The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Introduction to the Church (with Jeff Cavins) - 2022

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

Welcome to The Church period! Jeff Cavins joins Fr. Mike to discuss the final time period of the Bible Timeline. They discuss the historical context of the early Church, why Rome and the early martyrs are so significant, and how the Holy Spirit takes on a major role. They also explain the differences between Acts, the epistles, and the book of Revelation. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of Scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension. Using the Great Adventure Bible Timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds. And how we fit into that story today. We've just concluded the Gospel of Luke. And now today we're heading into that last age,

last stage, last time period known as the church. But before we get to that, I want to let you know that there is a gifting campaign happening when it comes to the Bible in the Year. The Bible in the Year has brought the Word of God to so many people. As you know, you're part of this community, changing lives in so many incredible ways. We're humbled to play this role in God's plan and consider it our ongoing mission to keep bringing the word of God to as many people as possible. So what I'm saying is the end of this year is not going to be the end of Bible in a year.

So far, Ascension has been able to add the podcast to YouTube. You might have found it that way. Maybe you're watching right now on YouTube. And also we're working on translating it into different languages so you could have the Bible in a year in other languages than English. But of course, this takes a significant investment to bring projects like these free of cost to our listening communities. And we want to keep them free of cost to all those people who participate because we want to get the Word of God out there. And because of that, we have to rely on generous contributions from listeners like you

to help defray these costs and to enable us to continually provide new audiences with this life-changing content. So if you would like to help support the Bible in a year on mission, you can go to ascensionpress.com support. So that helps us move forward, helps us keep the Bible in a year online in perpetuity, as well as developing those new programs and those new initiatives to bring the Bible in the air to more people. If you want to support that, you can go to ascensionpress.com slash support. Not only that, but also Jeff's joining us today, as you know. And Jeff also wants to introduce another thing.

It's a companion, essentially, to the Bible in the air. That's right, Father. We have been working all this time on developing a book that we call the Bible in a Year Companion. So many people throughout the year have been so blessed, and one of the comments is, man, I wish I had all of that in one place. I could go back and I could just look at it like kind of a devotion and go deeper. So that's what this is. The Bible in a Year Companion is a book, and it has wonderful descriptions of every day, kind of the essence of that day from your teaching, and it has frequently asked questions. And we, as you know, we have been on Thursdays at two

o'clock Eastern on Facebook, Ascension's Bible Study Facebook page, answering a lot of these questions that people are coming up with. And so we thought, well, we'll just put those in this companion so that they can not only find the answers to these difficult questions, but they can pass it on to other people. So it's going to be in three volumes and the first volume is available and we encourage people to get that. And it's going to be in three volumes, and the first volume is available, and we encourage people to get that, and it's going to be a wonderful gift, I think, to people. Some people would like that when they go through the Bible in a year to actually have it and follow along. So I think it's going to be a great idea, and people can get that at Ascension Press.

Yeah, so you can get that at ascensionpress.com slash companion, as well as if you want to be part of the gifting campaign to support the ministry, ascensionpress.com slash support. So those are the two words to remember, to remember slash support and slash companion. And yeah, that's, I think Jeff, that's our, our advertisement for today, right? It is. That's it. Well, thanks for joining us today, everybody. We have the final time period, the church launching off. And so, Jeff, my gosh, this has been incredible. Yesterday, most likely, people finished the Gospel of Luke, which is that, I don't want to say capstone, but in some ways, the capstone of everything we've been leading to.

And now we're heading into the age we're living in, essentially. We're going to be reading about the early church, but we're in the age of the church. And so what can people expect as they launch into these last number of days? Sure. Well, like you said, it's a new time period and the culmination has come. Jesus has come. He has fulfilled everything from January to November. He has fulfilled everything. And the last thing he said was, now you go into all the world and make disciples. And so, what we have in the book of Acts is literally, and this is such a gift, we have the history from that very beginning when he sent out the apostles, that very beginning, we see how the church is developing and how his message is going forth. And I think a lot of people misunderstand the book of Acts.

They think that, well, the book of Acts is just this history of the early church. It's kind of entertaining. Look what they did here and there. No, it is the era, like you said, that we're living in right now. And the church is not a body that just sits and studies Jesus. The church is the body of Christ. In other words, the church is going to go forth and continue what he started. I mean, he had a three-year public ministry.

