The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 144: How We Worship (Part 2 Introduction with Bishop Andrew Cozzens) (2026)

Episode Date: May 24, 2026

Part 2 of the Catechism—the Second Pillar—is about “how we worship” through the Liturgy and the sacraments. Fr. Mike sits down with Bishop Andrew Cozzens to discuss the significance of the way we worship God and how Jesus meets us in the sacraments. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church 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 Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. It's always hard to say. The Catechism in a year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity and God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 144. We're on day two. Actually, second day of our second pillar of the Catechism. And the first pillar of the Catechism, the creed, awesome, incredible. We had to hear about what we believe about God and what that means about us, the church, our salvation, everything.

The second pillar is on worship. The second pillar is on the sacraments. And to help me introduce pillar two, I have a very special guest with me, Bishop Andrew Cousins of the Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, Bishop Cousins. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. It's a delight to be with you, Father Mike. Are you familiar with the Catechism or the Catechismanier podcast? Yeah, I've been listening every day. And in fact, more than that, I got this idea when I heard that you were going to do this that I should maybe try to get people in my diocese to join me. So I got a little catechism group. We got about 230 of us who are doing it every day. That's awesome. I post a little reflection and other people put in their questions and comments. And once a month we meet on Zoom to talk to talk it

through. So I just thought this is a great chance for those Catholics who really want to engage this and others too to engage it together. And I know for me, I know if I have to post something every day, it's going to help me to keep going all 365 days. Keep that faithfulness consistently. You just know everyone just keep pressing play. Speaking of pressing play on this day, this second day 144, right, it's kind of a longer episode. I remember my dad, who's also listening to the catechism. He said, day three. He said, day one and day two, that was fine. Day three, 45 minutes. What the heck? What's going on? And it's like, well, this is one of those longer episodes too. But we're doing this because we want to get a kind of a general overview of what is this next section,

what's this next pillar of the catechism. And I really wanted Bishop Cousins to be, to do this, not only, well, a couple reasons. One is, so when I went through seminary, it was fine, it was good. But after I graduated, after I was ordained, Bishop Cousins became a professor at the St. Paul Seminary. And one of the classes he taught was on the Eucharist. And I have these other, you know, seminarians now, they're priests in my diocese who would tell me all about this class that you taught. And I was so jealous. I mean, I had the, we'll call it holy jealousy. It was just jealousy. I was, I was like, what the heck? I didn't hear any of this stuff. And they would, they would come back from your class. just being so not just educated, but edified, right? Not just kind of with what we're talking about this whole time in the catechism, not just with more data, but with a heart that loves the Lord more.

And so I was like, well, if anyone who should introduce this pillar with me, it should be Bishop Cousins. The other piece is this year is the Eucharistic Revival kicking off. And so, would you mind just sharing a little bit about that? Yeah, so I have the privilege of chairing this National Eucharistic Revival, which is a project of the Bishops Conference of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops. And I'm the chair of the Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis, and so this job fell to me. And basically it's been a beautiful privilege because really what we've tried to do is create a movement across the country

that would help renew and revive belief, understanding practice in the Eucharist. We all know that amongst Catholics, attending Sunday Mass is at an all-time low, right? The post-COVIDs studies are saying now maybe 15% of Catholics are attending Sunday Mass, which means people haven't had an encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist, and that encounter is transformative. And so that's really the goal of the Eucharistic Revival. It's a national three-year program that wants to affect every level of the church. We're going to have a big National Eucharistic Congress in 2024,

where people will be able to encounter Jesus in the Eucharist in profound ways all throughout this revival. But the goal is really just to renew the church by inviting people into this living relationship, with Jesus, which is exactly what we're talking about in this section of the catechism. Yeah, that's so good. I mean, even calling it that, that it's a revival. It's that sense of, it's not adding something that's new. It is recovering something that has been lost in so many ways. And how many of us, I don't know for myself when it came to, I encountered Jesus in confession for the first time, but that really transformed my life. It was an encounter with Jesus in confession when I was just a teenager. And then right after that, I was reading.

about the Eucharist. And that I just, it, it was that information that led me to just fall in love with the Lord in the Eucharist. And I, I've just asked a question for you, like, has that been, has the Eucharist, because all the sacraments, right, seven sacraments.

Yeah. The Eucharist is sacrament par excellence in so many ways. What, uh, has there been an encounter of, with Jesus for you in the Eucharist? Yeah, I, you know, from actually a very young age, I had an encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist. And I actually, I remember very distinctly my parish priest teaching me to genuflect, you know? Really?

