Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E139: Iraq Persecution, Evangelization & The Church's Youth w/Tiktok Priest Fr. Simon Esshaki

Transcript

E139: Iraq Persecution, Evangelization & The Church's Youth w/Tiktok Priest Fr. Simon Esshaki · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  What's been the hardest part of your priesthood?
• 0:03
  It's very hard to see a young person who was involved in the
• 0:06
  church and to see them be LED astray.
• 0:08
  We have to do our best to give them the nourishment, the
• 0:11
  spiritual nourishment that they need.
• 0:12
  Is that why you started your TikTok?
• 0:14
  Account yeah, I mean, it was at the time of the COVID lockdowns
• 0:17
  and people were really scared they weren't coming to church
• 0:21
  often. And so I was actually talking to
• 0:23
  my little cousin and she showed me a video on TikTok of Catholic
• 0:28
  and Christian content on the app.
• 0:30
  So I said we got to get the message out to people.
• 0:31
  We have to reach people where they are.
• 0:38
  Father Simon Osaki, welcome to the podcast.
• 0:41
  Thank you so much, Lila. Thanks for having me.
• 0:42
  You are the the TikTok priest. I've been doing that for a
• 0:47
  little while, yes. It's a big part of my ministry
• 0:50
  and I and I really enjoy it. I think you might be the most
• 0:53
  followed priest on TikTok. Yeah, I'm not sure about that.
• 0:57
  I mean, at least from the beginning of my TikTok ministry,
• 1:02
  at least from the beginning, I was, I mean, I didn't really see
• 1:05
  a lot of priests on the app. And so I think that's also one
• 1:08
  of the reasons why my account got pretty popular is because
• 1:11
  you'll be scrolling and you'll see videos of people dancing and
• 1:15
  of other random stuff. And then all of a sudden, oh,
• 1:17
  there's a guy with a collar. And a.
• 1:18
  Beard and a beard too. And so then I started to do
• 1:23
  different things as well, like, you know, eating food and trying
• 1:26
  out different things. And so it got pretty popular
• 1:29
  all. Right, so I want to talk about
• 1:31
  your content. I also want to talk about your
• 1:32
  story because it's very powerful and your vocation, also your
• 1:36
  history. A lot of people don't know about
• 1:39
  the experience of Christians, especially in Iran, in Iraq, in
• 1:43
  the Middle East. And so there's so much here to
• 1:46
  deep dive. But first of all, tell us a
• 1:48
  little bit about your background.
• 1:50
  And I want to hear your vocation story too.
• 1:52
  Sure. Yes.
• 1:53
  Thank you so much Lila. I am a first generation Chaldean
• 1:58
  American. So maybe people have heard of
• 2:00
  Chaldeans from the book of Genesis because Abraham is from
• 2:04
  all of the Chaldeans. So he was from the region of the
• 2:08
  Chaldeans, which are the some of the ancient inhabitants,
• 2:13
  original inhabitants of Mesopotamia.
• 2:15
  And they speak Aramaic. And so there's a lot of
• 2:18
  connection with Jesus, you know, who spoke Aramaic to right.
• 2:22
  So it's a very ancient people from the region of Mesopotamia,
• 2:27
  like I said. And so my parents were born
• 2:30
  there. They were actually born in
• 2:32
  Baghdad, which is the capital of of Iraq, which is still in
• 2:35
  Mesopotamia. But Chaldeans lived in the
• 2:37
  northern region. It was called Nineveh.
• 2:40
  Now it's called the Mosul Plain. And so there are a lot of
• 2:44
  villages around there that are, are just Chaldean Catholic
• 2:49
  people. There's there's Assyrians and
• 2:51
  Syriacs as well that live over there.
• 2:53
  To this day. To this day.
• 2:54
  So you have all these pockets of Chaldean Catholic.
• 2:57
  In Iraq, you'll, you'll walk into a village and you know,
• 3:01
  I've had read about villages in the Bible, you know, obviously,
• 3:05
  but I've never experienced it until 2019.
• 3:07
  So I was born here and I went there in 2019.
• 3:11
  And for the first time I, I was really shocked.
• 3:14
  I had heard about it, but I was really shocked to see a village
• 3:16
  that's completely Chaldean Catholics.
• 3:19
  And there's a church in the center of it.
• 3:21
  And it's, it's the most beautiful thing to witness and
• 3:24
  to be a part of. My parents didn't live in the
• 3:26
  villages. They're their parents moved to
• 3:30
  Baghdad, to the city, and so they also started to speak
• 3:33
  Arabic as well because that's the city, that's the language of
• 3:36
  the country and they moved here to America in the late 70s and
• 3:42
  there were multiple reasons for the move.
• 3:44
  A lot of people were moving about.
• 3:46
  My my grandpa who worked in the government of Saddam Hussein, he
• 3:52
  foresaw that there would be chaos in the region and, and a
• 3:57
  lot of people foresaw that and they knew that it was going to
• 4:00
  turn very bad very fast. And so they got out of there
• 4:05
  before it turned really bad. Meaning they were afraid of of
• 4:08
  like civil war and conflict or they're afraid of persecution
• 4:10
  because they were Christians. Both, both and especially.
• 4:14
  Because if Saddam were to fall, there would be chaos.
• 4:17
  And that's what I remember when I was really young.
• 4:21
  It's like, I don't know, 10 years old.
• 4:22
  And we're watching the news with my grandpa.
• 4:26
  And it was the day that Saddam had fallen.
• 4:30
  And I saw the people, they were like desecrating a statue.
• 4:34
  And I thought that it was a very joyful moment for the country
• 4:37
  because the the dictator is gone.
• 4:39
  And so now they're going to be free.
• 4:40
  But I just remember very shockingly that my grandpa was
• 4:45
  very sad at that moment. And I just asked him, I said,
• 4:48
  what's what's going on? Like, isn't this a great thing
• 4:50
  that there's no more dictator that the people are going to be
• 4:52
  free now? And he said, it's going to be
• 4:54
  chaos after this, you know, And so it was and, and it definitely
• 4:59
  was because all of the groups, you know, not to say that you
• 5:03
  know, he was a peaceful person, but he had control of all of the
• 5:07
  groups that wanted to rise up and be revolutionaries.
• 5:12
  When he fell, all of these groups started to take power.
• 5:16
  And, you know, that's how al Qaeda became a thing, ISIS
• 5:20
  eventually. So I have AI have a question
• 5:22
  about that because it's so fascinating as so the dictator
• 5:25
  Saddam Hussein falls. I think everyone even you know,
• 5:29
  people that 911 was before they were born, you know, they know
• 5:32
  the name Saddam Hussein, the evil dictator, you know, that
• 5:35
  fell in Iraq. But you were saying your
• 5:37
  parents, you know, there weren't, not maybe not your
• 5:39
  parents, but there were Christians called the end
• 5:41
  Catholics living in these villages peacefully in northern
• 5:44
  Iraq. Was that under Saddam Hussein?
• 5:46
  It was under him. So he let Christians.
• 5:48
  He let Christians live and in fact most of his employees were
• 5:53
  were were Christians. That's because he trusted them
• 5:57
  more. Wow.
• 5:58
  Yeah, but how does that work when he was committing all these
• 6:01
  human rights abuses? It wasn't really a religious
• 6:06
  thing for him. He.
• 6:08
  Just. Wanted power.
• 6:09
  Wanted power. So yeah, it was not a religious
• 6:12
  thing for him. He just wanted power.
• 6:14
  And so, you know, he didn't necessarily favor the Chaldean
• 6:18
  Christians more than others, but he basically treated them more
• 6:22
  or less the same and gave them their more or less freedom,
• 6:27
  right to to worship and to live. And So what happened was my
• 6:32
  family left and they came here, like I said, in the late 70s,
• 6:35
  and that's when a lot of people started coming here.
• 6:37
  A lot of Chaldeans went to Michigan 1st and that's where
• 6:40
  the majority of Chaldean Catholics are.
• 6:42
  But San Diego is the second largest Chaldean population.
• 6:47
  And so just like it happened in the villages where the people,
• 6:50
  they would stay together because they're minorities in the big
• 6:54
  country, right? So they're a minority with their
• 6:58
  religion, which is the most important thing to them.
• 7:00
  So they would stay together, so they would form communities.
• 7:03
  So that's what happened in the diaspora as well.
• 7:05
  Like in Michigan, San Diego, Arizona, the people moved
• 7:11
  together. They lived together.
• 7:12
  They started to buy homes near each other, and then the church
• 7:17
  followed that. So the church would send priests
• 7:21
  from Iraq, The patriarch who? So in case people don't know,
• 7:26
  the Chaldean Church is fully in union with the Catholic Church.
• 7:30
  However, we have a patriarch like the Orthodox Churches, who
• 7:33
  is the head of the Chaldean Church, but still under the
• 7:35
  authority of the Pope. So it's one of the 23 Eastern
• 7:39
  right Catholic churches. And so they would send clergy to
• 7:43
  America. And then the church was formed
• 7:45
  eventually, and I grew up as part of that church community.
• 7:48
  In San Diego, Yeah. So I have another question about
• 7:51
  Saddam Hussein, though, and, and Iraq, because I think a lot of
• 7:55
  people, we have this, you know, especially Americans, we have
• 7:58
  this kind of view of things happening in the Middle East.
• 8:00
  And, you know, we were maybe informed by news media
• 8:03
  narratives and everything else. But, you know, Saddam Hussein
• 8:06
  was a brutal dictator, but it sounds like he permitted enough
• 8:09
  freedom of religion that Christians could live there and
• 8:12
  create communities, right? He falls.
• 8:15
  All of these revolutionaries are vying for power, like you said.
