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Episode Description
While the four National Eucharistic Pilgrimage routes advance ever closer toward Indianapolis where they will converge for the 2024 National Eucharistic Congress, we talk with Dr. Edward Sri about what impact he hopes these events will have on the hearts of Catholics – especially when it comes to understanding the true ‘sacrifice of the Mass.’ Thousands of Catholics across the United States have been participating in this historic event set to be the largest of its kind in history.
As the movie Jesus Thirsts becomes the second highest-grossing documentary of 2024, producer Tim Moriarty discusses the impact the film is having on so many across the country. The documentary takes viewers on a global journey that delves into the profound mystery of the eucharist, unveiling it as Jesus Christ himself, and spotlights moving personal stories of its transformative power in people’s lives.
Father Roger Landry also offers an insightful homily for us as he himself walks the final leg of the full Eucharistic pilgrimage.
Bios
Dr. Edward Sri is a theologian, best-selling author, and respected international Catholic speaker. He is the presenter for numerous Ascension Press faith formation film series and the host of the acclaimed podcast, “All Things Catholic.” Dr. Sri holds a doctorate from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome and is an adjunct professor at the Augustine Institute. He is the founding leader of FOCUS where he serves as Senior Vice President of Apostolic Outreach. His latest books include When You Pray: Trust, Surrender and the Transformation of Your Soul, and The Good, the Messy and the Beautiful: The Joys and Struggles of Real Married Life, which he co-authored with his wife, Elizabeth. He and his wife reside in Colorado with their eight children.
Tim Moriarty is an actor, writer, and producer in both film and television. He has contributed to popular TV shows such as Blue Bloods, The Blacklist, House of Cards, Luke Cage, and Manifest. He is the founder and executive director of the production company, Castletown Media, an award winning film studio and communications agency, which produced the current blockbuster documentary, Jesus Thirsts. He holds degrees in Philosophy from Boston College and an MFA in Acting from Louisiana State University. His production company, Castletown Media, collaborates with clients worldwide to tell meaningful and inspiring stories.
Father Roger Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts. He writes for numerous publications, speaks on radio and TV, and is the author of the book, Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God. A graduate of Harvard and the Pontifical North American College in Rome, he served as Attaché to the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the UN in New York. Father Landry is nearing completion of his journey along the full 1500-mile Eucharist Pilgrimage, and will join 50,000 Catholics at the largest ever Eucharistic Congress to be held in Indianapolis on July 16.
The following transcript is machine generated.
Episode 273 Transcript
| Grazie | Hello friends, and welcome to Conversations with Consequences. We are the radio show and podcast of the Catholic Association where we aim to change the culture one conversation at a time. You can listen to conversations with Consequences on the EWTN Global Catholic Radio Network. We are also on Sirius XM Channel 130. Of course, our radio show is always podcast. Go to the Catholic Association, Dawgs podcasts, or directly to wherever you listen to your podcast. Welcome to Conversations with Consequences. I'm your host is Dr. Gracie Christie. Thank you for joining us over the summer when you have so many fun things calling your attention. I hope that this summer brings you rest and leisure and time with your family. Thank you for joining us. Week after week and being are valued and very appreciated listeners that conversations with consequences. Joining us today is Dr. Edward three. He's a theologian, author and well known Catholic speaker who presents to tens of thousands of people from around the world each year. He has a doctorate from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome, and he is an adjunct professor at the Augustine Institute. Dr. Three is a founding leader of Focus, one of my favorite groups where he currently serves as senior vice president of Apostolic Outreach. I can tell you he must be doing a really good job because our 20 year old, our fourth child, has been wonderfully affected by focus at his college. It's been a remarkable experience watching him be part of that focus group. Dr. Sri has a new book out called What Do You Seek Encountering the Heart of the Gospel. We welcome him to the show to tell us about his new book. Welcome to the show. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Dr. Three Thanks for having me. |
| Grazie | So your new book is called What Do You Seek Encountering the Heart of the Gospel. I understand that in the book you emphasize the good news of the gospel, also known as the charisma, and you work that out in detail. So tell us about your book and why this emphasis on the gospel. Why is this important? |
| Dr. Edward Sri | You know, in our day and age, we all have loved ones, friends, family members who are away from the church. Either they've walked away from the church or they've never really encountered Christ. How do we reach them? How do we bring them back? How do we inspire them? Well, the first thing we need to do is interior eyes, that beautiful gospel message that St Paul and the early church fathers proclaimed. And and it transformed a pagan Roman culture into a Christian culture. That basic core message isn't known by many Catholics today, even many devout Catholics that go to mass every Sunday. They may read Catholic books listening to Catholic radio, but do they really know the gospel message? If I go to the average Catholic that I meet at conferences that I'm speaking at around the country and ask them what the gospel they don't know? They know truths about the faith like that. There's 12 apostles. Ten Commandments is seven sacraments, but they don't know that core message of God's love, the story of that amazing love. And I wanted to write a book that would be helpful for ordinary Catholic to interior eyes, that beautiful gospel message. So it's not so much a tool that you used. You know, proclaim the charisma, the gospel on a street corner. That's not what this is. This is much more about how can I, as a Catholic, live not just knowing the facts of my faith, but live in deep relationship with Jesus through that beautiful core gospel message, the story of his amazing love of salvation. So it's a book we can pray through and reflect on so that I can live deeply with it in my own heart. |
| Grazie | If that's my experience to Dr. Story, that there's a there's a great ignorance about that basic core, that basic idea that very, very central idea that the entire relationship, the entire history of mankind has to do with God's purposes for us and his love of us in the salvation history that extends over the whole history of man. And at the center of that is love. It's his, his he, his, the primacy of his love. The the way that he interacts with us is starts with him. It's not us seeking God, but him creating us into beings, into being these creatures that flourish in his love right. And become the people that that he envisioned when he first made man. Yeah. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | When I break down the core gospel message into five parts and you could break it down many different ways, but you see these five parts all throughout Scripture and in the Catholic tradition. I divide them into what I call 5 hours, and this is what we use in focus. But the first hour is relationship that were made out of love from the God who is love, who created us to share his love with us. And I know that sounds like a really basic message. I remember as a kid hearing that God loves me, okay? You know, God loves everybody. I'm a part of everybody, so I guess that's fine. But can we get to more interesting things? You know, let's talk about the Eucharist and transubstantiation or so I wanted to, like really get into the death of theology. And I didn't realize that that is the depths that I will never really appreciate the Eucharist in my life if I don't really only encounter God in his message of his creating me. So, you know. |
