Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: And two.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: And one.
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish podcast with Father Greg and jd. Each week, Father Greg and I connect on a variety of topics related to our faith and our parish in Winona, Ontario. We are here to help spread the good news and further unite our parish community.
This is episode number 31. We are screaming through ordinary time. We are celebrating St. Gregory the Great. And I want to ask you about the relics we have at the Immaculate Heart of Mary and our opportunities to pray to them.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Yeah, sounds great.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Remember, you can find us on the Spotify, the Apple podcasts, and the YouTube every week. So please like or subscribe and we will follow your inbox every week.
I do have a quick question before we begin.
Do you have an opinion on which one is the greatest gospel?
[00:00:51] Speaker A: The greatest gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Oh, very good.
It's like you saw that one coming.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: I think I suspected. He didn't tell me. Is that what the joke is supposed to be? If I said, like, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, you're supposed to be like, well, actually.
Or was that what?
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Oh, I have a. I have a response.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Okay, what's your response?
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Well, I think Luke's gospel in itself is a miracle.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: I mean, the fact that a doctor had good enough handwriting to be recorded, passed down and translated.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Hey, that's good. That's a good one.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: I like that Father Greg quality joke right there. Coming to a homily near you.
After that, you better start us off with a prayer.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: That's a good joke, though.
That was actually better than Father Greg quality. Just saying. Okay. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, we thank you so much for your love and your goodness to us. And we just lift up any burdens, fears, anxieties, struggles, difficulties each of us might be carrying at this time. We lift them up to you, Lord, knowing that you are a good, loving God, that you know what we're going through and we're never alone. Bless us. Bless our families, our friends, anyone in our heart. Bless our parish and may it continue to thrive and grow and be led by your Holy Spirit. Help us to encounter you during this time. May Mary, St. Joseph, St. Michael and all the saints pray for us. May our guardian angels defend us and may we come closer to you through this time. May we do exactly as you wish, God. We pray this in Jesus name. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Thank you for that, Father.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Well, let's Reveal our saint of the week. Each week we feature a saint or several and share some facts about their lives. As we strive to live out our mission as Catholics, we can always look to our saints for inspiration.
So this week with Father Greg the Great, we celebrate St. Gregory the Great, also known as Pope Gregory, who was a pivotal figure in the early medieval church.
He strengthened papal authority and reformed church administration and enhanced the role of of the church and secular affairs. He's known for promoting monasticism and sending missionaries, notably Augustine of Canterbury, to convert Anglo Saxons.
Of his significant writings, pastoral care was probably most significant in shaping spirituality and clergy conduct. He also influenced liturgical practices, leading to the development of the Gregorian Chant.
How about that?
And his leadership helped stabilize the Church during great time of political and social upheaval in Europe. He's the patron saint of musicians, singers, students, teachers, and popes. So it's a great tie in to having celebrated Pope Leo last week with your shout out.
And Gregorian chants, of course, are named in his honor. As a former monk and later pope, he's also seen as a model of pastoral leadership and scholarly devotion.
So, of course, I got a couple of quotes that are attributed to St. Gregory the Great because his words are often focused on the interior spiritual life, highlighting that if the intention is unclean, then the deed that follows would also be evil, even if it seems good.
That was kind of deep.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:56] Speaker B: So quote first quote, act in such a way that your humility may not be weakness, nor your authority be severity.
And the sacred scriptures grow with the.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: One who reads them.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: I like that because it just emphasizes the point, the importance of continuing to read and the growth through reading. And not only you grow, but the scriptures grow as well.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: And he also said, jesus, I trust in you.
So one of the earlier saints and popes too.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Wow, that claim, what a surprise.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: I know.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: Didn't see that one coming again.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: Oh, goodness. Well, it is time for Ask Father Greg. Each week we respond to a question submitted by a faithful listener or one that we make up ourselves.
Let me make my regular appeal to please send in questions so that we can have a variety of voices to hear from.
So last weekend we had a relic of Blessed Michael McGivney, who founded the Knights of Columbus.
And you've mentioned before the relics that we have here. Could you remind our listeners of what relics we have in our church and what are our opportunities to pray to them? Like, can it be more regular? Can we anytime say, hey, Father, can you bring out the relic so I can rub my religious article? On it and get a blessing?
[00:05:15] Speaker A: It's a good question. Yeah.
So what comes to my mind first are our altar relics.
