Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:10 Welcome back to another edition of Big City Catholics, the Diocese podcast of the Diocese of Brooklyn, with Bishop Robert Brennan, the Bishop of Brooklyn, and myself, father Christopher. Hen you, we have come to pretty much the end of our Lenin pilgrimage. Of course, we're recording this podcast before we celebrate this solemn Easter. But we are really in these last few days, and this podcast is meant to be an Easter message, uh, to all the faithful of the diocese, uh, from Bishop Brennan, and a conversation about this great resurrection of our Lord, the day in which we celebrate. And so before we begin, we begin in prayer. In the name of the Father, son, and Holy Spirit, amen. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with the blessed, our thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of the Jesus
Speaker 2 00:00:57 Holy Mary, mother of God. Pray for us sinners now and that the hour of our death. Amen.
Speaker 1 00:01:03 Name of the Father, son, and Holy Spirit
Speaker 2 00:01:05 Come. Amen. Amen. Well, happy Easter.
Speaker 1 00:01:07 Happy Easter
Speaker 2 00:01:08 To you too. Christ is risen. He truly is. He truly risen. Yes. We've been through an amazing Lent. I think people here have really taken on the, um, experience of Lent and have run with it and very beautiful Holy week. Clearly we're recording ahead of time and as Father Christopher said, coming out on Good Friday in anticipation. But we had a beautiful experience of the charisma mass this week.
Speaker 1 00:01:33 Wow. The amount of priests to see how beautifully full the
Speaker 2 00:01:37 Cathedral was. I'm told somewhere between 303 50. What do we have? 400 priests in the diocese. Yeah. It's amazing. It was, it had such a wonderful turn at a priest. So the priest, it's in fact a renewal of priestly promises of ordination. It's a chance for me to be with the priest. It's a very important day for us as priest. But really it's a, an important day for the whole church. We had a good number of deacons. There were very much and, um, religious mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And then we had lots of people. I think the cathedral was, the co cathedral was nearly filled.
Speaker 1 00:02:11 Certainly the center aisles were, were very full. We had the deacons in the seminarians off on the side. And think
Speaker 2 00:02:18 Maybe a little bit of room in the, on the side, on either side. Yeah. Midway. But wow. It was
Speaker 1 00:02:24 Absolutely, absolutely. The, um, your homily bishop was very, very well done. I thought you sort of broke it down to half of the message was to the priest the first half, and then you moved to the acknowledgement of all those who were there present and, and a message then to the faithful. That was beautiful idea. Traditionally, the charisma mass, you know, as you mentioned, is a, uh, renewal of our priestly promises. So there's an aspect of that homily, that preaching that is directed to the priests in
Speaker 2 00:02:53 A way. And it really to recapture that fervor that we all had on the day of our ordination. That's, I think, the beauty of the Kris and master to, to really remind us of, uh, the promises we first made of the commitment and, and of the newness of that life as a priest. There's something extraordinary when you first ordained. Right. And so we try to renew ourselves in that, um, extraordinary time as we go forth now to continue to serve, to conform our lives to Christ.
Speaker 1 00:03:23 Yeah, it's great to have these opportunities where we're the priests of the diocese, the lay faithful, and generally the lay faithful who are here at the CRI and mass. So the fairly active ones in their own.
Speaker 2 00:03:34 Yeah. Many of them are pastoral ministers serving as catechists or in chaplain sea or serving to, uh, build up the church who very involved in their parishes on, on different councils and committees. So yes, it, and, and it's a beautiful sign. It's the gathering of the church. The, you have the bishop surrounded by priest, the deacons, the religious, and the people. It's all of us together. So the local church, the local church of Brooklyn gathered this
Speaker 1 00:04:00 Week. And so tomorrow we conclude this holy trudo with the Easter vigil, this beautiful liturgy of bringing the light of Christ into the darkness, the resurrection of our Lord, and, and we continue to sing the hallelujah, the Easter hallelujahs into Easter Sunday and, and throughout the octave of Easter. Right, Bishop. So there's not, we're not just celebrating Easter once, no one day,
Speaker 2 00:04:22 But 50 days of season. And the Octa is unique. It's like a week of Sundays. If you go to weekday mass during this week, it's, except for the creed, it's like a regular Sunday mass. And so we are, we even, uh, I think some of the prayers of the church that we use in the breviary, we use the Sunday readings each day is another Easter day. And we call the day Easter Monday, Easter Tuesday, Easter Wednesday. Yes. So, so this octave is a very privileged time.
