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6.5: Passionately Catholic - with Anthony Digmann (REMASTER)
3 Plays1 year ago
This is a remaster of episode six. No new content, just audio adjusted so you can better hear our guest!
Anthony Digmann is no stranger to passionately sharing his Catholic faith, it’s importance in his life, and most importantly, his love for Jesus Christ in the Sacraments. He gives us a little taste of his story, his zeal, and contagious enthusiasm, which will also be shared in his upcoming talks on the Eucharistic Revival.
The website and resources referenced can be found here:
-https://dbqarch.org/archdiocesan-eucharistic-revival
-https://www.eucharisticrevival.org/
-https://www.catholic.com/
-https://anthonydigmann.com/
Eucharistic miracles - Buenos Aires (1996)
Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper by Brant Pitre
(Doubleday)
Recommended
Transcript
Introductions and Audience Reflections
00:00:18
Speaker
Welcome everyone to the DeBucharistic Revival podcast.
00:00:21
Speaker
My name is Father Jacob Rouse and I'm the pastor of Notre Dame Parish in Cresco, Iowa.
00:00:26
Speaker
And I am here with my brother in Christ and in the priesthood, Father Kevin Earlywine.
00:00:31
Speaker
Father Kevin, can you introduce yourself and where you are at?
00:00:34
Speaker
Hello, I am Father Kevin Earlywine, pastor of St.
00:00:36
Speaker
Patrick's Parish in Hampton, Iowa, and St.
00:00:39
Speaker
Mary's Parish in Ackley, Iowa.
00:00:42
Speaker
So happy to be here as always.
00:00:45
Speaker
As always, I was thinking this morning, what is the biggest audience or venue or preaching opportunity that you've had?
00:00:59
Speaker
I think mine would be maybe, I think Xavier High School when the whole school was together.
00:01:04
Speaker
I don't know if that's maybe 500 people in a gym that I was preaching to for a mass.
00:01:10
Speaker
What is the biggest opportunity you've had to speak in front of a crowd?
00:01:14
Speaker
I don't know.
00:01:15
Speaker
Oh, I guess I was going to say Christmas Eve Mass, but then I remembered I have done a Mass at...
00:01:21
Speaker
Once I filled in at Columbus High School, so however many students are at Columbus High School in Waterloo, that's probably the biggest.
00:01:29
Speaker
I don't even know how big it is.
00:01:30
Speaker
400 maybe?
00:01:31
Speaker
Oh, okay.
Anthony Digman's Background and Media Influence
00:01:33
Speaker
We are joined by a very passionate Catholic.
00:01:36
Speaker
Mr. Anthony Digman is here with us this morning, and I'd like him to introduce himself, and then what's probably the biggest place that he has spoken at?
00:01:47
Speaker
Hello, Fathers.
00:01:48
Speaker
Thanks for the opportunity to come join you, and thank you both for your ministry to our church and for this podcast during this three-year National Eucharistic Revival.
00:01:57
Speaker
It's awesome and great to join you guys.
00:01:59
Speaker
So I am a Catholic author and speaker.
00:02:01
Speaker
I also teach theology at
00:02:03
Speaker
Beckman Catholic High School in Dyersville, Iowa.
00:02:05
Speaker
Been there 16 years now.
00:02:07
Speaker
I'm a native son of the Archdiocese of Dubuque.
00:02:10
Speaker
I have a father for a brother and a brother for a father.
00:02:13
Speaker
So my dad is now a religious brother.
00:02:16
Speaker
And my only sibling is Father Kyle Digman, who is also a priest, brother of yours from the Archdiocese of Dubuque.
00:02:22
Speaker
So guys, we're practically related.
00:02:25
Speaker
We share a brother.
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:27
Speaker
So, oh, the largest audience was probably at years ago, maybe 2017 at a Eucharistic Congress, annual Congress at the Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina.
00:02:39
Speaker
And they had me down to do one of the main talks, but it was kind of a breakout.
00:02:44
Speaker
But the room was set up for 6,000 people for the mass and for everything.
00:02:50
Speaker
But for that talk, there was about 600.
00:02:51
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:02:53
Speaker
It felt very lean.
00:02:55
Speaker
But it was, yeah, great group of people.
00:02:58
Speaker
And it's always great to learn and talk about the Eucharist.
00:03:01
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:03:01
Speaker
And notice how I said the largest physical audience, because we cannot count the media and electronic audience, because our guest has been featured on Catholic media such as EWTN, Catholic Digest and Radio Maria, as well as other various national Catholic radio stations, podcasts and blogs.
00:03:22
Speaker
And so we got kind of a star with us today.
00:03:25
Speaker
That's pretty cool.
00:03:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:03:27
Speaker
And now the thousands, millions of people who may be listening to this very podcast episode.
00:03:32
Speaker
Correct.
00:03:33
Speaker
Yes.
00:03:34
Speaker
Or the million people listening to it.
00:03:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's great to join you guys.
00:03:38
Speaker
Great to be with you.
00:03:38
Speaker
But I got to tell you this, you know, the most views I've ever had on one of my YouTube channels, I think it's well over 17,000 now.
00:03:46
Speaker
But it's not me.
00:03:47
Speaker
It's a video I did of my brother's first mass, his mass of Thanksgiving, and he
00:03:52
Speaker
had incorporated portions of his ordination.
00:03:55
Speaker
So it's beautifully humbling how precious the work that you guys do is.
00:04:01
Speaker
So thank you again for your ministry, gentlemen.
00:04:03
Speaker
Thank you.
00:04:03
Speaker
Thank
Early Faith Influences and Spiritual Journey
00:04:04
Speaker
you.
00:04:04
Speaker
Thanks for all you do as well.
00:04:06
Speaker
I love that.
00:04:06
Speaker
If you're in the game of counting views and likes, I feel you're just going to get disappointed.
00:04:12
Speaker
But when it's the Lord working through you and speaking through you, then it just takes off in a way that you can't take ownership of.
00:04:20
Speaker
And I think that's what we're all about.
00:04:22
Speaker
Amen.
00:04:24
Speaker
Mr. Digman, as your students, I'm sure, at Beckman call you, can you share a little bit of your own faith journey?
00:04:32
Speaker
How did you get to be in the various positions and roles that you have?
00:04:38
Speaker
And then how has your Catholic faith either played into that or how you continue to grow in it throughout your life?
00:04:47
Speaker
Sure.
00:04:47
Speaker
So I was raised, dad was always a Catholic from rural Iowa guy, hardworking man, blue collar.
00:04:56
Speaker
And mom was Lutheran, but we were raised Catholic.
00:05:00
Speaker
So I got an appreciation for Lutheranism as well throughout that process.
