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15: The Riches of Poverty - with Sister Alicia Torres
3 Plays1 year ago
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:15
Speaker
Welcome everyone to the DeBucharistic Revival podcast.
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Because that's the name we're going with.
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My name is Father Jacob Rouse and I am the pastor of Notre Dame Parish in Cresco, Iowa.
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And we are now in Ordinary Time.
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For today, I would like to introduce my co-host, Father Kevin Earlywine.
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Father Kevin, can you tell us where you are?
00:00:35
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Hello, I am Father Kevin Earlywine, pastor of St.
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Mary's in Ackley and St.
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Patrick's in Hampton.
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And honored to be co-host on this DeBucharistic Revival podcast.
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Excellent.
Sister Alicia's Background and Mission
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This is an exciting episode because we are now officially an interdiocesanal podcast because we have with us Sister Alicia Torres from the Franciscans of the Eucharist, which is based in Chicago.
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And so, Sister Alicia, can you introduce yourself and, well, where you're at in Chicago?
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Sure.
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Thank you so much, Fathers, for having me.
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My name is Sister Alicia, and our religious community, the Franciscans of the Eucharist of Chicago, is on the west side of the city at Our Lady of the Angels Mission.
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And anyone who maybe remembers a little bit of some history of the last century may recall that this was the location of a tragic school fire on December 1st, 1958,
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And 92 children and three sisters of charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose mother house is in Dubuque in your diocese, passed away in that fire.
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So it was a tremendous tragedy.
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But as God often does, you know, out of a tragedy, he brings new life.
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And so although the historical and the demographic configuration of the neighborhood changed a lot since the fire, and it's a very poor, very gang-infested and violence-ridden area, there's tremendous hope here because our Lord is present in the Holy Eucharist.
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He
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wanted our religious community to be here to serve the poor and to evangelize.
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And a lot of people actually who are connected with the fire have experienced healing through the transformation and the new life that has come here at the mission of Our Lady of the Angels.
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That's beautiful.
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A great reflection on the power of the Paschal mystery and how it continues to dwell with us and Jesus continues to dwell with us in the Eucharist no matter what happens.
Journey to Religious Life
00:02:37
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So we get asked as priests a lot.
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So Father, what made you want to be a priest?
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You know, and then we pull out of our back pocket, our vocation story, which is either depending on how much time we have, either a little elevator pitch or a talk for an entire night.
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So if someone were to ask you, sister, what made you want to be a nun?
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Like, how would you respond to that?
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Well, I pretty much just really liked the outfits.
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And so that was my primary motivation was like, wow, I'll never have to, you know, choose what to wear for the rest of my life.
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Just kidding.
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That's why we're wearing it for the good clothes.
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Yeah.
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Pretty much.
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And, you know, brown means I can drink as much coffee I want without worrying about spilling it and causing stains.
00:03:22
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Amen.
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Yeah.
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Anyways, but in all seriousness, I was really blessed to be raised in a Catholic family.
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And my parents took us to Mass every Sunday.
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And I certainly, at a young age, began to develop a Catholic imagination, whether it was visiting church, seeing those statues, knowing that that glowing candle in the red holder meant Jesus Christ.
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was truly present in that gold box, the tabernacle.
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And so those things, I think, were very significant seeds for me in my vocation.
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As I got older, I got to know some religious sisters who taught at the high school I went to on the East Coast, and I was very impressed by them.
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I had dreams and plans for a career in the Navy and a big family.
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My parents were both veterans of the U.S. Navy.
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So I came over to Chicago to go to college with an ROTC scholarship, but
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I couldn't maintain the scholarship because I couldn't get medical waivers from the military.
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And so I ended up in the city with a very small scholarship.
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And over my time there, I was very involved in the pro-life movement, which I had been since middle school.
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And my third year, junior year, I just started to notice how unhappy so many people on campus seemed.
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And it was a Catholic campus.
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And I thought to myself, gosh, I'm so lucky.
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I'm a first-generation college student.
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Shouldn't these people all be so grateful and happy?
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I realized it was because so many of us really don't have God at the center of our lives.
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And so as I began to take my own spiritual journey more seriously, I started to experience this prompting or this
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sense of my own heart toward a call to religious life and spent some time discerning with the sisters of life, which was a really natural fit for me.
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But I kept sensing God wanted me to be in Chicago.
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And eventually I met now Bishop Robert Lombardo, who was out on the west side of Chicago since 2005 on the invitation of the late Cardinal George to start a mission to serve the poor.
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He came from
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york the franciscan friars of their newall had been well known for starting missions in very poor areas in the us and abroad and so i heard about his work and that he was perhaps planning to start a new community and i was like hmm i thought maybe it's just for for men for priests and brothers and i i saw him at a meeting and i mentioned it and he said oh no we need sisters too and so within a week or so i was here talking with him
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about my vocation journey.
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And I remember crossing the threshold of Our Lady of the Angels and sensing that it was home.
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Before I could completely say yes, I had to work a miracle because I had over $94,000 in student loan debt to pay off.
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So there could very well be some folks listening today who were dedicated, relevant radio listeners.
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who may have sent in a hundred or more dollars to help me out.
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Even $15 was incredible.
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In less than a year and a half, Catholics from around the country who either read my story in newspapers or heard me on the radio, sent in money so that I was able to completely pay off all that debt and enter novitiate, which is the second and a more formal stage of formation in religious life in 2010.
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And I made my final vows in 2015.
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Great story.
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It's your story.
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You use the word formation quite a bit.
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And I know Father Kevin and I and all priests go through a period of formation.
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What does formation look like for entering religious life?
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Yeah, I think like similar to you guys, you know, we're all kind of wrinkled up and God just takes his hot iron and kind of flattens us out and makes us look really amazing.
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And Chris, that was an analogy just for you, Father Jacob.
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I like that a lot.
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You can use it in your next homily.
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But in all seriousness, it's a similar experience of formation.
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You know, the church in her wisdom wants people whom God is calling and they're discerning that call.
