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2: Encounter - with Matt Selby
2 Plays1 year ago
This episode features a personal testimony from Matt Selby, the Director of Adult and Marriage Formation for the Archdiocese of Dubuque. He shares with Father Kevin and Father Jacob some fascinating details about his training as a missionary, his journey to the Catholic Church, and his encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist.
The websites and resources referenced can be found here:
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Guest
00:00:18
Speaker
Welcome everyone to the Dubuque-Eucharistic Revival.
00:00:21
Speaker
This is episode two of our podcast all about the Eucharistic Revival here in the Archdiocese of Dubuque.
00:00:29
Speaker
My name is Father Jacob Rouse.
00:00:31
Speaker
I'm the pastor of Notre Dame Parish in Cresco, Iowa, and I am joined by my brother in the priesthood and my elder, Father Kevin.
00:00:39
Speaker
Can you introduce yourself, Father Kevin?
00:00:41
Speaker
Hello, Father Kevin Earlywine.
00:00:43
Speaker
I'm Pastor of St.
00:00:44
Speaker
Patrick's Parish in Hampton and St.
00:00:46
Speaker
Mary's Parish in Ackley.
00:00:48
Speaker
So I'm glad to be here in the Debuchadnezzar Revival podcast.
00:00:52
Speaker
Yes, that's still what we're going with.
Guest Introduction and Background
00:00:56
Speaker
For this second episode, we have a guest, Matt Selby, who is a worker in the vineyard.
00:01:02
Speaker
And Matt, can you introduce yourself and a little bit about your position here in the Archdiocese?
00:01:09
Speaker
Sure.
00:01:09
Speaker
Great to be with you.
00:01:11
Speaker
My name is Matt Selby.
00:01:12
Speaker
I am the Director of Adult and Marriage Formation for the Archdiocese of Dubuque.
00:01:15
Speaker
I've been in that role for about six years now.
00:01:18
Speaker
Previously worked at St.
00:01:20
Speaker
Joseph Catholic Church in Marion as the Director of Adult Faith Formation for four years.
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Speaker
So I've been in the Archdiocese for just over 10.
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Speaker
And my wife, Anna, and I have been married for 12 years, and we have five boys, 10 down to three months.
00:01:35
Speaker
So busy household.
00:01:36
Speaker
A lot of energy there.
00:01:38
Speaker
That's right.
00:01:41
Speaker
Good.
00:01:42
Speaker
And so, Matt, you didn't grow up Catholic, isn't that right?
00:01:45
Speaker
Even though you worked for the archdiocese and worked at the parish.
00:01:49
Speaker
So part of where we ask you on is if you could share a little bit about your story, your journey as a non-Catholic Christian, like a little bit of background, what you were growing up, and then some of the conversion moments of that where you fell more deeply in love with Christ.
00:02:04
Speaker
Sure.
00:02:05
Speaker
I never would have imagined myself working for a Catholic archdiocese.
Journey from Protestant to Catholicism
00:02:10
Speaker
In fact, I said that I've been married for 12 years.
00:02:13
Speaker
I met my wife, Anna, when I was not Catholic.
00:02:17
Speaker
She was raised Catholic, but I was raised as an evangelical Protestant in the E-Free Church.
00:02:23
Speaker
So kind of non-denominational evangelical was my upbringing.
00:02:27
Speaker
I went to
00:02:29
Speaker
a small Bible college up in St.
00:02:31
Speaker
Paul, Minnesota, studied theology there and kind of took a journey eventually, much to the credit of my wife as we met and dated and were engaged to the Catholic Church eventually.
00:02:45
Speaker
But that was certainly not my upbringing.
00:02:48
Speaker
I had a very different experience growing up in an evangelical Protestant church.
00:02:52
Speaker
So in that tradition, you, I assume you would have known and studied the Bible and the verses and the gospels quite, quite intently.
00:03:02
Speaker
Is that true?
00:03:04
Speaker
Yeah, I grew up, you know, we read the Bible at home, of course, heard scripture at church as part of Bible studies, part of youth group growing up.
00:03:13
Speaker
And I mentioned I went to a small Christian school.
00:03:16
Speaker
My degree was in biblical studies.