00:05:04
Speaker
Mom has since become
00:05:05
Speaker
Catholic and my parents are no longer together which is why my father is is able to become a missionary and is a brother in the church profess religious but for myself my faith journey really got going probably senior year of high school was really the transitional year for me I had attended Catholic K through sixth grade at Sacred Heart Elementary in Monticello Iowa and then throughout high school you know I got a good education at Monticello High
00:05:33
Speaker
but definitely missed out on the faith component with religious education classes that I was not motivated to learn more about my faith because I wasn't getting a grade.
00:05:42
Speaker
in those classes.
00:05:43
Speaker
So
Exploring Religious Beliefs and Re-embracing Catholicism
00:05:44
Speaker
it just lacked that for me.
00:05:45
Speaker
And I was pretty serious about being a student.
00:05:47
Speaker
So I took the sciences very seriously.
00:05:49
Speaker
I bought into the myth that science and religion are incompatible, which is something that I'm very passionate about teaching students, what a myth that is, what a misunderstanding that is and why here at Beckman in Dyersville.
00:06:04
Speaker
But I attended a retreat senior year, and that was really...
00:06:10
Speaker
an opening up of my heart.
00:06:11
Speaker
And as I look back on it, students asked me once, you know, you got confirmed junior year of high school.
00:06:18
Speaker
And I almost didn't because I felt like it would be hypocritical to get confirmed because I didn't really know if I believed what the church taught.
00:06:24
Speaker
You know, I was really wrestling with that.
00:06:26
Speaker
I ended up getting confirmed because I reasoned, well, if I decide not to be Catholic later in life, I'll just walk away.
00:06:33
Speaker
But if I want to be Catholic later in life and I don't get confirmed now, then I've got to go through a longer process.
00:06:38
Speaker
So I might as well just do it now with my friends and get it taken care of.
00:06:43
Speaker
So I did that.
00:06:44
Speaker
And a student asked me when I was about 30 years old, I'd been teaching for several years.
00:06:48
Speaker
I had a
00:06:48
Speaker
a master's in theology from Loras college, good old, good old, uh, Archdiocese of Dubuque education.
00:06:54
Speaker
And, um, he asked me, did your confirmation do anything for you?
00:06:58
Speaker
Did you notice anything different?
00:06:59
Speaker
Did it change you?
00:07:00
Speaker
And I was like, no, because I'm always honest with my students.
00:07:03
Speaker
Right.
00:07:04
Speaker
And I said, no, I didn't really notice a change, but that answer I gave really bothered me.
00:07:08
Speaker
And I think I was mowing my lawn a day or two later.
00:07:12
Speaker
Um, we had like an acre and a half at the time.
00:07:13
Speaker
So it took a little over an hour.
00:07:15
Speaker
and I had good thinking prayer time and it dawned on me for the first time.
00:07:19
Speaker
And this would have been 12 years or 13 years after my confirmation.
00:07:23
Speaker
It dawned on me that that was really the start.
00:07:26
Speaker
The end of my junior year getting confirmed, confirmed was really the beginning of God opening doors, pouring grace into my soul and me gradually opening those doors as, as God would knock, I would gradually open them and let him in deeper slowly and slowly.
00:07:43
Speaker
Until eventually this retreat, the fall of my senior year, God's love, God's presence really touched my heart in a way I'd never felt before.
00:07:52
Speaker
Because I'm a very intellectual person, and this was the first time my heart was kind of cracked open to God.
00:07:59
Speaker
And I came out of that retreat as a very naturally skeptical person, as I am.
00:08:04
Speaker
And I thought, you know what, maybe I just was feeling something weird and this was disillusioned.
00:08:10
Speaker
But at that point, I had a fire and the Holy Spirit really entered my soul for the first time and started lighting me up with the graces of my confirmation that I think were probably unlocked because I went to
00:08:20
Speaker
reconciliation at the retreat.
00:08:22
Speaker
And I had not gone to reconciliation that I can think of prior to my confirmation.
00:08:27
Speaker
I may have been in the state of serious sin.
00:08:30
Speaker
And then I think the graces of my confirmation may have been unlocked at that retreat.
00:08:34
Speaker
So the Holy Spirit really started to burn in my soul.
00:08:36
Speaker
And this was my issue.
00:08:39
Speaker
I needed to know what was true.
00:08:41
Speaker
I couldn't just believe something unless I knew it was real.
00:08:44
Speaker
And for me, that led into a study of, first of all, God.
00:08:48
Speaker
What evidence do we really have for God?
00:08:50
Speaker
Is this delusional?
00:08:51
Speaker
Do we just believe in God because we're afraid of death or because we're raised that way?
00:08:55
Speaker
What evidence do we really have for God?
00:08:57
Speaker
So I launched into what I call my truth quest of my senior year of high school.
00:09:02
Speaker
And
00:09:03
Speaker
I thought that this would take a decade to study what evidence do we have for God.
00:09:07
Speaker
And then if I'm convinced that God is real, then I was planning
From Teaching to Public Speaking and Writing
00:09:10
Speaker
to study all the world's religions and to see which one's really real.
00:09:13
Speaker
Because I mean, I was born and raised in rural Iowa.
00:09:16
Speaker
If I was born in India, I'd be a Hindu.
00:09:18
Speaker
If I was born in Iraq, I'd be a Muslim.
00:09:21
Speaker
So what evidence do we really have for different world religions?
00:09:25
Speaker
And then I realized, well, every world religion has so many different denominations and subsects that whichever one I...
00:09:33
Speaker
find out might have truth.
00:09:34
Speaker
Then I've still got a lot of work to do.
00:09:36
Speaker
Thanks be to God, I found my way back into Christianity and was so convinced by the evidence for the person of Jesus.
00:09:41
Speaker
Historically, sacred scripture, the evidence, the archaeological evidence, historical evidence, even psychological evidence for the New Testament, for the resurrection as a real historical event, supporting the person of Jesus Christ.
00:09:54
Speaker
That, okay, I can't deny Christianity.
00:09:56
Speaker
And now it's like, well, what kind of Christian should I be?
00:09:59
Speaker
I mean, there's over 7,000 independent Christian denominations, you know?
00:10:02
Speaker
And thanks be to God with the help of some amazing Catholic conversion stories of guys like Scott Hahn and Tim Staples and Steve Ray, who were big late 90s when I was going through this and I graduated high school in 2001.
00:10:17
Speaker
Their stories were a big deal and I got into those and they really helped me understand the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism.
00:10:24
Speaker
And thanks be to God, found my way back home to...
00:10:29
Speaker
Rome's Sweet Home, if you will, Scott Hahn's book, to Catholicism.
00:10:33
Speaker
So then it became a matter of, okay, I went into college as a very committed, excited Catholic and have never turned back, gradually trying to discern, God, where are you calling me to serve you?
00:10:45
Speaker
Are you calling me to the priesthood?
00:10:47
Speaker
Spent a good amount of time discerning that, never took the opportunity to attend seminary.
