The Word Is Christ, Not Background Noise

The Mass is not just something you attend. It is where Christ speaks.

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In Episode 3 of CristeroCast, Patrick and Fr. Mitchell Brown reflect on the Word of God, the Liturgy of the Word, Lectio Divina, and the power of friendship and brotherhood in the Christian life.

Why does Scripture belong in the Mass? How should Catholics actually read the Bible? Why do men need fraternity, accountability, and real spiritual friendship?

This episode covers all of that and more.

Topics in this episode:

• The Word of God in the Mass
• Scripture, tradition, and liturgy
• How to practice Lectio Divina
• Conversion during Lent
• The role of friendship in the spiritual life
• Brotherhood as a path to holiness

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Viva Cristo Rey.

Transcript

ids Love Saints Stories

SPEAKER_03 0:00

I mean, I'm not kidding. Like, I we we we feel bad as parents because she'll have been listening to the stories of the saints for like three hours. And we don't want to just say, like, why are you always listening to those stories of the saints?

elcome And Lenten Focus

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Put those saints stories down and go outside and play.

he Word Is God

SPEAKER_03 0:16

Like welcome to ChristeroCast, the official podcast of the Christeros, a new Catholic men's movement. Uh joining me again today is Father Mitchell Brown, pastor of Sacred Art Cathedral here in the Diocese of Gallup. And we're once again going to be running through uh his Linton Reflection series called Praying the Mass in Lent, that a lot of you have been reading or joining and listening on our podcast. So thank you once again, Father, for being with us. I'm glad to be here. Father, I thought that this week we would do two things. First would be to uh talk a little bit about the Word of God and and the parts of the Mass around the Word of God, which is what we've been going through this week in Lent. Um, but then I also want to, towards the end, transition to uh brotherhood and fraternity. Uh as we mentioned before, the Christeros, we uh root ourselves in daily prayer. We have a daily prayer regime that we that we run through, but then we also have a weekly formation cadence. In the first week, we focus on our identity as sons of the father, brothers of Christ, sons of Guadalupe. Uh second week we focus on our family and our parish as a as a whole. Um and then third week we try to focus on fraternity. And um, you know, as you and I have spoken before, a lot of uh men and and young men especially sometimes feel lost. They sometimes feel like maybe they're losing it life or they lack formation. And so part of this movement is a way for men to get together with other men, lift each other up, help form each other, and help support each other. So I thought for the second part of the conversation we'd run through that. If that works. Okay. Well, why don't we dive right in? So uh this week you focused a lot on the word of God. What is the word of God in relationship to the mass?

SPEAKER_01 2:13

So it's hard to under understand, understate rather the power of the word, because the word is the second person of the blessed trinity. Uh when we when we see even in the Old Testament, the wisdom of God, the way that God speaks creation into being, uh, this is because this the word is the second person. And then we get to St. John's gospel. The word was in the in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God. When we skip forward to verse 14, the word became flesh. So the second person of the Blessed Trinity becomes one of us in Jesus Christ. And then he is the one that goes to the cross, who's raised from the dead, who ascends to the Father. And that is the content of all the liturgy. This word who became flesh, suffered and died for us, and returned to the Father, that is what we are entering into in the liturgy. So we don't want to reduce it right off the bat to say that the word is just the scriptures. Those are extremely important, but the word is God. And then from that, we have ways of entering into that with liturgy. We have the content of the word of God and scripture and tradition. Um, all of those have their different elements in Catholic theology and Catholic life. But to say at the beginning very clearly, the word is God.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