| Grazie | Dr. three, can you blame young people if they've been if they've been raised on a steady diet of the Big Bang and evolution and sort of the coincidence that life is just this this mad coincidence on a on a strange planet, This is how they've been taught, this. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Is how they've been taught. And they're constantly distracted from thinking about what is their purpose in life and where do they come from and where they're going. You know, there's so much anxiety in people today, not just young people that I'm talking to, people in their forties, 5060s, lots of anxiety, lots of depression, lots of loneliness. And this message is so profound. And to help us in this, you know, so I was just teaching our focused missionaries at our training this summer, and I had them do a little exercise and I just said, okay, I know you all know the basic truths. I know you recite the Creed every Sunday. I believe in God, the Father, mighty creator of heaven and earth. We can't just mumble through these lines, but we should be astonished like the Saints were over this point. So I said, Here's why don't you watch it? Close your eyes and imagine the vast universe which you imagine the depths of the Milky Way galaxy, the peak of Mount Everest, the depths of the ocean, just the beauty of all of God's creation. And in all of the things and all the animals and all the planets and all the people that God has created, He chose to bring you into existence. And then I say, Keep your eyes closed and ponder this, this, this frightening thought. God did not have to create you. He's free to do whatever he wanted. He didn't have to bring you into existence. You don't have to exist. That's a very terrifying thought. But but the beautiful message is that God did choose freely out of love. That's the first point of the catechism, out of a sheer planet of God's goodness, God chose to bring you into existence. |
| Grazie | Well, then you place and you place the individual, this tiny, tiny individual in this giant, eternal enormity that we can't even fathom. Right. And then and yet he's creating this one person, each of these people sitting in the audience listening to you. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Just because he wanted a relationship with you, he wanted to fill you with his life, fill you with his love. He delighted in you. This is this is something that the Saints marveled over. Mother Teresa would would often be in all over this thing. God, that you're so big. I get that. But then I'm so small and you want a relationship with me. You thirst for me. You thirst for my love. I don't understand it. She was then all over this thing. Catherine of Siena says, God, this is crazy. You're drunk. You are drunk with love. That's what she said. And what do we Catholics do? We bumble through the sun creating, I believe in God. The Father Almighty, Creator of Earth. No. Again, if we're true disciples today, this is something I know the basic truth, but only if we go to over and over again in marble heaven. Thank God for because that gives me my identity, it gives me my purpose, and it is the foundation for everything. That's just one. |
| Grazie | Example. And Jesus and Jesus plus Jesus speaks about God wanting to delight in his creation, to delight in in each man and woman that he creates. Which is a beautiful word, right? Delight. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Exactly. Yeah. In fact, you see that in the creation account where he's after, he finishes creating everything in the climax of creation as man and woman, it creates us. And then it says it is very good. |
| Grazie | Because that relation ship, you could have a relationship with someone that you barely tolerate, right? Or someone that annoys you all the time. Or is someone you want to maybe, I don't know, punch in the eye next time you see him. These are real relationships, but the relationship that God seeks is a relationship of mutual delight. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Yeah, mutual delight, deep unity, Intimacy in great love. And this is this is the great news. Now, the second hour that I deal with at the book is the Fall. It's I call it rebellion. So you have a great relationship. But Satan and his angels rebelled against God and he enticed us to join his rebellion. And this is the fact that is not often talked about in the modern world, even among many Christians. We like to kind of downplay this part of the gospel and we need, if we're going to really appreciate what Jesus comes to offer us, we need to really proclaim the fall today because we live in a world a secular age that doesn't want to admit that we don't see things clearly. They don't want to admit the limits of the human mind. They don't want to admit that we were weak or fallen. And we don't always choose the good. We like to think we're a little immaculate conception in our modern world. Dr. Do you. |
| Grazie | Think modern people even believe in sin as a concept? |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Not really. I mean, we might say things like, yeah, I make mistakes, or I have to tell you I'm not perfect, but that we are deeply wounded, that that aspect is not known. And we need we need to really, I. |
| Grazie | Think, really think even well-formed Catholics reject that. They really have this therapeutic idea of of personality, of people just have these you know, they've had hard upbringings, they make mistakes. But there's no real sense, even in well-formed Catholics. I know, because I inquire about these things and I and I and I personally don't because I agree with you that if we don't have a sense of sin and a sense of our weakness, our internal that original sin that that that dysfunction that exists in all of us, then we can't appreciate God's love because I. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Think you. |
| Grazie | Are so beautiful and so perfect. Of course God loves us. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | No, you see this all the time. You see it a lot of Catholic social media, you know, there's this real therapeutic sense of the gospel that, you know, things like when we hear things like, you know, you know, follow your dreams, you know, we are just God wants you to fill, fulfill the desires of your heart. Well, let's be careful out there, because not every desire I have, not every dream I have is from God. I'm a fallen human being. So just because I desire something and I want this doesn't mean that I should get it. And I think people have a therapeutic view of God, that God is just there is like my divine therapist. He's there to help you solve my problems. |
| Grazie | And he's a therapist in the sky. Right when he wants you to do is feel good all the time about whatever you're doing. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | And we have to realize is that we're fallen. And maybe some of the reasons why I'm not happy isn't because of problems out there in the world. Don't get me wrong, there's serious wounds that people receive from relationships, family work, disordered work situations. Those are serious issues and we need to address them. But I always bring out in the book, I said, when we're looking at our problems, that our life, our first response should be like G.K. Chesterton. So someone asked G.K. Chesterton, What's the biggest problem in the world? And without hesitation, he gave a one word answer. He said, Me and I don't think most of us would say most of us, we are the biggest problem. You know, it's, you know, the environment or it's corporations or it's the government, it's Washington, you know, or it is my parents, it's my boss. That's my coach. We need to look internally and realize we're really seriously broken. We are under the reign of the devil. Without Jesus Christ, we are. Minds are not clear. We can't always see the truth clearly. We need his revelation. My weak, my will is weak. I need his grace to heal me, to heal my desires, to heal my emotions and not live by my emotions and desires all the time like that. This is the fundamental point we have to proclaim, and it is what brings unhappiness in the world and brings suffering in my own soul is our is the wound of original sin. |
