Renewing Our Eucharistic Love, with Dr Peter Kwasniewski, Dr Janet Smith, and Dan Burke

hello friends welcome to the eucharistic penance seminar webinar my name is dan burke and i'm here with dr peter kwashnevsky and janet smith and we're going to before we jump in and talk about dr kwesky's fantastic book the holy bread of eternal life published by sophia institut press we're going to open up with a prayer for the intercession of the blessed mother ave maria grazia plana dominus tecum benedicta tua in milierbio in mulieribus benedictus fructos ventres tui jesus so just introduce us for for the i would be shocked if our audience didn't know uh peter or janet but my name is dan burke i'm the president of the avila foundation the apple institute for spiritual formation dr peter kwashnevsky is a tomistic theologian liturgical scholar and composer and the author of a book we're going to talk about today which is a fantastic book the holy bread of eternal life restoring eucharistic reverence in an age of impiety and then dr janet smith a well-known troublemaker i mean moral theologian recently uh from sacred heart major seminary in detroit uh janet is most known for her vociferous defense of um humane vitae and and her great work in defending the faith uh in the church for a long time and i'm there uh dr koznevsky and and dr smith are both heroes of mine so it's a it's an absolute blessing to to spend some time with him talking about what i think is the most important issue of our time uh and since i'm not a theologian i have to be careful i have to make sure i couch all my comments as questions more than statements but uh i wonder as we open this up when after i had kovid in march was a it was a deeply traumatic time i was very close to death because i have a chronic lung issues and i was already very sick when i came out i came it was almost like a spiritual experience and and i was already you know very traditional in my views in terms of liturgy in the church and you know our whole foundation is based on reproposing preconciliar mystical uh theology and wisdom so i was already rooted there but as i exited something that just struck me that i had never thought about before and i i'd like to get both of your reactions to this and that is that it is true that the most i i the most grave moral evil on the human plane is in our time as abortion in terms of proportionality in the number of children that are killed but what struck me as i came to the conclusion that the most grave evil in our time in my opinion is uh is sacrilege desecration uh against the lord in the eucharist a liturgical abuse am i crazy is that what do you guys think of that um no i i i actually think very much along the same lines dan because in the holy eucharist we're not dealing with a mere sign or symbol if we were then sinning against it would still be grave but it wouldn't be such a big deal as sinning against the lord himself who is really truly substantially present in the blessed sacrament and so recovering a sense of wonder and amazement eucharistic amazement as john paul ii said at this miracle and this mystery and this and the majesty of our lord present in the eucharist is that's crucial that's absolutely crucial because if we're sinning against the lord and the eucharist we're we're we're sitting against our final end we're sitting against the ultimate goal that we're that of all of creation and of our own lives um and and that's something that's that's on a scale really that we can't compare to any natural evil that's a supernatural evil janet what are your thoughts on that i i'm not sure it's it's a um tantalizing thought i remember years ago a bud mcfarland senior who uh became a great spokesperson against contraception said that he had a vision at mass one day that um contraception and unworthy reception are you uh looks like janet froze up doc oh go ahead you said contraception and unworthy reception janet yeah i i think just because the picture freezes it doesn't mean the voice does okay good um so anyway he he said that he had this vision that that using contraception which is again and unworthy reception of the eucharist were very similar because you're taking this great gift of god and um violating it uh not um not living in accord with his will for um the intimacy of sexuality and not living in accord with his will for the intimacy the worthy way of receiving the intimacy of the eucharist um and i mean i agree with what peter was saying is is very um insightful that it both are both abortion and the body of christ are unworthily receiving it are um defamations of bodies that have a kind of a i mean maybe a baby has an immortal soul so there's a kind of a desecration of of of the holy in a sense in in both of those you're killing something that's meant to be to be life life or life-giving janet regarding your personal journey of course i i've known about you from before i even converted to catholicism with respect to your work with humana vitae but i'm i'm not aware of your own journey in liturgy have you always i know you're i more recently i've seen you out there talking about and wrestling with these ideas that were that that uh peter covers in his book but uh have you gone through what has your evolution been like it it's been amazing it it uh is very much i grew up with the latin mass all right until i was 15 or 16 and then um and it wasn't done well in the parish that i went to sunday mass was like 19 minutes all right and my father was not a pious man he was a very good man but that bothered even him aren't they uh i was always drawn to it because um i have a degree in latin and i just i love the latin in just in itself but i was uh i was afraid that because of that it would harm my apostolate for um a humani vitae that i was already on the far fringe of things and if i got associated with the latin mass community nobody would listen to me i would i would just be too far off and honestly it wasn't available anywhere uh for years and years and years and obviously and so i went to the odd one now and then but they weren't again they couldn't be done well they were sometimes sort of in classrooms and in schools and places so that the the what we have now is unbelievably different from what i grew up with and somehow god just roped me in in the last year there were just times when um i go somewhere and the only mass that was being said honestly was the latin mass and i was i was completely overwhelmingly roped in i mean not kicking and streaming but after about three or four times i didn't want to go anywhere else and i still don't i'm i'm done i'm done with the nova sorry everybody but i don't mean to trash nova's order but i'm done all right i spent a lifetime of of crazy liturgies and now having this most incredible reverent um transcendental uh liturgy i honestly i can't wait to get there and i don't want to leave and i want to get as often as i can uh i i go to the novus ordo sometimes because that's all i have for daily mass around here but um i sit in the back and i try to pretend i'm not sorry sorry i i you know so anyway it's been it's done amazing things for my um spiritual life and even mine just on a psyche i'm so much calmer and my and i mean it's it's probably irreverent to say something like this but i get into kind of a zen zone i mean i you know i kneel down and everything of the world goes away and i know that soon i'm going to be immersed in something where i mean honestly it's been over two years now and i i don't know exactly why today is the first day that my mind wandered during the latin mass where i thought about where i was going to get lunch all right i have not done i have not i'm sorry i mean i'm sorry that that happens it happened all the time when i was in the novice order it was today was the first time it was it was it was like jarring to me it's like what what am i doing why is my my mind uh going somewhere else so anyway i it's been marvelous for me and the one thing that has really been a surprise is that over the last two years i'd call up a friend i hadn't talked to for a couple months and i'd say you know i'm going back to that message oh and friends say oh yeah i am too yeah our family has two and these were some of these were very unlikely people um i never would have thought they would have uh found the latin mass and it just keeps happening i just keep running into people that say i i just found all that maps where's it been why haven't i known and of course i'm i'm now you know one of the older people there which is no surprise but i am stunned at the young families and yeah it's in the one i'm going to now it might it's a gift beyond compare that my very own parish is offering that latin mass i never i mean honestly i was i mean i've lived through the really bad liturgies i was at notre dame in the 80s and they had women up at the altar basically come celebrating of course that everybody come around the altar they wouldn't even say the words of consecration uh in a prop in in the right way i mean it was just it was agonizing to go to mass not torture and in some of the masses i go to my hometown where i helped my mother for several years i you know i just think wow if that's all i ever had i don't know if i could retain my faith but still do hoot nanny music they still do you still go into the mass on christmas eve and it's just anyway just and just for those who are who are might be worried the intent of this conversation is the intent of the conversation isn't isn't to uh isn't to uh isn't to you know necessarily uh criticize the ordinary form i it it is beautiful to hear your experience though janet and uh it's it's certainly true of many others i want to switch over to uh uh to peter and talk a little bit about the uh his his new book uh the holy bread of eternal life peter one of the things i appreciated about it is that whether the person whether someone attends let's say a um you know a a a good ordinary form mass or the latin mass they can i think they can gain a great deal of understanding how to participate in a much deeper way because of what you've written here did you intend to reach both uh you know where janet is now and then you know folks uh who are in the novus ordo ordinary form mess yes yeah for sure i mean as you know i've written a number of books that are more specifically about the the tlm the traditional latin mass extraordinary form i didn't want this book to be another one of those books this book is is my witness my heartfelt passionate witness to the mystery of the holy eucharist it's all about that and of course there are liturgical implications to what i say and i draw out some of those but the main thing i want to share with people in this book is you know something that's been growing in me for decades as i've you know in my own journey of faith which has become more and more focused and centered on the holy eucharist through adoration and through attending liturgy both eastern and western liturgies and so on is is just this this sense of of how what a gift what an ineffable treasure god has given us in the holy eucharist it's ab it's