Guestsplaining 012: Bishop Barron on the Eucharist

[Music] welcome to godsplaining contemplative preachers contemporary age each week join the dominican friars as they consider all things catholic hello folks welcome back to godsplaining i am father gregory pine uh hosting here with father jacob burchen on our most recent episode of guest planning father jacob bertrand how are things in dc things are good yeah pretty standard working through the academic year working through vocation stuff surviving the swamp that's it nothing more nothing less yeah the huge okay you've navigated the summer without suffering heat stroke or exhaustion or any heat related you know accidents of sorts yeah for which we got from from lack of sleep but not heat so are things in switzerland uh they're good yeah i mean lack of sleep is our common course and um i don't so much sleep we say as wait for morning but you know whatever things here are as they have been and we're grateful for that at a recent sojourn to the united states uh so i'll take any opportunity to sit and seat 43b on a united airlines flight surrounded by my two closest friends who have many questions about eastern metaphysics so another great installment with my favorite carrier but you have no desire to hear any of those things because you listener clicked on this episode because there was another name that was not gregory or jacob bertrand it was one far more important and far more telling uh so we're very delighted on this episode to welcome bishop baron uh so bishop baron thanks so much for joining us on the show thank you i'm delighted i love the international uh quality of the show we go from washington to switzerland to santa barbara so that's pretty good it is indeed i think we're we're spanning nine time zones which might be a record so we thank you for bringing us into a new phase of god's planning they're always expanding very good yeah that's right um so i guess by way of introduction i suspect that um many of our viewers most of our viewers all of our viewers all of our viewers and all of their families know who you are um so perhaps you could maybe just fill us in a little bit on the most recent ventures of your apostolate word on fire things that have been happening recently things that you're most excited about things that that we should know about yeah good thank you um a lot of things one would be this new book on the creed that i wrote during covid so i've been working on this book um it was kind of the back burner and i was you know preoccupied with all sorts of pastoral responsibilities and traveling and all that so it wasn't moving along very quickly but then kovitt hit and suddenly i wasn't traveling i wasn't going to meetings and i had this wonderful more contemplative time and i managed to finish this book on the nicene creed so that came out just a few weeks ago and also during kobit we filmed uh six talks i think each one's about 45 minutes based on the book so they're just kind of walking through the nicene creed we filmed them in beautiful places out in my neck of the woods and two of the missions and then this beautiful church in in montecito california so they're beautiful looking films and i think they'd be useful to a lot of people in parochial settings adult education settings rcia anyone that wants to be introduced to the catholic faith so that's out that project on the creed i'm very excited about a whole slew of books a number of my books that were published previously by other publishing houses we actually bought the rights back to them so my book on the eucharist a book called the the strangest way a book called the now i see a book of sermons that have been published so we repackaged all these in beautiful new hardcover editions and they've just come out so i'm very excited about that people interested in these books maybe that had forgotten about them or they're eager just to see some things i'd written some years ago also the word on fire bible volume 2 is coming out in january we were super proud of that it came out what over a year ago now volume 1 was the gospels and it's a beautiful book it's the gospel text but then glosses and commentaries from the great tradition and beautiful works of art so it's a kind of a meditative contemplative way to read the bible so volume two which is the rest of the new testament is coming out shortly so you know a lot of things are cooking great um so our particular kind of point of contact with your team was regarding the book on the eucharist and both father jacob burch and i read that most recently which was a great gift for us um and you said that you know it had been previously published and the rights bought back for it with you know some some edits and some expansion and and certainly we'll get into that later in the show but maybe um yeah by way of leading into that more specific topic we could just talk about things contemporary things catholic more generally um so in terms of catholic mission a lot of people in the united states and beyond look to you uh for for cues i suppose or for a kind of indication um maybe in this time when many people feel on the brink of despair they look for they look to you for for hope um and i think maybe one of the things presently that has met like a lot of folks find dispiriting or discouraging is that it's it can be