And that three-year public ministry is not a slice of time that just stays there, and we go back and study it. But that three-year time period was his public ministry, and then the launching of his kingdom throughout the world, and we're the ones that do that. And so when we look at the early church, we see that there's two super apostles. We have Paul and we have Peter. And one goes to the Gentiles, one goes to the Jews, and it is amazing. And so the early church in the book of Acts is really the study of the explosion of the church and some of the problems that they have because it's in the context of Acts, the book of Acts, that we see the epistles. So everything has a place, but the book of Acts is the structure

for the beginning of this church and the movement. And we'll get to it in a little bit, but the ending is kind of abrupt. And it's like, is that it we done no we're not done when there's more we'll get to that you mentioned too this is the the the launching you know that that sense of you mentioned there were two words i just cued in on one was explosion which is yeah i mean as jesus even says in acts chapter one says you'll receive the power or the dynamus of the holy spirit and that explosion that's what happens but then the launching of the first Christians, launching of the church into the world to change the world, essentially, to redeem the world. Gosh, it just, yeah, as you said, the story of the Acts of the Apostles is where we get

introduced to some of these people who, I mean, the apostles, obviously, that Jesus recruited, but also you have Paul and you have Barnabas. You have some of those characters that were part of that mission early on that were launched from this Acts of the Apostles time period and did exactly what you're saying. They went out and brought the gospel of mercy and hope and good news to the world and seemed unstoppable in so many ways, even though they definitely encountered opposition. Well, to give you a kind of an idea of the atmosphere that the early apostles went out into, it was brave. It was courageous. This is a martyr business here when they went out because

Rome was the world power. And people need to remember that right before Jesus, we had Julius Caesar, who proclaimed himself to be God, and Caesar was worshiped as God. He had an adopted son by the name of Octavian. Octavian defeated Mark Anthony at the Battle of Actium, came into Rome with the honorary name of Caesar Augustus. And it was said of Caesar Augustus that nobody before, during, or after will ever eclipse the glory of Caesar Augustus, who is the son of God, the one who ushered in the Pax Romana, the peace,

and the one who has given the euangelion, the good news to the world. So that's the atmosphere that Peter and Paul are going out into saying, guys, I know what you read in the newspaper and I know what you saw on cable news shows, but I got to tell you, he's not God, the son of God. He's not the one who ushered in the good news. He's not the Prince of Peace, but there is one, and we're going to tell you about him. And that's the atmosphere that the book of Acts takes place in. You know, it's so interesting too, because as you're pointing that out, here's Rome,

which is the world superpower at this time. And Peter and Paul, they don't stay away from Rome. They don't stay away from the place where everything's going down. I mean, you imagine that in so many ways. Up until this moment, the story is centered on the Holy Land. Yes, the people of Israel had been exiled, whether that be Egypt or Babylon, but the idea was, we'll stay here. And now they're launching, once again, launchpad, they're launching from that place where Christ walked and that place that was the land of the promise into new lands to bring the Evangelion, the real good news to the world. And I just think it's a shift.

I mean, it's a fulfillment, obviously. Jesus is the fulfillment. But this shift in how is the promise going to be fulfilled, not simply by retaining the land and staying here, but it's, we're going to the heart of the, in some ways, the heart of the beast, you know, by going to Rome and going all over the place and bringing that good news wherever they went.

Right, and the early church saw this, and the early church was aware that Rome was started by Remus and Romulus. And there's actually artwork from very early on showing peter and paul who are in a sense the new remus and romulus who i never knew that that's awesome yeah they're they're the new there it's a new rome yeah now you know and this is now the the shift will move from the holy land to Rome as the seat of Peter. And it's like a rebuilding of Rome, which is a sign of a rebuilding of the world.

And that's why Rome is very special to us as Catholics. It's not just, oh, they got good wine over there. But it really is the beginning of the new Remus and Romulus, the founders i i sorry i was kind of flabbergasted i was like what i never even i knew the remus and romulus part but i never put that made that connection with saint peter and saint paul yeah and especially when it comes to redemption when it comes to renewal when it comes to restoration this is the mission and here is you know rome that had done so much damage is being in some ways redeemed by the, that get restored by the two twins, we'll say twin apostles of Peter and Paul. How, how much, you know, one of the things that's going to happen is, as you mentioned,