I put some relics in the altar which are in an altar stone which is sealed. So you can't take the relics out the same way that you would have seen the relic of Blessed Michael McGivney. But the saints are Saint Helena, that's the mother of Constantine, and also Saint Theodorus the martyr. But apparently there's more than one Theodorus the martyr, so I don't know which one, to be honest with you.
But both of their relics are in our altar right now, but they're in an altar stone, which is a bit different than your average reliquary. So the good news is we have a chance to pray with them in a certain sense, every Mass, every time we're in the church, those relics are there in the altar.
It's not super commonly done that we take the relics out of the altar. So I haven't really thought about this very much, to be honest with you. But I'm not against it.
But I haven't thought about that. And then the other thing that comes to my mind is.
So we recently found a relic of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque as we were cleaning one of our back rooms. And it was just in a bin, but I looked at it and it does seem to have the seal of a bishop on the back, which you need in order to publicly display a relic. You can't show a relic unless you have the certificate that it's authentic. So I think I still need to get it authenticated officially before I'm allowed to publicly display it.
I have some relics as well that are in my own custody, shall we say, But I only have the certificate, the certification for one of them, which is Blessed Dina Belanger.
I've also recently requested a first class relic of Saint Jose Maria Escriva, but I'm still waiting for it to arrive. Okay, so that's my relic update.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: Oh, wow. So we could have quite a library of relics.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: That'd be cool. Yeah. The tricky part though, again, in order to publicly display them, they need to be like, certified.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: Which means I need to get some of that before I can be really.
[00:07:25] Speaker B: Cool to have the opportunity to pray to relics sort of on a regular basis.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's true.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: It's certainly on demand, but that.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: No, it would be nice. I want to put you to have. I want to put. When the St. Jose Maria relic comes, I want to put that in our adoration chapel. So I'd like to put them somewhere where they're secure but publicly accessible for whoever comes to pray.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: Okay.
And on our recent pilgrimage, we had a lot of influence from St. Helena and all of the relics, or I don't. I'll call them relics, but all the items that she gathered and brought back to Constantine or. But back to Italy, just incredible, the number of things. Every time we would go to a place, It's a.
Thanks St. Helena for that. Thanks St. Helena for this. The parts of the cross, the nails, just an incredible array. So it's really spectacular that we have a relic of her here.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: That's going to be a constant reminder.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Of that trip, too. Yeah.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: All the spiritual benefits that it had.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Amen.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: Okay, so relics coming soon to an Immaculate Heart of Mary near you.
All right, let's slide into our resource of the week. So we are working through the daily examen again, a short, structured prayer practice inspired by St. Ignatius.
And I'm working through the book of Father Timothy Gallagher to gain more insight and kind of bringing everybody along with my quest to try to pray this a little bit more regularly and more knowledgeably.
As I mentioned earlier weeks, the book is broken down into five parts. Last week we talked about part one, the desire to become closer to God, as one of the driving forces to pray the examine. And part two, I think we'll break it down over a couple of weeks, is about the actual practice itself and how to pray it in daily living.
Father Tim breaks it down into a number of case studies of people who have prayed and how they did it. And what really struck me was that there's not just one way of doing it. And I think we may have talked about this before, the fear of not praying correctly or properly and how it's really important to try to, you know, yes, have some structure, but there's not just a way of praying either the examine or launching into any other kind of prayer. And so that was a.
A huge revelation for me.
For example, one of the elements they talked about, gratitude and emphasizing concrete things in which God has poured out his love for us and trying to make sure that we're not rushing through the step and being mindful and purposeful.
One of the things that. That really stuck with me about reading the case examples today were that they didn't just sit and pray the examine at a particular time of the day. It was an ongoing prayer throughout the day. So when, as something would happen that would.
It would be appropriate to give thanks to God. Like most things but anyway, there's something significant that happened that really cried out then that would be part of the examine at whatever part of the day, and then the other parts of the examine what come up later on in the day.
So there's not just one way of doing it, I guess there is the structure that's important and making sure that we're expressing gratitude, petitioning for insight and grace to make the prayer fruitful. Doing a really good, thorough review of our day, asking forgiveness and then renewal for the next day. But I think what would help me the most is something more regular during the day to help with the review of the day.
Somebody asked me, so how was your weekend?
No idea.
