Livesplaining - The Eucharist and Spiritual Health + Q&A w/ Fr. Gregory and Fr. Jacob Bertrand

hey hi jeff 10 seconds we're live oh oh yeah yeah we're live wow it's a surprise uh welcome to live splaining live splitting is god's planning but instead of being pre-recorded and having the two hosts being myself and father bonaventure lie to you and say that it is live that's actually not a lie because i'm against lying it's a joke which is a different form of speech act so instead of pre-recording and editing and making ourselves sound better we don't pre-record or edit or sound good so this here is live's planning um we're delighted that you have joined us we're delighted we're just delighted in general uh so i'm here with father jacob bertrand father jacob bertrand how is life how is colorado life is good uh colorado's good i'm living in colorado right now just for the summer as father gregory's question probably indicated um yeah there's i don't know life is fine it's been kind of like cloudy rainy cool here so i don't know um not terribly exciting but that's it kind of so it's good hey that's it that's it yeah we had rain yesterday of a torrential sort of um we got like those flash flood warnings on our phones for like nine straight hours it was okay that's awesome must have been the same storm the map in the united states must have been folded in half by the weather gods you're not a polytheist i don't actually think that um but uh but yeah it was it was harrowing because anyone who forgot to silence his phone throughout the course of the day was rudely awakened to the fact of that being the case when you know it was just like so it's a little bit upsetting but we made it through okay what are we going to talk about i know we're going to talk about well insofar as we've been prompted by the theme that we established a couple of weeks ago we're going to talk about the eucharist so how about 10 minutes where we just describe some basic things about the holy eucharist and then go from there to answer some questions so here we are in the year 2021 the united states bishops are talking about eucharistic coherence it's gotten a lot of press as of late specifically with respect to those uh catholic politicians who hold for a position contrary to the catholic moral teaching and then whether or not they should receive holy communion so i think you know there's been like op-ed pieces in the new york times about what this is what it means whether it's intolerant those types of things so we thought that we would just kind of start from square one or start from the very beginning and describe what the eucharist is what it's not what it does what it doesn't do and and go from there so lead us in the holy eucharist what's good in life yeah um i think that when especially with the the the the current setting with the uh the usccb's document you know the greatest interpreter uh or um teacher of truth and faith is probably not the new york times or like the washington post stuff like that my guess is that they don't really know what they're talking about generally speaking so when they talk about the eucharist i would kind of be shocked if they knew what they were talking about uh with regard to that so um i guess that's just the way by which to set the stage um and perhaps we could yeah so i think talking about the eucharist let's use the contemporary setting again this current setting and um at least give an argument because it's probably on people's minds maybe it's not maybe it's not really in my mind so i don't know why i would assume it's on other people's minds but it's on someone's mind maybe as to like what the the u.s bishops are doing and uh with this document whether it's like you know they're writing a document with a list of like like a hit list of people who can't receive the community the communion the eucharist probably not what's going to happen but what the church is trying to do and what the u.s bishops are trying to do what they recognize is that in our contemporary climate in our contemporary culture whatever i can keep using the words contemporary um there's there's there's really been in the last series of decades a lack of catechesis on what the eucharist is who the eucharist is we could even say so i think it's timely perhaps it's always timely to teach about the truth of the eucharist um so i at heart that's what the u.s bishops are seeking to do to re-catechize or catechize or new or reintroduce teaching of of the eucharist and and understanding the eucharist that corresponds with well then how do we receive the eucharist how do we live a eucharistic centered life uh so um yeah just a few words on setting that so what is the eucharist who is the eucharist why the eucharist maybe father gregory would do this differently than me and he can take over after i finish talking but i'm going to talk for a second one of the ways in by which i think understanding the eucharist is helpful at least by way of starting is by looking at what it was um making an argument for the eucharist looking at what it was how it is that christ desires christ desired in his earthly mission to communicate his life to us so we look at the whole path of salvation history god's interaction with with us as human beings he desires to share his life with us to reconcile us to himself but then to offer us a real invitation to share in his divine life and through his earthly ministry christ was present in his in his body and his earthly life but christ in his ascension promised not to leave us abandoned promised not to leave us orphaned and part of that in that is he leaves us himself in the eucharist in he leaves us his very body and blood um soul and divinity we say in the form of bread and wine um we could talk in a few minutes about why this way is that fitting is that the best way these sort of things but we have to or we should think about the eucharist as the means by which or a means by which we directly encounter christ the true christ the body and blood the truth presence of christ so how that works and the effects we can talk about but at least by way of starting we can begin there let's do it um so since the eucharist is a sacrament and since sacraments are signed sometimes it's helpful then to expand upon the way in which it signifies so when saint thomas talks about the sacraments he said that the sacraments signify something of the past something of the present and something of the future in the case of the eucharist it signifies with respect to the past the passion of our lord jesus christ and saint thomas will say that in the mass we have this two-fold consecration of the body and blood to signify the fact that our lord shed every drop of his blood for love of us so when we celebrate the mass we are recalled to that mystery or that mystery is made mystically present um as we receive the merits or receive the fruits of our lord's passion then with respect to the present it communicates grace and virtue and st thomas will say that it's not insignificant that the lord chose bread and wine because bread and wine are kind of common sustenance as it were and so it's under the appearance of bread and wine that we receive our sustenance in the spiritual life which is to say grace and virtue and then third and finally it signifies