The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Standing Against Coronavirus with Faith, Hope, and Charity

Episode Date: April 3, 2020

There are three things within us that can help us deal with trials like coronavirus: faith, hope, and charity. Through these virtues, we can respond to a crisis with confidence and trust in our Lord. Jeff pulls from the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Scripture to illustrate what a faithful, hopeful, and charitable response to this crisis looks like. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get the shownotes or email us at [e-mail]

You're listening to the Jeff Kavana show, episode 160, standing against the coronavirus with faith, hope, and charity. Hey, I'm Jeff Kavans. How do you simplify your life? How do you study the Bible? All the way from motorcycle trips to raising kids, we're going to talk about the faith and life in general. It's the Jeff Kaven show. And thanks for taking the time. to join me again this week as we talk about everything that really is related to being disciples of the Lord following Jesus Christ and taking his word and putting it into practice in real life. And man, we have real life, don't we, right now? We have a situation that

as a world, we haven't experienced really since it was in 1918 and the Spanish flu. And and every country is focused on this topic of the coronavirus, every single nation, every city, every family is talking about this invisible thing that affects our lives in so many ways. And you know, it kind of reminds me in a way of original sin. In fact, I'm going to talk about that in an upcoming show where we have something that has affected our lives in such a in such a powerful way, and people are ultimately afraid of dying, aren't they? And they're afraid of suffering. And that's understandable.

That is very understandable. I've been thinking so much about this, and I want to talk to you today about three ways that we can stand against what is happening to us or what's happening to society with this coronavirus. but there's a couple things I want to share before we get into that in the show today. And one of them I've been thinking about a lot is you're quarantined, most likely. You're in your house. You're watching television. You're on the Internet. Yes.

And you're probably with your loved ones. And I pray for those who are separated from their loved ones. And they cannot spend this time together. But I was thinking, you know, and talking to my wife the other day, and I said, you know, What if this was life? I mean, what if the people we are around in this quarantined area, in your home, what if that is life and God's word comes to you in the midst of that situation? And still, you have to put that into practice.

You have to love one another, be patient with one another. You have to serve one another. You have to forgive. You have to love and sacrifice. and we oftentimes, you know, look at the scriptures, and we think of them in terms of at work and the neighborhood, extended relatives, on vacation, and so forth, but the task at hand is within a quarantined, you know, wall or home, and you still have to put that into practice. You have to put it into practice. Now, the thing that I am really encouraging people to

avoid, which it might sound funny coming from a show like this, but I, you know, so be it. You know, the consequences are what they are. But I really encourage people to back off of so much consumption of television and news and just everything they can get, every speaker they can listen to. There's a sense of binge watching, binge listening. And I think that to a degree, yeah, it's good. You know, listen to some things and be informed, yes. But you know what? Just like, you know, being outside of the quarantine period of time a month ago, two months ago, we probably didn't do this. We lived. We lived our life. And I want to challenge you to live your life within your home. Be the father, be the mother, love, sacrifice, be patient, merciful.

focus on, focus on living out your faith in a very, in a very, in purposeful way, within your home. We don't want to just sit in our homes and wait for this to be over, and the waiting period is simply consuming things, you know, news and movies and every kind of faith-based thing you can imagine. I talked to people recently, and they said, I just don't have time for this. It wears me out. It brings me down. And I think one of the reasons is because we don't actually, in many cases, get around to doing the faith. You're living it out and thinking intently about what is required of us in our relationship with the Lord and prayer, scripture, loving within our homes. And I think that's where the victory comes in this. Yes, we have to take care of ourselves, the masks, touching six feet, washing hands. Amen. And I'm doing all of that is the best I can. Don't touch your face. Wow, that's a hard one. You know, we all are fighting that we touch our faces way more than we ever thought, right? So there's so much to really think about. But what I would like to focus on today is really three things that we have within us,

that we can exercise in the midst of a trial like this. And I'm just going to touch on these today and perhaps we'll go deeper into them in episodes coming up. By the way, you can go to Ascension Press, their Facebook page, and I have quite a few shows that are mounting up there that I have been doing live in the evenings. And one of the series is called Walking Toward Eternity, a special edition where we're talking about key topics like prayerfulness,

and we're talking about love and hopelessness and loneliness and fear and anger, you know, a lot of these major topics. So go ahead and check that out, as well as the Bible in a month. I'm going through the entire Bible in four sessions, and we're halfway through at the time of this broadcast. You can go to Ascensions Facebook, and you can listen to the first couple. if you want to know the Bible. I'm not, I am, as you know, a big believer in live the faith. Don't just consume it, you know, forever and ever, live it. And that's part of the whole activated mindset that we live it out.