It kind of reminds me of um Pope Benedict wrote a I think it was a series of three books called Jesus of Nazareth. And in the first one, I remember when he I think he wrote it when he was a cardinal, and it was published when he was Pope. And I remember at one point he's talking about, I think, the road to Emmaus and the and the they encountered the risen Christ without knowing it was Christ. And he says Christ explained all of the scriptures and how they related to him. And and Pope Benedict made the point is like he didn't explain like how some of the scriptures related to Christ, he explained how all of the scriptures related to Christ. And and his he was making the point we may not know how it relates to Christ, but if Christ is the word and the scriptures is the word, then all the scriptures relate to Christ, the center of our faith.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Yeah, there are different senses of scripture. One of them is the literal sense. What does the word itself mean in historical and philological and in theological sense there? I mean uh historical sense. But then there's the spiritual sense of how this relates to us morally and all these all these uh aspects of our life. But one of them that we see especially in the writings of the saints is how does this passage, this verse, this word relate to Christ Himself, either as prophecy or as fulfillment or as typology or mystigogy, whatever it might be, it all leads us to Christ. Uh and as St. Augustine famously said about scripture, the old is hidden or is made manifest in the new, and the new is hidden in the old. So it's all pointing to him.

SPEAKER_03 4:57

Aaron Powell But Father, we're Catholics. We don't believe in scripture and stuff like that. I mean, I mean, that's kind of you know something you hear a lot, is like, and and to be fair, we don't know the names of the books of the Bible as well as some of our Protestant brothers. But I mean, is it fair to say that Catholics don't involve Scripture in their life?

SPEAKER_01 5:14

I would say that was maybe more true in years past, but you see how many things are happening today with Ascension Press and the Year in the uh Bible in a year, uh, the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible that's come out, tons of Bible studies from St. Paul's Center, and all sorts of other people that are doing things with the Bible to make the the Bible more accessible to Catholics and to help them understand its true setting, which is the liturgy, right? This is where we hear the Word of God speaking to us in a very profound and real way. So I think that may have been the case, and it may be individually the case for certain people, but uh it's never been the case for the church as a whole, and I think especially for American Catholics, it's it's less and less true.

ll Scripture Points To Christ

SPEAKER_03 5:57

Aaron Powell When I was gonna say I always thought, you know, I grew up in a very with a lot of Protestant friends growing up, and they would sort of, you know, rib me about that. And but I always felt, you know, we were very faithful going to Mass every Sunday. And then what, we have a year A, B, and C, we have a three-year rotation through uh through the readings at Mass. And in a three-year period, I felt like I heard most of the major stories of the Bible, and I was very familiar with the Bible. And I may not have had individual verses memorized, but um, between the Psalms and the Old Testament readings and the New Testament readings and the Gospels, um, that I was getting a pretty complete picture of the Bible and that I could hold my own with almost anybody. Maybe you could tell me though, like what is so we have in the church and or in the liturgy, we have, I guess, kind of two major parts of the mass, right? We have the liturgy of the word and the liturgy of the of the Eucharist. So what in the liturgy of the word, what are kind of the parts that are tied directly to scripture?

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Sure. Excuse me. So I think first I would like to take a step back and say that the the word's proper place is the liturgy. Much like a beautiful work of art that we find in a museum that was initially made for a church, that is only at home in that church, where it interacts with the other pieces of art, with the liturgy itself, with the mass. And the same is true for the word, right? That these the New Testament, for example, the church was able to determine which parts belong in the New Testament because of how they were used liturgically. At least that was one of the criteria. So we have to know that the word has its proper home in the liturgy. And even outside of the readings themselves, Mass is scriptural. It's you start off with in the name of the Trinity, which comes from Jesus Himself at the end of Matthew's gospel, the Lord be with you is all throughout scripture. The Sanctus, the unused dei, all of the different things that we have come from different parts of scripture. And sometimes they're amalgamated or combined, but that's a very scriptural thing to do in itself. So all of Mass is scriptural because all of it's related to the Word. And sometimes we have specific verses. But when we have these two parts of Mass, the liturgy of the Word is the part where we're able to sit and receive these scriptures, these the particular passage that there might be for the day. And I've always found that a very childlike thing because once we grow up, we don't have people reading to us anymore. But at Mass, we hear people tell us stories of people in the past that have done great things, heroic things, even. Sometimes there are things that we shouldn't be doing when we hear some of the Old Testament stories. But the the Word is still living and active, proclaiming himself to us in the Mass. And that's why, at least at our cathedral and in many places, on the front of the ambo where the readings are proclaimed, you can see a picture, a painting of Christ the teacher, because he's still teaching the church through his word in the liturgy.