What did I do on the weekend? Well, I know I hung out with Father Greg on Sunday for a little while, but, you know, a lot of the other events just sort of disappear into the ether. And I think for me, and this may apply to a lot of others too, a more purposeful daily examine, I guess, and more regular throughout the day and not just try to devote this 15 or 20 minutes to it.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: Yeah, it is nice to try to periodically bring that spirit into the day, throughout the day, whether it's at your meals or, you know, every few hours.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Now, do you have a specific practice for your examine?
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Every time I do one of the parts of the breviary, which is five times a day, I always do a little examine, but then I do a more thorough one at night prayer before I go to bed.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: Okay. So I think the big takeaway for me today is, is that it is something that would easily spread throughout the day and not just, okay, I'm going to do my examine now. Everybody leave me alone for the next 15 minutes and just.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Yeah, and it can be like two minutes. Like, you could just set a two minute timer and just sit there silently. Just reflect on your day. Where has the Lord been? And sometimes you want to stay longer than two minutes. But if you say, hey, I only have to commit to two minutes, it's an easy way to create low friction to start, but then you spend more time. You're like, actually, this is really life giving. And I'm glad I made this time.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: And that's another recurring theme, is with more practice, the more life giving, a lot of the practices become. Yeah, okay, cool.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: Oh, that's awesome.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: All right, more on the examine next week and my efforts to continue to make it an integral part of my prayer life.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Awesome. Yeah. It is so important.
[00:12:53] Speaker B: Well, we are into the last couple of months of ordinary time here. We're just like screaming along the church calendar. November is just around the corner. I mean, it's only September 2nd, so we're not rushing the season long, but it's going to come at us fast.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: And so at the end of November comes the end of Ordinary Time.
We talked about approaching Ordinary Time and what our frame of mind should be. But as now we're coming to the end of Ordinary Time in the last few months, what can we focus on to guide us through Ordinary Time?
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Well, sometimes it's just good to step back and renew our focus and say, okay, during Ordinary Time, have I been focusing on going and growing closer to the Lord, moving ahead in my spiritual life? Am I really making progress?
Can I see clear spiritual progress in my life based on my weekly attending Mass, daily prayer, perhaps regular confession, you know, having a plan of life, a spiritual plan of life, where I'm doing spiritual reading, I am doing examinations of conscience, I'm praying the rosary or part of the rosary. I'm, you know, surrounding myself with good influences that bring me closer to the Lord. I'm speaking to him from my heart, maybe going to adoration, etc.
Is drawing, drawing closer to God ordinary. Am I still getting closer?
Or have I noticed that sadly, despite my best resolutions, I have maybe become a little further from the Lord?
I have slid back a bit in my faith life, and am I bringing the Lord into my ordinary day to day life? Are the most ordinary events of my day, nevertheless divine moments, that is because I've brought God into them, or do I have a sort of separation in my mind? This is the God time, this is the not God time, when maybe it'd be better to say this is the focused only on God time, and this is the God and I doing stuff time.
So I think those are just good to step back, renew our awareness of what we've been trying to do, check ourselves, evaluate, and then be honest with ourself and with God. And no matter what, thank God for the grace he's given us and recommit to continuing to grow, because we always want to grow further. At the end of this Ordinary Time, we'll be starting Advent, which is always the beginning of a new liturgical year. So we want to close out this year strong and then build that momentum and keep going and growing closer to the Lord. When a new liturgical year begins and.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: The missal this season, this year is green. Any insight into the next year's color?
[00:15:20] Speaker A: I have no idea.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: No idea.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't make them Blue or.
[00:15:23] Speaker B: Burgundy, I guess will be.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: I have no idea. We could start, like, a pool and.
But I'm not planning to bet any money on this because I just don't know.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Okay. I want to pick out one part you mentioned. You talked about going spiritually backwards, which I think is we want a linear spiritual life.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: Like, we want to keep getting at least a net improvement. Sometimes you kind of feel like you're up and down. You have a good day, a bad day, but the net trajectory should be overall constant growth in a lot of readings.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: Again, going back to the exam in a bit.
Father Tim talks about periods of spiritual dryness.
And his people he's.
He's reporting on also have the same sort of thing. So it's not strictly linear or parable or exponential, but there's a little bit of, as you said, there's a little bit of waviness that happens in there, too.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: That's true. And yet spiritual dryness is a bit of a different phenomenon. It's not a lack of spiritual growth.
