Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:10 Welcome back to another edition of our Diason podcast, big City Catholics. I'm Father Christopher, hen you the rector of the co cathedral St. Joseph with of course, our Dias and Bishop, Bishop Robert Brennan, the Bishop of Brooklyn. As we come to the solemnity of the enunciation, we begin asking our blessed mother for her a continued guidance and inter ancestry support as we begin in prayer. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2 00:00:35 Amen. Amen.
Speaker 1 00:00:37 Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with the blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of th Jesus.
Speaker 2 00:00:43 Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sins now and at the hour of our death. Amen. In
Speaker 1 00:00:48 The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Speaker 2 00:00:51 Amen.
Speaker 1 00:00:52 So Bishop, this podcast is released on Friday the 24th, the day before the salinity of the annunciation. You wanna say a few words about that, Bishop?
Speaker 2 00:01:01 Well, yes. As you say, it's a solemnity. That's our highest rank, if you will, of feast dayss. So it takes place a special honor, so much so that if it falls on a Sunday in Lent or a day during holy week, it actually gets moved sometimes even to after Easter because we wanna make sure that we can celebrate it for all of its solemnity. And so this year it falls on Saturday. It's not a holy day of obligation, it never was. But on the other hand, it's like a Sunday mass. When you go to mass, we would use the Gloria, which we haven't been doing during the season of land. We would be saying the creed, all the things that you would do on a Sunday mass, because that ranks really high up there. And it marks really the moments, if you will, of the incarnation. You know, God chose to enter human history, took human form, literally became a human person in whom of the virgin. You can't get much more profound than that, that God would become a human person to just being conceived in the womb of the virgins, like the tiniest most vulnerable form of humanity. So God took it from beginning to end. God took on everything that we experienced.
Speaker 1 00:02:13 And of course, you know, as a child the test was, you know, when is the annunciation? What day is it? Well, it's the 25th of March. And why is that? Because it's exactly nine months, nine months from
Speaker 2 00:02:24 Christmas. That's right. Now it's, it's interesting because we often make the mistake, you'll hear it said immaculate conception talks about the conception of Jesus, that the message, the angel, and we use that gospel on the feast of immaculate conception. But the immaculate conception, which is on December 8th, is actually about the fact that Mary, from the very first moment of her existence was without original sin. This conception is the intervention of God. Through the Holy Spirit, through the Holy Spirit, she conceived and he became man
Speaker 1 00:02:58 In light of the season of Lent. Generally we celebrate these, those two solemnities in the midst of the season of Lent those two sort of pauses from the solemn penitential celebration of Lent to rejoice in, of course the first solemnity, which we spoke about little bit last week, was the solemnity of St. Joseph, but also the enunciation. Generally these two solemnities fall in the midst of Lent the idea of singing the Gloria, you miss the Gloria when you know through the season of Lent. And this is a, a great way, even just being reminded that we are rejoicing on these days, we're glory to God and the highest, you know, it's a great way to just remind us of the high importance of those two solemnities of those two important days.
Speaker 2 00:03:43 Exactly, exactly. So we rejoice, we give thanks to the fact that indeed God is living among us. God came to be one with us. God came to become one of us. That is a profound, profound mystery. Something we need to think about over and over again. Be mystified by.
Speaker 1 00:04:02 We're quickly approaching the conclusion of Lent, I guess
Speaker 2 00:04:05 That's right.
Speaker 1 00:04:06 Tying up this great season.
Speaker 2 00:04:08 That's right. This weekend then brings us into the fifth Sunday of Lent, the third of the very long gospel <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:04:15 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:04:15 This is cycle a, the first of a three year cycle. And so we had the woman at the, well, we had the man born blind, and this weekend we have the raising of Lazarus. And it's a fascinating gospel story. You get so many things packed into it. First of all, you have the friendship of the family of Mary, Martha and Lazarus and the grief and the tragedy that struck that family that was close to Jesus. It appears they lived in destiny and it appears that Jesus would stay at their house when he was heading up maybe to Jerusalem.
Speaker 1 00:04:49 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:04:50 We have the famous story of Mary and Martha Mary at the feet of Jesus, Martha in the kitchen.
Speaker 1 00:04:55 That's right. Martha. Martha,
Speaker 2 00:04:58 Yes. Martha. Martha, you were worried and anxious about many things, right. How that fits so many of us. Right?
Speaker 1 00:05:05 Absolutely.
