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19: The Quest of the Holy Grail - with Fr. Kevin Earleywine
5 Plays10 months ago
What is the Quest of the Holy Grail? Where did these legends come from? What IS a grail?
Our guest for this episode is the familiar and friendly voice of our beloved co-host Fr. Kevin Earleywine, who will be talking about this ancient Arthurian myth and the origins of the search for the tableware at the Last Supper.
The Green Knight: by Anonymous
translations by J.R.R. Tolkien and Simon Armitage
Le Morte D’Arthur: King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table
by Thomas Malory
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1251/...
"The Attainment" by William Morris
https://dbqarch.org/archdiocesan-euch...
https://www.eucharisticrevival.org/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Episode
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello, everyone.
00:00:15
Speaker
My name is Father Jacob Rouse, and I am the pastor of Notre Dame Parish in Cresco, Iowa.
00:00:20
Speaker
And welcome to the DeBucharistic Revival Podcast.
00:00:24
Speaker
Because that's the name we're going with.
00:00:26
Speaker
The voice you're hearing there is my friend, Father Kevin Earlywine, and I'd like him to introduce himself.
00:00:33
Speaker
Well, hello.
00:00:34
Speaker
I am Father Kevin Earlywine, co-host of this podcast and pastor of St.
00:00:38
Speaker
Patrick's in Hampton and St.
00:00:39
Speaker
Mary's in Ackley.
00:00:40
Speaker
And I am happy to be here.
00:00:43
Speaker
Thank you.
00:00:44
Speaker
So today, this is our penultimate episode.
Focus on the Holy Grail
00:00:48
Speaker
Penultimate.
00:00:50
Speaker
Penultimate.
00:00:51
Speaker
Penultimate.
00:00:51
Speaker
Pen dragon?
00:00:53
Speaker
Could be, yes.
00:00:54
Speaker
Penultimate means second to last episode.
00:00:56
Speaker
And so while we're full of sadness that this season of our life is slowly coming to an end, we're also very, very happy and grateful that we've been able to spend time talking to each other, talking with guests and talking to you over your various pod catchers or speakers, however you choose to listen.
00:01:14
Speaker
So today our guest for this episode is none other...
00:01:19
Speaker
But Father Kevin Earlywine.
00:01:20
Speaker
Co-host and guest today.
00:01:23
Speaker
Co-host and guest, yes.
00:01:25
Speaker
So we had this discussion a while ago where we were just thinking, why don't we talk about the Holy Grail?
00:01:34
Speaker
the Holy Grail, which has captured the imagination of moviegoers and crusaders alike.
00:01:41
Speaker
And Father Kevin has some knowledge and has read a book or two about it.
00:01:45
Speaker
And so we're just going to talk about the Holy Grail and how it connects to the
The Legend of the Holy Grail
00:01:49
Speaker
Eucharist.
00:01:49
Speaker
So first of all,
00:01:51
Speaker
What is the Holy Grail?
00:01:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:55
Speaker
What is it?
00:01:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:56
Speaker
So today we're going to be talking about, yeah, the legend of the Holy Grail.
00:02:02
Speaker
And people probably, people who do know of the legend of the Holy Grail know it probably either from the Monty Python and the Holy Grail movie, which is very much
00:02:12
Speaker
a spoof of the legend of the holy grail um or the indiana jones movie objectively the best indiana jones movie of all time being the last crusade i would agree father played by sean connery go on a quest to find the holy grail before the nazis get it or whatnot uh or is it nazis in that movie it is nazis yes they make a comeback yes they make a comeback so
00:02:35
Speaker
Yes, so the Holy Grail itself has had some different iterations, but essentially the legend of the Holy Grail is the quest of the, comes from the King Arthur legends, King Arthur and his knights, King Arthur Pendragon.
00:02:52
Speaker
That's why I made the joke about Pendragon and Pen Ultimate.
00:02:55
Speaker
Yeah, because jokes are better when they're explained.
00:02:57
Speaker
Uh-huh.
00:02:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:00
Speaker
So King Arthur and his knights who were called to go on the quest to find the Holy Grail, the Holy Grail being the cup, the chalice that Christ used at the Last Supper.
00:03:13
Speaker
And then there's a whole legend connected to that of then in the King Arthur legends of how that grail has played a significant role and ended up in England.
00:03:24
Speaker
and how they go on this great spiritual journey to this quest to find the grail.
Christian Themes in Arthurian Legends
00:03:33
Speaker
And as we're going to see, the grail, of course, being the cup of Christ used at the Last Supper, has various sort of layers of meaning, but one of them being that very much it is a, we might say, a Eucharistic adventure story that gives an example of how to pattern our life, what it means to center and pattern our life upon
00:03:53
Speaker
the holy sacrifice that is the Eucharist that we receive.
00:03:57
Speaker
So much more could be said on that, but that's kind of the general introduction and why we're talking about the Holy Grail on a Eucharistic revival podcast is that we want to talk about some of the Eucharistic themes in the Holy Grail and what it has perhaps to teach us in this age of Eucharistic revival.
00:04:14
Speaker
So it seems like that at one point in time, the mythic figure of King Arthur and his gang went on a quest to look for, if you've read the Once and Future King, that's one of the books about King Arthur.
00:04:30
Speaker
And it's about...
00:04:32
Speaker
each one of the nights of the round table going off and having adventures and looking for this grail, uh, where, so we know we last week, last we heard, um, uh, that Jesus used it at the last supper.
00:04:46
Speaker
And then what happened to it?
00:04:47
Speaker
Why are they looking for it?
00:04:50
Speaker
Ah, very good.
00:04:51
Speaker
Um, well, so, uh, they're looking for it.
00:04:55
Speaker
The, the story goes, well, we'll get more into the story in a second, but they, um,
00:05:01
Speaker
The King Arthur and his eyes there, it's become sort of the object of all holiness they're called.
00:05:09
Speaker
There's a scene where they're called to go and find this grail.
00:05:15
Speaker
Yeah, I guess it should be said that so these stories, they're more than just so of course Arthurian legends.
00:05:20
Speaker
Maybe if it's all right, we'll start with some of Arthurian legends.
00:05:24
Speaker
Yeah, they're fun adventure stories that really become a major part of medieval culture.
00:05:30
Speaker
You know, the
Cultural Impact of Arthurian Stories
00:05:31
Speaker
legends of King Arthur.
00:05:32
Speaker
We see those all over, by the way.
00:05:33
Speaker
Like they continue to make new movies about King Arthur.
00:05:37
Speaker
But more than simply being adventure stories about knights and dragons, which I love, by the way.
00:05:41
Speaker
That's why I loved it.
00:05:43
Speaker
As part of my childhood, I loved all the stories of knights and dragons.