very polemical it can be like very political and i think we sometimes risk um assuming a kind of polarized caricature of catholic life and worship and this is something that you know you touched on a little bit in the eucharist book so you know traditional catholics are said to not care about social justice because it's it's too liberal and more social justice oriented types um think about doctrine as to kind of hoity-toity or highbrow um so how do you uh in your mission and we're on fire and what you do more broadly how do you seek to kind of like maintain and grow the integrity of your apostolate in this in this current environment well you know my touchstone is uh your hero saying thomas aquinas i mean i i kind of went through a reawakening of my catholic faith as a kid by discovering aquinas and he's been um your french teachers would call the pierre touch for the rest of my life he's always my touchstone figure how did thomas do his work well i mean a deep engagement of the culture to be sure and the culture of his time was a very vibrant one intellectually had elements of opposition to christianity elements that he appreciated as conducive to the proclamation of the gospel and thomas from the standpoint of jesus christ read the culture of his time taking in what he could resisting what he had to and i think that's the model of all great theologians the same was true of of um augustine the same is true of john henry newman the same is true of john paul ii the same is true of one of my personal heroes cardinal george of chicago who you know one of his central themes was the evangelization of the culture and he just knew every culture is evangelically ambiguous you know it's got positive elements and it's got negative elements and the the canny evangelizer reads as vatican ii said the science of the times doesn't cave into the times doesn't hide behind walls but engages the culture in a christ-centered and critical way so from mcqueen is on that's been my model of how to do it you're right that we have opposing camps who fall into those two extremes i would say one and i would identify it as a catholic progressivism or liberalism that has caved in too much of the culture uses the culture as the measuring stick well the church ought never to do that we don't allow christ to be read by the culture it's just the opposite right um by the same token there is a kind of hyper defensive hyper-traditionalist catholicism that wants carl bart who's from your country there in switzerland said the church ought never to be hiding behind chinese walls and i've always liked that the church's job is not to hunker down behind walls defensively because jesus said go out go out to all the nations and proclaim the good news so we're not like just hanging on to a little treasure for our own private edification so neither chinese walls nor a surrender to the culture but a christ-centered critical and intelligent engagement of the culture no i mean thomas is my mom i know thomas aquinas but i've been trying to do something along those lines now the culture is complicated today we all know that but i think the general principles have remained the same uh from from the church fathers and thomas ahn yeah so thinking about the i guess the relationship between the caving in and the engaging and where we stand i guess in relation to modernity um there's always i find well not always maybe but i often get asked the question in conversations with men who are interested in in the order um you know the dominican saint dominic founded the order around the preaching against the albigensian heresy what's what are what are dominicans preaching against now and one of my answers is always well uh the church was preaching against this heresy um and dominic saw a unique way to do that and so too today that you know where it's one team the church is working in in different ways to to preach the truth but in a sense you know where how much how much should we be reading uh the signs of the times you know where where do you think the church stands right now in relationship to secular modernity are we kind of retreating too much are we not doing it i guess what what do you see as sort of avenues or areas of um i guess offense that we can that we can continue to preach well charitably but also boldly without you know getting overrun by this and that and everything else yeah it's good i mean you're laying out the the principles that obtain you know across the board we engage it i i like that word because it it doesn't mean cave in doesn't mean run away from you engage it uh with critical intelligence and in light of christ i go back to uh one of my intellectual heroes was um is monsignor robert sokolowski from catholic u from your neck of the woods and years ago when i was a kid taking his class he said the once integrated catholic culture at let's say the the reformation and the enlightenment blew up and the pieces of it landed here and there often in twisted form after an explosion and now disintegrated one from the other but they're still there and part of the task of the evangelist is to notice them and to highlight them and then try to bring them back into something approaching an integrated state so i i've used that metaphor in my own work i began when i was doing youtube commentaries years ago with movies and the very