hy Scripture Belongs In Liturgy

SPEAKER_03 8:58

So something that that struck me as you were as we're you were talking about that too, is that going back to what we said is that the mass itself is Christ is the center of the mass. So it makes total sense that what we were talking about, if Christ is the word and scripture is the word, that it would be most at most at home in the mass. We we spoke a little bit last time about Lectio Divina, if I'm saying it right. And um you you kind of gave a quick overview of it. You have a whole uh uh passage in this book dedicated to that. Could you maybe run us through a little more what is Lexio Divina?

ectio Divina Four Steps

SPEAKER_01 9:36

So it's Latin for divine reading and it's a prayerful way of reading scriptures. Instead of just reading them like a newspaper where we go through, well, I don't even know if people read newspapers anymore, but reading them, reading the scriptures cannot be like reading anything else, right? Because it's a specific sort of literature, and in fact, it's its own library of books. So we have to have a particular r way of reading that, because if we try to read it like a newspaper or a magazine or a novel or a history book, we're not going to be approaching it on its own terms. So we have to have a divine way of reading, a divine word. Um, so I think in here I point to Pope Benedict uh in his document Verbum Domini, he he shows that the the traditional method for this is four steps uh reading, meditating, praying, and contemplating. And each of those he provides a question that can help us to engage that particular step. So the first is just that reading. Uh we can't start with anything else besides the actual text, because if we do, we might put a pre presuppositions, pretext into the word that shouldn't be there. So we just start with the word on its own terms. What does it say? And that can that can involve commentaries and historical realities and research and all of this. That's not necessarily what everyone's going to have access to, but we start simply, what does the text say? The second question is, what does it say to me? That's where it really becomes personal. And that's the meditation aspect of this. Uh that's where we can start asking uh the questions about why did Jesus say it this way? Why did he choose to act this way and not another? Um, why is it fish in this instance and sheep in this instance? That's where like all of these questions that we might wrestle with, right? Meditation is nothing other than wrestling with the word, trying to figure out what is it actually saying and how does it apply to me. The third step is prayer. And that's where we respond to the word, because as a word, it's it he wants a dialogue, right? Any Catholic, when I say, The Lord be with you, will say and with your spirit, because they know that this is a dialogue. This is just like saying good morning, good morning back, right? Well, the same with the word. He's speaking to us, God is speaking to us, wanting a response. And because of Christ, we can finally respond fully with grace. So the prayer aspect is us returning the speech in that dialogue, not talking back to God, but speaking with him, engaging in that. So once we've wrestled with these aspects of the scriptures as it speaks to us, then we start saying, Well, Lord, this reminds me of this aspect of my life and I need help with this. Or why did you choose these men knowing that Judas would betray you? Why did you go to the cross and not show your power, whatever it might be, right? That's when we're returning the dialogue to the Lord. And then finally we have contemplation. And the question there is, what change does this word require in my life? So that's where conversion really can take place. Because if we stop before that, we can have all of the philosophy and all of the theology and all of the history behind a particular passage and all the word meanings in Greek and Hebrew. We can have all of our questions and pray endlessly about it. But if we don't stop and think, what effect is this going to require in my life, then the word just dies. So we have to ask seriously, what does whatever passage we're meditating on require in my life? What change do I need to have? And then Pope Benedict, in fact, goes another another step forward to say, all of this we see it take place when action in our life takes place. So when we take a step to make that conversion, when we go to serve other people, when we serve the Lord and respond with our life and not just with our hearts. So those are the basic questions, the basic steps of this process, none of which is meant to cage us in, right? It's just a uh a guideline to help us uh read the word better.

