Latest / Catholic Spirit Radio / Good News #197 112925: Advent Awakening: Make Room for Christ

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Good News #197 112925: Advent Awakening: Make Room for Christ · Catholic Spirit Radio

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Welcome to Good News on Catholic Spirit Radio, a program for teens and almost
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teens to better understand that the gospel of Jesus Christ is relevant in their
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lives, and it's a place where your questions about faith and religion can be answered.
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And now, here's your host, Deacon Al.
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Good evening. Welcome to Good News on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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I am Deacon Al Lundy, permanent deacon of the Peoria Diocese.
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Happy to be speaking with you. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.
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I hope you had a wonderful holiday.
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I hope you had your fill of all kinds of good food. I hope you took the time
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to give thanks to a gracious God for all the blessings we have in our lives.
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And we certainly all have lots of blessings to be thankful for.
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I spent Thanksgiving with my wife, and I say that because that's very unusual.
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It was just my wife and I, and that was it.
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And we think this is the first time
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in maybe 36 years where we spent Thanksgiving with just the two of us.
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Our son is married and moved off. My mother passed in June for the last 15 years.
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We've celebrated every holiday over at my mother's apartment.
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And so now it's just the two of us.
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So, of course, we cooked a big turkey. Who does that for two people? Pork chops.
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We had pork, butterfly pork chops. They're great. I love that.
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We had pork chops. We had grilled pork chops.
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And some rolls and corn and applesauce and nice little bottle of wine and a
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little apple pie for dessert.
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So that was a nice spread. I enjoyed that. And, you know, it's nice sometimes
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just to have you and your spouse, nice, quiet day together without having to run everywhere.
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Although I did have mass in the morning, beautiful mass, and then dropped in
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over at a little community Thanksgiving banquet that was being put on by one
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of our parishes and stopped in and said hello there.
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And then went home and had dinner with the wife. And we did our traditional
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dragging out of the Christmas decorations.
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So we always start that on Thanksgiving evening. We start dragging out the tree and the ornaments.
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Got a new ornament to hang up this year.
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One of the things, our tree is really unique. I think everybody's tree is probably unique.
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Everybody probably has some kind of a theme that they follow,
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even if it's just one color of ornament or whatever.
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But our tree is covered with ornaments from vacations Places we've visited So
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it's state parks and national parks mostly And we have a few other things We
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have one section that's all angels.
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Another section that's all Santas. But we have this huge collection of places
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that we've vacationed or visited.
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National monuments, state parks, national parks.
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And I love putting up those ornaments and remembering where we've been and what we saw there.
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So that's a big Christmas tradition for us.
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So we dragged everything out. Not everything's up, but everything's out.
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Which means my living room is a pile of boxes right now, which will soon look very, very festive.
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And of course, now that Thanksgiving has come, now I get to play Christmas music.
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See, because I don't like playing Christmas music before Thanksgiving,
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but I love Christmas music, all kinds of Christmas music.
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You know, it's okay. It's after Thanksgiving. We're, what, three and a half weeks away?
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I mean, from right now, John, we're three and a half weeks from Christmas.
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It's coming up super fast. Of course, you've already purchased the gifts for all your kids, right?
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Oh, John, John, three and a half weeks, buddy.
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Three and a half weeks. You can't wait till the last minute.
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All the good stuff is gone.
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And then you're back to buying socks. Yeah.
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You'd probably get them like a resistor or a diode or something. Look at this.
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Go into the closet and say, hey, here's an antique diode you can have. Merry Christmas.
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I'll just put this in your stocking and you can play with it later.
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So, yeah, it'll be a nice Christmas. And I love getting the church decorated.
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I've got a great crew. So right now, we've already decorated for Advent,
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of course, because it's Advent.
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This Sunday is first Sunday of Advent.
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We are just so close. 24 days away, John. 24 days away.
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Warm up that credit card, buddy. Get out there. Start buying, buying, buying.
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So you ought to see him cringing over here. This is really funny.
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Okay. Yeah, so we're into the first week of Advent. That's what our readings will be about.
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And Advent's a great time in the church. It's very short, as we said,
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three and a half weeks, and we're out of it.
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But in those three and a half weeks, so Advent means the preparation for a coming
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event, the Advent, the celebration before the actual event is the Advent.
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And it goes all the way back to even prior to biblical times,
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when a king or a great warrior was passing through a town, they would celebrate that arrival.
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And so that was the advent of the visit. And so what would they do?
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They would clean up the town, clean up their houses, decorate,
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wear special festive clothing, have special music, dancing.