00:03:17
Speaker
So I studied scripture pretty formally as an undergraduate student and got a lot of exposure and really good foundation, good background in the Bible.
00:03:31
Speaker
Matt, didn't you also, I remember part of your story, didn't you serve as a missionary at some point too to like another country somewhere for a time evangelizing folks and such?
00:03:40
Speaker
Yeah, so I was just out of college.
00:03:43
Speaker
My first...
Misconceptions About Catholic Beliefs
00:03:45
Speaker
full-time job out of college was, um, I was a full-time missionary, uh, working in the middle East.
00:03:51
Speaker
So I was, um, for two years working with an organization that would do short-term mission trips all over the world.
00:03:57
Speaker
But my focus was on the middle East.
00:03:59
Speaker
And so I would lead, uh, teams of Americans over for like 10 to 12 days, uh, to countries like Jordan and Syria and Lebanon and Egypt and Iraq and Israel.
00:04:11
Speaker
And we would, um,
00:04:13
Speaker
evangelize in a lot of different forms, but we'd be working amongst various populations and we'd be doing some humanitarian aid.
00:04:21
Speaker
But our goal was always just to share the love of Jesus with the people we would encounter and to spread the gospel and help people to come to know Christ.
00:04:34
Speaker
While you were doing that, I mean, we're all called to be missionaries, but you were actually...
00:04:40
Speaker
by title and employment and by baptism, a missionary.
00:04:44
Speaker
Did you have any thought even in the back of your head of the different denominations of different churches or even specifically the Catholic church at that point in your life?
00:04:54
Speaker
Yeah, so I would say I was raised implicitly anti-Catholic.
Discovering Biblical Foundations of Catholicism
00:05:00
Speaker
It wasn't like explicit in my family growing up or in my experience.
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Speaker
But, you know, even in college, there was just an anti-Catholic bent amongst the school I went to, the studies I was doing.
00:05:13
Speaker
I mean, there were a handful of Catholic students, but most of them ended up
00:05:17
Speaker
unfortunately, leaving the practice of the Catholic faith through their experience at that school.
00:05:23
Speaker
And then when I became a missionary, I remember actually my first missions trip, I was in training.
00:05:29
Speaker
And one of the things they trained me how to do was how to evangelize Catholics.
00:05:33
Speaker
Because, you know, even in these countries in the Middle East, for example, that training trip was to Israel.
00:05:38
Speaker
And there's a decent number of Catholics who live in Israel.
00:05:44
Speaker
And obviously, there's a
00:05:46
Speaker
historical presence of the Catholic church and Orthodox church and all these historical, um, holy sites that we go to, it's either a Catholic church or it's an Orthodox church typically.
00:05:55
Speaker
Um, and so definitely an exposure through, um, going over to that part of the world to more of the historical, um, church and, and ancient churches, uh, the ancient Catholic church, ancient Orthodox churches.
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Speaker
Um, but our perception, our approach was that Catholics need to be evangelized and converted to
00:06:14
Speaker
to the true form of Christianity.
00:06:16
Speaker
So that was my viewpoint.
00:06:17
Speaker
Catholics need to come see the light and come to Jesus and then leave the Catholic church and become Protestant.
00:06:25
Speaker
So I was trained, you know, these are the verses that you use with Catholics to show them that they need to be born again and they need to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, all those types of things.
00:06:33
Speaker
That was my mindset.
00:06:34
Speaker
That was the approach we would take.
00:06:37
Speaker
So I'm very curious about that.
00:06:39
Speaker
What, just a little more just about that perception of Catholicism, like was there, did you guys ever talk about, like, what was some of the, I guess the particular teachings of Catholicism that were seen as problematic or seen as anti-gospel or, or just, yeah, or whatever, if you could say a little more about that.
00:06:58
Speaker
I'm just always very curious, like, what is it?
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Speaker
What, what was that, like that inspired the view that they thought Catholics needed to be evangelized and didn't have the full gospel?
00:07:08
Speaker
Sure.
00:07:08
Speaker
So I probably had all of the typical misperceptions and typical stereotypes of the Catholic church.
00:07:15
Speaker
So, you know, a big thing was believing that Catholics think they need to earn their salvation.