SPEAKER_03 13:33

Yeah, it seems to me it's not just it's not just like a set of rules, but it's almost a recognition. I think we spoke about this a little bit in our first episode. It's almost a re the church sometimes recognizes the reality of human nature better than we do ourselves sometimes and gives us uh teachings that help us do that. Because when you you were talking about that and you started with, oh, yeah, just read it and and you know, g like accept it as it is, and you end with conversion, you're like, oh, that's actually kind of a natural progression. Like, okay, I'm I'm taking it in, kind of thinking about it, working with it, conversing with God, who I guess is the word, and I'm so conversing with God and conversing with the word, and then taking it into my like internalizing it and into conversion. It seems like that's something you could do in almost any aspect of your life or anything you're I mean, it doesn't just have to be the word. I mean, it it seems appropriate for the word of God. It seems like something you do with almost anything in your life.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Like, no, certainly it doesn't have to stop there. It can be uh the same steps, if you will, can apply to praying with sacred art, praying with instances of your own life, with things that are happening in your day-to-day life, or some big event that's happening, or some decision you have to make. Those steps can be applied to everything. Uh, because if if they can apply to reading the word of God Himself, they can apply to our own life, right? The greater can apply to the lesser. So it's actually a very helpful thing to consider those steps, those questions, because they're not just uh for moments of prayer, but uh, they're in a sense a way of living of how we engage in a dialogue with God in every aspect of our life.

SPEAKER_03 15:09

No, that's that's that's really good. I was thinking um Yeah, like we talked about music last time. I feel like you do it with music too. Like, okay, I'm gonna listen to the music, but I'm gonna kind of like meditate a little bit on what the musician is telling me, dialogue with God about this music, and then maybe how do I internalize this beautiful music too?

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Yeah, you can think of something, for example, like the diasire. There's a simple chant, dius ire, dius ira. Very, very simple, but a little bit haunting. And music scores use this all over the place for movies. But when you look at something like Mozart's Requiem or Verdi's Requiem, in a sense, they've done a Lectio on that text to turn it into music. And both of them are terrifying in a proper sense, because it's talking about the last day of time when Christ comes to judge, right? But the same can be true in our own meditation, whether it be on the text of some music or listening to the music, what does this what is it in itself? What does it make me feel? How do I want to respond to this terrifying day of judgment? And what change do I need to have in my life so that I don't enter into that terrifying day in a bad way? So it can certainly apply to that as well.

raying With Music And Art

SPEAKER_03 16:18

It's it's funny you bring that up. So the the Dear Sierra is one of my favorite little like trivia effects kind of thing. And I was telling uh our staff over here at the office uh about all the movies that use the Dear Sierra, um, including the Imperial March in Star Wars, or I think it's like Darth Vader's theme in Star Wars and the Nazgul theme in Lord of the Rings, and they're like, dun, dun, dun, dun. And I mean, it I think it shows the power of the church. The fact I was just listening to something recently, and they said nobody ever does an exodus movie where they invite like a Protestant preacher to to kind of praise and worship out the demons. They always call it Catholic priests. And I think there's something powerful to the truth of the of the faith that you know what, like our our scary music is legitimately scary, and you're gonna use it in your movies for legitimately scary stuff, and even a recognition that we there's just a truth to the Catholic Church that that even Hollywood that may not be actual believers can't help but see.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Well, and part of that is because we have a sacramental worldview. We recognize that sights, sounds, smells, touches, all of this kind of stuff are part of who we are as humans. And so we use them in our liturgy. We have incense for smell, we have all sorts of things for sight from stained glass to beautiful art. We have bells for for sight or for for hearing, rather. Um every sense is engaged in the liturgy. And so when someone wants to make a good piece of art or movie or music, they uh they engage a particular sense, but they can also try to evoke the other senses, and they often have to turn to what we have given them to do that.