• 8:18
  And many of these religious sects, even within Islam, right,
• 8:21
  the Sunnis and the Shiites, my understanding is like at war
• 8:23
  with each other. You know, that was big in Iran
• 8:25
  too, or is still a thing. But how did, how do Christians
• 8:29
  get impacted by all of this? And, and do you have any kind of
• 8:34
  perspectives or opinions on the best way for Christians to even
• 8:40
  live in the Middle East at this stage?
• 8:42
  You know, with all of the, the, the factions and all of the, the
• 8:45
  conflicts that are ongoing. So Christians are the most
• 8:49
  vulnerable group there. And one of the reasons for that
• 8:51
  is because we don't have our own armies to fight for us over
• 8:55
  there, which obviously is because of Jesus, right?
• 8:59
  Jesus was the one that that did not allow his apostles to use
• 9:04
  the sword. He came to bring peace in this
• 9:07
  world. And so Christians obviously are
• 9:09
  a people of peace. So we don't have armies to
• 9:12
  defend us, besides smaller groups maybe that rise up to try
• 9:16
  to do that. But they would be nothing in
• 9:19
  comparison to the armies of these nations or to these
• 9:21
  revolutionary groups that started, for example, ISIS, the
• 9:25
  Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Islamic State.
• 9:28
  And so they were, they were purposely targeting Christians.
• 9:35
  So what happened? Well, because they wanted to
• 9:39
  start the Islamic State and they want either everybody to convert
• 9:45
  to Islam or to abide by the Sharia Allah.
• 9:49
  No infidels. No, no, not, not there.
• 9:52
  So, so that's why actually, for example, they in one night in
• 9:55
  2014, they went to Mosul and to the villages surrounding it,
• 10:00
  where a lot of Chaldean people are a lot of relatives of people
• 10:04
  that are here in San Diego. A lot of actually people that
• 10:08
  immigrated here were there and had their homes invaded by ISIS
• 10:12
  members. And one of the things that they
• 10:14
  did is, well, first of all, they gave them three options, which
• 10:17
  is you either leave, you either abide by the laws and pay and,
• 10:24
  and an incredibly unjust tax, which nobody would be able to
• 10:29
  afford, or you, you, you be killed if you don't convert to
• 10:34
  Islam. And so obviously the people,
• 10:36
  they barely had any opportunity to take just a few belongings
• 10:39
  and they took them and they just left the villages.
• 10:42
  And thank God, we had a city called Erbil, which is in the
• 10:47
  Kurdistan region of Iraq. And a lot of the people went
• 10:51
  there and the diocese there really did a great job of
• 10:55
  housing these people. But they valued their faith more
• 10:58
  than anything. And they were not going to deny
• 11:00
  their faith in Jesus. And so even though they didn't
• 11:03
  have homes, they, they left ISIS went in their homes and they
• 11:07
  went in the churches. And I saw this when I went
• 11:09
  there, like I said, for the first time in 2019, which is
• 11:12
  after ISIS was defeated, I saw a bunch of graffiti.
• 11:16
  And I don't read Arabic well, so I couldn't read the graffiti.
• 11:21
  But I asked my Bishop who took me there, Bishop Emmanuel
• 11:26
  Shalita, and he said this says property of Isis and it was in
• 11:30
  the Christian homes and it was in the churches.
• 11:32
  I would even go to some of the churches and just a devastating
• 11:37
  thing. You see bullet marks in the
• 11:40
  walls on the altar area and you see icons that were in the
• 11:45
  walls, stone icons and the faces of Jesus and of Mary and of the
• 11:50
  Saints were, were desecrated. They were they were taken out.
• 11:54
  And so this is something that the people endured and it
• 11:58
  obviously made their faith stronger in Jesus.
• 12:01
  And it made us also realize the great benefits and the great
• 12:05
  freedom that we have to worship our faith.
• 12:07
  And I think it has to make our faith stronger as well to see
• 12:09
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• 14:03
  So when your parents came, this was before, you know, this was
• 14:08
  before Saddam Hussein's fall and they're here.
• 14:11
  And then in over the last. Can you give, would you be
• 14:13
  willing to give our listeners a quick history on what the last,
• 14:17
  let's say 40 years, you know, after Saddam Hussein's fall all
• 14:20
  the way to the Iraq of today? What what, what the movements
• 14:23
  were. Obviously the US got involved at
• 14:25
  at a certain point and invaded and.
• 14:27
  Yeah, I'm not entirely sure about all of the specifics.
• 14:31
  I don't want to. I don't want to give any wrong
• 14:33
  information, but but what I do know is the main group, Al
• 14:37
  Qaeda, Al Qaeda, they rose up and they were a revolutionary
• 14:43
  group and they were the ones that actually, they had a lot of
• 14:48
  power after Saddam Hussein fell. And they were the ones that
• 14:52
  actually killed some of the Chaldean clergy.
• 14:55
  They became martyrs. There was a sister as well,
• 14:59
  Sister Cecilia, and a priest named Father Raheed, a Bishop,
• 15:05
  Archbishop Paulus, Farage, Rahu. They were killed by al Qaeda.
• 15:09
  And so they were the big powerful group at the time until
• 15:13
  ISIS came and started taking over.
• 15:17
  So when you were growing up as a little boy in San Diego, were
• 15:21
  you hearing the stories of the Chaldean Catholics of the Middle
• 15:24
  East as a child? What was what was your
• 15:26
  upbringing like? Yeah, we would definitely hear
• 15:28
  the stories. A lot of my relatives, you know,
• 15:31
  even my extended family ended up leaving because, like I said,
• 15:34
  they would follow each other. So it was just very sad.
• 15:38
  It was a, you know, you know, devastating thing to see and to
• 15:41
  hear about them not even being able to worship and like a
• 15:45
  priest, like I mentioned, Father Raheed, the the Muslim
• 15:50
  extremists, they were trying to force him to close his church.
• 15:54
  And he said, how can I close the House of God?
• 15:57
  I'm here to serve the people and to give them Jesus.
• 16:00
  And that's, that's my duty. And even if I have to die doing
• 16:03
  that, I will, you know, this is what I've been called to do.
• 16:06
  And so that ended up being the what happened to him is that he
• 16:11
  was killed along with he. Was killed because he refused
• 16:13
  to. Close his church.
• 16:14
  Yeah, along with three deacons as well.
• 16:16
  What did they just murdered? Murdered them in the.
• 16:18
  Night they were they were on their way out of church, they
• 16:21
  were driving together and they were stopped in the middle of
• 16:25
  the street. And then they were, you know,
• 16:28
  given the ultimatum to either convert or not and when they
• 16:33
  they denied that they, you know, kept strong in their faith in
• 16:36
  Jesus. And so they were just shot in
• 16:38
  the street and their bodies were left there for many hours until
• 16:41
  people heard about it. And it's just very sad thing to
• 16:46
  see. And so me growing up, you know,
• 16:48
  like I said earlier, our faith has to be strengthened by those
• 16:51
  stories. And so I would realize like, I
• 16:55
  need to take my faith very seriously because of these
• 16:57
  people. I need to pray for them first of
• 16:59
  all. But I was also very inspired by
• 17:02
  their faith in Jesus. And I would think like, I have
• 17:05
  all these freedoms over here. I need to go take advantage of
• 17:08
  these gifts that God has given me, this access I have to the
• 17:11
  Eucharist, to the sacraments, to my church community.
• 17:15
  And so growing up, I was very close to church.
• 17:17
  My dad is a Deacon and so he would teach my sisters and IA
• 17:22
  lot about the faith and we would pray together.
• 17:25
  And I was an altar boy growing up.
• 17:27
  And from the first moments of my high school time, I I became a
• 17:33
  catechism teacher for the kids. And so I just love to teach and
• 17:38
  to spread the faith. And it was in high school in my
• 17:43
  sophomore year, I moved to a public school.
• 17:45
  Before that, I was just going to a Catholic school all my life.
• 17:49
  And so it was a very different experience for me to go there,
• 17:52
  first of all as a Chaldean, but also as a Catholic in that
• 17:57
  environment, which I was not used to seeing so many people
• 18:00
  that disagreed with my belief. I was used to being surrounded
• 18:03
  by faithful Catholic people. So I got really challenged in in
• 18:08
  my faith as well because I would even have moments where I would
• 18:11
  be embarrassed to share my faith.
• 18:13
  But thank God that He gave me the grace to persevere and to He
• 18:17
  just lit a fire in me to spread His word and to help others
• 18:21
  understand His message. When did you first feel, Father
• 18:24
  Simon, God calling you to be a priest?
• 18:26
  The first initial feeling was probably when I was like 6 or 7
• 18:32
  years old actually, I just had such an admiration for the
• 18:36
  priest of my church. There's only one priest serving
• 18:39
  a huge Chaldean community at the time.
• 18:41
  His name is Father Michael Bazzi.
• 18:43
  So I had a great admiration for him.
• 18:45
  And as I grew up, I was so involved in the church, and I
• 18:48
  would just ask myself the question.
• 18:51
  I would say, you know, he was a little bit older.
• 18:54
  I would say after he's gone, he's the only priest here
• 18:56
  serving the Chaldean Church. After he's gone, who's going to
• 18:59
  do it? So I would think about that.
• 19:02
  And so that was kind of the seed of my vocation.
• 19:07
  And that mixed with the Catholic foundation that I had at home
• 19:12
  when I went to high school, I kind of drifted away from that
• 19:15
  because of the temptations and the, you know, just just being a
• 19:20
  teenager. It was tough at the time, but
• 19:23
  thank God I came back to the church and was very faithful to
• 19:27
  Jesus. And so it was late high school
• 19:30
  when I really started to take it very seriously.