00:07:21
Speaker
And the Catholic church teaches that it's all works-based.
00:07:26
Speaker
The saints, marrying the saints, a big thing.
00:07:29
Speaker
This perception that Catholics worship Mary, worship the saints, or make a bigger deal out of marrying the saints than they should be, or
00:07:37
Speaker
do things like that, praying to saints, praying to Mary that in my mind took away from the focus on Jesus.
00:07:44
Speaker
So it was kind of like a zero sum game where any attention you'd give to Mary, any attention you'd give to the saints, any, you know, talking about the sacraments or anything that we would do our own actions that that would take away from Jesus.
00:08:01
Speaker
My perception was, you know, that was kind of
00:08:04
Speaker
our view of salvation was it's all the work of God and we're just recipients.
00:08:11
Speaker
And I thought that the Catholic view was kind of flipped on its head.
00:08:14
Speaker
That's all our work and that, you know, we're, we're focusing on human action and that takes away from Jesus's work.
00:08:22
Speaker
of redemption on the cross and through
First Experiences with Catholic Practices
00:08:24
Speaker
his resurrection.
00:08:24
Speaker
So those are big things.
00:08:27
Speaker
I mean, there's, there's more, you know, from the papacy to the Eucharist itself that, you know, I had a lot of different misperceptions about what the church teaches, what it believes and just,
00:08:40
Speaker
Thought it was unbiblical.
00:08:43
Speaker
But I found that I was wrong.
00:08:46
Speaker
I was very surprised that I found that actually is very biblical and very true.
00:08:52
Speaker
That's fascinating.
00:08:52
Speaker
You say that you believed that Catholics thought we had to earn our salvation.
00:08:57
Speaker
We actually had...
00:08:59
Speaker
Back in our past, a heresy called Pelagianism, which talks about how it's all our work and we have to do it ourselves.
00:09:06
Speaker
And I think actually I'm a recovering Pelagian actually myself thinking that I have to do it all myself, my ego, my hard work.
00:09:13
Speaker
But I mean, really, it's all grace and it's all Christ.
00:09:16
Speaker
All that to say, you had quite a view or a lens you were viewing the Catholic Church through.
00:09:23
Speaker
And just as someone who's raised either Democrat or Republican or a Bears fan or a Packers fan, and they come to see either both sides being valid or coming to the other side, what was, if there was one point or a series of points in your life that you kind of had your eyes opened to the beauty of the Catholic Church?
00:09:46
Speaker
Sure.
00:09:46
Speaker
So I mentioned earlier that it was through my wife that I was exposed to the Catholic faith.
00:09:52
Speaker
So Anna and I started dating.
00:09:53
Speaker
She was raised Catholic.
00:09:54
Speaker
She was actively practicing her Catholic faith and going to mass, not only on Sundays, but oftentimes the daily mass, going to adoration, just very active in her faith.
00:10:04
Speaker
And
00:10:07
Speaker
I thought when we started dating, I'm the Protestant missionary, I'll convert her.
00:10:12
Speaker
And just like that perception of Catholics see the light and then they become Protestant, I'd actually...
00:10:18
Speaker
never heard of someone going the other direction.
00:10:22
Speaker
I knew tons of people who had fallen away from the Catholic faith and become Protestant.
00:10:26
Speaker
Um, but I'd never heard of someone who was active in their Protestant faith, becoming Catholic.
00:10:31
Speaker
Well, through my wife, I started being exposed to these things.
00:10:34
Speaker
Um, I mean, she would recommend books like by Scott Hahn.
00:10:38
Speaker
So I started being exposed to people who had taken that journey into the Catholic church, um, wrestling with their claims, with what they had wrestled with.
00:10:47
Speaker
Um,
00:10:48
Speaker
And then I started actually experiencing Catholicism.
00:10:52
Speaker
I had all these perceptions about what Catholics believe and what Catholics do.
00:10:56
Speaker
I'd never been to mass before.
00:10:58
Speaker
I had never really studied in an intentional way Catholic teachings.
00:11:03
Speaker
And so now I was kind of forced to do that.