first one i did was martin scorsese's the departed and it's a movie that i think uses the f word about 8 000 times you know and it features violence and and so people would say why in the world are you commenting on a movie like that but see it the inspiration was i think there are elements in a movie like that and scorsese is a good example because he has a catholic formation and there are elements of integrated catholic vision there now in distorted form to be sure but i think worth pointing out and a positive way to engage people that might never darken the door of a church but they might well go to a scorsese movie and if they have a at the time i was it wasn't a bishop a priest of the church saying hey there's something there that is at least you know resonant with the gospel that's i think not a bad way to do it now are there elements of our culture that are deeply repugnant to christianity absolutely and the church's job is to engage those in a much more critical spirit i often put my finger on what i call the culture of self-invention that's one of the marks of secular modernity especially in our in our american context is i invent values it's it's jean-paul it's existentialism now run amok it's existence precedes essence so i decide i decide what's true i decide what's valuable i decide my own body i decide my gender don't you tell me anything i make all the decisions around here see but that's deadly stuff as you well know and that's that's modern liberalism run amok run to its most irrational extreme the church says no it's not about your self-invention you belong to a story you belong to god's great theo drama to use balthazar's language from switzerland but i i think that's the place i would very critically engage the contemporary culture is practically every movie practically every song practically every expression of the popular culture celebrates self-invention and you don't tell me what to do well that's repugnant to anything like discipleship when jesus says no come follow me your life is not about you it's about following me finding yourself by losing yourself in discipleship so that's repugnant to so much of the modern style and the church has to stand to thwart that uh so again it's a both end we look for the pieces of a once integrated catholic culture and we try to point them out and say hey hey that's worth looking at and that's interesting and good good look for the father's call though seminar verbi right the seeds of the word uh that's sokolovsky is simply updating and and changing the metaphor there but uh that's part of what we do and then we also stand to thwart these things and say no to certain parts of the culture so it's both and and um there are camps that want to do one or the other so uh to follow up on this image of father sokolowski or monsignor sokolowskis um if we're recovering parts of the tradition which has been in a certain sense exploded i think you're also the image with which um alistair mcintyre begins after virtue that he takes there from canticle of leibowitz i feel like a lot of us in our recovery of the tradition we're a little bit afraid of the arbitrary it's like why recover this and not recover that or for what reason have i chosen to recover this and i think there there's a kind of lurking threat of the self-invention that you describe but it's a self-invention that is closer to the mark and maybe as a result a little more seductive so we sometimes joke about like the prep the preferential option for the old like this thing is better because it it was before the second vatican council was thrown away so therefore we should recover it somewhat uncritically because it seems like that's the thing to do these days um so in place of this culture of self-invention how do we receive our identity like uh what does it mean to recover a tradition or what does it mean to recover an identity in a way that's genuine that's organic that's sincere that's good we the i'll tell you the answer it's you dominicans and what i mean is what's your motto right veritas here's an exceptionally clarifying question it's as simple as could be but it's exceptionally clarifying in regard to the question you raise namely yes but is it true i often find that you're in these debates with people or dialogues or whatever it is and a point is being made and you're saying yeah it's from this era yeah it's old or yeah it's new or yeah it's in the culture yeah it's against the culture yes but is it true that's the only thing that matters at the end of the day because look if i'm i i'd idolize the ancient tradition and i say oh i love all old things well good for you but is it true or do catholic progressivism oh i think the culture today i just love what's going on in the church in the modern world and okay but is it true that's the only question that matters and so that you guys and with your lovely black and white you know with your the lovely black and white dominican because not every question is black and white but by god that one is is it true and so dominican truth and to keep bringing that question to the fore because i think of um of whitehead sometimes in his famous line about the fallacy of misplaced concreteness is that we look in the wrong places for what's concrete we privilege again the old the new the cultural the anti-cultural the you know whatever