Pints With Aquinas - 197: Why The 7 Sacraments? W/ Fr. Gregory Pine

Starting point is 00:00:00 G'day and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. Matt Fradd here. Today I'm joined around the bar table by Father Gregory Pine and we are going to be discussing the seven sacraments. I think you'll find this a fascinating episode and yes, that's it. Hope you're doing well. I'm not sure how many of you are being affected by the coronavirus right now. We actually were supposed to release Matt Walsh's episode of Pines with Aquinas next week, but I decided to release it yesterday, actually. So if you want to go and watch that on YouTube, go over to YouTube, type in Frad, find my Pines with Aquinas channel.

Starting point is 00:00:35 Hey, better yet, I'll put a link in the show notes. That's what people do. I'll do that and you can watch that. But also next week, I'll put the audio up here on Pines with Aquinas so you can listen to it for yourself. Also, stick around to the end of this episode where I share with you an email I just received from a woman who said, thank you for ruining my life. He's in your heart Thomas Aquinas and ask him any one question, what would it be? In today's episode, we're joined around the bar table by Father Gregory Pine to discuss the seven sacraments, which I think you're going to find bloody interesting. Before we do that, though, I want to say thank you to two of our sponsors

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Starting point is 00:02:45 Hello dot app slash Matt Fradd. Again, it really is great. I have it on my phone. My wife has it on hers. She really likes it. So hi, Father Pine. How you doing over there? That wasn't awkward at all. We just crushed through it. It was perfect. I'm delighted. So do I look, how's the lighting in this room? You look great. Okay, good. I would say that it's soft lighting. Okay, that's probably good, given my... It's muted, but still revelatory, so cheers.

Starting point is 00:03:14 What's new with you? What's new with me? I just got back from some Thomistic Institute travel, and I'm here. I'm home for like almost three weeks for the most part. So that's good. Keep the home fires burning. How about you? What's new? Oh, I just got off about four or so weeks of travel. I've been traveling like three days every week. So I'm finally home for a bit of a stretch and I'm pumped about that. Nice. I actually woke up last night, couldn't get to sleep and went out into the living room, and I started reading, for the first time ever, Edgar Allan Poe.

Starting point is 00:03:49 Oh, okay. He's fantastic. Sweet mystery stories? Mystery, macabre, horror. Yeah, it was really good. Yeah, I think I've just read one short story in an American literature class in 11th grade, and I don't remember any of its details. So, yeah, I'm Innocent, a bit of Grell and Poe. I was reading Lovecraft, who's phenomenal,

Starting point is 00:04:12 but he'd write short stories, and it takes a while to get into his main point, and there's just a lot of background info that at night my head couldn't take. So I saw we had this Poe book, and I didn't even know he owned it. It was really great. Boom.

Starting point is 00:04:26 Yeah. Anyway, so that's that. So, the seven sacraments. Here we are, just chatting about the seven sacraments. It's pretty sweet. Poe to sacraments. Yeah, seamless transition. Yep. Where do you want to start? I've got a beautiful bit pulled up from Aquinas here on why we have seven sacraments, and he kind of, we'll get into that. But before we do, here's a simple question. What is a sacrament? What do we mean by that? And isn't that just some medieval invention? Ooh, nice.

Starting point is 00:05:04 Made up by the church. So I suppose we could talk about the sacraments in Scripture. That might be a good place to start without being too plotting. You know how some of those books that you read about the sacraments, it's like, let's examine all of the biblical data and then synthesize it. Well, I suppose we could do that, or we could do other things too. So the sacraments are the sacraments. Let's just start again. synthesize it. Well, I suppose we could do that, or we could do other things too. So the sacraments are instituted by Christ, and that being the case, we seek to identify them in the scriptures. So the ones that would be most obvious are the Eucharist and baptism, and we see the Lord instituting the sacrament of baptism at his own

Starting point is 00:05:45 baptism in the Synoptic Gospels, but he references it in the Gospel of John, or at least St. John does. And it's strange because the Lord Jesus himself doesn't need to be cleansed of sin because he isn't a sinner, and yet he descends into the waters so as to sanctify them, so that they have the power to sanctify us. And then you see, obviously, the sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist instituted at the Last Supper, where he also institutes the priesthood, right, and gives us a new commandment. And then we identify the other sacraments at kind of various stages throughout the scriptures. The ones that would be kind of most obscure are the sacrament of the anointing of the sick and then the sacrament