with respect to the future and for this he takes some cool stuff from st paul some cool stuff from saint augustine and he says how do you get bread how do you get wine well out of many grains one loaf out of many grapes one chalice so too by partaking of the sacrament right by partaking of the eucharist we who are many are made one which is to say we're made yet more perfectly the body of christ head and members so there's a sense in which the eucharist makes the body of christ right because that's the final fruit or that's the final grace of it um and then we can also say that the body of christ as it were the church kind of makes the eucharist that was a kind of thing that was repeated in the 20th century honoree de lubak said that with some frequency so you have this this three-fold signification there's other signification present in the sacrament of the eucharist but i think that helps to kind of establish the way in which it signifies and thus the way in which it causes um which should orient us with respect to you know the contemporary debate what is the eucharist for the eucharist is for applying the merits of the passion communicating grace and virtue and making us yet more perfectly the body of christ so against that backdrop then how are we to interpret contemporary things or how are we ourselves maybe just to kind of take in a personal way to make better use of the sacrament of the eucharist or to receive it more worthily yeah one of the the effects or the the primary we can look at all seven sacraments and attribute we talk about them in the same way you know what are their what are the parts of the sacraments what are the effects what are the graces and when we look at the eucharist one of the or the primary effect the lasting effect of the eucharist is is unity is is being united in the mystical body as father gregory was just was just talking about and um this is something that goes all the way back to to the fathers and to the early church understanding that there is unity in the body of christ in receiving the body of christ but also in the body of christ that is the church and this unity is is something that is brought about by being i guess unified to use the same word again but united in purpose and end i would say purpose in that what what is the purpose of living the christian life well it's pursuing um it's pursuing godliness it's pursuing god himself and the divine life um the life of virtue the life of goodness a life of perfection also pursuing the things that the church teaches and how the church interprets and and passes on the content of revelation to us um but it's also united i guess i kind of included the two together but also included in the end of the christian life that is unity with christ the beatific vision in heaven so um if this grace is is unity if this the the sacrament unites us together it's it fulfills the prayer of christ in the last supper when he prays to the father that that we may be one with christ as he and the father are one if we are united if you know if the point is to be united together then we need to be sort of on the same path together to in receiving the eucharist and receiving it well and worthily um that doesn't mean that those who receive the eucharist are perfect before reception of the eucharist but we're perfected by it but that we're pursuing this perfection in accord with what christ has called us to uh yeah i'll stop there i think that yeah and i think that um you know sometimes there's a stumbling block for people because it's like okay some sacraments are ordered to the forgiving of mortal sin we think here specifically of sacrament of confession but also the sacrament of the anointing of the sick if the person is unconscious for instance we believe that it purifies them of all sin uh provided that there's no impediment or hindrance to that movement and the temporal remission of all the punishment there upon um so why not the eucharist and i think here we just kind of come up against a stumbling block as it were which is a helpful stumbling block in so far as it's true but like i i suppose we could lodge a similar question with respect to the priesthood like why only male priests i mean you can give arguments as to why it comports well with the fact that our lord jesus christ took to himself a male human nature and in some way it symbolizes the relationship of father and son yeah but like at the end of the day it's because our lord chose men and that was not a decision that you can subsequently trivialize because we know better now we can presume that our lord knew best and so far as he's got insofar as his biggest knowledge and infused prophetic knowledge and the perfect you know like uh the perfection of acquired knowledge as it were so too with respect to the eucharist lord teaches that the eucharist is instituted for the building up the body of christ not for the healing or not for the pardoning of mortal sin it does burn away the dregs of like venial sins but not mortal sins and as a result of which we wouldn't use it in that way and so then with application to the present conversation about eucharistic coherence uh you have you know the metaphysical order in mind it's like okay what does the eucharist do and then how should we use it and there are other questions that arise but a lot of times those questions are like therapeutic they're like how does the eucharist make people feel and how can it make people feel better but our lord is asking questions about what is not necessarily about what feels and if he is asking questions about what feels or how one feels it's downstream of the questions about what is so i think that that again orients our discourse and then when it comes to like politicians and stuff like that you have other considerations about scandal and public life about the presumption of interior states based on exterior actions all of which i think is a good conversation to have i don't know if there's anything in that that you want to pick out or other things that you want to say by way of summation or conclusion yeah i think in one of the responsibilities that we have as christians as catholics is to is to feed our intellect i i would say you know to to learn about our faith and to learn um why it is that the church teaches what she does from the content of revelation because ultimately the church doesn't create teaching she protects and promotes teaching or protects and promotes revelation really the content of revelation uh through the apostolic line and through the bishops so but one of our responsibilities is to come you know to to feed our mind to learn about our lord to learn about the things of our lord and the ways by which he um desires to come to know us and come to save us so that includes the eucharist so um take advantage of the resources that you have to perhaps learn a bit about what the eucharist is what the eucharist does how the eucharist the second vatican council and the catechism both called the eucharist the source and summit of the christian life why is the eucharist the source of our life well it starts in christ and why is it the summit well it ends you know in christ but um you know sometimes we we're wondering well what do i pray about what should i spend some time praying about well you know perhaps