Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:10 Welcome back to another edition of our diason podcast, big City Catholics, with Bishop Robert Brennan, the Diason bishop of Brooklyn, and myself, father Christopher, hen you, the director of the Co Cathedral of St. Joseph. Today we're joined with Father Joseph Tino, the vicar for evangelization and catechesis of the Diocese of Brooklyn, who will join us in our discussion of the upcoming Corpus Christi events and processions, and the day, which we celebrate on Sunday, June 11th, the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body and blood, soul, and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the beginning of this podcast, we'll begin in prayer, will pray the anima Christie, in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Soul of Christ, sanctify me, body of Christ, save me, blood of Christ, inebriate me, water from the side of Christ. Wash me, passion of Christ, strengthen me. Oh, good Jesus, hear me within your wounds. Conceal me. Do not permit me to be parted from you, from the evil foe. Protect me at the hour of my death. Call me and bid me. Come to you to praise you with all your saints forever and ever. Amen. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Speaker 2 00:01:22 Well, good to have Father Gino with us. Um, father Gino's been working very hard with the committee to scope out really many events for our Eucharistic revival. He's spinning a lot of plates because we're getting ready to celebrate the great Feast of Corpus Christi. But at the same time, we're looking ahead to the fall where we're going to have our big gathering, big diocesan gathering over at Memes Park over where the Brooklyn Cyclones play in Coney Island. I beg you, all of you listening, please pray for good weather. We really need the good weather that day. And then we have the state gathering later on also in Octobers. And so, uh, father Jino, with all that you're doing, thank you for joining us right here. And then, by the way, you're keeping the regular faith formation, uh, going across the diocese.
Speaker 3 00:02:11 We're coming to the end of our tical year. So far so good.
Speaker 1 00:02:15 You are back by popular demand. This is your second time on the show,
Speaker 3 00:02:19 And it's still a little nerve-wracking. It's very intimidating, <laugh> sitting here with you all <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:02:26 So this weekend we celebrate Trinity Sunday. Last week we closed out the Easter season on Pentecost. We celebrate Trinity Sunday, the mystery of God. Three persons in one God, one godfather son, and Holy Spirit. And we hear that great line from the gospel of John. John three 16. God so loved the world that he sent us only son, so that all those who believe in him might not perish, but might have eternal life. And now we're getting ready next week to celebrate that love of God that we experience in a tangible way every time we approach the Lord in the Eucharist. And so we want to talk a little bit about our Corpus Christi celebrations for this year during the year of parish celebrations of the Eucharistic Revival,
Speaker 3 00:03:13 And throughout the diocese between the dates of June 8th, the traditional date of Corpus Christi and June 11th, every deanery will be hosting an event. So depending on which deanery in which you live, there are plenty of opportunities for eucharistic adoration, Eucharistic study days and personal devotions. The idea of a procession for Corpus Christi really goes back about 700 years to a little town in Italy called Orvieto between Florence and Rome, and the miracles around the Eucharist that took place. So we have been processing in the streets to proclaim our love of the Eucharist for about 700 years, which is extraordinary for us to consider whether we are in 13th century Italy or 21st century Brooklyn. We're still on the streets proclaiming the Eucharist.
Speaker 2 00:04:11 One of the things I love, I often say this I love about processions, is that we are doing in a literal way what we are called to do all the time. And that is to take what we celebrate, to take what we believe and to bring it out into the streets, to bring it out into the neighborhood. So every time we are at mass, we conclude the masses ended, go in peace we're sent out to take what we've experienced and to bring it to the world. And so we do that, um, in a very visible, very tangible, I say very literal way with the eucharistic procession.
Speaker 1 00:04:50 Since I've arrived here to the co cathedral, you know, we love processions and, and when we have two worship sites, the co cathedrals of St. Joseph and St. Teresa Avala, I try to create multiple ways which we can process from one parish to the other. So on Good Friday, we do a procession on Palm Sunday. Bishop, you've joined us for our Palm Sunday procession. This year we're planning our own Corpus Christi procession, but I can see it already. It's a much different procession because Palm Sunday, you're walking with the palms in your hand. Good Friday, we're walking, praying the, the stations of the cross. But this will be my first Corpus Christi procession here at the parish since I've been here. We're truly bringing Jesus Christ through the streets. And that's much different than waving palms. It's much different than even the solemn Good Friday. This is Jesus Christ in the monstrous, walking through the streets of Prospect Heights and Crown Heights. I'm really excited for it. And, uh, I think it's just a, a real blessing.