00:05:46
Speaker
that then the stories also become imbued very much with a Christian worldview.
00:05:52
Speaker
And they become very much where they help make the spiritual life accessible to the common folk and to nobility, you know, because sometimes, especially kids maybe in the Middle Ages, didn't want to sit and listen to their catechism lessons, but they'd love to hear a story about King Arthur and his adventures of his knights as Sir Lancelot and Sir Percival,
00:06:14
Speaker
And they go on these great quests and adventures where they fight monsters and evil knights and accomplish great things.
00:06:21
Speaker
But as I said, they became very much imbued with spiritual lessons and spiritual significance.
00:06:29
Speaker
And one example that's not the Holy Grail, but.
00:06:33
Speaker
of these Arthurine stories is one of my other favorites is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
00:06:39
Speaker
Great poem, by the way.
00:06:40
Speaker
I don't remember if you've read it.
00:06:41
Speaker
I know we've talked about the movie a little bit, but yeah, the E24 one.
00:06:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:47
Speaker
Which is very different than the original story, but the original story,
00:06:50
Speaker
is layered with these very like spiritual and Christian themes of, of facing our own sort of human fleshy temptations and desires, you know, of lust, but also our facing our own mortality and death.
00:07:05
Speaker
And then, but then kind of conquering those things with the, with the higher things of virtue of goodness and things like that.
00:07:10
Speaker
And so there's very much a Christian theme throughout and it's intentionally set in a Christmas setting.
00:07:16
Speaker
So there's very much these incarnational ideas of Christ incarnation.
00:07:20
Speaker
That's,
00:07:20
Speaker
that's kind of all imbued throughout the whole story.
00:07:24
Speaker
Kind of this feasting, this, you know, the feasting, gluttony, incarnation, lust, death, and how to rightly order ourselves as Christians in the midst of all of that.
00:07:36
Speaker
That's all bound up in this story of Sir Gawain facing the challenge of the Green Knight.
00:07:40
Speaker
And we could talk an hour about that, but that's not the topic of our podcast.
00:07:45
Speaker
It's just an example of another King Arthur story
00:07:48
Speaker
that becomes, becomes, is sort of imbued with these spiritual lessons and meanings and ways to kind of convey different aspects of the spiritual life and spiritual journey.
00:07:57
Speaker
So, the quest for the Holy Grail becomes this kind of, this great epic adventure tale that really, in a lot of ways, is kind of capturing this spiritual journey towards Christ, and ultimately towards Christ in the Eucharist, of how do we, and especially, you know, how do adventure knights, not just monks, but
00:08:17
Speaker
How do people in the world, like adventurous knights, order and pattern their life according to, towards Christ and centered around the Eucharist, you might say.
00:08:27
Speaker
And that's what's all in this story of King Arthur and the Knights.
00:08:33
Speaker
So whether or not the Knights, and because it's wrapped in legend and myth and centuries of storytelling, may or may not be true, but there is, the facts may not be there, but the truth is there.
00:08:47
Speaker
I recall C.S.
00:08:48
Speaker
Lewis saying something about fairy tales are important, not because they teach us that dragons exist, but because they can be defeated.
00:08:58
Speaker
Which I think is a really profound quote, if I got it right, that, okay, so swords and magic arrows and dragons are not the main thing.
00:09:06
Speaker
The main thing is that personal courage and valor and honor are the things that can guide us, even in this seemingly mundane human life, which actually has its own background and hidden background.
00:09:20
Speaker
spiritual adventures in itself.
00:09:24
Speaker
So it seems that the knights in these legends are searching for the grail just as we are searching for not really a magic item, but the kingdom of God or fulfillment or love.
Historical Context of Grail Legends
00:09:40
Speaker
Could you say that?
00:09:42
Speaker
Yeah, you could say that.
00:09:44
Speaker
Yeah, so it's layered with meaning.
00:09:47
Speaker
And of course, different historians and scholars have tried to pick apart what does the grail mean?
00:09:52
Speaker
And a lot of people try to go to some pre-Christian meanings.
00:09:55
Speaker
But one thing that always fascinates me that some secular historians ignore is the very obvious meaning of it is that it
00:10:04
Speaker
very much is this Eucharistic symbol, right?
00:10:08
Speaker
Christ, his holy blood, his, his addition, things like that.
00:10:14
Speaker
And, but before I get into the story of the grail, I just want to talk briefly about where do we even get these legends from?
00:10:23
Speaker
Okay.
00:10:24
Speaker
As I said, they've kind of stirred up, you know, the King Arthur legends have been a part of medieval culture.
00:10:31
Speaker
And they were kind of like, the best way I can describe it is sort of like comic book characters in the sense that there's these King Arthur legends and they all kind of have the same general kind of key moments and general arc of stories and general themes, but there's some different variations of them.
00:10:51
Speaker
Think about how many remakes of Spider-Man or Batman that they made, which all have the same
00:10:58
Speaker
You know, the origin story is generally saying there's certain aspects of the character that are sort of considered that always have to be there because they're sort of key elements to this story.
00:11:09
Speaker
But then people have taken and done different variations.
00:11:11
Speaker
Well, the King Arthur legends are kind of like that.
00:11:14
Speaker
You know, there's kind of key aspects of the story and the characters that are sort of generally agreed upon and throughout.
00:11:21
Speaker
But then there's different variations of how the story played out.
00:11:27
Speaker
So the, so we kind of, where we actually get these then written down, the King Arthur stories is in the 1100s.
00:11:33
Speaker
And, and, and I think that's just important to note that when it's, by the time it's being written down, that's important because it's very much, these stories are in the air.
00:11:43
Speaker
They're very much imbued in the culture.
00:11:45
Speaker
And so I want to just note, first of all, just things that were happening in the 1100s.
00:11:51
Speaker
It's first of all, during that time, you have one saint who,
00:11:54
Speaker
named saint francis of assisi i've heard of him francis had these dreams of being this great epic knight right that was one of his dreams is he wanted to be a knight he was kind of you know the kind of these ideas of a knight but also he was kind of a singing bard to wandering around singing songs uh but saint francis himself had this dream of being a
00:12:14
Speaker
this great knight.
00:12:15
Speaker
That's what kind of was orienting his life.
00:12:18
Speaker
And then of course he actually goes and starts to become an actual knight and he goes to battle and it doesn't go well.
00:12:23
Speaker
And he's sort of disillusioned a little bit, but then he has this dream.
00:12:28
Speaker
The part of his conversion process is realizing that he's to become a knight for the Lord.
00:12:33
Speaker
And he even has a vision in a dream of this room full of swords and weapons and armor.
00:12:38
Speaker
And, and the Lord tells him that these are for you, Francis, and for your knights.
00:12:43
Speaker
Okay.
00:12:44
Speaker
you know, so here you have St.