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to live a life dedicated to him and serving the church, to have the time and the space to really listen to God and to discern well what he's prompting and drawing us towards.
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So for religious life, the church asks for some period of
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you know, testing or initiation that's a little less serious.
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Most communities call that postulancy or candidacy for our community at six months to a year.
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And then there's a formal period called novitiate, which is similar to the propedeutic year now that has been established around the church, kind of a year of really pulling back, growing in our foundation of our relationship with Jesus and prayer, and just getting more used to what does it mean to live a religious life, wearing the religious habits,
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For our community, the novitiate is two years.
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Most active religious communities have a two-year novitiate.
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And then we profess temporary vows for three to five years.
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And that's a time where we get a little more involved in the apostolate, the apostolic work of the community, and learn how to integrate that with everyday worship.
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obligations and just really taking care of our vocation.
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So how is it that I can help serve in the food pantry in the morning, but still make sure I pray midday prayer?
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You know, when we have formators, just like you do at the seminary that help us along the way.
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Beautiful.
Central Role of the Eucharist
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I just want to say what I think it's such a beautiful story, how sort of your own seeking for religious life providentially connected with the founding of this mission for the poor and, you know, Father Bob's mission for the poor there and kind of how those all came together.
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And like you shared at the beginning, how it came in this.
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this neighborhood that had been such tragedy but then raised up this mission of hope um part of you know obviously in your name the franciscans of the eucharist of chicago and so um as you you know you were kind of starting this mission that led to the founding of this community which all coincided with your own discernment of vocation just um if you say a little more since we're a eucharistic revival podcast in the season of eucharistic revival
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just about that, the Eucharist being at the heart of your mission, kind of how, maybe how that name came to be.
00:09:24
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You could be the Franciscans of all sorts of things about Jesus, Franciscans of the Sacred Heart, Franciscans of the Five Wounds, or whatever it is, but obviously your community discerned the Eucharist, right?
00:09:34
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And somehow that that's at the heart of the mission of the poor, of your mission of serving of the poor.
00:09:38
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So if you just share a little bit more about, yeah, I guess how you guys serve the poor, but particularly how
00:09:44
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you guys came to having the Eucharist at the heart of your community in your name and the mission and kind of how that ties into your mission of serving the poor and things like that.
00:09:54
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Yeah, that's a really good question, Father Kevin.
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You know, our founder, Father
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Lombardo, then now Bishop Lombardo, he is very aware of our Franciscan history.
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And, you know, for all of us as followers of Jesus and the Catholic Church, we know that the Eucharist, the celebration of the Mass, is the source and some of the Christian life and everything flows from and leads us back to there.
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As a matter of fact, the Church tells her priests,
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that the Eucharist is your examine.
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Everything you do should either flow from or lead you right back to the altar.
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Of course, we have the profound gift of the Blessed Sacrament and the ability to be with our Lord in sustained times of quiet and worship and prayer outside of Mass.
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For people who are called to live the Franciscan life, we know from studying our history that St.
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Francis was a profoundly Eucharistic saint.
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Many people associate him with creation, which
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Indeed, he loved God's creation, but it's because he was profoundly enamored of the incarnation that the word became flesh.
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And so for St.
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Francis and Franciscans, there's three moments that we are really obliged to reflect on.
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Christ in the cross, Christ on the cross, and Christ in the Eucharist.
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And St.
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Francis was so devoted to the Eucharist, he mentions it in almost every writing that he offers to us, which we have a number of those.
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For a medieval person of his education level, it's quite remarkable.
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You look at a founder like St.
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Dominic, who is contemporary, and there's no writings that they have.
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from St.
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Dominic directly.
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So it's kind of ironic that the Franciscans have all these writings.
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One of my favorites is an undated document called the Admonitions.
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And it's effectively his exegesis on the two great commandments, love the Lord and love your neighbors yourself.
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But he starts out the first admonition talking about how
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We can't even receive our Lord in the Eucharist without the spirit of the Lord dwelling in us, like how poor we are.
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So there's this profound connection between the awareness of our poverty and our ability to be in communion with God, because if our heart is full of all sorts of stuff, there's no room for God.
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And for us as Catholics, if our heart is just so distracted by the ebbs and flows of life,
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then the authenticity of our relationship is really in jeopardy because we don't have the energy to let ourselves be in communion with God.
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And so, you know, as Bishop Bob was founding us, it was very important to him.
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And, you know, when you study the history of religious life, the church doesn't just say, yes, yeah, go ahead and found that community.
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That sounds great.
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You know, it gets tested.
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And the church talks about how religious life, these charisms that are entrusted to the church through founders and foundresses are meant to respond to a certain need and a certain historic time and even in a certain place.
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And so when Bishop Lombardo was...
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dispensing this invitation of the Holy Spirit and discerning it with then the Archbishop of Chicago, who was Cardinal George, you know, there's this tremendous need to serve the poor, tremendous need for evangelization, and a need for helping to teach our faith.
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And all of this is rooted, of course, in this rediscovery, which I think is really part of the Eucharistic revival of the place of the Eucharist in our church.
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And Pope Benedict said in Sacramentum Caritatis that every great renewal in the history of the church has begun with a rediscovery of the promise of the Eucharist.
Franciscan Spirituality and Freedom in Commitment
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So, you know, that's really kind of the big picture for us.
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Bishop Bob Cho's Franciscans of the Eucharist of Chicago for a very specific reason is
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And, you know, our entire life is centered on the Eucharist, daily mass together, daily Eucharistic holy hour, and as much as we can, an additional holy hour as we're building up over time to perpetual adoration.
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And from that intimacy with Jesus, then we're able to live community life, loving one another, bearing with each other patiently.
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And from that support of our life of community, our life in common as brothers and sisters in Christ, we can go out and take care of the mission of the church, which ultimately, no matter what we're doing, it's the same mission, Jesus' mission, the salvation of souls.
00:14:07
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Amen.
00:14:07
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I'd like to invite...
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That's great.