beyond anything we can conceive or imagine but we need to try we need to try to break open our minds and hearts to appreciate this gift i think so many people take it for granted so many catholics don't even really believe i mean we know that from the statistics so i i wanted to reignite and rekindle eucharistic fervor that's my main intention with this book but then practically speaking i want to say okay well if this is all true if what the church teaches is really true then what are we what what practical concrete steps can we take to improve our eucharistic faith our piety our reverence how should we behave towards this gift right if if god is going to give you his very own son how are you going to receive him you know are you going to receive him the way our lady received him the way the saints have received him right um and so then that's why and that's why i get into all these questions like uh you know what are the appropriate signs of reference towards the blessed sacrament you know why is catechesis not enough why do we need good pious reverent liturgy right so i'm talking about all these things but somewhat more generally it's not meant to focus on this form or that form of the liturgy well in doing that of course we do we do have to talk about some things that that cross boundaries that are going to make folks uncomfortable and and i i think our audience is very mixed you know we have uh traditional latin mass and ordinary form we've got a quite a huge number of people signed up and i want to first say that i knowing you just in a brief time you and i interacted about this book before it came to publication you you know though you are clear and i i my sense is janet is this way as well though you're very clear uh in your mind about uh and and about the tradition i mean and and unapologetic nobody here is judging anyone or criticizing any person in the sense of um because i want to get into a talk i want to get into a specific aspect of this in the sense that the formation in particular in the ordinary form side since the second vatican council has been horrifying and i don't think i i doubt you'd find many bishops who would disagree with that so this isn't this isn't this isn't uh i'm not stating something that's outrageous the formation's been horrible and so you have well-intended people good people who do a lot of things that they think is normal and appropriate but that really is contrary to to tradition so with that statement and i'm saying you know we're not judging or condemning anyone's statement i want to move into i think a practice that you cover well that's been really surprising to me and that is communion how we receive communion uh to set this up one of the things that was shocking to me was i used to think uh traditional tlm folks were a little fringy when they talked about you know well you know this was brought about by a disobedience and you know the the bishops of the world didn't want this and all that and then i read memorial domini right which is the document that pope paul the sixth um uh sent out through the cdf essentially that said we're going to allow this i was shocked what shocked me is one he argued for a very reverent approach to receiving the eucharist which doesn't exist in most ordinary form uh masses i mean what he argued for doesn't even what he allowed doesn't exist in the sense that he argued that it should be done reverently that communion on the tongue should be retained he argued that it was more of a humble position or the the cdf document that he approved argued all of that so talk a little bit about that situation how we ended up where we are where uh we're so far even from memorial domini in my opinion it's you know it's a big question this is a huge question because it involves it connects about a dozen different topics but i'm going to try to be very i'll try to be very succinct here it seems to me what happened is this if you take the very long view and you look at the whole of church history and the history of the liturgy what you can see is an ever-intensifying awareness of the real presence of christ and the magnitude of that and the ama the the profound meaning of that and the and the fact that we should approach the holy eucharist you know obviously with joy and with longing but also always with adoration and with humility and with repentance right so we need and with fear fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom right so i mean we we don't approach god you know just sauntering up and like equals to equals this is totally absurd we don't do that with our lord so the the trajectory of of the development of the liturgy was always towards enhancing and amplifying the reverence and that's why people in the west in the western tradition of latin church we moved from receiving standing to receiving kneeling you know we moved from reception in the hand in the early church to reception on the tongue for everybody except for the priest and so these developments happened and as pius xii said it's a mistake to think that it's always better to to leapfrog over centuries of development and go back to the way that apparently early christians did it i mean we sometimes don't even know exactly what they did because the records are not very good but pius the twelfth said it's a mistake to think that the developments were wrong they too were guided by the holy spirit so when you get to memoriale domini of the i guess it's from the congregation for divine worship but it was that's right yeah approved it um what he says there is that the traditional practice receiving on the tongue kneeling is most fitting that it as you said it expresses humility it expresses worship it shows uh and this is very important that the food is not ordinary food right but it's divine immortal food right it's heavenly food uh the holy bread of eternal life it's from the title of my book comes from the roman canon it's a phrase from the roman canon and so he says this should be retained and in fact the bishops who were consulted the vast majority of bishops also said it should be retained but then there's a second part of the document and it's odd because there's kind of there's no real transition it looks like something that was tacked on right on the other hand quite possibly uh although it was approved and it says but if communion in the hand has arisen in some places it may be permitted under the regulations of the of the episcopal conference so i i think what you have here is a classic case of 1960s confusion where certain people had reintroduced it a supposedly ancient practice but i think for modernistic reasons um i'll get to that in a moment and then they reintroduced it and paul vi was trying to do damage control by reaffirming the traditional practice but also allowing certain exceptions and and that's where the disobedience began because a lot of episcopal conferences which didn't which where there was no communion in the hands suddenly jumped onto the bandwagon and asked for permission to do it even though that wasn't the intention of of memorial domini um the comment i made about modernists is just this that when you read a church father like cyril of jerusalem or john chrysostom talking about communion in the hand the way they speak about it is totally different from the way the 1960s theologians were speaking about it for them they wanted mass to be reconfigured as a meal as a fraternal meal very horizontal very um kind of chummy in a sense uh like we're just breaking bread together you know and that was a mistake because that that that that was not shot through with the same kind of piety and sense of mystery and majesty that you find in the church fathers so that's that's the kind of that's the false antiquarianism that pius xii was was warning about right does that make sense it does i think he did he did he did he used the phrase the heresy of antiquarianism or did that come elsewhere no no he didn't use that i think somebody else there was another author who brought that up but pies the 12 just simply said false antiquarianism yeah and no everything you're saying it makes sense and i think i want to get down to very specific because because a lot of folks who argue for communion in the hand of course speak of cyril of jerusalem or or you know the the short list of of saints that spoke about it then they did not do it the way that uh it's done in a tr in a typical ordinary form parish can you describe a little bit about those distinctions so and i get the reason i want to do this i just want to set this up is to say if you're going to make that argument that we should do it uh we should receive it in the hand because this such and such a saint said it in this way or that way we we should probably understand how exactly they did do it which is but it's very much a contrast to modern practice yes well i mean very briefly you know some patristic scholars mikhail fiedrowitz bishop athanasius schneider nicola books um they all talk about the fact that if you look carefully at the records and as you say there there's not a lot of information but there's there's certainly some information um it seems that that that uh communion when it was received in the hand was always received in the right hand never in the left hand um and that for that for symbolic reasons right the right hand is sort of the hand of dignity and the hand of strength the left side is symbolically speaking in a sense the side of the devil that's throughout scripture but you received in the right hand and you didn't feed yourself right as as in picking up the the morsel and putting it into your own mouth but you bowed down in a in a sign of adoration and you licked up the the holy bread with your mouth so you basically used your hand like a patent okay it we all know what a patent is it's that metal plate that's put under the host right so your hand was like a fixed stationary patent and you lowered yourself in a sign of humility and adoration and you you licked up the the bread from your hand now people might say oh that sounds weird well no it's not if even today in the byzantine liturgy uh which is has less developed rubrics than the roman rite had and has um the the priest you know he uses leavened bread so it's a little more crumbly and he goes around you know licking and and and you know dotting up with his finger all the little bits of bread and then he licks his hands too i've seen this i've seen this at byzantine liturgy okay so they're more they they're more archaic in a sense than we are right so that what the priest does the disney liturgy is kind of the same idea of licking from your hand um so what we're not looking at here is this idea of i walk right up with full stature standing you know face to face with the priest and i put out my hands and i receive this food and then i feed myself with it um that that's that's never been done in the history of the church that's not even that's just novelty right to do it that way um and it seems to me what i really want to say about this is it's it's even if the early christians did certain things uh with good will um there's