Transcript

We'll be back the second evening of our parish mission and on behalf of the Evangelization of the Spirit Church, I'd like to make a commission.

I want to thank you all for being here and helping our church.

But, who thought the Superdome was worth the trip?

It basically stopped.

It was worth it.

So once again, thanks to Devin and Bella Woodland for their sponsors, thanks to Tom and Matt.

And the Black Catholics and the Filipino Network and all of the helpers who assisted us over at the cafeteria and who stood up in the presentation for this evening.

And also all of you who are coming out to share this special stage experience with our guest speaker.

Jim Papadrea is a teacher, author, speaker, and musician.

He holds a Ph.D. in History and Theology at the Early Christian Church in Northwestern University, with secondary concentrations in New Testament interpretation and the history of the Roman Empire.

He has also studied Roman history at the American Academy of Rome.

He is associate professor of church history at the Derrick New Angelical Seminary on the campus of Northwestern, up in Evanston.

He also teaches for the lay formation programs during the Archdiocese of Chicago, as well as the Diocese of Ethiopia.

The Catholic Scripture, Chicago Catholic Scripture School, and the Human Formation Program will be our status.

And without any further ado, I will turn you over to Dr. Ben.

Thanks again for coming.

Taste that sweet Lord's good Drink from the cup of His forgiveness Never mind where you have been Everyone is welcome, open is his door.

Come to his table, leave your shoes behind.

Open up your hearts again, see who you will find.

And in the mystery, you will know the beauty of that angel.

Haste and feast, Lord, is good.

Safeless breath is compassion.

Never-wisening, blessed healing will be.

Music will be omitted.

Now that your eyes are faithless in His name, You will see His hands when you stop from this way.

Music will be omitted.

Come to the table and leave your tears behind.

Open up your heart to him and see that you will find.

And in the midst of you, you will know that beauty does not age at all.

Music will be omitted.

Okay, so I'm back to the audience with my enthusiasm to the faith, such as it is.

Thank you for coming back.

I appreciate that, because I know just how cozy home is.

And so I don't take it for granted that you came back and I regret that you're here.

Maybe some of you are here for the first time and you weren't here last night.

If you didn't make it last night, I'm going to try to give a little bit of a recap and move on from where we were last night and we'll see how that goes.

Tonight's topic is two kinds of faith, two kinds of peace.

Now, last time we talked about faith.

And last time we talked about two kinds of faith, both of which are good, but one without the other is completely complete.

And I said one kind of faith is faith and belief.

But belief alone is not enough.

The other kind of faith is faith as trust.

And so we need to believe and trust.

We need to not just believe in God, but trust in God.

Not just believe things about God or know about God, but know God in a way in which we trust God.

Someone actually brought up the point that it can work the other way too.

Music will be omitted.

Music will be omitted.

So, two kinds of faith.

Faith as belief and faith as trust.

Either one, by itself, isn't quite enough.

We need both.

Now, tonight, I'm going to talk about two kinds of faith, but I'm going to come at it from a different angle.

Tonight I'm going to talk about two kinds of faith in a different way.

One definition of faith is faith as commitment.

Now, in Christ, God invites us to forgiveness, to reconciliation with God, and to eternal life.

That is an indication.

Now, I'm sure you're used to seeing a crucifix.

with the little plaque above Jesus' head.

And on that plaque are four letters, which are an abbreviation of the Latin phrase, uh, Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews, and in Latin that's I-M-R-I, right?

You've all seen that.

But I want you to imagine for a moment A different four letters above Jesus on the cross.

Why do you imagine a crucifix with the four letters RSVP? Because the cross is an invitation in it.

Jesus Christ came to make it possible for us to be reconciled to God.

That reconciliation comes through forgiveness.

And forgiveness is offered to us as an invitation.

But that invitation requires a response, an RSVP, right?

And so faith, in one sense, is a decision to respond to God's invitation.

Faith is a decision to RSVP, yes.

Maybe you remember the parable of the wedding banquet in the New Testament, in Matthew.

In the parable of the wedding banquet, a king is preparing a wedding reception for his son, Prince, who is getting married.

And the invitation would go out.

All the people whom you would expect are invited.

But they all make excuses.

They are, as we see, with regret.

Sorry, I can't do this.

And we're given certain examples of some of the excuses.

Well, I just bought a piece of land and I have to check it out.

I'm getting married myself.

Other excuses.