Okay, so I want to talk about three things that you have already, and they are faith, hope, and charity. And you may say, well, how do you know I have those things, Jeff? And I would say, well, I know what the church teaches, and the church teaches that when you are baptized, you receive in your spirit, in your heart, you receive faith, hope, and charity. Those are called theological virtues. In other words, you have been equipped with faith. You've been equipped with hope. You've been equipped and empowered by charity. It's a matter of developing those, recognizing them, developing them, and then exercising those three theological virtues, which come in handy at times in times like this, very much so. And so let's take a look here at this concept of faith and how we stand in the

midst of a pandemic, how we stand in the midst of a worldwide virus that we cannot see. Well, we're going to combat it with something that we cannot see as well, which is faith. We can see the manifestation of faith, but faith, I can't say, you know, walking down the street, look over there on the sidewalk. There's a pile of faith. That's not what we're talking about here. When we talk about faith, faith is the very response to God's revelation. Faith involves both the intellect and the will in what the church calls the obedience of faith. Now, if you are baptized, you have faith. You have faith. And we want to talk about. about growing that faith and exercising that faith. But we want to also look at what is faith.

When we talk about faith, the Hebrew word is Emuna, and Pistis in Greek, and Emunah, this idea of faith, is oftentimes misunderstood. Standing against the fear and the mystery of this pandemic, I may ask the question of you, do you have faith? And the answer would be, oh, yes, I do have faith, I do have faith, which oftentimes is translated, I believe in God. I do believe there's a God. I do believe he loves me. I do believe he cares. I do believe he sees what's going on. I have faith. But that's not really what biblical faith is. That's not what faith is in terms of how the church defines faith. This idea of faith, Pope Benedict talked about it quite a bit. And the catechism goes into this, and that is in paragraph 142 to 144. Those three, I'll deal with those today when we talk about faith.

Paragraph 142 says, by his revelation, the invisible God, speaking of invisible things, the invisible God from the fullness of his love addresses men as his friends, and moves among them in order to invite and receive them into his own company. The adequate response to this invitation is faith, is faith. Paragraph 143, by faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God. With his whole being, man gives his assent to God, the revealer. Now, sacred scripture calls this, calls this human response to God, the author of Revelation, the obedience of faith, the obedience of faith. So when we talk about the obedience of faith, and we say, I believe, and I have faith in God in the midst of the coronavirus, what we're saying biblically, and from a Catholic perspective, is that I am going to submit my intellect and my will

to God in the midst of this coronavirus. Now, what does that mean? Well, it means that, number one, you're submitting your intellect. So anything I say about what the church teaches, if I say anything about the Lord, the Lord will not leave you, he will not forsake you, he will provide for you, the Lord sees you, the Lord wants to use you in a powerful way, he wants to empower you by the Holy Spirit, he wants to nourish you with his word. All, I can go on and on and on, and you can say, intellectually, I believe that. In the midst of the coronavirus, I believe that. I have faith. Well, that's part of it. Because what we want to do is we want to submit our intellect, yes, I believe all these things. I believe that Mary is the virgin mother of God. I believe that the saints

are in heaven and that I have a relationship with them, true. I believe that. I believe that, in heaven, hell, in purgatory. True. I believe these things. I submit myself as far as my intellect to the creed in all of the facets of the creed. But it goes on and says that we must submit our intellect and our will. And another way of saying that is we entrust ourselves to God in the midst of this coronavirus. Yes, I believe these things about God. I believe these things about God. I believe these things about Jesus, and I'm going to submit my will. I'm going to entrust myself to the Lord in the midst of this coronavirus. This is very, very important. Paragraph 150 of the catechism goes on to say that faith is a personal adherence of man to God. That is beautiful, isn't it? A personal

adherence of man to God. You see, just listening to a lot of teaching, just reading a lot of books, going to a lot of conferences, whatever it might be. Yay, they're good. But what we're talking about here is an intellectual adherence and a personal entrusting of ourselves, doing something with what we know we need to act on. And so paragraph 150, the catechism says it's a personal adherence of man to God, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. So it is both a word that is of assent to God's truth and a deed, complete adherence to God himself. And so you can see that this is why we as Catholics do not believe that it's enough to simply say, well, I have faith. I have faith.