a reason why the church developed even by the end of the first millennium away from that right right it's known as if universally the entire church in east and west and we are literally talking about every single christian on the face of the planet by the end of the first millennium was receiving communion in the mouth from the priest right either with a spoon as in the east or directly from the priest's hand you know onto the tongue in the west i mean that that's just a universal thing that happened not for incidental you know light reasons um and it seems to me there well i don't know if you want me to get a little bit into the reasons why that developed i think it's important for people to understand why it developed sure yeah and then i want to talk to dr smith about yes a little bit more about her experience coming in i we got cut off earlier i apologize if i cut you off but keep going peter and then i want to come back to janet and her oh sure so it seems to me that when now again i'm going to talk about the latin uh the western church because the byzantine church is so is similar but not quite the same so i want to leave that for a sec that's a separate issue but in the western church latin write churches develops that the faithful that only the priest handled the blessed sacrament why because he stands in persona christi capitis he's in the person of christ the head of the church he is standing in for christ the high priest um and christ speaks through him christ transubstantiates uh the host and the chalice through him to make them the body and blood of christ and their and and his hands in the right of ordination are anointed with the sacred chrism as if to say these hands are being blessed and consecrated in a special way to handle this awesome divine immortal life-giving food okay and so the priest is the one to whom it's fitting to distribute uh the bread of life and the faithful for their part we have the dignity of being baptized into the common priesthood of christ our dignity is to receive this divine gift i don't need to handle it i don't need to distribute it in order to have dignity my dignity is to receive our lord what greater dignity could there be than that actually i mean it's even greater for the priest to receive jesus than for him to confect the eucharist right i mean at the end of the day we have to just say that that's true so it belongs to the priest to consecrate and distribute it belongs to the faithful to receive and what better way to receive than with a bodily gesture of humility reference and adoration which is to fall on our knees the way the magi did this is a very scriptural thing right this is not something that was invented by medieval people superstitious people it's in scripture we fall on our knees when we're in the presence of god and when we're on our knees and we tilt our head back the priest in persona christi he feeds us right we're fed by by god god the father feeds us with the bread that is his son and that shows the proper relationship of creator and creature of savior and redeemed that is the proper relationship we are not the ones who save ourselves we're not equals to god you know we don't assert our independence and autonomy we we should be lowly and adoring and full of of of of humble reference and that the kneeling posture and receiving on the tongue really strongly emphasizes all of those truths which are so important i would say these are fundamental truths of the christian faith i agree with you janet in in in watching you from afar and listening to your transition was when you were in the ordinary form had you come to conclusions regarding how to engage with the eucharist before you switch to the latin mass not no not a bit um my switching was kind of it was such a surprise it was just being going to various liturgies because again i went to um phoenix i was staying at a hotel and the nearest uh church was one that was nova sort of i mean i'm a tlm yeah i went to uh baltimore and friends said i needed to go to saint i found this liguri church while i was there i didn't even know it was tlm i got there whoa so over and over again in the in the space of the year i went to dallas to visit some friends and i decided they and i kind of made fun of them over the years i hate to say it you know they would only go to the peter you're laughing at me um oh that's okay uh i you know i asked my one time did i ever really mock you or anything for for give you a hard time and the only thing at one time they would not recognize the legitimacy of the novus ordo and my friend was very grateful that i moved her around to see that she should do that but um i mean i ended up going to mass all morning i got there earl midway through the first mass and then i i just stayed and prayed and then i stayed for the second mass and again i felt i could stay all day it was just some it just captivated me but i mean i there was a conscious moment when i was at notre dame that i decided i was going to learn nothing about the liturgy because it would just disturb me and i everything i know when i see that they're breaking some rubric they're doing something i just get upset so i said i'm just gonna remain in blessed ignorance about what but sometimes you couldn't help but i mean at one time one of my friends was at the basilica and at the end of mass she stood up and shouted to the whole church i i father you need to tell people they didn't receive a valid eucharist today you never said the words of consecration that the church prescribes and he said well just come up and talk to me afterwards and he told her maybe you need to attend a different liturgy because people are accustomed to that here and it doesn't bother them wow wow that's quite remarkable i you know for me i came in uh as an anglican seminarian and and our liturgy was quite beautiful obviously it wasn't valid but uh i was telling uh peter before the we did the open on the webinar that it was a a real beautiful blend um uh but most much more like the traditional latin mass than the ordinary form today but but had some uh more in the vernacular and so when i came in i was i was a bit shocked at what i saw in the uk in the liturgy the first liturgy i i attended actually before i converted was at a church in the round and it was for christmas and i thought well if there's going to be good liturgy it's going to be during christmas so i'll go there the parish didn't even have kneelers and i was so scandalized not even catholic yet but i was so scandalized that i said and oh and then the pews were made such that it wasn't possible to kneel so they purposely made it you couldn't kneel on the floor if you were going to kneel so i knelt in the aisle as a non-catholic scandalized by what was going on in this liturgy i think i think everybody of a certain age has all these sort of battle scars and you know and stories from the trenches that they could share the parish i grew up in in new jersey was the same way padded chairs with no kneelers carpet everywhere purple carpet you know in the round i mean just a crazy place when i look back i didn't know any of that when i was growing up i had no idea how irregular and how weird it was but later as i learned more about the faith i just i just thought this is crazy what the who you know whoever the people who designed this did not have the faith of the church that's really it comes down to that um and you know this question has just come up of beauty right it's come up in a way sort of marginally but you know janet's mentioned it some of the beautiful churches like saint alphonsus you've mentioned it with with the anglican liturgy and i just want to make this point about beauty which does come up in my book a little bit uh but not as much as it does in some of my other other books it seems to me that if we believe that our lord is really truly substantially present in the holy eucharist that's the that's the burning pulsing heart of the mass is is his eucharistic presence then everything with which the church has surrounded the mass over all the centuries beginning with the beautiful building and the architecture of it the stained glass the statues the communion rail all of these parts of the church and then the music with which the liturgy is is imbued um and the vestments right and the incense and everything all these things we do it's not just for aesthetic reasons it's not because we're kind of asking to like to go to museums and feel sophisticated it's not about that it's it's about bestowing on our lord the greatest and best and most beautiful things we can give him and the things that will lift up our spirits and will actually make us realize that we're in the house of god we're in his temple we're in his presence you know this is not it's uh you know the this is not uh your office or your school or your bedroom or your living room or whatever this is the temple of god right and and that is um and so the beautiful the role of the beautiful in eucharistic reverence is also really crucial and and very much underestimated i agree i had an experience i am hearing feedback i think it's can you i'm echoing so janet um i'm sure you've been to the shrine of the most blessed sacrament i imagine peter may have as well which which one mother angelica yes yeah yeah and i wonder what the f the if oh sorry we're having a little bit odder audio issue okay it's solved um i wonder what both of your your your uh your reactions would be when i first entered in the shrine in the most blessed sacrament and this is to speak to peter's point um which has the second tallest monstrance in the world and of course it's gold everywhere and it's you know god bless mother angelica for the for and the donors for this amazing place i was immediately went to my knees and that was my instinct was to go to my knees how did it affect you guys walking in that beautiful place and and how does that relate to what we're talking about here well um i had an interesting experience i was traveling to florida with my sister and her four very young children um and and one of whom uh to this day now he's 30 i mean has never shown the slightest um understanding of the supernatural or the transcendent or any inclination towards religion and my sister was quite angry that i had um really insisted that we were going to to go off the road or take this side trip to see this this shrine and it was you know you know just you can't make kids do this kind of stuff and i said well they're just going to have to i have to see that we're in the neighborhood we're going to do it and um i know you all all people think i'm just really this pushy bossy person but really i'm i well doesn't matter anyway all right i can't argue against that point for this story anyway so we got there we walk in and my nephew my nephew he's probably um maybe 10 or 11 at that point again never shows the slightest reverence anything he just says aunt janet i think if there's a heaven it can't be any more beautiful than this and it was just you could just say he was blown away you know and you just see that it touches the heart of a little boy like that