Acts of the Apostles is, is the context. But we're also reading the letters of Paul. We're reading the letters of Peter and John, all the, you know, New Testament letters as well. Is there anything that you would say, unless you want to stay on Acts of the Apostles for a second more, but is there anything you would say that, okay, here's some things to pay attention to when reading some of these epistles? Right. Well, I would say, just going back for a moment to the book of Acts, that we have a structure that is very important, and that is that it is the story of the two super apostles. And so chapters 1 through 12

really focuses on Peter, and then 13 through 28 focuses on Paul. But here's what's interesting. If you read, and as people listen to you very carefully, they will notice that Peter is imitating Jesus and the works that Jesus did. There is a direct correlation between Peter, his works, and the works of Christ. And the same thing is true of Paul in chapters 13 through 28. He is mirroring Peter. And so both of them are mirroring Christ. And that tells us something, and that is that we, as the members of the people of the book of Acts, we're doing the work of Christ like Peter and Paul did. So, that's a little structural thing

that I think is really important to get. But the basic structure of the book of Acts is that we have, first of all, in Jerusalem. It's a witness in Jerusalem. And then after that, we have Judea and Samaria. Now, Jerusalem is Acts 1-1 through 8-3, and then 8-4 through 12-25 is Judea and Samaria. So, that is on the outskirts of Jerusalem. And then in Acts 13 through 28, you have to the uttermost parts of the earth. You have the entire world. So, you mentioned explosion earlier, and that is that it starts in Jerusalem and boom, it just explodes into Judea and Samaria, places we wouldn't normally go. And people we don't really know, and then to the uttermost parts of the earth. And the fact that people are listening to you and me right

now means it worked. Right. Yeah. Honestly. Because you and I are in the uttermost parts of the earth. You're not anywhere near, well, two and a half hours further away from the center than you. Yeah. Well, you know, even it's Acts 1, right? Where Jesus says, you'll be my witnesses here in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, to the ends of the earth. And then as you're saying that, just telescopes for the rest of the book of Acts to that exact same pattern. That's phenomenal.

It's incredible. And not only that, I know that our people who are listening, journeying with us, one of the things that is noted by Luke in writing the Acts of the Apostles is a lot of times what caused that explosion, what caused that launching was persecution. It was as a result of this persecution, the Christians, they went out and they began to proclaim Christ in other places. And that's just that that can be backwards for us. We think if it's going to be blessed, it's going to it's going to be blessed in a way that just I like, you know, it'll be blessed in a way that just fruits everywhere. But it's often not only the fruit of Christ and his Holy Spirit, also the fruit of suffering. That's going to be giving new life to the church.

And that's something that Paul really understood that too, just exactly what you're saying, because it was in the second phase of this explosion in chapters 8, 4 through 12, 25, that this great scholar, Saul of Tarsus, was brought into the kingdom by the Holy Spirit, and he became a super apostle. And then in the third part of the explosion, Paul has three missionary journeys, which are covered in the book of Acts. And every one of those journeys, he goes out first, and what does he do? He establishes churches. And then in the book of Acts. And every one of those journeys, he goes out first and he, what does he do? He establishes churches. And then in the second and third, he's establishing, but he's going back and he's nurturing the churches that he started. And one of the things that people will find when they read the epistles of Paul, which Paul wrote more books, Luke has

more territory in his writing. But when you read those epistles, Father, you're going to, as you know, see that that early church did experience the power of the Holy Spirit and the expansion of the church, but they also had problems. And the problems typically were departing from the ways of the world and Roman customs in their temples and so forth. And so when you read the epistles of Paul, he's going to teach you theology. He's going to show you how Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. But then at times he's going to say, hey, guys, we got a problem here. And we got to deal with this if we're going to keep moving forward.

And so I think it's key for people to read that in a twofold way. One is the mission. The other is, what about us as the church? Are we getting along? Are these stones in the temple causing problems? Well, that sense of, you said, in the letters of Paul, epistles of Paul, all the letters in the New Testament, they're going to be teaching us theology. So there's that teaching of here is how Jesus is the fulfillment and here is what we believe. But also there's going to be a specific context. Whenever Paul is writing his letters, he's addressing them to a certain group of people, typically about a challenge or typically about their experience or some kind of way in which, whether it be the Corinthians. And here's what I've heard is going down in your community.