learning about the eucharist and what it's how the lord reaches us through that and you know you can learn about anything but it's it's helpful um i think for our own appreciation of our lord of our faith of the eucharist to to also um yet to dive into it and perhaps i haven't seen it yet it hasn't been published yet i don't think but perhaps the bishops document will be helpful in that you know a little a catechetical tool to deepen our knowledge to deepen our faith to deepen our our love for the lord boom we're in the business of loving the lord hopefully we do it better um and at this stage and with that send-off i think we can now turn our attention to some questions um based on how we are framed in this picture i might you know you might lose view of my mouth for significant periods of the next 40 minutes but that's just the risk that i'm willing to run here we go mouth disappears gone yeah yeah yeah because of that old overlay all right so ben hutchinson says good morning from australia and i was wondering whether aquinas ever wrote on fatherhood and if so where i could find that first thoughts so st thomas isn't necessarily thinking about fatherhood in the way that you might encounter in like father carter griffin's book about priestly paternity uh but he's certainly thinking about fatherhood when it comes to god the father okay so like in prima paris question 33 he talks about god and he understands the father the first person the blessed trinity just to subsist after the manner of paternity he also talks about fatherhood when he talks about causality a lot which is an interesting meditation he'll say there's two kinds of cause there's equivocal causes and universal causes i don't think you really need to worry about what that means for the present circumstances but he says uh in terms of universal causes man begets man and what he's saying there is when a man begets a man in order for that child to then uh give birth to subsequent generations it's not necessary that his father continue in existence so it's like you know a gives birth to b b is birth to c as it were but a doesn't need to still be in existence in order for b to bring c into the world so that should on the one hand um kind of be a bracing thought that we're all uh not independent but we're all like real secondary causes constituted as such and that we all have a kind of power whereby to like affect changes in the world of one sort or another so those are my two fatherhood meditations you got any uh you got any thoughts that occur to you not really um perhaps in perhaps there would be some applicable applicable um sections in uh when thomas speaks about like domestic prudence or like these sort of things um but i don't think he addresses like fatherhood in the way that uh as i'm assuming the question is asked i also i think often um theologians the church thomas obviously isn't the church but a theologian respond to particular crises so i think we hear a lot now in the 20th century about fatherhood because of the particular crisis of fatherhood and there's you know a need i imagine that i'm sure there were issues but i don't think they were sort of contemporary issues so i think harder to find a particular spot so i'll leave that to that i guess um all right here we go get excited for this next comment father briscoe and father janzik i received my book today saint dominic's way of life a path to knowledge and loving god it is i assume the next word there was going to be magnificent um life changing life-changing exactly it is the reason why i'm now a catholic because i wasn't a catholic before i received it so charles busby cheers to you my friend thanks boom all right next wendy hovelman says if you are distracted during daily mass or worse fall asleep because you are tired from work study and masses early in the morning would it still be worthy to receive communion that mass thoughts uh i yes i think so um you know we aren't uh there there isn't a sort of we don't want to turn our practice of the faith in our relationship with christ into sort of uh uh into the realm of of moralism of having these kind of you know lists that we keep in our back pocket and if we make all the tick you probably can't see my hands i'm doing things with my i don't know where my camera is there it is if you're doing things on the list i'm so confused you're doing things and you and you and you fill out the list then then you know you can receive communion or you can't or these kind of things um i think prudence the virtue of prudence and our conscience is helpful here but if you know if if it's the case that we're tired and distracted the question is not are you tired and distracted because i think most people are always tired and distracted but it's like do you entertain this this distraction are you willingly sitting through mass daydreaming about the next thing that you're doing or you know want that's that's a different question often for things that are going on in our minds i i i use the the idea of like do you take it to you and make it your own because distractions temptations tiredness they kind of pop up but do you take it euro into your own and kind of play with it in your mind and sit with it in your mind such that you're no longer attentive at mass and really kind of aren't properly disposed that's a different question but i think just being tired kind of dozing off um it sometimes it's just life you know sometimes sometimes people work a lot have families have stress are tired and so i i think i think you're just fine i don't know uh fat gary might think differently but he probably doesn't no yeah um i guess i mean the kind of the kind of limit case would be let's say that you're an insomniac and you can't sleep basically period um except when you're at mass so let's say that you know you're kind of here and there when it comes to the practice of the faith in general but you're very diligent about attending the holy mass because it's the only place where you can catch some z's i would say in that instance you might not receive holy communion because basically you're going to holy mass as if it were a sleep center so provided that you go because you're going to mass i think that you're fine and you know not aware of any mortal sins or of any like serious grave indisposition to the reception of holy communion then i would say go for it um so yeah saint thomas we'll talk about attention and for him the baseline is intention uh the word there in tendere means to tend unto but it basically signifies when we choose a thing as an end so when you go to mass you're choosing to worship god right you're choosing to receive him and holy communion and then kind of to go further in from intention he'll talk about attention and he says with respect to attention you can attend to the words right as they're described uh then you can attend to the things that they signify right and then you can attend to the full reality which lies beyond or lies through the mediation of those words and things so obviously the the goal would be to attend to everything that's on offer in the sacred liturgy but in a certain sense it's it's greater than our minds and hearts so we can't expect to be wholly clued in at all times so i think that just to have for your intention worship god