Speaker 2 00:05:47 And, and many of our deanaries are joining, the parishes are joining together to celebrate the feast and to have these processions,
Speaker 3 00:05:55 You know, procession is really a mini pilgrimage. And the sin invited us to ask ourselves the question, how are we journeying together? So here now, we are combining that collaboration from the sin with the journey. We're literally journeying to the kingdom of God through the streets for us, a Brooklyn new queens, which is amazing for the national pilgrimage. One of the roots, the Elizabeth Anne Seton route is actually going to go through part of our diocese, and Bishop will be there to greet the Eucharistic pilgrims as they arrive in Brooklyn. So that's very exciting for us here.
Speaker 2 00:06:38 That is, that's part of the lead up to the national celebration next year. So this will be in 2024. Uh, we look forward to that. There were four routes from different starting points in the country where people are going to be walking, making their way Wow. To join together in Indianapolis, which is where the national event will be. I'll admit, I'm going to greet the procession, walk with them through Brooklyn, and then get on a plane and meet them in Indianapolis. <laugh>. Yes.
Speaker 3 00:07:08 And for those of you who are interested, we have 250 reserve seats for the Indianapolis Congress. The brochure is ready, and we'll be getting that out to you very quickly. Well, 249, I'm taking one. So 200 and Bishop gets one <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:07:25 But these kinds of events nationally coming together are good moments. We, the word we are using is revival, really to stir up that which is within us. One of the things I hear some of the statistics, some of the crisis, I share the concern for the faith in the Eucharist, that the numbers are appallingly low of people who believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. We'll talk more about that and what the nature of that is. But for me, my experience is that for those who do believe, there's a tremendous love. I mean, there's a great Eucharistic culture, great love for the Eucharist. We experienced it during Lent with the Eucharistic pilgrimage as with the station churches, people who made the pilgrimage themselves to all the churches, but the parishes that hosted this tremendous love. There's a culture of adoration, and it's expressed in various different ways, but there's a culture of adoration and it's growing.
Speaker 2 00:08:30 There's a culture of adoration among the young people who are involved in the church. Again, the number of young people who are involved, it's appallingly low. But for those who are involved, there's something very deep and something very authentic and part of my own goal. But I think the goal of the Eucharistic revival is to stir up that which is already within us, that we can see the faith in of one another and encourage one another in this faith in what we really do believe that Jesus Christ gives himself to us, holy and completely, body and soul, humanity and divinity completely. God has given us this gift. Jesus comes to give us himself in holy Eucharist. Going
Speaker 3 00:09:11 Back to the Lentin pilgrimage for just a moment, one of the things that Bishop has heard a lot, and I've heard a lot, is of the desire next year to do it again. People are holding onto that hope and grace of this was so meaningful, we have to do it again. That's grassroots. It's not coming from us. And that's extraordinary that in a generation that we have now where things come and go so quickly, people are remembering and celebrating this and asking, please, let's do it again. It, that's very powerful for me.
Speaker 2 00:09:49 It is. So do we make a grand announcement right here? We can use the podcast to launch officially. We will have the Eucharistic pilgrimage next Lent will begin on Ash Wednesday and take it through Lent just like we did this
Speaker 3 00:10:03 Year. Just like, and this, there will only be 1000 passports <laugh>. So if you want a passport, get them early
Speaker 1 00:10:11 999 <laugh>.
Speaker 3 00:10:13 That's right. Father Chris wants one.
Speaker 2 00:10:15 Certainly. Again, the love is there and I detect it when I go to the parishes. I sense it among, uh, people. There is a deep love, a deep desire for the Eucharist. So one of the things, it's, we have a lot of things that we have to deal with ourselves. So there's sometimes the gift of the Eucharist is so attainable, so readily available. We've all visited other places in the world mission territories where maybe the Eucharist is celebrated once in a month because priests can only get around because of the difficulty of travel, uh, because of the vast territories that need to be covered. But we have the Eucharist available to us daily and in multiple places. It just becomes habit. It just becomes part of the day. And every once in a while we have to stop and think about just how profound this gift is.
Speaker 2 00:11:18 So I think the first place of conversion is within ourselves. You know, I remember when, uh, Pope St. John Paul II did his letter on for the year of the Eucharist. He called on us as priest to examine our own conscience and to say, how do we approach the Eucharist? All we really thinking about the profound mystery, St. Charles Barr, Rome, I love it. This comes up in the office every year. He says, yo, you priest, if you feel yourself getting distracted at mass, what are you doing before mass? How are you preparing yourself? That's a call I need to remember as a, as a priest and as a bishop. And I think it's something all of us need to do who know and love the Eucharist. So there's the interior hurdle, there's the interior hurdle that we have to overcome, that the Eucharist is so available to us that we can take it for granted. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:12:08 I remember as a newly ordained priest, um, that idea of recognizing what I'm about to celebrate. And you know, when I say, I say mass every week for the missionaries of charity, and they have a little sign in their sacristy in every sacristy that says, dear father, please celebrate this mass as if it were your first mass, your last mass, your only mass. You know, you're absolutely right, Bishop. I mean, we can get so distracted by answering quick questions in the sacristy before mass, or spending a quick email or a text, and then the bell rings and it's time to say mass. And you say, well, what am I doing? The other great quote is, you know, if we truly understood what we were celebrating, we would die in shock. You know, if we truly understood this, the mystery of what we were celebrating. It's just a such a beautiful gift. And you're right, sometimes we ourselves can take it for granted.