Put your right here, knee on the floor here, because God's present here before this tabernacle. And impressing upon me, like, we bend our knee before God. Yeah. Right. And that whole sense, and then serving mass after that, immediately I sensed. I wasn't just in the presence of a ritual, but a person. Yeah. And that's really the heart of the Eucharist, right?

right? It's Jesus's death and resurrection and Jesus' his own person who comes to us. And that's really what ultimately led me to priesthood and ultimately led me to give my life. I love the way St. John Paul II described his priesthood. He said, I was ordained a servant of the Eucharist. Like here's the heart of our faith that everything else in a certain way serves because here's where we worship God perfectly. Wow, that's incredible. And even just kind of comparing

my experience of when I first encountered Jesus in the Eucharist began with learning more, reading about this, your experience began with the, here's a ritual. That paved, it wasn't the ritual, wasn't the point. Right. Just like the words or the teaching wasn't the point. Jesus is the point. And so what we're going to do is we go through these next weeks and maybe a couple months of going through the catechism in this pillar too is to go through the rituals,

to learn about the rituals, to learn about what do we believe about the sacraments. But the end goal is that relationship with the Lord, right? the encounter with the living God. And so what's like the overarching point of pillar two? Yes. You know, so basically pillar two, we're going to talk about liturgy in the sacraments. Right. Right. And so this is how the church prays, but it's more than how the church prays, is how the church continues her life throughout time. And the overarching point is we're invited to live Christ's own life through the liturgy in the sacraments. And Christ wants to live his life in us. And so all that we've been talking about in terms of like the theology of

God and all that we believe, that's not all something happens in the past. These are mysteries that we can encounter now. And that's what the liturgy in sacraments wants us to understand is as we enter into these mysteries, they transform us. We become more and more Jesus living in the world today. And the goal, of course, is that we would then be able to transform the world through our own transformation, which happens by living and experiencing and encountering Jesus in his mysteries. Yeah, when you said that the sacraments, the liturgy, is the prayer of Jesus. What is that means? This is very important.

People are like jumping into the catacombs of the first time. Maybe they go into Mass. Maybe, actually, we probably have a lot of non-Catholics who maybe haven't been to Mass, or maybe they'll start. What is it to say that the liturgy in the sacraments are the prayer of Jesus? Yeah, this is very important because, of course, it's important that I pray. It's important that we pray, but that's not only what the liturgy is. This isn't a group of people just gathered here.

Actually, the liturgy is Jesus' own self-gift, his perfect worship. It's his prayer that he made to the Father. And we'll talk about this, but his prayer that he made in this gift of self on the cross. But we actually are invited to participate in that prayer. And so the liturgy is, like, in that way, infinitely more important than any other kind of prayer that we could possibly do, because it's not just my prayer, I'm participating in Christ's prayer. And you see this all throughout the signs and symbols of the liturgy. It's trying to draw me in to heaven. It's trying to draw me into where Jesus, as the book of Hebrew says, has gone ahead with his own offering to the Father,

and we're invited into that to participate in that, just as it's trying to draw me back to the Passover, as we'll see. Right. So just to highlight what you just said, which is, again, it's blowing my mind and my heart, is that because a lot of people would say, well, I can't wait to get the pillar four. Pillar for in prayer, which is obviously going to be incredibly important for us, say, well, I know I have a prayer life, but what you're highlighting is the sacraments, even though sometimes we can encounter them and like not feel like we prayed, we can sometimes go through the liturgy or the rituals and not feel like we prayed. But when we go, we encounter Jesus in the sacraments, when we celebrate the sacraments, we are actually not just praying our own prayer, we're praying the prayer of Jesus himself. Exactly. And so that's why we're going to spend time here on Pillar 2. And so it's important in my little longer episode is going to be worth your while.

Exactly. So imagine no one has ever had any experience with Pillar 2. What kind of, how is it structured so they can kind of get the kind of the lay of the land when it comes to the second pillar? The way that the Pillar 2 is structured is that it begins first just talking about what is the liturgy. And it really actually begins with the Trinity, right? And how the liturgy is inviting us into this life of the Trinity. and how, you know, we've talked about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and Pillar 1. Now we're going to see how actually our life of prayer in the liturgy allows us to enter into the Trinity itself, right?

So we pray through the Holy Spirit in the sun, and what that all makes present in terms of what we'll call true worship through the Trinity. And then it's going to talk about what the liturgy is and all the different aspects of the liturgy. You know, who prays the liturgy? When do we pray it? Why do we pray it? Why is it so important? and what we've been talking about, the prayer of Jesus and how we enter into that.

And then it's going to go into the sacraments. And it's really beautiful because we're going to go through each of the seven sacraments and actually see how those sacraments affect us at various moments in our life. So we're using the word liturgy. And I think I know what it means. And you think, you know, but I imagine there's some people here who might have been told here's that liturgy means. Maybe they know sacraments, you know, there's seven of them.

