The Journey Home - 2019-03-04 - Billy Kangas

[Music] good evening and welcome to the journey home my Marcus Grodi your host for this program once again you and I get to sit down and listen to a story of someone whose heart was opened by the Holy Spirit to them and grace to the fuller walk with Jesus Christ in the church our guest is Billy Kangas he's a returning guest he's a former lutheran and evangelical covenant he's now since the last time he was on the program he's become the director of community engagement at Hope clinic and we'll talk a bit about that Billy welcome back to the journey home thrilled to be here although I was in here last time well you know I'll forgive you it's great to have you back this time you sat in with my son John Mark and I'm missing him today - yeah that's right we pray for for his family a little bit of illness and their family so John mark couldn't join us again but it's good to have you back Billy and John Mark heard your story last time so let me hear it again this time well whenever I returned guests even though your programs on the website give you a chance to review the story for our audience sure where should I begin very beginning so I guess my my journey of faith began in the home I grew up in as all of us does really and one way or another my parents were very committed Christians they're passionate and we were with in the Lutheran Church and my father was a lifelong Lutheran who had had a sort of radical experience with the Holy Spirit himself and he gotten involved with a ecumenical charismatic group and they had started a sort of a charismatic a Lutheran Church that was sort of the original faith home I was a part of and as we grew up we stayed part of the Lutheran Church we joined another church eventually that but was still within the Lutheran tradition and it was in the Lutheran Church Missouri Senate and so through those years I guess I cut my teeth on the Lutheran theology I would seem to me that a movement from a charismatic Lutheran to him in the lutheran in itself as a radical move in some ways yes the church that we moved to had charismatic lenience right now there was a lot of controversy in those years around this issue though pastor that had been in part of the original church had been a professor at Valparaiso University and because of his charismatic connections had had a lot of difficulties with the denominational leadership in the Lutheran Church Missouri Senate at the time so those were big hot-button issues what does it look like to sort of have this experience with the Holy Spirit and also have this Lutheran identity and the Missouri Synod and we don't need to go too deep into that but there I think core expression of Lutheranism is very much a response to the pietistic resister II and they had had some negative interactions at least one of their early foul not quite founders but influences a guy named cfw Walther and because of that they always had a suspicion against anything that seemed a little too mystical and so yeah I think it was a real tension there and I always sort of existed with a bit of tension where there was a little bit of this charismatic pietistic mystical element going on and yet I was getting formed in a sort of a formal way by a very traditional Lutheran way of looking at things went to a Lutheran School from second grade eighth grade you know learning the catechism by heart and a very strong Lutheran ties kind of in a formal sense but at home very hard religion you know and so it was it was an interesting a way to grow up and I would think seemed to me that the more charismatic Lutheran movements tended to be more ecumenical especially with Catholics even mm-hmm whereas the Missouri Lutheran I mean they rejected when the Lutheran's and Catholics came to an agreement to some extent on justification yeah Missouri's Lutheran's weren't very happy with that movement right that's very true and we we were raised in a very ecumenical home the community and my parents had met and had a lot of Catholics as a part of it as well as Presbyterians an orthodox and and Eastern raid and you know the whole gamut of kinds of ways to be a Christian I was exposed to that throughout most of my life so it was it was a an existence that had tension and spiritually speaking but I thought I thought it was helpful in many ways because it gave me exposure to a lot of these other ways of thinking okay all right so your Lutheran did did a draw it towards I can't remember if you were drawn to toward the pastor it or not yeah so I I had my own sort of encounter where my faith became real to me some call us were born-again experience or whatever but for me it was it was really rooted in just making my faith my own and that for me happen when I was in high school and that was in the context of a number of different things I I had gone through confirmation in the Lutheran Church which in many ways is similar to confirmation in the Catholic Church in practical ways which means for a lot of the folks that were going through was more of a graduation than a confirmation and was debating and how am I going to live this faith out if at all and getting involved with some of the youth groups that were around really sparked my interest there was one in particular but I was involved with a lot of different things and and through my high school years sort of went from a person who was a who showed up on Sunday so somebody who really viewed