Speaker 1 00:04:52 And we, you know, you mentioned, uh, the 50 days of Easter. So there's this extended period of the Easter season. Uh, again, it makes sense too, doesn't it, for us as, as Catholics, we've, we've walked through the season of Lent for 40 days. You know, now we're not just doing these acts of penance, ums giving charity just to celebrate Easter once we continue through that Easter season. But that's also rooted in the scriptures. Our Lord remained with his disciples. Right. For until ascension
Speaker 2 00:05:23 Thursday, 40 days. That's right. And then another 10 days until Pentecost, until the coming of the spirit. And so this time of 50 days, it's, it's a time of celebration of, of the resurrection. Now, in some ways we do it well, in some ways we do it very, very well. You know, so the decorations are out and we have 'em for a good week or so, and maybe another week we celebrate the sacramental life of the church. Right. How many first communion, and I have a whole bunch of confirmations beginning. We don't restrict them to the Easter season, but a a lot of our parishes celebrate confirmation during Easter time. A lot of parishes have certain celebrations during Easter time. It's, um, that time of newness, of resurrection joy. And we do that part of it. Well, what we don't always do as well is keep alive that sense of celebration. I mentioned the decorations, but you know, Lilly's only lasts so long. First
Speaker 1 00:06:22 <laugh>, two weeks later you said you, I like how you said, at least for a week, they're out at least for
Speaker 2 00:06:27 A week. But you know, soon after, sometimes
Speaker 1 00:06:29 We
Speaker 2 00:06:30 Tend to get back into normal or true. You, if you were to say somebody in two or three weeks from now, happy Easter, they might look at you like, where have you been?
Speaker 1 00:06:38 That's right.
Speaker 2 00:06:39 But the fact of the matter is we can greet each other. Happy Easter. It is still Easter time. That's
Speaker 1 00:06:44 Right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:06:44 The readings for the first three weeks of Easter on Sundays, we have the resurrection accounts, and then we have, uh, the Good Shepherd Sunday. And then the last three weeks take us to the Last Supper, Jesus' talk with his disciples, where he talks to them about friendship and where he prays for them until we get to Pentecost. So it's a, a season of celebrating the resurrection, but also realizing his closeness, his friendship with us. Yeah. Beautiful. You know, the other thing we do during the Easter season, one of my favorites, we read from the acts of the apostles.
Speaker 1 00:07:24 Yes,
Speaker 2 00:07:25 Yes. I love reading from the acts of the apostles at, at mass, and you know, that might be something I could encourage, use this time of Easter, whether you pick something up with the daily readings and just read the reading of the day, it'll take you sequentially through the acts of the apostles or whether you sit down and start to go through it. But it really brings home Jesus' promise. I will be with you always. Sometimes the acts of the apostles is called the Fifth Gospel, the Gospel of the Resurrection. It's, you know, people say, why do, why do the Gospels end so quickly after the resurrection of Christ? Well, Luke wrote a whole other book. Luke wrote a whole other book, the Acts of the Apostles. That's the working of the Risen Jesus. It starts off with Jesus physically present among them, and then ascending into heaven, but keeping his promise to send his spirit. And the apostles going out and witnessing Jesus's continued work. It's not that they're doing the work that they know for sure that it's Jesus doing the work. Jesus is risen and with them. And we see how now Jesus is walking with them and working through them. So it's a great, great book. It's also sometimes called the Gospel of the Holy Spirit, because again, we have the Pentecost and the effect of the Spirit on the apostles and then on Paul who would come Sure. As in, in a later time, um, as an apostle of Jesus.
Speaker 1 00:08:50 Yeah. And, and I think you, I do remember you remarking last year around this, that period of Easter time when reading through the acts of the Apostles, how the readings are so rel relatable to our current day.
Speaker 2 00:09:04 Precisely. You
Speaker 1 00:09:05 Know, it, it's that you could read it and say, I can't believe this was written 2000 years ago. This fits what I need to be as an authentic witness today,
Speaker 2 00:09:16 And what we need and what we face as the community of the church. So, you know, we had to, they had to figure some things out, and they had to do it. That's right. By turning to the Holy Spirit, they, you know, there were passages early on in the acts of the Apostle. They were all of one accord, and they dedicated themselves to the breaking of the bread and to doing good. But there were a few points in the acts of the Apostle. They were at odds with one another, and they had to figure that out and, and work through some of those divisions. But always trying to keep connected to the risen Christ, to the power of the Holy Spirit. And always then with a sense of, of respect. So it can teach us an awful lot on even how we resolve some of our differences, because we're all seeking the same thing. We're all seeking to love Jesus. We're all seeking to witness to him risen among us. But we also, you know, we step on each other along the way and the Holy Spirit can help us to get beyond ourselves.
Speaker 1 00:10:20 Sure, sure. It's a beautiful, it is definitely very rich. And for a preacher, for a homily, it's all very, it's like they're, you know, softballs being thrown over at us because they're just so, so much richness in the writings and so much that we can relate
Speaker 2 00:10:37 To. Now next Sunday, this will bring us through Easter week to the Octa, and it's become known very, very popularly and a devotion that I love called Divine Mercy Sunday. There's a real devotion to divine mercy here in Brooklyn and Queens, certainly in particular communities like the Polish community. Sure. But it really is more universal. And so we thank St. John Paul for renewing that within us, for awakening us to that devotion. But, you know, more traditionally, the second Sunday of Easter brings us back to the newly baptized Catholics. That's right. In the old traditional, um, language. It would've been called Dominica in Abus the Sunday in the ALBs. And the idea is that now the newly initiated come back to the church, they come back to their parishes wearing their abs mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the the new white garment that they were given on the, on the day of their baptism.