| Grazie | But people really do reject the idea that that God loves us the way we are. So we say God loves us the way we are. Right? And then but God wants better for us, right? So He want He loves us the way we are. It's like I love my my toddler who can't who can't eat properly with a spoon, but I want him one day to eat with a spoon properly without someone having to feed him. |
| Grazie | Right. I love my toddler the way he is, but I want him to grow into a man. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Yeah, this is the balance of the full gospel message. Like sometimes Christianity is presented as just harsh in a bunch of rules and you didn't follow the rules. You're you're just a mess. And that's and then you don't hear the message of God's grace. But we're also living, as you've described in this therapeutic era today, we're oftentimes it's just, God loves you, you're special, and he just wants to help you with all your problems that make you feel happy. It's like, well, that's not the full story either. There's there's a story of the fall and that we're we do have disorder desires. We have emotions that need to be healed and redirected. And and God wants to do that for us. So I love this line from John Paul. The second I quoted in here is I'm presenting the reality of the second are this rebellion, the reality of the fall. It's from JP to and I'm paraphrasing here. He says, You know, we're not the sum total of our weaknesses and faults. We do have weaknesses and we do have serious faults. We do have serious sin in our lives. But yet even in the midst of that, we're really the sum total of the father's love for us. That in the midst of all of our weakness and all of our sin to God does really love us. But He wants to heal us. And that's really what gets to the next couple. Are as reconciliation and recreation are the two the next 2 hours they talk about. So we're wounded, we're fallen, we're in a broken relationship with God. How does God solve the problem? Well, he sends his son to die for us. We know that basic message. And I walk through a meditation on that. But I think maybe for our purposes, I'd like to focus on the fourth. Ah, recreation, because this is one that's not talked about. You don't see many Protestants mention this aspect, but it's absolutely essential for a Catholic understanding of salvation. And many Catholics missed this point. It's the idea that God doesn't want to just forgive us. He wants to heal us. He doesn't want to just pardon us like a judge. okay, you're sinner, but I'll let you into heaven. I'll forgive you. You know, he wants to heal us like a physician. He wants to get to the roots of our sins and changes. So all of those things I keep bringing to confession. God wants to heal me of those my pride, my selfishness, my anger, all these things that God wants to He wants to heal God. He wants to heal the wounds from my past. He wants to get to the roots of all that, that that's not hole in my soul. And and the good news is he really can do this. He sends his spirit into our hearts that the Saint Paul says he makes us a new creation. And he does this through the sacraments, through prayer, through the teachings of the church. These are our guides to help chance transform our souls. I'll share one less analogy here. This is I mentioned this in the book, but the beautiful analogy that the early Christians used the church fathers to describe this reality of our salvation that God doesn't just forget about us and pardon us, He transforms us. So the analogy is that of an iron rod put in fire. You put that iron rod in fire, it starts to glow. It. It becomes hot, it emits smoke, it changes color becomes red and orange. It takes on the properties of fire. It's still an iron rod, but it's taking on those characteristics of fire. And the church father says that that's what happens with our souls when we're in the furnace of the Holy Spirit through the sacraments, through the life of prayer, our iron rod of our human nature, our broken, wounded, weak, sinful human nature becomes changed. It becomes it begins to take on the properties of God himself. We begin to love like Jesus, to forgive, like Jesus, to be patient, like Jesus, to be pure of heart, like Jesus. And if we long for change, we long for that transformation. We longed to be better husbands and wives and mothers and fathers and the love like Jesus loves. And we want to interior rise this gospel message to live our Catholic faith deeply. Because if I just know the facts of my faith and I just begin Catholic content all the time, that's not going to change my heart. It ultimately is through a personal encounter with that gospel message that we have to encounter over and over and over again, not just once. When we were in high school and not just once when we had a conversion in our adult years, but as the church is calling us to renew over and over again our encounter with Jesus in the Gospel. That's why I wrote this book is to help people take that gospel message and take it in a personal way so that they can experience freedom and transformation. |
| Grazie | The Hour of Recreation. This sounds like a very painful process. It sounds like you have to see, as Lewis said, this first. But people people want God to help them, but they want God to tinker around the edges and fix the small things that they know are broken. But God's what God wants to do is recreate us anew. That's that's quite a process. That's that people reject. That is painful, right? |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Yeah. I think about Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ. You remember. |
| Grazie | That? Of course. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Tense. It exhibits where Jesus, the suffering he went through for us. But there's that line. And he says, you know, in the midst of it, I make all things new. I think he's looking at his mother to make all things news from Revelation. It is that idea of that new creation. But think about how much pain and suffering he went through. And it was like our transformation isn't just like, cool, I'm going to get some nice cosmetics and get some makeup on my face and I'll look nicer for Jesus. No, no, no, no. It's going to be an open heart surgery, and that's not easy. It can be really painful. |
| Grazie | Very disorienting. And, you know, when you start to change, everyone around you resists. Have you noticed? |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Yeah. Well, that that could happen. Yeah. When you're in the people in your life, they start noticing you being, you know, you don't gossip as much as they do or you're not watching those same shows that have you know, that images on the screen that that you used to with them. And they feel a little bit, you know, threatened by that, a little judged by that. But maybe to go back to your point about the painful ness of it, it's a theme with the purpose. You know, the analogy Jesus uses in John 16 is he's describing what he's going to go through on the cross, which is the pattern that we're all going to go through. You know, he uses that of childbirth. He says, a woman in travail, you know, she's going through all the pains and suffering, you know, as she's delivering this child. But yet once the child is born, she holds the child and no one could take their joy away from her. |