00:10:52
Speaker
I think what was difficult in my discernment struggle was feeling called to serve the Lord, but
00:10:58
Speaker
Being called to the married life, as I've been married 17
Interconnection of Sacraments and Science
00:11:01
Speaker
years now, have a wife and three kids, love those guys so much.
00:11:05
Speaker
They're so good in so many ways, the challenging ways and the easy blessings, if you will, as well as the challenging blessings.
00:11:13
Speaker
But I think it was a difficult discernment for me because I felt called to serve the Lord very directly.
00:11:19
Speaker
But at the same time, I was wrestling with a call to married life, which I didn't fully understand until later,
00:11:26
Speaker
that was called The Married Life, but also to serve the Lord very directly, which I've been so blessed to get into teaching.
00:11:33
Speaker
I started out as a DRE, actually, at Resurrection, Church of the Resurrection in Dubuque, for two years, and then got into the classroom.
00:11:41
Speaker
And then really coming into writing and speaking came out of doing my master's in theology at Loris, really got me started writing more seriously.
00:11:50
Speaker
And then speaking was really taking what I do in the classroom, really
00:11:55
Speaker
into a broader audience.
00:11:56
Speaker
I would have parents come in for parent-teacher conferences and say, what are you learning or what are you teaching the students this semester?
00:12:02
Speaker
And I would talk about with senior theology apologetics and the evidence for what we believe, which is a huge passion of my life.
00:12:09
Speaker
That's a big part of my faith story.
00:12:11
Speaker
And they would oftentimes say, man,
00:12:14
Speaker
Can I sit in on a class?
00:12:16
Speaker
Is there an opportunity that we could learn about this?
00:12:18
Speaker
And I thought, you know, I really need to take this out and share this more with the church.
00:12:24
Speaker
I had done a few speaking things for a theology on tap or a small parish event or a confirmation retreat and stuff like that.
00:12:31
Speaker
But I started to take that more seriously around 2015, 2016, and then have since gotten a little bit bigger with that and done some more speaking as time goes on.
00:12:41
Speaker
So it's been great opportunities to be able to share the truths that God has shown me, to be able to share some of the ways I've wrestled with my faith and the things that I've discovered and how I fall in love with God and share that with others.
00:12:54
Speaker
So very blessed and very thankful for those opportunities.
00:12:57
Speaker
That's excellent.
00:12:58
Speaker
Your life is perforated with the sacraments.
00:13:02
Speaker
The story that you just told is they're everywhere.
00:13:05
Speaker
And I think that's really a statement towards how the physical and the visible interacts with the invisible.
00:13:13
Speaker
Because second graders receiving their first communion, first reconciliation, confirmations, even the average congregant every Sunday, like, do they really know?
00:13:25
Speaker
Maybe, maybe not.
00:13:27
Speaker
But like the fact that we continue to open the door to the Lord, he works on us in ways that we don't even realize.
00:13:35
Speaker
And the same thing is true for priests, you know.
00:13:38
Speaker
So I think that's cool that also I like that you emphasize the falsehood that science and religion, faith and reason are.
00:13:48
Speaker
can't go hand in hand, which they do.
00:13:49
Speaker
They interlock perfectly.
00:13:51
Speaker
And Aquinas will tell us that.
00:13:53
Speaker
And so will you, of course.
00:13:55
Speaker
Thank you.
00:13:55
Speaker
That's a really cool story.
00:13:59
Speaker
And we could do a whole podcast episode about faith and science, but that might get outside of our focus here.
00:14:05
Speaker
But there's a lot of fascinating stuff there.
00:14:09
Speaker
I liked also just about the sacraments, about how confirmation, even though it seemed like it didn't do anything at first, realizing that maybe it did.
00:14:18
Speaker
I often, this is going to be an interesting example, but I often, when I teach about the saccharines by people, I often use the image of making chocolate milk.
00:14:27
Speaker
Because you have your glass of milk, right?
00:14:29
Speaker
Just like plain old boring white fallen human milk, right?
00:14:32
Speaker
And then you pour in the divinity that is chocolate, right?
00:14:36
Speaker
Pour it in there, squirt in the syrup, and there it is.
00:14:39
Speaker
And if I'm really prepared, I have like a visual of this.
00:14:42
Speaker
Because of course, you pour in the chocolate, and then it's there in the milk.
00:14:46
Speaker
but it's all kind of settled on the bottom, right?
00:14:49
Speaker
So it's objectively, it's there in the milk, but the white milk, you can ignore the chocolate and just pretend they'll keep living like plain old ordinary fallen white sinful milk, right?
00:15:01
Speaker
But then, of course, that chocolate, so it's there, but then sometimes you need something to stir it up, right?
00:15:09
Speaker
So that the chocolate
00:15:10
Speaker
the divinity can actually transform the milk to make that is divine chocolate milk.
00:15:14
Speaker
So that's, uh, often an image I use with mostly I use it in baptism and talk about the responsibility of parents and godparents to help stir up that milk, uh, stir, stir up the chocolate.
00:15:24
Speaker
And that's objectively
Understanding the Eucharist and Its Significance
00:15:25
Speaker
poured out in the milk.
00:15:25
Speaker
But I think it's very applicable to a variety of sacraments like confirmation.
00:15:30
Speaker
Objectively there's grace given there that's there.
00:15:33
Speaker
Uh, and we may not perceive it at first, or it may not immediately be stirred up or transform us.
00:15:38
Speaker
But, uh,
00:15:38
Speaker
But it's there, right?
00:15:39
Speaker
And I think we would apply to the Eucharist as well.
00:15:43
Speaker
Well, Father Kevin, I just did some quick math here, and I think your theology checks out.
00:15:48
Speaker
So I'm going to steal that.
00:15:50
Speaker
I'm going to use that.
00:15:51
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:15:52
Speaker
Well, and it's not copyrighted, so you don't even need to credit me or anything.
00:15:55
Speaker
Well, great.
00:15:57
Speaker
Or charge royalties, so.
00:15:58
Speaker
I agree.
00:15:59
Speaker
That was brilliant.
00:15:59
Speaker
I can't wait to use that in the classroom in my sacraments class.
00:16:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:02
Speaker
The visual is very striking for people.
00:16:04
Speaker
So, so, but, uh, speaking of the, the, maybe so the Eucharist, uh, and maybe transitioning into, uh, some of the Eucharist, um,
00:16:16
Speaker
So just talking about your conversion of becoming convinced of Catholicism, what was maybe like a particularly... I know there's many... There's a whole variety of evidence that goes towards conversion process and convincing us about the faith.
00:16:32
Speaker
But maybe what was particularly, and because this is Eucharistic revival, particularly striking about Catholicism and maybe of convincing about the idea of the Eucharist.