Because the biblical idea of faith and the Catholic idea of faith is that it is believing in doing. It is intellectual assent, and it is a personal entrusting of oneself. That's something for all of us to look at during this coronavirus. Iris. It's something for all of us to look at in our own lives. Are we, yes, believing, which I think most of us are, but are we entrusting ourselves to the Lord? Are we entrusting ourselves to the Lord? You know that the catechism says in paragraph 144, something very beautiful. It says to obey, to obey to hear or listen to in faith. is to submit freely to the Word of God that has been heard because, and get this, it's so good,

paragraph 144, mark it up, because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is truth itself. Let me say that again, to obey, which is this entrusting of ourselves to God in the midst of the coronavirus, whatever aspect it is. That's why I am such a proponent of get into the Word of God, get into scripture, read it, underline it, meditate upon it, dulexio divina. But get into the catechism as well, because to obey what you are reading to hear or listen in faith, to obey in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is truth itself. Isn't that beautiful? And that also explains to, you know, explains this idea of why words and deeds are so important. Paragraph 53 of the

catechism tells us that God reveals himself in deeds and words. He doesn't simply tell us things or write us notes or speak at a conference or or a webinar or whatever it might be at this point. No, he speaks and does. And our response to his revelation is, is intellectual assent believing, but doing also. And so that is very, very, very important. Now, the catechism reminds us of the importance of faith to our arrival at our destination, the blessing from which we have come with these words that St. Thomas said, faith is a foretaste of the knowledge that will make us blessed in the life to come. In other words, according to St. Thomas, paragraph 184 in the catechism, the faith that you received at baptism, the theological virtue, the faith you have,

that adherence, intellectual adherence, and personal entrusting is a foretaste. It's a foretaste of the blessed life to come. So if you want to get a foretaste of heaven, walk in faith now. Walk in faith during the coronavirus. And I really encourage you to go through scripture and, and, uh, and get to know the will of God and entrust yourself to him in the midst of it. You know, so many people have contacted me and said they are, they're worn out. And I, you know, I'll reply and I'll say, well, what are you doing? You know, it's a text or a phone call, whatever it might be, and said, well, I'm just so tired of just watching the news and this bad news that I'm hearing.

Well, begin to read the good news then. read it be smart but read it and do it it it will make a difference in your life it really will again to take a break when i come back i want to talk about hope and charity in the midst of the coronavirus we're talking all together about faith hope in charity and you're listening to the jeff kaven show every one of us is made in the image of god we are unique worthy of love and called to greatness. In this world, though, we can be distracted from that truth and begin to doubt God's love is real. You see, we live in a world that tells us we are not smart, attractive, thin, or rich enough. It is easy to focus on the ways we fall short of worldly perfection and forget

that we are already made perfect. We are already enough. I'm Danielle Bean, author of You Are Enough, what women of the Bible teach you about your mission and worth. You Are Enough dives into the stories of women in the Bible so that you can fully see God's plan for your life. To order, visit ascensionpress.com or Amazon. And welcome back, my friend, where we are talking today about standing against the coronavirus with something that is not seen. It's something that's in your heart. Faith, hope, and charity. And we just have been using a lot of time talking about faith. I want to turn to hope. And I knew that I knew you'd be hoping that, that I would cover that. I know that's corny. So let's talk about hope a little

bit in the midst of this coronavirus. A lot of people have lost hope. And by that, most people would say, well, I don't see a good future for myself. It's discouraging, my job, the money, my health, my relationships, my mortgage, and so forth. And all of that is very understandable. And they say, well, I'm losing hope. And that is that my excitement about the future is waning. Fear has entered in. And I don't seem to have anything to wrap my arms around. Well, as I mentioned prior to the break, When you were baptized, you received faith, hope, and charity in your soul. And that's part of baptism. They're the theological virtues.

And these are not just names, faith, hope, and charity. These are tools. These are real, real tools in your quiver to walk through life. Faith. You have been given faith. You have been given hope. Now, to us, hope oftentimes means hope so, right? As in our response to the question, do you think that you're going to have a job when the coronavirus is gone? Well, I hope so. I hope so. Well, that's one type of hope. But in scripture, in scripture, hope never has really such an uncertainty connected to it.

it has a certainty that is concrete. Think of reading Titus chapter 2 in verse 13 in the modern sense. Jesus is called the Blessed Hope. We don't refer to him as the Blessed Hope so, do we? No, hope means something sure, something certain, that just hasn't happened yet. It's in the future, and we have this certain hope in our lives. The Hebrew word for hope is Tikva. Hope is an expectation of good.