00:12:45
Speaker
Francis who this tale of the Holy grail is in the air, you know, who's dreaming to be a knight and who very much takes on the spiritual meaning of the quest for the Holy grail.
00:12:55
Speaker
And St.
00:12:56
Speaker
Francis, by the way, also, um, go at one point in his ministry does what he calls a Eucharistic crusade where he sort of writes all these letters to different people, uh, to priests, to lay people, to members of his order.
00:13:11
Speaker
Um,
00:13:11
Speaker
that's all about the Eucharist and basically very much encouraging people to have this great love and devotion to the Eucharist to center their lives on the Eucharist and, and, and pattern center there.
00:13:22
Speaker
And then of course doing a lot of preaching about the Eucharist.
00:13:25
Speaker
And so, so I just wanted to name that, that, that, that interestingly, I mean, we think about these legends over here, but we don't always think about their impact in the world and society.
00:13:33
Speaker
And so it's very likely that Francis would have had familiarity with,
00:13:38
Speaker
the famous quest for the Holy Grail story that may have been very much a shaped influence in a positive way, his imagination that helped him open him up to the call of God in his life.
00:13:50
Speaker
So we have St.
00:13:51
Speaker
Francis, who started off as a young knight, but he was actually a bard, and he became a cleric.
00:13:57
Speaker
So I think we have enough for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign here.
00:14:00
Speaker
There you go, yes.
00:14:02
Speaker
But that's cool.
00:14:03
Speaker
Can we talk just briefly, too, about the Crusades?
00:14:06
Speaker
I've often heard the Crusades, with disdain, dismissed as a reason to not believe in religion because it's just violence.
00:14:17
Speaker
I am aware that there is...
00:14:18
Speaker
at least 10 different actual crusades.
00:14:22
Speaker
And sometimes it was to free prisoners.
00:14:24
Speaker
Sometimes it was to fight enemies.
00:14:25
Speaker
Sometimes it was to, you know, go after some of these artifacts.
00:14:30
Speaker
Does that sound accurate?
00:14:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:33
Speaker
I did not brush up on my history of the crusades.
00:14:35
Speaker
Okay.
00:14:37
Speaker
But I can say, yes.
00:14:38
Speaker
I mean, the crusades are one of those things in history.
00:14:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:40
Speaker
Which would have been happening around this time also.
00:14:45
Speaker
Right.
00:14:47
Speaker
So again, so I think we have to, with the Crusades, remember
Origins and Evolution of Grail Stories
00:14:51
Speaker
that, yeah, while they are often looked on with disdain, they weren't all bad all the time.
00:14:59
Speaker
The original idea of the First Crusade was actually found on a noble idea, is that you had Christians in the Holy Land who were being invaded, basically, and the call basically to go and defend the defenseless, defend the widow and the orphan, you know, to
00:15:15
Speaker
to go and defend these people who were being attacked.
00:15:17
Speaker
Like that was the original noble.
00:15:19
Speaker
And then it was added with a spiritual significance of, of also that you're defending these people who are being attacked, but defending these people who are being attacked, who are living in the holy places of Christ, right.
00:15:29
Speaker
In Israel.
00:15:30
Speaker
And so to go and defend both the people of the land, but to defend the, the Holy land.
00:15:36
Speaker
Right.
00:15:36
Speaker
So there was, and that was the original idea.
00:15:38
Speaker
And of course, then it unfolds in a series of different campaigns back and forth.
00:15:42
Speaker
And some are,
00:15:44
Speaker
more noble than others.
00:15:45
Speaker
Uh, some are more successful than others.
00:15:48
Speaker
Um, but along that, so, so this is also worth mentioning it within that whole line is you have people who are these military men, knights who want to know how do I live?
00:15:59
Speaker
Holy, you know, how, how do, how do I live a Christian life as a military man?
00:16:03
Speaker
Right.
00:16:04
Speaker
Um,
00:16:05
Speaker
And so then you have the development of these knight monk orders, the most famous being the Knights Templar, who would accompany pilgrims to the Holy Land.
00:16:13
Speaker
Because, of course, back then, travel was very dangerous.
00:16:16
Speaker
You not only have wild animals, but you have bandits and robbers.
00:16:20
Speaker
And it becomes very dangerous.
00:16:21
Speaker
Of course, also, you need money to travel.
00:16:23
Speaker
And they didn't have credit cards then, so you're traveling with bags of gold or whatever, and then bandits would rob you and attack you, so you needed defense.
00:16:33
Speaker
But it also developed, interestingly enough, into a whole, the Knights Templar kind of formed of these monks, monk knights, knights who lived as monks, devoted their lives to Christ, to prayer, to poverty, chastity, and obedience.
00:16:45
Speaker
but also use their military skills as knights to defend pilgrims, help them to travel.
00:16:51
Speaker
And they even, interestingly enough, developed basically a banking system so that if someone had a bag of gold and they wanted money in the Holy Land, but they didn't want to travel with all that because that's dangerous, they could leave money in their hometown with the Knights Templar and they'd give them a special certificate and they'd go to Holy Land and turn in the certificate to the Knights Templar there and get it.
00:17:13
Speaker
basically a banknote and get their money over there and things like that.
00:17:17
Speaker
So it developed into this whole thing.
00:17:20
Speaker
And so the Knights Templar actually, these holy knights actually become, interestingly enough, also sort of, there's later legends and they get sort of woven into some of the later imagination iterations of the Holy Grail because, you know, there's different things.
00:17:35
Speaker
Did they find the Holy Grail in the Temple of Solomon and Israel and so on and so forth?
00:17:40
Speaker
But
00:17:41
Speaker
But yeah, but so all those things are going on in the background in history as these stories are being told.
00:17:47
Speaker
So whether those...
00:17:48
Speaker
the things in the world are influencing the stories or the stories are influencing the imagination of the people.
00:17:52
Speaker
It's probably a two way street, right?
00:17:54
Speaker
Cause I think stories both are a product of culture, but also are shapers of culture.
00:17:59
Speaker
So how this quest, the Holy grail is shaping kind of the imagination of people.
00:18:04
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I especially wanted to highlight St.
00:18:07
Speaker
Francis and another important saint during this time, St.
00:18:09
Speaker
Bernard of Clairvaux, who was a great reformer of the Cistercian monks.
00:18:14
Speaker
Uh, so Cistercian was a movement of monks that had, um,
00:18:18
Speaker
That was kind of a reform order of monks as they were getting kind of lazy.
00:18:22
Speaker
But we also, I just want to mention St.
00:18:24
Speaker
Bernard of Clairvaux because scholars often name the Cistercian influence on the grail stories, how the Cistercians may have been part of it who helped to sort of imbue these stories with Christian significance or using the stories of King Arthur to teach spiritual lessons.