00:16:42
Speaker
I mean, we believe this radical idea that
00:16:44
Speaker
that the bread and wine become not just a symbol, but truly present, the physical body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ physically present to us, which is a pretty radical claim, right?
00:16:54
Speaker
And at first, people may think they look at it, they use their scientific evidence of their senses, right?
00:17:01
Speaker
You look at it, you listen to it, it looks like, smells like, he sounds like bread and wine, right?
00:17:07
Speaker
Because I used to always say, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it must be a duck, right?
00:17:13
Speaker
So the Eucharist looks like walks like talks like bread and wine, right?
00:17:18
Speaker
So someone who maybe is skeptical of that.
00:17:20
Speaker
So maybe I guess you can talk about maybe if there was something in that in your own journey, but then just in general, someone who maybe is skeptical of that.
00:17:27
Speaker
What would you hold up as sort of something that is particularly powerful and persuasive about this idea of the Eucharist and what it really is?
00:17:36
Speaker
Yeah, that actually flows really nicely right out of the story because as a naturally skeptical person, somebody who really wants evidence and is really committed to seeking the truth, the Eucharist was one of the biggest struggles for me.
00:17:48
Speaker
Actually, I think probably the two biggest struggles for me around senior year of high school was the church's teaching on
00:17:56
Speaker
Family planning related to contraception and natural family planning, fertility awareness-based methods was a huge problem for me.
00:18:02
Speaker
I was absolutely convinced that the church was completely wrong.
00:18:06
Speaker
And when I teach students in moral theology class senior year, I tell them, I think that this is the most widely rejected teaching of the church.
00:18:13
Speaker
And that one took me.
00:18:15
Speaker
golly, years going throughout college to continue to wrestle with the evidence.
00:18:19
Speaker
And every time I had an opportunity to do maybe a small research paper for publics, I went to the University of Northern Iowa as an undergrad.
00:18:28
Speaker
So anytime I had the opportunity to do a talk or something like that, I did it on that subject.
00:18:32
Speaker
I even did my master's thesis at Loras on the church's teaching on that.
00:18:37
Speaker
And the more I dug in to that, the more and more I was humbled to
00:18:41
Speaker
and realized, you know what, I don't know everything, and there's a lot here that I haven't considered, and the wisdom of the church is absolutely overwhelming in a beautiful way that just blew me away.
00:18:51
Speaker
But similarly, in terms of the Eucharist, I had almost an identical experience because I went, okay, God,
00:18:58
Speaker
I'm open to the possibility that this is real, that it looks like bread, it tastes like bread, it looks like wine, it tastes like wine.
00:19:05
Speaker
My senses tell me the other, and everything that I do in life is based on my sensual perception and trusting that.
00:19:12
Speaker
Can I really believe this?
00:19:14
Speaker
I'm willing to be open to that possibility, but I need more evidence because this just isn't working for me at all.
00:19:22
Speaker
And I had dated a Baptist girl my senior year of high school, which was also a very important
00:19:27
Speaker
part of that story and that retreat and me growing.
00:19:30
Speaker
So I learned a lot about Catholicism from the outside, and I was very interested in exploring other theological ideas.
00:19:38
Speaker
So I was not committed to believing the Eucharist right off the bat.
00:19:42
Speaker
I was open, but definitely not motivated to go, oh yeah, this is the faith of my youth, and I'm committed to this.
00:19:48
Speaker
And yes, I want to be a Catholic because I was raised Catholic.
00:19:51
Speaker
For me, it was definitely a truth issue.
00:19:54
Speaker
But the more and more that I
00:19:55
Speaker
wrestled with the topic of the Eucharist and dug in and studied and listened to perspectives and gave Catholics a fair opportunity to share, the more and more I was blown away, like the Church's teaching on contraception and family planning, blown away by the working of the Holy Spirit, the truth, you know, related to the Eucharist.
00:20:14
Speaker
And this is something that I share in the Eucharistic Revival talks that I'm doing as part of the National Eucharistic Revival.
00:20:20
Speaker
is going over the evidence that we have, because for me, that's really, really important.
00:20:25
Speaker
So I spend time taking a look at the Old Testament, and I make the argument that, you know what, the Eucharist is not something that Jesus or the church just invented 2,000 years ago.
00:20:37
Speaker
The Eucharist is something that God has planned since the beginning.
00:20:41
Speaker
in terms of making contact with us.
00:20:43
Speaker
There are so many Old Testament typologies, so many ways where he prepared us in the New Testament for the Eucharist.
00:20:53
Speaker
You've got the lamb is huge.
00:20:55
Speaker
The Passover lamb is one of the most pivotal that most people are aware of.
00:20:58
Speaker
You have the manna in the desert is also a big one.
00:21:01
Speaker
But even something as subtle that most people don't even know about of the bread of the presence in the Holy of Holies, next to the Ark of the Covenant, right?
00:21:11
Speaker
So many of these elements, these typologies, set us up in the Old Testament to finally receive the fullness of what the Eucharist really is in the New Testament, right?
00:21:21
Speaker
And you can even look at details.
00:21:23
Speaker
Like, let me show you one detail from the Old Testament that really got to me.
00:21:27
Speaker
So Leviticus chapter 17.
00:21:29
Speaker
says that you shall not drink the blood of any creature because its life is in its blood, right?
00:21:37
Speaker
So this is a big issue when you hit New Testament and Jesus in John chapter six, and that's something we also dive into in the Eucharistic revival.
00:21:45
Speaker
It's so important.
00:21:46
Speaker
John chapter six from the new Testament is looking at Jesus saying, you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood.
00:21:52
Speaker
Okay.
00:21:52
Speaker
Well to his Jewish audience, that's, that's unthinkable because Leviticus 17 says you cannot drink the blood of any creature.
00:22:00
Speaker
It's life is in its blood.
00:22:01
Speaker
No way.
00:22:02
Speaker
Can you do that?
00:22:03
Speaker
Right.
00:22:04
Speaker
And even as you look at, at Catholic dialogue with, with Protestant Christians, uh, some of whom may have consubstantiation like Luther and say that, well, it's, it's bread and wine and it's body and blood.
00:22:15
Speaker
or the sacramentarianism of Ulrich Zwingli from Switzerland, who would say, no, it's a pure symbol.
00:22:21
Speaker
There's no presence.
00:22:22
Speaker
It's purely a symbol of Jesus.
00:22:25
Speaker
Wrestling with these other ideas, you know, there's a strong objection, even based on Leviticus 17, that no, you can't drink the blood of anything.
00:22:33
Speaker
That's wrong.
00:22:34
Speaker
Scripture forbids that.
00:22:35
Speaker
Well, here's the twist, right?
00:22:37
Speaker
Jesus so often throws these twists at us, right?
00:22:41
Speaker
And the reason why we have to eat his flesh and drink his blood, okay, that's not fair.