So the king says, okay, fine.

And the king sends the invitation to everyone.

The high and the low, the rich and the poor, the good and the bad.

The invitation goes out to all.

At the end of the day, when the party rolls around, who's at the party?

The ones who are at the party, yes.

Who's not at the party?

The ones who are at the party, no.

And that parable that Jesus tells is thus an allegory or an analogy for the Kingdom of Heaven, that the invitation is extended to all people.

God invites all human beings into a relationship with himself, under Jesus Christ.

And what makes the difference between whether we have a relationship with God and are in the Kingdom of Heaven, and whether we do not, is how we respond to the invitation.

To respond with a yes, R-V-P, yes.

That's one way to think about faith.

Our Catholicism says this, Faith is man's response to God as he searches for the ultimate meaning in his life.

Faith is accepting God's truth as revealed in Christ, accepting that invitation to forgiveness and reconciliation with God and to eternal life, and making a commitment.

Now, this gets called different things in the New Testament.

The Apostle Paul likes to call this faith, but in the Gospels, sometimes it's called repenting, sometimes it's called accepting or receiving Christ.

John likes those terms.

I like to think of it as identifying with Christ.

We identify with Christ when we say, I am His, I belong to Him, I am one of His, I am a follower of Him, and He is mine, in the sense that He is my Savior.

And the outward signs of our identification with Christ, well, there are many of them, obviously, the sacraments, baptism, congruence, reconciliation, but there are even little things, crossing ourselves, dipping our fingers in the Holy Water.

Every time we do that, we are saying to the world, I identify with Christ, I am His, and He is mine.

And so that commitment, that decision, to make that commitment, is faith.

Now, of course, we have the freedom to RSVP no.

The RSVP, the response to God's invitation, is an act of free will.

And God has given us all free will.

That is the gift of God, and in fact, I would say that is part of what leads to these images of God.

I talk about this more in my book, Spirits for Blueprint.

I talk about what does it mean to be made in the image of God?

There are several things, like creativity, Love, compassion, but it also includes free will, and it includes rationality.

God is rational, and God has made us to be rational.

God has given us the gift of reason, and then God gave us the gift of free will, so that we can exercise our reason.

So we should say no to God.

And that's, you know, the paradox of God's wisdom is that God gave us the free will to reject our creator.

I suppose if I was the creator, I might not have done that.

But God, in His wisdom, gave us the free will to reject them.

But to say no to God is to reject more than just God.

To say no to God is to reject the things that are off by an implication.

Forgiveness, reconciliation with God, and eternal life.

Because forgiveness is a requirement for reconciliation.

And God offers us forgiveness, but if we say no to that law permanently, guess what happens?

We don't get the forgiveness.

And that's not God's fault.

That's our fault for saying no.

I believe that the only unforgivable sin is to reject God's forgiveness.

Because obviously, if you say no to the offer of forgiveness, God will respect your wishes, and you won't regret your forgiveness.

The good news, though, is that God doesn't give up.

God doesn't simply put that information out there once and say, oh, well, you said no once, so that's a dream.

God does not do that.

God is continually inviting you.

And there is nothing you can do that can permanently cross you off the invitation list, except, of course, to continue to say no to God's invitation.

So faith, then, is the acceptance of the invitation.

Faith is saying yes to the ark of the queen.

Now we have to acknowledge that, and the Catechism tells us this pretty clearly, even though it is an act of free will, it is also a gift of the Holy Spirit.

On some level, even the ability to say yes to God is a gift of grace.

So we cannot pat ourselves on the back for our faith, because God has given us the ability to say yes to Him.

It's not something we regret about, it's only something we can be grateful for.

We could never accept the invitations without God's grace.

In fact, maybe this sounds too simple, but you could say it like this.

We could never accept the invitations without the information.

The invitation itself is the word of God's grace and the Holy Spirit.

But there are a couple of myths I want to talk about tonight.

One myth, and for those of us who have spent some time in this process, there are some misconceptions about what baptism is.

There are misconceptions about what Catholics think baptism is.

And there are some people who believe, or some people who believe that Catholics believe, that baptism in itself guarantees salvation.

That somehow simply being baptized is a guarantee.

And I would say that historically the Church has never believed that.

Baptism, as I like to say, is a clean slate, but it's not a free ride.

And so there is a responsibility to continue in the faith after baptism.

I'm going to come back to that in a minute.