Speaker 2 00:11:38 And now since the Easter vigil, when they would've been fully initiated, now they just come as members of the assembly joining in at the Eucharist. That's right. If you look at the prayers for that day, that's where the prayers focus in on the prayers focus in on the newly baptized, the collect the prayers of the mass, even the entrance anon, it's like newborn infants. They come, actually, the Latin is, um, Quasimoto <laugh>. We used to laugh about that in Quasimoto, like newborn infants, like new newborn people. It's celebrating the new life of the newly initiated
Speaker 1 00:12:17 Does traditionally, do they come together in the diocese for, for a celebration?
Speaker 2 00:12:23 Indeed. So, um, the, the custom in the churches that the, the church should invite people back for the neophyte mass. And so sometimes during the Easter sun season, we have that near fight mass. It'll be the regular 11 o'clock mass at St. James Cathedral, and that will be televised in place of the mass here at the co cathedral. So I'll have the privilege of welcoming many of our newly initiated Catholic. Some of them will be going to their own home parishes on that day, but we wanna celebrate them when, and we wanna celebrate them as part of the family. That's right.
Speaker 1 00:13:00 Just
Speaker 2 00:13:00 Being at the table joining us, you know, through Lent and through the year, they would come to join us from mass, people would join us from mass, and then they would be dismissed and they would do further reflection. Well, now, you know, they've, it's, it's like the grownup table. They come and they, and, and stay for the Eucharist. And that's really a blessing for all
Speaker 1 00:13:21 Of us. That's the beautiful prayer during the, uh, the scrutinies of Lent for those candidates where we say, though you cannot participate fully in this Eucharist.
Speaker 2 00:13:29 We look forward to the day. Well, that day came. Yes. And now that day is coming again and again and again. And now you're going to be with us always.
Speaker 1 00:13:37 Amen. Amen. Bishop, do you have an Easter message to the faithful, to those who are listening on this Diason podcast?
Speaker 2 00:13:46 Yes. My Easter message goes back to the gospel from the Easter vigil. I love the version from Matthew, and I focus in on just a couple of pieces. So first of all, you know, the angel appears at the tomb and tells the women, you're looking for Jesus to crucified woman. He's not here. Go tell his disciples this good news. And then Jesus meets them on the way they were running. They were half joyful and half fearful. They were half joyful, half fearful. And Jesus meets them on the way. And I think that too speaks to our life experience. The life of a Christian is half joyful, half fearful. We know, we know the good news of Jesus has risen. We know the end of the story, but sometimes we are a little blinded that's right by the realities around us, by the things that weigh us down. But Jesus meets us on our way. The risen Lord comes to meet us on our way. So that passage from Matthew is so profound. And so as we enter into these glorious days of Easter, my prayer is that each of us might be able to encounter the risen Lord who meets us along the way and helps to fill us with confidence and hope.
Speaker 1 00:15:10 Amen. Thank you, Bishop. I hope that you have a, a blessed Easter and Easter season, but definitely, um, looking forward to the Easter vigil here at, at the co cathedral tomorrow night to all the people, all those who listen and to the podcast, I wish them all a very blessed Easter as well. You know, just a funny story. When I was a seminarian, I was with the Mother Teresa's sisters, the missionaries of charity. On Easter Monday, Bishop Cisneros had taken me to the mass and the nuns came and we, they opened the door and they said, she says to me, I was find myself at the door. And she said, Jesus is risen. And I, at the time, I didn't know the response, you know, so she says, Jesus has risen. And I said, he sure has <laugh>. He sure
Speaker 2 00:15:57 Has <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:15:58 And she looked at me like, what is wrong with this guy? This is the future of our fa of our church. Here. I later realized the responses. He has truly risen indeed. So, uh, he or he has risen indeed. So I wish you all a very blessed Easter bishop to you as well. And if you maybe want to end with a prayer.
Speaker 2 00:16:16 I do. And so one of the traditional prayers of Easter time, um, in fact it replaces the, during Easter time, is the Regina Chaley, which means queen of heaven. And, um, I often think of the church speaking to Mary, saying to Mary, rejoice, we rejoice with you. Your son is alive, and Mary speaking back to us, rejoice. He really is alive. He truly is. Jesus is reason. He truly is. It's sort of like that exchange. Yeah. I think of that. And what does that mean? It means life for all of us. So let's pray in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Queen of heaven, rejoice,
Speaker 1 00:16:57 Hallelujah
Speaker 2 00:16:58 For the Son whom you merited to
Speaker 1 00:17:00 Bear. Hallelujah
Speaker 2 00:17:01 Has risen, as he said.
Speaker 1 00:17:02 Hallelujah.
Speaker 2 00:17:03 Pray for us to God. Hallelujah, rejoice and be glad. Or Virgin Mary, hallelujah. For the Lord has truly risen. Hallelujah. And may mighty God bless you, you this Easter day and always in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Speaker 1 00:17:18 Amen. God bless you. Have a blessed Easter, and we hope you'll join us again next week.