00:22:47
Speaker
I shouldn't say the reason.
00:22:48
Speaker
There's many reasons, but...
00:22:50
Speaker
A reason why we have to eat his flesh and drink his blood is specifically because Leviticus 17 says that the life of every creature is in its blood.
00:23:00
Speaker
Because Jesus Christ wants to bring us to eternal life.
00:23:04
Speaker
He wants to fill us with divine grace, but not even just divine grace in the purely spiritual sense.
00:23:10
Speaker
Also in the physical sense.
00:23:12
Speaker
He is giving us his life through his blood.
00:23:16
Speaker
in the Blessed Sacrament.
00:23:18
Speaker
Another reason why, at first we go, oh no, we can't do that.
00:23:22
Speaker
And then we go,
00:23:23
Speaker
whoa, Jesus is really taking us to a whole deeper level, like not even one level down, like eight levels down.
00:23:31
Speaker
He's taking us to something so much more intimate of the heart and so much more intellectually mind-blowing and relationally that he wants to touch us on so much of a deeper level and he wants to be interwoven into the being of who we are, not only in terms of spiritually or mentally, but physically as well.
00:23:51
Speaker
The Eucharist just touches on this...
00:23:53
Speaker
in ways that just blow me away.
00:23:55
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:55
Speaker
So giving talks on the Eucharistic revival, so much fun, right?
00:23:59
Speaker
To be able to dive deeper into this because, you know, just one talk, you know, there's, there's several things you can cover, but being able to do two or three talks together in a series, you're able to go so much deeper.
00:24:10
Speaker
Um,
00:24:10
Speaker
And I just love that.
00:24:12
Speaker
Another connection I like to make is with marriage, because for many, at least adult Catholics, we're familiar with the idea of marriage.
00:24:19
Speaker
And taking a look at the connections between marriage and the Eucharist are also extremely powerful.
00:24:24
Speaker
And that's another biblical reference is throughout the Old Testament, one of the most powerful and most common ways that the prophets use to explain our relationship with God is a marriage.
00:24:35
Speaker
You know, Song of Songs is really, really strong with that, of course.
00:24:38
Speaker
And then in the New Testament, Jesus builds off of this.
00:24:41
Speaker
And he starts talking about his relationship with the church, right?
00:24:43
Speaker
As a marriage.
00:24:44
Speaker
So as we enter into the Eucharist, the Eucharist has very strong marital parallels because you're the couple sharing marriage.
00:24:55
Speaker
themselves with each other emotionally, sharing their lives, their time, their minds, right?
00:25:00
Speaker
They're also sharing in a physical sense, and that's that deeper connection that husband and wife share in that sacrament, right?
00:25:07
Speaker
Well, Eucharist is doing that also with Jesus.
00:25:10
Speaker
It's not purely spiritual, or purely.
00:25:13
Speaker
It's not just.
00:25:13
Speaker
It's not merely spiritual, right?
00:25:16
Speaker
It's not merely an intellectual connection to God.
00:25:18
Speaker
It is also
00:25:19
Speaker
a physical connection with God, that God wants to bond with us even more deeply than the bonding that husband and wife share throughout their lives and their physical intimacy.
00:25:29
Speaker
God wants that with us.
00:25:30
Speaker
It's a love story, right?
00:25:32
Speaker
It's a love story that transcends all of human history throughout God's plan and is ultimately pointing us to heavenly glory.
00:25:39
Speaker
where we're headed in the eternal marriage banquet, but also that bonding that we will share not only with God, it's not only a vertical relationship, vertical connection, it's also horizontal.
00:25:50
Speaker
That the Eucharist also builds and makes the church.
00:25:53
Speaker
It connects and binds all of us together.
00:25:55
Speaker
That when I receive communion,
00:25:56
Speaker
At Mass, I attend Father Kevin's Mass or Father Jacob's Mass, and I receive communion, and Father receives communion.
00:26:02
Speaker
Well, I'm bonded to Father through Christ.
00:26:06
Speaker
He's that glue.
00:26:07
Speaker
But it's not just you guys.
00:26:08
Speaker
We're bonded to the entire community.
00:26:10
Speaker
But wait a minute.
00:26:11
Speaker
God's also not bound by space.
00:26:13
Speaker
So every Catholic who receives communion around the world on that given Saturday night or Sunday, I'm being bonded to Jesus.
00:26:19
Speaker
You're being bonded to Jesus.
00:26:20
Speaker
We're being bonded to Jesus together.
00:26:22
Speaker
But that's not all.
00:26:24
Speaker
God's also not bound by time, which means when I receive communion and I'm bonded to Jesus, I'm also bonded to anyone who ever has or ever will receive communion.
00:26:33
Speaker
So the entire communion of saints, every whole communion of saints here on earth, those who are part of the body of Christ, those who are in purgatory, those who are in heaven, we are all connected through Jesus Christ with each other, forming that vertical and horizontal family of God, that communion of saints that we're ultimately headed to in our faith journey
00:26:52
Speaker
to heavenly glory.
00:26:53
Speaker
So you guys, oh my, like this is tip of the iceberg, right?
00:26:57
Speaker
On the depth of the Eucharist, right?
00:26:59
Speaker
Okay, I'm going to breathe now.
00:27:00
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's why we're doing Eucharistic Revival because it's so rich and beautiful and why we want to do this podcast is show people the many rich facets of that.
00:27:08
Speaker
I'm going to go say Mass right now.
00:27:11
Speaker
I think it's Saturday.
00:27:14
Speaker
So we're bonded to even that, even...
00:27:16
Speaker
That person who sits in the pew three behind me that I don't really like that they voted differently from me.
00:27:23
Speaker
I'm bonded to them too, you know, in a deeply intimate marital way.
00:27:27
Speaker
Wow.
00:27:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:29
Speaker
So just to summarize a little bit of some of the things and three things I like to talk about one, and you touch on this is like,
00:27:37
Speaker
I often talk about the spiritual life is like, it's a divine blood transfusion, right?
00:27:40
Speaker
Like we're getting God's life into us through blood transfusion or also sometimes a divine heart transplant, right?
00:27:46
Speaker
His heart being put into ours and how that's just like, it's a nice metaphor, but then there's also like a very real dimension to that.
00:27:53
Speaker
And then secondly, the two become one flesh, right?
00:27:56
Speaker
Like we're the bride of the lamb.
00:27:59
Speaker
And that's where I also can talk about when I talk to married couples in preparation for marriage, I mean,
00:28:05
Speaker
um, is how celibacy and marriage when lived in the Christian life, um, are not so much opposites as, um, complementary.
00:28:14
Speaker
Their facets reflect, and they're different facets of the same mystery.
00:28:17
Speaker
That is the divine love of God.
00:28:19
Speaker
You know, one sacramentalizes and makes very present and tangible to us, the sacrament of marriage, um, what the love of God is like.