00:11:05
Speaker
I mean, Anna invited me to come to mass
Intellectual and Spiritual Journey to Belief
00:11:07
Speaker
with her.
00:11:07
Speaker
So I went to mass with her.
00:11:09
Speaker
Um, my first mass was June of 2010.
00:11:12
Speaker
I didn't realize it at the time, but ironically it was on the feast of Corpus Christi.
00:11:18
Speaker
Um, and so that was my first experience of Catholic mass.
00:11:22
Speaker
And it was at the cathedral of St.
00:11:24
Speaker
Paul in St.
00:11:24
Speaker
Paul, Minnesota, uh, this magnificent, beautiful old church, um, with a very beautiful liturgy.
00:11:33
Speaker
And, um,
00:11:35
Speaker
I recognize the beauty to a certain extent, but I actually left that mass pretty angry, pretty frustrated because I'd been raised Christian.
00:11:43
Speaker
I was a practicing Christian and I felt totally lost in the mass.
00:11:46
Speaker
I had no idea what was going on.
00:11:48
Speaker
I didn't know.
00:11:50
Speaker
what hymns they were singing, when to stand, when to sit, when to kneel, what to say.
00:11:55
Speaker
I was used to everything up on a screen and just follow along.
00:11:58
Speaker
And this was totally foreign, totally a new experience to me.
00:12:02
Speaker
So that was kind of initial exposure.
00:12:07
Speaker
I would say, because I was dating Anna, I had motivation to come back.
00:12:11
Speaker
So I didn't just walk away frustrated and angry.
00:12:14
Speaker
I kept coming back to mass with her.
00:12:18
Speaker
I started being exposed to things like Eucharistic adoration, other opportunities that she would invite me to.
00:12:24
Speaker
I started reading, started studying, honestly, to prove it wrong at first.
00:12:29
Speaker
I thought, well, let me study what the church actually teaches so that I can show Anna that
00:12:37
Speaker
it's wrong and I can talk her out of it and convince her to leave the church.
00:12:41
Speaker
Um, that was my perception.
00:12:43
Speaker
That was my approach, but, um, it kind of backfired, so to speak, as far as, uh, I was, it was proven, right.
00:12:52
Speaker
It was proven true.
00:12:53
Speaker
And I found the truth, beauty, and goodness of the Catholic faith.
00:12:55
Speaker
And, you know, a lot of that had to do with the Eucharist.
00:12:58
Speaker
Um, so it was a journey over the course of kind of, uh, uh,
00:13:04
Speaker
concentrated year of really investigating, studying, and experiencing the faith.
00:13:10
Speaker
But there were a lot of things in the background that had led up to that year before I actually joined the church in 2011 at the Easter Vigil.
00:13:16
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:13:18
Speaker
Thank you.
00:13:20
Speaker
So since we're in this and, you know, the focus of this podcast is the Eucharist, and we're in this midst of Eucharistic revival, can you just say a little more, just like, what were some of your perceptions of what Catholics believed about the Eucharist going into it?
00:13:35
Speaker
And maybe, and what was sort of your...
00:13:38
Speaker
Maybe some of what you perceived as your strongest arguments against the Eucharist, and then how were those overcome?
00:13:47
Speaker
On the flip side, then, what was presented in some of the stuff you were studying that was most convincing to you about what Catholics thought about the Eucharist?
00:13:57
Speaker
Sure.
00:13:58
Speaker
So I knew that the Catholic Church taught about the real presence of Christ.
00:14:03
Speaker
I mean, I might not have known that terminology, but I knew that there was this belief that there was this change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.
00:14:11
Speaker
I probably had a more kind of literal understanding than a sacramental understanding.
00:14:17
Speaker
I didn't really have an understanding of sacraments.
00:14:19
Speaker
I didn't grow up with a sacramental theology or worldview.
00:14:26
Speaker
I grew up in a church that...
00:14:28
Speaker
maybe at most celebrated communion once a month.
00:14:32
Speaker
So it wasn't a regular part of our Sunday services.
00:14:35
Speaker
We believed it was just a symbol, a little wafer, a little cup of grape juice.