who's kind of before various family reasons unfortunate things he'd been hardened to his father was a very anti-religious and so he sort of inherited that attitude from his dad and so just seeing that was just extraordinary uh to me to see the effect that it could have on on a young man i i often feel when i i'm in front of uh a tabernacle it's just like wow jesus came he came to us and he wants to be he's in ipsilanti michigan you know and you just think and he's in a beautiful tabernacle here and and all these people who have uh sacrifices over the years um to to do this and it just it's a stunning thing that you can get it down the street yes in you know uh it's just incredible i i'm sure you both know um if you if you looked at augustine father augustine thompson's big biography of saint francis of assisi which is really important biography he's able to show from all the source documents that saint francis that the number one concern of saint francis his priority was eucharistic reference and the beauty and clearness of the churches the appropriateness of the vessels and the vestments i mean this is the ill you know you know the the poor man the hippie that as the people like no no he wasn't i mean yeah he was radically poor but he always wanted the best and the most beautiful things for our lord that that just makes sense if you're in love with someone you know you don't you don't you don't want them to live in a dirt hole or some kind of little plastic box or something you you want them to have the best that you can provide for them i i think we need help right you talked about going into the church that i've never been to that shrine unfortunately but i've been to other ones you know of similar um impressiveness and i think we need help right we're fallen human beings our tendency we're born into this world basically i like to say we're born as materialists right all that the only thing that we can appreciate is what's in front of our senses you know we're not very spiritual we it's with difficulty that we pray and that we elevate our minds to god um and so you know saint thomas when he's talking about why we have sacraments he says god wanted to meet us where we were and bring us to where we were not he wanted to lift us up through sensible beauty through and through sensible things like water oil bread wine to himself and so it's this pedagogy this wonderful divine you know leading by the hand and that's why the church catholic churches were always beautiful from the very time of the emperor constantine onwards every church that was built had to be the best and most beautiful it could be and i think this just shows a kind of realism about the capacity of human beings and their needs does that make sense it does i mean architecture it tells you what's i mean architecture speaks right it's it it has a doctrinal component to it it either tells you the truth or it doesn't it tells you what's most important in a room if if it has a directionality and there's a a focal point or not uh it tells you how big or small you are it tells you it you know and and i really think um that of course you know since the council um in the in the the craziness of the 70s just culturally we've we've wrecked so many places of worship or built them without this sense of understanding that the these our physical surroundings can dispose us to encounter god or keep us or hinder us from encountering god yes yeah in fact you know you mentioned the the bad architecture of the 70s which of course began in the 50s i'm sure there's a church not far from where i live that's just hideous it's from the 50s um but i what's interesting when you read all these people i have a whole library full of liturgical books from all different decades from the you know from all different centuries in fact but but i i especially i'm interested in reading what people were saying in the 30s 40s 50s what were they thinking right some of them were on the right track but some of them were way off they were on the space age you know we're moving into a new humanity a new future you know a new kind of man that's not like anyone that's ever existed before and one thing one common thread i've seen with the more modernist authors from that time before the council and after the council is they have this kind of you used the word zen earlier but they have this weird sort of um like the more stripped down a church is the more empty it is if it's whitewashed it has no images no beaut no beauty to for the eye then it's somehow more pure and and somehow more authentic and more sincere and it it focuses us more on what's essential right i mean i'm sure you've all run across this this line of reasoning it's completely absurd it has nothing to do with how human beings work and however will ever work did you ever visit the um chapel at the john paul ii center in washington dc the original one it was it was like a cinder block jail cell there were little windows up there and and nothing of beauty and then a couple years ago they renovated it and put in a beautiful beautiful chapel and but when you're when i first went yeah it just you just think this is just a violation of everything you know that it's so as you said bare and stripped down and of course i lived through the time and i it's a real question are there still places where the tabernacle's off to the i mean i know one um but i didn't think i'd live long enough to see the tabernacle return to the center of the church i again vivid memory when i it was teaching at notre dame and of course they can't move the one in the main basilica thank god but they did in the um in the crypt and the crypt is just a chapel right and it's a chapel and it's it's a very long narrow chapel and then they have like two side storage areas and they put the chapel in the place where they stored the the chairs when they needed excess chairs i i went into some sort of fit you know that i couldn't believe it that you moved the tabernacle out of the center of this chapel and moved it over that nobody knows it's there you can't see it and you have to you have to move past chairs to get to it and i was told of course oh well people want to pray in front it shouldn't compete with the eucharist that's being performed and people have a place to pray it was crazy but this is this is a great example you know earlier i was mentioning this idea of false antiquarianism you know that just because the early christians receive communion in the hand doesn't mean it's best always and everywhere to receive communion in the hand or that we should recover that after a thousand years more of a contrary practice i mean they also say this about tabernacles right it's true that in the early church the blessed sacrament was not reserved in the in the center of the church that's absolutely true but the development that took place was very appropriate because what you see when you go into a traditional catholic church is you see this amazing constellation of the high altar the tabernacle and the crucifix and it's all on the same vertical you know plane it's it's right there in a line so that when you come into the church your mind is sort of overwhelmed with the sense of the grandeur of god the presence of our lord and the altar of sacrifice it all comes together all of those things are are sort of orbiting around the same axis if i can put it that way and it's we can see why that happened that way because then during the liturgy it's not a question of am i bowing towards the cro the crucifix or towards the tabernacle where am i supposed to genuflect what's going on no it's all just one place totally clear and it's it that clarity in fact is what catechizes us most deeply right sometimes you hear people say oh you know we could solve the eucharistic crisis in the church if we just catechize people better no that's baloney textbook catechesis is not the solution to our problems it's a component it's necessary i think we need to bring back the baltimore catechism forget about all this day schmoozy catechism stuff bring back the baltimore catechism and have children memorize the answers but that's still not enough they need to see in the church and in the liturgy the the visible audible expression of what catholics believe it's the lex orandi lex credenti thing right how we pray should show what we believe we don't need to study a book to get that let me uh make sure folks who are watching are reminded and i don't know if we can put it up on the screen or if it's already there for our producer but the holy bride of eternal life restoring eucharistic reverence in an age of piety it's up there um it's up on the screen uh we're we're talking about a lot of what uh peter talks about in his book and and does such an amazing job i want to transition uh to another aspect of encountering the lord in the eucharist which has a dimension in the realm of moral theology and in liturgy it crosses all both of your expertise quite well and and it was it was it it my discovery of uh was a shock of this missing passage to give you a hint uh where we're going because uh i came to the catholic church many reasons right the catholic mystical tradition drew me in in probably the the biggest way and then the apostolic fathers and um but reading the new testament you know passages like if you don't eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life in you but the one passage that really struck me you know for years before i became catholic was first corinthians 11 27 and this idea that there and it really was mind-bending for me as a protestant because i'm thinking well how is this if this is just a symbol how how is this happening so the passage basically says i don't have it in front of me but it says that if you eat the eat eat if you participate in a way and maybe one of you can pull it up and and get the exact passage you have it there you want to read it peter yeah this is first corinthians chapter 11 verses 27 to 29 therefore whosoever shall eat this bread or drink of the chalice of the lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the lord but let a man prove himself or examine himself and so let him eat of that bread and drink of the chalice for he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh judgment to himself where some translations have condemnation or damnation in the knoxville translation not discerning the body of the lord so that's the passage so what what rocked my world a bit as a protestant was how is it if this is just a symbol that people are dying or getting sick i mean it doesn't make any sense you know in terms of protestant theology in any any any framework even high anglican or anglo catholic i in my opinion not to be disrespectful to the to the anglicans but i i just i didn't see it so i'm asking the question how is this possible and where did this teach where did we lose this teaching and obviously i found out back in the catholic church but the thing that shocked me was that um there that's been removed from the uh from the lecture from the readings of the in the ordinary form math yes yes it it's actually it's really scandalous