Speaker 2 00:05:07 And then you had has this fascinating story, uh, Jesus raising somebody from the dead. You know, I'm always fascinated. It's an interesting beginning. The gospel of John puts it, he hears that Blas sick. And so he stayed where he was for a few more days. He didn't go running,
Speaker 1 00:05:24 Which leads to that very emotion filled response, right. Lord, if you had been here, been
Speaker 2 00:05:30 Here exactly where
Speaker 1 00:05:32 Were
Speaker 2 00:05:32 You? We kind of tame the gospel all the time. And this is one of those ones, oh Lord, if you had been here and, and you know, you think of somebody biasly saying, oh Lord, we're nothing without you. But you know, Martha wasn't happy. I mean, she basically said, you didn't show up if you had been here as a friend, she could be angry and she could let Jesus know her feelings. And isn't that beautiful that Jesus even allows out of us in our, our prayer, let him know how you feel, what you're going through, what you're struggling with. And Mary too has a similar thing, Lord, if you had been here, but I love Martha's second part of that line. If you had been here, this wouldn't have happened. But even now, I believe
Speaker 1 00:06:15 That's
Speaker 2 00:06:15 Right. And that's the other side that we need to learn from. But you know what, Lord, there are a lot of things I can't figure them out. There are a lot of mysteries and there are a lot of prayers that I would've hoped you would've answered differently. But even now, even now, Lord, I believe
Speaker 1 00:06:33 That's
Speaker 2 00:06:33 Right. That's faith.
Speaker 1 00:06:35 Truly beautiful. Especially when I know in our ministry what a, what a blessing it is, what a humbling experience it is to counsel people through the death of a loved one. And yet for me, when I witness men and women and, and even teenagers whom I've had the honor of, of walking with in those moments, to remain faith filled and faithful is really a grace from God. It's, you know, even still, I, I still believe what a blessing that is
Speaker 2 00:07:07 Be stand in awe. Yeah. At the faith of people. You know, it's one thing to say, oh, I have faith because God did this or that for me. But even now, that's where it's really faith. It's not just based on the appearance, it's in the suffering. And you know, Jesus never asks of us anything that he hasn't already done for us. Right? And so we are talking about life and death, and Jesus is going to go all the way to the cross, but the cross is so that the resurrection can happen. And the sign of that is what he does with Blass so that he does stay behind, he ends up doing something beyond their expectation and that changes everything. And it prefigures what Jesus is going to do for all of us. So there you get the sense of Jesus's deeper purpose. Sometimes Jesus's ways they don't make sense to us, but Jesus accomplishes things that we couldn't even begin to imagine.
Speaker 1 00:07:59 What a beautiful thing, uh, these three gospel, these past the fifth, fourth, and third week of land, as you mentioned, have been very long, even jokingly, it's, we have these, uh, televised masses and mass on YouTuber, on Facebook Live. And I timed the gospel. The gospel was like four and a half minutes, uh, last weekend just reading it. And I, I made a joke with our parishioners. I said, we're building up our strength, our muscles and our legs for Palm Sunday and Good Friday, where we're really standing even longer, right? It's, it's like an exercise
Speaker 2 00:08:31 And you know, beating up two holy week. Notice what Jesus does when he calls lies respect to life. He says, release him and let him go free, unbind him and let him go free. And I think that's a great segue into Holy Week because one of the things we are getting ready as we get closer to Palm Sunday as we get our legs ready for Palm Sunday, <laugh> is reconciliation Monday, at least here locally in Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens, Rockville Center and New York. So that from Montauk Point going across the island and up north all the way close to Albany and to the Catskills, we've got confessions, the talk about unbind and let them go free. We, we have this great gift that Jesus is giving to us in this sacrament of reconciliation.
Speaker 1 00:09:22 That's right. And we'll have a chance to remind our listeners again next week. Every church participates in these three dioceses on Monday, April 3rd. And there are set hours that I believe that, you know, our dioceses are hoping that our individual parishes will hold to these set hours so that there's uniformity amongst our churches so that the faithful can come anytime between two and 4:00 PM and six and 9:00 PM on that Monday. Perhaps some churches may have additional hours,
Speaker 2 00:09:52 And at the very least that we are all in uniform for those two station times, two to four and six to nine, six to nine, two to four and six to nine. Well, you know, the idea is that it's to be a no-brainer. So you don't have to call and say, when a confession's in this church, it gets a little more complicated than when we started because we do have a few parishes that are combined parishes. So, you know, it used to be able, easy to say just any Catholic church, but if you just know the Catholic church is in your area and you know the situations and who's merged with who, you should be able to go anywhere you want. And you know, there are some people who are only comfortable going to their parish priest because they have a relationship and they sort of like spiritual direction. But there are other people who want to go anywhere but their parish, church,
Speaker 1 00:10:41 <laugh>. That's right. That's right. So find,
Speaker 2 00:10:44 And this gives a chance just to go somewhere else or maybe to make it part of your day when you're at work, which is in a different place than where you live. But the idea is to make it easy, to make it accessible. But it's a great day. I know we started it in preparation for the Jubilee year. So in 1999 or 2000 in Rockville Center, so we're coming up 23, 24 years. Wow. We've been doing this, and I tell you every year I found it here last year. Every year is as fresh as it was the year before. For us as priest, you always say, man, what a full day and what a moving day. Humbling just to be the instrument of God's mercy, but to walk with people through, through struggles and to offer those words of Jesus, of forgiveness and healing.