00:18:42
Speaker
So, yeah, so that's what's going on in the world here.
00:18:45
Speaker
Hmm.
00:18:46
Speaker
So we have the historical context.
00:18:48
Speaker
We have St.
00:18:50
Speaker
Francis, Bernard of Clairvaux, or Bernard, and then King Arthur legends.
00:18:58
Speaker
So what is the, those are some of the original sources.
00:19:01
Speaker
Anything else to add to the original sources?
00:19:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:04
Speaker
So basically just to add that, then the,
00:19:07
Speaker
So the stories were kind of written down at this time.
00:19:10
Speaker
And then we kind of have two major versions of the Grail story.
00:19:14
Speaker
There was one written down in the 1100s that was simply titled Percival by a man named Chetrian de Troyes.
00:19:23
Speaker
It's a French name, so that's not how you say it.
00:19:25
Speaker
We'll allow it.
00:19:26
Speaker
Chetrian de Troyes or something like that.
00:19:28
Speaker
But I'm not French.
00:19:30
Speaker
But anyways, but he kind of has Sir Percival as kind of this main character who goes on
00:19:37
Speaker
these adventures that includes the search for the Holy Grail.
00:19:40
Speaker
And there's a couple of scenes that I love in his versions of, there's one scene where Percival's going along and it's Good Friday.
00:19:47
Speaker
And Percival's kind of been living this worldly life and he's, and he's doing his thing as a knight and someone says, you know, why are you doing that?
00:19:54
Speaker
It's Good Friday, don't you know?
00:19:56
Speaker
Percival realizes he's forgotten the important spiritual things.
00:20:00
Speaker
And then he, on that Good Friday, he then goes to a monk who then, you know, he sort of repents on Good Friday, goes to this monk who teaches him spiritual things.
00:20:09
Speaker
And then also there's a scene where Percival battles this dragon knight.
00:20:14
Speaker
There's this knight who has this dragon demon in his shield and no one can defeat him.
00:20:18
Speaker
But Percival goes to battle him.
00:20:20
Speaker
And of course he makes the sign of the cross and that drives out the dragon demon from his shield and he's able to defeat him.
00:20:26
Speaker
but last minute when, you know, they're fighting essentially to the death.
00:20:30
Speaker
And finally Percival keeps telling him to yield and he doesn't.
00:20:33
Speaker
And so finally they, he kills, strikes the killing blow.
00:20:37
Speaker
So the man is now mortally wounded and dying, but then Percival invites him to repent still yet.
00:20:43
Speaker
And, and then the, the dragon knight, he goes to confession with the priest.
00:20:46
Speaker
And oh, wow.
00:20:47
Speaker
Shriven is the old, old fashioned word for that shriven.
00:20:51
Speaker
And so, so there's,
00:20:53
Speaker
Another example of in these stories of these spiritual lessons, the power of the sign of the cross, the power of repentance of confession to save his soul and all this stuff.
00:21:02
Speaker
So that that happens in Percival.
00:21:04
Speaker
But then there's a later version of the Grail stories called the Latin cycle or the Lancelot cycle or the Vulgate cycle.
00:21:12
Speaker
So there's the Percival stories by Chetrian de Troyes, which was never finished, by the way, and then other people tried to finish them.
00:21:19
Speaker
But then there's this other cycle that makes Galahad, Sir Galahad, sort of the main figure.
00:21:24
Speaker
And it's this later version of the stories with Sir Galahad that becomes written down finally by a guy named Sir Thomas Mallory, who wrote, is kind of considered kind of the authoritative.
00:21:37
Speaker
He's the guy who kind of collected together all the
00:21:40
Speaker
stories of King Arthur into the final version, commonly titled The Death of King Arthur, The Morte de l'Arter.
00:21:48
Speaker
So Sir Thomas Mallory kind of is the, he's kind of the one who that is kind of referenced back as the one who compiled all the Arthur legends together.
00:21:56
Speaker
And he takes that version of Sir Galahad as the quest.
00:22:02
Speaker
So that's kind of the sources I want to say.
00:22:05
Speaker
And so it's kind of that last one, Sir Thomas Mallory's version that he takes from this
00:22:09
Speaker
Latin cycle, but that's kind of the story of the Grail we'll be following here.
00:22:14
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:22:16
Speaker
So that's kind of the sources before we get into what is the actual story and what can we learn from it?
Adventures and Moral Lessons
00:22:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:22
Speaker
So the gist too, we're up on what the actual gist.
00:22:26
Speaker
So like if you're going to do a Batman movie or introduce a new Batman universe, you have to have young
00:22:31
Speaker
Bruce Wayne orphaned by someone.
00:22:33
Speaker
His parents are shot in the alleyway and then he grows up and wants to fight crime, but he's afraid of bats.
00:22:38
Speaker
He meets the Joker.
00:22:39
Speaker
All those things are kind of present.
00:22:42
Speaker
They are present in whatever iteration of Batman, but they take it many different ways.
00:22:46
Speaker
So is there kind of like hard and fast elements that are always in the grail stories?
00:22:53
Speaker
Like what's the gist of, of these grail stories?
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:57
Speaker
Yeah, there's different versions.
00:23:00
Speaker
And like I was saying, it's kind of the latter one that becomes sort of cemented as the official story.
00:23:05
Speaker
But there's elements of, okay, there's a grail.
00:23:08
Speaker
It's sort of mysterious.
00:23:09
Speaker
And in this mysterious castle with this mysterious figure called the Fisher King.
00:23:14
Speaker
And Percival is part of that.
00:23:16
Speaker
And it involves various...
00:23:19
Speaker
adventures in searching for that.
00:23:23
Speaker
And that's kind of the general gist.
00:23:25
Speaker
But then it kind of becomes a little more solidified in this later version that kind of becomes the more or less authoritative story that people then riff on from there.
00:23:35
Speaker
So let's go and show... So if it's all right, I'll go into the gist of this official story.
00:23:41
Speaker
So basically, this Latin cycle kind of becomes the authoritative one.
00:23:46
Speaker
And from that... So basically, the legend goes...
00:23:49
Speaker
And all the way back, so Jesus had this cup that was used at the Last Supper, that's the chalice.
00:23:54
Speaker
And then a guy named Joseph of Arimathea, you've heard of, he's in the Bible.
00:23:59
Speaker
He took the cup from the Last Supper.
00:24:03
Speaker
And actually, when Christ was pierced in the side, he kind of caught Christ's blood into phytoxia.
00:24:09
Speaker
the very chalice.
00:24:09
Speaker
So it makes a very explicit connection between the Eucharist and the Last Supper and the cup, or the Eucharist and Christ's sacrifice in this very explicit way, right?