SPEAKER_03 17:53

Yeah, well, you know, I remember our kind of mutual friend and mentor, Father Keller. Um he used to always tell, I mean, he grew up, he was born on the Navo reservation, grew up on the Navajo reservation, you know, has lived here kind of his whole life, and now he's a priest uh in the Diocese of Galp, which primarily sir, which is the the diocese that serves the Navajo nation. And he always said that um, you know, the the Navo people are much more connected to the natural world than your average uh uh white guy from New York because they live it. They still they still have that visceral sense of land and creation. And because of that visceral natural sense, they feel ripped off if he does a mass and they don't have a ton of incense, or they've or if they don't have a ton of holy water. Like, you know, sometimes that he feels like, okay, I better do an extra dousing of holy water and incense, otherwise um they're not gonna appreciate it. And I think of our own church now, you know, it's the smells and bells. Uh our church is packed with native people, you know, from the Pueblo Indians to the Navajo, and they love the incense and the water, and so do the kids. And frankly, so do most adults once you used to. I mean, there's always the one person that's kind of like, you have the incense out and they start coughing like, ah, but but I think for the most part, it just it it makes it makes the liturgy real and miserable.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Like you feel it and it's smell it. You know, it's following the pattern of Jesus Himself, right? Our worship has to be, as St. Paul says in Romans 12, our worship has to be word worthy and it has to follow the pattern of the word. So Jesus, when he made uh, we'll hear this in the gospel this coming Sunday. When he made clay with saliva and put it on the man's eyes, that's extremely visceral and tactile. You can feel that and be uncomfortable with it just hearing about that if you're listening to the word, right? Um, or when he when he uh casts out with the power of his word, or he uses uh water and turns it into wine, when he takes bread and wine and changes it into his body and blood, right? He's not just saying we're a bunch of angels that can appreciate something spiritually. He knows how we were made. He made us so he uses those things in our life that we're used to to elevate us to a new level in a sacramental way.

Sacramental Worldview

SPEAKER_03 20:10

Well, and it's like we talked about confession that you confess to a man uh who's standing in persona christi, but you are actually speaking out loud, using your voice, and it's hearing it's landing upon the ears of another of another person. And I just think of just how yeah, how visceral our religion is. Like as soon as you walk into the church, you're dousing yourself with holy water, especially if you're my two-year-old, you're just like bathing in the in the holy water. Um, and we have oils, and we have uh, you know, on Holy Thursday, you're taking your shoes off and water taking shoes off and washing people's feet. It's just it is just pretty an amazing thing. Um I think next time we'll talk more too about as we get closer into the Eucharist, which is really the the center of NASA. We'll talk about just how visceral that is. I mean, more how how much more real does it get than you are becoming one body with your Lord and Savior and brother?

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Yeah, there's no more deep, there's no deeper communion.

SPEAKER_03 21:08

Yeah. So um you also this week is another check-in. Maybe you could just remind us why it's important throughout Lent to have check-ins on how our land is going.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Sure. So I think check-ins help to avoid a pride in Lent that I set out to do X, Y, and Z. And if I don't do it, either I'm a failure or I'm gonna write this Lent off or whatever it might be. Having these check-ins helps us to remain humble that we are fallen, we are weak, we can easily not live up to what we had hoped to do. But within that, to adjust to something maybe that the Lord is asking of us instead. So maybe we took on too much or too little so we can adjust in a way that will benefit our relationship with God and with others. But especially at this point, we're getting close to the midway point this coming Sunday. Um maybe Lent is just dragging on and it's a bit rough right now for some people. So Adjusting in a way that's going to be in accord with the reality of our situation, which we never know on Ash Wednesday, is also appropriate because again, it keeps us humble, knowing our weaknesses, our faults, our failings, our sins, but also within that, knowing that there's an opportunity to return to the Lord again, right? Every time we fall away, whether it's sinful or just not living up to these Lenten penances, it's an opportunity to come back to Him. And He's more than happy to receive us.