their faith as a integral part of their whole life started leading groups started a group at my school started entering in leadership at my church started leading worship and preaching in different contexts and pretty soon fell a call to enter the ministry so I started out doing youth ministry did that in a couple of different churches and for a parachurch organization was a music director I had a reformed church for for a period of time got my bachelor's in religious studies and then went off to Chicago to study to be a pastor you know in a very formal way and found myself kind of in a new new context there within the evangelical Covenant Church which is the denomination I sort of moved into because it had kind of this Lutheran ISM but it also had this Pietism so it was kind of the the home for the two sections of my up cream bringing that I really liked really they they were a Lutheran's that affirmed kind of the pietism more than Lutheran's that rejected it I carry a covenant come out of the Scandinavian countries the break away from the Lutheran's basically so their background was Swedish Pietism right and I was a Scandinavian myself and in terms of our family background and I just fell in love with this denomination they were really committed to social justice which was close to my heart they were generous with their theology but also they had that Lutheran route that I felt comfortable with where there was that a bit of sacramentality to it which when I had spent time among evangelicals I have really had missed about kind of the richness of the Lutheran Church that I had when you went to seminary in Chicago was was an affirming experience were you thrown into the midst of the modernist theological battles I loved it I loved seminary Northpark theological is where I went and I found it just wonderful the community there was great the scholarship was top-notch we were exploring ideas learning about the Bible and rich and just exciting ways for me and part of that also was exploring the history of the church and rich in exciting ways which was something that had really been lacking in a lot of my earlier formation and I think this is really common of many Protestants you sort of zone out for 1500 years of church history and to be able to start focusing in in a very intentional way through my studies was one of the reasons that I started paying attention to you know in a more earnest way some of the Catholic elements so discovering that the church back in the days the Apostles looked a lot more like one of my friends in the Catholic Church we're doing then what I as a precedent was doing that was a real challenge and also would you say that was the kind of the pinprick that began the journey well it's hard to say what the pin print was right I think the pin prick was honestly the Catholics that I knew in the community back home these were Catholics who took their faith very seriously I would say maybe I'm in the minority of folks where some of the best Christians I knew were Catholics well and as time went on their faith proved to be more resilient than many of my other friends who wound up walking away from the church the church stopped being relevant to them the the weight if you will that their tradition had couldn't match the weight of what sort of the culture had but like Catholic friends when they encountered a sort of culture they had deep roots and there was a deep wellspring that could sort of take on the challenges of the world and I really admired their faith I admired the depth of spirituality that they were able to tap into i admired their sense of tradition things that i have myself valued I saw a wealth of richness in that so I think the initial pinprick was the handful of faithful Catholics who walked with me sometimes gently prodding me handed me books and encouraging me to explore ideas and because of that I had developed something of a I guess antibodies to Catholicism I knew the arguments I knew what they're gonna say I understood all of that but there was also an attraction that happened it was in seminary that I began to explore approaches to understand Catholicism that were more rooted in the patristic s-- and the kapha devotion fathers in some of these older more ancient ways of expressing that and I started to see that that really the the way that the theology is expressed today has roots that go way back and I stopped being able to ignore these things as modern developments and and started to see it actually there's a real deep genetic relationship in all these things to the Apostolic fathers to the real bedrock of the faith and I think that's when I started to seriously consider that I might want to be on the side of history and and I started to see that what I had believed as a Protestant it was harder to defend in that light so it started in fluency me you often our guest is Billy King is or lutheran Jellicle covenant often the issue is as you learn through study of history and theology philosophy you see the validity of the Catholic Church as at least a Christian tradition so you get to this the point of at least accepting them into the fellowship and it sounds like you because you've reacted medical background you already kind had done that but often to gets that point but at some point the needle in the gauge says I can't just accept them as one of many I I have to become one of them uh-huh what was the the turning point for you well there was one big