00:14:41
Speaker
So I didn't have, even as some others who are raised Protestant have maybe a more liturgical experience or more of a
00:14:50
Speaker
a similar experience as far as the liturgy and regular communion every Sunday, even though it's not the real presence of Christ.
Profound Prayer Experiences and Conversion
00:14:57
Speaker
It wasn't really emphasized in my upbringing.
00:14:59
Speaker
So I didn't really wrestle with that a lot until I was exposed to the mass, until I was exposed to the Catholic church.
00:15:06
Speaker
And then pretty early on in the process of wrestling with Catholic teachings, this became a crucial subject and it became very black and white for me.
00:15:16
Speaker
Um, I think one of the first Catholic books I ever read shortly after I went to that first mass was, uh, Scott Hans, the lamb supper.
00:15:24
Speaker
And that just opened up this whole new understanding that, you know, I didn't buy into it all at once, but I was wrestling with it.
00:15:33
Speaker
I never heard this stuff before.
00:15:35
Speaker
And so now, you know, I'm looking at scripture and looking at the church fathers and trying to understand, um,
00:15:43
Speaker
What is this Mass and what is this Eucharist thing all about?
00:15:47
Speaker
And it became very black and white in the sense that I recognize the Catholic Church makes a very bold claim by saying this is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus.
00:15:57
Speaker
And I started being exposed to Eucharistic adoration.
00:16:00
Speaker
I quickly recognized that either the Catholic Church has this right, and that really is Jesus.
00:16:07
Speaker
And if that's Jesus, I want to follow Jesus, so I want to be where Jesus is at.
00:16:11
Speaker
Or it's not Jesus.
00:16:13
Speaker
And then I should continue to try to pull people away from the Catholic church because then they're just worshiping a piece of bread up there on the altar.
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:16:24
Speaker
So that became kind of a very black and white sort of watershed topic for me in my discernment of my journey to the Catholic faith was, okay, this is true and I need to become Catholic or this is not and I need to...
00:16:39
Speaker
run away and take people with me away from the Catholic church.
00:16:41
Speaker
Cause they're worshiping, um, just a piece of bread.
00:16:46
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:16:47
Speaker
Wow.
00:16:48
Speaker
I'm really glad you used the word wrestling.
00:16:50
Speaker
My namesake in the Old Testament, Jacob, wrestled with God or an angel or however you want to read it.
00:16:57
Speaker
And he had his hip broken.
00:17:00
Speaker
So what I think in our discussion here, this isn't about whether Protestants are right or wrong or which church or whatever.
00:17:07
Speaker
This is about Matt encountering the truth or
00:17:11
Speaker
really Matt encountering a person.
00:17:13
Speaker
And what I think is cool is that your, your wife is a living, breathing person.
00:17:18
Speaker
And you can read as many books as you want about your wife or your children, or even about me or father, Kevin, but like until you actually encounter a person, namely Jesus Christ, every person who meets Christ in the gospels is never the same, whether they run away or embrace him there, they're always different.
00:17:41
Speaker
So it sounds like you read a lot of things and you know a lot of things, but you actually met the person of Jesus.
00:17:48
Speaker
Is that accurate?
00:17:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:17:51
Speaker
I mean, I would say that I studied and prayed my way into the church.
00:17:55
Speaker
And when I say, you know, the study part, you know, I was looking at scriptures like John chapter six.
00:18:01
Speaker
I was reading books like by Scott Hahn.
00:18:03
Speaker
I was looking at the church fathers.
00:18:04
Speaker
I said, I prayed my way in the church.
00:18:06
Speaker
It really was that experience, that encounter of Jesus was especially in the Eucharist through going to mass, but especially through Eucharistic adoration.
00:18:15
Speaker
I would say there's a few examples that I can give.
00:18:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:19
Speaker
One, before I even knew what Eucharistic Adoration was, Anna had invited me to this young adult gathering where we did some service and then we were invited.
00:18:29
Speaker
It was at a convent that also served, I think, as a care facility.
00:18:35
Speaker
So we were doing some service with the residents and then we were invited into the chapel and one of the nuns exposed the Blessed Sacrament.
00:18:42
Speaker
And all I knew was that this was this prayer service.
00:18:46
Speaker
And when they...