id Lent Check In

SPEAKER_03 22:29

That's really that's really great, Father. And that's something we should we should all remember as we continue to go through Lent. Um I want to switch over to our second topic now. So my I should I should know how old she is. I think my six-year-old daughter, just uh Teresa, named after uh Mother Teresa, St. Teresa of Calcutta, uh just today received her first confession at the cathedral. Um you don't have to tell the whole audience all of her sins. Um but uh she's an amazing little girl and she spends probably three to four hours a day. You know, my wife helps work in the office a couple times a week. I think you even said you hear her in there listening to her saints podcasts for hours. For hours. I mean, I'm not kidding. Like, I we we uh we feel bad as parents because she'll have been listening to the stories of the saints for like three hours, and we don't want to just say, like, why are you always listening to those stories of the saints? Put those saints stories down and go outside and play. Like we want her, and she's been uh she's been really uh uh taken in by it. And I'll tell you another quick story about it is uh so when she was practicing for her first confession, she would uh always do a practice sin, and her practice sin was gossip. And we're like, Do you even know what gossip is? And and she didn't, and we told her, she's like, Oh yeah, that's like when Philip Nerean made the lady made the lady p pull all the feathers out of the chicken. Exactly. So so it is amazing. But I was listening, so I end up learning more about the saints through my daughter sometimes than I even knew. So Saint Francis, who I have a big devotion for, uh, you know, the the Franciscans in our area, Francus Denizos had his first mass here in 1538. Um so we have a big, I've always had a big devotion to Francis. Um I even slept on the streets of Assisi one time in my younger days. But uh I was listening to the story of St. Francis, or my daughter was listening to the story of St. Francis at bedtime, and there was something in there, and it was it was a little bit dramatized, but I I think it's true. I knew that his two first followers were two of his friends, two of his close friends. They had they were kind of rich sons of a CC together, and they all three went off to war together. And that when Francis, you know, uh threw off all his clothes and ran yelling joyfully into the woods in front of the entire town, one of his friends followed after him and immediately joined him. And they put on sackcloth and they started building the church of Saint Damian, and then later their third friend came back. So really the Franciscans, which is this, and and I just learned recently too that Francis himself got permission for the Franciscans to administer the sites in the Holy Land, which still goes today. To this day, the Franciscans still administer the sites in the Holy Land. So this powerful saint, this powerful movement of uh Franciscans that uh they started with three friends, three buddies, and you know, they were changed the world. They changed the world. And that they're right, they they they the Pope allowed them to become an order because he had a a dream of Francis like holding up the church, right? The church would collapse if it was not for the Franciscans. And I think of like how powerful it is that three buddies, three drinking buddies, right? They used to drink. That's their that was what they're known for. Like, we're gonna go drink and and party around a CC. And those three guys started this humble order that changed the world. And especially in this year, it's the 800-year anniversary of uh Francis' death. It's a Jubilee year of Francis. I thought, um, how appropriate to be meditating on friendship and building up our friendships in this year where Francis started this entire thing with friendship.

t Francis And Brotherhood

SPEAKER_01 26:19

Yeah, you know, that that goes back to the very creation of men. After Adam sees all of the animals, God says it's not good for men to be alone. And so, of course, there's marriage involved there for for Adam and Eve. But there's something about it that, especially uh men and women each in their own way, we need others because we can't do it on our own. St. Catherine of Siena, one of my favorite saints, she was complaining to God once saying, Why don't I have all of the charisms? I want all of these gifts from God. I want everything from you, Lord. And he said, I don't give you everything because then you would not rely on other people. You need other people. And that brings out good in us. It challenges us to have other people in our life who are also seeking virtue, who are also seeking holiness. So friendship is an essential in the Christian life.

SPEAKER_03 27:05

When I think, you know, we talk a lot about how men today feel lost or alone. And I think I've been blessed really to have some very close friends that we get together regularly, and you know, we're not always sitting around talking about high things. In fact, usually we're not. We're talking about movies or music or whatever it is. But having those good men in my life is probably what's saved me in some ways. And I think that, you know, I always say, you know, the relationship I have with my wife is there's no other relationship other than the relationship with my God that is that is better. Is that I'm it's more intimate, right? But I do have an intimate relationship with my friends too, and that relationship has lifted us up. Um, I won't name any names, but I'll I'll tell a story of one of our friends. Him and his wife were struggling to get pregnant, and he was just sort of coming back into his faith, and he uh we're just hanging out one night drinking course light, like a bunch of cool cowboys do. And uh he just like out of nowhere, he's like, Hey guys, like you know this in vitro fertilization thing, and I was like, Yeah, we we know, and he's like, Seems kind of like abortion, and uh and we're like, Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much what it is. He's like, he's like, because what do they do with all those other babies that are conceived but you don't use? So do they just die? You just kill them, and we're like, no, man. It's like he's like, and he he kind of like opened up to us over a beer, like, you know, we we are having problems getting pregnant, and my wife is really struggling with this, and we thought about turning to in vitro, and next week we're supposed to go in and like get the first procedure. And we then spent the next two hours talking with each other, going through it, hearing his struggles of having children and how they were suffering. And at the end of the night, he said, Okay, I'm not gonna do it. I'm gonna I I he's like, I understand, and like thank you, friends, for for lifting me up. And like the beauty of the story is he told his wife that the next day, and then four days later they were pregnant. And it's everything is God taking care of you. Like, you do you kind of have to trust in God and He'll take care of you. But I just think of like what good came out of that friendship.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