• 19:32
  And then I ended up joining the seminary right after high
• 19:34
  school. What would be what do you think
• 19:36
  your parents did? What are the top two or three
• 19:39
  things that your parents did right to help foster your love
• 19:44
  for Jesus? Great question.
• 19:47
  One thing that they did is they were very close to us, to me and
• 19:53
  my sisters. They were very personal with us.
• 19:55
  They they were, they made it very comfortable for us to talk
• 19:59
  to them and to be open to them. And so there was a lot of times
• 20:03
  where they would teach us about the faith.
• 20:06
  So it wasn't only from church classes that I learned.
• 20:10
  I mean, I would go in there basically knowing all the basics
• 20:13
  of the faith. And it was because of the
• 20:14
  upbringing at home, but. Equally or even more important
• 20:19
  was not only learning about the faith, but it it was praying
• 20:23
  together as as a family at home. And from the earliest times, I
• 20:29
  remember, every single night we would pray the rosary together,
• 20:32
  no matter what. The whole the whole rosary.
• 20:34
  The whole rosary, even when. You were a little itty bitty.
• 20:37
  Yeah, yeah. And the whole family had to be
• 20:39
  there no matter what. I I remember a time I'm a big
• 20:42
  baseball fan. And so I was watching the Padres
• 20:45
  game and baseball fans know how extra innings work.
• 20:49
  You know, they just, are you a Dodgers fan?
• 20:52
  I mean. I I I moonlight as a some
• 20:55
  interest in sports. This is a good time to be a
• 20:57
  Padres fan. I'm a definitely a Padres.
• 20:59
  Yes, there we go. Perfect.
• 21:01
  OK. And you want me to be father?
• 21:03
  For today, their their mascot is a is a Friar and they're called
• 21:08
  the Fathers, you know? Yeah.
• 21:10
  Thank you. So I was watching a Padres game.
• 21:13
  I still like. This is one of my core memories.
• 21:16
  I don't know how old I was 12/13 watching the Padres game.
• 21:20
  It's a very intense game. They're in the playoff race,
• 21:22
  extra innings, and the game is just going and it's just not not
• 21:26
  ending. And so my dad kept on telling
• 21:27
  me, like, look, it's time to come and pray the rosary.
• 21:29
  And I kept on telling him like, you know, give me another couple
• 21:31
  minutes to the point where he just came and said because it
• 21:35
  just wasn't ending. And, you know, everybody had to
• 21:37
  sleep. And he said, you have to come.
• 21:38
  So I remember turning off the TV and going and praying the
• 21:41
  rosary. And even though my mind was on
• 21:43
  the Padres game during the rosary, I learned the importance
• 21:46
  of prayer, that prayer is the most important thing in in in a
• 21:50
  person's life because it's about your connection with God.
• 21:54
  And if you don't have prayer, then there's no spirituality and
• 21:57
  there's no life in your soul. And so my parents formed that in
• 22:01
  me and they really helped me to grow up as a, as a Christian, as
• 22:06
  a, as a Catholic with a relationship with Jesus.
• 22:09
  And it was the communal aspect of the church as a family that
• 22:14
  had a great impact on me growing up.
• 22:15
  And it was because of that that I had the opportunity to go and
• 22:19
  to start having a personal relationship with Jesus
• 22:22
  flourish. So that's when I would go,
• 22:24
  because most of the time my prayer was with my family or
• 22:27
  with the church community. But then I would go and I would
• 22:30
  start to read the Bible by myself and I would really
• 22:32
  increase in my personal relationship with Jesus.
• 22:34
  And that's what really helped my faith flourish.
• 22:36
  How many siblings? I have two sisters, 1 is my twin
• 22:39
  sister. Oh how fun is.
• 22:41
  That Oh my God, it was, it was pretty boring as a child and I
• 22:45
  just, we'd get mad that we have to share birthdays, you know,
• 22:48
  but, but I love her and we have a great relationship.
• 22:52
  How did your parents respond when they when they learned that
• 22:55
  you were felt called to the priesthood?
• 22:57
  My dad is a Deacon and he really supported it from the beginning,
• 23:01
  even though he did have AIT technology business at the time,
• 23:05
  and it was kind of the plan that I was going to study that and
• 23:08
  take over it. But he was very happy about it.
• 23:12
  My mom was also happy about it. She was just shocked because I
• 23:15
  was 17 and I told her like a month before I was going to
• 23:18
  leave the house and joined the seminary.
• 23:20
  So she was very shocked that it was that fast.
• 23:23
  She thought I would wait until after college and stuff.
• 23:25
  But then she ended up coming around at the time and and and
• 23:28
  and they both really support me. So are you serving Father at the
• 23:32
  church that as a little boy you wondered what would happen to
• 23:34
  the priest? I served there for my first two
• 23:38
  years as as a priest, but then thank God, I mean, that was the
• 23:40
  only church at the time in San Diego, the only Chaldean church.
• 23:44
  So I'm serving at the second Chaldean church that was
• 23:47
  established. I'm the pastor of Saint Michael
• 23:49
  Chaldean Church and now we actually have 4 Chaldean
• 23:51
  churches in San Diego. And is that because the Chaldean
• 23:55
  Catholic community is growing there, there's more children, or
• 23:58
  is it because of immigration? Why it's?
• 23:59
  Growing. It's both.
• 24:00
  There's a lot of children, a lot of young Chaldean Catholic
• 24:04
  families and immigration as well.
• 24:07
  Especially from the time of ISIS, a lot of people came here.
• 24:10
  What does it mean? You kind of were describing it
• 24:13
  earlier, how it's under Rome, you know, but they have their
• 24:16
  own patriarch like the Orthodox do, although the Orthodox are
• 24:19
  not under Rome. Can you just explain it?
• 24:22
  A. Little more to people.
• 24:24
  Because I think people here are they encounter the Chaldean
• 24:27
  right as an example and they, you know, it's interesting and,
• 24:29
  and it seems, you know, beautiful.
• 24:31
  But I think there's a lot of these different rights and, you
• 24:34
  know, different patriarchs, but then there's the Bishop.
• 24:37
  And so break it down for people. So I'll just say something very
• 24:41
  short and then I'll explain a little more.
• 24:43
  But the short statement is it's the same faith, but a different
• 24:47
  way of expressing it. And the way that we express the
• 24:51
  same faith, like we believe in the Creed, we believe in the
• 24:54
  sacraments, we are fully Catholic.
• 24:57
  The different ways that we express the faith are in our
• 24:59
  liturgy. Although the general structure
• 25:01
  of the liturgy is the same, like we have a liturgy of the Word at
• 25:04
  the beginning and then the liturgy of the Eucharist.
• 25:07
  We have a different way of praying.
• 25:10
  In a certain sense, we have different prayers.
• 25:12
  We have our own Church fathers. I'm sure people have heard of
• 25:15
  Saint Ephrem. He was part of what was called
• 25:19
  at the time the Church of the East, which had also what's now
• 25:23
  the Assyrian Church of the East, who they are like Orthodox.
• 25:27
  So they're our sister church. Hopefully one day they we can be
• 25:31
  united. But they have a patriarch who's
• 25:34
  separate from the Chaldean patriarch and he's not under the
• 25:37
  Pope. Our patriarch is under the
• 25:41
  authority of the Pope. So we have what's called a Synod
• 25:43
  of bishops that meets every year and they're basically the, the
• 25:50
  law system of, of our church. So different prayers.
• 25:56
  Obviously our language is different.
• 25:58
  Like we have no Latin Mass ever. We've never had, we've had
• 26:02
  Aramaic Mass and not to say anything about the Latin Mass,
• 26:05
  but our Mass is older. It's much older.
• 26:08
  Our like we're the true trance. Yeah, really.
• 26:12
  Our liturgy, our Eucharistic prayer, anaphora goes back to
• 26:17
  Ede and Mari who were disciples of Saint Thomas and probably
• 26:22
  part of the 72 if not one of them was part of the 12
• 26:26
  apostles. Ede, who is might be considered
• 26:29
  Saint Jude Thaddeus. So they wrote our first liturgy.
• 26:33
  So it goes back to Apostolic times and the first ever church
• 26:38
  building was in a region and a city called Kohei, which means
• 26:43
  slums and Aramaic. And that was in Mesopotamia.
• 26:47
  That's the first ever church building.
• 26:48
  Wow. So it's a very, very ancient
• 26:50
  people. What year was that?
• 26:52
  It was in the in the 1st century for sure.
• 26:54
  Like like late 1st century 80s maybe?
• 26:56
  So were they able? 70s eighties.
• 26:57
  Were the those early Christians just a few decades after
• 27:01
  Christ's death and resurrection, were those early Christians in
• 27:04
  the position to be able to build those Chaldean Christians, build
• 27:07
  that first church because there wasn't persecution of them in
• 27:10
  the in the region? Or how were they able?
• 27:11
  To question. Because you had the catacombs,
• 27:13
  you had the underground church, Yeah, the Roman Empire and all
• 27:16
  the persecutions that would, you know, intermittently.
• 27:18
  Yeah, what I think is that they would be gathering in the homes
• 27:23
  and I just think it got too big for them to gather in homes like
• 27:27
  the the communities were too big.
• 27:29
  And so they did start to build church buildings until the
• 27:33
  persecution really, you know, you know, started and.
• 27:36
  So why, how did? How is it that the Chaldean
• 27:40
  Church remained under Rome but the Orthodox Church didn't?
• 27:44
  Yeah, so let's just speak in terms of the Chaldean and
• 27:48
  Assyrian Church, because like I said, the Assyrian Church is
• 27:51
  like the Orthodox Church. It's very similar in their
• 27:55
  liturgy and in the fact that they just have a patriarch.