00:28:27
Speaker
We can tangibly see, uh,
00:28:29
Speaker
experience that.
00:28:31
Speaker
And then the other sort of points to then what we're all ultimately made for.
00:28:35
Speaker
And then the last thing you said is how
00:28:37
Speaker
I often say, you know, how it's the blood of Jesus Christ that makes us brothers and sisters.
00:28:41
Speaker
You know, we're made children of God and thus brothers and sisters, not merely by adoption, but by flesh and blood.
00:28:48
Speaker
We become blood brothers and sisters, you know, that we're together.
00:28:52
Speaker
And like Father Jacob said, sometimes whether we like it or not, right?
00:28:57
Speaker
But that's exactly the call to love, right?
00:28:59
Speaker
Like sometimes people tell me, Father Kevin, I don't like to go to Mass.
00:29:03
Speaker
There's a bunch of sinners there, you know.
00:29:06
Speaker
which it's like, the point is you have to learn to love them too.
00:29:09
Speaker
That's why we need, that's why it can't just be like my own prayer at home.
00:29:12
Speaker
That's why we need mass.
00:29:14
Speaker
We need church.
00:29:14
Speaker
And for all of these things that we said, and also for that, it pulls me out and calls me to love because it's really easy to,
00:29:21
Speaker
It's really easy to love my neighbor if I never have to deal with them or see them, right?
00:29:25
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:29:25
Speaker
Anyways, but just so much there.
00:29:26
Speaker
Thank you.
00:29:27
Speaker
And yeah, Father Jacob, do you have anything you want to add to that?
00:29:31
Speaker
Yeah, for anyone listening, speaking directly to our audience, if you yourself are wrestling or doubting, or if you have a comformande, perhaps, living in your house that is wrestling or doubting, I just...
00:29:46
Speaker
I just think our guest here, Mr. Digman, is a pretty smart cookie.
00:29:54
Speaker
And he himself, through his journey, was doubting and wrestling.
00:29:57
Speaker
And I just take a lot of consolation and reflection from my namesake, Jacob.
00:30:02
Speaker
who in Genesis 32 actually wrestled with God or an angel and had his hip broken.
00:30:09
Speaker
So you can go check that passage out in Genesis 32.
00:30:11
Speaker
But I think the idea of wrestling, we see it with the apostles constantly.
00:30:16
Speaker
They're either doubting or little, they're ye of little faith, you know.
00:30:21
Speaker
if we're going to be in this thing and on mission and being sent out by Christ, it's okay to not have everything figured out.
00:30:32
Speaker
And, and that's part of the love affair that is Christianity and knowing Jesus Christ is that we're going to go forward in faith, even if we don't quite understand,
00:30:43
Speaker
um, assent or understand it all.
00:30:45
Speaker
We're never going to understand it all.
00:30:46
Speaker
There's the Trinity itself is a mystery.
00:30:48
Speaker
So it's the Eucharist in a way, but, um, so to all those who, who may be feel they're, they're conflicted or doubting or wrestling, that is okay.
00:30:57
Speaker
And that is actually a welcome part of being a disciple.
00:31:01
Speaker
And, um, I, I, I just think that that's even more encouragement to seek others, to seek, um,
00:31:08
Speaker
understanding and uh and prayer too i mean all this i would imagine that um you talked about your your intellectual adventures and your truth quest but there had you you were you were speaking directly to the lord in this and it has to be him illuminating your path and you you truly trusting him to do that so through others and through prayer um it's okay to wrestle amen absolutely
00:31:35
Speaker
Yeah, and just to add to that wrestling, the end of John 6, when Jesus talks about, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have life within you, right?
00:31:42
Speaker
Many people weren't sure what to do with that, and the apostles even themselves were maybe a little baffled.
00:31:46
Speaker
Jesus said, are you going to leave too?
00:31:47
Speaker
They're like, well, maybe we don't fully understand or know what to do with this, but you have the words of everlasting life, so.
00:31:55
Speaker
Where else are we going to go?
00:31:56
Speaker
Yeah, where else are we going to go, so.
00:31:59
Speaker
Speaking of places you can go, if you liked what you heard today, I think this episode is dropping on February 15th.
00:32:06
Speaker
So like in like a week or so, Anthony Digman will actually be speaking in LaSalle, Pastorate, which is where is LaSalle, Pastorate?
00:32:16
Speaker
That's north of Dyersville, includes the towns of, I always forget, Luxembourg, Holy Cross,
00:32:22
Speaker
Balltown, Rickardsville, and Cheryl, I think.
00:32:26
Speaker
It's Father Tyler Raymond.
00:32:28
Speaker
Yeah, Father Tyler Raymond.
00:32:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:30
Speaker
Yeah, so these talks will be February 25th through the 27th.
00:32:34
Speaker
We're doing Sunday, Monday, Tuesday night.
00:32:36
Speaker
They're at 7 o'clock.
00:32:38
Speaker
All of the talks will be at St.
00:32:39
Speaker
Francis of Assisi in Balltown.
00:32:41
Speaker
It's part of the St.
00:32:42
Speaker
John the Baptist de la Salle pastorate up there.
00:32:45
Speaker
There you go.
00:32:46
Speaker
So that's a place you can go and hear more on if you liked what Anthony Nygma had to say today.
00:32:51
Speaker
You can go and hear more.
00:32:54
Speaker
And do you want to just tell us a little bit, kind of as we're closing out, Anthony, are there any other things you're doing for Eucharistic Revival or any other things that you have that you're working on or that you have coming up?
Resources and Miracles for Strengthening Faith
00:33:08
Speaker
Oh, sure.
00:33:08
Speaker
Thanks for asking.
00:33:09
Speaker
Actually, let me also share just some more resources for anybody listening to get some more stuff.
00:33:14
Speaker
You know, one of the most powerful resources that I think I can credit fairly with keeping me Catholic when I was in that year or that.
00:33:23
Speaker
pivotal transitional year of senior year in high school and then into college that has helped me so much.
00:33:28
Speaker
And I tell my students in apologetics class, I want you to memorize this website.
00:33:32
Speaker
And it's one of the toughest website names for a Catholic to memorize.
00:33:37
Speaker
It is catholic.com.
00:33:40
Speaker
Okay.
00:33:40
Speaker
Very difficult to remember, right?
00:33:41
Speaker
Catholic.com is Catholic Answers website, and they're out of San Diego, California.
00:33:46
Speaker
And, you know, I mean, I can't say that everything that they have is phenomenal, but many, many things that they have are really quite good.
00:33:53
Speaker
Some things really phenomenal, but I think that they really excel at answering questions.
00:33:59
Speaker
So you can just hop onto Catholic.com.
00:34:01
Speaker
You can type in a question in their search bar and they have radio shows.
00:34:04
Speaker
They have videos.