i mean not to put too fine a point on it um because you know as as as probably i mean certainly you know and many of my listeners will know as well that um the lectionary of the old mass is much smaller than the lectionary the new or reformed lectionary which was touted as a great advancement or step forward in biblical literacy but the problem is that there are quite a number of important passages that had always been read by the church including first corinthians chapter 11 that were omitted purposefully when the new lectionary was was put together why do i say omitted purposefully that seems like a pretty you know bold claim to make well the fact is that all the other verses around that part are there but not those right so they were left out and you see this pattern frequently that verses are kind of snipped out here and there because they say something that was deemed difficult or objectionable or or too harsh or liable to misunderstanding or whatever which to me is just supremely arrogant on the part of the the people who put the lectionary together we need to hear the whole unadulterated word of god you know i sound like those you know like those protestant chapels they say like the unadulterated word of god right that's what we need that's what catholics had and that's what we still need and this passage in particular i mean when you think about so many examples like like um you think about you know catholic so-called catholic politicians who shouldn't be receiving communion because of what they support and so on i mean this this warning of paul is absolutely relevant and timely it always is and it's it's urgent to hear it and to take it to heart yeah it seems to me there are two there are two aspects of this and janet maybe you can comment one is the the the sin of the person who approaches who's not who's in a state of mortal sin right so you're in a state of mortal sin you you're approaching and you're receiving the eucharist which is mortal sin on top of mortal sin and not only is it a mortal sin and please correct me you guys are the experts to me it's desecration uh at that point it or it has an equivalent moral weight to it because because you're you're essentially receiving um the lord you're you're you're not in union you're not in communion it's not it's it's it's a kind of a lie it's uh it's uh you're receiving the the the true body blood soul and divinity into a state that's deeply uh corrupted if you will and separated from the life of god so that's one aspect and then the other is the sin of the person who might give it to me who knows i'm in unrepentant mortal sin and that that is clearly the case with politicians who unequivocally are pro-abortion or pro-contraception and do all that they can to advance those things you know for either of you am i overstating how grave it is uh in this situation i don't know if janet you want to take a shot at that first i mean i think that there's there's um uh it's not just lack of reverence for the eucharist there's a problem here or it's that really this notion of universalism that we're all saved and so um that i mean you have an abortion and it's not doesn't threaten your immortal soul nothing does everybody's saved and so everything gets watered completely watered down is for the importance of going to confession or or being aware of your sinfulness i it just says why if you're all saved why worry about it so the mass does become a communal gathering where you get together and kind of just enjoy um your friends and you just enjoy joy being together it's not that this is absolutely essential to your salvation and it's absolutely essential that you repent of your sins and that you believe in the gospel and you transform your lives that's not something that you hear ever in you know maybe now and then i mean again since i've been going to latin mass i've heard more homilies on the need to transform your life and to put jesus in the absolute center of your life and as um peter mentions in his book the fact that it stuns people that there's confession available uh at the beginning of mass and during the mass and it's just that sense and how many people you can honestly see this relief like oh yes i need to go to confession before i go to and it's right here you know and so that that notion that a purity of self i mean as i'm not saying anything that people don't know but how many parishes have one hour a week of confession and there's no encouragement to go so i think it's it's much more than that the reason that passage is not included is because of a uh a really a heresy that um we're all saved yeah i mean the thing i agree janet it seems to me that again it always surprises me that the strongest voices uh about communion unworthy communion are not recent voices but the church fathers i i quote i quote a passage from saint john chrysostom that's you know would be considered over the top by anybody nowadays but he's quite serious about the problem of of approaching in a state of sin i quote saint thomas aquinas i quote saint john vianney you know you you could quote people saint thomas aquinas i mean you could quote people you know day in and day out who all say the same thing the catholic faith is absolutely consistent on this point and it's really only it seems to me it's only in the 20th century and you know i'm not an expert in the field of the history of you know communion practices or something so maybe somebody can find another age where there was a similar problem but my reading has indicated that it's only in the 20th century that we have lost the sense of the fear of god the fear of offending god i think pius xii famously quipped that the the worst sin of modern man is the loss of the sense of sin something something to that effect right um so it seems to me that there's a unique problem that we're facing now of people not actually maybe not even knowing what the concept of sin means and what does it mean to be separated from god well even the idea that that god is a lawgiver and that we're obliged to follow his laws his commandments his precepts under pain of death eternal death right i mean even something as simple as that which is like kindergarten level catholicism i'm not really sure that that's a common notion anymore um so we have a lot of rebuilding that has to take place but once again the rebuilding is is happening in the way that you say janet that when people see everyone taking the mask seriously and they're on their knees and they're going to confession it kind of wakes you up like oh this is a big deal there's something serious going on here right i mean you know what i mean like you have to first intuit it you have to first feel that there's that this is a big deal that going to communion is a big deal and also to see that some people are not going for whatever reason you know maybe they're not feeling well or they're in an irregular marriage or they haven't fasted or whatever it doesn't necessarily mean that they're a mortal sinner you know in in a in traditional communities there are people who don't go to communion and nobody judges them for that but in a lot of parishes every single person gets up and goes to communion it's like the ushers tell you okay now it's this row's turn everybody comes out and everybody goes up you know john paul ii and benedict the 16th were complaining about this but it seems to me that they weren't able to stop it you know yeah you know it it one thing is disturbing about this conversation is that it has an end uh it feels like it needs to we need three hours to really get scratched the surface you know this is a fantastic book that you've written peter the holy bride of eternal life published by sophie institute press i want to circle back to the beginning um producer man do we have questions or are we able to do that they're on my phone okay um how how much time do you both have i don't want to presume in uh i like i thought we were going to 5 30 anyway but um all right i've got time you can do it yeah a little more time okay um let me just get pull up some of these questions i want to circle back to the beginning and as i'm getting these questions ready um i'll i'll pitch to you peter to talk about this okay i've got i've got it um so the the way we started was i mentioned you know i had covid and and that this kind of awakening and i i still feel pretty firmly about this idea that it's the it's it's it's the greatest sin of our time mainly because what i realized was it it's not a sin i i'm not saying that it's the the sin of the bishops or the priests i i'm but certainly we've had a lot of issues with liturgical abuse but what i saw in my own mind in my own eye and my own experience i've traveled to every single state in the united states speaking even shortly after i was out of quarantine i was speaking again i was refused communion i saw communion distributed with plastic gloves you know i got a phone call from one of our community members who had communion uh they were taking them in a little box uh the the lord was placed in little baggies into a bible study so the person left the church in a box with little baggies you know so if it if it wasn't the most prominent sin of our time before cove it's certainly after we've seen rampant uh liturgical abuse and sacrilege and i think uh desecration so we've gathered together today in i think in some sense with broken hearts i mean i am hopeful about the the future of the faithful in the church and the authentic expression of the church i am truly hopeful but we live in very dark times in this in the respects that we're speaking of and so part of this gathering part of the reason the three of us you know took time out of our sunday which i don't think most of us do this kind of thing on sunday is one to say this is a great book you all need to read it and i really believe that whether you're in ordinary form even if you're you think we're crazy i don't know uh and if you're in the latin mass everybody needs to read the holy bread of eternal life but we're also asking folks to join with us in a novena of reparation and peter why don't you share with me a little bit about you know what what that's about and and how and why people can participate yes yeah now this idea um i mean i just want to give credit where credit is due this idea was from sofia institute press the publisher of the book and they said wouldn't it be great if we took advantage of this opportunity you know this book coming out to gather people together at the beginning of 2021 and to pray in a serious way in reparation for sins against the eucharist to show our lord that we that we love him you know that we adore him that we that we want to receive him in the humblest and best way we can and that we want to do penance for other people you know for our brothers and sisters in christ um so that's the idea of the the novena for eucharistic reparation and supplication i would say you know begging the lord to help us uh to help his church to overcome these evils these evils can be overcome but i think you know to quote that that uh frequently quoted line of our lord some