receive holy communion uh with the desire effectively uh that god will continue to purify and strengthen to attend yet better and better as he gives you grace and then don't worry about it okay boom next question it's not a question it's a comment a comment of excitement social ryan says i'd love to join you on pilgrimage pray that i can um our response to that is boom let's go if you haven't yet heard we're uh we're going on pilgrimage the two of us are and it's a blessed company of what are we doing 12 or 13 something around that yeah so good squad tbd a good squad to hike between 160 and 170 miles of the camino de santiago de compostela and that's late may early june of next year so check out the website for it more deets more excitement more comments to be posted on our next live explaining all right here we go jacob nx01a says fathers have either of you read david bentley heart if so can you give some objections objections to his arguments for universalism thanks i haven't have you no i know the name but i i don't know anything more than the name that he's probably a bad man so i'm just kidding what do i know about david bentley i don't know i know i think he's orthodox right he writes the he used to write the back page and uh first things for a while before matt schmidt started doing that um good pros stylist he uses big words uh for which reason you know i'm inclined to like him uh but yes he published this book recently about universalism which i didn't read but in classic and quintessential dominican fashion i will react strongly to it um i i don't know what he says so i'm not going to engage directly with his arguments but i've heard some arguments right for universalism um but i think that where one might start kind of when arguing to the contrary is with the biblical data and the passage they're usually cited would be like division lazarus this idea that hell is a place and that there are people there or the description of the narrow road right that leads to life and the wide road by which many pass that leads to destruction um and then the eschatological discourses like in mark 13 and in matthew 24 and 5 i want to say um all of which seem to be a monitor in a kind of realist way so i think universalists usually will explain those as avoidable circumstances whereas in the tradition of the church a lot of the fathers have read those as actual states of affairs and certainly saint augustine thinks that more people go to hell than go to heaven right he speaks of the masadam natto the masaluti out of which those who are kind of uh predestined or elects are kind of plucked and then saint thomas tends to be of an augustinian mind while taking some of the edge off his speculation so um yeah there are other things written on this theme uh but you might check out joseph ratzinger's eschatology he's certainly sympathetic to some universalist arguments of the 20th century but he's pretty balanced in his approach so that might be a place to start all right linda abrahamian says thank you for your work in your podcast it is excellent it's all father jacob bertrand here we go connor max says referring to pope paul vi memoriale domini how we can better encourage the giving and receiving of the eucharist with the utmost respect for example receiving on the tongue and other traditional practices thoughts father jacob bertrand on cultivating cultivating eucharistic devotion um that's a good question i uh so i don't know if i've read the document i think it was i don't know if it was paul the sixth or if it was the cdw under paul vi i don't know i don't remember but i kind of been familiar with it but i don't think it really matters because you're not asking a historical question you're asking a particular question um how to encourage uh devotion to your case well i think that first begins in catechesis on the eucharist i don't think anybody's going to care well i think people don't care about a piece of bread i think people care a little bit more about a piece of bread that symbolizes something that happened in the past you know if it's just a symbol i think people would care a lot more if they understood that you know more clearly and more readily and more universally that the eucharist is the actual body and blood of christ um so i think it's catechesis on the reality of what the eucharist is is is the starting point um there's no other reason to be devoted to it but for the fact that it is our lord um i think from another thing that the way by which we treat our churches is or the way by which we yeah treat or act in our in our sacred spaces is very important too because um that signifies what's happening there so like the sanctuary is not a place for people to hang out between masses um because if we believe that the eucharist is confected on the altar in the sanctuary then it's you know a holy place obviously you know people have to go maybe move in and out of the sanctuary to like candles and to to prepare for the eucharist but it's not it's not a social space the church is not a social space it's a place to worship um the true presence of god so that comes from you know reverencing the alt or the the tabernacle or the altar properly genuflecting the church these sort of things so i think it's it's all of a piece not just in receiving communion um but i think begins with with catechesis if there's not a proper understanding of what and who the eucharist is um then it's it becomes very difficult to make the argument as to why um you know receiving an irreverent way is is important so that's what i would say yeah and i think that coveted has kind of brought this home in so far as i think a lot of people have had very traumatic experiences of receiving holy communion and certainly i've talked to people who have gone up to receive holy communion and have been chastised for the manner in which they approach and you know redemption sacramentum says you have the right to receive on your tongue and actually priority is accorded to reception on the tongue reception on the hand was only ever provided for just in the last few years so it represents a kind of aberration from a 2000 year old practice and here i'm i'm kind of a chestertonian mind chesterton describing himself as a kind of classic early 20th century liberal but um but like conservative in uh a kind of thorough goingly british sort of way where he says you know let's say that you're wandering through the woods and you come to a fence before you tear down that fence it's best to know what it's keeping in or what it's keeping out and i think right now we're kind of reaping the harvest of kind of certain experimentation with respect to eucharistic practice in the last however so long um and um and we're coming to discover that there's less belief in the in the true presence uh that there's less eucharistic devotion that in general uh people have an easier time walking away from the source and summit of the faith from christ present substantially and sacramentally on the altar so i think that we should be we should be critical of a stance which just says i'll do this because it's permitted because just because it's permitted doesn't necessarily mean that it's good or even that it's better um so i think with receive when it comes to receiving holy communion um maybe we