Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: I'd like to welcome everybody to the latest version of Big City Catholic Bishops Brennan podcast. I have the pleasure and the honor to be the co host this week. And we're going to speak about the great events that have gone on in the diocese celebrating 125 years of Catholic Charities work with the people in Brooklyn and in Queens, and actually for a good portion of that, actually the people in Nassau and Suffolk as well. It's a very, very special time. We had a great weekend and I'm very honored that Bishop asked me to be with him to kind of spend some time and talk about it. But as always, we like to start with a prayer. So let's begin, my friends, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Lord God, you call your people to specific times and places to be the minister that people need. Open our eyes, our hearts and our ears so that we may see, hear and know the grace that abounds and help us to build your kingdom in all that we do. We ask this in the name of our Lady, Queen of Mercy. Amen.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Welcome, Bishop. Welcome to your podcast, Bishop. Welcome to your podcast.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Thank you. Deacon McCormick, thank you so much for jumping in this week. It's always fun when we get to record together.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: I agree, I agree.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: We had a great weekend together. Wasn't that amazing?
[00:01:19] Speaker A: It truly was. And to spend time speaking and thinking at St. John's and then the Mass was so powerful on Sunday at the Co Cathedral, but just very, very powerful. The place was packed, as you would expect. But actually, to be honest, it was a Sunday at 11 o'clock. Every one of our churches had Mass at that time, and there was still significant representation by our bishops, our priests, even our deacons. The religious were there, the people who work at Catholic Charities. It was very beautiful, beautiful Mass. The excitement, the neocats, they always bring energy. When we walked out, they were praising the Lord. It was a very special day and I was very, very honored to be a very, very small part of it.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: It really was Cardinal Pierre, the Pope's personal representative to the United States, the ambassador, as it were, he came in person, he came to deliver the Pope's solidarity with us, and he came to help us celebrate. And I can tell you that having spent some time with him over the weekend, and at the end of the weekend, he was very touched by what he saw and experienced, by the level of faith and the level of commitment by so many people here in Brooklyn and Queens. Last week I had the chance to Chat with Monsignor Lepinto. And to go back over the last 125 years, I've been talking about the history of Catholic Charities and also some of the current challenges that we face. We got somewhat granular talking about the issues, both past and modern issues. But this weekend, we've focused in on the reason we do. Monsignor Lepinto said that a number of times it's important to remember the reason we do what we do in Catholic Charities, and that has to do with Jesus himself. And Cardinal Pierre brought that out so powerfully, both in the symposium on Saturdays at St. John's University. It was done in partnership with the Vincentian center, but Cardinal Pierre was the keynote, and he used that occasion to ask us to reflect on what we're doing. He used Pope Francis famous image of the field hospital. He said so many times, the Church is the field hospital and that this is something Catholic Charities represents. And a week before, he spoke to the US Bishops and had a very similar message. He said, when. When you're in a field hospital, you're not checking somebody's cholesterol, you know, you're binding the wounds, you're providing relief, and then you're kind of prepping people so that they can take the next step. And the state of the world is such that the world needs the field hospital because we've got to announce the good news of Jesus Christ and the good news that Christ loves us immeasurably. One of the things he said, when you're working in the field, the work that we do, it has to be that through our encounter, people will know that Christ loves the very person we're encountering, that he's eager to be close to them. He wants to call them friend. And so I take that to heart. You know, whether it's in our schools, in our parishes, through Catholic Charities, in our families. Do I, as a friend of Jesus, communicate by my words and action and.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: With that bishop, when you and I are friends, if you and I are friends, then I have to be vulnerable to you. If I'm your patron, if you will, then I don't need to be invested in you. I give you what you need, and then I move on. But if I'm a friend, then that means that your pain is my pain and that my encounter with you changes who I am. And I think in many ways, when this work is done, it's done because not only for the people who are initially in need, but for the person who appears to be in the superior position, but really isn't. It's a dance that goes together. And I think, look, the Catholic Church has always been known for its good works. Hospitals and schools began in the Middle Ages and even before with the Catholic Church. We have much to be proud of there. But if you look at what Catholic Charities has done beginning in the 19th century, now we're in the 21st century, they're building on the past. They're standing on the shoulders of the charitable work that was done in orphanages, et cetera. But now when it's done right and we do it right, more than not, what we see is that we change. I don't come in impermeable to the pain, but I walk not ahead of you, not behind you. We walk with you and Bishop. We're doing that with the elderly, we're doing that with the young. We're doing that with the immigrants. We're doing that with the families who have psychological needs, therapy and all the stuff that's there. And we doing it with great joy. I mean, how many times do you meet people from Catholic Charities who can't stop bragging about the work they do?