00:18:48
Speaker
put the Eucharist up on the altar in the monstrance, my literal thought was, oh, that's a nice decoration.
00:18:54
Speaker
I wonder what that's for.
00:18:55
Speaker
I had no clue at that point that this was the center of our prayer, the focal point of our adoration.
00:19:03
Speaker
In fact, at that point, had I known that
00:19:05
Speaker
I probably would have walked out.
00:19:07
Speaker
So sometimes ignorance is bliss.
00:19:09
Speaker
And I was just at this prayer service and I was like, I didn't know what was up on the altar.
00:19:13
Speaker
And I just remember that that was some of the most profound prayer time I had had in years.
00:19:18
Speaker
And I felt closer to Jesus in that time than I'd felt for a long time.
00:19:23
Speaker
So I had this sense of Jesus' presence, but I had no idea that it was Jesus' presence in the Eucharist, in the monstrance on the altar.
00:19:32
Speaker
And then I recall a few months after that,
00:19:36
Speaker
I've been going to Mass fairly regularly on Sundays with Anna, and just one Mass that we went to at, I think it was at Holy Hill, a shrine in Wisconsin.
00:19:46
Speaker
Beautiful place.
00:19:49
Speaker
Yeah, very beautiful, and it was a beautiful Mass.
00:19:51
Speaker
And there was a sense that when the priest elevated the host after the consecration, I just had this sense, I can't explain it, but this experience that
00:20:00
Speaker
I just knew in my heart, that's Jesus.
00:20:02
Speaker
And I've been wrestling with it intellectually, but I just, at that point, really knew and had come to a belief.
00:20:10
Speaker
I was not quite ready to join the Catholic Church at that point, but
00:20:14
Speaker
From then on, there was a change that I really had a sense that this is Jesus in the Eucharist.
00:20:20
Speaker
And then I would go to adoration.
00:20:24
Speaker
My wife is a diehard Catholic who signed up for the 2 to 3 a.m.
00:20:29
Speaker
adoration slot at the Perpetual Adoration Chapel.
00:20:32
Speaker
And I was...
00:20:35
Speaker
Committed to impressing her wanting to please her.
00:20:40
Speaker
And so, okay, I'll come with you two to 3am.
00:20:43
Speaker
So there are a lot of nights, you know, that once a week going to adoration in the middle of the night in the chapel where I would just sit there.
00:20:50
Speaker
And my prayer throughout that whole time became, Jesus, if this really is you, show me.
00:20:57
Speaker
Because I want to know.
00:20:58
Speaker
It was this very black and white.
00:20:59
Speaker
I want to know, is this you or is this not?
00:21:02
Speaker
And over time, through those experiences I shared and other moments of encounter, he really did reveal that it is him.
00:21:11
Speaker
And that's what
00:21:13
Speaker
helped me, you know, take the step to join the church.
00:21:17
Speaker
That's beautiful.
00:21:19
Speaker
It's him.
00:21:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:21
Speaker
I just also want to add, I can very much empathize.
00:21:24
Speaker
I was born and raised Catholic, but I did not always believe in the real presence of the Eucharist.
00:21:28
Speaker
And a big part of that also involved a pretty girl inviting me to late night Eucharistic adoration.
00:21:36
Speaker
So there's something to that.
00:21:38
Speaker
So I can empathize with that and relate.
00:21:41
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So beautiful.
00:21:43
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I really like the black and white part that you mentioned because it's very intellectual and we can understand it.
00:21:51
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But then at the same time, the dichotomy of the complicated step by step personal relationship day by day, because there's really no magic bullet.
00:22:02
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Like if we had...
00:22:04
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A little note card of Bible quotes and church fathers references that we could make and just convince someone.
00:22:11
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But really, it's it's a personal invitation from Christ and it's a personal encounter with him that has to be done based on the person's heart and mind over days, weeks, months, years.
00:22:24
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it's not a one and done thing.
00:22:25
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It's an ongoing journey.
00:22:26
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Last week we talked about the Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith.
00:22:31
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But then Father Greg brought up that it's a mountain.
Eucharistic Revival and Understanding
00:22:36
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Like we are going through life, scaling, climbing and playing and adventuring all through that mountain.