can have the the trauma of coveted uh animate a response of healing but also of deepened devotion to reception of holy communion um so that yeah we could once again testify by your own faith and reception to what is in fact you know the most important thing in creation so yeah those are just some thoughts all right here we go um all right i think i pronounced it kind of almost right the first time but i'll go it again uh sorcia ryan says can you speak about your life as christ's bridegroom i'm going to hop in at the outset um one of one of the priests of our province father basil cole yeah let's go he's like um he's like you know sometimes people will talk about priests as married to the church and they'll describe it after the manner of you know the priest being the groom and the church being the bride he says truth be told christ is the bridegroom he's the only bridegroom and we're all the bride so you are the bride of christ he's like i would say that more publicly but i think people would find it repugnant [Laughter] so i don't know that i identify strongly as uh as bridegroom in any meaningful way but certainly you know when one's a relationship with christ we describe it according to paradigms of friendship and intimacy and things like that so i think that for any for any priest or at least my experience is that it's about you know it's about the lord it's always been about the lord and that one service of the people issues from one service of the lord yeah and i think for us to especially as dominicans who live you know for dominic set up our life to be an imitation of the apostolic life so that being the case for us i i think a lot of us um really appear are attracted to christ as friend um from the last supper discourse when christ calls us friends i know that's super popular amongst especially our peers as as an important scripture verse that we're called to this this friendship with our lord in prayer and then it conformed to him as a priest and through the evangelical council so i think for us and kind of how we approach that it's it's much more on the friendship than the sort of nuptial imagery boom all right here we go kyle m what is church teaching on a literal adam and eve i don't know yeah if the church has taught about it in a formal way i don't recall having come across it but i know you know like many devout scripture scholars like scott hahn for instance who are willing to acknowledge in genesis 1 through 11 a kind of mythopoeic language which isn't to say that it's false just says that it's attempting to communicate truths in a way that are deeper than modern historiographical methods are capable of conveying um so certainly we have first parents and those first parents fell and that that fall this communicator original sin is communicated to all subsequent generations so when it comes to describing this we have to account for one the introduction of the human soul by god's direct intervention two a sin which is communicated to all subsequent generations and then three it has to correspond with the scientific data and so far as we don't hold to a double truth theory right so we know that there's just one reality and whether one approaches it by reason unaided by faith or by reason aided by faith it's it's of a peace so you know if the currently best evidence says that the out of africa hypothesis is you know uh seemingly to be borne out by subsequent discoveries and that our genetic information only ever really bottlenecked down to a couple or a few thousand you know pair bonds or you know like mating couples then we would have to find some way by which to explain adam and eve in light of those facts and i've come across good explanations like in domestic evolution and kenneth kemp uh wrote an article about it i think in the american catholic philosophical quarterly that we read for a class that we had together so those are some initial thoughts yeah a good i think i think they do this on there's a there's a website that's been put together by like four or five dominicans philosophers actual i was going to say actual scientist like biologist um physicist called it's to mysticevolution.org and i i know that father nikkor ostriaco who's a dominican of our province and i believe father thomas davenport too i think they wrote a bit on this some like the mysticevolution.org their articles are sort of are meant for like popular consumption so you might want to check there for a bit more a bit more information a bit more reading all right here we go don says question is the separated soul before the general resurrection a person or only part of a person that is survivalism or corruptionism what do you all believe and what did aquinas believe thanks so i think the basic teaching is that after the separation of body and soul uh what goes before god in the particular judgment and then either goes to hell or to heaven perhaps by way of purgatory is a separated soul and to be a person properly so-called a human person properly so-called one need be body and soul so what subsists in the time between death and the general resurrection would be a human soul so what we're talking about there is a kind of survivalism but one that um you know just requires one to account for the integrity of human nature no i think that's right i think i just said when we talk about a person it just matters what the definition of a person is and a person is understood to be what we call a hylomorphic being made of multiple or two forms that it's body and soul so if it's if you're missing one of the two pieces it's not technically speaking a person the other thing too is the the separated soul um between death and the second coming it's it's still your soul or a particular person soul because god makes human souls for what we call designate matter like my soul was created for my my body for for me to be a person so it's not as if like we kind of lose our identity without our body but we're we wouldn't say properly speaking that we you know a separated soul is a person nor would you say that the body in a casket with you know the dead body in a casket is a person either it's it's a body um we need both body and soul to be a person boom all right i put this question up not actually knowing hoping you may linda abraham says what is the divine will according to blessed luisa picoreta have haven't we always been called to do the will of god is the divine will that she speaks of any different i haven't read any blessed louisa have you there it is sorry out of out of the abundance of our ignorance we lapse into silence all right here we go all right hallelujah killing it still killing it uh question i know confession cannot be online but can spiritual direction be online father jacob bertrand uh yes strictly speaking there's no uh prohibition against that um i i tend to put well i don't really do a ton of spiritual just given my work as vocation director but i tend to advise or prefer to have it to have spiritual direction in person i think that it's it's a lot easier um to have that sort of relationship and to build that relationship and and that sort of thing but there's nothing strictly speaking that would prohibit it and sometimes you know like global pandemics or distance might necessitate uh or make it easier to have things online