Speaker 2 00:12:57 Exactly.
Speaker 3 00:12:57 Well, you know, I owe a great deal to the Sisters of Notre Dame. No more, more than anything else. They taught us my generation, how to genuflect. And that is such a deliberate gesture. And they taught us that when we are genuflecting, it is an act of adoration. Our bats should be straight, our head should be revent, our knees go down. It was a real lesson. But every time I gen Flatt, it focuses my attention on an active adoration. And I think when we look at our body language, it says so much about our interior state that you were talking about Bishop. So for me, a genian is such a deliberate action that I must take seriously.
Speaker 2 00:13:47 The other thing is a second hurdle is the state of the world. So the fact of the matter is, we're all very, very busy people. I look at a lot of my contemporaries when they were raising children like my brothers and sisters and my friends of my age when they were raising children. They lived their life in the car. There's so many things that pull us apart. Now fortunately, my family, my brothers and sisters were all very committed to Sunday Eucharist to Sunday mass. But you can see where people just feel so many pressures pulling them away. And even though it's, it's not a rejection of the Eucharist, but it's more, yeah, I really want to get there more often. But life is so busy. And so again, reflecting on the depth of this mystery on what we really celebrate, I, I remember somebody, you had an expression, let's keep the main thing the main thing.
Speaker 2 00:14:43 Mm-hmm. And when the Eucharist becomes the priority, then we have to set everything else around that. And so, so I think that's the second hurdle. The third hurdle is really there's an anti-Catholic prejudice that's still very prevalent in our nation. We're experiencing now the formerly Brooklyn Dodgers, now the Los Angeles Dodgers. And this invitation to this very clearly blasphemous anti-Catholic group, the attacks on what is most sacred, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is, is appalling. And, and then after dis inviting the group, not only do they invite them back, but with all these apologies and praise for what this group accomplishes, that is in itself just clearly anti-Catholic bigotry. There's no other way to put it. And that exists in the world. And so one of the things we need to be able to do, again, Eucharistic processions celebration, Eucharistic revival, is to say, you're made to feel as if you are the only person who believes this, that you are different, that you are weird.
Speaker 2 00:15:58 And these kinds of events can help us to support each other, encourage each other along the way, and we see the faith in other people. I'm looking forward to summit, to World Youth Day where, you know, a million or 2 million sure young people from around the world will gather with the Holy Father. One of the great things about World Youth Day, well, one of the great things is the Holy Father himself and his invitation to draw close to Jesus. But really, I always am uplifted by the way that the young people are inspired by each other and they see others. First of all, you have the national experience. So you see people in your own language group with the love of Jesus and this exuberant love of Jesus.
Speaker 3 00:16:40 Yo Bishop, you really are touching on a very important theme, which is the solidarity and grace. When we bring groups together, procession world, J Day, Indianapolis, and also the power of symbol. One of the more distressing things about the situation in Los Angeles is the way they can take such a profound symbol, religious habit, religious garb, which is sacred to us, and pervert it in such a way that they destroy or attempt to destroy this sacred symbol. So our unity symbolically, when we're together, reinforces our no, we're taking back our symbol set. You may not tamper with what we hold sacred, right? And, and, and it's crucial for us.
Speaker 2 00:17:33 So what we wanna do with these processions is reclaim the symbols and to show our love, show our unity. And that's something else. That's another thing we have to work on, is our unity within our respect for one another and, and our unity as the body of Jesus Christ. So the Eucharist is the body of Jesus Christ. We experience it in the bread and wine that's been changed into his body and blood, but we receive this Eucharist, we receive this gift of his body and blood, so that as St. Paul says, we might be the body of Christ that to foster our communion, our unity with each other, our communion. And so we focus in on this coming feast. We're going, let's skip back to Corpus Christi. Then this feast helps us to focus in on all those elements. The truth of the real presence of Jesus Christ in the bread and wine that has been consecrated, set aside, transformed into his body and blood, our unity, our communion with each other as the body of Christ. And then living in that communion as the body of Christ in the world, so that others may come to see and know Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 00:18:45 Now, Bishop, I know each and every Sunday you post on your Facebook page a small reflection of the Sunday readings. And so, you know, upcoming this feast of the Holy Trinity, it's hard to describe the Trinity in a minute and a half. Uh, you know, to delve into the what, the depths of it. It's also very hard to, to describe the Eucharist, you know, and I think one of the things Father Dino, with your presence here today as your role as vicar for evangelization and catechesis, is the catechesis of what the Eucharist truly is. And, and asking, trying to, to teach our faithful the depths of the, the Eucharist, the depths of why we believe that it is truly Jesus Christ. Present, how that happens, the beauty of the mass, all that that needs to be described. And I think, do you see in parishes now, perhaps as part of this revival, as bishop's mentioning more catechesis being done, perhaps in better preaching or, or even classes offered, or, or workshops in, in regards to why we believe that it is truly Jesus?