The other myth is this idea that some people believe that once a person is saved, a person is always saved.

Once saved, always saved.

This is what I like to call the altar call and that call, spiritually.

That sometimes a conversion experience guarantees salvation.

This isn't getting more true than the idea that baptism guarantees salvation.

Because guess what?

Just like God continually fights, God also continues to give us the free will to reject Him at any stage of our journey.

So the first kind of faith is a commitment.

It's a decision to accept the invitation.

And this might be a point in time.

It might be a convergent experience.

Maybe you can even remember a time when you made the decision to accept Christ and to say yes to God.

Maybe it happened for you in your confirmation.

Maybe you were baptized as an infant, but your baptism was confirmed later.

Well, all this is to say that, you know, conversion experiences are great.

But you may have had an experience where you've had several conversion experiences throughout your life.

Several well to the top experiences.

And we don't get baptized again every time we have a conversion experience.

Right?

So, this brings me to the second time today.

The second kind of faith goes beyond faith as an initial commitment.

It goes beyond faith simply as the beginning of the journey.

The second kind of faith is faith as the continuation of the journey.

Faith as a process.

And the interesting thing about having been both Protestant and Roman Catholic is that I find myself bilingual.

Now unfortunately, I don't speak any other languages fluently other than English, and sometimes I don't speak that too good either.

But I am bilingual when it comes to Protestant and Catholic.

And one of the funny things about being able to translate between those two words, world, is that certain words are used in both groups differently.

And one of those words is the word conversion.

In the process of a book specializing in Catholic world, conversion, you say conversion and they think of a decision, a point in time.

In the Catholic world, it's not quite like that.

Conversion in the Catholic world usually means moral progress.

It means an ongoing journey of growth.

And so, yes, faith is a decision, faith is a commitment, but it doesn't end there.

The second kind of faith that I'm talking about tonight is faith as continuing in the journey.

Faith as a process.

Faith as remaining in Christ.

You may remember in the Gospel of John, Jesus says, Remain in me, and I will remain in you.

How do you do that?

How do you remain in Christ when He won't remain with you?

It's actually not that difficult.

Go to Mass.

Because when you receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist, You are remaining in Christ, you are living your commitment to be a follower of Christ, and Christ remains you and actually kind of literally to the Christ within you when you proceed to be body and blood, but self.

What he's trying to say is we remain in Christ by living our faith through the sacraments, especially as we say, the sacraments of the Eucharist and our reconciliation, and through other aspects of a devotional life.

I mean, obviously, the sacrament of reconciliation reconciles us to God.

But I would say that the Eucharist is also a sacrament of reconciliation in a way.

It keeps us close to God, to Christ.

But it also reconciles us to each other, because we have to get up, leave our homes, and come and gather together.

And remember when Jesus said in the Gospels, he said, if you're going to the altar to make the sacrifice, and you remember that you have something against your brother or sister, or your brother or sister has something against you, stop.

First, go reconcile with your brother or sister, and then go to the altar.

And I think we need to, uh, let me do well to present that with regard to you, too.

Um... that we should reconcile not only with God before receiving the Sabbath, but also with each other, reconcile with our neighbor.

So how do we live our faith as a journey?

Again, I keep referring to my book Spiritual Blueprint, but in that book I talk about what I call the spiritual tripod.

You know what a tripod is, the one right there.

A tripod has three legs.

And three legs creates a pretty sturdy stand, a pretty stable stand.

But if you take any one of those three legs away, what happens?

They don't tip over.

The spiritual tripod also has three legs, so these three aspects, which create, I believe, a complete life, a complete Christian Catholic life.

If you take any one of the three away, It's unbalanced instead, and works with your soul.

So what are the three layers of the spiritual tract?

Well, first is corporate worship.

Now, by corporate, I don't mean anything to do with business.

I mean corporate as in by following Christ, worshiping as an assembly, as a congregation.

Corporate worship means you leave your house and you come to your parish church.

And you gather as a community.

Because faith cannot be expressed completely all on your own.

Faith has to be expressed in communities.

And communities is where we support each other.

So the first leg of the spiritual tripod is corporate worship.

The second leg of the spiritual tripod is personal devotion.

This is where you cultivate a devotional life between you and God in Christ, between you and the Trinity.

This is connected with the divine, in prayer, beyond just Sunday Mass.

And this can take many forms, of course.