so yeah i'm of the same mind all right here we go next question again from wendy hillman's who comes to us well comes to us who is in presently the netherlands is it disrespectful to veil at mass and stand neal sit at the right moments at mass if you are the only one doing it to bring god the respect he deserves not to stand out in the crowd that's a great question um yeah um no it's not disrespectful um there are uh in fact it's disrespectful to do the opposite uh and it's yeah it's wrong to do the opposite in fact the church is very specific about when um and how we are to worship particularly during mass when we are to sit and kneel and stand now some places sometimes there's allowance for particular bishops conference to i don't know i was gonna say administer to direct the faithful in a particular way but other times there aren't there's there's a universal uh law that governs how the liturgy is to be celebrated by the priest and how it should be participated in by the laity so if the church instructs you to stand or sit or kneel at a particular time you are to stand sit or kneel at a particular time not because the church wants to control what you're doing but because the way by which we worship god we're supposed to do it together as a universal church not just as a you know a church and part of the world or that sort of thing the church is universal not regional um but also because the you know it's through the church's wisdom through her ability to lead us to salvation that she knows best how to direct our worship um so no it is it is not disrespectful to they'll stand sit or kneel at the right moments during mass and in fact you should yeah my general thoughts on this too is um you know in the netherlands obviously uh secularism has advanced to a point far beyond that of what we experience here in the united states and i think uh in a country where the general sensibilities are just deadened to the possibility of transcendence to the possibility of any real significant divine intervention i think that people can sometimes also be greatly helped or even jarred by testimony to the fact of god being unlike anything else um and i think that we reflect that in our posture st thomas will talk about how exterior acts of religion conduce to you know like interior acts of religion both for the person who exercises them you know so like acts of adoration or acts of sacrifice or acts of oblation cultivate devotion and prayer both for the person who exercises them but also for those with whom they live like i'll talk about why we sanctify space because when you bring a lot of people together it communicates that this worship means something and so i think that you know you are you are a witness to your contemporaries and uh you could potentially be misunderstood you might be tempted to pride as it were but i think that it's good right i yeah i used to receive holy communion on my knees before i entered the order and uh yeah i was i was i was like mocked a couple of times by priests in a way that i was very shaken by but it's just what it is you know you can't you can't rely upon a generous interpretation of your actions and uh it's unfortunate that such is the case but it's always been so so power to you all right here we go nicolas lol says question how do we go about proving teleology and the natural law what do you think you want to take a first step um yeah i think both of those um are the best way to sort of make an argument for either teleology like that's something for those of you who might not know teleology comes from the the greek word telos or an end that things move towards an end or things have a i'm pointing again not in frame uh that things have a particular purpose for which they're moving um things are made for something um and the natural law um we can i think just by way of example we can point to very simple examples um to to to prove that and then can move from what is kind of simple and observable to things that are that are more i don't know substantial or things that actually people care about you know like the t what's the end of a human person or like what's the end of our sexuality or these kind of things does the natural log dictate that so like natural law um easy example is like digestion you know something like that you can look at like the physical reality of of how the natural law works there are other things of course but like we eat something and we digest it we we gain from it nourishment and that's you know that's also the teleology of our digestive tract now we can talk about other reasons for eating enjoying good food enjoying company but there's there's a purpose there and there's there are laws that that govern um you know natural laws not not civil laws not like created by a legislative branch but there are there are kind of natural laws the same thing we could even you know in a in a more moral thing with respect to the natural law like murder um there's you know the ten commandments we can think of the ten commandments as as sort of recapitulating the natural law of what is what is normal to the human being so like we we can generally all agree that natural law is against what is good to you know what is good for a particular person that you're killing probably and also for the good of the person doing the killing the good of society so we can just look at examples and i think find common ground um and then we can move from there so sometimes people don't even want to agree on common ground and when you get into a situation like that you're kind of there's no argument to be had because they're not looking to talk so such is life yeah um maybe maybe just one other point about the natural laws we call it the natural law because it's based in nature and when we talk about nature we're not just talking about you know a beautiful sylvan scene painted by you know bierstadt uh but we're talking about a principle of both rest and motion and that to which it pertains per se and not for accidents which means uh nature is i it identifies what the very substance or what the very essence of a thing is both is a way by which to understand what it ought to be and what it ought to do so the idea there is based on the very whatness of a thing we can then speak to how why not best interact with that thing or how one best ought to um yeah maybe like operate so like concrete example is okay so because your teeth are what your teeth are i don't know what they are exactly but there's stuff with other stuff on them very very precise biological knowledge i remember the outside part is called enamel and i remember that that's like hard and it protects you from decay but that it can also be worn away so you shouldn't use a hard bristle toothbrush you should use a soft bristle toothbrush okay well what we said there is basically a natural law argument because your teeth are what your teeth are that dictates how you interact with them that you ought to floss once a day that you ought to brush but not too hard that you ought to take care of your gums and watch out for like gingivitis and periodontitis or whatever it's called right so because the thing is what it is you ought to behave with respect to it in a particular way and you can build those arguments up and out so you start like father jacob birch