Starting point is 00:06:26 of confirmation. And, you know, people make biblical arguments for these different things, but St. Thomas, with the Catholic tradition, is reading the scriptures and he is inheriting the tradition, and then he is kind of like giving us a theology of how best to understand what the Lord's doing and then what these things are doing. So I think that's a helpful way by which to approach the matter. And then in short, you know, everyone's kind of got the catechism definition memorized that a sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible grace instituted by Christ for our sanctification. And you can kind of rearrange those parts. Different people say different things. But when we're talking about sacraments, we're talking about signs that communicate realities. And that's a good lead into the passage that you have queued up from St. Thomas

Starting point is 00:07:12 Aquinas, because the question that anyone can pose when approaching, whether it be the sacrament of baptism, if you're a catechumen, or it be the sacrament of confession, if you find yourself there again after a couple of weeks, wishing that you needn't use the sacrament as frequently as you must, what is the reality that's being communicated? And I think it's at this point that we turn to the fact that the Lord gives us grace and he kits us out with all types of graces that are basically attuned to the different aspects of human life. Before we get to that, do you mind if we just pause and kind of dwell on that for a second? Because I know we have some evangelical listeners. We might have some Catholic listeners. What does your mug say right there?

Starting point is 00:07:49 It says… Oh, brave old army team. Good. Yeah, so I visited the campus of… What are these? So the university… Oh, that's nice. Excuse me.

Starting point is 00:08:00 United States Military Academy. So go army. They gave me a mug. Kudos to them. Okay, very good. Yeah, no, I guess, so let me just try and say this in a way that our evangelical friends might understand and even some Catholics. I think it's tough, like when you live in a day and age

Starting point is 00:08:16 where you're confronted by objections to your faith, either from a Protestant angle or an atheistic angle, you tend to be skeptical even of, you know, truths that should be kind of uncontroversial taught to you by an authority. So like, I think if someone's engaged in a lot of Protestant sort of apologetics, Christian apologetics, when somebody says something like, yeah, sacrament is this, this, this, this, even if they want to believe you, and on paper they've signed and they're good, they're all down with it, there's a kind of reluctance to accept things, sort of skepticism, I think, that we learn.

Starting point is 00:08:47 But I guess I would put it this way and get your take on it. We would say that by Christ's life, death, and resurrection, he has redeemed the whole human race. And we know from 1 Timothy 2.4 that he desires all to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. But then we would say that even though Christ has redeemed the whole human race, that does not mean that everyone will be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. But then we would say that even though Christ has redeemed the whole human race, that does not mean that everyone will be saved. And so it's as if we need that redemption to be applied to us specifically, which is where I suppose we'd begin talking about salvation, sanctification. So if you understand it like that, it seems to make sense to me there is a way in which christ

Starting point is 00:09:26 wants to kind of distribute that grace so that we can be saved and he does so through visible means but what's interesting is like when you look at the protestants it um and i don't mean to be too too critical here but it feels a little kind of cartesian It's almost like they've done away with the signs and the symbols and the earthly reality. And it's almost become a sort of just totally, what do you say, kind of mental exercise where it's something I say even just between me and the Lord in my bedroom, and that takes care of everything, which, you know, they could put forth arguments for that. But I do think it's interesting, don't you, that it is kind of devoid of these sort of earthly things. Yeah, I think, so in a sacraments class, we were taught to think about it in terms of like a chain of causality,

Starting point is 00:10:18 which I suppose sounds a little bit like Greek philosophy. But you think about the way in which the Lord extends different means for our salvation, the foremost of which is, you know, the incarnate Lord. The Lord's humanity is a kind of instrument of our salvation. He takes our humanity to himself so that we have the hope of enjoying life with God forever because we see it in his flesh, right? And all of his deeds and sufferings are saving because he does them with an infinite merit. He does them with an infinite charity. He does them with an infinite charity. He does them with a redemptive purpose. But then the Lord gives us the church, right?