turning point and a lot of little turning points so I'll handle the little ones first and that will get to the big one little ones were basically that my laundry list of things that I didn't like about Catholicism kept shrinking and that was related to studying history that was also related to exploring practice and just seeing that there was richness and truth and beauty and nuance there and so I started to explore Catholic spirituality you know kind of a basic way at first saying okay let's try this Liturgy of the hours thing now let's see what happens here and then falling in love with it let's let's go to Mass and fall in love with it and part of it was Catholicism for me I offered an opportunity to experience God in a way that was not prescriptive and it didn't require me to quite orchestrate something right so part of the the real attraction was I was doing ministry work and so Sunday morning worship I always had my professional hat on you know I'm thinking about how the sermon could be better adjusting the sound making sure the worship works right I had all these concerns and it really was a sort of a production wears and we're gonna take this idea and we're going to present this thing and and I enjoyed doing it and it was great but I wasn't encountering God I was focused on the event so I would head out in the evenings to it they have evening mass available and a lot of parishes and I would go to Mass and I could sit in the back and no one knew who I was and experienced something of real beauty where it wasn't they weren't telling me how to experience God they were just saying God's here and they were believing the guy was here in a really present tangible way and and we're honoring God in that presence and in that place and I started to encounter the presence of God there too and began to hunger after it you know in a certain sense really longing to be able to participate in the sacramental life that was going on as well so there was this deep attraction for me to the sacraments and to the liturgy and that was a huge gravitational force that kept drawing me deeper and deeper in and getting myself more and more into trouble I just kind of led to the big push factor in my life which was something I shared about last time on the show I can I can sort of share the story again for those who may have missed it or have forgotten but for me the last straw in the process was this idea of the doctrine of the paper paper paper see how is it that God could entrust his church to a guy it made no sense to me I had I had gotten to the point where I had really started seriously considering Catholicism and I had also started seriously considering orthodoxy and for me there were two sort of mortal sins on either side I couldn't reconcile the on the Catholic side we had the Pope and on the Orthodox side we had this kind of National Church thing where I felt like if I'm really gonna believe in a universal Church I want sort of there to be a way that that shares and that's a whole nother story but the papacy was the big thing for me and I was heading back to Michigan for Easter to see my family and I had picked up this book by John Hardin called the Catholic catechism and there's a section in it where he talks about the papacy in the eighty references Matthew 24:14 we're basically Jesus comes to his disciples and says you know I'm gonna send you out into the whole world and you've got this this you 12 guys basically you have this global mission and it's good your missions gonna last until the end of the end of time right and harden basically says well if we're on this mission it's good to know you know whose team we're on basically like are we connected to that mission how do we ensure that the mission that was entrusted to these guys continues is there still an apostolic center and Jesus seems to have entrusted his mission to particular guys in this particular place in this particular time but gave them a mission that was Universal and scope and in time so is our face still apostolic and for me that was a big question I said that's a good question I'm gonna think about this so that was right before Easter I go to the Easter Vigil the next day maybe the same day I have and and in the middle of it I get this sense almost almost kind of a an audible word from God you need to become Catholic and I was so mad I at this point was you know I had seven years of theological education in my belt I had been working in churches for about a decade I had a family to support and I said God you're crazy I mean I really love this Catholicism stuff I don't mind being the weirdo and the denomination of plate praise the Liturgy of the hours and talks about the rosary but I don't want to abandon my whole life my sense of vocation my my heart I was a pastor that was my identity and he said no you know you've got to do it so I said okay we'll talk about this later guy so the third part of this story is we head back to Chicago and the first night back I tell my wife I need to go to a prayer walk because I had promised God we were gonna talk about it later and I didn't want to be a lying to him so I grabbed a Bible I had it out and I was going to do the old Bible roulette you know what you put your finger down and see what happens terrible way to make a theological decision allegedly but I I opened the Bible I'm about to put my finger down and this guy runs literally runs around the corner and looks me in the eye and