00:22:42
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And I think you've done both of those.
00:22:46
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Yeah.
00:22:47
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Yeah, it really was a journey of the head and the heart.
00:22:50
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Like I needed to...
00:22:52
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be convinced intellectually there's that part, but that wasn't that alone.
00:22:56
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Um, you know, it was really encountering Jesus and, and my heart being convinced and drawn and that yearning.
00:23:02
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Um, actually I remember in that process.
00:23:06
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So I was in RCIA and, uh, it was Christmas and I think we went to midnight mass and it was literally midnight mass, you know, done at like 2am.
00:23:17
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Um, and I just remember at that point, I, I,
00:23:21
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had that yearning.
00:23:22
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I believed in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
00:23:26
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And there is starting to be that desire to actually receive him in the Eucharist.
00:23:31
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And honestly, I was kind of frustrated at that point because I knew it was a few months until the Easter vigil.
00:23:38
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I wasn't 100% all in on becoming Catholic, but I was pretty all in on the Eucharist.
00:23:46
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And I just remember watching all these people going up to communion.
00:23:49
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I'm like,
00:23:50
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I know they don't believe this.
00:23:51
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I know, you know, I mean, they're just going through the motions and I believe it and I can't receive.
00:23:55
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Like there was this kind of wrestling in my heart of, I want to receive Jesus.
00:24:00
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I believe it.
00:24:01
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Seeing all these people that just take this for granted.
00:24:03
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And, you know, there was this mixed emotions of it, this excitement, this desire, but also this kind of frustration over the reality of,
00:24:13
Speaker
people taking the Eucharist for granted when I had come to this strong belief through a difficult process getting there.
00:24:23
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along those lines, that might be a good segue into, so we are in this Eucharistic revival.
00:24:29
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You know, the church in the United States has called for this movement of Eucharistic revival exactly for, in some ways, exactly for that reason.
00:24:36
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Unfortunately, there are people of the church, born and raised Catholic, who don't believe it, don't understand it.
00:24:41
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They just go through the motions.
00:24:42
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You know, that's what you do.
00:24:43
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You go to church, you receive your little wafer and sip of wine and move on with your life and not really understanding the fullness of what this
Upcoming Events and Resources
00:24:50
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is.
00:24:50
Speaker
So,
00:24:52
Speaker
So I guess as we're kind of landing the plane here, as our country, as we're in this state of Eucharistic revival, Matt, just some thoughts on why you perceive this Eucharistic revival as important and kind of, I guess, what would you want fellow people listening, whether fellow Catholics or if there's any non-Catholic Christian brothers and sisters listening, to what would you want them to know about the
00:25:17
Speaker
But the Eucharist, Eucharistic Revival, I guess what might be a takeaway thought you would want them to know?
00:25:23
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Yeah, I think this Eucharistic Revival is a great invitation for all of us to renew our understanding and our commitment and our experience of the Eucharist.
00:25:35
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So kind of like I journeyed, I mean, I was coming from a different background from those who were raised Catholic, but I
00:25:41
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just to dive in to seeking to understand why we believe what we believe about the Eucharist in the Catholic church, and then dive into encountering Christ in the Eucharist.
00:25:54
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And most especially, like I experienced, I invite people to Eucharistic adoration to really just sit before Jesus and,
00:26:03
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as it says in the Catechism, just to gaze at him and let him gaze at you and, um, maybe wrestle with those things.
00:26:10
Speaker
Like Jesus, is this really you show yourself to me in the Eucharist, help me to experience you and encounter you in the Eucharist.
00:26:17
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And then at the same time, dive into, um,
00:26:20
Speaker
the celebration of the mass.
00:26:21
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And, and, you know, if you're going to mass regularly, really try to seek to understand what we're doing and why we do it and participate more fully.
00:26:28
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If you're not, you know, try to go to mass more regularly and, and encounter Jesus there because he is there waiting for you.
00:26:38
Speaker
Oh, thank you, Matt.
00:26:40
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You can quote me as saying back to what you thought before, that Catholics do need evangelizing.
00:26:46
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I need evangelizing.
00:26:47
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I need conversion every single day.