00:34:05
Speaker
They have magazine articles.
00:34:07
Speaker
They have tracks, readings, things that, you know, you could spend just 20 minutes doing some decent research.
00:34:13
Speaker
And they have done so much of the background research for you.
00:34:16
Speaker
And then you just get to jump in at the end and benefit from all of the work that they have done in terms of, you know, what, why do we believe this about being Catholics and what
00:34:26
Speaker
The Eucharist for sure, but anything, anything, you know, Mary, the saints, the Pope, reconciliation.
00:34:32
Speaker
You know, when somebody asks us, do you really go into this dark room alone with this guy and you tell him your deepest, darkest secrets?
00:34:41
Speaker
Well, yeah, we do.
00:34:41
Speaker
Well, why would you do that?
00:34:43
Speaker
You know?
00:34:43
Speaker
So just giving an explanation for anything that we do as Catholics, highly recommend Catholic.com.
00:34:49
Speaker
Specifically related to the Eucharist, gentlemen, Eucharistic miracles,
00:34:55
Speaker
are so helpful for me as a naturally skeptical person.
00:34:59
Speaker
And I think my favorite one is Buenos Aires.
00:35:02
Speaker
Do we have enough time that I could share that one?
00:35:04
Speaker
Yeah, go for it.
00:35:06
Speaker
My favorite Eucharistic miracle, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
00:35:10
Speaker
There was a series of them, 92, 94, and 96, but my favorite is the 1996 one.
00:35:15
Speaker
So they're celebrating Mass, and somebody comes up and they tell the priest there's a host in the back of the church.
00:35:21
Speaker
So it's Father Alejandro Pezet is the pastor.
00:35:24
Speaker
So he goes back, he collects the Blessed Sacrament, the host, he puts it in a glass of water, they put it in the tabernacle.
00:35:30
Speaker
He goes back to check on it later.
00:35:32
Speaker
The host should dissolve away.
00:35:35
Speaker
And once it's completely dissolved and there's no more visible presence or physical presence of breadness, if you will, then there's no longer the sacramental presence of Jesus.
00:35:45
Speaker
So he goes and he checks on it and the host has started to turn to flesh and has started to bleed, or at least that's what it looks like.
00:35:53
Speaker
This might come as a shocker, but the Catholic Church doesn't typically move very quickly on certain things.
00:35:58
Speaker
And we certainly wouldn't want to say, oh, we got a miracle here, and then have it disproven later, and then, I mean, that looks bad, that hurts people's faith, that would be a problem.
00:36:07
Speaker
So he, Father Alejandro Pezet, informed
00:36:10
Speaker
his bishop, his archbishop in Buenos Aires, who ends up becoming Pope Francis, which is a lot of fun, fun connection there.
00:36:17
Speaker
And they sit on it for a little while.
00:36:20
Speaker
They have it professionally photographed for a time.
00:36:23
Speaker
Eventually they bring in Dr.
00:36:26
Speaker
Oh, golly, I can't remember his name.
00:36:28
Speaker
Oh, Dr. Professor Castanon Gomez.
00:36:30
Speaker
They bring him in to do an investigation, and they take a sample of this blessed sacrament.
00:36:36
Speaker
And Dr. Gomez takes this to forensic labs all around the world over the course of several years.
00:36:42
Speaker
So he goes to San Francisco in 2000.
00:36:45
Speaker
He ends up going to Sydney, Australia in 2002.
00:36:50
Speaker
But my favorite is in 2004, he went to Columbia University in New York.
00:36:55
Speaker
And he takes this to Dr. Zagube, who had done analysis on the Shroud of Turin.
00:37:00
Speaker
And what they determined at all these forensic labs is that it is bleeding, that this is human tissue.
00:37:06
Speaker
It is type AB blood, which matches, as far as I'm aware, not only the Shroud of Turin, but every Eucharistic miracle that's ever had.
00:37:14
Speaker
Scientific analysis done comes back as type AB blood.
00:37:17
Speaker
As far as I'm aware, I could be wrong on that.
00:37:19
Speaker
But Dr. Zugube finds not only is it human tissue and human blood, but it's tissue from the human heart, from the left ventricle of the heart, which is one of the four chambers.
00:37:30
Speaker
It's the chamber that when it constricts, it pumps blood to the body, giving the body a
00:37:38
Speaker
Dr. Zagube said that the victim or the donor of this sample suffered labored and painful breathing, which is consistent with our Lord's passion and death that he experienced and dying of asphyxiation on the cross.
00:37:52
Speaker
And Dr. Zagube, as well as these other forensic labs, continue to notice for years, and this is eight years later by the time it's at Columbia University, there's still the presence of intact white blood cells.
00:38:03
Speaker
And now, this is interesting.
00:38:05
Speaker
White blood cells, I'm told by medical professionals, and I always ask this as I've given talks for the last Eucharistic revival.
00:38:11
Speaker
Last year, I was blessed to do
00:38:13
Speaker
44 talks on the Eucharist over the course of six months from October to last Easter.
00:38:19
Speaker
So blessed to get down to Albuquerque, New Mexico and Erie, Pennsylvania and all over the Archdiocese of Dubuque and a couple other places in Iowa.
00:38:27
Speaker
And I always say, if you're a nurse or you're a doctor, please correct me on this one.
00:38:31
Speaker
I need to make sure I have this right.
00:38:32
Speaker
And they helped me polish it up a little bit.
00:38:34
Speaker
So I'm confident saying this, that within about 15 minutes of death, the white blood cells break down.
00:38:40
Speaker
And you have, Dr. Zagube has intact white blood cells.
00:38:43
Speaker
And again, these other Sydney, San Francisco, these forensic labs still find white blood cells present in this tissue, suggesting that
00:38:54
Speaker
that the victim or the donor from whom this sample was taken, that this was recently taken from them.
00:39:01
Speaker
And here we have, this is a Eucharist from eight years later.
00:39:04
Speaker
This is in 2004 that this Columbia University stuff is being done.
00:39:08
Speaker
Eight years later from 1996, from halfway around the world, from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
00:39:14
Speaker
So favorite Eucharistic miracle.
00:39:17
Speaker
Because I'm naturally skeptical, the scientific evidence behind it, you've got historical evidence for the Eucharist, you've got
00:39:22
Speaker
scriptural evidence for the eucharist you have logical evidence for the eucharist you have relational evidence for the eucharist you have scientific evidence for the eucharist but if you want to dive in and get some of the some more eucharistic miracles and i only share eucharistic miracles that have been vatican approved it's like kicks right kid tested mother approved right these are these are people tested you know scientifically tested vatican approved right um check out therealpresence.org they have the vatican exhibition of eucharistic miracles
00:39:51
Speaker
online that you can go check out, which was largely started by Blessed Carlo Acutis from Italy, if you're familiar with him.