whatever but who cares is it true that's the clarifying question and uh um oh i i am very wary of you because you you don't seem to like older things is it true i'm wary of you because you don't seem open to the culture is it true and so see and i've i've been arguing now for years that we have to teach our culture our catholic culture again how to have an argument and there we go you dominicans see this it's your moment i told you guys that when i ordained dominicans what was it a couple years ago it's a great privilege the first priests i ordained were the young dominicans two three years ago and i said to them and i meant it i said this is your moment this is a dominican moment in the culture because you need to teach people again in the catholic space how to have arguments uh when are you wasting your time see the aquinas with his with his wonderful iconicism it it's his way of saying no no that's a waste of time that's a waste of time that's a waste of your breath here's what we should be talking about you know the wonderful kind of undecorative quality of thomas's writing but that's what he was doing it's like cutting fat off of meat he was cutting away all the extraneous to get to the question of yes but is it true so i would urge catholics left right and center to revisit that dominican motto you know yes but is it true is the only thing that matters at the end of the day all right end of rant i apologize not not a rant in the least very encouraging uh for us and for our listeners uh but i mean that i don't know how many dominicans listen to your podcast but it's your moment it's your moment and you dominicans ought to be shy about it boom okay well on that note we're going to take a short break here to hear a word from our imaginary sponsors uh but when we return back we'll pick up boxes on this vein of truth and try to dive a little bit into the teaching concerning the eucharist which bishop baron has treated in this most recent book so stick with us and we'll see you on the other side of the break [Music] you are listening to god's planning visit us at godsplaining.org to listen to our episodes shop our store and donate to our podcast all gifts go to improving the podcast and bringing the gospel to more listeners thanks for your support all right folks thanks so much for sticking with us on this episode of guest planning we're very uh grateful we're very blessed to have with us bishop robert baron speaking on the occasion of a release of his most recent book on the eucharist but also just to kind of give us a sense of what word on fire is about these days but more broadly the state of the life of the church in america and beyond so that we can uh fortified by the grace of god engage in these present struggles and do so for the glory of god so enough for me i think our next question is going to come from father jacob bertrand that's right yep here i am uh so at the top of the top of the episode the first half of the episode we spent some time talking about the different um you know the the dichotomy between caving into the culture engaging with the culture how to engage with it with your with your um book that was republished on the eucharist um there seems to be the eucharist at least in the last six months has been a kind of hot button issue in the church especially with the reception of communion and public figures and these sort of things but in the book you propose a number of ways or realities whether it's through theology or worship or life with with the relationship between the eucharist as meal sacrifice the presence of it for readers listeners to sort of contemplate to get to know the eucharist better the teaching the truth on the eucharist so i guess question then how how is this teaching how is like revisiting the teaching on the eucharist or encouraging people to to think about the eucharist anew helpful for navigating present difficulties in the church in our own sort of in our own faith in our own approach to the eucharist how how yeah what are how does this kind of help the faithful help those who you know aren't within the fold but thinking about the eucharist for whatever reason yeah well i hope it does all that um but you know my book goes back i think it was 2008 i wrote that book a long time ago i was a professor at mundelein at the time i was approached uh it was by orbis and they had a series on different aspects of the faith and they proposed to me the eucharist you know weird in god's providence i write that book i wrote it i think in the course of a summer four or five months maybe and um who would have known though that all these years later we'd have the opportunity word on fire didn't exist in those days uh but through war and i fired to bring it out precisely at a time when i think this eucharistic question is so central and for two reasons one is you say the whole debate about politicians and and worthy reception of the eucharist but also in the wake of the pew form study and i'll say this i'm the one that rang the bell at the bishops conference so when that study came out i don't know what a couple years ago that said 70 percent of catholics don't believe in the real presence um and i i it wasn't on the agenda at all but it was at an administrative committee meeting and i was chair of a committee at the time so i was on that one and i said