Right. Aridity or spiritual dryness has a few different causes. One is it could just be our own sin has distanced us from God and so we don't feel as close to him because we stepped away from Him. Secondly, it could be that God is permitting spiritual dryness so as to wean us off of the warm, fuzzy feelings in prayer, which calls us to actually have a stronger commitment to Him. It's like removing the training wheels. So God sometimes allows that actually as a purification so that we will do the right thing and pray even we don't feel like it. Or we'll do the more charitable thing even when we don't desire to.
And that's actually spiritual growth. It may not feel like spiritual growth, but it actually is.
And sometimes aridity is a temptation, like the evil one will tempt us to feel farther from God.
And that's called spiritual desolation. And that's always meant to be rejected as a lie. And we're called to then say, no, I choose to remember that Jesus is here with me. He loves me. And insofar as I choose to do that, I'm actually having spiritual growth. So what might feel to someone who's untrained in the spiritual path as some kind of recidivism or slipping back actually is the normal process by which we grow.
And I think it's important not to conflate the two, I.e. aridity or dryness with a lack of spiritual growth and or sliding back.
There are going to be Ups and downs. Times where we feel closer to the Lord, times where we feel farther. But our feelings are not really our best barometer of our spiritual quality of life. It's really more, am I praying every day? Am I showing up to the sacraments? Am I making time for scriptures? Am I a better person, more and more to other people? Am I more charitable, more giving, more selfless?
And we can, if we're attentive to ourselves, we can notice that's going up or down as a totally separate thing from do I feel, Do I feel God's presence all the time or not?
The feeling of God's presence is often tied to our own choosing to be aware of his presence because he's aware whether you feel him or not. You just have to choose to be aware that he's there.
And we can't let our senses dictate our faith. We have to be beyond that.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: Wow, that was a lot.
[00:18:29] Speaker A: Okay, there you go.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: But that, but that was good. Like I, I picked out on a. What I thought was a theme. And you gave such a brilliant and eloquent sort of. Oh, it's not quite that. So just love that little piece of education bonus education that we all get from those. All right. Okay then.
More food for thought.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: For sure. For sure. For sure.
All right. There is so much happening in our community, Father.
Ramping up activities in the church, coming with a new school year which coincides with, I guess, a new activity year in the parish. And our parishioners and our parashioners, they can all check out the bulletin every week. But for everyone else out there, what's some of the big stuff that's coming up in the next little while?
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Well, looking forward to our upcoming youth and young adult events. And also we've got our Divine mercy event permission film screening event. I really want you to come to that. It's going to be great. We've got a pro life little fundraiser live music event coming up as well. And the dates of these are on our website bulletin. And I've also got the chance to watch the season four finale of the Chosen with our people this upcoming Saturday and lots of other cool stuff. And we just had the relic of blessed Michael McGivney tonight.
This will be online after tonight, but it'll be back at the mass tonight, Tuesday night on September 2nd. That's the day we're recording. And just lots of, for me, lots of meetings with people and a lot of marriage stuff or just helping people with different things. We've got our men's recollection on September 15th, we're going to have an Ask Father night again in October, where I'll also share about my trip to Italy. So that's hot off the press news for you.
And I'm just getting back in the schools as things pick up again. So lots of fun, exciting stuff. And if you ever need. Just throwing this out there, I feel kind of prompted by the Holy Spirit. If you need a house blessing, let me know. I'm doing some house blessings here and there, but if you want a house blessing, let me know. I'll do it up.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: Okay. Is a house blessing good for life or does it have to be.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Good question. Good question.
In one sense, it's good for life, but it's also good to renew. Like, sometimes some cultures, like, you see this more in Poland or other parts, the priest will come every year.
So if you can get a priest once a year, awesome. If not, yeah, whatever frequency, he's at your place, It's. If you're wondering about me, if you say, like, oh, will Father Greg find it? Like, I'm asking too much if I ask for once a year? No, I'll come. I'm happy to chat. I'm happy to visit. Doesn't take long to bless a house. Plus, I get to say hello. So. Yeah.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: Okay. All right. So let's fill up Father Greg's calendar.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: Indeed.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Not that it needs help, but that's not it. That means please, like, fill it more. Like, just do it. I want to. I want to come bless your house.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: Okay. Excellent.
There are so many great people doing great work, and all those events that you mentioned, all rely on volunteers, and people in the church are doing amazing work. Who would you like to recognize in.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: The parish this week? Today, I want to recognize a gentleman named Emmy. And Emmy has recently offered to, like, help fix things around the church. He's a really nice guy.