It is linked with trust and yearning. A good definition would be an interest or desire whose fulfillment is cherished. Ecclesiastes chapter 9 in verse 4 says, So long as there is life, there is hope. And I want to extend to you today that hope that is in your heart. I want to awaken that hope that is in your heart. The life of the righteous is grounded in a hope that implies a future because it's point of reference. And this is important for you during the coronavirus.

The life of the righteous is grounded in a hope, The Hope, Hatikva, that implies a future because its point of reference is God. That's the important point right there. Our point of reference is not President Trump. Our point of reference is not the cast of leaders behind him at a news conference. Our point of reference is not CNN or Fox or MSNBC or ABC or CBS, whatever. That's not our point of reference. Our point of reference is not some show on the Internet.

I'm not a point of reference, but the point of reference is God. But there is a difference in the kind of hope, for example, of Plato and Scripture. Plato speaks of a hope that is a projection from oneself concerning the future. In other words, I create my future with the limited brainpower I have and limited experience, limited resources. And maybe you're doing that right now. You're creating a future for yourself based on tremendous limitations, and the limitations are that which is within you, your own experience, but the limitations may also be the news media.

It may be the facts. It may be things that we simply don't know about, and that is helping to form our sense of the future, right? So Plato speaks of a hope that is a projection from oneself. Nietzsche held that hope was the worst of evils because it prolongs the torment of man. But hope that the Bible speaks of is good expectation about the future. because of what God has done and says he will do and continue to do. So what a difference. If you muster hope on your own, it results in a false sense of security. What are some ways that we can create our own sense of hope without God? Well, we can put our hope in riches, you know? we, because we have a limited knowledge of the future, and because man is aware of obvious different scenarios for the future, he is hopeful for he naturally seeks fulfillment and meaning in life,

we're made to hope. And when we really examine hope, we see that hope is an activating and guiding principle for all of life. But sometimes our hope is put in the, really in wrong places. For example, as I said, we put our hope in riches, or we put our hope in men, we put our hope in idols, we put our hope in things, right? So, for example, if we're going to put our hope in riches, 1 Timothy chapter 6 says, command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant, nor to put their hope in wealth. Maybe your hope is in wealth. And if your hope is in wealth, then stop looking at the stock market, because your hope will fall, drop, collapse. You see, our hope is not in riches. Are we concerned? Do we need to be

smart? Absolutely. Yes. But our hope is not in riches. Our hope is not in men. Psalm 118, it is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. Our hope is not in idols. It's not in idols. Jeremiah 48, then Moab will be ashamed of Chemish, as the House of Israel was ashamed when they trusted in Bethel. And so we don't put our hope in idols, and let me just suggest, and I'm not saying you,

but I know as a culture, have we made an idol out of sports? Have we made an idol out of money? Have we made an idol out of music? Entertainment? Eating? Are these idols in our lives? Food? They're gone. They're all gone right now. Everything has fallen over. Don't put your hope in idols. Put your hope in the Lord. Some put their hope in things, you know? Psalm 33. A horse is a vain hope for deliverance, despite all its great strength that cannot save. We don't put our hope in things. And so God wants us to have hope, doesn't he?

He really does. He wants us to have hope. And there's a story in the Old Testament that's very, very powerful. And it's the story of the children of Israel in Joshua coming across the Jordan River from Moab. And they have been in the desert now for 40 years wandering around. Moses has died on Mount East. Bo. Everybody over 20 has died. The younger generation has grown up in the desert. Joshua's going to take them over across the Jordan. And he does, but God gives them clear instructions. The clear

instructions that God gives them is that when you go over and take AI, you shall not take anything for yourself. No idols, nothing, gold, silver, nothing. It all belongs to the Lord. So they went across the Jordan, they took the city of Jericho, and then the next city was AI, and they were defeated at AI, because one man, by the name of Aiken, took to himself, idols, and so forth, and it affected everybody. And a judgment took place. A judgment took place. This became a low spot in Israel's history, a bad, bad memory. And that took place in the Valley of A-H-H-O-R, A-C-H-O-R, the Valley of A-H-O-R. And so if you wanted to bring up a bad, bad time in Israel's history, all you had to say was Valley of A-H-H-R. And it was at that point, you realized, you know, that was a low point.