| Grazie | And she forgets she forgets all the pain. She's ready to do it again that day. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Yeah. And I think that's the analogy for Christ is describing him going through on the cross. But it's also the analogy for us is that there's always going to be a good Friday, a new Good Friday. God is inviting us to over and over again in our interior life like a certain area. He wants us to change. He wants us to give up, he wants us to or to attach to something. So he's inviting us to stop the certain behavior. Maybe he wants us to forgive someone sometimes that that deeper Good Friday experience in the spiritual life involves, you know, going back and maybe it was going to therapy and dealing with things from our past in our upbringing. Sometimes it involves with things on the cross called the Dark Night of the Soul. There's real darkness on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. But but it's a darkness. It's a suffering, It's a pain with a purpose that brings about greater freedom on the other side and greater transformation. And again, I just did in another class for our focus missionaries that it's called the second conversion, the first conversions. Okay, I'm going to follow Jesus the to pray and get my life together. I got better friends and you notice a lot of benefits right away when you live a Christian life as opposed to a secular pagan life, especially. |
| Grazie | If you're a young person, right? You're not waking up with a horrible hangover on Saturday morning. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Exactly. Things like that. Or you just have better friendships. You just you're living a more holistic life. You know, there's a lot of benefits to it, but God is calling us to something deeper. That's a good first step, but there's a deeper conversion he's inviting us to. And again, this is the depth of the gospel that we need to re encounter over and over again. But it's good like that. The pain of of letting go, of something you've been attached to for your whole life, or the pain of going through some dark wounds in your life or the pain of just persevering in prayer in times of great dryness. These things actually draw out the deepest desires in our soul, which are for God himself. Which brings us back to that. First, are that of relationship. So I think again, the book that I wrote, what you what do you seek is really meant to walk through the gospel message, but in a prayerful way to help the average Catholic not just know the facts of their faith and be orthodox, which is absolutely essential. We need to do all that. But how do I take those truths and have them written on my heart so that I can experience Jesus healing me, freeing me from those sins, from those weaknesses, those faults, those weak, those those wounds in my life that prevent me from receiving his love and prevent me from being an instrument of passing on his love, whether it's to my spouse, to my children, to my friends, to my coworkers. I want Christ to radiate through me. But that can only happen if I have. I'm living from a deep interior life, renewing my encounter with the gospel, and Catholics need to know the gospel. Every Catholic needs to know this gospel message that I wrote the book. |
| Grazie | Doctor three I personally am a person. I'm a very orthodox person because it's it's not. It's my personality. I like rules and form and order and I like challenges, right? So all that works great for me is to be orthodox. But I so agree with you that I've noticed in my life that it's in it's in deepening my my relationship with the gospel has to be a daily one. I have to read the gospel every day and meditate on it. And that has informed my orthodoxy with with that relationship, as you say. Right. The relationship and my desire to be recreated and to be transformed. And that leads me to another thing, which is the Eucharistic revival, which I know that that you're part of. One of the things that hasn't made a huge difference in my life is adoration. Time before the Blessed Sacrament, where what I'm fostering there is in that silence is my relationship with Jesus. And it's something that that personal relationship where I'm not just talking to him, but I, I want to hear him speak to me. And I'm actually making the time to be there and silencing everything else so that I can have that relationship with him. Is that how you see the you because the Eucharistic revival, or is that a huge part of it? Is this relationship with Jesus that we can have through, through the Eucharist? |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Yeah, I think the revival, I've been blessed to be a part of some of those initial committees and thinking through it. And you know, it's involves many things. Yeah, I think that what you're saying is at the heart of it, there is a renewal in catechesis on the Eucharist, and I think that's one of the efforts over the last couple of years. Every dioceses, every parish doing more catechesis on the Eucharist because a lot of Catholics don't even know the basics, that the bread and wine is changing, The actual. |
| Grazie | Body will stand as a. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Symbol. |
| Grazie | A scandalous number of Catholics. Yes. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | yeah. But. But what hasn't been as talked about, is that the vast majority of Catholics, I would argue, even many orthodox Catholics, don't understand the sacrifice of the mass that Christ sacrificed on the cross has made present to us that every mass and that is made present to us so that we can enter into it, so we can unite our lives with Christ's suffering on the cross, unite it with his offering of love to the Father, to the Christ, Perfect act of love on Good Friday can be rewritten in our hearts so that I can then share that perfect love of Christ on the cross in the world around me like that. That I mean, most people don't know the real presence, but I would say like 90% of Catholics could not explain to me the sacrifice of the mass. And that's another catechetical crisis. But but I think what you're getting at then is when we come to know the sacrifice, the mass and participate in, and we come to know the real presence of Jesus, the Eucharist, we come to understand the reality of the profound union we have in Holy Communion. Now we're prepared. I think we're better prepared to really appreciate adoring the Christ in Eucharistic devotion outside of the Eucharistic liturgy, and that's in adoration, whether it's visiting a church, the Tabernacle, or with exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in the monstrous and the adoration chapels around the world. I think that's that's what really the time we spend with Jesus in the Eucharist outside of the liturgy is what's going to strengthen my ability to enter into the Eucharistic liturgy itself. The two really go together. I think it's really important, like in a marriage, that, you know, your spouse's heart and this is great. I think it ties back to again, looking at what the gospel message is. You know, I know facts about my wife. I know when she was born, I know her parents. I know what her major was in college. I know the color of her hair. I know all these facts about her. And I may do certain good, you know, pious practices, so to speak. You know, my relation with birth. I can ask her, and how was your day? I could take out the trash. I could help do the dishes and I could help take care of the kids. And I can do I go through all the motions? I think that's what many Catholics do. They know facts about God and the Catholic faith and they go through the motions and all the right place practices. They say the right prayers, do the right things. But my wife longs for me not to just know facts about her. And she's longing for me not just to go through the motions and do all the right things. She wants me to know her heart. She wants me to be in relationship with her. And and I think that's that we need to go back to the gospel message, the charisma, to know that. So when I wrote this book, actually, I wrote it thinking, this is this is a book. I ideally can picture somebody in an adoration chapel praying with it. So I think this brings the two themes together. Here is before the Blessed Sacrament, before his real presence, I'm pondering the marvelous