That'll be one of the secondary joys of heaven, I think, seeing the all of the ways God worked through our friends, not only to help us avoid evil, but to grow to greater heights of holiness. Because friendship, like I said, it's been there from the beginning and it's something he wants us to have. It's a gift from him.

SPEAKER_03 29:32

And so how do you I mean, what do you think? Like when you if you go to a new place, how do you how do you make friends? How do you how you're in a you cat a new Catholic man or a new parish or new town? I mean, it seems to me like actually I guess talking to the guys after mass, that seems to be like one of the best ways. Like go up to some guys you see and just introduce yourself.

ow To Build Real Friendships

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Yeah, part of it is is showing up and and making the time to do it, which is not easy, especially after the pandemic when everyone wants to do things in the easiest way possible, not go out of the house. So we do have to go out of our comfort zone in that regard to go meet people. And even if that's just for something after mass, five minutes, starting to get to know people's names or a bowling party or you know, whatever that people might do. All of these kind of things are our first step. And friendship is something that increases. It's not going to be meeting one, we're talking about the deepest things of our life and all the problems we're having. That's later on. But I think it's also helpful to see in our Lord's own life, there are different degrees of friendship we can have with people. So when you look at him, he had the beloved disciple John. Then he had the three, Peter, James, and John, then he had the 12 apostles, then he had the 70 disciples, right? He had these different concentric circles, if you will, which helped him to relate to different people. And it was through them that he ministered to so many others that he wasn't able to get to personally. But he had different people for different circumstances, different situations, right? John the Beloved was at the foot of the cross with him. He was able, he was the one that was able to have that communion with the Lord. The others, obviously, you know, there was denial and all these things, but from the lens of friendship, he was the one that had access to that moment. But then the 12 were there, or minus Judas, in the upper room, right? They were there at that moment of intimacy. Peter, James, and John had three moments of intimacy with our Lord, right? This close sharing between hearts, between brothers, right? So I think that's something helpful too to realize not every friendship is going to be for every situation. We may have some that are closer, some that are farther, but that's normal and good. So that in every aspect of life we have someone that we can share with. Um, so I think besides making time and knowing there are those differences, it's also okay to ask the Lord, can I have some friends? Yeah. And actually, I know I'm just curious, what are the three circumstances with Peter James and Oh, so the raising of the girl from the dead, um, the um transfiguration, and then Gardner gets ebony.

SPEAKER_03 31:56

Okay. Yeah, oh yeah. Where they fell asleep. But they were there. They were there, yeah. They're still there. Um Yeah, no, I mean, one of the things that struck me as you were saying that is we always talk about how John, the beloved disciple at the foot of the cross, is a stand-in for all of us. Right? He is Yeah, he's not named John, he's just called the beloved, and he says, you know, mother, behold your son, son, behold your mother. And that's supposed to be us all receiving Mary as as our mother. Um and it just strikes me as you were taught saying that, is like John was the best friend of Jesus. And we are stand, and John is a stand-in for us. And in some ways, Jesus is like, look, even if you don't have any other friends, I'm your first friend, I'm your best friend.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:40

But like you always say, like, don't be afraid to ask, and God and God will provide.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Yeah. And it's not just for the suffering, right? A good friend will be there in the highs and the lows, not just a fair weather friend or a poor weather friend for everything and even just the normal humdrum in the middle, right? So John was there as they were just fishing. He was there at the cross, but he was also the one at the Last Supper who laid his head on the heart of Christ, right? They weren't yet at the agony, they weren't yet at the difficulty. They were sharing a meal between friends, between brothers. And he was able to hear the heartbeat of Christ in that intimate moment, right? So he was there in every aspect that he could be. And that's what allowed him to pierce these mysteries and to know Christ so well because he was there with him through it all.