Here's where you need to start living these new lives or even to Timothy, encouraging him and to be the Christian he's being called to be and living in this world. I think that there's something about that, that when we get the context for the letters, sometimes they become much more clear. It's kind of like the writings of the prophets where we can read them and say, I'm kind of getting stuff. But if we know the context more, here's what's going on at the time, then we recognize, oh, here is how not only this applied then and what they're talking about here, but here's how it applies now. And I think so much more accessible and so much more,

like, as you say, oh, this is for me, not only for a community 2,000 years ago, but this is for me, this is for us, this is for now. Right. You mentioned in context, and that is very important, particularly with Paul's writings, because four of his writings, he wrote not from the beach with a iced tea. He wrote them from prison. And when you're reading an epistle from Paul, knowing that he's in prison, knowing that his life is on the line, and then you read what he wrote, that's life-changing. He wrote Philippians, Ephesians, and Colossians, and Philemon. Those are called the prison epistles. And for anybody who feels like, I'm in prison, whether it's in a relationship, at work, financially, whatever it might be, pay close attention to those prison epistles because

they're going to teach you an awful lot. We have a number of writers in the New Testament. You have Paul, we have Peter, we have John, we have Timothy, there's different authors who are telling you about their experience and teaching people as this gospel explodes. And I oftentimes think to myself, wouldn't it have been great to be back then, you know, and to experience this? Paul's coming to Minneapolis, the Xcel Energy Center, you know. Wouldn't that have been really, really great? But the truth of the matter is, we're in that period right now. You are the one, and I say you, those of you that are listening to this right now, you're on the stage now. You're on the stage now. It's your turn

to take this mission and continue to grow it, learning from Peter and Paul, learning from the early church and what Jesus taught them. And this is a time of expansion as well. Yeah. And I love that you pointed that out because for many reasons, but one of those reasons is, I think we can look back and say, well, you know, Paul's story is over and Peter's story is over and Barnabas and Timothy, all those stories are written now. They've been lived. Those lives have been lived, and now they're enjoying the reward. But we can realize that when they were writing these words, you know, here's Paul writing his prison letters. He was in the midst of uncertainty. He had no idea how it would all hash out. He had no idea how it would turn out. And so I think a lot of times we can look at that back then and

think like, oh, that would have been so great. And yet to be in that moment would be to be in a situation that was completely filled with uncertainty. It would be completely filled with, I have no idea what's going to happen next. I mean, honestly, when St. Paul goes to the list of all the ways in which he has, you know, basically suffered for the sake of the gospel, any one of those moments would be enough for a lot of us to be, okay, I'm going to tap out here. Like, I might not want to go any further because of the fact that I don't know.

Okay, I'm stranded. You know, he's shipwrecked. What's going to happen? I mean, he just says it as if I was shipwrecked a couple of times, you know, as opposed to I would tell the whole story. If it was me, I'd be like, okay, there I was. And here's the, I had no idea what was coming next. He just mentions it in passing as if there

wasn't any uncertainty. And yet, of course there was, because just like us, Peter and Paul and all the apostles and other early disciples of Jesus, they lived in the same broken world and same fragile world and same dangerous world that we live in. And so it's so good to listen to our older brothers and sisters and see their lives and see how they're living because we recognize that, okay, that same danger, that same uncertainty, that same suffering is ours as well. Exactly. People will look at Peter and Paul as they're listening to you read and they'll say, well, yeah, they're super apostles and that's Paul, that's Peter, but I'm so-and-so from Omaha. I'm so-and-so from Pittsburgh. And you got to remember, Paul was not aware that he was Paul. I mean, he wasn't saying, in light of the fact that people

are going to be building churches in my name, I would say to you, no, what did he do for a living? He was a tent maker. He was a tent maker who was on a mission from Jesus, and he exhibited every characteristic that we would want to exhibit, you know, the tenacity and the courage and boldness and the love. And so we can, as you said, we can learn so much from our older brothers and sisters. But one thing to really pay attention to as you are going through the book of Acts is to pay attention to the reading in the context of that church exploding in the early church and how the church is changing and adapting as it continues to grow

and the common problems that they face, the leadership. We can learn a lot about the leadership of the early church. And I would say that really for the first time in our journey together, Father, the Holy Spirit now is really center stage. Not that he wasn't before. I mean, the Trinity is the Trinity, but now this is the age of the Holy Spirit. We were in the age of Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, our Father in the Old Testament, and now the Holy Spirit is going to usher us in. And I love what it says. Paul writes about it and he said, he talks about the power of the Holy Spirit in his life to transform. And Jesus predicted this before.