• 27:58
  There was a schism, there was a split.
• 28:00
  Actually the Chaldean Church was not part of the Catholic Church
• 28:03
  officially, but some historians would would say that we never
• 28:09
  made an act of separation, which I believe is true.
• 28:13
  Like we never actually made an act of separation from the
• 28:16
  Catholic Church or from Rome, living the faith over here and
• 28:19
  that Rome. Was, you know, the Patriarch of
• 28:21
  Rome was. Doing the faith over here.
• 28:23
  Exactly. And there was no cell phone.
• 28:25
  There's no e-mail, there's no phone calls, all that stuff.
• 28:27
  So things wouldn't get their information and all that stuff.
• 28:31
  But we, we had the same faith and there was a split.
• 28:36
  And the Assyrian Church now is still not part of the of the
• 28:41
  Catholic Church, although there have been movements in the past
• 28:45
  and even a little bit now to try to unite our churches.
• 28:49
  We hope that one day it will happen because our faith is very
• 28:52
  similar. Like I was just at a mass.
• 28:55
  There's one Assyrian church in San Diego.
• 28:57
  And so I was just at a mass. Their patriarch Marawa came to
• 29:00
  visit San Diego and so the Chaldean Bishop Mark Emmanuel,
• 29:04
  Shalita and A and a couple of priests and I, we went to go
• 29:07
  visit there. And so we went to their, their
• 29:10
  liturgy and then we had dinner with them after.
• 29:12
  So it was, it was nice. Usually there's not that much
• 29:15
  interaction. Just in case the Pope's ring.
• 29:16
  Come on, guys. I.
• 29:18
  We were talking about that there actually, with the priest.
• 29:20
  Like that's the last step and. What's the what's the hesitation
• 29:24
  do you think? I don't know.
• 29:28
  I don't know. But what I tell them when I talk
• 29:32
  to them sometimes is that the Vatican is very good with us.
• 29:35
  Like they're not very authoritative over the the
• 29:40
  Chaldean Church. They have a great respect for
• 29:42
  the patriarchs and they really only deal with us and two
• 29:47
  things, which is they approve the final liturgical texts,
• 29:51
  which I think is very important. You know, it's good to not have
• 29:53
  the freedom to just go and change liturgy anytime you want.
• 29:56
  And the Pope will choose any new bishops and he'll take the
• 30:00
  recommendation of the patriarch and the Synod.
• 30:02
  But other than that, we are, oh, you know, we are free.
• 30:07
  And it's, it's cool because we are still members of the
• 30:12
  Catholic Church. And I think that that's what
• 30:13
  makes the Catholic Church like the formula for the unity of all
• 30:17
  Christians is because you can come and you can keep your
• 30:19
  liturgy. You can keep your traditions,
• 30:22
  you can keep your language, you can keep your customs, but
• 30:24
  you're still part of the Catholic Church.
• 30:25
  So that's why it's a beautiful thing for us Chaldean Catholics.
• 30:29
  And even, like you said, a lot of your listeners don't know a
• 30:33
  lot about the Chaldean Church. Even a lot of Chaldeans don't
• 30:36
  really know a lot about it. And one of the reasons for that
• 30:38
  is because most of the texts that we have about our Saints
• 30:42
  and our church fathers and our liturgy, most of them are in
• 30:45
  Aramaic. And our youth here are not
• 30:47
  really growing up speaking Aramaic.
• 30:48
  So that's why we have English Masses.
• 30:50
  We have times that, you know, we have prayer services where we
• 30:54
  teach the people about these things.
• 30:56
  We have new prayer books. So we're really trying to
• 30:59
  preserve the Chaldean heritage. I would call it like a flavor of
• 31:03
  Catholicism. It's a it's the same faith,
• 31:05
  different flavor, and we're trying to teach our people that
• 31:08
  so that they are inspired by the faith of our martyrs and our
• 31:11
  church fathers. But the combination or the, the,
• 31:15
  the, the thread that holds you together is your shared history
• 31:18
  and your ethnicity. I mean, it is an ethnicity and a
• 31:21
  common language and to some degree probably common customs.
• 31:26
  Although now that you're Americanized, how does that
• 31:28
  look? We're proud Chaldean Americans.
• 31:31
  Very, very proud Chaldean Americans.
• 31:33
  Yes. Oh, yeah, always.
• 31:35
  And just one thing on that note about the ISIS time, I remember
• 31:39
  hearing from people at the time, there's a lot of factions and
• 31:42
  divisions even within the Chaldeans and Assyrians and the
• 31:45
  Syriacs, right? Like different villages and
• 31:48
  which name are we going to be called?
• 31:50
  But I remember hearing from people at the time that when
• 31:54
  ISIS came, they didn't come and say, are you Chaldean, are you a
• 31:57
  Syrian? Are you Syriac?
• 31:58
  Are you from this village or that village?
• 31:59
  No, they were looking for Christians and they united
• 32:02
  themselves according to that. They, their main identity was to
• 32:07
  be followers of Jesus. And that is at the core of the
• 32:11
  Chaldean identity now is that we are, we are Christians, we are
• 32:15
  Catholics, members of the Catholic Church.
• 32:17
  And that is the main reason for our lives is to spread the word
• 32:23
  of Jesus and to be members of his Church.
• 32:26
  Amen. Why do you think that the
• 32:29
  obedience to Jesus but through Rome matters?
• 32:33
  And we talk about this sometimes on the podcast, but increasingly
• 32:36
  I'm having more priests on the show.
• 32:37
  Which is happening. I'm like.
• 32:39
  Becoming I'm like the 4th 1 and the priest interviewer.
• 32:42
  I love it. I love it.
• 32:43
  I'm. Like, OK, the audience.
• 32:44
  Is the longer they're right? Thank you guys, but we have
• 32:47
  Protestants listening, we have non Catholics and non Christians
• 32:50
  listening. We have Catholics, of course,
• 32:51
  listening. We have like, we don't have just
• 32:53
  this is not just like the Catholic show.
• 32:54
  I'm having all the all these amazing priests on.
• 32:57
  But I think this question kind of bubbles to the surface
• 33:00
  sometimes of why does it matter so much if we, if, if anyone who
• 33:04
  loves Jesus, if we're called by, you know, we, we, we profess the
• 33:07
  name of Jesus, we're trying to serve the Lord Jesus.
• 33:09
  You know, we, we try to live by largely speaking biblical truth
• 33:13
  and values. And I'm asking this a bit
• 33:15
  rhetorically because I have my own answer, but I want your
• 33:17
  answer, you particularly because of your history, your family
• 33:22
  history and your own faith. You know, you have this personal
• 33:25
  relationship with our Lord. You're, you're, you're a priest
• 33:28
  in the Chaldean, right? Why does it matter so much for
• 33:32
  you to be under the Roman Catholic Church as opposed to
• 33:36
  independent or maybe connected to the Assyrians or the Orthodox
• 33:40
  or prod it like do your own thing, like you have make it
• 33:43
  your own church. Why does it matter so much?
• 33:46
  The church is the body of Christ, and Jesus wanted
• 33:51
  everybody to experience not only him in a spiritual sense, but to
• 33:56
  experience his body as well. So Jesus came and walked around
• 34:01
  this world and he lived here for 33 years.
• 34:03
  For only three of those years he was actually serving.
• 34:07
  And I mean, he was doing his public ministry at the time.
• 34:11
  And then he went up to heaven after he died and rose.
• 34:14
  And it wasn't that he completed his ministry or his work of
• 34:18
  salvation for us. And it wasn't that only the
• 34:20
  people at the time had the opportunity to encounter his
• 34:24
  presence, his real physical presence.
• 34:26
  But he meant it for all time. So that's why at the Last Supper
• 34:30
  he took the bread, he blessed it, he broke it, and he gave it
• 34:32
  to them. And he said, do this in memory
• 34:34
  of me. And I think that that there's an
• 34:39
  interpretation of something that I always think about very deeply
• 34:43
  around Easter time, because we preach on this, on the Gospel of
• 34:46
  John's account and Mary Magdalene's encounter with Jesus
• 34:50
  about how she wanted to hold him.
• 34:53
  She wanted to, you know, he said, don't touch me, really.
• 34:57
  He said, don't hold on to me. And I, I think a simple
• 35:03
  explanation to that is that he was gone and she wanted to hold
• 35:07
  on to him. She didn't want him to leave.
• 35:08
  But he said, don't hold on to me for I have not yet ascended to
• 35:10
  my father because when he ascends to his father, he's
• 35:14
  going to be not only available for her in a physical way, but
• 35:17
  for the whole world through the Holy Spirit, through the power
• 35:21
  that he gives to the church. And so, you know, I was just
• 35:25
  with Ruslan, you were there too, right?
• 35:28
  Yeah. He's great and he's so awesome.
• 35:30
  And it was kind of funny how we were talking and he was
• 35:34
  interviewing me, but there was only one question that I asked
• 35:37
  him. Which is why aren't you
• 35:39
  Catholic? We spoke about that, but we're
• 35:43
  talking about the Eucharist and about the real presence.
• 35:47
  And he said he and Zach as Co host, they said, yeah, I was
• 35:51
  actually pretty shocked to hear they said we believe in the in,
• 35:54
  in the real presence. And I was shocked that I said,
• 35:57
  why do you believe in the real presence in the Eucharist?
• 36:00
  Like what makes yours the Eucharist and what's the
• 36:03
  difference between that and ours?
• 36:05
  And the conversation led to me telling them that I don't
• 36:07
  believe that there's the Eucharist.