[00:05:40] Speaker B: Isn't it something? Yeah. At all levels. What I call the front lines of hope, people who are out there in the field doing the work, people who support it, they got right to work after the 125th anniversary and they're doing all the distribution of the Thanksgiving turkeys. And everyone is just so moved to be able to really share on the front lines the goodness and the generosity of so many people behind them. But it's all about that encounter. It's walking together equally as disciples on mission with Christ.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: So many times in the position I have now as the superintendent, I dare say as bishop, you probably get caught into this as well. We have a lot of stuff to do that doesn't necessarily look very much like it's building the kingdom meetings and papers and reports and all the stuff that goes with that. And that's necessary. We're not going to pretend that's not. But at the same time, we need, and I think His Eminence brought this up very clearly on Sunday's homily. He didn't use these words, but it was very clear to me. This is what he how I heard it. We need to develop a practical mysticism. We don't need to go up to the mountain. We don't need to go down into the desert. While there are some more call to that, that's fine. But you and I and the people who are listening to this. We're not most likely called to the extremes. We're called to live. And this is one of my catchphrases in the common, ordinary, unspectacular flow of our everyday life, where someone comes and says, I'm hungry. Not looking for an existential explanation of the Trinity. What they need is a belly that's full. And they need someone who recognizes that and addresses that, who can hear their desires, that sees the pain and understands the way to heal.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: And that's a great term, practical mysticism, because it captures that both end. That's so much a part of Catholic life. It's practical, it has its effect. It's sometimes very simple acts. So it's action oriented. But it's also at the very same time, part of this mysticism, this relationship with God who loves us immensely. Pope Francis brings that up in his encyclical on the Sacred Heart. He said, the more outward we're going to go in mission, the more we have to turn inward. Otherwise what you have is action without love is. I'm sorry, but it's renting and raving. It's not really moving the needle. It's just making a lot of noise. Action without love doesn't really change anything. But that experience of the love of God is only authentic when it pushes us into action. St. Paul says the love of Christ impels us both end. Practical mysticism. This. It's put it in a relationship with God who loved us first, but it drives us out to recognize the needs of the people around us.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: I think it fits very well also with the Holy Father's most recent encyclical, which was discussed also by His Eminence. It came through in the conference and certainly alluded to in the homily. The Sacred Heart is not some 19th century piety that we can get lost into, but it's the very love of Christ that we connect to. And that heart is obviously not a physical heart. That's not what the devotion is about. It's about the fact that the essence of God, the essence of God on earth, Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word. The essence of God is the draw towards him to get the fullness of it. I'm kind of impressed that I can talk with you about this, Bishop, because I just a week ago, I was with Father Yu, a Montford Father out in the shrine of Our lady of the Island. Brilliant man, brilliant man. And he was presenting it to us. And what he talked about was the gaze of Jesus that he looks upon us, that's how it's initiated. He sees the potential disciples. He sees them and then he calls them. But the key to that is that the Sacred Heart sees us where we are and it invites us to such fullness. And we can't do it alone. That's the other thing. As Catholics. So we're not about individual salvation, where, you know, it's not a, you saved, Bishop. Are you saved, Deacon? It's, you know, how do we encounter the risen Lord? And we have to do it side by side.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: Exactly. Except we're loved immensely, you know, and when we realize that we're loved, that we're worth something, that inward dimension, that gaze of Jesus Christ looking upon us with love, it transforms us. It. First of all, it reminds us of our worth, our self worth, that we're people creating God's own image and loved immensely by God. But then it addresses something that Pope Francis, I know he addresses it in the encyclical, but one of the words that he's been using a lot lately is indifference. The culture of indifference. And I think that's pretty powerful. That's something that's been kind of been tossed around in my head. Now, this is me, not the Pope. But indifference takes many different forms. So there's the indifference, indifference of not my problem. There's the indifference of, I'm incredibly busy. Yeah, I'd like to pay more attention, but I gotta run from this thing to the next thing to the next thing. There's the indifference of we live in that world with the cell phones and, you know, like, the bubble just gets smaller and smaller. And then I think there's an indifference. This is a big one for me, this sense of indifference, because we feel overwhelmed. What difference can I really make? And there's a powerlessness, and that's not easy to live with, with powerlessness and just to do the best that we can with what we have and recognize that we need to be united with the efforts of others. That brings us back to some of what Catholic Charities is about and the.