says is that a Bible I say yeah he goes read Matthew 24:14 so I read it and I realized it's the same passage then I had been reading two days earlier that had really challenged me about my stance in the papacy and at that point I couldn't ignore it any longer so I called up yeah he runs around the corner he asked me to read the passage I read it to him he says thank you and he runs on I only had a chance to ask him by the time I figured out what was going on he was gone so I don't know who this guy is he's an angel he changed my life completely wrecked my entire course but yeah I certainly think there was some Holy Spirit going on there and yeah so I was I was flabbergasted honestly I sat in silence for about 20 minutes just not knowing what to do finally I emailed a friend of mine who I knew was a Catholic and said I think I wants me to become Catholic and he said you should pray about that so I got a spiritual director Loyola was just down the street and so I called them up and said I hear you guys do spiritual direction they send me up with a guy and I said I'm gonna live like a Catholic for a year and see what happens so I within the first month read through the Catechism cover to cover I read pretty much everything written by John Henry Newman and Chesterton was just gobbling stuff up but more importantly I was just praying a lot and doing all the Catholic stuff consecration rosary you know iconography offices mass and exploring every church in town I can get to it was the most pious year of my life and at the end of it I realized I had encountered a depth and richness that I couldn't walk away from it wasn't that was rejecting anything I had gotten in my in my Protestant life but I just had tapped into just a depth and beauty and I realized I am NOT a Protestant anymore I this is where I feel at home was was your wife on the journey with you my wife was on the journey for sure and she was Catholic oh so that was another factor which I didn't even mention which is I had married a Catholic which was really interesting and she was of course very supportive of the move and but she had never been really pushy on the other side either in retrospect she always says well I kind of knew you're on the path and I wasn't gonna try to rush the Holy Spirit so when I had met her you know it would I had always had Catholics in my life you know and she was a person who was inspirational to me in many ways all right now when you were on the program before and you talked with John Mark a lot of at the time you were very much involved with a kind of an ecumenical coffeehouse well it wasn't I wouldn't say an ecumenical cover yes it was it was a coffeehouse but it wasn't a ministry or anything I think it was a non-profit so that's one of my sort of real-life passions is helping to serve the least of these is she just might say and so when I had when I became Catholic I had moved to DC to pursue this PhD in liturgy and sacramental theology and I was doing coursework there enter the church there and was contacted by a pastor a friend of mine who was interested in starting a coffee and Taff house and so I moved back to Michigan after I completed my coursework while I was doing my comps and languages and all that sort of stuff we started this coffee and Taff house and it was focused on helping and hunger in the community right so the proceeds would be invested in these areas we really made it a gathering space for the community and tried to make it about something more but it wasn't a church thing good and I had been involved with coffee for a long time really I had gotten involved with that because I was doing these ministry jobs early on in my career that paid next to nothing and in order to pay the bills he just had to get some supplemental income but I fell in love with it fell in love with the whole process of getting to know your neighbors and sort of creating a space where people can share in some ways what the church used to be is what some of these cafes and other third spaces had become and I said you know if I really want to be meaningfully engaged in my community and creating authentic relationships I need to be in these spaces so we created what I would say is one of the the best third spaces I've ever encountered it's a really incredible cafe and built that for a couple of years it was very successful continues to be very successful but in the time since I was last on the show we got to point in our life where I had to make a big decision which was what am I really passionate about and I started transitioning more and more there to the nonprofit end of things and eventually decided I wanted to invest my life in some more tangible ways of serving in helping the least of these in my community so I transitioned to basically a board member at large for the coffee and tap house and began my work which I'm doing now as the director of community engagement at the Hope clinic which is as incredible organization it was started by a Catholic physician what was ecumenical and it's his roots and in his core so they bring in Christians from all over and say let's let's unite on this issue of serving those and offer free care medical dental food a bunch of stuff and we do it together so it can be salt and light maybe we can talk more about that after the break it's named really thing let's take a break now we'll come back and pick up on a couple questions that we're gonna glean from Billy's journey [Music] [Music] welcome back to the journey home I'm your host Marcus Grodi and our guest is Billy Kangas Before we jump into that I just again want to take time as I do every week to remind you about the work that I do with the coming on network we have website ch network.org and you can find lots of conversion stories there you can find assistance we have what I want to really emphasize is in our online community that you can become a part of and I was thinking about Billy you talked about the importance of that these little third places you called a little and in a way that's what this is is a place especially if you're way out in the middle of and you feel alone our online community is a place to connect with others who are also on the journey and are trying to figure out how to help one another grow in our Lord Jesus Christ in His Church so that's ch network.org alright Billy let's some a couple of things to pick up on you know this the social gospel mmm the social gospel that got a kind of a negative press amongst many evangelicals especially those that want to reject Pietism and want to go get real but they reject what they call the social gospel which our Lord yet says is the core of the gospel love the Lord your with your heart mind soul and your strength and your neighbor as yourself so how do you apply that and that's kind of what seemed to me was that really at the heart of what you were trying to see how you apply your theological education and then dedicate your life mm-hmm right I think is a huge part of it there's anything I've learned from studying a lot of theology is knowing stuff about God doesn't mean you know God and there are a few places in Scripture that promise Christ presence more powerfully than when we engage in serving those who have needs for me my own journey was one word dad kind of dragged me off my own path and started bringing me out of his I had a plan that I want to get to be a part of thank God to actually know I'm doing something else and you can join me if you want to but what I have for you is something that's beyond just what you've got so I think that the the social aspect is really really really important because it's in helping others that we kind of encounter how to serve God in that tangible tangible place and I've found that I I know God a lot more in those places then and just studying about him I was thinking about those verses in in first John mm-hmm and a big part of first John is about love and what that means an abiding and God but it's in there when he says whoever does not do right is not of God nor does he nor he who does not love his brother and there's a place in there where it says that if you say you love God he and don't love your brother you're a liar mm-hmm I mean it really emphasizes he who loves God should love his brother also I mean there's so much in that the importance of living it out so how do you how do you take in a way if is there a way that in becoming Catholic helped you discover that even more well I think that the depth of thought and reflection that Catholic social teaching brings was really influential in my way of understanding things which I thought was really powerful and really good and helped help frame things for me but even more than that it was the Saints right I fell in love with the Saints part of that was this is I think the the hidden mystery of discipleship in the Catholic churches that we have these living examples not perfect examples about living examples of what it means to follow Jesus and as I started to say okay I want to follow you god I don't want to just have you invite into my life but I want to follow you with everything that I'm doing the Saints give us this beautiful mosaic of what that looks like we don't have just the example of Jesus so as a president I say okay I've got Jesus and I can look at what he did which is definitely the starting point but I am NOT a first century Palestinian Jew the Saints give us this nuance of what what Jesus look like if he lived in 4th century Alexandria or if you lived in 15th century Italy if he was married or if he yeah you know as a woman you know everything is a different perspective what what being a disciple looks like right because they embody the person who Jesus would be in in some ways in these different contexts throughout history and over and over and over again I saw people whose heart is close to Jesus their heart is close to the poor and so I began to say I want to walk in step with these these folks and I also found many brothers and sisters in the Catholic Church who were just just amazing examples of following Jesus and also deeply committed to serving those in our community and I started to say okay I want to these are the people I want to hang out with and now that was a huge blessing just the Saints and the examples within the church that's that show me what what it looks like to be a disciple as an example to follow after not just as an idea that I can agree to and so that is what it offered me it offered me a true path to discipleship more than just information about what I should be doing whether you were mentioning the Saints to Saints come to my mind and make me think about often when people think of Saints they sometimes emphasize the miraculous or the the stigmata or the floating and like I think of Saint Francis or Padre Pio they think about that when really st. Francis of Hydra people we're totally dedicated to people