It can be Eucharistic adoration, it can be Rosary, it can be, um, Lectio Divina, it can be scripture devotionally, it can take many, many forms.

And, you know, there's no one way for everyone.

God made no two of us alike.

We are no two personalities the same, which means we are no two devotional lives the same.

So, that also means it might take a little bit of experimentation for you to find what works for you, but that's okay.

Personal devotion is the second leg of the spiritual tripod.

The third leg of the spiritual tripod is what I call social responsibility.

This is what we get involved in for working for the justices.

Getting involved in acts of mercy and compassion.

This is where we pay it forward.

I wish I had invented that phrase.

It's a great phrase, but I can't use it right now.

But, you know, we often have so much gratitude toward God, for all that God has done for us, except the problem is, we really can't repay God's penance.

If we can worship God, we can.

But God doesn't really mean anything from us, so there's something we can give God that will enhance God's existence in any way.

So, how do we pay God back?

We pay God back by paying him forward.

We love God by loving our neighbor, even the neighbors we don't know, even the neighbors who don't actually live close to us.

That's social responsibility.

And so those are the three legs of the spiritual triad.

Corporate worship, personal devotion, and social responsibility.

And I've told you that those are the three things that every person's spiritual life, we, without any one of those, our spiritual life is complete.

When Jesus said, remain in me and I will remain in you, I think these are the ways we remain in Christ.

These are the ways we stay on the journey.

These are the ways we live our faith and we make faith a journey, a daily journey of progress and growth.

And doing that, doing that will give you peace.

But, there are two kinds of peace.

You saw that coming, didn't you?

There are two kinds of peace.

Now when Jesus was born in Nazareth in Bethlehem, the good news was announced to the shepherds by a heavenly choir of angels.

And you know these songs.

Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra.

This is how we know that the language of heaven is Latin, by the way, from the song.

And for those of you for whom English is a second language, God can relate.

But for those of you for whom Latin is not your first language, I'll grant it for you.

The song goes like this.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace.

Peace on earth.

That was important enough to put it in the psalm.

It was important enough for the angels to sing at the birth of Christ.

And after all, Jesus is the Prince of Peace.

And in his Beatitudes, in his Sermon on the Mount, he preached blessed are the saints.

So this is a pretty important gospel.

Now, I have to just take it aside here.

As a scholar and a student of the Bible, I have to admit, it doesn't actually say the angels sang.

It does say they were praying for them, but I think it's fair to put it in a song.

The other thing, though, is that we can't ignore the last phrase.

Peace on earth to those on whom God's favor rests.

It sounds a little like they're saying, peace on earth, but only to God's sake.

Now, I'll just say up front, I don't think that's what it means, but I'll get back to that in a minute.

The point right now is that the whole thing begs the question, if that's God's Christmas wish for humanity, where is it in peace on earth?

And why do these beings seem so bent on rejecting it?

I think part of the answer is that we forget that there are two kinds of peace.

Last night when we talked about the two kinds of fear, we found out that one was a healthy fear and one was unhealthy.

One kind of fear is good, the other kind is bad.

And then last night, tonight, when we talked about two kinds of faith, we found out that one is good, but not enough on its own.

The other is completely good.

Now you already know about peace on earth.

And even though we don't seem to have it, we know what that might mean.

We know what peace on earth would look like if we didn't have it.

So why don't we have it?

If everybody says they want it, I mean, even beauty caches contestants tell us they want peace on earth, right?

Why do we have to?

Well, again, I go back to the caches.

According to our texts, the lack of peace on earth is caused by following.

Greed, envy, distrust, and pride.

I think that's four out of the seven deadly sins right there.

But these sins are committed, not only on the personal level, but also on the corporate level, and by now I have my statements, on the national level, and they are also committed on the international level.

So there's just some sin on top of sin.

After explaining what causes the lack of peace on earth, the Catechism then goes on to quote the doctrine of Gaudium et Fe. Peace on earth requires reconciliation.

But reconciliation takes an issue.

Forgiveness, it requires letting go of anger.

In other words, reconciliation, when offered between human beings, is a risk.

Because efforts at peace may be rejected.

In fact, efforts at peace may be, and often are, returned with violence.

Remember the parable of the unforgiving servant?

In this parable, a servant owes a huge debt to his boss.

The boss erases the debt, forgives it.

But then that servant goes out and demands payment of a small amount.

Now it should have worked like this.

It should have worked like this.