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Franciscan, since she's a, this order is based on Francis of Assisi.
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I'd like to invite anyone who's either has, or has seen like a key chain or a Holy card of St.
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Francis standing there with a, with an animal and someone who says, I love St.
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Francis so much because he loved the animals.
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That's great.
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But invite yourself to go deeper in that.
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Know that this man, St.
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Francis of Assisi was a,
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completely enamored with Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, the same Eucharist that we receive every Sunday.
00:14:42
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Yeah.
00:14:44
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And he obviously, sometimes when I hear things about Franciscan spirituality, one of the questions I ask is to figure out if my litmus test is, do they say anything about Christ crucified, right?
00:14:55
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Because I think that's so much of the heart.
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And of course, the Eucharist is like the mystical union with Christ on the cross.
00:15:02
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And I remember in my own studies of St.
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Francis,
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two things along uh like you said sister alicia about him preaching the eucharist so much he even had a little uh i think he called it a eucharistic crusade where he just sent these messages that he preached to a variety of uh people um um to to like to priests and to lay people into members of his community that were just about trying to encourage devotion to the eucharist and and you know and preparing our hearts well to receive the eucharist and everything like that because
00:15:34
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had such a devotion.
00:15:35
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And we think of, you know, the poverty of St.
00:15:37
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Francis and his
00:15:39
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devotion to simplicity but then he would talk about but with the eucharist it should be kept in a in a richly beautiful place you know because he had such wonder and i also remember reading once many years ago before i was a seminarian or anything something uh and i don't remember where he said this but i remember reading this and it almost scandalized me is saint francis had such a love for eucharist he said if i were walking down the street and saw a a very very holy lay person you know like
00:16:05
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walking along.
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And then I saw a priest who's known to be a public drunkard and, you know, in the center, I would go and greet him and kiss his hands first.
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I remember being scandalized by that because I'm like, why, you know, and especially in the scandal of church, unholy priests and all this stuff.
00:16:20
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But the reason being, I mean, the reason to emphasize that it's not to, it's not to, to hold up priests in this overly clericalistic way, but it was his love for the Eucharist that it was like, even though this priest is a sinner, I'm,
00:16:32
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it's from his hands in consecration that I received the Eucharist and that was how much he loved the Eucharist.
00:16:37
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And, and from that also, it was like it, for me, it kind of also later helped me to flow that connection in between love of Christ and the Eucharist and love of the poor.
00:16:46
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Right.
00:16:47
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And things like that.
00:16:49
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So anyways, cause yeah, people think of St.
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Francis, I think of creation and they think of poverty, but I think sometimes this other piece of, of,
00:16:56
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Christ crucified, and we would say, and that deeply interwoven within the Eucharist, which all flows from the incarnation, as you said, too, is sometimes lost.
00:17:04
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So, yeah, I think that's rich and beautiful.
00:17:07
Speaker
Yeah, St.
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Francis was a pretty scandalous dude, actually, if you think about it.
00:17:12
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I'd like to back up before we go forward real briefly.
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Sister Alicia said the three moments in St.
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Francis' life that we are obliged to contemplate is the creche, the cross, and the Eucharist.
00:17:24
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And just for the benefit of our listeners, the creche is a fancy word for the nativity or the manger, I think, that Jesus was born in.
00:17:31
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And so thinking about the incarnation, God becoming man, that's a big deal.
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God dying for us, that's also a big deal.
00:17:39
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And then God continuing to dwell with us in the Eucharist is a big deal.
00:17:44
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So there's your holy hour for the day.
00:17:45
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Just think about those three things.
00:17:47
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what and all of his poverty when i've i gave a talk last year on um the franciscan uh spirituality not that uh anyways but the uh i just remember that's the thing is it's god's outpouring gift of self that is the pattern of his of franciscan poverty i would say is that is that right sister lisa i'm not i don't want to misrepresent i think that's just you know an accurate
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expression of the church's Christology.
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And we talk about the kenosis, the self-emptying of God, that letter to the Philippians, you know, that he emptied himself and took on the form of a slave.
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He was obedient unto death, death on a cross.
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And so the son of God can be that and do that.
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We too can in communion with him.
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And that's what St.
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Francis chose to live.
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And he responded to the grace of
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to be able to become conformed to Christ and Christ crucified, just like St.
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Paul recommends to us in his letters.
00:18:47
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And then one final thought on before we get to revivals, she already mentioned, Sister Alicia already mentioned the habit that she wears every day.
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It's a brown habit and a black veil.
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I also have, you know, an arsenal of jokes about the black clerics and white collar that I wear every single day.
00:19:04
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There's absolutely a freedom.
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I mean, my biggest decision in the morning is, am I going to like wear a hoodie or
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or like a cardigan, you know, like that's about it.
00:19:17
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So there is freedom.
00:19:18
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True.
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Anyone who's listening, who's either discerning, giving themselves to the Lord through whatever vocation I wear a wedding ring also.
00:19:25
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And my students at the school ask, well, they know now they, I say, guys, am I married?
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And they say, yeah, you're married to the church.
00:19:32
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So I've trained them pretty well, but honestly giving yourself a hundred percent to something is,
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Most ideally, the Lord and his will is the most sublime freedom that I've ever experienced.
00:19:46
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Giving myself 100% is the most sublime freedom, not only for my life and its directions, but also the clothes I wear every day.
00:19:53
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I don't know if you have any, if you both have any thoughts on your yes.
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I'll just add a well, oh, not a serious thing just to sense.
00:20:01
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Funny too.
00:20:03
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Well, it's just at least they made a joke about spilling coffee on herself.
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So I recently encountered someone from the community, a family I know.
00:20:09
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And the kid said, you know, well, there's a little girl.
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She said, why do you wear black as priests?
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And I made the joke.
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I said, oh, so if I spill things on myself.
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you can't notice and she immediately points to my shirt and she says, Well, it didn't work.
00:20:21
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And she points her boots, like, well, you got me there.
00:20:25
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So yeah, I always tell you the truth.