to the poor to being Christ for others in their life that was the point of their lives yes talk about if you would something else that's happened in the journey since the last time you went from these coffee houses but a part of that were these ecumenical discussion groups right talk about that if you would sure I've I've always been ecumenical at you maniac as some people call me I just love I love other churches I love other journeys if you will and I have a heart for pastors as somebody who was one myself I understand how lonely it can be I understand how hard it could be and so one of the things I've really tried to do is to be a friend to all the pastor's that's kind of are in my life I just like I am connected to these folks I care about them and so for many years I've been involved with even before I became Catholic it's just a lot of relationships with pastors and those relationships didn't go away when I make him Catholic some of them were wondering what happened to me I definitely had a few who who wanted to grab coffee and you know ask some questions about why would torpedo my my life in the way that I did but I think when they saw that it was rooted and really a desire to follow God all homework cited and so we I continue to build relationship with lots of pastors and we get together and we talk about life and ministry and what are the gaps to discipleship in our own ministries and in our own life and how we can support each other in those ways and and just I want to create a context where where we can build healthy leaders in our urges whether that's a Lutheran Church or a Presbyterian Church or Catholic Church for that matter so often miss ministry life is isolating it's difficult it's overwhelming there's so many things that you're supposed to be good at and no one's really good at all of those things and the more I can sort of be in that place where I couldn't offer some support or create a context for helping these folks grow I think it's an awesome I think about where you live up in Michigan you you're not far from Detroit and of course I grew up in that neck of the would all my family ancestors are from that part of the world and to me that whole area which is going through a very difficult time because of the economic downturn of the city you know here we have a whole area that in many ways grew and grew and grew and built as a result of the Industrial Revolution in its effect on that one economics and industries change the bottom drops out how do you minister to people carry the faith in the midst of that struggle well there's a lot of different ways part of it is learning with folks what's going on I think no matter what your context is one of the first things to do when you're dealing with anybody is to to listen to where God's story is in in the same way that God called me to step out of my story into his story when I'm dealing with other people I need to step in to destroy that God's working in their life rather than telling them about why they should join me so that's been my pastoral approach with people for many years even before I was Catholic but it's definitely getting stronger and in the past few years of just saying you know there are some foundational things that we know about how God operates in the world right and so I have sort of a few rules I live by number one is just an affirmation that God's at work everywhere that I go there's no place that I go I bring God but I'm God I'm always showing up into a story that's already underway so I need to know that story pretty pretty well myself I need to be engaged in the scripture regularly I need to be reading about the lives of the Saints and in the life of the church be deep in history be deep in Scripture write these things tell us the story of God and we can see that these major themes play out over and over again because we we serve a God who has created a world that is good but people are fallen and so guys in the business of redemption and restoration so we got these four things creation fall Redemption restoration and there's no person that I encounter where there isn't one of these things happen in their life right so the third thing I do so first I look forget second I listen to a story third I talked to people with an ears see we're got stories that and their life and then depending on where they're at you know just love seeing them loving them serving them and praying for them so I have been so privileged to do my work I hope because I get to serve the the needs of people in a really tangible way someone comes to the door and they have a physical need you know that they're experiencing the brokenness the fallenness or whatever and you can reach out and lend a helping hand but in the midst of that also see them as a person not just as a problem and as you recognize that and you can start to say you know yeah things aren't going well and then I kind of made sure there's a lot of folks in our community that are still recovering from a major paradigm shift of you know typical Rust Belt stuff were the factory jobs aren't there anymore or whatever and that that shows up all the time people who don't know what is the foundation of the in their life anymore and so to be able to hear their story to be able to embrace them to be able to talk to them over and over what I've heard from my patients is yeah it's great that you guys offer free medical care and free groceries and dental and all that stuff