat and tie and be quiet and so I put on my coat in time I looked at my brother and goes so we drove over the mountain for an hour from Transylvania County to Haywood County from Brevard to Waynesville and we pulled up this little old house and we pulled into the driveway but we got out of the car and dad opened the backseat he got my brother and me out he took us by the hand and he and mom and the two of us we walked up to the front door and dad knocked on the door and an elderly woman opened the door and she just looked really gaunt and tired my dad said is he ready and she said yeah he's ready and so my mom went with the elderly woman and they headed to the kitchen my dad took my brother and me and we went in the front door and we turned left and we went down the hall to the second door on the right we opened the door we went in and it was a small bedroom and there was a single twin bed in there and my there on that on that bed was an old man who two years before had been six feet to 200 pounds square job bushy hair thick strong robust voice but after two years of cancer he'd been emaciated down to maybe 140 pounds his hair was out his eyes were that yellow and gray and his skin had the look of death my dad dropped our hands he turned and he walked out the door so there's my brother and me and we're looking at this man on the bed and the man looks at us and he says boys I want to tell you something and we said yes sir and he said I want you to write it down and we said yes sir he said you have something to write with then we said no sir and he said we'll find something and so my brother looks around the little room and he gets a couple of little pieces of scrap paper and a couple of pins and he hands me 110 he keeps one and so we look at this man and he kind of pushes himself up on his elbows and he musters all the strength that he has in his behind and he looked at us and he says I want to tell you something and I want you to write it down and we said you sir he said so write this down boys always remember who you are that's what he said always remember who you are I wrote it down and I've had it with me ever since and I take it with me in my Bible everywhere I go I wrote it down because these were the last words my grandfather ever said to me always remember who you are so allow me if you would to ask you just one more time who are we we are the people of the Eucharist always remember who you are

Channel: Steubenville Conferences

Views: 22,346

Rating: 4.8295083 out of 5

Keywords: Steubenville Conferences, Catholic, Franciscan University, Catholic Ministry, New Evangelization, Youth

Id: vyUmA6HgCbc

Length: 48min 33sec (2913 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2016