The boss forgives the huge debt, and then the servant, out of gratitude, turns around and forgives the smaller debt.

That's how it was supposed to go.

Whether we are doing it right, Our gratitude to our God for all that God has done for us and for all that God has forgiven us, our gratitude to our God should free us all to forgive others.

Recognizing what God has done for us frees us to pay the forgiveness forward.

When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, remember this one, he taught them the iPhone, and he includes this line, as we forgive those who sin against us.

Now, that line isn't technically a prayer or anything.

We're not asking for anything here.

We're kind of promising something, right?

Interesting how Jesus slipped that line in, as we forgive those who sin against us.

And then immediately after teaching the disciples to the Our Father, he says this.

For if you forgive others their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your sins.

Wow!

So here's what we know so far.

Grief, envy, distrust, and pride lead to a lack of peace on earth.

Forgiveness and reconciliation will lead to peace on earth, but the refusal to forgive is itself a sin, and forgiveness is a risk.

But what frees us up, or at least what should free us up, to take the risk, to offer forgiveness, to take the initiative in reconciliation, what should free us up to do those things, in spite of the risk, is gratitude.

Gratitude toward God, for all that God has forgiven us.

It's recognizing God's love and God's goodness that gets rid of bad fear, remember that?

God loves to cast out fear.

And here is where the rubber meets the road, because we need to cast out that fear if we're going to take the risk to forgive and to offer reconciliation to others.

God's love casts out that fear and in place of the bad fear, God's love gives us that perspective that I talked about last night, that perspective of the same picture of eternal life.

And it gives us hope.

And that hope and the gratitude that we have for God should free us up to take the risk and offer forgiveness and reconciliation.

And so, that hopeful perspective is actually the very definition of the other kind of peace.

The other kind of peace is peace of mind.

Peace of mind frees us, will let go of hatred, and take the risk to forgive.

According to the Apostle Paul, It is the fruit of the Spirit.

In other words, it is the product of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

And I would say that the reason we don't have peace on earth is because we don't have peace of mind.

I believe that peace of mind has to come before we can have peace on earth.

And I believe that peace on earth will come from peace of mind.

Or to say it the other way, mystifying will lead to peace on earth.

St. Augustine began his Confessions.

And by the way, if you've never read the Confessions of St. Augustine, it sounds like a heavy theological text, but it's not.

It's all the way out.

It reads like a novel.

It's an easy read.

I highly recommend it.

You can skip the last part and get the whole theological part.

You know, the first nine books.

The books are like chapters.

Have you ever felt that your heart is restless?

If so, you are experiencing a lack of peace of mind.

If you know people whose hearts are reckless, these are people who need more peace of mind.

And we won't have peace on earth until more people have peace of mind.

So I mentioned earlier that Jesus is called the Prince of Peace.

Why is Jesus called the Prince of Peace?

Well, it's part of the Old Testament prophecy, but why?

According to Catechism, Jesus is the Prince of Peace because he is the one who brings reconciliation.

He is the facilitator of peace on earth.

He is the one who brings peace of mind to people because he reconciles humanity to God.

He gives us that big picture perspective of eternal life and he gives us that hope that leads to peace.

Okay, so now, what does it mean that the angels wished for peace on earth for those on whom God's favor rests?

It doesn't mean that the wish was limited, as if they said, may God's favor have peace on earth.

That's not making sense.

It means that those who follow the premise of peace, they will be the peacemakers.

And they will experience more peace.

They will exercise that third leg of experience described by them and get involved in social responsibility.

And they will work for justice on earth because the peace of mind that they have will free them up and overcome their fear to get out there and do things.

Now last time we talked about the other kind of fear too, the healthy fear of God, or reverence of God.

It's really another way of saying that we trust God.

We put ourselves in God's care.

We also talked about how belief plus trust is a complete kind of faith.

So tonight we looked at how faith has what we might call two aspects.

Faith as a commitment, but that's only the beginning of the journey.

Or maybe we have a stepping stone of commitment along the journey, maybe we have multiple conversion experiences, multiple new beginnings along the journey.

But faith is also a process.

We can't stop just because we started.

We continue on this journey.

We walk that journey.

We live that commitment.

And we live it by the spiritual tripod.

Worship, devotion, and service.

And when we engage in the spiritual tripod, over time, our faith in God's promise grows.

And we grow in gratitude for God's forgiveness, for God's reconciliation, for God's love.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews said this.