and describe at the level of very simple things like digestion uh but you can work your way into the metaphysical or you can work your way into the kind of moral order so like as the thing is so it ought to comport itself because we are human beings we ought to do this and not ought to do that that's the basic idea i'll get up next question joshua anderson says i'm an enquirer to the catholic church i live and work in washington dc would i be out of place or would it be awkward to periodically attend mass of the dominican prior as a non-catholic not out of place not awkward check this out we actually have two places in town so you can come to the house of studies which is uh where the two of us live and uh yeah all of our liturgies are open to the public you just gotta ring the doorbell and someone will let you in and then st dominic's is actually a parish run by dominicans in southwest dc so that might be closer to your place of work where you could bop in there with even more frequency uh so yes you're most welcome actually father jacob burch is prepared to add a second comment which says you're not welcome but that's just because him he's him i'm just kidding he would never [Laughter] thanks just definitely threw me under the bus but you know you got it man hey i get thrown under the bus all the time okay um okay here we go uh venerafacio says do you recommend reading the divine hours daily as spiritual practice for a layperson nice i you know my difference is not to the liturgy of the hours uh my indifference is to it as being taken up as a devotion i think if it's um if it's something that would be conducive to your prayer life and to drawing you more deeply into your relationship with christ then great pray the divine office pray the hours pray some of them pray morning prayer pray night prayer pray evening prayer pray one of them um but i don't think there's any sort of well and you're not asking this but there's no obligation to so i think it depends on on on the person on the individual i think some people find it very very beneficial and just having that like rather regular rhythm that of prayer that's united to the church and other people find it you know burdensome trying to flip through the pages and do all that there's a great app um i breathery that's really helpful if you don't mind using a phone or a device but yeah i'm i'm kind of indifferent i would say if you if you don't then and you're interested then maybe try it and see how it goes magnificat like the daily like misalette the monthly misalette that comes out also has like an abbreviated form of the divine office so that might be another place to start of morning and evening prayer um so yeah if you don't pray it you might try it in a in a way that's um you know more abbreviated or simpler just praying one of the offices and see how it goes and if it's something that's beneficial and you find fruitful then you know continue maybe uh expand that a little bit more and if not i don't think there's any you know shame in and not so yeah sorry as priest and religious we're obligated to so we have to do it but it's part of our you know daily life but for you all for the lady it's not my only thing to add is if you're thinking about becoming a priest you know or entering a religious life then i would encourage it more uh if not then i wouldn't necessarily kind of along the lines of what father jacob bertrand described and i would say simply that when you look at the incoridian for indulgences like what are the acts that the church most recommends for your piety the big things are mass confession praying the rosary especially in common making meditation right so mental prayer in the presence of the blessed sacrament reading holy scripture and the stations of the cross so i'd say that like if you're looking for a kind of objective order of the things to which the church assigns a place of prominence or importance relative importance i'd say start with those things uki doki um all right here we go jacob nxo1a says for a union with the orthodox what is most prudent for the catholic church to concede to the orthodox and demand for them it seems to me like the differences can be worked through do you have thoughts about this nope i do not i don't i think go i say no and then i say think no you go i was just going to say that there are so there are doctrinal things and then there are disciplinary things an example of a doctrinal thing would be the filioque another example of a doctrinal thing would be divorce and remarriage an example of a disciplinary thing would be like priestly celibacy the date of easter whether one uses leavened or unleavened bread in general i think the disciplinary things are less important than doctrinal things and i think that work has to be done on the doctrinal things you know the other big one is papal primacy and infallibility and that the disciplinary things kind of come in its wake and i think we've seen that recently with like the anglican communion and things of that sort so those would be my organizing thoughts yeah i was just gonna add that there's um also a lot of political kind of like historical political realities that fall into it so i i just don't really know i don't even know what the orthodox would want from us just generally speaking i mean i only think i know what catholics would want from the orthodox knowing a catholic dogma in that there are differences in those things that father gregory listed so i don't know if i have much more uh anything insightful or worthwhile to say about it hey you've got many insightful things to say oh thanks about this yeah you got it there you go all right here we go ben hutchins says ben hutchinson says that's tough um can we ever have too many books on aquinas and if the answer is no please confirm this so that i can defeat my wife in an argument laughing crying emoji um my first thought is it depends one must distinguish so i i think that if you have access to a good library you don't really need to own two terribly many books but that's because i move a lot and i also have taken a vow of poverty and i currently have one two three four five nine nine books on my shelf so i don't know that i'm the best one to ask on this but i'll leave it at that i like the way books look on shelves [Laughter] so i think it's more important to have a nice curated selection of books on aquinas than just a plethora you know there's there's quality has it's i think you know it's often better than quantity so i don't know but and perhaps equality all its own i was thinking of that and didn't want to say it but there you have it nice next question nicolas lol says question what books do you guys recommend on the truth of christianity and more specifically catholicism i'm just going to recommend one which is orthodoxy by gk chesterton which i referenced earlier in the conversation that's a good one um as far as like making an apology like an argument four uh i don't know uh i think that's what father gregory recommend is good as far as like a catechesis on the faith um for like a you know non-beginner um i think father thomas joseph's white the light of christ is a really excellent book on you know an introduction to christianity is the subtitle is really excellent um so that might be a place to look