But how can... Give us a, what's a working definition of liturgy so that, as we're saying, yeah, this, as we enter into the liturgy, it does this. What? Yeah. The liturgy officially means like the work or a public work. But what it really means for us is it's the official prayer of the church. Right. So first and foremost, the Holy Mass, the Eucharist, right? That's the center of all liturgies and the center of our whole liturgical life. But then you have the liturgy of the hours that priests and others and lots of laypeople pray it every day, right? And so you have all the sacramental liturges.

Those are the rituals. So it's the official public prayer of the church. Okay. So everything from the sacraments to the liturgy, the hours like praying, morning, prayer, evening, night prayer, that kind of situation. But it's a way that individual members of the church can enter into the, overall prayer of the church. Is that kind of a way to say it? Exactly. Yeah. And the beauty, of course, is the church is always praying. Yeah. Yeah. Every hour of the day, the mass is being offered somewhere in the world. Every hour of the day, you know, people are praying the liturgy of the hours.

It's morning somewhere right now and it's evening somewhere. And those liturgical prayers are like, it's like the response of the son to the father in the Holy Spirit. The son being us, the body of Christ, constantly praying to the father. And that's the liturgy we're invited into. Well, you mentioned that here's the prayer of the church as it prays in the son through the power of the Holy Spirit to the father. Yes. Would you say that it's accurate? I'm just asking this for myself because I think this is something I came across a couple of years ago and it revolutionized the way that I celebrated the mass and revolutionized the way that any kind of prayer was oriented, that it's all an offering to the father. Correct.

And so just like when we're saying Lord in Mass, that Lord is the Father. We're talking to Dad in Heaven, our Father in Heaven. Exactly. Which is why when Jesus taught us to pray, what did He say? Pray our Father. And we can only pray that in Jesus. Yeah. But when we pray it in Jesus, it means something radically new for who we are as human beings

and what our eternal destiny is. That's incredible. So then I think that for any of us listening right now too, we might not get to that section of the Catechism for a few days or a few weeks, but the next time you go to Mass, to be able to recognize that in the mass, the whole point isn't necessarily to get the Eucharist or to get the word, although those are gifts of the mass, but to give to the Father the worship of Jesus. Yes. So the lay of the land is the first section is on the liturgy, and the second section is on

the sacraments themselves, those seven sacraments. Okay, so as people start, what are maybe some obstacles they're going to encounter as they start? okay, here we go. You know, we're leaving the creed behind, and we're kind of walking into the second pillar on worship, on the liturgy, on the sacraments. What are some obstacles they're going to face? Yeah, this is really important to understand because to understand the liturgy, you have to have a biblical worldview. Right. Because the church has a biblical worldview, and we live in this biblical worldview. And this was one of the beautiful things about the Bible timeline and what you did with the Bible in the year. It's like helping people understand this whole

biblical worldview, who am I in light of what the Bible tells me who I am, right? And so the biblical worldview is also what we might call a sacramental worldview. And it's really important to understand this to understand the catechism. That word sacrament, it simply means like sign, right? And what it simply means is a sacrament is something that we can physically, tangibly see, that makes present something that's invisible that we can't see, right? takes something we can see and makes present to us something we can't see. Correct. But a biblical worldview says the whole world's a sacrament.

Like it says in the Psalms, right, the world is telling the glory of God. Like the sunrise this morning, incredible. Like that tells me that God loves me again today. Right. And it speaks to me of God's love. All the stars, everything in nature, everything that exists points to the reason that it exists. We're kind of going back to the very beginning of the Catholic. Peticism, that what's, what are some sources of revelation? One of them is just the natural world

and reason that we look at this world and it reveals something to us that we can't see in nature, but we can see it's made present to us by the reality of nature. Is that kind of idea? Exactly. And the problem is that today we have kind of a different worldview because we have more what I would call a scientific worldview. And by that I don't mean scientific. Like science is a really good thing. We believe in science. We know that science tells us about reality. But when we have this worldview that says the only things that are real are things that I can see or touch or feel with my senses, material things, or the only things that are true are things that I can prove from some kind of scientific experiment. Now, that's actually a ridiculous

statement. And it's ridiculous in this sense. Like, there's so many things that are true. Like, you know, two plus two is four. Yes, I can prove that to you. But if you held a gun to my head and said two plus two is five, I'd agree with you. Right? Because I don't really care about that. Yeah. But, you know, my mother loves me. How can I prove you that my mother loves me? Well, I can give you lots of examples, but I mean, how do I know my dad wasn't paying her on the side for all the nice things she did to me? Right. Yeah.

And so I can't prove it, but everything proves it and no part of me doubts it. And it's because I know it's true because it adds up to reality, right? And this is, in fact, the same thing about God. Like, everything proves God's existence when you start to see rightly. Everything points to him. And then what we begin to see is that God made creation so it would point to him. And then he actually, in creation, he sanctified certain actions on his own. And he made those actually carry his own divine presence.