This author's line made his way.

Faith is the assurance of what we look for.

Living our faith leads to hope, specifically the hope of eternal life that gives us that faith that shows respect.

That is peace of mind.

So faith leads to hope, and hope leads to peace of mind.

Peace of mind frees us to be motivated by our gratitude to forgive others, to overcome the fear, to take the risk, And that in turn leads to reconciliation among people.

And by facilitating reconciliation among people, we become the peacemakers that Jesus promised to be left, and we work for peace and justice in the world.

And we don't fear because God's perfect love has cast out the scary fear.

We take the risk to extend God's invitation to others.

In a way, that's really what we're doing, extending that R.A.P. invitation to others.

Sometimes we have to let go of anger and resentment, sometimes we have to get over fear, but when we do, we become peacemakers, and we are blessed, blessed with reconciliation.

Eventually, the peace of mind that we have, and the hope that Christ gives us, will lead to peace on earth.

The more people have peace of mind, the more we will have peace on earth.

Okay, so what?

I always like to end with answering, trying to answer the scope of my question.

I mean, you say to me, if you gave me this mission, I'm so grateful that you did, but now what?

What next?

What's going to be different to your life because you were here?

I said I came here to annoy you, but really I just came here to encourage you to do something different, to step it up a bit, to remain in Christ through the sacraments, especially the Eucharist.

And to live in the faith with the spiritual trifecta.

To step up your personal devotion and your service to the world.

Because living the faith journey will lead to hope.

And hope will lead to peace of mind.

And then, if you let, the peace of mind will become contagious.

I'm going to end with a song I wrote called Peace, which I guess is appropriate, and then I'll open it up for some questions.

Music will be omitted.

Music will be omitted.

Music will be omitted.

You restore the joy of your salvation.

You cleanse your heart, renew your soul.

Lord, grant us your peace.

Jesus, be merciful, holy peace.

Make us intangible.

Music will be omitted.

Please, I need you.

Be who lives for me.

He's the God.

He are what you can be.

Don't mend your heart.

The actions of the faith that the world gives you are based in fragility.

Greater is the one who is within you than the one who would lead your heart astray.

If Christ has overcome your tribulations, Music will be omitted.

That God will take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

Grant us your peace, Lord grant us your peace, Jesus, we worship Thee, Holy Be Thee, may God bless us all.

Music will be omitted.

Music will be omitted.

Thank you.

Well, I appreciate you letting me play a piece of song as part of this fair exhibition.

It's been a real blessing to be here.

What are we doing?

Oh, we're okay.

We've got a few minutes.

Here's what we're going to do.

I'm going to offer to open it up for a few questions for about ten minutes or so, and then I will be back in a minute at the book table.

And I will continue to answer questions if you have them.

If you want to get over a pain, I can certainly do that.

Also, I have little business cards on the table back there that have my website.

So if you did get a flyer last night, or even if you did, feel free to take one of those business cards that have my website and other information on it.

Okay, so, do we have any questions?

The two kinds of peace, absolutely, are peace of mind and peace on earth.

And I started with peace on earth and backed up with peace of mind, but my point was that peace of mind leads to peace on earth.

And the reason we don't have peace on earth is because there isn't enough peace of mind.

And we all can Spread the peace of mind by spreading the invitation to reconciliation with God with Christ himself.

We can make peace of mind contagious without the presence of God.

Any other questions?

Yes, here.

I've got a lot, so stop me any time you want.

Well, is there a question?

I think I'm going to focus this.

We'll start with the idea of hatred as the core of the wrong kind of fear.

Can you clarify us for that?

Are you talking about hatred of God?

In other words, if I'm a sinner and I know that I haven't fully reconciled with God, I haven't stopped sinning, which I don't expect I will in this life, thank God for confession, Oh, so you're asking whether...

A healthy fear of God recognizes that we can't simply rest on our baptism in the guarantee of salvation, but that we are called to continue the journey.

At the same time, though, I would want to say that I don't want to go so far as to make the Christian life a daily worry that I'm going to lose my salvation any moment.

I think that while it is possible for us to lose our salvation, I believe you'd probably have to try pretty hard to do it.

I mean, you know, in the sense of having one's experience done is great, and having committed oneself to following Christ.

And as we identify with Christ, as I said, by taking and receiving the Eucharist and trusting ourselves, one would almost have to, you know, really be jacked up by a, you know, A constant lifestyle in order to undo that can be done.