Starting point is 00:10:52 So he gives us a kind of extension of his humanity in time and space, which he speaks about in those terms as his body. But then he gives us further yet sacraments, which, like you said, make application of his passion, death and resurrection or of all of his deeds and sufferings. They make the mysteries of his life immediately applicable in our lives. And, you know, you can talk about that, whatever states of life and various actual graces. So like the Lord is the Lord is giving us all types of means whereby to be made holy. But I was just reading recently some stuff about the sacrifice of the mass and debates as to whether or not that is a good way of thinking about the Eucharist or what the Lord's doing at the Last Supper. And I was reading a commentary by Cardinal Cajetan, you know, 16th century Dominican, Thomas, you get it. And he talks about it in terms of representation and application. So there's nothing deficient to the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. The letter to the Hebrews is super clear on that,

Starting point is 00:11:52 right? One drop of his blood is sufficient for the salvation of the whole world. But he applies those merits organically. It's not like you said, it's not like we're just kind of beamed up into the Lord's salvation in a way that runs roughshod over our humanity. Rather, he applies it in such a way that we ourselves kind of get to exercise or be exercised in. I'm saying E-X-E, not like exercise like demons get driven out, but that we need to be exercised in the mysteries of salvation, like we need to feel it in our bodies, to quote Justin Timberlake, seamlessly. Yeah, so, and then the sacraments are, they kind of put us through the paces, not unnecessarily, but so that we can actually step into salvation in a body-soul type way.

Starting point is 00:12:43 Yeah, that's good. I was having a chat with a friend of mine, Cameron Bertuzzi. He's a Protestant apologist, and he did a live stream on his channel where he basically grilled me with objections. But he was great. He did it very charitably. But here's one thing, like, if I were an evangelical, I would find this very troubling. And I've done a bit of research into this, and I'm open to being debunked on this, everybody out there in internet land. When I did a bit of a study, quite an extensive study on John 3, 5, unless you're born of water and spirit, every father, like unanimously, who comments on this, interprets this to mean baptism. And the first prominent theologian to reject baptismal regeneration is

Starting point is 00:13:29 Protestant reformer Ulrich Zwingli. I couldn't find anyone prior to that. I mean, you find people who just, you know, deny the sacraments in general because they think matter is evil or something. But the first prominent theologian is him. And when is it, like 17th century or 16th century? Yeah, 16th century, I think. And I would just be bothered by that. So in my chat with Cameron, all he could say was, yeah, well, we don't see the church fathers as inerrant. And I said, well, yeah, neither do I, if you take them individually in their particular sayings about things. But wouldn't that bother you? That for 1,500 years, the church had a pretty... Cheers, love. My wife just brought me coffee.

Starting point is 00:14:11 Wow, what a woman. Thanks, Del. You know, that the church has this understanding of how we're saved, and it's through this very material means. But now we have our Bible in hand, and we're confident that the church was wrong about that. I guess for some people that doesn't bother them, but for me, I would be tremendously bothered by that. Yeah. Well, I think, so on the one hand, you have these types of arguments, which are

Starting point is 00:14:37 convincing or convincing to some, some people would say they're convincing to those by whom they are already convinced. But you can also, another way by which to kind of supplement it is to show how it accords, like what is, all right, come on, Gregory, speak clearly. St. Thomas says, yeah, come on, let's go. St. Thomas says this beautiful argument in an article in the treatise on the sacraments where he describes how the kind of hylomorphic shape of the sacraments is so very suited to our salvation. Because when you think about it, okay, we were made to occupy this place within a hierarchy. So God, angels, man, material creation below him, and God is our creator and end.

Starting point is 00:15:19 We're meant to reflect that, right? So that's just true. That's just true regardless of whether or not we acknowledge it. But when we do acknowledge it, then we are at peace with the world rather than in rebellion against it. And so the Lord gives us the sacraments so as to kind of breathe the logic of the cosmos into our interior life so that our interior life, the microcosm of the heart of man, reflects the macrocosm of God's creation. And so he talks about, okay, what are we? You know, we're body and soul. And so we come to knowledge of things by way of sense discovery. So the sacraments are well suited to human beings in that regard. Also too, how did we sin? We sin by being prideful, by wanting to be something that we're not, or wanting to be like gods. And so it's humbling

Starting point is 00:16:05 for us, right, to have to use water and oil, bread and wine, et cetera, in order to have salvation given. So second, it's also humbling. And then third, he says, we're going to latch onto something because we have this bodily nature, we're going to worship at some altar or we're going to make some idol. And it's best that the Lord give us holy things to occupy us rather than having us occupied by unholy things. I mean, it's like the Netflix argument. You know, you're going to consume some kind of content. You may as well consume sacramental content rather than just like binging things that are otherwise destructive. So yeah, like it's present in the scriptures. It's present in the tradition of the church. Obviously, all of these are contentious claims and they can be given one spin of the other,