mystery of his creation that he brought me into existence, that he wants a relationship with me that should bring me to tears. That should be the father, my niece and I moved by that. And to go to Adoration Chapel and think about that relationship he wants with me. And then he's right there at a beautiful place to pray through the creek and then to ponder the sad reality of my rebellion that I've been selfish, that I've not said yes to Jesus, that I've been allowed by fears to control me and not surrender my life to him. Like all those things, I like to pray in from the Blessed Sacrament until Jesus, I'm sorry. He'll me Jesus like that. That's a beautiful place to pray through the Gospel and then to ponder like, Thank you Jesus for dying for me and thank you for for wanting to recreate me, to transform you, to make me a new creation, to make me into your likeness from one degree of glory to another is name, Paul says, and then ask him for the grace to bring about that change to help me cooperate with the spirit in my heart that is transforming my iron rod of my soul into his fire, the fire of the Holy Spirit. These are the Adoration Chapel is the number one place I can picture somebody pondering that gospel message, which is then Pope Francis says we need to do over and over and over again. If we get bored with these truths. This is not like go back to math class and learn that two plus two is four. That's not what this is. These are the most profound truths of our Catholic faith. These are the truths at the bedrock of the foundation of the universe. And if I'm bored with that, that's a sign of something being broken with me. I wrote this book for helping Catholics to really encounter that message that you and I, I pray that they'll they'll, they'll use it in Eucharistic chapel. You can read it at home or wherever, but a Eucharistic adoration chapel, I think, is the number one place to begin to rekindle that relationship with Jesus in the charisma in the gospel. |
| Grazie | Well, that's what that's where I'll bring my book. Doctor. Dr. Edward three. He is the author of What Do You Seek Encountering the Heart of the Gospel. You can buy the book at Ignatius Press or on your website, I think. Dr. Sweet I think it's Dr. Edward three I'm sorry. Edward Yeah, sorry. Edward three Tor.com And it's called What Do You Seek? So thank you so much. Doctor three It was a delight to have you. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Thanks for having me. |
| Grazie | Gather Welcome back to Conversations with Consequences. I'm your host is Dr. Gracie Christie. And joining us now is a special guest. His name is Tim Moriarty. He's the executive producer of the film that's Taking the World by Storm amid the Eucharistic Pilgrimage, which we've been talking a lot about on our show. The film is called Jesus Thirsts The Miracle of the Eucharist, and he is also the owner of Castletown Media. Welcome to the show, Tim. |
| Tim Moriarty | Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to talking a little bit about this film and the great Eucharistic revival that's happening in the country. |
| Grazie | So I was able to watch the film and I just yesterday is very fresh in my mind and it's it's a film that I think is vastly necessary right now, and it's watching the film. You understand why right from the beginning, because you are right at the top at the front of the film. You talk about this horrifying fact that recent polling has shown that only a third of Catholics in the United States even believe that the Eucharist is the body, the actual body of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that's such a shocking statistic. Why is it was this an impetus for you? I mean, it's also we have, of course, the Eucharistic revival year. But was this an impetus for you to make this film? |
| Tim Moriarty | It was. It was so so the the genesis of the film came through. Deacon Steve Greco, the executive producer who works out of the Diocese of Orange, Runs Spiritual Hearts Ministry. He had a conversation with with Jim Wahlberg. He had done a series of conferences really focused on reviving devotion to the Eucharist and there was a sense, there was a sense that to aid the great work of Eucharistic revival, it would be very helpful to have a film that could be be not just a piece of catechesis, but a kind of a almost initiation into the Catholic worldview, the sacramental worldview, a deep visceral sense of what is it, what does it really mean? The crisis present in the Eucharist is something that engages not just the head, but also the heart and also the senses. So we had worked previously with Jim Wahlberg on a film, a Mother Teresa, No Greater Love, which was produced for the Knights of Columbus, and this was now about a year ago. Where were these conversations started and said, well, you know, let's let's let's work on creating something that could be a great tool of evangelization and try and give people not just not just head knowledge, but a real experience of of of what it is. So as you know, on the top of the film, we really we start with Archbishop Fulton Sheen, where he has that wonderful. |
| Grazie | Wonderful quote. |
| Tim Moriarty | Where he says, if you know, if you were alive at the time of our Lord, you would have seen just as humanity. But if you had faith, you would have pierced the humanity and you would have seen divinity. And he says, the same is true in our own time. When we look at bread and wine, it's faith that allows us to pierce the merely material components of this to see the divine reality that's just beyond the veil. And so what we wanted this film to be was a kind of experiential, experiential film that allowed people to get a glimpse of that unseen world that we're growing more and more numb to in our modern world with scientism and materialism, And to try and bring back that sense of the divine really comes to us, comes to meet us in the sacraments, and most especially the Blessed Sacrament. |
| Grazie | So the Wonder and the R and the supernatural quality of it that is that is intertwined with the very physical reality of the Eucharist, right? Supernatural. And it's physical at the same time. And that's something that, as you say in our culture, that kind of awareness has, has worn away from the way that we interact with the world, right? Like we're very we're very, if we can't count it, you know, we can look it up on, on, on our phones, then it doesn't exist, which is such a is such a limiting view, Right. |
| Tim Moriarty | Yeah, it's so true. It's so true. We live kind of I mean, I think it's a kind of Gnostic or neo gnostic situation where we're so split between something that is purely, you know, reality is simply that which we sense. And yet there's a kind of strange forms of spirituality, sort of new age forms of spirituality that have come where it's divorced from the physical world. And so what the sacraments are, and I think the real the genius of the Catholic sacramental worldview is that, no, actually we live in reality is is is unified. We're not we don't need to be split apart between a purely reductionistic scientific prism and then kind of various strange forms of spirituality, which in which in a way are kind of flights away from the body, in a way from the material world. The sacraments are that which which God becomes manifest through the physical world, the Christ incarnation, divinity becomes flesh. And this is most especially true in the Eucharist. So the recovery of the sense of what the Eucharist is, is in a way, I think the great anecdote to some of the the prison of the reductionism and also the conflate from reality that we're facing as a culture, I think it's absolutely critical for the church to to to revive that deep, deep gift that we have in the Eucharist. |
| Grazie | And maybe a lot of the dysfunction that we're experiencing is that that we're not we're not in touch with that that same that same complexity of our own human natures. Right. Because we understand ourselves to be very material and very physical. And at the same time, we know that we feel that we have a spirit and a soul about us, the things that we cannot touch, but that are just as important as as our physical bodies. And Andrew, our society has closed that out for us. That understanding and and the Eucharist brings it back. |