demons only come out by prayer and fasting and i think there are a lot of demons at work in the world and in the church and we can see that i don't need i don't need to go off on a tangent to ex to say what those what those demons are so we need prayer and we need fasting um so i was and and so that the nuvina you know there's a little prayer that we're praying from uh insinu jesus uh which is a book that's been a profound effect on me um about eucharistic adoration um and that's you know sophia has been sending that out and there are some scripture verses to meditate on we're fasting from one meal we're skipping a meal uh during this novena um and we are trying to fast or abstain from social media which is huge i mean that i can already feel like i feel i feel like a new man no just kidding right but it's it's really healthy it's really really healthy to uh to give up that you know facebook twitter all this kind of stuff um you know and we're praying the rosary in the divine mercy chaplet going to mass uh if we can so basically what all of whatever you can do of those things do them yeah the uh and for those of you who may be out funny enough for telling people to get off social media it's like me on ewtn radio saying you shouldn't watch television and doug kicks going what did you just say but the eucharisticpendants.com for those out on social media go to that site you can still sign up you can receive a recording of our broadcast today and then you'll get the daily uh you'll get the you'll get the novena so i do have a few questions we were able to figure that out while you're answering that question and either of you can jump in it's up to you guys uh first one what can i do to receive communion when churches are closed it's from anna ashton uh often the priest will like my my parish priest by actually teaching him latin because he wants to do the latin mass and um while i was teaching him latin you know during the whole covet insanity but you can say you know janet if you asked me i could give you the eucharist and i just kept thinking well why should i have special privileges but you know he just kept saying if you asked me i could give you the eucharist you know so i finally said can i get the eucharist and so they set up a tremendous plan um you know that hours on uh during the day and on the weekend they would for three entries of the church they would uh you know you'd come and get the eucharist and it was just such a consolation so certainly you can ask any priest um to to give you the eucharist but many of them will so i don't think you should if there's if there's a time when first if you're ill and you don't want to um infect others and you can tell the priest that so you can take precautions but if there there's all sorts of reasons why you might want to receive the eucharist outside of mass um ask the priest yes and of course we wouldn't want to make that a norm a normal thing for exceptional circumstances and we've seen exceptional circumstances you know it can be appropriate to ask for that and i i know people have heard this maybe even too much um but i i think it's still worth repeating because the saints saint teresa of avila saint thomas aquinas they all talk about it you know spiritual communion is a real thing it's a very powerful practice if we if we recollect ourselves and we enter into the presence of our of our god and we tell him you know with with a heart full of faith and love that we wish to receive him we wish we could receive him sacramentally but we can't and we ask him to come to us nonetheless with his grace that is a very powerful prayer and one that our lord is very pleased with because basically we're saying to him you know we know you are the source of life and if we can't receive you in the sacrament then we want to receive as much grace as you can give us uh as if we were receiving the sacrament right so it's a it's actually an act of faith in the eucharist and it's an act of adoration towards the eucharist even when we're not close to a church right so i think that's another way of building up eucharistic faith yeah we have a we have a community member of apostolic va community who's in oman for instance all the mosques are shut down all the churches are shut down so there's no no possibility of any uh direct reception of the sacrament and in that case uh what you're what you're describing is really important folks you can go out and do a search for spiritual communion prayers you can find that i'm out on ewtn i i would also just quickly recommend i think it's it's it's it can be very nourishing to take up a missile an old missile especially the the latin mass missile and read the mass of the day if you can't make it to mass just pray read over those prayers slowly prayerfully do a kind of lectio divina with the prayers of the mass and that can be very very nourishing spiritually that's a great that's a great point in particular the the latin mass missile and had often you have beautiful commentary uh in the margins about the mass and it's a great way to learn about the mass and go deeper and prepare for when you can receive again one one caution is in this time there's a lot of people skipping out on mass because of the dispensation if you're healthy and you can go you should go if you're healthy and you're not a high risk person that you're not why the dispensation is there uh your the the dispensations are there for high-risk people and uh people who who would be threatened gravely if they were to get get coveted another question uh that's a really good one that i i want to take a shot at first and then send it to you guys for tlm do we have to know latin can novus ordo be made like tlm so i'll answer the first question can tlm do we have to know latin i would just say this if you're an ordinary foreign person and this is making you curious that what you need to do is go and do not try to follow the mass just go and observe and do it for five or six times just go be at peace and pray and you'll receive communion uh you'll see if there you go to a normal latin mass parish you'll see a long line for folks before math uh for for confession like janet was talking about um you know just uh allow the experience you allow yourself time to experience it and kind of watch and you'll after five or six times you'll get the rhythm and then uh you know go pick up there's good books out there one by angelus press like introduction to the latin mass um you can pick up a missile uh but the the most problematic thing you can do uh that'll frustrate you like crazy is try to follow along and act like you do in an ordinary form mass when you go in an extraordinary form yeah yeah i i actually completely agree with that uh and part of the reason for the frustration is that in fact multiple things are happening at any given time um especially at a high mass and so you can't really follow everything as it's happening it's not possible there's too much going on uh so you you need to as you said pick up the rhythm of it um janet did you want to comment on new york i have several friends who are wanting to go to latin mass but they find the the latin an obstacle and uh you know i tell them there's very few people unless you've been going to the latin mass for a very long time and know latin very well that can and and of course the priest speaks salto voce most of the time it's more or less quiet so you can't hear it anyway and you couldn't follow it anyway he says it's so quickly or his accent is different and very few people who know latin very well can understand latin spoken they're they're reading it right and so i say you know you're not they you're like you're you're not looking around and think everybody knows the latin everybody's following the latin except me that is absolutely not true all right there may be a handful i'm one of those i i follow it religiously and i can't try to listen to angelus while i'm reading this and the song just while i'm reading it anyway but what i'm doing for them is trying to show them how to pray the latin of the mass when they haven't really studied latin per se and i'm doing these lessons that i on my website and they're in a primitive form now that i'm learning a lot on how to do this but it's um janet smith.org and i'm for instance we'll go through the gloria and i will um explain all these english derivatives uh that are that you can know what the latin words are because you know english and it i would say 90 of the time you can and then if you just see how the structure is and you get the structure of the prayer and the meanings of the words and i'm i think if you did it for a week especially if you did it with some of the singing if you found it a youtube uh um beautiful uh singing of the that before you almost have it memorized but now you would know what the words mean and friends are really loving it they're we're having a great time with it so that's the other point i would just bring up is that the actual prayers of the mass are repeated so much from sunday to sunday or even day to day that it after a while you it's amazing how much you pick up by osmosis you know what's going on you know what's being prayed you know and you get used to using a missile to follow along with with some of the quiet parts if you want anyway but the question about can the can the ordinary form be made more like the traditional landmass i mean of course the answer is yes it can um and yes it should be made to be more traditional to be more fully catholic to to draw upon this 2000 actually 3 000 year heritage of worship that we have judeo-christian worship um however it's it's it's a challenge it's a challenge because uh because you know the faithful have all different sensibilities and the clergy among themselves don't agree and the bishops often don't agree with their clergy and so it's it it can happen but it's it's fraught with difficulties and that's i think part of the reason why a lot of people are finding a refuge with the extraordinary form because it just is what it is it's absolutely totally determinate it's always the same the rubrics are always the same the texts are always the same it really i mean unless somebody doesn't know what he's doing it's going to be basically always the same and for me that's that's an outstanding plus that's a real virtue that it has yeah for someone who's uh you know one of our one of my passions is teaching people mental prayer and uh if you know if you're an ordinary form catholic you go to the novus ordo and you want to learn to pray and sit in silence and and give your heart and mind to god it's a great it's a great respite i back to janet's note it was kind of funny saying she was kept going places and ended up in latin masses i was flying back and forth to dc when i was every week when i was the president of ewtn news and i my favorite hotel i discovered was the only latin mass in the area was exactly across the street i could throw a rock and hit it so god did the same thing to me i want to i want to just invite some folks to another uh opportunity to learn how to dig deeper into tradition i'll be