00:26:49
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I think through the sacraments and through prayer and God's grace, my salvation and conversion is an ongoing process.
00:26:57
Speaker
Would you say that too, Father Kevin, as well?
00:27:00
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It's an ongoing thing.
00:27:02
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Absolutely, in a certain sense.
00:27:03
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Yeah, that's why we're calling for Eucharistic revival, but not evangelizing as in taking them away from the Catholic faith, but rather evangelizing in the sense and helping them understand more deeply what it is, how the gospel is present in what we do.
00:27:16
Speaker
Yeah, and like I shared a little bit last week, just for my own self, I was born and raised Catholic, but it wasn't until college that
00:27:23
Speaker
I came to encounter the gospel truth of Jesus being present in the Eucharist and that really changing the course of my life.
00:27:29
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So, yeah.
00:27:33
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Do we have anything coming up that Catholics could participate in or anything in the Eucharistic revival up on the agenda?
00:27:41
Speaker
Yes.
00:27:42
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Yeah.
00:27:42
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So there's various things around the diocese.
00:27:43
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First of all, I guess I didn't know if there's anything coming up that you, Matt, wanted to specifically plug or name or anything in the archdiocese that you knew of or anything that you wanted to specifically name.
00:27:54
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Otherwise, I have a few things I can name here, too.
00:27:56
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I keep hearing about the great things going on at parishes around the Archdiocese.
00:28:00
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So I would encourage people to check out their local parish or a neighboring parish to see what's going on because a lot of parishes are running the USCCBs.
00:28:09
Speaker
I think it's called Jesus and the Eucharist series or doing other things or increasing Eucharistic adoration opportunities.
00:28:17
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So just to explore what your local parish or a neighboring parish is doing to grow in your understanding and devotion to the Eucharist.
00:28:27
Speaker
Yeah, so many things going on.
00:28:29
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We do have an Archdiocese, Archdiocese and Eucharistic Revival website at dbqarch.org slash Archdiocese and Eucharistic Revival that we try to update with various upcoming things.
00:28:40
Speaker
There are many events going on at parishes that aren't necessarily up there.
00:28:44
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So as Matt said, certainly check out your local parishes and your area parishes.
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:28:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:49
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But a couple of things coming up.
00:28:51
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I know we have in November 4th, there's a Eucharistic Adoration, Praise and Worship Night at St.
00:28:57
Speaker
Patrick's Parish in Cedar Rapids.
00:29:00
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That'll go on November 4th and December 2nd.
00:29:02
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Also, our own local traveling speaker, Anthony Digman of Dyersville, he will be in
00:29:09
Speaker
The Maquoketa Parish Cluster in December.
00:29:12
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So it's Maquoketa, Preston, and Otter Creek.
00:29:15
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It's Sunday, December 10th through Tuesday, December 12th.
00:29:18
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He will be giving talks three nights in a row on Eucharistic Revival.
00:29:22
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Those talks are at 630 on those various nights.
00:29:26
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So those are some things coming up.
00:29:29
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As I said, I know there's many more things I've heard of that aren't necessarily on here.
00:29:32
Speaker
So check those out and we will try to keep you up to date.
00:29:36
Speaker
Lastly, we'll be coming out with more of these Eucharist Revival podcast episodes.
00:29:42
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We'll try every couple of weeks or so.
00:29:43
Speaker
They'll be posting a new one.
00:29:44
Speaker
So be looking out for those in your various places where you can find podcasts as well as you can find them on the Archdiocese of Dubuque website.
00:29:51
Speaker
We will get them posted.
00:29:54
Speaker
And yeah, anything else?
00:29:58
Speaker
We are now on iTunes.
00:30:01
Speaker
No, what's it called?
00:30:02
Speaker
Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.
00:30:06
Speaker
Wow.
00:30:07
Speaker
Pretty cool.
00:30:09
Speaker
Awesome.
00:30:09
Speaker
So thank you so much for your time, Matt.
00:30:12
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This was a pleasure and a very fascinating look into your past and your conversion.
00:30:17
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So thanks for joining us.
00:30:19
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And thank you, listeners, for joining us.
00:30:22
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We will see you in the Eucharist, and we will see you next time.
00:30:30
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