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Well, we do the same thing today. That's what advent is in the church.
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It's this time of preparation.
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So we're decorating our homes. We're cleaning up not only our exterior houses, but the interior home.
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Advent's the time to clean up inside. It's a mess.
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It's a mess. We had, I like to tell this story at Advent.
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My wife and I, one Advent, as it turned out, just sitting around at home,
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not doing much, phone rings.
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It's a buddy of mine from high school that we keep in touch with from Florida.
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And we're just chatting on the phone. He says, by the way, you want some company?
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And I, of course, say, sure. I can't tell you how many times that question has gotten me in trouble.
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And I said, yeah, sure. And he says, well, we'll be there in about an hour.
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I said, what? He said, yeah, we were visiting family in Chicago and we're heading
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back to Florida, but we're going to come by through Bloomington and come see you guys.
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Okay. So, I mean, I have no food in the house for guests.
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We've got a lot of stuff just kind of laying around and not the cleanest of homes at that time.
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And we now have an hour to get ready for guests.
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And so we start gathering everything up and we're well beyond the point of putting
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things where they belong.
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So you pick a room and this is the room where we're going to hide everything, right?
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So everything we don't want these people to see gets pushed into this room and
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the door gets closed and they can look at the whole house.
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They just can't open that door.
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And I tell that story because we do that ourselves.
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As we're getting ready for Christmas, or if it's Lent and you're getting ready
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for Easter, people have a tendency when they do that interior housekeeping,
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they take stuff that they don't want anybody to see,
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and they hide it away in a little corner of their heart, little corner of their
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mind, and they say, Okay, Jesus, I'm all set for you to come.
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Just don't look here. You know, just don't look in this little nook.
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And that's why we have confession, to clean that room out, to go in and sit
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down with Christ and with the priest and throw that door open and say,
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okay, here's all the garbage that I don't want anyone else to know about.
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You know, it's time to clean this room out. And that's what confession allows
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us to do, is to clean out the room and not have to have anything to hide from
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anyone. and just be done with it. Just take care of it.
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So as we go into Advent, three and a half weeks to Christmas.
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Now would be a great time to not only clean up your home home,
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but clean up your internal home.
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Make room for Christ to visit. That's what Christmas is all about,
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is the coming of Christ in two ways.
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One way is coming in the nativity as the baby Jesus coming, God incarnate into the world.
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But the other thing we're preparing for is the second coming of Christ,
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where he's going to come and judge the whole world.
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And he's going to look in the room. You know, if you haven't cleaned that room
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out, he's going to open the door and look in there.
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And you have to decide if that's really what you want Christ to see.
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No, probably not. That's probably not what you want.
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So, Advent's a good time to get that all cleaned up.
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So, we have readings today from the first Sunday of Advent. The first is from
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the book of the prophet Isaiah.
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Our second reading is St. Paul to the Romans.
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And then our gospel today is from Matthew. So, we're done with Luke.
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We're into a new liturgical year. So, we're done with this year of Luke.
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And now we're moving into a new liturgical year.
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So, for this Advent, we're starting off in Matthew.
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So, grab something to drink, park the car, whatever you need to do,
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come back in a few minutes and we'll continue with more good news.
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On Catholic Spirit Radio. Stay tuned. Good news will be right back on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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Prayer for the Canonization of Archbishop Fulton J.
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Sheen. Written by Monsignor Richard Sosman. Heavenly Father,
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source of all holiness, you raise up within the Church in every age men and
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women who serve with heroic love and dedication.
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You have blessed your Church through the life and ministry of your faithful
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servant, Archbishop Fulton J.
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Sheen. He has written and spoken well of your divine Son, Jesus Christ,
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and was a true instrument of the Holy Spirit in touching the hearts of countless people.
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If it be according to your will, for the honor and glory of the Most Holy Trinity
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and the salvation of souls, we ask you to move the church to proclaim him a saint.
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We ask this prayer through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
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Our human nature is constantly absorbing all the negatives, all the worst that
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could happen to us and does.
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But I have to be aware that I am not a child of the world. I'm a child of God.
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And the Lord said, I tell you solemnly, your hearts will be full of joy,
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and that joy no one shall take away from you.
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Well, you can't say I would have that joy if I didn't have suffering.
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Jesus had that joy. But don't give me that stuff, oh, here we go, Jesus.
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You cop out over everything. No, he's giving you grace, baptism,
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the sacraments, wonderful confession when you goof off so you can come back.
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All these wonderful things he's giving you. And he's giving you his presence
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in the midst of the worst trials is because you don't think of that wonderful.