But, you know, I believe in the letters of John.

John there says, you know, again, you know, look, I don't want you to be afraid every minute for your salvation.

There is a sense that we can have a peace, a peace of mind about our salvation.

So I wouldn't want to, you know, say That we should live with this fear that we can have salvation if we have it, to undercut some of the love and grace of God.

Is that a question?

Oh, it's not a question.

Well, if it's not a question, say it for the last minute, I can say it.

Again, God is in charge.

How come the other half of the people in all the whole world, they want separation of church and state?

That's the problem.

This one church in our society now is the best.

The way I hear this justice code, it will solve all the human problems.

the word, the language, the definition, the dream, and all of that kind of stuff.

Now, now too far.

We are here with this study, and we say things that we think, things that we believe, and then they distort, and here and there, outside this church.

Okay, I think we have a few questions left.

Is there a question?

The question is, okay, I think you are responding.

This part of the body, the mind and the heart, usually they disagree.

Say we see the kind heart, generous heart.

Giving heart, not in Christ.

But the mind, mind of a human needy or sick, no, the mind will disagree with the heart.

The heart should always be followed because that is where the Holy Spirit resides.

I don't mind the Holy Spirit dissecting a human person in that way.

I wouldn't want to get quite that civil with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Remember that in the ancient world, they had a whole different idea of what the body parts were responsible for.

So, for example, you know, when Jesus said this, this is actually a legend, you brought this up, because when Jesus said to his disciples, you must forgive your brother or sister from your heart, And we read that, and we often think, wow, you know, that's hard to do.

I mean, I know that I should forgive, but what if I don't feel like giving?

What if I don't feel ready to forgive?

What if I feel too hurt?

Well, you have to remember that in the ancient world, in Jesus' worldview, the heart is not where feelings come from.

Feelings come from your gut.

But he wasn't talking, he didn't say forgive from your gut.

He said forgive from your heart.

So what's the heart all about?

In the ancient world, the heart is the will, is the place where decisions come from.

So when Jesus says you must forgive your brother or sister from your heart, the good news is that you can make a decision to forgive, even if you're not feeling it emotionally, you can still decide to forgive and go on back until you do feel it emotionally.

And that's actually a good thing because it's easier to make that decision.

Yes, question?

I can't hear.

I can't hear.

I can't hear.

You mentioned that this scripture text is walking by faith, not by sight.

But again, these are not things that are meant to be taken literally, so I wouldn't want to assign body and heart to these things.

Heart and mind, eye and ear, you know, it's more of a... Yes, question here.

When was the word Catholic first used?

In the early second century, the first person that we know of, and remember I say that we know of because there may be documents that are lost, but the first person that we know of in Ignatian or Antioch Not to be confused with Ignatius, but the early second century, right around the year 110, you have a letter from Ignatius to Antiochus, and there it has the meaning of the universal church in the sense that What is Catholic is what is believed by Christians worldwide.

He's making a case that this is what Catholics and Christians believe everywhere and in every place.

The point being that if you don't agree with that, then you're not Catholic and you're not Christian.

It has already had that connotation that that is orthodox and correct doctrine.

That's early second century.

In the creation of the Bible, there was a Catholic and a non-Catholic church.

I'm not referring to a Catholic church.

I'm referring to a Protestant church.

The question was, in the creed, we say we believe in the so-called four marks of the church, one, holy, Catholic, and Catholic.

We say we believe in the Catholic church, and they don't classify it.

And you know, in the Protestant creed, They say that they've created a little asterisk after the word Catholic, and at the bottom it says, it means the universal truth.

It means the universal truth.

And that is exactly what it is.

When we say we believe in the Catholic Church small c, we're talking about the worldwide body of Christ, the Catholic Church, the universal church that includes the Protestant, the Orthodox, everybody.

Yes, they do, but again, it's not Catholic.

Yeah, and so when, you know, if I go to a conference and I meet colleagues, and I want to tell them who, where I'm coming from, you know, doctrinally, I might say, you know, that I'm a small-c Catholic or a big-c Catholic, and they know what I mean, a big-c Catholic, a small-c Catholic, and, you know, theologically orthodox, but, you know, not really Eastern Orthodox.

Let's do this.

Let's adjourn.

Thank you again so much for coming.

I appreciate you coming out tonight, and I will be at the table, and you'll be able to talk some more and see if you want to get any stuff.