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Work that's going on in our parishes. You know, taking the gospel for the last Sunday of the year, depending on when you listen to this. But, you know, we could say when you set out the Anten's cookie for the meeting, you were there. When you plugged in the coffee urn, when you helped the kid cross the street, when you wrote a note to the pastor and thanked him for his work, when you saw the sisters and you reached out to them, these little acts of charity. My mom used to Talk about that all the time. It was the little things for her. I think, Bishop, that's the key to why I find being a Catholic so essential to who I am. Are there things about what we do as a collective that drive me crazy? Yeah, there are. There are things. There are times I look and frankly, I can be quite embarrassed by some of the things that I do that I do and say, wow, that didn't really help anybody in that case. But then when you look at it and you realize that that Sacred Heart of the Lord is calling me to do what I can, do the best I can, where I am, where I am. And again, will I ever be a great saint? You know me well enough to say that's not going to happen. But I do like to think I'm on the team. I do like to think I'm on. I may not be the cleanup hitter, but I'd like to think I'm on the bench. And I do think that's where that practicality comes from. And you look again, going back to Catholic Charities, but again, the way it manifests itself in all our parishes and all the good works that we, across the board, in our institutions, it matters. It matters. And it changes not only the people we serve, but it changes us. And that is the key that's so.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Important that we become transformed. You know, I'm going to quote somebody kind of local and somebody known to you, but December 2nd marks the death, the martyrdom, you might even say, of Sister Ita Ford, one of the marinal sisters killed in El Salvador back in the 80s. And she's a graduate of Fontbonne right here in Brooklyn. And I remember looking at her life when I. I was making a visit to Fanban and don't have it exactly. But when she was writing a letter about her experience, at that point, she was in Chile, and she said, can I really enter into this? Can I look among people and enter into, with, like, solidarity, into their suffering and say, I don't have the answers to the problem? But I'll tell you this, I'll walk with you along the way. I'll share the vulnerability. I'll be vulnerable with you. I'll learn from you, and we'll walk through this together. And I think that speaks volumes about that experience of powerlessness, that we walk in solidarity. By the way, that's what the Pope calls synodality, that we walk in solidarity, as you said before, feel somebody else's pain in friendship and say, yeah, let's try to figure this out together. Let me Share with you what I have to help you along the way. Let me carry the burden along with you. Isn't that what God did for us? Though he was in the form of God, he emptied himself and lived among us. Right.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Everything you're saying here, it certainly echoes what we heard this weekend from all the people involved. You see it that the work that Monsignor Lepinto and Father Keating have as the leaders of Catholic Charities with the literally hundreds and hundreds of people that work with them on this. But if people who are listening saying, like, well, look, I don't encounter the poor. I don't. I'm trying to live my life. I'm doing the best I can, but I'm not in those situations. So what about me? Imagine very much you're going to agree with me this. It goes back to the domestic church. So if you're in a relationship with a parent, a sibling, with a spouse, with a child, all these things that make you vulnerable, then you begin to understand what Christ went through on the cross, his vulnerability. He chose to empty himself. He did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at. He did it by choice. And if you're in love, you have to choose to be vulnerable. And I think that's what Catholic Charities is models of. And that vulnerability allows the weakness to let the grace get in. It's the crack that lets the grace get in.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: And that crack that lets the grace get in. It just increases our capacity to love. And that itself, that increase in the capacity to love is a gift from God.