00:20:30
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Yep.
00:20:32
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Yeah, I think your point is so important.
00:20:35
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Father Jacob to articulate because
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We live in a society that was founded by Christians but is no longer Christian.
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We're not living in a Christian society.
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And when people look at the church, they have this big question mark.
00:20:52
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Or at worst, you know, they can cultivate a hatred because we're so different.
00:20:57
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And we propose ideas that are so different from what is valued in the culture, especially our understanding of freedom.
00:21:05
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Because outside of a Christian worldview, freedom is do whatever you want, whenever you want it, create your identity, all these things which are really, really hurting our culture right now.
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They're leading us really far.
00:21:20
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from a stable society.
00:21:23
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You know, that's a whole other conversation.
00:21:25
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But we believe that we are created in God's image and likeness and that we have this gift of free will that we can choose to love
00:21:33
Speaker
And so when God invites us and we can listen to to give ourselves completely to him in religious consecration or in holy orders, that's a really incredible invitation.
00:21:47
Speaker
And we're free to respond.
00:21:49
Speaker
And it doesn't mean that it's easy.
00:21:51
Speaker
It's not like, oh, yeah, we're on a honeymoon all the time.
00:21:53
Speaker
Jesus is the best.
00:21:55
Speaker
The church is the best.
00:21:56
Speaker
Well, I mean, church is full of, Jesus is the best, but the church is full of like broken people who are sinners, just like the three of us, you know, and another huge challenge that we face today is that
00:22:10
Speaker
a lot of us Christians have in our mind, even if we're not aware of it consciously, this notion that everything can be perfect, that we can create utopia, that my life is going to be awesome if I do these five things.
00:22:21
Speaker
And that's just not the case.
00:22:23
Speaker
You know, we live in a veil of tears and the fullness of life is not here.
00:22:27
Speaker
And that's for the main reason of, right, original sin and that we've fallen from that relationship with God.
00:22:34
Speaker
And so
00:22:35
Speaker
Jesus redeemed us and we look forward to heaven.
00:22:38
Speaker
But if we have this expectation that life is going to be perfect, we're missing the mark and we're going to have a hard time letting ourselves be in relationship with God because he's not making that happen for us.
00:22:50
Speaker
Right.
00:22:51
Speaker
And one thing I'd add going off of what you said, Sister and Father Jacob, I know like once sometimes I talk about one of the, you might say the irony, one of the ironic, seemingly ironic messages of the gospel is true freedom is only found when we bind ourselves in love, right?
00:23:10
Speaker
That's the irony because when we, you know, there's the joke when someone gets married, they talk about tying the knot, you know, or the old ball and chain, you know, but it's exactly when we bind ourselves in love
00:23:21
Speaker
that that's where true freedom is found.
00:23:22
Speaker
Just like, I mean, it's that whole idea, those who seek their lives will lose it, and those who lose their lives for my sake will find it.
00:23:28
Speaker
The irony, as long as I live seeking my own happiness for myself,
00:23:32
Speaker
And that's the center of my whole thing.
00:23:33
Speaker
That's exactly when true fullness of life and joy slips through my fingers, right?
00:23:38
Speaker
Jesus says, those who seek their lives will lose it.
00:23:39
Speaker
But those who lose their selves, their lives for my sake will find it.
00:23:42
Speaker
That when we do die to self, when we lose our lives totally to God, we talk about living into the death of Christ, you know, when I allow myself to die in Christ and live in love, that's when I find fullness of life, right?
00:23:57
Speaker
And that's kind of sort of the irony of the gospel that,
00:24:00
Speaker
It's sometimes hard to wrap our heads around.
00:24:02
Speaker
Like, what do you mean?
00:24:03
Speaker
How can I be free and would I bind myself to someone?
00:24:05
Speaker
Or how can I find happiness if I choose no longer to seek my own happiness, right?
00:24:12
Speaker
But it's exactly, that's the whole irony, the ironic message of the gospel that I think is so baffling to the world.
00:24:18
Speaker
But when you lean into it, when you live into it, that's when it's, we finally begin to discover it and the beautiful twist of the gospel, you might say.
00:24:26
Speaker
It's a scandal.
00:24:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:29
Speaker
Maybe this question will lead into what the heck we're doing with revival.
00:24:32
Speaker
But what
Prayer vs. Service: A Balance?
00:24:33
Speaker
if what if someone like a podcast host or someone on the street were to ask you, sister, don't you think you could help more people if you didn't spend all this time praying in church?
00:24:43
Speaker
How'd you respond to that?
00:24:45
Speaker
You know, it's a good question and it makes sense from a particular perspective, right?
00:24:51
Speaker
There's a lot of poverty, there's a lot of suffering.
00:24:53
Speaker
People struggle with various things like addiction, mental illness, broken families.
00:24:58
Speaker
I mean, it could go on and on and we could start to feel really depressed by cultivating a list like that.
00:25:03
Speaker
So it's a valid question, but if we have a kingdom-centered worldview, if it is true that when I am on mission,
00:25:12
Speaker
that means I'm somehow building up the kingdom of God and that the kingdom of God is not fulfilled until we get to heaven, then it makes sense that we would center our lives on prayer because it's not just for us, but it's also for the salvation of souls for the life of the world.
00:25:27
Speaker
As Jesus says,
00:25:29
Speaker
The flesh that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world in the John 6 Bread of Life discourse.
00:25:36
Speaker
And so for us and for me, like, you know, without the relationship with God and prayer, I couldn't do what I do.
00:25:43
Speaker
It would either become too depressing, too overwhelming.
00:25:47
Speaker
Jesus says in the gospel at the anointing at Bethany,
00:25:51
Speaker
You know, Judas is like, why are you letting her pour this oil on you?
00:25:55
Speaker
It could have been sold and given to the poor.
00:25:57
Speaker
Jesus is like, you will always have the poor with you.
00:26:00
Speaker
And that goes all the way back to Deuteronomy chapter four, when Moses and the Israelites are together.