But listen to what Joseus says. Listen to what the Prophet Josea says as he uses that to explain something about hope to Israel. He says in Hosea 215, there I will give her back her vineyards and will make the valley of Ahor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. Now, the valley of Ahor was synonymous with failure, synonymous with grief and difficulty, but God says through the prophet, I will make the valley of a whore a door of hope. And so I extend that to you today and remind you that God can take this which we're going through and make it a door of hope. He can make it a door of hope. And I encourage you to do that with your family, to stop the negative talk and to stop the hope that is just

based on our own experience and our own resources and our own ingenuity, and allow God to place a door of hope in your family, a door of hope in your life. And that door of hope will go out to His will for you. And the future is projected based on his faithfulness, his experience, his power, his resources. Isn't that what you need is new hope? New hope for what you might be going through? If you know of anybody who needs this message, please send this to them. because this is the word of God. This is my opinion. This is the word of God that God talks to us about hope.

The church teaches us about hope. Very, very powerful. You know, Paul talks about going through tough times and hope. He says in Romans chapter 5, the first five verses, therefore since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering

produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint us because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, which has been given to us. You know what? When we rejoice in our suffering, we produce endurance. You don't know what? Endurance produces character. Endurance, faithfulness, it produces character, and character produces hope. Hope comes. from people who have character, and people who have character have learned to endure, and people who have learned to endure know what to do with their suffering. That's a message for you.

That's a message for you in the midst of this. And the third, the third gift is charity, isn't it? Faith, hope, and charity. And when we talk about charity, we're talking about love. and one way that we deal with this coronavirus is that we walk in love. That is, we put others first. We have their eternal destiny in mind. We become servants, and we choose to love them.

And Jesus said, no greater love does a man have than to lay his life down for his friends. And so I encourage you to lay your life down for your family, Lay your life down for your colleagues on your Zoom meetings and your Skype meetings and your phone calls. At dinner, don't let dinner be the top of a volcano, a frustration of what's been going on, but love your family. If you blow up, you get angry, you become impatient at times like this, humble yourself. Now, sometimes particularly men, they have a hard time with charity. with love, and they're venting, you know. Things aren't going right on the Zoom call.

Things aren't going right at work. Or they don't have that job, and they're thinking, I don't even know how I can go out there and look for a job right now. Love. At least walk in love, right? Walk in love and build on that love. And so when you love, fear leaves. Perfect love casts out fear, John says.

perfect love casts out fear. Love as Christ loves. If you are finding yourself and not being charitable, seriously, go into the bathroom, look in the mirror and just say to yourself, say your name, walk in love. Walk as Christ would love. Repent. Tell people you're sorry if you blew it. Tell them, I love you. I'm sorry for my anger. I'm sorry for my impatience. Whatever it might be. but walk in love. You know, love covers a multitude of sins. Love sets the environment in your home. Love opens the door for communication and trust. Love has a powerful way of knocking down the fences of indecision, of indifference, and unforgiveness. And so I encourage you with all my heart to walk in charity. Now, to wrap this up, remember, you have these things. If you are baptized,

you have faith, hope, and charity. You have them. And I encourage you to walk in them during this coronavirus pandemic. I want you to know that I love you. That's why I'm here. I'm sharing with you. I'm going to provide for you the scriptures that I've mentioned in this show. If you do not get the show notes, you can get them free every show. All you have to do is text me, and you can text me at 33777.7. And all you have to do is write my name. Jeff Kavens, all one word, Jeff Kavins, 3377. We'll get you the show notes and you'll be on the list. You'll get all the show notes in the episodes in the future. And I think one of these days I'm going to go through and give you some of the top 10 shows in the past as far as response and that might also be helpful in equipping you. That's what I'm interested in. I'm really not interested in just spending time or entertaining or anything like that. It's tools. that make a difference, tools that make a difference in your walk with God. So share the show with those that need to hear it, those who need to know a little bit about faith, hope, and charity,

and have some marching orders in the face of this coronavirus. Let me pray for you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Lord Jesus, I thank you today for giving us life. I thank you for inviting us into your amazing plan of sheer goodness. Lord, I reach out right now to my friends, and ask you to touch them, give them a renewed sense of faith, that is, a mental assent and entrusting of themselves to you. Renew their hope as an anchor for their soul, your future for us, you're the reference point, and thank you, Lord, for renewing love in their life that love overcomes and love drives out fear. Help us to walk in these three theological virtues, I pray, In Jesus' name, amen.

Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. God bless you, my friend. I do love you. And I already look forward to talking to you again. God bless.