And this is what the sacraments are. It's like sign with a capital S, sacrament with a capital S. It's like, no, these things, they don't just signify God's presence, but they actually make God's presence real here and now for us in a very, very powerful way. Let me give you an example. This might be too long of an example, but let's go for it. Some years ago, I got to visit Belarus, and I got to visit a place where the faith had been attempted to be stomped out by Stalin in Russia, on the border of Belarus and Russia. And in that place, Stalin had come in with his troops. It was a small Polish village, and he had destroyed the church. He had killed the priest. And he left this small

village of Catholics. And they went without a priest for 60 years. Really? 60 years. 60 years. And every Sunday, they would gather, and they would take the Roman missile in Latin, and they would pass it around and read parts of it. And when they got to the words of consecration, they couldn't say because they didn't have a priest, they would just sit in silence and long for Jesus in the Eucharist. Wow. Right?

And then when things really got bad and they felt the weight of their sins, they went to the grave of their priest, and they would speak their sins out loud, begging God to forgive them over the grave of their priest. Now, what if you went to those people and said, you know, like, you can go right to God? Right.

You don't need the sacraments. They would say, well, we know that, but God would come so much closer if we could have him in the sacrament of the Eucharist or if we could actually hear the words of Jesus saying your sins are forgiven, right? They were longing for that encounter with him, which eventually, you know, some years later, a priest came

and got to be able to hear their confessions and celebrate mass for him and they wept. Yeah. Because Jesus can come so much closer through the sacraments. Well, even just that, I mean, that's not only just blows my mind, incredible, but also for someone to say, you can just go right to God, you can just kind of pray wherever is not only, it's true, but it's kind of a minimalist type true, where it's like, yeah, that's the minimum if that's all I, I can do that if that's all I have. But isn't there,

I mean, I just, I'm pulling back to what you had said where all of creation reveals God. So yes, of course you can pray in the woods. And of course you can, you know, there's 21st Street in Duluth, draft on 21st and right in front of you, you can see Lake Superior. just in the morning, the sun's coming up over it. It's just diamonds on the water. It's incredible. That is true. That reveals the glory of God. But there's these places in moments, there's these times and places, right, where God doesn't just review. You said it, God doesn't just reveal himself, but he comes to us in a very particular way, right? Comes to us giving his life in a particular way, comes to us giving his healing in a particular way, and his forgiveness in a particular way.

And the sacraments are rooted in the incarnation. This is important, right? So Jesus, God became flesh, he took on our human matter. And when people encountered Jesus, they encountered a sacrament. They encountered a physical body. They couldn't see God, but they could touch him because when they touched Jesus, they touched God. And when Jesus touched them, God touched them. And so the sacraments continue that incarnational principle. And St. Thomas Aquinas, when he talks about the sacraments, he says, it's actually charity to speak to people in a way that they can understand. And so the sacraments, through the sacraments, God speaks to us through material things. He comes to us through material things so that we can receive him and understand him and encounter him. And so it's like what in this St. Leo the Great says, and it's quoted in the catechism, right? What began in the incarnation of God's presence in our midst is continued in the sacraments in the life of the church so that we can still encounter the living Jesus today. Well, that sense of the incarnation, I always say something.

like, you know, that God being all-powerful could have just declared the world saved. Like, feasibly, right? He could have just said, saved. The God who created the world, but the word could redeem the word with a world, world with a word. And yet, how does he do it?

He takes on a body. And in the body, he lives and he suffers and he dies. And he rises from that descends to heaven. And that's how he wanted to mediate salvation to us. And right, so, so, Tertullian, who says, the flesh is the hinge of salvation. Yes.

That sense of it all is on this, the sense of that God, like you said, when Jesus touched them, God was touching them. When he healed them, God was healing them. And now, St. Ambrose, I think, who says something along the lines of, I've seen your face, O Lord. I see your face in the sacraments. Yes. You've come to me in the flesh, essentially, in the sacraments.

So that sacramental worldview versus a scientific worldview is going to be one of the obstacles. People are going to have to kind of like, maybe a lot of us learn to embrace. Absolutely. Yep. The other obstacle that's really important is to try to understand how the Bible understands history. And, you know, the key at understanding divine revelation in the Bible is that God breaks into history. And he breaks into history and he saves us through these salvithic events. So going back to the Old Testament, you have Exodus. There's this salvithic event that actually creates the people of Israel and saves them throughout all of time. But because the Jews have a a biblical understanding of history, what do they do? Every year on the anniversary of that, they gather and they remember that event. But they don't think of memory the way we think of memory. What is memory? I recall this thing that happened in the past and I make it present in my mind. But the Jewish people actually believed, in Hebrew they called the word zikaron, right, this idea of