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I'll give you a reminder, if you'd like to be part of the program,
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that, be happy to address it on the air.
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I don't remember if I talked about this last week or not, but I had a question come in.
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Can an unbaptized Catholic receive the Eucharist?
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And my first thought was, a what? An unbaptized?
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There is no such thing as an unbaptized Catholic.
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There's not even such a thing as an unbaptized Christian.
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It's the baptism that brings you into the faith.
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So until you've been baptized, you really can't claim that you're anything in
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the Christian faith, let alone a Catholic.
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So no, you can't receive communion if you haven't received baptism.
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In fact, in the Catholic faith, baptism is the base, the core of all the sacraments.
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You have to receive that first before you can receive any other sacraments.
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So even if you were an infant and you had some sort of a fatal illness,
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right, before you could receive anointing of the sick, you would first have to be baptized.
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That always comes first. It's baptism that opens us up to be able to receive
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and accept the graces of God.
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So everything starts with baptism.
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So I hope that—oh, and then I had a question from somebody a couple days ago
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as I was walking out of church.
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I kind of understand what they were getting to, but the way they phrased it
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was, what do you think Mary's opinion was of women in theology?
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Now, theology is a rather new science. I'm pretty sure they weren't studying
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theology in Mary's time on earth.
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Now, what's her opinion now? Probably pretty high. I mean, women serve in all
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kinds of aspects of the church and of Christianity.
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Are they priests? No, but that's okay because a nose isn't a foot,
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and that doesn't make the foot any less important or the no's any more important or vice versa,
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Scripture explains the body's made of many parts, and each part has a specific function.
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And just because you're built to do one thing doesn't mean you're built to do everything.
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So women have a very important role in the church, but they're not a priest.
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But that's okay, because priest is not the most important part of the church.
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Lay people are the most important part of the church, because there's far more
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laypersons than there are priests.
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A church could not function without the laity. If all we were made of was a priest...
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Can't do much. We need the laity. We need the laity. Christ works through the laity.
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The priesthood helps provide the graces, the strength of God for the laity to do their work.
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But anyway, so I think Mary would be very happy with the role of women in the
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church today, but I don't think she studied theology.
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Just top of my head, pretty sure that didn't happen. Okay, so let's go into our readings.
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This is for the first Sunday of Advent, so Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
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Happy Advent, and very soon, a very Merry Christmas.
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Our first reading is from the book of the prophet Isaiah, and Isaiah writes,
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This is what Isaiah, son of Amoz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
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In days to come, the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the
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highest mountain and raised above the hills.
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All nations shall stream toward it. Many people shall come and say,
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Come, let us climb the Lord's mountain to the house of the God of Jacob,
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that he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.
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For from Zion shall come forth instructions and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
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He shall judge between the nations and impose terms on many peoples.
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They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
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One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.
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O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.
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So Isaiah is telling us about two things that are going to happen.
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The temple of Jerusalem is coming, which is going to sit on a mountaintop.
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The highest point in Jerusalem will be the temple.
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It'll also become the house of David,
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And people are going to come from all over the world to worship there,
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all over the region to worship there.
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And they're saying from Jerusalem will come the Messiah, the Christ,
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the Word will come from Jerusalem. And that's what happened.
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Jesus came to us from the region of Jerusalem.
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So Isaiah's doing pretty good. I mean, for so far ahead of his time,
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ahead of the time of Jesus, he's got things pretty accurate here.
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He's being a good voice of God, telling people what God is proclaiming and telling
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them Jerusalem's going to be a very important part.
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But even more important than the city is what the city is going to produce, and that is the Messiah.
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In our Responsorial Psalm, I just want to go over what the refrain is,
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because it's going to play a role here at the end as I tie these readings together.
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The responsorial psalm is, let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
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So when you think of the house of the Lord, that again, that represents more than one thing.
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The house of the Lord, it could be David's house. It could be the temple. It could also be heaven.
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So when we talk about the house of the Lord, you have to look at the context
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that it's being used in because it could be any of these places.
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And our second reading is from the letter of St. Paul to the Romans.
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Paul writes, Brothers and sisters, you know the time.
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It is the hour now for you to awake from sleep, for night is advanced, the day is at hand.
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Let us then throw off the work of darkness and put on the armor of light.
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Let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness,
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not in promiscuity and lust, not in rivalry and jealousy,
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but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the desires of the flesh. you
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the word of the Lord. So, so far, we have two readings that talk about the coming of the Messiah.
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Paul thought it was coming really, really soon.