• 36:09
  And the reason for that is because they're not part of the
• 36:12
  Apostolic Church. They're their pastors, are not
• 36:18
  ordained priests that have a direct connection to the
• 36:21
  apostles and which means to Jesus.
• 36:24
  And Jesus had a hierarchy for his apostles, right?
• 36:28
  For his disciples. He had 72 disciples, 12
• 36:31
  apostles, three more important ones, Peter, James and John, and
• 36:36
  then one most important one, who is Saint Peter, who he gave the
• 36:40
  keys of the Kingdom to and said you have the power to loose and
• 36:44
  to bind on on earth as as in heaven.
• 36:48
  And so I think Jesus gave us the formula for the unity of all
• 36:51
  Christians, which is the apostles under Peter.
• 36:55
  Beautiful, yeah. Yeah, the Pope.
• 36:57
  I think so too. But I think there's also, I, I
• 37:01
  think there's confusion too, even about the Orthodox
• 37:04
  tradition, because, you know, there was, as you said, the
• 37:07
  schism, the split and the Orthodox priest, you know, they
• 37:11
  are in the line of the apostles, the line of Saint Peter.
• 37:15
  And so they do have the power to consecrate.
• 37:18
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We believe in their Eucharist.
• 37:19
  We believe in their Eucharist is Jesus, but my understanding is
• 37:23
  it's valid, but it's not licit. Yeah, it's not lawful in the
• 37:27
  sense that they are not under. They're not in the full unity.
• 37:30
  Yeah. So of course, the priest still
• 37:31
  has that power through his ordination, the gift of his
• 37:34
  ordination, but they're just not fully in line with Rome.
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  delivered. Do you think that there will be
• 38:34
  a day when we will all be under one family?
• 38:38
  I definitely hope so. I I mean.
• 38:40
  All the churches, and I don't just mean like the Orthodox and
• 38:43
  you mentioned the Assyrians, but I mean all the evangelicals and
• 38:48
  the denominations like the Lutherans and the Presbyterians
• 38:52
  and the Anglicans, Like when are we all going to be together
• 38:54
  under one head? Yeah, we got to keep working
• 38:57
  towards that with love and with humility and with respect, while
• 39:00
  also not denying what we believe.
• 39:03
  I think that's very important. And in the work for that
• 39:08
  ecumenical, you know, Spirit, we have to make sure that we don't
• 39:11
  deny what we believe, but that we hold firm and that we explain
• 39:16
  it. That first of all, we know it
• 39:18
  well, everything that we believe so that we can explain it well.
• 39:21
  And that's an opportunity for evangelization as well.
• 39:24
  If we believe strongly about the teachings of the church and of
• 39:27
  the Bible and we show people how they are biblical.
• 39:30
  I mean, the Bible is our source of God's revelation for the
• 39:36
  whole world, right? And especially for all
• 39:38
  Christians because they all believe in it.
• 39:40
  And so if we just keep on focusing on the Scriptures and
• 39:44
  teaching people about the teachings of the church, like,
• 39:46
  you know, the assumption was yesterday, you know, OK, it's
• 39:50
  not explicitly mentioned in the Bible.
• 39:51
  But, you know, if we have relationships with people, we
• 39:55
  can have longer conversations. So we can show that it's not
• 39:58
  just about proof texts. It's about.
• 40:01
  Delving deep into the Word of God and understanding the story
• 40:04
  of salvation which ends in the church being the one that will
• 40:11
  the the institution and the home that will get us to heaven.
• 40:17
  What's been the hardest part of your priesthood, Father?
• 40:20
  That's a good question. All great questions.
• 40:23
  Hardest part of my priesthood, I'll tell you.
• 40:27
  Just an experience that happens more often than than I would
• 40:32
  like, for sure. I would never want this to
• 40:33
  happen. But it's really hard to
• 40:35
  experience when you grow up, like when a kid grows up in
• 40:39
  church and let's say, like, you baptize the kid.
• 40:41
  I mean, I've been a priest just over 9 1/2 years.
• 40:43
  So some kids that are baptized are, you know, eight or nine
• 40:47
  years old now. It's very hard to see a young
• 40:51
  person who was involved in the church and to see them be LED
• 40:53
  astray and to see them leave the church and to live a life
• 40:58
  outside of the teachings of Jesus and of the Bible and of
• 41:02
  the faith and there not being anything that you could do,
• 41:05
  right. So, I mean, we can do a lot as
• 41:08
  priests. We have a great power that has
• 41:10
  been given to us by Jesus to perform the sacraments.
• 41:14
  But that's a sad, hard part. And it's a reality of the
• 41:18
  priesthood that I mean, we just have to keep on doing our best
• 41:21
  to bring people to him, go out and get people beefishers of
• 41:24
  men. But that's a very hard part.
• 41:26
  I mean, ultimately it's not in our control.
• 41:29
  It's it's in God's hands. And God allows people to make
• 41:32
  decisions. We have to do our best to give
• 41:35
  them the nourishment, the spiritual nourishment that they
• 41:37
  need. Is that why you started your
• 41:39
  TikTok? Account yeah, I mean, it was at
• 41:41
  the time of the COVID lockdowns and people were really scared
• 41:45
  and they weren't coming to church often.
• 41:47
  And so I was actually talking to my little cousin and she showed
• 41:51
  me video on TikTok, which was a pastor or something talking.
• 41:57
  And I said, what platform is that on?
• 41:58
  Because I'd never seen it. I I mean, I had seen some TikTok
• 42:02
  videos but it was unrecognizable to me because I thought it was
• 42:06
  only about like dancing and stuff, you know, because it used
• 42:08
  to be called musically, no. Not.
• 42:11
  Bother. Actually, I, I, I grew up kind
• 42:14
  of shy. And so there's very beautiful
• 42:16
  Chaldean traditional dances, like in a, in a circle.
• 42:20
  Yeah. But I just never really learned
• 42:25
  how to dance like that. But so my cousin told me that.
• 42:30
  So she showed me videos of Catholic and Christian content
• 42:34
  on the app. Not really Catholic.
• 42:35
  There's barely any Catholic content.
• 42:37
  So I said we got to get the message out to people.
• 42:39
  We have to reach people where they are.
• 42:41
  And so I started doing that and among other things, which is
• 42:47
  that we, me and the Chaldean priest that served with me, we
• 42:50
  have great ministries, you know, physical interactions with
• 42:54
  people as well as social media ministries.
• 42:56
  One of the my favorite ministries actually.
• 42:58
  And I started this when I was in high school.
• 43:01
  I called it Youth for Truth. I would gather with some of my
• 43:04
  friends and it, it ended up being almost every Chaldean at
• 43:08
  the school, we'd gather once a week and do like a Bible study
• 43:11
  and have pizza during lunch. And it kind of stopped after I
• 43:14
  graduated high school. And I and I told some youth
• 43:16
  about that a few years ago and they were inspired by it.
• 43:19
  And so now a couple priests and I actually help them, and we go
• 43:23
  to five or six different high schools every every week, and we
• 43:26
  do a Bible study and take pizza. Amazing.
• 43:28
  That's cool. Yeah.
• 43:29
  What kind of fruit do you see from your ministry among
• 43:32
  especially younger people? There is, you know, 2
• 43:36
  narratives, I guess 1 is that, oh, America's youth are in
• 43:38
  trouble. They're all going crazy.
• 43:41
  They're so confused on politics and morality.
• 43:46
  There's so much woundedness, mental health, suicide addition,
• 43:49
  suicide ideation and suicide, you know, suicide attempts.
• 43:53
  Like it's just a mess right there out there for young
• 43:55
  people, especially Gen. Z many and now Gen.
• 43:58
  Alpha. And then I hear and I see
• 44:00
  personally conversion and all of these strong young people who
• 44:05
  are fighting for family and life and who are passionate about
• 44:08
  their faith and, you know, bucking.
• 44:10
  And now it's in a way it's almost a rebellious thing to
• 44:13
  live a moral life in service of Christ instead of living the way
• 44:17
  the culture recommends. What do you see?
• 44:19
  I mean, you said you go to five different high schools in San
• 44:21
  Diego a week. You see, I see people and youth
• 44:25
  on fire for their faith and they just want to learn.
• 44:29
  They want to receive the sacraments.
• 44:30
  I mean you should see our confession lines are are crazy
• 44:34
  at our churches. In San.
• 44:36
  Diego in San Diego, yeah, Chaldean churches and so many
• 44:39
  youth young people. I have a group of many altar
• 44:45
  servers between 40 and 50, sometimes even more that come to
• 44:49
  daily Mass actually. And they serve daily Mass and we
• 44:52
  do the prayers of the Chaldean liturgy and English, we chant
• 44:56
  them. It's a very, very beautiful
• 44:57
  thing to see. And one of the reasons for that,
• 44:59
  one of the ways that it started. It's a cool story because I, you
• 45:03
  know, I mentioned I'm a big Padres fan and I love sports.
• 45:05
  I love to play basketball. And one of my friends, he called
• 45:09
  me one day. He said, I have this really nice
• 45:10
  basketball hoop, but I don't need it anymore.
• 45:13
  So he said, do you want? I said, yeah, bring it to the
• 45:15
  church. And so we set it up in the
• 45:17
  church and at the same time, I started a evening daily Mass in
• 45:21
  English because we only had one daily Mass.
• 45:24
  It was Justin Chaldean Aramaic at my church in the morning.
• 45:27
  So I started that Mass and kids would come and play basketball
• 45:30
  at the church and I would just go up to them and say, guys, you
• 45:32
  can come play whenever you want. I just have one rule.
• 45:35
  Don't play during Mass and I didn't really intend for this to
• 45:40
  happen, but one by one they started coming to Mass and then
• 45:43
  they started to serve the mass and then now it's this, this big
• 45:46
  group and do. They play after mass.