| Tim Moriarty | It really does. No, I think that's exactly right. I think that's exactly right. I mean, I was really struck just, you know, just after coming off of the box office success last week and going to Mass in St Paul's second reading, where he talks about, you know, the unseen, you know, the seen as that which is transitory, but the unseen is the eternal in the relationship between the two is is really so important in this, this longing. I think that is a thought. I think one of the things that's been moving to us is the responses that we've received from people that have seen the film, a family member who has been disaffected from the church, and we really left during some of the period where the scandals were on the front page and hadn't really been to Mass and, you know, eight or nine years. She called and she was bawling and said that there was some something in the film that was a kind of it stirred in her, a kind of remembering something that had been forgotten, that there was something that and this is what I think the role of beauty is, and especially the role of Catholic art, rather than leading an evangelization with, say, you know, leading with doctrines which are utterly important, absolutely important, or rather than leading with even moral rules, which again, are absolutely important, starting with beauty to attract to to attract people to the faith. Because in in the experience of beauty, you know, when you're stopped in your tracks and something opens up, something pierces through a kind of mundane kind of muddling through that we kind of get into in our day to day life and there's something attractive that makes you want to go deeper. That's that's really, I think, what was what we were attempting to do with this film is to present the richness of the Eucharist, the theological depth of the Eucharist, the biblical roots of it, but also to do it in a beautiful way that that it would maybe attract those who have, you know, come to the opinion that they no longer wanted to have anything to do with the church who were wounded by the church to to say, just why don't you just stop for a moment and look at this, just look at this, you know, and consider how beautiful this is. And that might lead then to the further conversation. And I think that's very important for us to recover beauty and the attractiveness and the utter splendor of both of our faith. |
| Grazie | Well, you certainly you certainly did that in the film. And one thing that moved me very much is the way that you you approach this from all these different directions, different countries, different people, kinds of people, right? You have religious people. You have a scene in which Jim Wahlberg in a prison, in a prison ministry, nuns, nuns making the host itself in the in their convent monks picking the the the the grapes from the very vines Yeah and all these all these. you go to Uganda. I think it's Uganda and. Yes that's right. That's right. This beautiful, this beautiful, these beautiful scenes of people that are so different from us and yet they're adoring at the same at the same sight that, that, that we adore here in our homes in United States where things are so different and yet so the same. Right. We have that same necessity for our Lord. How beautiful the way that you wove all of this in, it's very effective and. Well, it really does reach deep inside. |
| Dr. Edward Sri | Yeah. Yeah. |
| Tim Moriarty | Ah, I can see that when we begin when we began a year ago and I'm not sure this before there was a sense of, of real. I've never felt so, such, so much trepidation, so fear. Because you think, how can you do a film about the Eucharist and how can you do justice to the subject matter? You know, it's it seemed very daunting. And I think for us, what what really helped overcome that was was trying to bring it to prayer and essentially to say, you know, there's no way we can do justice to this, but maybe we can point to the reality and allow ourselves just to try to be used as instruments in the process. And what happened then is you just we knew we wanted to we knew we needed a structure for the film and we wanted the structure to be based upon what Jesus does on the road to a mass where, as you mentioned, we start with these statistics and kind of the bad news. We're where we are today. We just needed to be really honest and sober about where we are. But then it's very there's a parallel to the way in which the disciples who were leaving Jerusalem were dejected and hopeless. |
| Grazie | Yes, yes. |
| Tim Moriarty | Since in many cases you look at statistics today, there can be that sense where we feel, where's the church going? What's happening? So what do we do? What is Jesus do? He goes back and in and into the scriptures where all of these things from the past are pointing to him. And as the as the disciples are hearing this, their hearts are stirring within them. And then he, you know, breaks the bread and then their eyes are open. So in the film, the structure is based on that, where we go into the stories of the Old Testament. But in order to prevent it from merely being, you know, sort of an academic exercise as you say, we want it to weave in various stories from around the world where, you know, when we talk about, for instance, the the manna, the heavenly manna, then we sort of segway into the scene where the sisters are creating Eucharistic hosts. So there's this there's a kind of a reason for moving to that story. Or we want to talk about the sense of dejection, the sense of hopelessness. That's when we kind of move into this segment of the prison, these prisoners who can have, you know, they're in life, lifetime sentences, and yet the devotion they have to the Eucharist and the hope and the faith that they have. So. |
| Grazie | and then that gorgeous scene of the Vietnamese forgetting his name, the Vietnamese who spent a month. |
| Tim Moriarty | Yes. Cardinal Antoine, you spent. |
| Grazie | 13 years correctly in solitary. |
| Tim Moriarty | That's right. Yes. |
| Grazie | how beautiful that was. And I thought, yes, you know, you show his hands dirty from the from his cell and holding using his own hand as the chalice to hold on just a few drops of wine to make his to make his mass, not to write, to bring forth the blood of Jesus. It was extremely moving. |
| Tim Moriarty | Yeah. I think that one in particular was very we just it shows the it shows that, you know, we can often take for granted the fact that, you know, daily mass is offered in churches and chapels all over the place. We are being persecuted for that in the same way that people of the past were. But to see somebody who, you know, was imprisoned by the communists for 13 years, nine years in solitary, and they literally, his family members cleverly smuggled in wine by, you know, hiding it under a jar of medicine, and then Eucharistic hosts in a small flashlight. And he he would it was absolutely sustained him in the midst of these the horrors of the prison. But even more so I mean what his sister said, the real miracle of this was the compassion that he had towards the guards, that they were abusing him. And yet he treated them as Christ and many of them converted. And there's a sense in which the Eucharist, when we feed on this spiritual food, it transforms us and allows us to be Christ even in the midst of these horrible situation. So that that story in particular, I think is really helpful. It's it comes right after we talk about some of the some of the problems in the priesthood and some of the scandals to say, well, this is actually what the priesthood is and can be. It's that sense of a call and response where we are honest about where we are. We're not being Pollyanna about it, but it's the response is to go back to this is what the faith is. This is what happens when when we surrender to Christ in the Eucharist. |