too so a couple resources there i mean peter kreeft has a lot um i'm trying to think of other like catholic apologies bishop baron is really excellent on some of these things so there are other resources for sure boom all right linda abraham says since july is the month of the precious blood of jesus could you speak a little about this devotion success and suggest some good ways to practice it this month i'm gonna go for it okay so i don't know much um about the precious blood of jesus i know that there is a religious order founded uh for cultivating a devotion to the precious blood of jesus and the congregation of the most precious blood i know that that congregation was influential in including the precious blood of jesus in the divine praises which are the prayers that you would say at the end of eucharistic adoration and benediction i my kind of general approach to this thing would be theological which is to say i think about it in in in context of the whole teaching about christ's present body blood soul and divinity in the eucharist and um there was a heresy in the history of the church called utraquism which taught that you had to receive both species bread and wine in order to receive the whole christ and this heresy was rebuked corrected by the church because we believe that where one is present there the others are also because where one is present it it's with reference basically to the glorified christ in heaven and what's together in heaven is also together in the eucharistic presence so like for instance uh there's this two-fold consecration in the in the in the come on gregory there's this two-fold consecration at mass so christ is made present sacramentally and substantially under the appearance of bread but the blood the soul and divinity are also there by what we call concomitants where one thing is if those things are all together or if that one thing is with the other things in christ glorified body in heaven then they are together in the eucharist so i think that um i'm made a little bit nervous by devotions which separate things out this is a sensitivity of mine um like when i see lots of statues in a place where jesus is very small like it's just all the infant jesus i slowly back away um so i think it's good to cultivate devotion to the most precious blood of jesus but with the understanding that the blood is held together with the body the soul and the divinity um one way in which i make use of devotion the precious blood of jesus is to kind of intentionally cover myself in his blood when you know in like moments of great stress anxiety or temptation so if i feel like something is a foot which signals the presence of the demonic i will say this prayer lord jesus christ i cover myself in your most precious blood and i bind and send to the foot of the cross whatever it is that plagues me that you may do with it there what you will so that's one way that's a long winding statement so apologies for prolixity all right here we go next doo doo doo pita patta let's go pitipatta says could you speak on just war theory a bit did aquinas write about it at any point do any modern wars or conflicts meet the standard set forward any example of history in j of a just war if any um thoughts you want to get started sure yeah aquinas does write about just war in particular uh in the summa uh i believe i believe father gregory knows better than i i think it's around question 40 of the sukunda sukunde uh boom as he might exactly uh so question 40 of the tsukun tosuken day in in the um in the summer theologica uh he talks about just war and essentially gives a number of um i guess requirements for or things that that the war or launching a war need to meet in order for it to be just so um one of the first principles is that the just war for a war to be just the war needs to be um embarked upon by by the the sovereign by the ruler by the person who has the authority to go to war so it can't just be you know rando people saying we're going to war so there has to be a proper authority leading the war the second is that it has to be for just cause um so that i guess can there can be some debate there as to what what constitutes a just cause for going to war often i think here it has to do with the protection of peoples or or even we could say that we could hold the protection of lands of sovereign lands that that would be just cause there or if there's a particularly grave evil being inflicted to put an end to that evil those could all be just causes um the third is that there that there needs to be the right intention or a third the right intention of the of those engaging in the war so to uphold the just cause not just to like go out and like conquer and and get all the spoils of war you know that's not that's that doesn't constitute a just cause there was a fourth that i had in my mind that has just slipped from my mind um so i can't remember but those are those are some of the big ones um yeah and then as far as the second part um do any modern wars meet um the the just war kind of question um i don't know if i know about enough about war to say yes or no i would think that like even just thinking about the second world war and what you know you know the the nazis were doing i think like the the existence of concentration camps and the mass extermination of peoples constitutes a just cause for going to war um so i would i would wager that i i'd be pretty confident in saying that the second world war was a just war by way of example so boom i have nothing to add and truth be told we have nearly come to the end of our time so we're going to take the opportunity to say some things which would be this thanks for luck i was about to say listening and then i changed to watching and it came out launching that's gross that's great yeah it is gross thanks for watch listening let's listen watching um and we're you know again very grateful so please do like share and subscribe and if you haven't yet please tell your next-door neighbor about god's planning if you already have tell the neighbor on the other side if you've told them both then go across the street get yourself um that's exact move um so the things about which we are excited the upcoming retreat so please pray for the retreat and for the retreats july 23rd through 25th think about joining us on the camino de santiago de compostela beginning may 23rd 2022 through june 6th 2022 application stuff available on our website and uh yeah that's that's it any other thoughts no i don't think so if you're looking to support the podcast feel free check out the merch merchandise and merch whatever people call it these days um and also our patreon page uh both are super helpful especially for putting on these events getting us to look like we're not no longer in caves on our videos all that you know it's super helpful and of course we are continually praying for you all of our benefactors and listeners in particular ways so thanks very much boom boom all right so thanks so much for listening to god's plan we're praying for you please pray for us and we will catch you next time god bless

Channel: Godsplaining Podcast

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Id: Xmi4H_MUqxg

Length: 57min 55sec (3475 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 03 2021