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I mean, Paul's writings are really helpful in knowing about the early development of the church.
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One thing Paul kind of got wrong, not completely, was that he thought that the
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last day was coming in his lifetime, right then.
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Well, that's not a bad attitude to have. What he's telling the people is a pretty good idea.
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The days at hand, Christ is coming. Clean up your act, right?
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Stop and smell the coffee, folks. Are you ready or not? And this is what Paul's
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talking about is let's get ready.
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Well, the day of the coming of Christ is still coming.
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We still need to heed those instructions from Paul, we still need to be ready.
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And just like with my company coming from out of town, had I been ready,
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I could have had a much more relaxing visit.
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But I wasn't. I got caught off guard.
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And I at least had an hour to prepare.
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I think we're going to hear in our gospel that when the last day does come,
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we're not going to have that hour to straighten things up.
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It's a come-as-you-are party.
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Wherever you are, that's where Christ is going to find you at that instant.
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So our gospel according to Matthew says, Jesus said to his disciples,
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As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the coming of the Son of Man.
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In those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking,
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marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day that Noah entered the ark.
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They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.
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So it also will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
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Two men will be out in the field, one will be taken, one will be left.
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Two women will be grinding at the mill. One will be taken, the other will be left.
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Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on which day your Lord will come.
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Be sure of this. If the master of the house had known the hour of the night
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when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into.
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So too you must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.
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The gospel of the Lord. Now, this kind of plays against what we think about,
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what we hear about so often about the rapture from our Protestant brothers and sisters.
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They seem to think that the rapture will come in stages.
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We could take hundreds of years for the whole thing to be complete.
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And Jesus is saying, that's not the way it's going to happen.
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It's going to be instantaneous. It's going to be at a moment nobody expects.
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And when it happens, it's going to happen quickly, suddenly, surprisingly.
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And if you aren't ready, you're going to be the one left behind rather than the one taken.
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And what they're saying here, the one taken is going to heaven.
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The one left behind is going to go back to the earth, back to the dust, back to destruction,
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back to hell, Hades, however you want to put it, back to an eternity of torment
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rather than an eternity of joy in heaven.
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So I guess one way you can look at this end of times is how do we use our time?
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That can open our eyes up to the challenge each of us faces in this present
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moment of keeping the focus only on the end of the world, that can seem like
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something many generations in the future need to worry more about.
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Even today, we're not promised another day. Like I said, I think it was Ann
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Landers who says, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.
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It's time to realize the importance of now.
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The season of Advent can be an opportunity for us to make a plan about how to
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really use our time and how to allow God to step into these precious moments of our lives.
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Today's reading suggests three ways that we might use our time this Advent and
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throughout the coming year.
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First of all, gather together at church. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
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Make Sunday worship important to you. Whether you're Catholic or Protestant,
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it really doesn't matter.
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Make worship important. The other thing to think about is from the second reading
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of Paul is it's time to awake from the sleep and put on the armor of Christ.
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We need to start looking and acting more like Jesus.
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Conduct ourselves properly so that we can call what we call living has virtue
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to it rather than promiscuity. we're called to faithfulness.
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Rather than the rivalry and jealousy, we're called to unity.
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We live out our faith by being people of goodness to each other.
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And finally, while so many so despair in our age, we can use this time we have now to sow hope.
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Remember the gospel passage for today can remind us a lot of the 24-hour news
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cycle that bombards us daily, signs of doom and gloom and terror and sadness,
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but we're people of light.
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From the Advent candle that we begin to light this week until we experience
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the glory of Christmas in just a few weeks, a single flame of hope will grow
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brighter as we move toward our celebration of the Incarnation at Christmas.
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Be awake, as both our second reading and our gospel call us to,
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includes being attentive to the goodness of the world, not the darkness.
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Let us be intentional in this time of calling hope into our lives.
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Into our community, into our world.
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We prepare not only our hearts, but the hearts of others to embrace and believe
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in the mystery of the Incarnation, Christ's presence that overcomes any of humanity's
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actions that attempt to dim that light.
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Make Advent a special time of preparation in your life.
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Let's get ready for the coming of Christ in the Nativity, as well as the coming
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of the Christ in His final judgment.
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And may Almighty God bless you, protect you from all evil, and bring you to everlasting life.
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Good night from Good News. You've been listening to Good News on Catholic Spirit
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Radio, a program for teens and almost teens to better understand that the gospel
26:44
of Jesus Christ is relevant in your life.
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Submit your questions to Deacon Al at goodnews at catholicspiritradio.com.
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That's goodnews at catholicspiritradio.com.
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