| Grazie | Tell me what you think our society, our American society would look like if the Eucharistic revival is as successful as it ought to be. If your film changes hearts and opens minds to the to the reality of the Eucharist, what what would this do to our society? |
| Tim Moriarty | Well, that's a it's a tremendous question. I mean, in a way, I think as Christians, as Christians were meant to be, salt of the world, were meant to Catholicism is ultimately saying is that this is reality. This is what reality is. Our society right now feels very untethered from anything objective. It feels like we're just awash in subjectivism and relativism. So a real Eucharistic revival is is essential because in my estimation, we're very similar situation. It could be somewhat parallel to a kind of collapse of a civilization where we're in a moment where kind of a civilizational transition in the church is back right where we were. There's a great book by Monsignor Shea from From Christendom to Apostolic Mission. I think he's right that this the current culture we're in is, in a way, a decay Christendom, and we're left with values like equality and freedom. But they're untethered from the rest of the Christian worldview. And it's created a tremendous problem. And there's just there's a lot of almost absurdity. |
| Grazie | And they've taken on the totalitarian strength, right, because they're discussion, because they're disconnected and unbalanced by the other virtues. |
| Tim Moriarty | That's exactly right. And that's the definition of a heresy, which is you take one truth and you take it so far to the exclusion of others. Some have said this, you know, modernism is a kind of ultimately a Christian heresy where where you take certain Christian values, but they separate them from the eternal and from the transcendent. So, I mean, to me, it's is Christians and Catholics realizing that, yeah, there is a there is a situation where our institutions are going through transition. But look at the look at the apostles. We know when Jesus appeared to them after his resurrection, they were like, you know, 12 and, you know, and women who were totally in love with in love with Christ, and they set the world on fire. So what would it look like? I think it's I think it would look like seeking to bring bring the kingdom of God more and more present on Earth. I think it would be instead, our institutions would be transformed by being informed by the Catholic worldview, I think. But I think we're in a situation now where as Catholics, we absolutely need to go back to the fundamentals and we need to really go deep into our faith so that we can deal with the very strong cultural headwinds that are that are increasingly opposed to the Catholic worldview, opposed to Christ, opposed to these eternal values. You know what it's going to look like in the future? I think it will look different than it has looked in the last 2000 years. But I think I think the Christian story, the Catholic story, is very much alive and I'm much more interested in sort of playing defense at this point. You know, what happens if we're really on fire and what happens? What happens if we can bring Christ present to this situation? That's that's where I think we need to be focused. |
| Grazie | Well, and that's that's your film. Exactly that. Right? Jesus, there's the miracle of the Eucharist. Tell our listeners, please, where they can watch Jesus thirsts. |
| Tim Moriarty | So the success of the film during our initial box office release led Fathom Events to give us two additional dates on June 18th and 19th. You can find out more information about which theaters that Jesus thirsts film dotcom. And we're really encouraging people who haven't seen it yet to come out, people who who have seen it before. It's a great opportunity to bring your friends and family members maybe are disaffected from the church, people who haven't been to church in a couple of decades even. We're really, you know, we think the response that we've received, it's there's something very special, I think, in the whole Eucharistic revival movement. And this this film can help, I think, stir that flame of love that for many, many of us kind of lies dormant. And so so again, June 18th and 19th are the two dates next week go to Jesus there's film dot com and you can find more information about which theater it will be playing. |
| Grazie | Well, thank you. Tim Moriarty, executive producer of the film. Thank you for joining us today and we wish you the best of success and. I hope all our listeners will go online and buy their tickets for the next show. |
| Tim Moriarty | Thank you so much. |
| Grazie | God bless you. And now Father Roger Landry offers us, as is customary, a short and inspiring homily to prepare us for this Sunday's gospel. |
| Fr. Landry | This is father actually honor and privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation. The result, which is one step with each of us this Sunday, as he sends out the apostles for the first time to proclaim his gospel with instructions that are meant to guide the way that we share in that same continuous mission of the salvation of the world. Is the whole church in the United States prepares for the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis. Beginning this Wednesday, it prepares for the missionary phase of the Eucharistic revival. After the Congress is completion. Jesus words will help us become more effective. Missionaries of Eucharistic Knowledge, faith, gratitude, amazement, love in life. The essential starting point for our mission is that Jesus love for us was so great that not only did He want to save us, but he wanted to involve us in our own salvation and in the salvation of our family and friends. Even those we don't know. For the beginning of time. He wanted us to be co redeemer's with him. He could have stayed in our world until the end of time, physically traversing every country himself. He didn't have to ascend the right hand of the father, but he wanted to ascend so that we could fulfill the mission he would give us to bring the good news of salvation to the whole world. So for the beginning of his public ministry, not only did Jesus preach in word and deed, but he prepared us, his disciples, to do the same. He trained us to preach. He gave us his own authority to cure the sick and cast out unclean spirit. He formed us to be more and more like him was himself. God, the father's great missionary. He never merely stated, Do what I say, but always said Follow me. And he wanted us to follow him in the mission he had receive for the Father. That baton was passed to the Apostles and first disciples. They passed it on to others who in turn handed it on to others. He hands to us anew that baton. This Sunday he trusted us enough to entrust to us his life saving work. It's important for us to grasp that Jesus commissions all of us as his missionaries by our baptism been strengthened by our confirmation. We're called to share in Christ own prophetic work. This universal mission grew in stages. She's first trained the 12, sent them out, then he trained 72 and sent them out with the same instructions, for he ascended in heaven. He instructed 500 on the mountainside and told them, Go out to the whole world and proclaim the Gospel, baptizing and teaching them to carry out everything I have commanded you. That mission continues down to this day, and Jesus wants us and in some sense needs us to carry it on the second point is that we're not sent out with our own message. You're given the instruction to wing it. We're sent out as his ambassadors with his own message, the same message he himself proclaims It's in Mark writes that as soon as Jesus returned from his 40 day fast in the wilderness, he came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying the time is fulfilled in the Kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe in the good news. Jesus states a fact and then gives an imperative. This is the Kingdom of God is at hand. We're called to change our lives and based them on this Gospel. When Jesus sends out the 12, as we see in this Sunday's gospel, it's with the same message, same Mark tells us they went