00:24:21
Speaker
And Joseph of Arimathea, people may remember in the Bible, he's the one who gave, he was there, he helped take Christ down from the cross and put him in his tomb, right?
00:24:32
Speaker
Wasn't wasn't it his own tomb that he put Christ in?
00:24:34
Speaker
So then the the grail legend goes is that then that Joseph of Erebathea traveled to England.
00:24:43
Speaker
Naturally.
00:24:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:44
Speaker
And he takes the grail with him.
00:24:46
Speaker
And he also takes the spear that pierced the side of Christ called the Spear of St.
00:24:52
Speaker
Longinus or Longinus.
00:24:54
Speaker
who was the Roman soldier who pierced the sign of Christ.
00:24:56
Speaker
And he has his own legend that he eventually converted and became a saint.
00:25:00
Speaker
But anyways, so the spear and the cup, the chalice, they kind of go together with Joseph of Arimathea to England.
00:25:07
Speaker
And Joseph of Arimathea establishes essentially this line of these mysterious figures called the Fisher Kings who have this quest to guard the grail.
00:25:21
Speaker
And that's kind of the,
00:25:23
Speaker
the gist of the origin story.
00:25:24
Speaker
Now there's, again, slight variations on who this Fisher King is and what precisely his role is in relationship to the Grail and the Spear, but
00:25:34
Speaker
But that basically Joseph Aramitya brings the grail to England and so on.
00:25:39
Speaker
Who is it protecting from?
00:25:44
Speaker
If there is a line of, in the legend, a line of fisher kings who protect the grail, and yet our heroes are searching for the grail, are they protecting?
00:25:55
Speaker
What are they protecting the grail from?
00:25:58
Speaker
Yeah, unclear.
00:25:59
Speaker
Okay.
00:26:01
Speaker
I mean, I guess it might be better to say they're the keepers of the grail.
00:26:04
Speaker
Oh, keepers, okay.
00:26:06
Speaker
So they're to keep this thing from being perhaps lost or mistreated or whatever.
00:26:13
Speaker
But this is where there's kind of these mysterious aspects to the legend that they don't explain all these details, which then leads to, of course, different variations and imaginations.
00:26:24
Speaker
So
00:26:26
Speaker
So this is the background.
00:26:27
Speaker
So finally, we're getting to the grail story.
00:26:28
Speaker
So Joseph of Aramithia brings the chalice to England.
00:26:32
Speaker
And this is where then King Arthur and his knights pick up.
00:26:34
Speaker
So the story itself is then King Arthur and his knights at Pentecost are gathered in this great feast at Pentecost.
00:26:42
Speaker
And then Sir Galahad appears or comes to the court.
00:26:48
Speaker
And we find out that Sir Galahad is the son of Sir Lancelot because Sir Lancelot has been considered
00:26:54
Speaker
the greatest knight of all time.
00:26:56
Speaker
And it's, so it's his son Galahad will eventually win the grail.
00:27:01
Speaker
And while they're together at this meal at Pentecost, they all have a vision of the grail and they take that as that's the call from the Lord that they're to go seek the Holy grail.
00:27:12
Speaker
And the way they seek the Holy grail, it's not a very organized sort of seeking is they basically all go out on these quests and
00:27:20
Speaker
and kind of discover whatever adventures they have.
00:27:24
Speaker
And somehow through those adventures, they may or may not end up finding the grail.
Sir Lancelot's Spiritual Redemption
00:27:31
Speaker
So again, this is where it's like a little unclear, not explained really well, like, well, why aren't they, you know, more methodically looking for the grail or whatever?
00:27:40
Speaker
They're just kind of wandering about going on these adventures.
00:27:42
Speaker
But this is where it very much becomes a spiritual story.
00:27:45
Speaker
Because essentially then the pattern of the legend is the knights will go out.
00:27:49
Speaker
They will have some sort of quest, some adventure.
00:27:53
Speaker
So they do some battle or go through some trial.
00:27:57
Speaker
And then usually what happens, they go through that.
00:27:59
Speaker
And then afterwards they meet a monk or a nun who then explains to them.
00:28:04
Speaker
The spiritual significance of their adventures.
00:28:08
Speaker
So one, for example, Galahad goes out and he battles seven evil knights that are sort of holding this castle hostage and he defeats the seven knights and then.
00:28:20
Speaker
He meets a monk and it's explained that they are symbolic of the seven deadly sins, right?
00:28:26
Speaker
The seven deadly sins, you know, anger, less gluttony and things like that.
00:28:30
Speaker
They have to be overcome, right?
00:28:32
Speaker
On this quest, there's the Holy Grail.
00:28:34
Speaker
So that's an example.
00:28:37
Speaker
And then basically how the story ends up, they're all going on these adventures.
00:28:40
Speaker
Some knights are deemed worthy to, you know, accomplish these quests and so can move towards the Holy Grail.
00:28:47
Speaker
Others have to go home.
00:28:48
Speaker
And then basically three, Sir Galahad, Sir Bors, and Sir Percival are the three who end up being able to what they call achieve the Holy Grail.
00:28:58
Speaker
So they finally, this ship mysteriously appears, they get on this boat and it takes them and they're able to go into the castle.
00:29:05
Speaker
And then they have this vision of the Holy Grail.
00:29:06
Speaker
Christ comes out from heaven.
00:29:08
Speaker
celebrates the last supper with them and feeds them from the chalice.
00:29:11
Speaker
Um, and so on.
00:29:12
Speaker
And, oh, and they weave in the sword of Solomon and Percival's sister becomes a part of it.
00:29:18
Speaker
Um, who actually has to sacrifice by pouring out her blood to break an enchantment, enchantment that, that frees this castle.
00:29:26
Speaker
So very much this Christ sacrificial figure and so on.
00:29:31
Speaker
And then Sir Lancelot, I should mention is, uh,
00:29:35
Speaker
is considered the greatest knight of all time, but he is sort of able to see the grail, but only from a distance.
00:29:43
Speaker
And it has to do with, because he, he has a whole story of repentance as part of this too, which we could talk about, but which I'll talk about in a second, but that's kind of the gist of the story.
00:29:56
Speaker
Sounds
Relevance of Grail Stories Today
00:29:57
Speaker
like the Lancelot only being able to see it from a distance sounds like Moses not being able to enter the promised land.
00:30:04
Speaker
Yes.
00:30:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:04
Speaker
So I'm sure there's lots of and the fact that they start off at Pentecost, the fact that they all have a meal together, the fact that they're sent out, they're called by name to a particular court and a group.
00:30:15
Speaker
Very, very much in line with Christ calling the apostles.
00:30:19
Speaker
Oh, very much so.
00:30:20
Speaker
Yes.
00:30:21
Speaker
And it sounds like for some of them, the grail was the friends they made along the way.
00:30:28
Speaker
uh, sure.