i don't know brothers i just think this is a serious problem and that we ought to talk about it and that started the ball rolling toward what we have now this three-year proposal for a eucharistic revival in all the dioceses of the country i'll take some credit for that because i rang the bell and we got the ball rolling in that direction so i think it's of supreme importance if we're talking about the source and some of the christian life and 70 of our own people don't believe it or you know some some have said to me oh well you know i i are getting too worked up because it's not they don't believe it they just don't understand it i said well that makes it better you know you think that solves the problem that's just as bad so something's gone deeply wrong if the source and summit of the christian life is either massively misunderstood or massively unbelieved in right so that's what i said to my brother bishops and i think they they bought it and said okay we need to address it so weirdly again through god's providence this book we have the opportunity now to bring it out at this at this time look my generation we got meal like crazy everyone understood the eucharist is a meal i i would i mean any catholic who is what even had a modicum i have two brain cells working in in the time i was coming of age would say now oh yeah the eucharist that's a sacred meal and we gather together around the holy table of the lord to receive the the body of christ everybody got that trust me but what my generation did not get again trust me when i tell you sacrifice language we didn't get that we we should move away from that we didn't talk about alters we talked about table uh we didn't talk about the the offering of a sacrifice we didn't get that and as the pew form study i think has amply demonstrated we didn't get real presents very well either uh so i hope if there's a virtue of the book it's bringing forward those latter two themes what i tried to do in regard to sacrifice was to give it a a richly biblical background to show that this is not some arbitrary or some weird medieval accretion that this is a very deeply biblical idea of offering sacrifice to the lord and why the new testament authors i mean reached readily for this language of sacrifice so i tried to show that and then real presence back i used your your man i used st thomas aquinas who's still third part of the sumo i don't know any better place than it's discussed but my generation nobody read that nobody knew that it was never taught to my generation and my generation we're now the leadership you know so it's not surprising to me that there's a lot of bad understanding of the eucharist what makes us different than a protestant church that gathers around the table of the lord you know symbolically to consume his body and blood i think for a lot of catholics i don't know i don't know what the difference is um that's a problem so i hope this and the book i wrote it in very short compass it's not like a major treatise it's a short study that's meant to be kind of punchy um so i i do hope people can use it to get at least a richer more rounded understanding of what the eucharist is about so just a small follow-up question as we kind of come to the end of our time uh in in the book i noticed that what we usually receive as source and summit which we have you know in the most recent edition of the catechism you give an alternate translation of as something like fount and apex i don't know i mean maybe specifically to those words that you choose or more broadly concerning our understanding of of eucharist as source and summit those are words that we often hear bandied about in catholic conversation like what what is the faith that informs that profession like how can we better appropriate that appropriate that profession like what's it what's at stake when we call it source and summit or fountain apex well what's at stake is is your boy again go back to thomas aquinas uh the other sacraments have the virtus christi thomas says the power of christ is in baptism and in in reconciliation and the sacrament of the anointing virtus christi but the eucharist aquinas says is ipsa christus is christ himself there's a qualitative difference therefore between the other sacraments and the eucharist the other ones have the virtuous christian this one is ipsec christus and once you get that well then of course it's the source and summit of the christian life because it's christ himself it's the alpha and the omega it's where it comes from and where it's going it's it's the it's the anticipation of heaven because it's christ himself if you don't understand the real presence you're not understanding that you don't understand that you're not being drawn into the christifying deifying purpose of the church you know so of course it's source and summit because it's ipsec christos and again no one better than aquinas at articulating that yeah so i guess just a minute or two left what would you um having this book in the eucharist or even just point about points about from the conversation that we have had as far as drawing um tips for drawing people or for people to be drawn more deeply into that christifying reality of our of our faith of our church what and and i guess such a polarized world and all the what what do you um kind of recommend offered um