giving a webinar on um january 25th on septuagisma and the pre-lenten traditions and how you might prepare for lent there's a lot of folks out there who will give you blanket prescriptions on what to do for lent usually they're good advice but often that kind of advice doesn't really get to what you need specifically to grow spiritually what are the barriers that hinder your your growth what are the what are the ways you need to grow in virtue so i'll be walking through that find that at spiritualdirection.com and then go to the events page and you'll see that uh observed septuagint sunday january 25th it'll be it'll prepare you for lent like nothing you've ever experienced through the the lens of faithful tradition of the church um i want to go back to some of the questions for you guys uh here's another one in the present time with a pandemic raging in the world we have no holy mass we listen online so this is ontario canada to sri lankan catholic who lives in ontario and then we drive to church to receive holy communion only we are administered holy communion by eucharistic minister not our priest we try our best to receive being in a state of grace we're eager to receive but is this okay so i want to take a shot at this uh just and then give it to you guys the one thing you know i don't i don't participate in things like that and i don't participate if i can't receive on my knees and on the tongue and and some people might say well wait a minute you're not taking the eucharist but you have to understand what the obligation to go to mass is not an obligation to receive the eucharist in a manner that you personally are convicted is is problematic and and i am personally convicted of that so i only go i will only receive on my knees and if i'm refused then i pray for the one who refused me and i give thanks for the suffering and i go back to the pew so you know if you end up in a situation like this you don't have to you don't have to i mean i know we want to receive the lord and i i you know i wept the first time i received the lord after i came out of covid um and and so i get that hunger but it's important how we participate as well yeah and i want to i want to add to that because i think this is a question it comes up over and over again um you know in the history of the church there's been a kind of pendulum swing back and forth between frequent or more frequent communion and infrequent extremely infrequent communion and the fact of the matter is that when the great saints talk about this question i'm thinking of saint augustine and saint thomas aquinas in particular uh whom i quote and i think i quote them in the book um they they say there is no rule about how frequently you should receive communion you should receive communion when you're suitably disposed you know when you've prepared yourself adequately for it um really when it's for the good of your soul as you can as you can judge it and often in the tradition people were it was said that you should talk to your spiritual director about this so there was once a time not so long ago when you had to you know when religious for example needed the permission of their spiritual director to go to communion frequently um so i think what's happened after pius saint pius the tenth is that communion has become so frequent as to become routine and almost meaningless for a lot of people and the danger the more subtle danger including for catholics who are very earnest and very good people is to think of the eucharist as something like kind of like our property like if we we did we deserve to have this and we have to get it instead of having the humility to see that that sometimes it's good for us to to have a so to speak a eucharistic fast as joseph ratzinger calls it and to have that longing in us for a deeper sacramental communion really nourished and enkindled so i guess this is just a way of saying there's a real danger in our time of kind of utilitarianism and pragmatism where we try to reduce the mass to receiving communion and we reduce communion to the most efficient system that we can think of and this is all wrong because this is not how we should treat our lord and it's not the way we best prepare ourselves to receive janet any thoughts oh yes when i when we couldn't go to mass because of covid um i started watching a latin mass in limerick ireland which was just exquisite um everything was beautiful oh they sing it was an empty church there was the fact there was just one one or two nuns at the at the very front that would do the sitting and standing but um but you know at first i'm i have it on my my laptop and i'm sitting in my easy chair and i'm thinking like there's something wrong there's something wrong with this and so i set up a um a beautiful i just love a little altar in my in in in my bedroom in a corner and it's it's just beautiful and now it's transformed my prayer uh you know i have candles i like them every day i have icons i have all sorts of things it's just gorgeous and i'm thinking that's one of the best things that's come out of code for me is realizing i don't want to pray in my um recliner and and um and honestly i don't want to watch math i mean everybody i at the beginning kind of found it kind of interesting to see how the mass was done in different places and and then they found out that as you said peter is is to pick up a missile and pray through the mass and and even with children you have them read different parts of the mass and you may just not read the whole mass or pray the whole mess but you discuss different portions of it and you devote an hour or so to this and it just makes such a difference um and it's you know it's poured over into their attending mass that they have a a heightened awareness of what the mass is and why it's so wonderful to have it i mean i think that's we're going to have to talk about either now at some other session but we haven't touched much upon preparing for mass um i mean i've seen people over the years with with kids just do great things um and they make the preparation all week long you know if they talk about someone having problems they say well let's make that our intention or one of our intentions on sunday and as they they talk about mass they say what are you going to offer your mass for and then afterwards um you know what were you moved to pray for after mass during the time of thanksgiving and you say i'd like to pray for that too so i want to know in and all those sorts of things the fasting the the dressing up um the i have one friends that on sunday kids got all dressed up and then they would um go home and have a very nicely prepared uh meal and they had to learn table manners and once they all reached a certain level every couple weeks they'd go out to a restaurant and if to show off that they knew my father would would travel extra hours to visit this family and take them out to dinner because he couldn't believe he's how well mannered the kids are but i can never do it he said i can never do it i don't know how this guy does it but practiced they practiced at home so making it something you look forward to all week long um and uh you know saying that you're bringing everything to this mass and offering it to the lord and all the graces that are there kids love they totally love to think that they're helping someone by um offering uh the mass and offering prayer for them so i think that changes everything when you're really um intentionally preparing all week long yes yeah just just a second that i mean children particularly can see when their parents are taking something seriously and and they can pick up very easily that the difference between a mass that is celebrated with total faith and reverence in the blessed sacrament and a mass where it's kind of about the community or it's about something else and political cause or whatever they can they can sense that they may not be able to put it into words but there's an intuition there and and it it seems to me that a similar uh something similar can be said about thanksgiving after mass right we haven't even touched on that but i make a big point of of urging people to stay after mass after you receive communion stay for 15 minutes in the church it seems like a long time when you're not used to it you know you're and you're busy and you're thinking i've got to get away i've got to get and sometimes people really do have to leave right away i'm not saying that that never happens but if you can it's part of i mean pious the tenth says this when he encourages frequent communion he says that prep preparing adequately and giving thanks afterwards is part of a fruitful communion right um so i think we really we really need to think carefully about sort of how to put it like all the other things that surround holy communion right it's not just something isolated by itself it's part of a whole way of life it is very well said um there's another question that's a tough one and i want to uh throw something out there and get your thoughts so whenever i talk about this i get this question and i and i feel a little bit bad for people so ordinary form participant extraordinary minister they they listen to this and they go oh my hands aren't consecrated oh i am touching the lord i am doing something reserved for the priest historically now back to the beginning of we're not judging that person because usually those people are pretty devout they really want they have been taught a uh what we you know what was an unintended interpretation of pious the tense you know uh uh active participation and and and so they wanted to help and they and so you know my one of the things i've said is is well if you quitting is going to lead to it being done more or less reverently i would struggle with that um so i don't know what are your thoughts yeah i so i i think i'm in a pretty good position to talk about this because i wrote an article just this past monday at new liturgical movement um about lay ministries and how lay ministries actually lay liturgical ministries take lay people away from their own proper vocation in the world yeah and they also take the clergy away from their proper vocations but i started the article by talking about my own experience growing up i was i wanted to be a good catholic i think that that was clearly the grace of god working in me in my life um and the only message i ever got was if you're serious about being a catholic you have to sign up for ministries you have to sign up and do stuff that's the message i took away um and so i first signed up to be an alter alter server i did that for a while then when i was a little older i signed up to be a lector and i did that for a while and then i signed up to be an extraordinary minister of holy communion and i did that for not a very long time maybe about a year um and it was at that point and see this whole the problem when i look back on it now is i don't really think i knew what i was doing i mean young people typically don't know this is in high school i mean they typically you know nobody really fully understands the mass but i mean i didn't know that the