Speaker 3 00:19:50 Oh, absolutely. I know this year for our children in the children's catechesis, we asked all of the parishes to focus in on the Eucharist and also in joint efforts with the school's department here in our diocese, the secretariat and the school's office under the leadership of Deacon McCormick, put together four experiences that were videotaped through the great work of DeSales media that were offered to all of our religious ed programs and to all of our academies in the hopes that greater catechesis collaboration can take place. Because more than anything else, we need to look to our families. The family celebration of the Sunday Eucharist then comes home to the celebration of family meal. We can't expect children to understand what we do in the Eucharist as our great family celebration, the family of the church, if they don't know what family celebration means. So through the Eucharist and good eucharistic catechesis, we want to bolster our families so that when children are taught about good nutrition, they also understand that we don't become what we consume in the Eucharist. We become Jesus. And that's extraordinary for them. And that's putting it in the simplest terms for a child. But when adult hears, when I consume the Eucharist, I am becoming more like the Lord. That should be a powerful statement for a family.
Speaker 2 00:21:34 So as we approach this feast, it's part of a, this whole year of celebrations, of eucharistic awareness at the local level. It's an important feast. You know, we celebrated the gift of the Eucharist on holy Thursday, but I look at this feast of Corpus Christi and realize this isn't the first time that the church has dealt with eucharistic revival. It happens through the ages that again, we, I guess, lose our way or become too acquainted or the state of the world. The whole feast, of course, BI Christi was a response to a lack of faith in the Eucharist and the Pope St. Thomas mm-hmm. <affirmative> really to compose all of these prayers that we have in the office and in the mass that day that then become part of our eucharistic adoration prayers. So through the ages, every once in a while, we need that little shot in the arm.
Speaker 2 00:22:29 And so we're hoping that this year and the year to come will provide that for us in the church. But that this particular feast will be, uh, a great moment of appreciation of the great mystery of the Eucharist. And thank you Father Jino, for all the work that you've been doing with the Committee for this Awakening. We invite you take part in your own parish procession or celebration, certainly any of the Sunday masses, you're celebrating Corpus Christi, but the deanery processions, the deanery celebrations, and some of the larger parish celebrations will be listed on our diocesan website. If you want to plug into a larger celebration somewhere, know that you are most welcome and we'll have all of that information available on the website.
Speaker 1 00:23:19 Part of the reason why we're, you know, recording this and sending it out a week before Corpus Christi is to allow those listeners that opportunity this week to prepare themselves and say, okay, I have, as you said, father Jino, the processions begin sometimes on June 8th, the traditional day and up until that Sunday. So I really do hope my prayer is that we'll have great crowds at, at all the different events throughout the diocese.
Speaker 3 00:23:45 And please mark your calendars for October 7th, 2023 for a major diocese and eucharistic revival that will take place at my Field Cyclone Park, in which we hope to get 4,000 to 6,000 of our faithful for a day of prayer, praise and adoration. So please mark those calendars. October 7th, cyclone Stadium, 9:00 AM doors open at eight for a really wonderful adoration proclamation, day of evangelization around the Eucharistic revival and
Speaker 2 00:24:22 Pray for good weather <laugh>. Amen.
Speaker 1 00:24:24 So Bishop, I guess, um, in preparation for this, uh, great two great feasts these past, these next two Sundays, holy Trinity Corpus Christi, um, perhaps you could end us in prayer.
Speaker 2 00:24:36 Sure. We'll ask the Lord's blessing using that, the blessing from the Book of Numbers. The Lord be with you and
Speaker 1 00:24:42 With your Spirit.
Speaker 2 00:24:43 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. The May Almighty God bless you, the Father in the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Speaker 1 00:24:55 Thank you Father Tino, for your presence with us. We always happy to have you as a part of the big City Catholic podcast team, and, uh, we wish you well in all the upcoming endeavors. We hope that you'll join us or your local parishes for these upcoming Corpus Christi events. God bless.