memory that makes the event present. So when they celebrated Passover, when Jesus celebrated Passover with his apostles, He believed that the event of passing through the Red Sea was becoming present now and that they were being saved through this celebration here and now by the event that happened in the past because they were connected to that event in time. He was taking that past event and making it present. Exactly. So the catechism calls this word anamnesis. It's the Greek word for memory. But this is so important because this is why Jesus' last command to his church is do this in memory. memory of me. He doesn't just mean make a ritual remembering of this because it's a nice thing to

think, oh yeah, remember Jesus? He gave us the last supper and he died on the cross for us. That was a nice thing. Don't forget that. No. He means that when we make memory of this, that event, which happened once in time, becomes present here and now. And not just that event, but actually it's fulfillment in heaven becomes present here and now. And this is where we come to understand really the liturgy exists in a certain way in God's eternity. And when we celebrate the liturgy, especially Holy Mass, we enter into God's eternal time. And we experience it as if it's present now

so that we can be transformed by it and live by it. This is all in the catechism. It's really important to understand. That's incredible. I mean, just the first thing is a sacramental worldview versus a scientific. So all there is is just stuff. All it is what you see.

There's more. That what you see reveals something. and also even communicates something even more important. And the second is a linear view of time versus, what would you say, the biblical view of time? Yeah, which is this idea that the salvific events that happen in time are not completely in the past. Yeah. Because they participate in God's eternity. And that's one of the, I love that, you know, sometimes when I'm speaking to our students,

we talk about what's happening at the mass is on the altar, time and eternity meet, that heaven and earth kiss. Yes. And that's what we're saying, right, is that this event that happened at one moment in time is now expanded throughout all of eternity. And we get to like participate. We get to participate in it in this unique way in the sacraments. I mean, I imagine probably also reconciliation. The sacrament of reconciliation would also be, here's God's mercy breaking through in a particular way.

Exactly. Exactly. Every one of the sacraments, eternity breaks into time. Yeah. And the sacrament of marriage, like here, in fact, an invisible. bond that is going to last until death is formed between this couple, and it's unbreakable. Nothing can break it. And it's actually God's love for the church breaking in and uniting this couple so they become one. So this isn't all like abstract theology. This is very much

concrete and present. And here's in marriages, people who will be listening to this in the next few days, next few weeks, I'm like, this is how God is broken into my life and made this his grace, his presence, his reality, real. And this is the power of the sacraments, because they're actually meant to help us at each of those moments in our life. We're going to see that as we go through it, right? At the beginning of our Christian life, we need baptism,

and it gives us all the grace that we need to become saints, right? But then as we grow, we need to be strengthened by confirmation, and that, in fact, allows us to become strong enough to stand in the world and to testify in the world. And then, of course, there's the daily growing in union with him through the Eucharist, right? And each of the sacraments, as they go, they give us a particular grace for a particular part of our life. So it's not just a one and done kind of situation.

Exactly. But it's here's God who, in these unique ways, these seven unique ways, he breaks into our lives in very particular and intentional, like, flat bitter term, ways. So if we were to say, okay, okay, we're starting tomorrow. The next section is on the liturgy you said we begin with the Trinity. Is there anything to kind of understand in a deeper way about like the liturgy is when it comes to, this next step tomorrow in the next few days. Yeah. So when I talk about what the liturgy actually is,

I like to use that phrase that Jesus uses, worship and spirit and truth from John chapter four. And when you study that in John chapter four, in John's gospel, you begin to see what in fact Jesus is doing. So in John chapter three, if you remember, Jesus cleanses the temple. And people are scandalized when he cleanse the temple. And they say, by what authority do you do this?

And he says, destroy this temple and in three days, I will raise it up. And then St. John tells us, in quote, in parentheses, he was speaking about the temple of his body. And then Jesus in the very next chapter goes to Samaria, where they worship at Jacob's well, and he meets the Samaritan woman, and has that dialogue with her. And then he tells her, he says, she says, you know, you Jews say we're supposed to worship the temple, we worship here. And he says, you know, actually the time is coming, the hour is coming and is already here when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, and the Father seeks such people to worship him. That hour of Jesus, which of course began at

Cana, right, which is in fact continued here and he speaks about it through all John's gospel until John chapter 12 when he says, this is the hour for the son of man to be glorified. That hour is really the true worship that Jesus offers. It's very, go ahead. The hour. So he said it begins at Cana because, you know, Jesus has to marry what has this to do with you and with me, woman, my hour is not yet come, but then he moves, right? So that begins this, that is fulfilled in now the hour has come, Father be glorified. Exactly. And in fact, notice there's two times in John's Gospel when Jesus calls Mary a woman at John chapter two at Cana and then when he's on the cross. Yeah. And he says, woman, behold your son. Because of course, in that moment,

Jesus is giving birth to the church, right? As he gives his life. It's very important to understand that the cross is an act of worship. Yeah. You said the one true act of worship. Exactly. The way we would say it is this, the one true act of worship that ever happened in the whole history of the world. What is worship?