SPEAKER_03 33:23

I guess that's the friendship Christ is inviting us all into. Yeah. Well, Father, I think uh we're coming up to the end of our time here. I thought the last thing we could do would be that each of us could name uh our favorite fictional friends. Uh so I I have mine picked out on it. Do you want to go first or you want me to go first?

SPEAKER_01 33:43

Aaron Powell Well, since we've been talking about the word, I'll do one from the scriptures and one from the literature. But uh so David and Jonathan are not fictional, they're historical, but uh I I think they're such a great example because it talks about them having one soul. That's how close they were. And modern nonsense will twist our friendship into something aberrant. It's not. Guys can be very good friends and they should be. Uh, so that's a great example from scripture. And then I always go to uh Sam and Frodo in The Lord of the Rings for all sorts of reasons. Fair weather, poor weather, everything in between. Uh, but also especially at the end, when Frodo failed, he couldn't do it. Uh Sam was able to help him make it to the end.

avorite Fictional Friends

SPEAKER_03 34:23

I love that line. Like, I may not be able to bear the ring, but I could bear you. Yeah. Like that's such a great line. Well, mine are also from Lord of the Rings. So uh I was thinking of Gimli and Legolas. And uh I'd been thinking about this a lot lately because and I don't know, this may be getting too geeky um on you and our audience, but um so the elves were supposed to be like the first people of Middle Earth, and one of like the angels of God kind of like messed was impatient and created the dwarves, and then and God was like, no, hold on, elves first, and then um, but he's like, Okay, but then the dwarfs could come that could come later. Um, and so there was always this animosity in the books between like like uh uh elves and dwarfs, you know, and um the elves were kind of the high beings, like the the angelic beings, the dwarfs are these like kind of of the earth, almost just like made from clay, dirty creatures of the earth, and they're but they were still very authentic, right? They were very like strong like the earth. Um, and they would come together. And so when Legolos and Gimli meet, they start off very hostile towards each other. Then as their friendship develops, they're competing with how many orcs they could kill and and everything else. It's just it's a beautiful story of friendship through that. They go on all these adventures together, and then even Gimli uh you know sees Galadral, the elf, and he and all he asks for is a lock of the hair, and that forever endears Legolas and uh Legolas and the heart of Legolas. But the thing that struck me was uh my kids are all reading Lord of the Rings right now, my older sons, and in the appendix it says something to the effect of Legolas was the last elf to leave Middle earth because he could not bear leaving Gimli behind. And it's also said that when uh Legolas left, Gimli was the only dwarf to ever leave Middle Earth because he could not bear leaving Legolas behind. And um, and and Tolkien made some comments like I who knows if this is true. Nobody's ever heard of a dwarf leaving Middle Earth before. But if it is, it's it's a beautiful thing. And it just struck me of of of in that situation too, of like just how close friends could be and how important friendship is to all of us.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Yeah. You know, that reminds me of um, you know, with when we see the the lives of the saints, they all have their friends in life. We talked last week about Gregory and Basil. Um you have Francis de Sales and um Jean-Francis de Chantal, uh, but they also have cross-temporal friendships. So St. John Viani had an amazing friendship with St. Philomena, who was 1700 years younger than him, if you will. Um Padre Pio, and not only in his own life, but he counseled everyone make friends with your angel, right? So when you were talking about, you know, the the earthly people making friends with the angelic ones, it reminded me of that that we can have friends with the saints and our angels in a very real way. Oh, that's awesome, Father.

SPEAKER_03 37:18

Um, would you mind closing us off with a prayer?

SPEAKER_01 37:22

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Help us to find that true rest in all the gifts that you give us, in the words of Scripture, in the prayers of the liturgy, and the gift of friendship that you bestow upon us through Christ our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

SPEAKER_03 37:45

Thank you, Father, and thanks everybody for listening. God bless you.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

Thank you for watching this episode of Christerocast. For more information on the Christeros or to join the movement, check out our website at theChristeros.org. That's theChristeros with an S.org. There you could find our daily reflection series as well as many of our publications and articles. Thank you for watching, and viva Christore.