00:30:29
Speaker
They didn't actually find it.
00:30:30
Speaker
They, uh, they just had a lot of other, and I'm sure there's a, there's cool, like you mentioned the seven deadly sins represented by the seven nights.
00:30:38
Speaker
Um, I'm sure there's lots of different times when they, uh, either free hostages or set or learn something about themselves as they are doing battle, et cetera, et cetera.
00:30:48
Speaker
Hmm.
00:30:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:51
Speaker
So it's very much, so these stories, um, uh,
00:30:57
Speaker
So I should mention, like I mentioned before, some modern scholars try to purify the quest, the legend of the Holy Grail from its Christian meaning to get to the real meaning.
00:31:07
Speaker
But I think it's really to lose the essence of the thing itself.
00:31:09
Speaker
I think it is a truly Christian story.
00:31:12
Speaker
It's an adventure tale that teaches about the spiritual life.
00:31:14
Speaker
The heart of which is this movement towards this Eucharistic center that is the grail and the spear, as I mentioned, appears to the side of Christ, which are symbols of the passion of Christ, the Eucharist, and the spiritual struggle, kind of the spiritual battle that we're all on, the spiritual journey we're all on.
00:31:31
Speaker
So it also very much juxtaposes these knights, they put on their armors and swords.
00:31:36
Speaker
And then when they talk about priests celebrating Holy Mass, because mass happens a lot throughout the story too, with their priest monks, they talk about the priests putting on their armor for battle as they put on their vestments and prepare for mass.
00:31:49
Speaker
That they're preparing for spiritual battle by putting on their spiritual armor of, you know, the Alb and the Chasuble and all of these things.
00:31:57
Speaker
And on their journey, there's a lot of deceptions.
00:31:59
Speaker
There's a lot of demonic deceptions and temptations, often sort of in kind of beautiful, seductive women.
00:32:06
Speaker
But also there's, you know, a dragon, of course, or like one rides a horse that ends up being this devil horse that tries to kill him and all this stuff.
00:32:16
Speaker
But
00:32:16
Speaker
So it's very much a discernment of navigating through the deceptions of the devil.
00:32:22
Speaker
But prayer, repentance, cultivating virtue are all things that help them in their journey towards the Holy Grail.
00:32:31
Speaker
And this is where I mentioned Lancelot, particularly.
00:32:34
Speaker
Hammer's
00:32:35
Speaker
pretty hard on Lancelot because Lancelot, of course, was the most famous, the greatest knight.
00:32:39
Speaker
But the other thing he's known for in the Arthurian stories is he had an affair, an adulterous affair with Queen Guinevere, right, who's the wife of King Arthur.
00:32:51
Speaker
So basically, he is essentially chastised for this, that Lancelot, the greatest knight, he's on this quest for the Holy Grail,
00:32:59
Speaker
And then he has a dream where basically seeing himself dead and killed and loss of life.
00:33:07
Speaker
And that very much shakes him.
00:33:09
Speaker
And this monk explains to him because he has this unrepentant sin in his life.
00:33:12
Speaker
He's been having this affair with Queen Guinevere and he needs to repent from that.
00:33:16
Speaker
So he goes to confession and kind of spends this journey.
00:33:20
Speaker
So his is very much a journey of repentance of this unrepentant sin that he...
00:33:29
Speaker
So yeah, so he's on this quest, but that his soul is in peril unless he repents of what he did.
00:33:34
Speaker
And that does allow him, then he is able to see the grail, but not quite getting there.
00:33:41
Speaker
So anyways, so this might transition into what then, why are we talking about this?
00:33:50
Speaker
What does this have to do with us today?
00:33:51
Speaker
Other than it's really cool.
00:33:54
Speaker
Yeah, other than it's fun, you know?
00:33:57
Speaker
I mean, I nerd out about all this stuff because, like I said, I love dragon stories and knights and everything like that.
00:34:01
Speaker
But I think it's so cool that in our culture, we have this adventure and story of knights and dragons that's very much Eucharistic centered.
00:34:08
Speaker
So why do I think we should talk about it here on this podcast, Eucharistic Revival?
00:34:15
Speaker
What does it have to teach us for today?
00:34:17
Speaker
So, first of all, just reiterating that how these are these legends of King Arthur are still very much a part of our English speaking culture.
00:34:26
Speaker
There continues to be new movies and shows on Netflix that are seem to be a retelling of King Arthur or Merlin or somehow reference back to those legends.
00:34:34
Speaker
Like it's very much still in our popular imagination.
00:34:39
Speaker
So so basically one thing I want to because it's in our popular imagination is to help people see that they they actually are Christian stories with Christian values.
00:34:47
Speaker
at least the original iterations, not every new iteration is of that.
00:34:52
Speaker
But the original ones very much are these, have these, they're fun stories, but they're stories imbued with these Christian values and virtues woven into their very fabric.
00:35:00
Speaker
And I would say the greatest of these is the quest of the Holy Grail that teaches us about how we are to center one's life on this quest towards union with God.
00:35:10
Speaker
Like it very much is this allegory of the spiritual life that, that,
00:35:15
Speaker
And the center of that union with God, of our quest for union with God, is, of course, the Eucharist, right?
00:35:20
Speaker
And the movement towards the Eucharist is a spiritual journey itself, right?
00:35:24
Speaker
Repentance and conversion is a necessary precursor to that.
00:35:29
Speaker
This is why we do our first reconciliation, right, before First Communion, right?
00:35:35
Speaker
That we're to become aware of our sins, that we need to confess, a sense that my life needs to, I need to start repenting, transforming my life,
00:35:43
Speaker
prepare myself for this union with God that's part of the journey towards God is repentance for my sin.
00:35:49
Speaker
This is also imbued right into the mass itself, right?
00:35:53
Speaker
Every mass, we always start with the penitential act.
00:35:57
Speaker
We don't always sing the Gloria, but we always start with some form of the penitential act.
00:36:00
Speaker
Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy, you know, where I confess to Almighty God that I have greatly sinned, you know, and right before we receive communion, right?
00:36:09
Speaker
Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter into my roof.
00:36:11
Speaker
but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.
00:36:14
Speaker
So there's repentance.
00:36:15
Speaker
Penance is an important part of this journey towards the Eucharist, right?
00:36:20
Speaker
That we are not, and none of us are ever worthy, right?
00:36:24
Speaker
But that there's a sense of repentance that we move towards.
00:36:28
Speaker
And then in centering our life on the Eucharist, we might say on our quest for the Holy Grail,
00:36:35
Speaker
It is also something that is to orient our life towards virtue, towards goodness, to purify our life.
00:36:41
Speaker
And the journey itself towards the Eucharist is itself purifying.
00:36:46
Speaker
And so we are questing souls called.