00:39:57
Speaker
He died at 15 years old, I think, from leukemia.
00:40:00
Speaker
He really got a lot of this started cataloging the Eucharistic miracles of the world that are approved by the church.
00:40:05
Speaker
So highly recommend realpresence.org.
00:40:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:08
Speaker
Also, anthonydigman.com is my website.
00:40:11
Speaker
If you have any questions or I can point you in the right direction, I always love hearing from alumni, students, but anybody, you know, and let me know if you heard about us, heard about the Eucharistic Revival and heard about me from this podcast.
00:40:24
Speaker
Let me know how you heard about me.
00:40:25
Speaker
And, you know, anthonydigman.com, there's a contact form.
00:40:27
Speaker
Let me know what your question is and
00:40:29
Speaker
I'll try to point you in the right direction or give you more resources.
00:40:32
Speaker
If you have a young teen who's wrestling with the Eucharist or you have, say, a husband or a wife or a colleague or a neighbor or your parents or whatever it is, I'd be more than happy to help you out on that as well.
00:40:44
Speaker
But yeah.
00:40:45
Speaker
I'm very blessed to be doing Eucharistic revivals, Eucharistic missions around the Archdiocese of Dubuque especially, but around the country.
00:40:53
Speaker
If that'd be useful for you and your parish, harass your pastor a little bit and see if we can get out there.
00:40:59
Speaker
Father Kevin, you asked kind of some of the direction I'm going with a few things.
00:41:02
Speaker
The Eucharistic revival was really big for me last year, did a lot of talks.
00:41:07
Speaker
Not as many this year.
00:41:08
Speaker
I've got three coming up in Lent.
00:41:10
Speaker
So one is in the...
00:41:12
Speaker
I'm going to be in Fr.
00:41:13
Speaker
Tyler Raymond's group, his pastorate up in northern Dubuque County, but I'm also going to be down in the Quad Cities early in February and over in Boone.
00:41:22
Speaker
So if you're in the western end of the Archdiocese of Dubuque, you can catch us, catch the Eucharistic Revival over in Boone at the beginning of Lent as well.
00:41:30
Speaker
And if you want dates and times, just reach out to me directly.
00:41:33
Speaker
But a direction I'm kind of going, you guys, that I want to share is kind of shifting from doing nightly talks to I want to do more to help people in their faith through,
00:41:43
Speaker
You could call it a retreat, but I'm calling it a day of renewal where we take a Saturday or we
Future Plans for Community Engagement
00:41:48
Speaker
take a Sunday afternoon.
00:41:48
Speaker
We take several hours and we do some talks.
00:41:51
Speaker
We have reconciliation available.
00:41:53
Speaker
We have some small group discussion on the talk so that we can build each other up as a community.
00:41:58
Speaker
And then if it's on a Saturday, ideally, it would culminate in the massive anticipation for that evening so that we can grow together as a community.
00:42:07
Speaker
We can pick a topic like maybe it's a Eucharistic revival and we work on that for the day.
00:42:11
Speaker
or I'm working on a second master's degree at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio right now.
00:42:17
Speaker
And it's in catechetics and evangelization.
00:42:20
Speaker
And last summer I took a course on Christian spirituality that just rocked my world.
00:42:25
Speaker
And being able to dive in deeply into the spirituality of saints' lives, how they live, how they pray, was just such an eye-opener for me.
00:42:35
Speaker
And I remember being angry almost taking this course and thinking,
00:42:40
Speaker
how could I have served?
00:42:41
Speaker
I'm 41.
00:42:42
Speaker
How could I have served in the church for so many years, be halfway through my life, hopefully, maybe I make it to 82, I don't know, be halfway through my life, be an active, committed Catholic, teach at a Catholic high school, have a master's degree in theology, and have never heard
00:42:58
Speaker
in depth, the spirituality and stories of prayer, how to pray, how to actually systematically lay out a healthy, consistent prayer life.
00:43:08
Speaker
You know, there's a lot of books that do it lightly, but I'm just like, this is amazing, you know, when you put it all together.
00:43:14
Speaker
So that's something that I'm starting to offer and share in these days of renewal.
00:43:19
Speaker
So that's kind of the direction I'm going.
00:43:20
Speaker
I think Catholics...
00:43:22
Speaker
Catholics, we get busy and doing a series of night talks at night, sometimes Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, you know, that can be a lot.
00:43:28
Speaker
You can't make it to all of them.
00:43:29
Speaker
Your kids have practice or, you know, other things are going on, but, you know, taking a day or half of a day to really sit down with, with a community of people and grow in faith, have time for prayer, have time for reflection, have time for sharing, hear talks, go to reconciliation, have time for adoration and culminate in mass is something that I'm really excited to be able to offer in the future.
00:43:50
Speaker
Marvelous.
00:43:51
Speaker
For everyone voraciously scribbling notes, I will be putting all this in the show notes in text so you can look at everything he just said.
00:44:01
Speaker
Also, I would add your story earlier about the Eucharist and the typology.
00:44:08
Speaker
An author named Brant Petrie wrote a book called The Jewish Roots of the Eucharist.
00:44:12
Speaker
And he's one of I call him Scott's boys.
00:44:15
Speaker
Scott Hahn's cohort.
00:44:17
Speaker
They all came out of the same kind of intellectual and academic field.
00:44:21
Speaker
But Brant Petrie's Jewish Roots of the Eucharist hits all of the typologies that Mr. Digman talked to us about.
00:44:29
Speaker
Yeah, and to give credit where credit's due, when I cover that in the Eucharistic Revival Talks, it's largely built on Dr. Brant Petrie's book.
00:44:36
Speaker
So it is a fantastic book, great read.
00:44:39
Speaker
And yeah, you would only get the summary if you heard one of my talks.
00:44:42
Speaker
Instead, you can get the full version from Dr. Petrie.
00:44:46
Speaker
Well, this has been delightful.
00:44:47
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining us this morning.
00:44:50
Speaker
Thank you, Fathers.
00:44:51
Speaker
I really appreciate it.
00:44:52
Speaker
This has been awesome.
00:44:52
Speaker
And thanks again for your ministry and the good work that you're doing.
00:44:56
Speaker
Anybody who's listening, God bless you for taking the time to sit with us and to grow more in your faith and to share it.
00:45:01
Speaker
Evangelization is so key in the church today.
00:45:04
Speaker
So don't be afraid to take whatever golden nugget that you got out of today that helped you and share it with your sibling, your friend, your coworker, a fellow student, your parents, your neighbor, whatever it is.
00:45:14
Speaker
Share whatever golden nugget you picked up today with someone else.
00:45:19
Speaker
Amen.
00:45:20
Speaker
All right.
00:45:21
Speaker
Thank you, everyone.
00:45:22
Speaker
See you in the Eucharist.
00:45:24
Speaker
Amen.