Speaker 1 00:11:37 It truly is. And as that minister of God's healing, again, as you mentioned, a humbling experience. I know that it's also refreshing for me as I still consider myself to be a young priest, uh, six years ordained, almost seven years ordained. When you look out out of the confessional and you just see this constant flow of penitent, a reminder for us of just how God's grace continues to flow in the workings of our diocese and in our state, in our city. So for me, it's a long day, but it's an absolutely refreshing day, A grace filled day, if I
Speaker 2 00:12:11 May add. Exactly. Now, it's also a day, one of the graces of that day is that we find sometimes people are returning to the sacrament, some of them returning to the church after having been away, or some of them just having come to mass regularly, but not having been to confession in a while. And there were various reasons that, you know, sometimes you do hear about people who've had a bad experience with confession. And I'm terribly, terribly sorry that happened to you somewhere along the, I'm so sorry. And that should never have happened to anybody. And we want the whole point of the sacrament of reconciliation is about healing and about welcome and about God's loving mercy. But I'd say to me, the two most common reasons people hesitate to go to reconciliation, one is it's like a lot of other things that we, we do as humans.
Speaker 2 00:13:05 The, the longer the time that it's been, the harder that it is to get back on you Just say, well, you know what, I'm gonna get to that. I'll do it. Yes, I'll do it one day. And it's not for ill will, I mean, I can think of a dozen things that I know I need to catch up on, and you know, one day I'll get to that. And this is just one of those, and that's very human. And that's one of the, I think the blessings of this day because basically it's loud sounding trumpet now is St. Paul says, now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation. Like if this has been in your resolve and you, you, you, you're saying I gotta get around to it, here's the day, this is the chance. Just jump right in and hopefully it'll be a positive experience and bring you back again even, you know, and some people only come on that reconcili as Asia Monday every year.
Speaker 2 00:13:52 And you know what, that's great. I'm, I'm glad for whatever you do, I really am. That's right. We wanna encourage people to draw on the graces of the sacrament more often. But if you just come on reconciliation Monday, you're during Holy Week during Lent, that in itself is a wonderful thing. Now the other reason is because that people say, well, I'm not really sure what to do. People hesitate because I don't, I'm not sure what to do. And the answer to that is a very simple, don't worry about it. All you have to do is show up. Just walk in. And we know the years ago there was what they called the new rite of penance. People, you know, the guidelines came out and that just mixed a lot of people up. You the same old, same old is still there. You can walk in and just say, bless me father, or forgive me father, for I have sinned.
Speaker 2 00:14:40 The last time I was the confession was, and you just blurted out. You could also just walk in in and say, father, I'm not really sure what to say. I'm not really sure what to do. And the priest will help you do that. That's his job. That's right. It's to to say, put you at ease so that you can acknowledge your sin. We all have to do that, acknowledge that need for God's help in mercy. But then to be able to hear those words of Jesus, those words of absolutions spoken through the mouth of the priest, and as if it's like Lazarus being called out of the grave, it's Jesus saying, I'm behind you and let you go free. Let lift that whatever it is that's weighing you down off of your conscience or you know, and a lot of, sometimes a lot of our sins are connected to other wounds. It's because somebody else heard us or because of a situation or because of a loss. It's a chance to be liberated as Lazarus was from the grave.
Speaker 1 00:15:37 Absolutely. And I think bishop's also helpful to know, first, as you mentioned, the priest is there to help you through this examination of your conscience. And, but there are incredible resources. In fact, just a simple Google search would, you know, examination of conscience 10 commandments, it, it leads us even on the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, the U S C B, right? There's a program, an initiative the light is on for you
Speaker 2 00:16:05 That actually is probably one of the best. When you go on the web, you might find things that are useful. You might find things that maybe are a little more demanding than what the church or Christ is asking. You know, like that reflects somebody's own opinion. That's the danger on the web. But if you go to a site like usccb.org, if you go to some of the better known Catholic sites, Catholic media, you'll find links to examinations of conscience. Now that helps you to prepare, you know, before I was talking about what you do when you get in there to prepare, just pray over the 10 commandments or the two commitments. I love God with all my heart and all my soul and all my mind. Do I love my neighbors myself? Where have I failed to put God first in my life? Where have I lived for myself first?