to to the to the lady to those listening yeah well i think one thing would be begin with beauty i often start with that because the true and the good are both very off-putting for people in the post-modern framework who are you to tell me what's true or what's good but the beautiful just show people look and i think for the eucharist it's the mass itself um that's you know i spent a lot of time in my work with uh churches uh i did a little book on gothic cathedrals and i've used rose windows and and the gothic churches to make theological points that's part of it the very beauty of our churches why are they so beautiful because we want to make pretty things no because it's it's where the eucharist happens where the supremely beautiful uh appears so beauty can draw people in so i would say that um i'd also say dominican truth the clarity of teaching that we're not shy about the eucharist that we're bold in our proclamation clear in our articulation you know give an interesting example um when this pew thing came out i changed the talk i was going to give at the famous la religious education congress you know this huge gathering of catholics i was speaking in the arena and i i set aside whatever i was going to talk about i said i'm going to talk about the eucharist and i gave a rip snorting hour-long talk and rehearsed the history of it i got very theological spent a lot of time with aquinas and okay good and people you know i hope they enjoyed it if you had told me that that video would become the single most popular video that word on fire has ever produced i would never believed it but in fact it's true it just pushed past like 1.1 million views i would never have guessed never that that one i've done you know eight minute commentaries on on popular movies and i've done things on jordan peterson and but that an hour-long sustained kind of serious talk on the eucharist would get 1.1 million views but it says something to me that says something to me about source and summit about the hunger for it and about the virtue of a clear and deep presentation of the eucharist i don't think you're going to find an unreceptive audience to that kind of presentation mr parent thanks so much this is i mean for me it's very encouraging i mean just to hear it simply said that there is still a kind of correspondence between the mysteries as they are preached and the reception of the faithful um yeah i think sometimes i don't know maybe i speak for father jacob burch maybe i just speak for myself but it can feel like you're preaching not so much into a void but you're saying things that you find interesting and you just hope that other people also find them interesting or also find them edifying beatifying whatever you might add but yeah just to hear you simply say that for me is yeah very encouraging and our apostolate and our priesthood and in our life more broadly so thanks well is it miraculous that you guys after 800 years you're still here in in your white habits proclaiming you're preaching you're preaching the truth and it's a miracle really that you're still here and attracting young people such as yourselves to get you know a solid education of the faith so that you can proclaim it so just do it shia labeouf would say just [Laughter] you dominicans especially it's your moment okay amen hallelujah all right well thank you so much again thanks so much for joining us thanks so much for contributing and um yeah it's just very wonderful to have had you uh a few closing announcements for our listeners uh please do check out all the most recent things from word on fire you'll want to check out that video for one on the eucharist but also i received an email recently from a word on fire regarding a book sale so not only is the eucharist book available at a reduced price but so are others in addition and besides um so thanks so much for for liking for sharing and for commenting on our uh you know podcasts and videos uh if you haven't yet shared a video or you haven't yet shared a podcast perhaps this is the day so click on the little thing that says share and then just text it to one of your friends and you'll find a happy listener a happy companion in 30 minutes time um and if you're listening to or watching on youtube please do subscribe so that you can be updated when when other episodes like this come out thanks again to all those who support us on patreon we're very grateful uh we're very appreciative we pray for you please continue praying for us and then look for us on future episodes of guest planning live-splaining regular episodes and uh yeah all else besides so again praying for you please pray for us and we'll catch you next time on god's planning thanks for listening to god's planning a work of the dominican friars of the province of saint joseph follow us on facebook twitter and instagram leave a review on your podcast app and visit us at godsplaining.org [Music] you

Channel: Godsplaining Podcast

Views: 53

Rating: 4.7894735 out of 5

Keywords: catholic, dominican friars, theology, philosophy, religion, faith, order of preachers, godsplaining, seekers, Truth, preaching, questions, searching, prayer, meditation, Bishop Barron, Robert Barron, Word on Fire, eucharist, Jesus, podcast

Id: Cf4Df3wucyI

Length: 33min 43sec (2023 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 04 2021