Not predicted. I mean, he told us before that he was going to go to the Father, but he was going to send a helper. And that helper would guide us into all truth. And he did. And he continues to. In that word helper in Greek, paraclete is the one who comes alongside of us. And that means that not only is baptism critical for this new church, and that is the forgiveness of sin, the joining with the family of God, but confirmation is equally important in the sacraments of initiation, because it is in confirmation that the Holy Spirit is given to the

church to fulfill the baptismal graces and power and give us the courage to be, as the catechism says, official witnesses of Jesus. So I would say that anybody who is joining us that has not been confirmed, maybe you've been baptized, but you haven't been confirmed, this is your period now. This is the time where you go to pastor and you say, you know what? I need to be confirmed. I have never been confirmed. I talked to one priest, father, a while ago, and I said to him, how many people in your church have not been confirmed?

And he goes, oh, I don't know, maybe 20 or so. I don't know. I said, why don't you do some work? Go into the database and check. He called me back a couple weeks later and he said, you're not going to believe this. We have over 500 people who have not been confirmed. And so I said, well, you can imagine what Easter vigil is going to look like next year then. So I just say that as a sort of a word of encouragement that if you're reading this and saying, I want to live this way, then you've got to be equipped the way the early church was equipped.

And as Jesus went in Matthew 3 and 4, and he went into the water, came out of the water, the Holy Spirit came down upon him. That's how he began his ministry. And he said, as the Father has sent me, so I send you. And that is very powerful, the Holy Spirit in the life of this early church. Well, that makes so much sense, especially even the role particularly of confirmation because you have the apostles who had been baptized, right? The apostles who had been essentially ordained at the Last Supper, the apostles who had been

given the gift of being able to forgive sins here at the resurrection of Jesus at the end of John's gospel. And yet still, they lacked this power of the Holy Spirit in this unique way, this power of Pentecost, the power of confirmation. And so, yeah, they had the Holy Spirit, and yet there was a certain charism of the Holy Spirit, a certain mark, a certain power of the Holy Spirit that had not yet been given to them. And so someone could say, well, I've been baptized. I have the Holy Spirit. You are right. You are correct. You do. And yet there's more. And that's what did Jesus say? He says that anyone, bad fathers, bad parents you might have who would, you know, you wouldn't even give your son a scorpion if they asked for an egg, but how much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to anyone who asks him?

And that's an incredible thing. Not only can you ask the Holy Father to give you the Holy Spirit now where you're listening to this, but also in that sacramental, that sacramental way, that way of power that comes through the sacraments of the church that Jesus had given to us is just so essential and so powerful. I'm glad you, thanks for that reminder, because that's one of those where I think sometimes, I just assume, I just assume sometimes that, well, everyone's been confirmed or they've said yes to their confirmation.

That happens too, where we have people who, yeah, I was confirmed when I was however old, but they have not yet in some ways really cooper or, again, said yes to that and said, okay, Lord, you gave me the gift of the Holy Spirit. I have allowed that gift to lie dormant in me. All it takes is, you know, essentially a good confession and asking the Lord, come alive now in my life in the same way that you came alive in the lives of the apostles and the lives of those who were sent out and had lived radical lives, transformed witnesses to Jesus. Yeah. And there's one book that you're going to be covering, which if you, when I take polls in

the past and say, what book would you like me to teach? What book would you like to learn from? Overwhelmingly, The book of Revelation. Of course, I was going to guess. You were going to guess. I would have been right. Yeah, it is. Because it's such a mystery. And when our good friends will hear you reading the book of Revelation, just to put that into context, the book of Revelation was written by John, and John received quite a revelation from God about the end of that era, the end of the Old Testament era and the beginning of something new, and there will be

judgment on Jerusalem and Rome, and there will be this new beginning. But the book of Revelation is a mystery to so many people because it's not written the way the epistles are written. The epistles are letters. Hey, Father John, how are you doing lately? I hope you're – but the book of Revelation is called apocalyptic literature. In other words, it's written differently. It uses code words and uses structures that are taken from the Old Testament to explain something that is about to happen. And that thing that is going to happen is the destruction of Jerusalem after Jesus. That's what it's going to focus on. But at the same time,