00:36:49
Speaker
So just like in the grail story, the grail itself sort of calls the night to this great adventure.
00:36:55
Speaker
So we ourselves as Christians are on this great adventure called by Christ in the Eucharist and how that's to orient our life.
00:37:04
Speaker
And that
00:37:04
Speaker
we ourselves are navigating through temptations, through spiritual, through deceptions of the devil.
00:37:11
Speaker
But that if we stay close to the Lord in prayer, through penance, if we strive to cultivate virtue that orients us rightly, as so as our life is centered on Christ in the Eucharist, and we cultivate those things that orients us rightly through this spiritual journey.
Role of Stories in Culture and Values
00:37:28
Speaker
And that really the quest of the Holy Grail reminds us that the spiritual life
00:37:32
Speaker
is the greatest of all adventures.
00:37:35
Speaker
So that's what I think is something that reminds us of or that we're reminded of that it teaches us.
00:37:42
Speaker
Yeah, I myself had to fight off three of the seven nights yesterday.
00:37:46
Speaker
So if I'm a boy in like, I don't know, the 12 or 1300s, a little squire working in the horse barn and
00:37:55
Speaker
pitchforking hay and learning my catechism.
00:37:58
Speaker
And but then I'm also told these stories of the greatest knight of all time, who himself had to repent.
00:38:06
Speaker
Yes, learning about the faith is going to have a good and educational effect on me, but also
00:38:13
Speaker
I mean, I know one of our seminarian brothers pretty much modeled his life after not only Jesus Christ, but also the character of Captain America.
00:38:24
Speaker
And it's amazing how even though they are fictional, well...
00:38:29
Speaker
may more or less likely mythical figures, the lessons and the actions that they do in these stories can apply and teach us something in our own lives.
00:38:41
Speaker
I think that's really cool how that was used.
00:38:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:47
Speaker
And thus, I think it also gives an example of just like, how do we create, I mean, as we're reflecting this time of Eucharistic revival, how do we create an authentically Catholic culture?
00:38:56
Speaker
How do we create a Eucharistic culture?
00:38:59
Speaker
And as I mentioned earlier, I think the stories we tell are an important part of shapers of culture.
00:39:07
Speaker
Like stories, like I said, are both products of culture, but they also shape culture, the story we tell.
00:39:13
Speaker
And so I think telling stories is a very important part of culture.
00:39:16
Speaker
And so what kind of stories are we telling?
00:39:18
Speaker
And I think this is just an example in a medieval iteration of a fun adventure story
00:39:26
Speaker
But that also had something that was shaping culture.
00:39:29
Speaker
It was holding up through these fun adventure stories what is truly important, the ways we should shape our lives.
00:39:36
Speaker
And so I think it can be also an example of us is what kind of stories are we telling now, right?
00:39:41
Speaker
we did an episode a few episodes ago, just talking about movies, for example, as a form of storytelling and the ways those can communicate how, how that art form can be used to communicate kind of deeper themes, um, that, uh, that maybe, um, are not always passed on the same way.
00:40:00
Speaker
So yeah, we can sit through a class that a lecture that people may or may not listen to, but people tend to listen to stories, you know, and, uh,
00:40:09
Speaker
And that's kind of the biblical precedent, right?
00:40:11
Speaker
That the Lord says, you know, what is the mystery of God like?
00:40:15
Speaker
Well, let me tell you a story.
00:40:17
Speaker
Let me tell you a collection of these stories.
00:40:19
Speaker
Now, when I say story, I don't mean necessarily that they're all fictional stories, right?
00:40:24
Speaker
But how both fiction and nonfiction stories, the stories we tell can be an important part of.
00:40:30
Speaker
shaping of culture and can communicate sometimes more effectively, um, the deeper spiritual truths, um, simply a lecture.
00:40:40
Speaker
So you use the word allegory earlier.
00:40:42
Speaker
Um, and, uh, an allegory is bring up CS Lewis again.
00:40:46
Speaker
Um, uh, allegory is a story or a poem or, um, some sort of image that can be used to reveal a hidden meaning.
00:40:55
Speaker
Um, so it sounds like that, uh,
00:40:58
Speaker
Yes, the use of knightly violence and swords and armor are the image that's used, but the true meaning behind it is defending yourself and your soul, keeping yourself pure and repenting when you don't, and searching for union with God.
00:41:19
Speaker
Could it be said that these are allegories?
00:41:21
Speaker
Yes.
00:41:23
Speaker
Yes, very much so.
00:41:24
Speaker
Okay.
00:41:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:26
Speaker
Another thing is.
00:41:27
Speaker
It's an allegory of the spiritual life so that our own, yeah, our own spiritual struggles, we do do spiritual battle with the forces of evil.
00:41:34
Speaker
St.
00:41:35
Speaker
Paul, St.
00:41:35
Speaker
Paul says this in Ephesians 6, right?
00:41:37
Speaker
He says, put on the full armor of God, the helmet of salvation, the sword of truth, the sword of the spirit, shield of faith, you know, but our battle is not with
00:41:47
Speaker
flesh and blood with other human beings, right?
00:41:49
Speaker
Our battles with the forces of evil, the powers and principalities, the demonic forces that work in the world.
00:41:54
Speaker
So there's real spiritual struggle.
00:41:57
Speaker
And the story sort of gives image to that.
00:42:02
Speaker
Another allegory our listeners may be familiar with is to bring up C.S.
00:42:06
Speaker
Lewis again is his Chronicles of Narnia.
00:42:08
Speaker
It's very, very
00:42:10
Speaker
If you're a Christian reader, it's very obvious that the lion represents Jesus and Peter represents, you know, Peter.
00:42:17
Speaker
The evil witch represents Satan.
00:42:20
Speaker
So while we're not advocating for actual physical violence at the edge of a blade, we are advocating and promoting the values that go along with those disciplines.
00:42:34
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:42:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:37
Speaker
Because the knights, I would assume that in the story, the knights, I know from just a little bit of knight culture, like if they have, like you mentioned, if they have some sort of sin or impurity, they're not either worthy to go forward to the next chamber of the castle or they're not, their impurity or their sin is going to hinder them in some way in their battle or in their adventure.
00:43:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:03
Speaker
And yeah, and how these
00:43:06
Speaker
Like I said, how these stories have influenced inspired saints to do holy things, right?
00:43:11
Speaker
That St.
00:43:12
Speaker
Francis, you know, and his Eucharistic crusade.
00:43:14
Speaker
But also, yeah, you mentioned the chambers of the castle.
00:43:17
Speaker
Very much moving deeper into a castle.
00:43:19
Speaker
Another saint uses a spiritual life.
00:43:21
Speaker
St.
00:43:21
Speaker
Teresa of Avila, her interior castle, uses that image of journeying into the castle.