but the thing that really made a difference was you saw me for the first time in a long time some people say you're the first person who's ever offered to pray for me and so I think helping to ground somebody that it's not about what she do that makes you valuable it's about the God who put his image in you and who loves you enough they give his life for you I say every day that I want to start out with the heart of the prodigal father so that whoever walks to the door I'm expectantly waiting not just oh here's some money that I have to deal with that person needs to become an inconvenience but that I'm expectantly waiting to embrace that person with radical generosity that's my prayer because when you have that story as your story then no matter who comes your way your response is awesome another person who God loves and I think that's been a huge blessing and impact in my life so on the one hand you could what you're affirming is our need to be channels of God's love to these people and to pull that a step farther there was a wonderful book called soul the apostolate which a great book written about hard years ago I think but it emphasizes that the soul of the apostolate when you're actively doing is prayer and so he quotes in there st. Benedict to say that were more than channels we need to be reservoirs right so that what comes out is coming out of a Dem so how do you make sure that what comes out for those people that you meet is coming out of a reservoir of your own intimate relationship with Christ I think of it as two primary reservoirs that I need to keep full or at least stay connected to you one is my prayer and the other one is the prayer of the church so I have prayer practices that are connected to both every morning I do a kind of Ignatian examination right where this is my personal prayer I look back at the last day and I asked the question where was the spirit at work what was awesome about yesterday and where did I say no to God and I repented that and then I look to the day ahead and I say what's the thing God that you're calling me to today and pray praying for that so I have a whole series of questions that I I pray through and so that's the feeling of that reservoir of who I am and how the Spirit is interacting with me but I know that there's days where I'm just not going to be strong so I need to have a super strong reservoir of the prayer of the church to because that's a much bigger one so I also try to pray the office and stay connected to that so that when my words fail or my strength is its weak that the kind of the Liturgy of the hours the prayer of the church the the the richness of the sacramental life that I am a part of actually can carry me in my weakness too so I would say more than just one reservoir I need to have two because if it's just my spirituality then if I find of a bad day it's I'm not going to be able to carry on but the church gives me that context where I have a stronger deeper richer that's the real that's the power of the river that's flowing and it's I spend a wonderful phrase in the mass where the priest prays to not look on our sins but on the faith of your church not on our sins but on the faith there's the community community aspect now you were completing your PhD in liturgy and the sacraments if you would talk in your journey of both those liturgy and sacraments how they drew you to the church and also emphasized the necessity of the church in these areas of liturgy and sacrament I shared a bit already about the beauty that the drew me and I think I'm definitely somebody who was drawn by the sort of the apologetic of beauty but getting into understanding the liturgy in the sacraments more I start to see the the mass becomes the center of everything that I do because it's there that God takes the work of human hands and this physical world that we live in and shows us the world as it's meant to be done right that God can take in our world and everything that we encounter and he can be a part of it that God is not just this person who's off in a distance but when he communicates with us he does so in these very tangible ways ways that that are in that universal language of presence that every person understands presence in symbols like I loved it when my son was baptized and he cried because even though he had no theological understanding of what was happening what happened was tangible enough for him to notice you know that it was cool that it was wet the God's grace comes to us in these tangible ways and so sacrament etl sacramental theology helps train me to look for God in the tangible things to view every every part of our world as something that God cares about that guy wants to join us in so that because I'm able to experience the true presence of God in this gathering of broken people and in these elements that are so humble in their form I can go home and I can say the the diaper that I change is an expression of worship you know that the the commute to work is something that can be marked by God's presence that I can I can wash dishes in a holiness you know that the tangible aspects of my life all are connected to the sacramentality which God demonstrates that the world has in in the mass this the liturgy and the sacraments and as you were talking about earlier your need for a reservoir more than yourself you need the community behind it is this mystical body of Christ that unites us all around the world it reminds me