00:26:07
Speaker
And in a sense, the poor are.
00:26:10
Speaker
a prophetic sign to us that we are not in the kingdom of God.
00:26:14
Speaker
You know, they are assigned to us that we do not love each other with perfect charity.
00:26:19
Speaker
They're assigned to us of our selfishness and our inability to, to allow ourselves to be poured out as a gift freely.
00:26:27
Speaker
So, and that doesn't mean that God is like, you know, using people to remind us of how bad we are, but this is just a state of affairs.
00:26:34
Speaker
And because this is a state of affairs in a fallen world,
00:26:37
Speaker
These people remind us of our own brokenness.
00:26:41
Speaker
You know, we might not be materially poor, but all of us are spiritually poor.
00:26:47
Speaker
That's why I like the Beatitudes are pretty cool.
00:26:49
Speaker
When Jesus says, blessed are the poor in spirit, I've interpreted that, well, I believe that to mean a complete emptying of myself so that I am dependent on the father like a toddler on his or her parent's
00:27:04
Speaker
And that's what Jesus demonstrates to us in the cross.
00:27:07
Speaker
So I'm glad you also added that, that God isn't using people or striking people with poverty so that we can be nicer people.
00:27:16
Speaker
It's that we are in a fallen world.
00:27:18
Speaker
We're in a veil of tears and we need to be completely dependent on him no matter our situation.
Eucharistic Revival Initiatives
00:27:25
Speaker
Yeah, that reminds me of that famous story of Mother Teresa that I've heard about how I think one of the sisters came to Mother Teresa and said, you know, Mother Teresa, of course, who gave her lives to serving the poorest of the poor, but who came to her and said, Mother Teresa, why don't we, we spend too much time in prayer.
00:27:40
Speaker
There's so much need.
00:27:41
Speaker
we should be doing that.
00:27:42
Speaker
And we should be spending less time in prayer, more time helping the poor.
00:27:47
Speaker
And so in response, she made the sister do four holy hours every day, you know, to understand, because that there's, there's, there's the poverty of the world.
00:27:56
Speaker
And then there's that holy Franciscan poverty.
00:27:58
Speaker
We talked about that self emptying of God, but that,
00:28:00
Speaker
has to be centered on him and reminds us of our, where our treasure truly lies, that the Lord is our highest treasure and that he is the one who outpours himself in love and that, and that we're totally dependent on him.
00:28:12
Speaker
And so turning towards him and then that then flows into our life, you know, and it's that whole, yeah, the, the,
00:28:18
Speaker
What shapes my heart and allows me to engage the world and combats my selfishness is dwelling in the presence of him who is total self outpouring love, which we see particularly manifested sacramentalized in a particular way in the Eucharist, right?
00:28:34
Speaker
Because here is God.
00:28:35
Speaker
totally pouring himself out in total gift of self to us, allowing us to receive him, to manipulate him, and even at the risk of scandal, right?
00:28:49
Speaker
That we can mishandle him, to handle him and to mishandle him, and yet he still gives himself totally in love.
00:28:55
Speaker
And this might be a good segue into...
00:28:58
Speaker
We've been talking about Francis and the Eucharistic crusade and the center of the Eucharist and how we need God.
00:29:06
Speaker
This is probably a good segue into...
00:29:09
Speaker
We're in this.
00:29:09
Speaker
The whole reason this podcast exists is our nation has been called for.
00:29:13
Speaker
The U.S. bishops have called for this Eucharistic revival, this season of revival towards the center of this mystery that is the Eucharist.
00:29:20
Speaker
And that's happening both kind of on a national level and then efforts on a more diocesan level.
00:29:24
Speaker
And speaking of the national level, if anyone has been following some of the national emails and stuff, they may have seen this.
00:29:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:48
Speaker
So yeah, whatever you want to say about that.
00:29:50
Speaker
Go.
00:29:52
Speaker
Okay.
00:29:53
Speaker
This whole thing was your idea?
00:29:55
Speaker
No.
00:29:57
Speaker
This was the Holy Spirit's.
00:29:59
Speaker
Amen.
00:30:01
Speaker
I mean, I'm sure that your listeners are aware of their revival because you've been hosting this podcast for a while.
00:30:10
Speaker
when we talk about the word revival, even, you know, the clarification there is that we don't decide we're going to have a revival.
00:30:16
Speaker
God inspires it.
00:30:17
Speaker
Right.
00:30:17
Speaker
So it's the Holy Spirit.
00:30:19
Speaker
Um, it's a, uh, you know, it's a charismatic sort of thing.
00:30:24
Speaker
And so the bishops discerned, um,
00:30:27
Speaker
in part because of a Pew Research study that came out in 2019 indicating that an overwhelming minority of Catholics believed in the doctrine of the real presence, that we needed to do something about it.
00:30:37
Speaker
And at the time, Bishop Robert Barron was the chairman for the Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis.
00:30:44
Speaker
And so he, as he was going out or the outgoing chair in that final year, he recommended a Eucharistic revival.
00:30:53
Speaker
And so
00:30:53
Speaker
Bishop Andrew Cousins was the incoming chair and he really sensed a great draw to that.
00:31:00
Speaker
But what happened in the interim was a pandemic.
00:31:03
Speaker
And so that delayed it a bit.
00:31:05
Speaker
But in 2001, in that winter, early that year, Bishop Cousins began having virtual listening sessions with people from the top down and the bottom up, apostolic movements, dioceses, et cetera, famous people, no-name people, God's people.
00:31:24
Speaker
to get their feedback on this idea of a Eucharistic revival.
00:31:27
Speaker
So I somehow got on the list to be in one of those listening sessions.
00:31:31
Speaker
And, you know, I was very shy and didn't say anything.
00:31:36
Speaker
Just kidding.
00:31:37
Speaker
I had a lot of things to say.
00:31:40
Speaker
And about a month and a half later, my religious superior got a call from Bishop Cousins asking if I could be on the executive team, which I was like completely shocked.