• 45:48
  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:51
  I have. I have more fun than most of
• 45:53
  them, probably, you know, But I think that's one of the great
• 45:57
  things about my ministry. One of the things that I'm
• 45:59
  seeing is the closeness of people to the church community
• 46:02
  is that it's not just ideas for them, but they are actually
• 46:05
  encountering Jesus in the sacraments.
• 46:08
  And we go out and get them. Like we go to the high schools,
• 46:12
  we post online, right? But the most important thing is
• 46:16
  not just to learn about Jesus, but it's to encounter him is to
• 46:19
  receive his body and to become Jesus.
• 46:22
  And so that's what I'm seeing a lot.
• 46:24
  Obviously there are many struggles, but the relationship
• 46:27
  that we priests and that, you know, Catholic leaders like you
• 46:30
  have with the people is something that is really
• 46:32
  nourishing their faith and helping them grow.
• 46:35
  What do you recommend? What's your advice for someone
• 46:37
  listening who maybe is hungry for that, but when they show up
• 46:41
  at their local parish, you know, or maybe they're evangelical and
• 46:44
  they've tried different churches and they just feel that they've
• 46:47
  haven't found that community. Yeah, it's tough, especially
• 46:54
  when it's not really possible for you to just go and keep
• 46:56
  looking, right? Like I really feel for people
• 46:59
  who don't feel the sense of community with other people.
• 47:03
  I would encourage them though, to focus on Jesus and his love
• 47:10
  for them and the way that he wants to give himself to them,
• 47:13
  which is in humility and becoming vulnerable in the, in
• 47:18
  the, in the Eucharist, which he sacrificed for us.
• 47:21
  And the Eucharist is there, no matter which language it's in,
• 47:25
  if you enjoy the Mass or not, if you have fuzzy feelings during
• 47:29
  the Mass or not, if you enjoy the homily or not, right?
• 47:32
  The Eucharist is still there. It's still Jesus.
• 47:35
  And as hard as it is for some people who don't have the
• 47:38
  community, I would encourage them to persevere in their
• 47:41
  faith. That's what that's what Jesus
• 47:43
  says. And that maybe God is calling
• 47:44
  them to be instruments of his grace for other people.
• 47:47
  Maybe He wants them to go and to experience Him so that he
• 47:52
  touches their hearts and so that they can help other people who
• 47:54
  have the same experiences as them.
• 47:55
  He can help other people get closer to Him through their
• 47:58
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• 49:58
  Be the community. Yeah.
• 49:59
  And love Jesus a lot and let him love you.
• 50:02
  That's so good. What do you when you became a
• 50:05
  priest and he said nine years now.
• 50:06
  Yeah. Of being a priest.
• 50:08
  What's been the most surprising thing about being a priest?
• 50:12
  Deep questions today. I'm sorry.
• 50:14
  I love them. No, no, no.
• 50:15
  I love it. They're like, we just do TikTok.
• 50:17
  Videos of the Padres. On cooking right?
• 50:21
  You do TikTok videos on cooking. Yeah, Well, not.
• 50:23
  No, I don't cook. I I do food reviews.
• 50:25
  Sometimes. You do food reviews?
• 50:26
  Yeah. Most surprising thing.
• 50:33
  I don't know. I I didn't know how much.
• 50:37
  I didn't know how much I would enjoy it.
• 50:39
  Let's just say it's great, OK? Because in my discernment, I was
• 50:45
  thinking about the sacrificial aspect of it.
• 50:48
  I'm going to have to sacrifice having a wife and kids and I'm
• 50:50
  giving my life to be with Jesus and to walk with him and to, you
• 50:54
  know, be a priest in the church and to sacrifice my life for the
• 50:58
  good of souls. But I, I didn't know how much I
• 51:00
  would enjoy it. And it's a very beautiful thing,
• 51:03
  like, and I, I think it's the same thing with like a father of
• 51:06
  a family. Yes, there's a big sacrificial
• 51:09
  aspect to it. You have to sacrifice, you have
• 51:11
  to go to work, you know, you have to be there for your wife
• 51:13
  and kids and be a virtuous person.
• 51:15
  And that takes a lot of work. But the more you put into it,
• 51:18
  the more you're going to actually enjoy it.
• 51:20
  Being with, with your family and being that person that's there
• 51:23
  for them, rather than if a man were to give in to his desires
• 51:27
  and go hang out with his friends all the time, or, you know, give
• 51:30
  in to his lustful passions or stuff like that.
• 51:34
  He's going to be just satisfying a desire in himself, a temporary
• 51:37
  desire, but he's not going to be fulfilling who he is called to
• 51:41
  be as a man. But the more you do that, the
• 51:43
  more you fulfill your vocation, what God has called you to do,
• 51:46
  the more God actually wants you to enjoy it.
• 51:49
  And so I thought I'm going to be giving up wife and kids, but God
• 51:53
  actually fulfilled those desires in me, you know, in a way that
• 51:58
  it that I, I could have never imagined.
• 52:02
  And so that was very surprising and very joyful.
• 52:05
  There is advice I heard about a priest saying one time I think
• 52:09
  about how to discern whether or not you have a religious
• 52:12
  vocation. So this could work for women,
• 52:14
  but it's mostly for men considering the priesthood.
• 52:16
  But women can have a religious vocation obviously too.
• 52:18
  You know, be a non nervous sister.
• 52:21
  And he was saying that if he, if he, if it's impossible to
• 52:25
  imagine life without a family, like marriage, kids, like it's
• 52:30
  like kills you, like waking up in a bed alone each morning, you
• 52:33
  know, and knowing, OK, this is me.
• 52:34
  You know, I'm, I have a community of people in my
• 52:36
  household maybe, but I don't have a spouse.
• 52:38
  I don't have kids, biological kids or adopted kids in that
• 52:41
  way. But if you can imagine, you
• 52:44
  might maybe imagine it'd be like, yeah, that would be maybe
• 52:46
  tough sometimes, but I think I can do it.
• 52:48
  That's sometimes a a clue for, yeah, you might have a vocation.
• 52:54
  But if it's like, I can't even imagine that that would kill me.
• 52:56
  It's so painful. Then maybe you don't have a
• 52:59
  vocation and you don't have to torment yourself because I think
• 53:02
  a lot of really faithful young Catholics I have seen anyways,
• 53:06
  they just torment themselves sometimes about what is God
• 53:09
  calling me to. I'm going to go discern at this
• 53:12
  religion disorder or this priest or this because they really want
• 53:15
  to give themselves to God, which is beautiful.
• 53:16
  They're very wholehearted. They want to give themselves to
• 53:18
  God. But part of our vocation, yeah,
• 53:21
  it's sacrifice, but it's also, it's also joy and peace, right?
• 53:24
  Definitely. I mean, what?
• 53:25
  What advice do you have for people discerning their
• 53:29
  vocation? Yeah, I would say, first of all,
• 53:31
  don't force it, right. Just like you mentioned, don't
• 53:33
  force something that's not there.
• 53:37
  The Bible talks about that. We have to accept the different
• 53:41
  gifts that God has given us, the gifts of the Spirit.
• 53:44
  Jesus says when he's talking about Unix for the Kingdom, he
• 53:48
  says let he who is willing to accept it, accept it, right?
• 53:50
  So there has to be a desire. What does that mean?
• 53:53
  Unix for the. Kingdom Unix.
• 53:54
  For the Kingdom, it means people who have dedicated themselves to
• 53:58
  celibacy for the sake of the SO. Jesus wasn't talking about
• 54:01
  people who are actually castrated.
• 54:02
  He was. No, Yeah, that's a, that's a
• 54:04
  good celibacy. Yes, definitely.
• 54:05
  I think so most people get this confusion about.
• 54:07
  That yes, yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 54:09
  So it's the people that have the desire for that St.
• 54:11
  Saint John Paul the the second talks about that and the
• 54:13
  theology of the body in a in a beautiful way.
• 54:15
  It's about the people that have the desire for that, but also
• 54:21
  God could be placing a desire in your heart to serve.
• 54:25
  And it doesn't have to be necessarily in the priesthood.
• 54:27
  The church needs good people all over the world.
• 54:31
  And so my advice would be two things, like practically
• 54:36
  speaking, would be to seek like a spiritual father, spiritual
• 54:39
  director to guide you in the process, but ultimately to go to
• 54:45
  Jesus, seek first the Kingdom of God, and all these things will
• 54:48
  be given you. Go to Jesus, deepen your
• 54:52
  relationship with him. You know, there's that book,
• 54:54
  Soul of the Apostolate, one of my favorite books.
• 54:57
  Someone was just talking about that.
• 54:59
  Oh, yeah. Father Jason.
• 55:00
  Father Jason, right? Yeah, yeah.
• 55:01
  Yeah, maybe. Yeah, maybe that's why it's on
• 55:03
  my mind. We should do a book club guys,
• 55:05
  what do you? Think that is such an incredible
• 55:07
  book. It had such a big impact on me
• 55:09
  and my ministry because the premise of the book is if you
• 55:12
  want to minister well, go to Jesus more, you know, go pray
• 55:17
  more, go to Mass, go to Adoration.
• 55:20
  You know, a lot of the time I feel like when people discern,
• 55:23
  they're, they just try to think, oh, what should I do?
• 55:26
  What should I do? Right?
• 55:27
  Go to Jesus and he's going to bring you peace and he's going
• 55:31
  to show you. Like physically go to Jesus.
• 55:33
  Physically go to Jesus. It is true.