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: On a bio note, if I can, anybody who's been with me knows I talk about my grandkids now all the time. I'm being a grandpa. And when I noticed that when I was a. I am a dad, obviously I didn't stop being a dad. But my kids are adults now. Now, when I was a dad, I felt it was my job to fix everything, to protect them, to create a dome to make sure I challenge them, how they act as a grandparent. I see my job is to walk with my children and with my grandchildren to be present to them. And I never understood what that meant when I was in my 30s and my 40s and even my 50s. But I realized now I have a limited amount of time, whatever God gives me. And that time needs to be spent, not necessarily with a pointed finger of pedagogical events. And we need people to do that, but for the people we love, we need to let them know they're okay. We're going to be okay. And we're okay because of that Sacred Heart of Jesus. The water and blood that pours from that side is what gives us that nourishment. That's why I go back to this practical mysticism, because I get the whole mystical stuff. I have to be honest, Bishop, when I read some of the stuff they write, I have no clue, like what world they're in, never mind the universe. But if you get behind that and you realize that the changing of the diaper, the being patient with a co worker, the allowing somebody to merge in, in the Bell park way, these are not trivial if they're done in the spirit of grace.
[00:16:08] Speaker B: This is being released on Friday before Thanksgiving. What a great opportunity, right? Isn't this a great opportunity? There's something in the air around Thanksgiving. There's something that among us, as American people put aside our deeply held Catholic Christian convictions, but there's something about us as a nation that kind of thinks a little bit more generously in this season, but that comes from that sense of gratitude. And maybe as we do whatever we're going to do, whether big gatherings or small gatherings or maybe just a little bit of quiet time with the Lord these days of Thanksgiving, this week to come, this weekend of rest, might be an opportunity just to reflect on that love of God, that sense of powerlessness, that realization of the grace that breaks through the cracks and the opportunities that are there in our everyday life. Who, yeah, we can talk big picture or out there in the world, but who at home needs a little bit of attention or patience or affirmation? These are great days for that kind of self reflection.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: It becomes who we are. I send out a reflection every week to the principals and leaders of Catholic schools, high schools and grammar schools. And at the end of it, we always say, it's what we do. Like, it's so New York. It's what we do. You know? You know what I'm saying?
[00:17:28] Speaker B: It's what we do. There you go. And it seemed to me that in our celebration, it was certainly a definite Brooklyn flavor to the whole experience. It was a great moment. Well, listen, listen, what are you doing for Thanksgiving? You know, now that your grandfather.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: We're having a very intimate relationship with 18 people who are coming. So it's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be chaos. But as you know well know, I kind of thrive in chaos. So I'm looking forward to it. And how about you?
[00:17:52] Speaker B: I have mass in the morning in Queens and then I'm going with my dad to my brother who lives out east a little bit. And it'll be kind of a quiet Thanksgiving, but it'll be fun. I haven't really been able to sit down with my brother and his family in a little while and so we'll have a nice time together.
[00:18:10] Speaker A: It's okay to step out of the baddest box once in a while.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: It really is. It really is. Well, thank you for jumping in this week and I wish you, your family and all yours, a great Thanksgiving. To you who are listening. Happy Thanksgiving. I often think to myself that when I pray and offer my thanks to the Lord and count the blessings, if you will, in my life, high on that list is that opportunity to serve here in Brooklyn and Queens and to be surrounded by such incredible people who really love the Lord and who are trying the best that they can to live the gospel. I'm one lucky bishop. I'm one lucky guy. And I'll be praying in thanksgiving for all of you. So thanks for joining us this week. I wish you a wonderful week. This weekend is the feast of Christ the King and have a great feast day, a great Thanksgiving, and we'll be back together next week. On the threshold of Advent already. Why don't we just close asking God's blessing, especially in these days of thanksgiving. The Lord be with you and with your spirit. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May he look upon you with kindness and grant you peace. And may the blessing of Almighty God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit descend upon you, your families, and all your loved ones and remain with you forever and ever. Amen.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: Amen. Thank you, Bishop Sa.