that we've seen so many images of of Nazi Germany or of Stalin Russia or of North Korean where the one way the rulers try to convince everybody that this is a Thorat ativ movement is they get as many people a bazillion people if they can all in perfect lines marching in one step to try and convey this idea that we are an invincible united group and they all fail and the what unites us as the church a lockstep if you will is the indwelling of the holy spirit that changes us and draws it together even in a unity that we don't see that empowers us we have an email Frances from Minnesota being a Catholic in a secular culture is hard what do you think are some ways that Catholics can seek to glorify God and further the kingdom through our work and ordinary interactions with people even when it seems like we are often caught up in everyday drudgery so I talk about the things that I do about connecting a god story I use a little pneumatic device to help me with that and it's you know eyes and ears mouth hands and nose right so I keep my eyes open to the kingdom of God so as I'm going into work I said God opened my eyes to where you're at work there's no place that I'm gonna be today that you're not at so open my eyes ears God remind me of your story and help me to hear the story in the lives of other mouths talk to people just get out there and chat like I'm it's easy for me I'm an extrovert but to have conversations where we're not just going through the motions but we're really listening to who that person is then we have hands serve look for opportunities to extend God's radical generous grace in whatever context that you're in and finally the nose which is the weird one and I say this is this is one where we should be praying with people the scripture says that the prayer to the Saints are like incense so I want to create a beautiful aroma in heaven and so what that's one of the most powerful things I do is I always I'm looking for is there an opportunity to pray can I in this conversation say do you mind if I pray for that and just do it with in other words you sniff out opportunities to serve and to pray and those are I guess five really practical things that I pray for and I try to remind myself everyday to do and that's kind of my simple way of doing that in the world well behind that it seems as an important thing not that you've ignored this but just to talk about it that those windows to the soul the sensual windows of the soul are also the windows that the devil uses to try and twist us through our eyes through our ears through our mouth through our hands through our nose I mean those are the channels to our soul that the devil tries so how do you advise to people to make sure we keep we keep guard as the Easterns talk about of our heart through these windows to the soul I think a lot of it is making sure that you don't stop being active in following the holy spirit if it's left up to me I'm in trouble I'm really in trouble galatians 5:16 says walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh right if you're not walking in step with God then you can fall into temptation and the real reason that this is very important and it's all about how were engaging with God are we affirming a box of checklists or are we looking for God's presence discipleship in the New Testament was based on this idea of a person who follows their rabbi step by step and lives like them it wasn't about agreeing to everything that they said about the tour it was about living like that person we were given the Holy Spirit that's the heart of the disciple is the person who says it doesn't matter so much if I fall down or not if I'm getting back it up and I'm running after God then I will experience God's life then I will be free otherwise I'm in trouble if it's up to me I'm doomed maybe one last word then the very outreach let's say we've got a Lutheran looking what watching you sitting there right now why should they make the same journey home you've made oh man I don't know if they're gonna make the same journey but I would say exploring I love Lutheranism I love so much of what it brings but the richness and the depth that I've experienced in the Catholic Church really helped me become so much stronger and better and in all the ways that I affirm about my Lutheran faith and I think the one thing I would say is yeah move move on beyond just through the Reformation questions and started exploring some other things too all right the the website the hope clinic org is that way your website for the work that you do and if people want more questions about what you do they can connect it to the Hope clinic dot org to find out great all right Billy thank you for joining us again on the journey home and god bless you and your work and your witness and and I do those of you watching the program I hope that Billy's journey is an encouragement to you his it seems challenging to me to us to remember that our faith needs to be expressed through these windows of our soul through our eyes there are hands there are ears so that other people when they see and are with this will see Jesus I mean that's the calling in our life Thank You Billy and thank you for joining us on this episode see you again next week [Music] [Music]

Channel: EWTN

Views: 14,314

Rating: 4.7555556 out of 5

Keywords: jht01647, ytsync-en, jht

Id: aaDOHgfVbcc

Length: 56min 10sec (3370 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 04 2019