mass was the holy sacrifice of calvary i didn't really have faith in the real presence you know i it was i was kind of going through the motions to be actively involved because i thought this is how you show that you're a catholic and that you believe and when i got involved in the charismatic movement right after that i stopped doing those things and the interesting thing for me is that i didn't stop doing them because i had a conversion to the traditional latin mass i didn't even know that it existed it was because the charismatic prayer group took over my life in a way that was so fulfilling and so energizing because suddenly i really believe i mean it was i learned how to pray and i learned to be satisfied in praying as a layman and i didn't want to do those those other things anymore does that i don't know if that makes any sense but it was kind of like i found a home as a layman just praying and then later on with the traditional latin mass i realized oh that's right you can be totally fulfilled and satisfied and set on fire just worshiping god you don't have to volunteer to do anything i mean maybe you can sing or maybe you can you know help out with you know the collection basket or something but you don't have to be like a mini priest or like a quasi cleric in order to have dignity and value as a layman you know and to show your faith so anyway that's kind of a little nutshell about how i you know my own journey on that question all right go ahead janet do you have any thoughts but in the last year i've become both a sacristan and a eucharistic minister which are two total surprises to me but um and i eventually i mean this notion of a eucharistic fast is really hard for me to get my head around um though i usually end up wherever peter is eventually and so even though i'm here now i you know i come back in another year uh i never wanted to be a eucharistic minister i only did that because i had a friend who um had um cancer and uh wasn't able to go to mass or even get outside for months on end during covid and nobody would uh no priest would take it to her and so i said okay well i'll i'll get you the the blessed sacrament so i i did that and and as a sacrifice i you know i've been so critical of priests uh in the church uh recently that i i sort of wanted to have a way to humbly serve um uh the priests and uh show them that i i mean there are so many wonderful beautiful priests and i i didn't i wanted them to know that and even i do it at a novus ordo mass a daily mass i obviously wouldn't do it for the um tlm i don't know how long i'll continue doing that um i i loved reading in peter's book that it used to be that sacristan wore gloves and i'm thinking i'm going to start wearing gloves uh when i handle the the chalice and the pattern and i take these things out to the altar and when i i take them back that seems right to me uh i'll start dressing a little better for daily mass you know that that that sort of thing i i mean i really think i've been tremendously malformed liturgically and what i'm what i'm learning from you know reading this book is kind of an examination of conscience you know it's like um do i have the proper uh reverence uh towards the eucharist have i started uh acquiring kind of a casual uh you know i you know we all i mean i don't know if we all did you know when i was again at notre dame you would have these student retreats you know and you're all sitting on the floor during the eucharist you know when the one someone else is making the eucharistic bread um and i remember that was one of my huge crises at notre dame and i was asked to go to a retreat and i knew the other faculty member had made the eucharistic bread it wasn't unleavened and you know i'm sorry you know and anyway that kind of thing i had so many crises where again i decided i didn't want to know because it was just so traumatic for me answers you got to your questions were worse than anything you could imagine you know you know it's the the it does it says it has to be unleavened bread but it it doesn't say it can't be leavened bread that's the answer i got you go like wait a second it's no it's not right i mean the principle of non-contradiction does not hold in these situations with these people and and that really always causes me huge cognitive problems and oh anyway i would i plead guilty uh to many of the um attitudes uh both thinking and behav in my behavior uh towards the eucharist and i am finding that again going to the latin mass and reading peter's stuff just is again is transformative you sort of sit there and you say oh well then i have to change i have to do this and because i acquired all of these attitudes and habits yeah yeah so let me uh add one la one last thing to that i as i told you i do not like universal uh spiritual prescriptions i i don't think they drive me a little crazy and can be shallow but i will say this we're we're uh lent is not that far away and as we conclude our conversation with these two uh really incredible people um who love the lord and love the church and given you know so much of their life to to bring greater life to everyone who who desires god i would strongly recommend that no matter who you are latin mass ordinary form that you buy this book the holy bread of eternal life and that you make this year a different year you participate in the in the novena and you you purpose whether you're in the ordinary form and in our community we have you know thousands of people 44 countries a lot of diversity charismatics traditionalists i tell them be faithful in your tradition you know be faithful so if you're an ordinary foreign person read this book if you're in the latin mass read this book uh read the general instruction of the of the roman missal read memorial domini begin to dive into this reality of what it means to encounter god because as we've talked about here there is no more important thing in our life so it is beyond irresponsible if i could be very direct to not to not dig into it and there are reason many reasons you know janet talked about just trying to stay out of trouble i get all of that but but i would just say it's time for all of us to dig deeper and to begin to make reparation because i believe with all of my heart that the decline in the united states as an example of course the the the sin of abortion and contraception these grave sins of intrinsic evils just committed day in and day out are are a blight on our nation and are in our causing and an internal deterioration of epic proportions but i do believe also that our lack of attentiveness to the lord our lack of respect for the lord desecration that occurs because we're approaching him in a state of mortal sin all of these things are essential are vital to be remedied and to be made reparation for if we're to see we're going to have any hope for revival i i beli it sounds trite but i believe uh father z when he says you know save the liturgy save the world i mean because what we're saying by that is when we are properly oriented to god the the likelihood we become holy is dramatically higher and when you're changed by an encounter with god then the world changes around you that when you're an authentic disciple of jesus you are changed and the world changes around you so this year i think is the year and and i'm making the commitment you know i i've i reviewed the book before it came out i'm going to read it again i told peter i would read it again you know devotionally i'm going to participate in this novena and i'm going to make it a year and it's going to be part of my lenten discipline to go deeper in my worship and understanding of what it means to encounter god in the eucharist amen i couldn't possibly say it better thank you dan well it's been a blessing being with you guys as i said it's far too short a time but we do need to wrap up wrap it up um everybody go out and get the holy bread of eternal life janet you want to mention one more time where folks can you said you were doing some teaching on latin and that sort of thing what's that it's an evolving project it's a it's a primitive stage but it's on my i've got a website called janetsmith.org it's got a lot of my contraception why not stuff but it also has a latin page where i'm trying to help people understand the latin mass and i want to agree with you about the silence of the mass and i i tell people when they're first going to latin mass treat it more as adoration than what they've experienced in the novice order because you know they want to sit and stand and sing and this and that and that and you don't do that and i want to say just enter into a profound receptive peace that's what the goal is and whatever prayer strikes you as being something that really deserves your meditation stick with that and don't try you said don't try to follow that will drive you crazy so you know watch what's going on and get a sense of the reverence and the movement and what's happening but don't fuss about following everything last thing i'll say and then i'll give peter the last word uh don't forget to sign up for the septuagisma pre-lent preparing for lent webinar january 25th it's at spiritualdirection.com forward slash events peter that's tomorrow i'm yeah that's true i'm giving that tomorrow that's right thanks for the producers like the conversion of saint paul so here's my here's my comment you know my confirmation name was paul um because when i was confirmed i wanted to pick i was impressed with saint paul with his fervor with his zeal with his humility as someone who converted from from pharisaism to catholicism if i can put it that way um and i and i still love saint paul and that the conversion of saint paul which we celebrate tomorrow reminds us that we all need deeper conversion i mean this is this is something that dan with with your emphasis on on mysticism on the mystical way the mystical and ascetical life you you know this this is a fundamental truth we all need deeper conversion no matter where we are um and whatever we do to love the lord more in the holy eucharist and to prepare ourselves more for receiving him and to give thanks for this gift is going to benefit the whole church what every member of the mystical body does or suffers benefits every other member of the mystical body we need to keep that in mind we need to have that supernatural perspective amen all right thank you both again for all the great work you're doing in the church it's been a blessing spending some time with you and uh well i i hope we can do it again and and keep digging deeper uh in the meantime folks holy the holy bread of eternal life restoring eucharistic reverence in an age and of impiety please join us uh for the novena for eucharistic penance to make reparation for the sins against the lord and the holy sacrifice of the mass go to eucharistic penance dot com and if you're signed up there you'll get this video god bless you guys thanks and take care god bless you

Channel: Peter Kwasniewski

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Length: 97min 20sec (5840 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 01 2021