00:31:49
Speaker
but I've been really blessed and humbled to serve on the team.
00:31:52
Speaker
And we first gathered in June or July of 2021 up in St.
00:31:56
Speaker
Paul at the seminary there in Minnesota that we call that first year, year zero.
00:32:01
Speaker
And I ended up on a team that helped to cultivate our national Eucharistic preachers movement, who in a sense carried out the front lines of the revival when it launched on Corpus Christi 2022 for the year of diocesan revival, these preachers were,
00:32:15
Speaker
have been available to this day.
00:32:16
Speaker
They're both diocesan and religious ordered priests.
00:32:19
Speaker
They had a special formation retreat here at Our Lady of the Angels Mission that we were able to host with mostly bishops and some theologians, giving them content to help kind of cultivate what we're going for in this Eucharistic revival.
00:32:32
Speaker
especially around the reality of the holy sacrifice of the mass and the real presence of Jesus and the Eucharist.
00:32:37
Speaker
So that was a tremendous joy to help with that movement.
00:32:41
Speaker
And then as that got stabilized, I was asked to move over to the newsletter team, ended up taking on the role of managing editor for Heart of the Revival newsletter in 2003, which is our weekly e-newsletter.
Engaging the Youth and Future Events
00:32:51
Speaker
It goes out over 100,000 readers at this point, probably more.
00:32:56
Speaker
And then the following fall, we were aware that
00:33:00
Speaker
the overwhelming majority of our subscribers are 60 or older.
00:33:03
Speaker
We really want to bring the revival to younger people.
00:33:05
Speaker
And so we started to cultivate the content on our YouTube channel.
00:33:09
Speaker
So I have to produce our weekly, I produce our weekly YouTube video series called The Pulse.
00:33:14
Speaker
And we have a lot of collateral content as well.
00:33:18
Speaker
Testimonies from priests, Eucharistic preachers from our bishops.
00:33:21
Speaker
It's a really fun channel.
00:33:22
Speaker
We've been trying really hard to build it up.
00:33:25
Speaker
And it's been nice to see that, um,
00:33:27
Speaker
We're starting to get data that's indicating that we've got a really good percentage of viewers under 40 that are engaging with our content.
00:33:34
Speaker
So we're really happy about that.
00:33:35
Speaker
Yeah, I also help.
00:33:38
Speaker
I'm helping to actually oversee the priest track at the Eucharistic Congress.
00:33:43
Speaker
So I have a team that we've been in discernment and collaboration with.
00:33:47
Speaker
for a while for a good long time to help cultivate that track and i'm kind of the main point of contact right now helping on the inside to make it happen um and i have a lot of things to say but i'll just stop there that's a um that's a lot of things and it's it's uh it's cool to um have the you said you were shocked when you were first asked to do this and it sounds like you've just continued to say
00:34:13
Speaker
Yeah, okay.
00:34:13
Speaker
Yeah, sure, Holy Spirit.
00:34:14
Speaker
You know, the Holy Spirit is prompting all this movement.
00:34:16
Speaker
And it really is a revival.
00:34:18
Speaker
I'm glad you said that you didn't.
00:34:19
Speaker
I mean, I was joking, of course.
00:34:20
Speaker
It's not your idea.
00:34:21
Speaker
But, like, what I've learned in the past year, especially from the Holy Spirit Healing Fire Mission, see episode five, is that the Holy Spirit loves to mediate.
00:34:34
Speaker
The Holy Spirit loves to work through people.
00:34:37
Speaker
So Jesus could do all of this.
00:34:40
Speaker
himself and just make it all happen.
00:34:43
Speaker
But as we know from the gospel accounts, he spent absurd amounts of time alone in prayer, and he spent scandalous amounts of time with 12 people he loved, and more than that, too.
00:34:55
Speaker
So he loves to work with humans because he delights in, he doesn't need us, he wants us.
00:35:02
Speaker
A line I steal from Bishop Robert Barron and I've used frequently is God delights in using secondary causes.
00:35:11
Speaker
I love that line and I use it so much and I think it explains so much of the gospel.
00:35:15
Speaker
So, so sister, so we're coming approaching upon.
00:35:20
Speaker
And I think when this podcast airs, it will be a month away from the National Eucharistic Congress specifically, which is a kind of a big culminating event that many things have been building up to.
00:35:31
Speaker
There are four National Eucharistic pilgrimages that are converging in Indianapolis on this date in July, as well as for this big event that will include speakers and prayer and prayer.
00:35:45
Speaker
things like that and that's coming up in this July and I don't remember what it's not like so anyways could you say more about that this big National Eucharistic Congress that's happening this kind of this Eucharistic centered party that's going to happen in Indianapolis what's all happening there sure so the National Eucharistic Congress you know our country has a tradition of National Eucharistic Congress this will be the 10th one on the grounds of this country
00:36:12
Speaker
We haven't had a Eucharistic Congress in over 50 years, a national one.
00:36:16
Speaker
Our last Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia was an international Eucharistic Congress.
00:36:21
Speaker
And so the church has this tradition.
00:36:22
Speaker
It roots back to a priest movement in France.
00:36:24
Speaker
I can't remember the exact century, but I believe it was the 1700s or 1800s.
00:36:27
Speaker
So there's a movement of
00:36:30
Speaker
French priest, and then that kind of became Eucharistic Congresses.
00:36:35
Speaker
And so in our National Eucharistic Revival, we have been saying that the movement needs a moment, and that's what the Congress is.
00:36:42
Speaker
So a lot of news media will talk about the Congress as like, you know, the culmination, but it really isn't the culmination.
00:36:48
Speaker
It's a culminating point from which we intend and we believe the Holy Spirit wants to send forth
00:36:54
Speaker
Eucharistic missionaries.
00:36:56
Speaker
And so at the Congress, every participant will be invited to a missionary imperative.
00:37:01
Speaker
We have a special initiative that we're cultivating that we will reveal and share at the Congress.
00:37:07
Speaker
And of course, we can only welcome 50,000 people to Lucasfilm Stadium in Indianapolis.