00:43:26
Speaker
And there's certain things that have to be overcome to go deeper with the Lord as we move towards the Lord.
00:43:31
Speaker
So, yeah.
Does the Holy Grail Exist Today?
00:43:32
Speaker
There you go.
00:43:36
Speaker
So that's what I think we could learn from it.
00:43:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:39
Speaker
So that's what, what, what is the grail?
00:43:41
Speaker
The quest of the Holy grail actually teach us for today is that we are called, we are chosen.
00:43:48
Speaker
We are Christ for one another.
00:43:49
Speaker
That's a song.
00:43:51
Speaker
We're called at our baptism and claimed by God and then sent out.
00:43:55
Speaker
I mean, that's, that's the, I emphasize this at my baptism during mass is that you are anointed, uh,
00:44:04
Speaker
priest, prophet, and king, and you are sent out into the world.
00:44:08
Speaker
And that's true for the Knights of the Round Table, that's true for the apostles, and that's technically true for every single one of us.
00:44:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:18
Speaker
So a final interesting question tidbit.
00:44:22
Speaker
Does the Holy Grail actually exist?
00:44:24
Speaker
Yeah, does the Holy Grail actually exist?
00:44:27
Speaker
the cup that christ used in the last supper and i would say yes in two senses one the sense that um as kind of we're alluding to how it's an allegory for the spiritual life how any chalice used to hold the cup of jesus christ is the holy grail right that in that sense so and that's what we're kind of saying here and is the sort of the takeaway that
00:44:49
Speaker
Our whole life is this quest towards the Holy Grail as we move towards the Eucharist that is the source and summit of the entire Christian life, the very thing that orients us, but also strengthens us for the journey.
00:44:59
Speaker
So every chalice is, in a way, the Holy Grail.
00:45:03
Speaker
But also the question, then, in a historical sense, well, the actual physical cup that Jesus used, where is it today?
00:45:10
Speaker
Do we know where it is?
00:45:12
Speaker
And, you know, is it in some
00:45:14
Speaker
hidden chamber behind many booby traps that you have to go through that's guarded by a medieval knight that gives you immortality if you drink of it, like on Indiana Jones, right?
00:45:24
Speaker
Well, probably not that one, but there are some different cups at some different churches that claim to be the cup that Christ actually would have used at the Last Supper.
00:45:38
Speaker
We do have some indication, of course, that it was kept at least for a time because there was the
00:45:45
Speaker
in the famous story of the deacon in Rome named St.
00:45:48
Speaker
Lawrence, there's a story, of course, some may know the story of St.
00:45:52
Speaker
Lawrence, that he was the one who, when told to give all the treasures of the church to the emperor, he gathered up all the poor and brought them before, and he said, here are our treasures, which I always think is a moving story.
00:46:06
Speaker
But there's some indication that he may have had
00:46:10
Speaker
some that, that when he references the vessels that he has, that he may have had the cup of Christ from the Holy supper, which makes
Eucharist as a Spiritual Quest
00:46:17
Speaker
sense, right?
00:46:17
Speaker
If Peter would have, Peter probably may have kept that and took that to Rome with him.
00:46:23
Speaker
So that, that makes some sense, but we don't really know Lawrence, St.
00:46:27
Speaker
Lawrence was martyred in 258 and we don't really know what happened to the,
00:46:31
Speaker
the chalice after that but in spain valencia spain at the cathedral there is a cup that they claim to be the one that was used by christ so there's the chalice of the cathedral valencia in spain uh what's interesting is this chalice is it's a cup made of dark red agate so agate is kind of a cool rock stone that's kind of swirly and kind of different colors put together um and and that the cup itself is made of agate now since they've
00:47:00
Speaker
built on a whole golden stem and everything but the original cup itself was just this stone and it does match the kind of cups that would have been used for fancy meals in palestine during the time of christ so it's material and style matches the the time period of christ so there's at least there it's at least plausible that
00:47:22
Speaker
that the cup in Valencia, Spain could be the very cup that Christ used.
00:47:31
Speaker
We don't know for sure, of course, and so it's not a matter of doctrine, faith, or anything like that.
00:47:37
Speaker
But it's interesting that it's at least a plausible theory that that could have been the actual chalice, so the Holy Grail in a historical sense that Christ would have used at the Last Supper.
00:47:49
Speaker
Wow.
00:47:50
Speaker
So that's just a fun little tidbit I thought I'd throw in at the end here.
00:47:53
Speaker
Yeah, so before, Father Kevin, you get all excited and get a sword and a horse, which are cool, and go off to Valencia, Spain.
00:48:02
Speaker
You have mass this weekend in Ackley, I believe.
00:48:06
Speaker
Yes.
00:48:07
Speaker
And that is, as we've talked about on this podcast before, that we can go off to far off lands and search for the things that Jesus touched, but we actually get to touch him.
00:48:18
Speaker
in the Eucharist and be, and be spiritually united with him in every single mass every day.
00:48:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:26
Speaker
Yeah.
Conclusion and Reflections
00:48:27
Speaker
And week after week, how is my life?
00:48:30
Speaker
How am I living my life as this quest, right?
00:48:32
Speaker
The spiritual quest towards the Holy grail that as I move towards the source and summit, I mean, yes, we celebrate mass every day, but for,
00:48:40
Speaker
an average person week after week, you know, as we kind of move through our week back towards the Holy Grail, if you will, questing.
00:48:47
Speaker
How is my life living as a great adventure of I am moving my life towards Christ, striving for virtue, battling dragons in a symbolic sense, you know, navigating the beasts and deceptions and fighting for what's right and good, right?
00:49:01
Speaker
Defending the defenseless, liberating people from the forces of evil and so on, you know, that we might see that every week,
00:49:08
Speaker
is our mini like every week is our quest for the holy grail right and that that then i moved and then i moved back towards you know the source and summit where we come from receiving the eucharist into the world but then we move back towards that in this quest and how is my life being shaped how am i cultivating virtue repenting of my sins defending the defenseless uh against the forces of evil um myself uh growing in virtue and so on you know and that the quest of the holy grail can remind us of all that so every week of your life is
00:49:38
Speaker
a quest for the Holy Grail.
00:49:40
Speaker
And I think we can find it.
00:49:42
Speaker
Amen.
00:49:43
Speaker
Well, thanks for sharing all that with us about the legend of the Holy Grail and how it applies to our life.
00:49:47
Speaker
That is, it's very fascinating.
00:49:50
Speaker
You're welcome.
00:49:51
Speaker
Thanks for listening.
00:49:51
Speaker
Yeah, you're welcome.
00:49:52
Speaker
All right.
00:49:53
Speaker
Well, that's all the time we have for today.
00:49:56
Speaker
Join us next week as we search for the face melting power of the Arkady Covenant.