off and preached repentance, just gave the same message to all the disciples before his ascension, saying repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed, and then in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. The Fundamental message of Jesus is about our need for conversion, indeed our need for new life and the great news that God mercifully wants to give us that life. Jesus sent His first disciples out with that message, that good news of the call to turn away from sin and live in the Kingdom of God. Likewise, He sends each of us with that message a sheep in the midst of all, in the context of a culture in great need of conversion to be credible missionaries, though we must first in flesh this message. It's no surprise that among his first missionaries, Jesus chosen some great sinners. Peter, whose first words the Lord were Depart from the Lord, from a sinful man. Matthew, a hated tax collector. He used to sin by shaking down his own people. Later, Paula, once terrorized, tortured, presiding over the presided over the killing of Christians. They were able to preach that conversion from sins was possible and that God had indeed come to reconcile sinners. They were living testimonies of the salvation Christ sent them to preach to others. They went from sinners to saints. The Lord calls us to preach the same message, not only with our lips, but with our life. That leads us directly to how Jesus wants us to deliver that message. He gave several specifics in the Gospel. He sent about two by two and instructed them, say, Mark tells us to take nothing for their journey but a walking stick, no food, no sack, no money in their belts. They were, however, to wear sandals, but not a second tunic. Jesus point was not to give the church particular dress code to last until the end of time, but to form his disciples so that their message would be credible. He wanted us to preach the Gospel just as he himself was accustomed to deliver it with simplicity of life. He wanted to cultivate in us the virtues of the kingdom so that we would be able to preach this message not just with words, but with our whole bearing. We are to show that we take seriously what we are announcing the presence of a God who tells us not to worry about what really eat, drink, where or where we are asleep because God knows what we need before we ask it and cares for us more than he cares for the lilies of the field and the birds of the sky by telling us wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave, is instructing us to be grateful for the hospitality given rather than looking for a better deal by mentioning whatever place does not welcome you leave there and shake the dust off your feet and testimony against them. He was teaching us not to be weighed down with bad memories or to nurse the wounds from one place to the next. We experience rejection. Most of us will. He wants us to let it go, to have a fresh start and not to have the good news of great joy masked by the sadness of a previous difficult experience. By sending us out two by two. He was also helping us to learn how to grow in love in our missionary journeys. Pope Saint Gregory the Great 1400 years ago taught that the reason why Jesus sent the Apostles and disciples out in pairs, even though they could have covered twice as much ground if he sent them out solo, was so that they could learn how to love each other, to be patient with each other, to forgive each other, each day. Most of the disciples Jesus sends out and peers are married and they have a mission by the simplicity of life, their dependance on God, their acceptance of His providential will to give witness to their families, neighborhoods, cities and towns that the good news is real and has filled them with joy. He wanted them to proclaim by that joy the source of their joy, by their for each other, the one who loved them first and commanded them to love like him, but their poverty of spirit, that their treasure was in God and so forth. Likewise, the Lord wants each of us to incarnate the message we proclaim. If we hope to be credible ambassadors of Christ, we need to practice what we preach. The final question is to whom were sent to proclaim that message, sent to share it with the whole world, beginning with the one we look at in the mirror each day. And then after we've heard the message and tried to live it to those with whom we come into regular contact, we're called to proclaim the good news, repentance and the forgiveness of sins to our family, to friends, to colleagues at work, to fellow students, even when the occasion arises, to religious, to priest, to bishops, and even the Holy Father. In some ways, this mission to go to the last sheep we know is more challenging than going to dangerous missionary territories overseas because it requires profound conversion to those closest to us, can most readily see if our actions contradict the words we're trying to proclaim to them. We can't get away with subtle arguments in beautiful words. We have to radiate to them the salvation we receive from Christ and His zeal for their souls. We have to, in other words, love them to conversion. At the same time, however, those close to us are the ones to whom, with God's help, we might be the most effective instruments God can use to bring them to the message of conversion and salvation. We know them. We know what buttons to push and not to push far better than any foreign missionary might if they're away from the practice of the faith who have never practiced the faith, then we will also have better access to them than any priest, not a missionary involving us in his saving mission. Jesus wants to give us the joy of seeing his redemption, Don and others, in becoming the greatest benefactors they will ever have, because we will be the ones called by God to bring them the greatest treasure. This week, as we begin the National Unity Congress and prepare to commit to being Missionaries of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, we will also be bringing to a conclusion an historic Eucharistic apostolate that has been taking place over the last 65 days. The national Eucharistic pilgrimage since the vigil of Pentecost on May 18th, four different teams of missionaries have been literally transporting Jesus from the Atlantic and Pacific, from the northern and southern borders of the country to Indianapolis, encountering more than 100,000 people along the way and showing that Jesus Christ is alive, that the Kingdom of God is still at hand because the King reigns in the Eucharist and inviting others to join us in the Eucharistic pilgrimage that constitutes the Christian life. One of the most fundamental aspects of our Eucharistic mission is to proclaim unabashedly that Jesus Christ is with us and to show by our infectious faith in Him that life with him is so much richer as we thank Cheese for all the graces of the National Egoistic Pilgrimage, we ask him to help us all learn how to proclaim him with faith and love, with courage and effectiveness. All our days along the Eucharistic procession of Christian Life. This Sunday, the same Jesus who sent out the Apostles in the Gospel comes to be with us in the Holy Eucharist. In each of our churches. He comes to us in the Eucharist so that we might enter his kingdom through Holy Communion, be strength, and go forth to announce that Kingdom filling people with hope that God, with us is still with us, and the great hope that if we repent and believe, if we draw close to him in the sacraments, then we will experience the the film and of the great promise of his kingdom that will know no end. This is what we will be celebrating at the Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis. This is what we're meant to celebrate and live all our days. God bless. |
| Grazie | You. Thank you so much, Father Landry. To hear more of Father Landry's homily, please visit Catholic preaching income and to follow him on the Eucharistic pilgrimage route dedicated to Saint Elizabeth Seton, please visit Seton Pilgrimage Lord. And with that, we leave you for our prayers for a wonderful week for you and your families. |