Worship is this giving back of ourselves to God from whom we came. It's what we owe him. He gave us our life. and we have to give ourselves back. But of course, we have failed in sin in so many ways. And so to make up for that, what did they do in the Old Testament? They gave replacement sacrifice. They sacrificed bulls and goats as God commanded them to.

But when Jesus comes, he actually ends temple worship, which is why when he dies on the cross, it's recorded in the gospel, that the temple curtain is torn into. In fact, the temple is destroyed. Why? Because the new temple has come. The place where the one true act of worship will happen. Jesus, because he's both God and man, is the only one who can offer perfect worship to the Father.

And he makes that self-gift on our behalf to save us from our sins and order to restore us to become children of God so that now we can offer true worship. But true worship isn't the beautiful prayer that I might offer, even when I'm singing with all my heart, right? That's beautiful. And it's a really important to sing with all my heart. But actually, the true worship is the worship of Jesus. which is why he says do this in memory of me, because he wants that one act of true worship to be present throughout all of time in the Mass so that you and I can participate in it. And this is what makes the Mass so much more than anything else we could possibly do, right?

And what am I supposed to do at Mass? I'm supposed to bring my life, all my particular sacrifices, struggles, my weaknesses, everything that is me today. and I place that on the altar at the offatory when the priest offers the bread and wine. And then that very imperfect sacrifice of mine, with all my particular weaknesses and frustrations, it actually is joined to Jesus' sacrifice. Yeah. And it's offered to the Father.

And it becomes pleasing to the Father in Jesus, because we're all sons and daughters in the one son. So this is what it means to worship in Spirit and Truth. It's the one true worship that Jesus offered on the cross. that we are all united in the Holy Spirit offering and that is actually pleasing to the Father. And then, of course, it transforms us. And when we give this to the Father, what does he do? He gives us back the life of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, right? He gives us the resurrected life of Jesus, which comes to live in us so that we can now continue to live this life in the world.

Okay, so everything you just said, this is life-changing. I mean, truly, hopefully everyone who's listening to this is just if you could underline something in your brain would be Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, which is a culmination of everything that began for the incarnation, is the one true act of worship. And so the mass, and Jesus saying, do this in memory of me. So that is the once for all self-sacrifice of the son to the father. And he invites us into this. So every time we worship God in the mass, we're uniting ourselves to the one true act of worship that has been given. So, oh my gosh. So St. Paul writing Off of your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and beloved.

You're uniting, like you said, my hopes, my fears, my struggles, my pains, my joys. In the mass, those things become acceptable. They become part of this true worship. Okay, so Eucharistur revival, go. It's so good. I mean, this is what this is all about. I think this is part of why we're doing the catechism in a year is because it's not, as we said before, it's not just facts. Like, this is the stuff that I didn't realize what I was doing.

I didn't even realize that I was part of this. I just go to Mass and my small country parish, my small hometown parish, my massive megachurch parish. I didn't realize this was what was happening. Yeah. And, you know, the catexon, when it talks about it, we'll talk about the paschal mystery. Yeah. And so the paschal mystery is the event that saved us, right? So it's the last supper where Jesus gathers to celebrate the Passover with no Passover lamb,

except that he becomes the Passover lamb, where he says, this is my body given for you. this is my blood poured out for you, where he points to what he's going to do on the cross. And in fact, you can't understand the Last Supper without understanding the cross, right? And so what he does on the cross then is this gift of self to the Father for our salvation. But then you can't understand the cross without the resurrection and even the ascension into heaven, right? Because his death on the cross would be empty without the resurrection. And so when we talk about the Paschal mystery, we're talking about the Last Supper, death on the cross, his resurrection, and his ascension, all present. in this one mystery, and that's what we enter into at Mass, and that's what we're offering with

Jesus to the Father, and, of course, then receiving the life back. Right. That's incredible. So, wow, because this is, that's, it's all in everything we're teaching. That's what we're, not just what we're teaching, what we're living. So the next section in the catechism is not just about the liturgy, but about, in particular kind of the seven sacraments. Yes. And so what would be some some key takeaways for people to kind of pay attention to as we hit these seven sacraments. Yeah, maybe just first to emphasize what a sacrament is. So we call a sacrament an efficacious sign. That's a big word.