• 55:35
  I feel like my my biggest vocational moments, defining
• 55:38
  moments like meeting and marrying my husband and like
• 55:40
  getting over like all the chaos of dating in my 20s and figuring
• 55:44
  out like maybe I'm supposed to be consecrated, you know, I
• 55:46
  don't know, like in the celibate or who knows?
• 55:48
  But it was in adoration and just opening your heart to Jesus.
• 55:52
  Tell him everything and just say do with me what you will like
• 55:56
  whatever you want. Lord, you know, and he's so,
• 55:58
  He's so peaceful and. Generous I know like how Mother
• 56:02
  Mary was you know, she she's the model of vocations because she
• 56:09
  was betrothed to Joseph and she received a call from the Angel
• 56:14
  and she she discerned the angels call.
• 56:18
  There is actually a beautiful hymn from the Chaldean liturgy.
• 56:22
  This is just an example of the Chaldean spirituality, which I
• 56:24
  think it's good that it came to my mind to share with people.
• 56:28
  There was one of the church fathers of the Chaldean Church.
• 56:31
  His name is Saint Narsay Martin Narsay.
• 56:34
  He was around the time of Saint Ephraim.
• 56:36
  They like had encounters together, but he was one of the
• 56:39
  great church fathers of the Chaldean church.
• 56:42
  He wrote a hymn which is kind of poetic about the Annunciation,
• 56:48
  which is a Chaldean style of theology, which was basically an
• 56:53
  exposition of the Bible passage where it takes the characters.
• 56:57
  Like, let's say there's a short dialogue in the Bible and it
• 57:00
  takes the characters and it basically like expands their
• 57:02
  conversation to show theological points.
• 57:05
  And so the hymn is Mary and the Angel Gabriel going back and
• 57:08
  forth with each other. There's just a couple lines in
• 57:10
  the Scripture, right, and the Annunciation passage.
• 57:12
  But the hymn of Saint Narsay is going back and forth a lot to
• 57:16
  show like what was on Mary's mind at the time.
• 57:19
  And he shows her questioning a lot about what it means.
• 57:24
  Yeah. What it means about like, why?
• 57:26
  Like, how can this be, right? That's, that's what, that's what
• 57:29
  Mary said. And one of the things that she
• 57:31
  says is my mother, Eve was deceived by a supernatural
• 57:35
  person, by a supernatural being. And so I, I, I want to make sure
• 57:39
  that I'm not being deceived because what you're telling me
• 57:41
  is unheard of, right? And so it's not until obviously,
• 57:45
  like in the Scripture, she hears the mention of the Holy Spirit,
• 57:48
  that it's going to be done by God, by the power of the Holy
• 57:50
  Spirit. And then in the Gospel passage
• 57:53
  and in Martin Nurse's account, there's no more questions
• 57:55
  afterwards, there's full acceptance.
• 57:57
  So the point for discernment is she questioned, she didn't
• 58:01
  understand something. She said how can this be since I
• 58:04
  have not known men or have you heard the thing by the way of
• 58:07
  the Mary being consecrated a virgin before that moment?
• 58:12
  I have her. Yeah.
• 58:13
  It's it's crazy. It is crazy.
• 58:14
  Because which is crazy that she would then be betrothed to
• 58:16
  Joseph. Yeah, it's very.
• 58:18
  It brings up a lot of. Consecrated as a virgin.
• 58:21
  So, yeah, we're just for people listening, there's a an, you
• 58:24
  know, a history and we don't know if it's true.
• 58:26
  It's it's a it's a tradition that Mary was consecrated by
• 58:31
  her, you know, for free will, but with her parent, through
• 58:33
  her, with her parents to be a virgin for Jesus.
• 58:36
  And this was a thing like a lot of these young girls at the time
• 58:39
  like that, that was a thing to be consecrated like the other.
• 58:41
  It wasn't just Mary, right? There were other.
• 58:43
  Girls that were. Consecrated and she was
• 58:45
  consecrated and then she was betrothed to Joseph, but that
• 58:48
  was done culturally for protection of her as she got
• 58:51
  older. Because there was no confidence
• 58:52
  for her to go join. She would have respected her
• 58:54
  virginity, her consecration, right?
• 58:56
  That was the that's the understanding.
• 58:58
  Yeah, so there was a law in the Book of Numbers.
• 59:00
  Brent Petrie would quote this a lot better than me because he he
• 59:04
  wrote a whole chapter of this in his book Jesus and the Jewish
• 59:06
  Roots of Mary, one of the best books on Mary that I've read, by
• 59:09
  the way. And he quotes a law from the
• 59:12
  book of Numbers that was about that, that was about the other
• 59:16
  spouse accepting A vow like that.
• 59:20
  And so he says that there is precedent for it even in the Old
• 59:22
  Testament. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 59:27
  And so the way to read Mary's question in that light is not
• 59:33
  how are you going to make this happen, Right.
• 59:36
  But no, it's how can this be, since I do not know, man.
• 59:39
  So it's the present tense word that is used there.
• 59:42
  It's a continuous word. Like that's what's implied.
• 59:46
  It's the the question, can we translate it to what should I
• 59:51
  do? Like what am I going to do to
• 59:54
  accomplish this? Because I don't have plans to
• 59:57
  have intimate relations with a man.
• 59:59
  So are you telling me to do that or is there another way?
• 1:00:03
  Right. So that's one way of reading.
• 1:00:05
  It I mean it make it kind of makes sense.
• 1:00:06
  Yeah, it does make sense because.
• 1:00:08
  Especially if she was a consecrated virgin and
• 1:00:10
  regardless she was a virgin. You know, they she hadn't
• 1:00:13
  consummated anything with Joseph, if that you know, some
• 1:00:16
  Protestants believable she went on and had kids.
• 1:00:17
  But, you know, obviously we believe in the in the virginity
• 1:00:20
  of Mary beyond even the birth of Jesus.
• 1:00:22
  But yeah, it makes sense. It's like, how's this going to
• 1:00:25
  happen, guys? Like she didn't assume that it
• 1:00:28
  would be through the power of the Holy Spirit.
• 1:00:29
  Yeah. Who would assume that?
• 1:00:30
  Yeah, yeah. Who would?
• 1:00:32
  Yeah, right. And so that's when the Angel
• 1:00:35
  explains to her like, look, you don't have to go and do that.
• 1:00:41
  We're going to God is going to take care of it in a miraculous
• 1:00:45
  way. And then that's when Mary says,
• 1:00:46
  behold, I'm the handmaid of the Lord.
• 1:00:48
  Let it be done to me according to your words.
• 1:00:50
  So it was a passive acceptance of God's will.
• 1:00:55
  It was her uniting her will to God's will.
• 1:00:58
  And that's what answering the vocational call is like.
• 1:01:02
  How Mary responded to that. She questioned, she discerned,
• 1:01:07
  and she accepted actively. You know, she, she accepted
• 1:01:12
  God's will in her life and she made herself to be an instrument
• 1:01:15
  or the handmaid of the Lord. I love that she was, she was
• 1:01:18
  receptive, but she was passively.
• 1:01:21
  She's receptive, actively. Passive, you know, but but also
• 1:01:25
  later on, like she goes to the Hill Country to go see her
• 1:01:27
  cousin. Like she, she's like first
• 1:01:29
  trimester pregnant. That's not easy, but she's like,
• 1:01:31
  she takes Mary's a woman of action as much as she's also a
• 1:01:34
  woman of meditation. Like she's listening.
• 1:01:36
  She's receiving the word of the Lord and and Saint Joseph is
• 1:01:39
  too. You know Jesus speaks to him in
• 1:01:40
  dreams, but then he takes action like he he has to figure it out
• 1:01:43
  to. Protect.
• 1:01:44
  Jesus and Mary and I, I love that the implication for our
• 1:01:47
  faith and especially for discernment, because Jesus wants
• 1:01:50
  us to ask. He wants us to ask.
• 1:01:52
  He wants us to in a way wrestle like disgust, but he wants us to
• 1:01:55
  be at peace in the asking, to know that it's already taken
• 1:01:59
  care of. But you're going to use your
• 1:02:00
  reason and your circumstances and and and the graces I give
• 1:02:04
  you to navigate whatever the situation is.
• 1:02:06
  Yeah, You mentioned Saint Joseph, and it says that he had
• 1:02:11
  decided these things, like to go to go to Egypt and those moves
• 1:02:16
  that he had to make to protect Jesus or just going back when he
• 1:02:22
  was confused. We're not exactly sure what he
• 1:02:25
  thought of or what he heard from Mary about her pregnancy, but
• 1:02:29
  it's said that he decided something, right?
• 1:02:31
  He decided to to, Yeah, put her away quietly because he was a
• 1:02:35
  just man. It said that he decided, but he
• 1:02:38
  didn't make a move until the Angel told him what to do.
• 1:02:42
  So he did the the work of discernment and he decided
• 1:02:47
  something. God didn't want him to do that.
• 1:02:50
  And so it's it's like he was so much at peace and in unity with
• 1:02:54
  God that even in his sleep, he was receiving messages from God
• 1:02:58
  and he was listening. And then he woke up.
• 1:03:00
  And it said right when he woke up, he did exactly what the So
• 1:03:03
  wait, just what the Angel told him you?
• 1:03:04
  Wouldn't listen to who's discerning something.
• 1:03:06
  If you decide something and you're a piece about it after
• 1:03:09
  using the best of your reason and your abilities, don't go
• 1:03:12
  change that decision if you don't get a.
• 1:03:13
  Dream like if you get a. Miraculous dream then yeah, go
• 1:03:16
  with what? You thank you for that
• 1:03:17
  clarification. I don't know.
• 1:03:19
  And if you get a dream of an Angel, go ask a spiritual
• 1:03:22
  director about. It to confirm where the angel's
• 1:03:25
  coming. From yes, exactly.