it's going to focus on the end of time. time, it's going to focus on the end of time. So it's kind of like it has dual purposes, but it was written to the seven churches of Asia Minor, which that's modern day Turkey. And there was a formulaic statement that you're doing good in this area, but I have this against you. You need to correct this. And then there was the reward for that. That was the beginning. Then we see the judgment on Jerusalem, the end of Jerusalem, and the beginning of this amazing family, the kingdom of God, the church. And it's so interesting because whereas Paul and Peter and Timothy and everyone, they quote from the Old Testament. John doesn't. What John does is he alludes to the Old Testament over 500 times. And so as people have gone through the Old Testament with you,

some of this is going to be like a rumble strip as they listen to the book of Revelation. Wait a minute. I've heard that. Wait a minute. I've seen that pattern before and you are right. Wait a minute. I've heard that. Wait a minute. I've seen that pattern before and you are right. You are right. So it is a great book. The highlight of it is the Lamb's Supper. It is the Eucharistic celebration in heaven, a new heaven. And so that's kind of the wonderful dessert at the end of this whole story. Right, yeah.

Maybe it'd be more appropriate for me to say the capstone would be that, that sense of, and here is not only now, here is into eternity, that vision, not only glimpse of the church on earth, but here's the church in heaven. Here's the bride in heaven, the bride of Christ, which is so good. Yeah, that's gonna be a fun one. I, one of the things I noticed that is a bit of a challenge is a lot of times when we have our,

our daily mass readings, our readings from scripture, they're, you know, a number of verses long, but not too long. Cause if they get too long, then we kind of get a little bit lost. There's so much content there that it's just, it's easy to be overwhelmed. If there were times in the old Testament where people who are joining us were overwhelmed by, wow, this whole new story or this whole new kind of thing, the epistles of Paul are one of those places and the epistles of the others and the book of Revelation are one of those texts of scripture where we're going to go through chapters at a time. And it's one of those where I think if there's ever a time that you might want to follow along in your Bibles as we're reading,

as you're listening, this might be one of those moments where you want to kind of like mark down something or write it down or you have a journal, like, you know, Jeff, you have your insight journal, that kind of sense of being able to, I want to, I need to capture this right now because there's so much and there's so much that the commentary section of the Bible in a Year podcast isn't able to cover everything. But I know that what's, I'm so convinced just what has happened for the last 300 plus days is going to happen for the remainder of this year. And that is that even when it's a fire hydrant of just information and it can be overwhelming,

the Lord is still speaking. And he's speaking not just to all y'all. He's speaking to you personally, individually. And he is going to help you hear what you need to hear this time. And Jeff, I remember when I went to Israel with you the first time, it was like drinking from a fire hose. It was just, man, there's so much here. And I kind

of got panicked. I had a little bit of anxiety of, I need to take everything in as much as I can. Until I realized I made the decision, I don't know, halfway through the pilgrimage, maybe I'm coming back. And when I made that decision, okay, I'm coming back. I was able to calm down because it was, okay, I don't need to take it all in right now. I'll take in whatever is given to me today, whatever's given to me today, whatever's given to me at this moment, and I'll be back. And so I'll get more next time. And I think maybe for this community, that could be a really good thing as well, where you're just like, I'm getting overwhelmed by this, but you know what? It's okay. I'm coming back. I'm coming

back to these letters. It reminds me of what St. Ephraim said. He talked about the word of God and studying the word of God using the drinking fountain as an example. And you know what it's like to go on a run or a bike ride or something, and you're really thirsty, you're hot, and you see a drinking fountain. You go over and you press the button, and oh my gosh, that's so good. That crisp, clear, good-tasting water. Well, we don't stand back and go, wait a minute. Wait just a minute. I only drank a little bit. Look at all of it that fell to the ground. St. Ephraim says, don't be discouraged by the water that falls to the ground, but rejoice in the water that you drank. And know that the fountain exhausts you. You don't exhaust the fountain. And so when people are listening and they think,

oh, this is so much, this is so much, focus on what you're drinking, because you can go back to the fountain and you can do this next year. You can do it two times in a week, whatever, you know, the same lesson, but keep drinking and know that this word of God is going to exhaust you. You're not going to exhaust it. Nobody can sit back and say, there you go. I've exhausted the word of God. It's not like that at all. So that's a beautiful picture for people to continue with. Another picture, kind of to close out our thoughts on this period, is that if you read the end, we win. And we win. And the battle has been won by Christ.