00:37:13
Speaker
So we know a lot of people won't be able to come.
00:37:15
Speaker
And the whole church will be invited from there into this Eucharistic missionary movement.
00:37:20
Speaker
that we have been discerning and preparing for, which is really exciting.
00:37:25
Speaker
And these Eucharistic pilgrimages, I mean, if you Google Eucharistic pilgrimage, the footage and the images and that it's being picked up by the secular press, it's just remarkable.
00:37:35
Speaker
And so we really see the pilgrimages as our most public facing.
00:37:39
Speaker
dimension of this planned revival.
00:37:42
Speaker
We already have dioceses that are planning for three more years of their own initiative of Eucharistic revival.
00:37:47
Speaker
So the goal was never for it to end on Pentecost 2025, but rather that the hearts of our people, our local shepherds, our bishops will continue to discern the movement of the Eucharistic revival and continue to initiate and animate it in the local churches that
00:38:04
Speaker
So, yeah, the Congress, I mean, the highlight of the whole thing is Jesus and the Eucharist.
00:38:09
Speaker
So there'll be tremendously beautiful, giant masses, masses from different rites in the church.
Unity Through the Eucharist
00:38:15
Speaker
Everything, there'll be, you know, a general session with everyone coming together in Lucas Oil Stadium for keynote talks, but most importantly, Eucharistic adoration.
00:38:24
Speaker
There will be, I mean, there's well over a thousand priests registered right now.
00:38:28
Speaker
There'll be confessions available almost every hour of the day.
00:38:31
Speaker
We'll have Probitual Adoration.
00:38:32
Speaker
And St.
00:38:33
Speaker
John's Church was right across the street from the Indianapolis Convention Center, where many of the sessions will be hosted.
00:38:39
Speaker
There's going to be cultural events.
00:38:41
Speaker
There's a musical on St.
00:38:42
Speaker
Bernadette.
00:38:42
Speaker
There's going to be art displays.
00:38:43
Speaker
There's going to be Catechists of the Good Shepherd atriums for children.
00:38:47
Speaker
I mean, there's going to be so much.
00:38:49
Speaker
It's for the whole church, you know, from families to youth, young adults, even elderly.
00:38:55
Speaker
We just featured a story today in Heart of the Revival of a 79-year-old woman who
00:39:00
Speaker
who's planning to go to the Congress with her contemporary sisters.
00:39:03
Speaker
So they're all elderly and they wouldn't miss it.
00:39:06
Speaker
So it's, I mean, it's just going to be incredible to see how God draws the whole church together.
00:39:11
Speaker
Beautiful.
00:39:13
Speaker
For those who can't physically make it, well, is there a way to participate?
00:39:18
Speaker
Like, will any of these talks or videos be aired afterwards?
00:39:22
Speaker
Or is there, or obviously prayer, that's part of it.
00:39:26
Speaker
So, but, but any word you have that you might say is an inspiration for those who can't physically make it, but are very excited about it.
00:39:32
Speaker
Yes, I can promise that there will be revealed ways to participate.
00:39:38
Speaker
Okay.
00:39:39
Speaker
I cannot say anything else.
00:39:41
Speaker
Okay.
00:39:42
Speaker
I promise that when you need to know, you will know what is going to be available.
00:39:46
Speaker
Okay, very good.
00:39:48
Speaker
You heard it here first, folks.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:54
Speaker
This is really exciting.
00:39:55
Speaker
I remember the Lord saying in the gospel that the gates of hell will not prevail.
00:40:00
Speaker
And I always thought...
00:40:02
Speaker
As a little kid, I heard that and thought, okay, we're going to stand up to anything.
00:40:05
Speaker
But I mean, gates don't move.
00:40:07
Speaker
You know, it's, we are on the offense and we are the ones who are moving.
00:40:11
Speaker
And so I love this idea of, as C.S.
00:40:13
Speaker
Lewis talks about, a good infection just spreading all across the land.
00:40:19
Speaker
And then two, this is, I've been delighted this entire time is there's really no way you can
00:40:25
Speaker
be like, Oh, yeah, well, I'm not really into that.
00:40:28
Speaker
Like, either my political views, or this is too left or right or too traditional or whatever.
00:40:33
Speaker
I mean, it's the Eucharist, man, like you can't, who can not be down with that, you know, so I like it how it's so it's like, I use the word inclusive, because I can't think of a better word.
00:40:42
Speaker
But that's really it.
00:40:44
Speaker
It's all encompassing.
00:40:45
Speaker
That's a better word.
00:40:45
Speaker
Thanks.
00:40:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:48
Speaker
And that's so important, Father Jacob, to know is that, you know, Jesus founded this church on the Rack of St.
00:40:55
Speaker
Peter.
00:40:56
Speaker
And we understand the church to have these four marks, one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic.
00:41:01
Speaker
And unfortunately, in our church today, we have this tremendous struggle with more political dialogue and political dichotomies that we kind of like place on the church.
00:41:11
Speaker
But it's just not possible.
00:41:12
Speaker
If you're Catholic, you're in communion with Rome, and you're in communion with one another.
00:41:16
Speaker
And so,
00:41:17
Speaker
These things that pull us apart from each other, oftentimes are symptoms of our brokenness or our need for conversion.
00:41:24
Speaker
You know, and I know that people probably won't like to hear that, but that's just true.
00:41:29
Speaker
Because Jesus prayed at the Last Supper, I pray not only for these, but for those who will hear of me through them, that they may all be one.
00:41:37
Speaker
And that's Jesus' great prayers, our unity.
00:41:39
Speaker
And these things,
00:41:41
Speaker
draw us apart, they divide us.
00:41:43
Speaker
And that's not part of Jesus heart for us.
00:41:48
Speaker
Mic drop.
00:41:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:50
Speaker
Amen.
00:41:51
Speaker
And the Eucharist is the thing that incorporates us into the mystical body, right?