Very sweet family. They come here for mass virtually every week. I mean, they may be traveling sometimes, but Emmy was just patching up some holes today here at the parish, and he's going to paint some things more. And so it's a real blessing to have just good, generous volunteers. Whatever gifts you have, I mean, there's. There's a place for them here, and it builds up the kingdom, helps our parish get better. And now that Rayne, our summer student, is gone, she was doing a lot of fixing walls. But now we need some more help doing that just to keep our facilities in top condition. We want it to be the best for God and our people.
So, yeah, just thank you to Emmy for his generosity in that.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: Excellent. Thank you, Emmy, for all that you do.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: Amen. And I also thought of one more thing about upcoming things to share, and it is.
I had it in my head, and then I talked about Emmy.
But it'll come back, I'm sure.
But there was something cool. Well, there's also the parish golf tournament coming up, by the way.
Whatever it is, if it's important, it'll come back. But it was. I was like, oh, man, I got to say that to them. But then it went away, so.
[00:22:43] Speaker B: Okay, well, maybe it'll come back. We got about another minute and a half or two minutes here. Might still come back.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: It's true.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Because that is just about all the time we have for today. And thank you for your insights, Father. I remembered it all right here.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: It's RCIA. RCIA, that's right. September 30th. So we've already got.
Right now, it looks like 8ish people signed up for RCIA. It's pretty good.
But, yeah, the more the merrier. If you know someone who's just on the fence or interested in becoming Catholic, they'd like to chat with me. We'd love to chat with them, answer any questions, welcome them. Yeah.
[00:23:11] Speaker B: Okay. And that's for initiating people. Is there like a refresher course?
[00:23:16] Speaker A: Good question. Sometimes parishes will open up, and I've done this before, open up RCA to the whole parish that has pros and cons. The. The pros are more people can take in the content. The cons are like, we have like a very kind of small classroom feel that could get lost with too many.
So this is where eventually we'll be trying to start, like Bible studies and faith formation programs on Wednesday nights. And I think that'll be something that can fill that gap.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: And maybe parish podcasts.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: Parish podcasts. Hopefully we're helping with some refreshers, but if you have questions and you have things you want to be refreshed on, let us know.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: Yeah, send some questions.
[00:23:54] Speaker A: Also, if you're looking for just a great series that covers the Catholic faith super well on formed.org check out cymbalon S Y M B O L O N Balon. It's an amazing just summary of the Catholic faith. I really like it a lot.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: Well done. Nice little bonus content there.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: All right, shall we close with a prayer?
[00:24:14] Speaker A: Yeah. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. God, we thank you so much for your love for us and all the great things you're doing in us, around us, through us, and for us. Because you're everywhere and you're with us always and you love us, Lord. So thank you for that. Please bless our parish, guide us by your Holy Spirit. Grant many, many, many people come to Mass and continue to help our parish get even better by sharing their gifts with us. And may you bless us and our listeners as we thank you for all you're doing in our lives and our parish. We pray this in Jesus. Name the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: Thank you for that, Father. And thank you for your insights today. Your words are inspiring, your insights are enlightening and really your sense of humor makes me think you missed your calling. Maybe he's a stand up comedian. You know, if this whole priest thing doesn't work out.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: That's right. I think it's working pretty good, though.
[00:24:59] Speaker B: Well, and I think it is. And I think the souls are probably safer this way.
[00:25:03] Speaker A: That's good. That's good. But it's a good joke still. Thank you.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: Thank you to our fans and friends and odds and ends for joining us this week through the Immaculate Heart of Mary social media channels. The Apple podcast and Spotify, or the YouTube.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: The YouTube.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: And if you like our show, subscribe and tell your friends.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: Subscribe, subscribe.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: If you don't like our show, tell your friends anyway and let them discern for themselves.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: Tell them to subscribe, subscribe, subscribe.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: Until next time, everyone. Keep the faith, say your prayers and hey, don't forget to tip your priest with a smile and a Hail Mary.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: Have a Greek, Greek. Have a Greek week, everyone. Let's go to September 2nd to 9th is Greek Week.
So enjoy that and also enjoy a great week, everyone. We are.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: It's only going to be greater if it's more Greek. That's right, I'm not Greek, but I'm just throwing that out.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: There we are, Father Greg the Great and JD Leaving you smarter, happier and more blessed than you were yesterday.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: Love Greek indeed.