What does it mean? It means the sign causes what it signifies, right? So we're used to signs. We have simple signs like a stop sign, right? The stop sign doesn't actually cause you to stop, as many people could testify. I can demonstrate that, I can prove it, I do it every day. Right. But there are even in nature, like what we'd call complex signs. They make present what they signify. So smoke is a sign of fire. When you see smoke, you know there's a fire, right? One of the ways I like to talk about is the body is a sign of the soul, right? When you see a living body, you know there's a soul there because it looks very different than a dead body. Right, yeah. When there's no soul there, you can tell the difference. And so you can't see the soul, but you can see the sign or the effect of the soul. And the sacraments are like that in a certain way, but supernatural. So they come. what they signify. So it's not just when the priest says over these words, this is my body, over

this bread, this is my body, over the wine, this is my blood. It's not just that it's a symbol of the body and blood. It is. It becomes, yeah. But it actually becomes the body and blood of Jesus. So much so that we would say there's no more bread there. There's no more wine there. What's there? Jesus's body and body and blood and whatever his body and blood is, his human soul is there and his divinity is there. All that Jesus is becomes present. So they, they, they come. cause what they signify. When the priest pours water over the baby's head, it actually causes, does something, causes the wiping away of sin, and it fills him with new life. So to understand that fact helps us see that these are not just simple signs. Right. So an efficacious sign is a

sign that does what it's a sign of. Yes. Like a stop sign that stopped you. Baptism is a sign of washing, and so does wash away original sin. It's a sign of new birth actually does make us into God's sons and daughters. And then like you said, the sign of signs, when the sign is, this is my body, actually becomes his body and blood, soul, and divinity, which is, or even just that reconciliation, not just, but confession, it's a sign of God's mercy actually does impart God's mercy to us. Exactly. And this is part of the beauty of the sacraments is they're not simply based on my feelings. Yeah, right? Because we all know, sometimes I feel more sorry or less sorry when I go to confession. But the fact is God works and I want to be sorry for my sins and the more sorry I feel the better.

But regardless, God forgives my sins if I have some contrition. So the point is that the sacraments are actually objective ways that God begins to transform us that we gradually surrender ourselves to. You know, you said that I remember there was a young man who was raised Catholic and he left the Catholic church and he came back. I remember after he went to confession and after the confession, and after the confession, confession, he said, you know what? He said, I don't feel anything. And he said, but this, he said, that's good. He said, when he was away from the church, and he said, whenever he felt that he needed to repent of sins, he would turn, he was a big music guy. He would turn on songs, worship songs, Christian songs that would make him feel sad. And then, so he got worked himself up to feel

repentant, to feel sad about his sins. And then he would ask God's forgiveness. And then he turn on songs that were declaring, I am forgiven, I'm, you know, redeemed, this kind of thing, to make himself feel forgiven. And he said, here when he said, he would, he would ask, to confession and I don't feel anything, but I know that I'm forgiven. Now, I know that I have been made new because, as you said, it's an objective reality that happens, which is incredible. But what happens when people, if they don't mean me asking this? What would you say to someone who says, yeah, I go to Mass, I don't feel anything? I go to confession, don't feel anything. How can I get more out of the sacraments as we kind of take these next steps? Maybe the second to last thing as we

conclude our episode today. Yeah. So one of the things you can do is, is exercise faith. So the sacraments are effective based on our faith, right? Yeah. The example I always use of this is the famous story of the woman in the hemorrhage in the gospel. Jesus is walking along and she has this hemorrhage and she has this sense. If I could just touch him, I'll be healed. And so she does, even though she's not supposed to touch him because she's got this hemorrhage and she's unclean in that sense of the Jewish law. But she does go and touch him and she's healed. And Jesus, he feels power, went out from him and he looks around and says, who touched me? and the apostles are like, what do you mean? Like you're surrounded by, everybody's touching you. But one person touched with faith. And this is the power of the sacraments. Like if I have faith when I receive the sacraments, they will transform me. So it's not based on feeling, but it is based on faith.

And this is why it explains the fact that many people go to the sacraments and they're not transformed. Because they haven't exercised faith. They might receive them casually or they might not think about what they're doing or they might not even really believe what they're doing. faith allows the sacraments to be effective in me. If I don't have faith, I still receive Jesus when I go to Holy Communion. I still receive him, body, blood, soul, and divinity. But he'll only transform me to the degree that I'm disposed to being transformed. I love that example of the woman with the hemorrhage.

Everyone's touching Jesus, but she touches with faith, just like in the Eucharist. Everyone's receiving Jesus. It's not if you think so or if you believe so. It's true, and yet that transformation. You had mentioned that the sacraments not only they will, they create, is that the right way to say? They put in right order our relationship with God. Yes. Like they make that relationship right.

But also, how do the sacraments help us grow in that relationship? Yeah. So when St. Thomas Aquinas talks about the sacraments, he talks about them like with a natural analogy, you know. So like we have these sacraments which accompany us at every moment of our life. So at birth, baptism, as we grow confirmation, as we get strengthened the Eucharist. And so they accompany us at every moment of our life, especially those most important moments, when people join their lives together in marriage, when a man is made a priest so that he can serve the mystery of redemption in the world, right? And then also when we need healing or when we need reconciliation.