00:41:58
Speaker
The body of Christ makes us into the body of Christ and thus unites us as such, right?
00:42:03
Speaker
And that's what's so incredible.
00:42:04
Speaker
That's what makes us one across various ethnicities, political views, countries, nations, borders, kingdoms, tribes, whatever you want to, whatever those dividers you want to put on it is like,
00:42:15
Speaker
There's a rich, beautiful diversity in church, but then we're united in the body of Jesus Christ.
00:42:22
Speaker
We're incorporated into that in and through the Eucharist.
00:42:25
Speaker
His body and blood makes us into his body and blood, right?
00:42:27
Speaker
That's the incredible thing.
00:42:29
Speaker
And in a previous podcast episode, we talked about the Eucharist as being sort of the...
00:42:34
Speaker
the beating heart, you know, the sacred heart of Jesus that, that like, you know, like a beating heart does, it pulls in the blood that needs to be reinvigorated, re-inspired, you know, re-oxygenated, right?
00:42:45
Speaker
And then beats to send it out, you know?
00:42:47
Speaker
And so the Eucharist is that beating heart of Christ.
00:42:50
Speaker
And so I go back to that image a lot.
00:42:52
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:42:55
Speaker
Amen.
00:42:56
Speaker
Amen.
00:42:57
Speaker
And, and the last thing I'll say is, I mean, there's not to have the final word here, but the, but like, like you were saying, Father Jacob, it's not just,
00:43:05
Speaker
It's not just, well, this particular thing about the Eucharist, well, that's not my cup of tea or whatever.
00:43:08
Speaker
But there's this richness to the many facets of this Eucharistic mystery, which is kind of why we're doing this whole podcast is to highlight those many facets, you know, for our listeners that can be reminded to go back.
00:43:20
Speaker
We had one on...
00:43:21
Speaker
well, the Eucharist and serving the poor and social justice.
00:43:23
Speaker
We haven't talked about it here, but in a previous episode, we talked about catechism, the good shepherd.
00:43:27
Speaker
We talked about Eucharistic miracles and, and we talked about the Eucharist and music, right.
00:43:33
Speaker
And art and, and all those facets as part of it.
00:43:36
Speaker
So I remember when we started out with the weekly newsletter, I was like really nervous that we would run out of things to cover.
00:43:44
Speaker
I don't know where I got that idea, but Holy cannoli beans.
00:43:47
Speaker
There's just, it's, it's, it's, it's an un,
00:43:54
Speaker
undestroyable well.
00:43:55
Speaker
That's the knowledge.
00:43:57
Speaker
It's just the source.
00:43:58
Speaker
It's like, wow.
00:44:01
Speaker
For me, trying faithfully to serve the revival, it's been so tremendously graceful for me.
00:44:08
Speaker
So much more healing, so much more conversion, so much more ability to recognize my own sinfulness and let Jesus touch those parts of my heart because
00:44:19
Speaker
In different ways, all three of us are leaders in the church.
00:44:21
Speaker
And if we cannot lead by example, then we shouldn't be leading
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:44:25
Speaker
at all.
00:44:25
Speaker
You know, we have to show by our lives that we take conversion seriously and that it's okay.
00:44:32
Speaker
that we struggle with sin.
00:44:34
Speaker
But that's not the end of the story because we're beloved sinners, you know?
00:44:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:39
Speaker
It's an inexhaustible.
00:44:40
Speaker
Well, I remember when father Kevin and I were on the, our own little committee of, okay, what are we going to do here?
00:44:46
Speaker
Well, we think we could maybe squeeze out, you know, 12 episodes in this limited run.
00:44:51
Speaker
And what are we on 14?
00:44:52
Speaker
We still got like four left.
00:44:54
Speaker
So I think we have a total of what do we have 19 planned or something?
00:44:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:57
Speaker
Something like that.
00:44:58
Speaker
So it's, it's pretty cool.
00:45:00
Speaker
Um,
00:45:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:01
Speaker
And once again, this is not a culmination.
00:45:03
Speaker
I mean, a lot of the things that Sister Alicia talked about, catechesis of the Good Shepherd and art and music and healing and confession, all these things we've talked about on various episodes and we ain't done yet.
00:45:13
Speaker
So that's the same thing with, I hope that this Congress will just continue to ignite and not be an exclamation point at the end of a sentence.
00:45:21
Speaker
But yeah.
00:45:23
Speaker
a very loud colon.
00:45:25
Speaker
Semicolon.
00:45:26
Speaker
Semicolon.
00:45:26
Speaker
Thank you.
00:45:27
Speaker
Bishop Cousins always says, you know, he's our leader on behalf of the bishops, Bishop Cousins, the ordinary up in the Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota.
00:45:36
Speaker
He's this incredible leader, a holy leader, deeply in love with the Eucharist.
00:45:40
Speaker
And he always says, you know, we're not starting a movement, we're lighting a fire.
00:45:44
Speaker
And that's what the Holy Spirit does.
00:45:45
Speaker
We just celebrated on Pentecost a few days ago.
00:45:48
Speaker
You know, so I mean, in the best sense of it, get lit.
00:45:54
Speaker
Get lit.
00:45:55
Speaker
And on that note, is that our ending note?
00:45:58
Speaker
Go get lit.
00:45:59
Speaker
Get in a holy way.
00:46:01
Speaker
In a holy way.
00:46:02
Speaker
Well, thank you so much, Sister Alicia, for sharing your witness, your ministry, and your love and your subordination to the grace of God.
00:46:12
Speaker
It's really appreciated.
00:46:14
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:46:16
Speaker
Sorry.
00:46:16
Speaker
It's my pleasure.
00:46:18
Speaker
God is so good.
00:46:19
Speaker
I mean, what do we have to lose?
00:46:21
Speaker
Amen.
00:46:22
Speaker
Amen.
00:46:23
Speaker
Well, Father Kevin, next time I see you, I think I'm going to kiss your hands.
00:46:27
Speaker
Oh.
00:46:30
Speaker
See you in the Eucharist.