• 1:03:27
  That makes a lot of sense, Yeah. Any other advice, Father Simon,
• 1:03:30
  for people who are wanting to grow in their faith, especially
• 1:03:34
  younger people, especially in with crazy, like, you know, just
• 1:03:38
  I, I, I just talked to a lot of people and they're there's, I
• 1:03:40
  mean, marriages are struggling. People who are young, you know,
• 1:03:43
  struggling to build community, struggling to like live by the
• 1:03:46
  faith. And you're in San Diego.
• 1:03:48
  We're both in California. Like this is not like the most,
• 1:03:52
  you know, the culture here sometimes can be very tough.
• 1:03:54
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:03:56
  Nothing compared to like ISIS in Iraq though.
• 1:03:59
  Or. You know.
• 1:04:00
  We're so blessed here. We're so, you know, we have so
• 1:04:02
  many freedoms. Yeah, but it's it's a different
• 1:04:04
  battle here. It's a different battle.
• 1:04:06
  It's a spiritual battle more, you know, there was the
• 1:04:09
  spiritual battle aspect over there too, you know, battling
• 1:04:11
  Islam and all that. But here there's a there's a
• 1:04:13
  different one and it's very subtle and it's very dangerous
• 1:04:17
  as well. And the one advice with the one
• 1:04:21
  piece of advice that I would give, which is, you know, very,
• 1:04:25
  it's very important and this is from the Bible and the church,
• 1:04:28
  It's don't make it all about yourself and about what you know
• 1:04:32
  or about what you think. Takes a lot of humility, which
• 1:04:36
  is the root of all virtues. It's the foundation to say and
• 1:04:40
  to accept the fact that I'm not in charge and that I don't know
• 1:04:43
  what's best for my life. The Creator knows much better
• 1:04:47
  for me. So rely on the Creator, not on
• 1:04:50
  the created or not on your own kind of flawed mentality.
• 1:04:56
  All of us have a darkened intellect because of sin.
• 1:04:58
  You know, even though we have original sin removed from us
• 1:05:02
  after baptism, we still have the concupiscence, which is just the
• 1:05:05
  confusion of our hearts. All of us do.
• 1:05:08
  And so we can't rely on that. We are confused.
• 1:05:10
  We have darkened intellects. We cannot rely on ourselves on
• 1:05:13
  our desires, which are changing. We have to rely on the Rock, You
• 1:05:18
  know, the church, the the foundation that Jesus gave us.
• 1:05:22
  The church is a mother for us. God is our father, and he wants
• 1:05:26
  us to be members of that church community.
• 1:05:28
  So in a practical sense, I would say focus on the Bible and on
• 1:05:33
  the teachings of the church, especially on matters of faith
• 1:05:37
  and morals. All the moral teaching of, you
• 1:05:40
  know, the sexual teaching of the church is so important for us as
• 1:05:44
  human beings, the way that we'll use our desires and our souls
• 1:05:48
  and our bodies to love one another and to build the Kingdom
• 1:05:51
  of God in this world. We can't do it only the way that
• 1:05:54
  we desire. We have to do it the way that
• 1:05:56
  God wants of us. And that's shown to us and it's
• 1:05:59
  taught to us through his church. There's one thing you said that
• 1:06:02
  I just want to follow up on because I think it's a, it's a
• 1:06:04
  misunderstanding today, especially about about
• 1:06:08
  Catholics, about priests. And you hear our priests so you
• 1:06:11
  can answer, you know, the, the sexual, the ethics of the
• 1:06:15
  Church, you know, the moral teaching of the Church.
• 1:06:17
  You know, no sexual activity before marriage.
• 1:06:19
  And then within marriage, there's a guideline for it.
• 1:06:21
  You know, it's not like just do whatever you get married and
• 1:06:23
  then whatever goes. It's like chastity before and
• 1:06:26
  after marriage gift. Your body is a gift, a gift of
• 1:06:29
  self being open to life. These teachings are very counter
• 1:06:31
  cultural, I think even confusing to a lot of people, but I think
• 1:06:35
  a lot of people too on priestly celibacy, I think it's just
• 1:06:38
  crazy. Like they think you're crazy.
• 1:06:40
  I know. I know.
• 1:06:41
  And I'm sure you've gotten this before, right?
• 1:06:43
  Yeah. Is it crazy?
• 1:06:45
  Is priestly celibacy crazy? I don't think it's crazy.
• 1:06:52
  I think that it's a, it's a beautiful gift that God has
• 1:06:55
  allowed us priests to give and to participate in his gift for
• 1:06:59
  the church. And I mean, people might say
• 1:07:04
  it's crazy just to have only one sexual partner.
• 1:07:07
  You know 1. Wife.
• 1:07:08
  Yeah. And husband, I think that we, we
• 1:07:12
  both have challenges and that Catholic man has a lot of
• 1:07:16
  challenges in his life to be faithful.
• 1:07:18
  But the more that he encounters Jesus and practices the virtue
• 1:07:24
  of chastity, the more he'll be faithful.
• 1:07:26
  And like I said, the more he will enjoy also being a husband.
• 1:07:30
  And so I think priestly celibacy is a gift that God allows us to
• 1:07:35
  participate in, like I said. And there's actually something
• 1:07:40
  when I was discerning, there's something that I heard from a
• 1:07:42
  priest, I, I forgot his name, but I was watching a thing on
• 1:07:45
  EWTN. Nice.
• 1:07:47
  Yeah, our. Partner.
• 1:07:48
  Yeah, yeah, I just heard that before this.
• 1:07:51
  That's that's very. Cool.
• 1:07:52
  Thank you. This is Yeah.
• 1:07:53
  Thank you for this. Gosh, it was this old Italian
• 1:07:57
  priest. I'm sure people will know, but.
• 1:07:59
  Not the Chaldeans, I'm Italian. Yeah, what was his name?
• 1:08:02
  Oh my gosh. Anyways, this is also another
• 1:08:05
  one of my core memories, especially in my discernment.
• 1:08:09
  I was a young high schooler and so I was, you know, attracted to
• 1:08:13
  a girl at the time. And I was having struggles with
• 1:08:17
  that and with my my discernment. But I knew somehow that God was
• 1:08:21
  calling me to become a priest or I was really, really convinced
• 1:08:24
  of it. And I was really confused about
• 1:08:25
  this desire that I had for the girl.
• 1:08:28
  And I remember this priest talking about that and I just
• 1:08:31
  stumbled upon it watching EWTN. And he said, if, if the girl has
• 1:08:37
  a capacity to make you happy as a man, where does she get the
• 1:08:42
  capacity from? She gets it from God.
• 1:08:44
  God is the the creator. As a celibate priest, you're
• 1:08:48
  cutting out the middle man or woman.
• 1:08:50
  You're going directly to God, who is the source.
• 1:08:53
  So if he's calling you to that, trust that he's going to fulfill
• 1:08:57
  your happiness. And that was a huge step for me
• 1:09:00
  because it was a moment where I had to just trust in God and say
• 1:09:04
  God, if you really want this from me, I know that that you
• 1:09:07
  will make me happy. Beautiful.
• 1:09:09
  And do you believe you're you seem pretty?
• 1:09:11
  Happy. Yeah, Yeah, very happy working
• 1:09:13
  so far. I would not change it for for
• 1:09:15
  anything in the world. Beautiful Yeah Father, where can
• 1:09:18
  people find your stuff like you're you have a podcast too or
• 1:09:21
  a. Couple of podcasts it sounds.
• 1:09:22
  Like and then your TikTok and Instagram.
• 1:09:24
  Yeah, so I do have my personal social media pages mostly on
• 1:09:28
  TikTok and Instagram, little bit on X, but TikTok, Instagram, you
• 1:09:33
  can just type in Father Simon and I post a lot of content on
• 1:09:36
  their daily prayers. I do the rosary on most days on
• 1:09:41
  their live. And like you said, I started a
• 1:09:44
  podcast with my priest friends. It's a Catholic media company,
• 1:09:49
  Chaldean Catholic media company called Urbana Media, which is
• 1:09:52
  the Aramaic word for Eucharist. And we have a show called
• 1:09:55
  Feeding fathers on on there where it's just a long form
• 1:09:58
  podcast show where we talk about cultural topics and bringing
• 1:10:01
  them from a Catholic perspective.
• 1:10:04
  And I will be starting hopefully soon at kids Bible study Show.
• 1:10:07
  So I'm really looking forward to that.
• 1:10:09
  Yeah, and the feeding fathers. You talk and then you go eat.
• 1:10:12
  We talk and eat. Yeah, Yeah, I should.
• 1:10:14
  Eat, I just show we. We love it.
• 1:10:16
  Where's our lunch? I know.
• 1:10:18
  I love it. Thank you.
• 1:10:19
  So much, Father, thank you so much for having me, Lila, and
• 1:10:21
  thank you for your work and your witness in the Catholic world,
• 1:10:25
  but especially in the pro-life movement.
• 1:10:27
  We're we're praying for you and we in the Chaldean community, we
• 1:10:30
  love your ministry and and we support you all the way.
• 1:10:33
  Well, I love when I see Chaldean, the Chaldean young
• 1:10:36
  people and priests outside the abortion club is praying.
• 1:10:38
  It's so beautiful. So thank you for that ministry.
• 1:10:40
  Thank you, God bless you. Thank you, Father, a huge thank
• 1:10:43
  you to our partner. EWTNEWTN is the world's leading
• 1:10:48
  Catholic network, reaching millions with the truth about
• 1:10:51
  the faith, entertainment and news.
• 1:10:53
  Check them out at ewtn.com.