Thank you, Lord. Yeah. But the reason I mentioned that is that it reminds me so much of the time where I would go to Mass and I'd come home at noon on Sunday and I DVR'd the Vikings game. And why, I don't know. But I DVR'd the— I was going to say, why is it penance? Penance, yes. Only if we could get a Super Bowl. know, but I DVR'd the football game. And one time I did that and I got home, we had dinner and then Emily had to leave to do something. And I thought, I'm going to watch the game now. So I started to

watch the game against the Packers and it was very close. And then the Packers are pulling ahead in the fourth quarter. And I'm thinking, no, this this always happens I can't believe it what a loser and it just really brought me down you know and then there's like 58 minutes left in the fourth quarter we're down by 10 and Emily walks in she's been listening in the car and says wasn't that a great ending and I'm like, you just ruined the game. They came back and they won. But the point is, is that we don't need to walk around with our heads down. We are not defeated people. We do not have to be lost. Jesus said in John 14, I'm not going to leave you as orphans, okay? Holy Spirit's going to come. but we don't have to live our lives with our head hung low. Like we're losers. We won act like it act like a winner,

act like we have won that Jesus won that battle. And now we are walking with him. And so you go out into life now knowing, I know, I know what the end of this game looks like, and I know we win. So that should put a smile on your face. Honestly. And I'm glad you said that because there have been so many people who have been listening with us and they've said, I feel more confident now than maybe I've ever felt. Confident in the Lord, confident in my faith that I actually know who he is. And that sense of, you might even say, even increased faith where I just, I trust him. And I find myself in a world of insecurity, I can rely upon him in a very secure way. And yeah, when we get to the end, we know that he has won it for us. And so we win.

I'm so grateful. Jeff, I don't know if you have any last words for this entry into the time period, if that might've been the last word, because that's a really good last word. Or if you have anything, yeah, if you have anything else for us. Sure, I would just, just a couple of things.

One is that this is just the beginning. Yeah. We're coming to the end, but it's really just the beginning. And we have people that have been joining us that are neophytes, brand new. They've just come into the church. This is amazing.

To be able to hear the entire Bible like this is truly a gift from God. It is a gift. We have people that have been walking with the Lord for seven, eight years. We have people that are scholars and they have been teaching and they are with us as well. But again, after you hear the word of God, the church says there must be a response. And that response is faith, faithfulness. And faith

is twofold. One, mental assent. Lord, I've heard the whole Bible. I'm with you. Wow. Two thumbs up. I'm with you. This has been really, really good. And I might even do it again. But the other part of faith is a personal entrusting of yourself to him. And so the response when the divine word of God is revealed and God pulls back the curtain and shows you himself completely, then the proper response is faith. And that means that we go from here believing and entrusting ourselves to him in the midst of the story. And it says in the very first paragraph of the catechism that God has a plan of sheer goodness. And what people have heard over this last year is the plan. And it's a plan of sheer goodness.

And he has now reached out. He's got a hold of you. He has brought you to the level of adopted sons and daughters. And he is going to share his divine life, the life of the Trinity, with you. It's a blessing. And so that is really important. The last thing I would say is, Father, you have done an amazing thing. You have done an amazing work, not just in scope of Bible in a year. There it is. That's great. But the amount of time and effort and

energy that you have put into this has been incredible. And I think there's going to be eternal fruit. I'll take that back. I know there's going to be eternal fruit as a result of it. And so, you know, on behalf of everybody, thank you for the great work that you have done. And thank you for letting me come on this journey with you. We've been friends for a long time. We go on pilgrimages and things like that, but this has been, I think, the most fruitful thing I've ever been involved in, and I really appreciate you as my brother, as a father, and as an evangelist in today's world. That means a lot, Jeff, especially, well, you just, you probably know you're not only a friend and a brother, also in so many ways, a mentor. And I just, yeah, that just means, that means, it means a whole heck of a lot as we'd say, and I'm grateful. And also not only am I grateful

for, for you, but also for the entire team of people who have been, have made this work. Amen. And so I want to, and also also this community. So y'all, this is our last intro into our time periods. And so this is the home stretch, but it's not the, there's still days and days to come. So I, especially when you're battling that faithfulness, you know, in the upcoming weeks might be really busy for you know that we're walking with you and we're praying for you. I know that the whole team of people at Ascension are praying for every single person who's part of this community because they tell me, they let me know. We're on a regular basis. We get together

as a company and we pray for those who are listening to the Bible in the air. I know that they're praying for you. I know Jeff is praying for you and I too, I am praying for you. Please pray for me. Please pray for us. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.