Speaker 2 00:16:50 Where have I neglected God? Have I not been going to mass or have I been leaving God out of my life? And then have I loved my neighbor as myself? You know, I think of Mother Teresa, she holds up her five fingers on her hand and she says, think of the words of Jesus. You did it for me. What did I do that lifted people up? And then what did I do that tore them down? You know, have I, do I need to make amends? Have I heard anybody by anything I said? Anything I did? And we're not looking for an exhaustive list. We're looking for, you know, I tend to be selfish that happened when I did X, Y, or Z, for example. But you know, specific about, um, I haven't been to mass, you know, and there's a difference. I missed mass one, so I haven't been to mass in 40 years. Again, you know what the, the response of the priest should be. I'll tell you what it should be. I'm so glad you're here.
Speaker 1 00:17:46 That's right.
Speaker 2 00:17:47 I'm so glad you're here. You're welcome. You're welcome here. And I'm so glad that you want to come back to Massy, that you're coming for confession. Do what makes it simple for you to get in there and have that encounter and Jesus will, will help. The priest has the job of offering that assistance.
Speaker 1 00:18:07 That's right. You know, I often use the, uh, image of our sins as the baggage that we continue to accumulate in our lives and certainly baggage, but there's also emotional baggage of hurt and resentment and anger that we kind of carry with us. And I say to the penitence often, I'll say, leave that baggage here at the foot of the cross with Jesus. Let him take it from you and feel that sense of liberation, uh, that sense of being freed from it. And walk out of this confessional, a changed person, rejuvenated, refreshed, renewed, liberated. That's right. You know, Bishop, you know, when we see the looks on the faces of the penitent, as I myself have been on the receiving end of God's forgiveness and God's mercy, when you see that's lifting off their shoulders and a sense of renewal and a sense of peace, there's nothing better than to experience, uh, in my opinion.
Speaker 2 00:19:04 Exactly. Exactly. And you know, in a sense it's an act of worship because what you're doing is you're letting God be God. Like sometimes I'll find people say, I I just can't forgive myself. And that might be a deterrent. And the fact of the matter is, it doesn't matter. Don't worry. You don't, you don't have to forgive yourself. Big deal. You don't have to forgive yourself, but let God be God. God wants to forgive you. So trust that God is forgive you. Accept that gift, accept it. You know, and then the other thing people sometimes will struggle with, but I have to say, the act of contrition, and there are different forms of the act of contrition. Many parishes have the act of contrition written down somewhere. You can read it again. You can say to the priest, I don't know, the act of contrition. Or, and, and he'll give you the words or maybe give you a simplified form. Again, know, knowing the act of contrition is not a requirement, it's not a test. That's right.
Speaker 1 00:19:57 It's not a,
Speaker 2 00:19:58 It's not a requirement for going to confession. There are two requirements. Show up and be sorry and then God step in. It's a great, great gift. So we are coming up next week, Palm Sunday, and then Reconciliation Monday. I will want to take this opportunity to invite and to encourage, if this is really your annual opportunity for this sacrament of reconciliation, start making you plans. Now, if it's been a while, please hear this as a very sincere and warm invitation. And no matter where you are in this process, if you're a regular penitent, if, keep in mind reconciliation Monday is not about counseling because we do meet a lot of people. It really is the focus on that encounter. In those words of mercy, there were other times you could come back and talk more extensively. But whatever it is, I'm gonna ask everybody listening today, please pray. Let's all pray that Monday of next week, Monday after Palm Sunday is a day of grace and blessing for many, many people here in Brooklyn, Queens and beyond. So that's the plea I make to all of you. Let's pray and, and ask that many people will be, be touched and healed by God's loving mercy.
Speaker 1 00:21:21 Amen. Bishop, perhaps on that note, if you'd like to end in prayer and we can raise that intention in United in closing prayer,
Speaker 2 00:21:30 We adore you, oh Christ, and we praise you because by your Holy Cross, you have redeemed the world. Lord God, we thank you for the gift of your love and your mercy, which comes home to us in a special way in these late days of Lent leading us into Holy Week. We ask you blessing upon all those who will approach the sacrament of reconciliation in these days, and upon all of us and all of our families, male mighty, God bless you, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Speaker 1 00:22:03 Amen. God bless you, Bishop. Thank you for your continued shepherding of the diocese and supporting the faithful on the priest in this blessed time of Lent. We are grateful for all those who have joined us and listening in on our in podcast Big City Catholics. And we hope that you'll join us next week as Bishop and I discuss more fully Holy week and the sacred Triduum, the holy Thursday, good Friday, Easter vigil, that mother of all liturgies, that we are so excited as a people of faith to come and celebrate. God bless you and have a great week.