So at each of those moments, the sacraments are there to help us grow. And what you find as you live a sacramental life is that it affects you. It gets in your bones. And we always say that about Catholics. You know, it's like something gets in me that actually begins to make me more and more like Jesus. And this is why regular use of the sacraments is so important. It's why, you know, regular practice of the mass, even during the week, can really be transformative. It's like regular confession can really be transformative because it makes me more and more like Jesus as I grow in him.

And that being the point, right? I'm brought into a relationship with the Trinity, but that's sharing that divine life so that I can be more and more like the sun. Exactly. Jesus, whose will is conform to the fathers. And, okay, so last couple of things, if you don't want me asking Bishop.

Yes. A couple of things, as we move forward. First, is there a way that you'd say, if you don't want to share, how have the sacraments been impactful in your life? Is it what's a way in what you'd say? Okay, so this isn't just a ritual I go through. this isn't just something I kind of do and it really quote-to-quote helps me.

But like, no, this is actually transform my life. This is something that's not optional, it's necessary. Or anything along those lines that you'd say, I just point to this and say, for my life, this is necessary. Yeah. You know, when I was getting ready to be ordained a priest, I had always believed in Jesus' presence in the Eucharist, you know, and I'd always believed that he was really there. But the thought occurred to me about maybe a month before I was ordained or two months before,

wait a minute, when I'm the one standing at the altar and I'm the one who says those words, this is my body, will I believe this is really Jesus, you know? And it actually kind of was like a fear for me a little bit as I got close to being ordained a priest. But I can honestly tell you, and it was one of those moments where the faith of the church becomes so clear that when I celebrated my first mass in the cathedral in St. Paul, and I said the words, this is my body given up for you. when I raised up that host, and then I set it down on the patent and I genuflected, I had no doubt I was genuflecting before the Lord of the universe. And really that sense that, you know, my whole life exists for him.

And so the sacraments become that way for me that I can encounter him, really, truly, living today. And I can't imagine them without that. Yeah, no, that's so good. Like you said, there's such a human aspect where, you know, when, when we keep the Lord, keep the Bible, keep the sacraments distant, it's like, well, yeah, then it's holy because it's distant. What happens when he gets so close?

And that's one of the things that we recognize is, you know, you and I were talking about this, that when it comes to the Bible, sometimes it's, in some ways, can be for some people easier to accept than the catechism in the sense that, yeah, the Bible's really old and it gives us teachings for way, way back when, but also applicable to now, obviously. But the catechism is like, oh, no, this is. what we're called to believe now is what we're called to how we're called to live now and the sacraments here's how we're called to worship now and they kind of invade our lives in some ways they impose themselves i mean not really you know because god only proposes he hasn't imposed himself

but but they kind of impose themselves in our lives we can't the sacraments are one i would say this maybe something like this the sacraments are a way in which god refuses to remain distant just like the incarnation is a way in which god refuses to remain distant and the the pentecost is a way in which God refuses to remain distant. Can you say one thing on that, if you don't mind me asking? Yeah, basically, the sacraments provide this direct encounter with God. That's not possible anywhere else. And I think that would be the thing I would encourage people to keep in mind most as they're

reading this second pillar of the catechism. You know, here we are 144 days in. We're only at the second pillar. Right. But this second pillar is to keep in mind that it's all. about an encounter with God. Jesus and then through Jesus through the Trinity, right, in the Holy Spirit. And that, the whole purpose of the liturgy, the whole purpose of all the mysteries that we celebrate is that we can come into this relationship with God. Everything exists for that relationship.

And the more we allow ourselves to encounter him, then the more that we're going to be transformed by him. Because he gives us the sacraments to transform us. Right. And in order to be that we can then transform the world and also that we can live in union with him and be pleasing to him. That's so good. This has been so helpful, but just one last piece. Any last piece of advice or any last comment

you'd like to just say, by way of parting as we begin the second pillar, keep this in mind as we move forward. Maybe buckle your seat belts. Some of these sections are intense, right? Yeah. Yeah. In this second pillar, there's long paragraphs

in certain places. But yeah, Jesus in the mysteries of the liturgy in the sacraments, you're going to find him there in a way that you've never found him or encountered him before if you allow yourself to enter into these mysteries. That's so good. And as we said at the very beginning, this is, you know, there's some people who get intimidated by the teachings, intimidated by the rituals, or put off by either of them, but they're merely

the vehicles to get to the heart, which is him. Like you said, the life of the trinity. Remember that first paragraph that God in a planet, if you're goodness, he gives you himself, reveals himself to us so we can share in his own divine life. So thank you so much for your time, Bishop. I'm just so grateful. And also taking time out of your schedule to be with the Eucharistic revival. And we're just praying for that. We're praying truly that this, this, what we're doing here does a little piece to, yeah, revive a love for Jesus in the Eucharist in the hearts of not just every Catholic around the country, but every person around the country. So thank you so much.

I'm praying for you. And please know that pray for each other. frame for you. Please be for me. Mine is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.