Starting point is 00:16:48 but it seems that a docile way by which to read the tradition is, um, kind of like looking to it as a teacher and then appreciating the logic at work in the Lord's choice and how the tradition subsequently unpacks that. Um, yeah, I think that's a good way by which to go about it. Yeah, that's really interesting. And really interesting and it's also interesting that the material means by which he conveys grace are very humble things like water and grain and bread and wine and oil yeah and practically every case

Starting point is 00:17:23 there are things that are universally available. I mean, this sparks a debate when I think it's Christians in the Far East say, hey, we don't really use wheat so much. Can we use rice to make our Eucharistic bread? And here, we're also brought to the recognition that we're not just choosing things just because they're readily available. That's part of it. The Lord chooses ordinary things, but he also chooses things that he chose. And you'll hear this sometimes referred to as the scandal of particularity. So the Lord just – he just chose bread and wine, and so we're bound by his choice.

Starting point is 00:17:58 The Lord chose water. He didn't bathe his disciples in beer, and so we're bound by his choice. The Lord chose to ordain men, And so we're bound by his choice. The Lord chose to ordain men. And so we're bound by his choice. So whenever people give you an argument, they're saying like, well, the Lord chose men because of X, Y, and Z reason that like men are better. You're like, no, he just, he just chose men. You know, he just chose men. So like the reason that the Lord chose men is because he chose men. Uh, so you just have to, you have to kind of start there at the, at the very brute fact of the Lord's choice. So as to inform your subsequent theologizing, otherwise it can kind of get science fiction. I like that. Yeah. Because I could, I could see the argument,

Starting point is 00:18:35 someone saying, look, this is something that's common in your culture. It's not common in our culture. So we're going to go ahead and use rice cakes or something. And I could see someone being sympathetic to that, but I think that same person wouldn't be sympathetic to us rewriting the parables because we don't come from an agriculture background. You'd be like, no, no, just figure out how to understand it because this is what our blessed Lord said. Kind of a similar argument, isn't it?

Starting point is 00:19:00 Yeah, and it's because the Lord took to himself human nature in first century Palestine because the Lord was a Jew, because the Lord was born of Mary, because Joseph was his father. He speaks in this way, and it involves us in the relationships in which he was involved. And so we have to put on the mind of Christ, and this is what it means for us to be following Christ or to imitate Christ. It has a real bodily dimension to it. So it's not just like, yeah, I can kind of speculate as to what Christ might have thought after the Industrial Revolution and put on that mind of Christ. It's like, well, you know, I mean, you got to get down and observe the fact of His having taken human flesh in this

Starting point is 00:19:35 time in this place. Well, here's the one I was looking at as far as Aquinas' article. We can read whichever one you want. I'm looking at question 65 in the Tertia Pars, article one about the seven sacraments. Perfect. Is that what you were kind of thinking of too? That's great. Well, it's queued up. I'm ready to rock. But he basically goes through this and says the spiritual life has a, he basically says, and I'll quote the entire thing. No, I won't. A spiritual life has a certain conformity with the life of the body, just as other corporeal things have a certain likeness to things spiritual. Now, a man attains perfection in the corporeal life in certain ways, and he's going to say that we attain perfection in spiritual life in analogous ways. And then he uses this, he kind of analogizes the sacraments to things that we use and need in the bodily life.

Starting point is 00:20:22 So do you want to break that open rather than me reading for five minutes? Sure. I guess maybe, so zoom out first. Yep. The Lord gives grace and he gets grace into all the nooks and crannies of our life. So you can think about the Lord gives sanctifying grace. Sanctifying grace is like health of the soul. So it's sanctifying grace is like this type of grace, to quote Tommy Boy. It's the grace that goes all over. And so it fills you. St. Thomas says it's an entitative habit. So it's a habit of your whole being. And then he gives us virtues, right? And virtues, they perfect the powers of our soul. Gifts of the Holy Spirit make us especially docile. And then what you have him describing here are sacramental graces. And sacramental graces are these movements or kind of like the impetus to grow in a particular way that corresponds

Starting point is 00:21:12 with spiritual life. So they're, yeah, so they're movements or growths in spiritual life that correspond to different bodily stages. So he sets up this sweet analogy. I think we can probably read some of it, maybe just like, yeah, you can. So he says, a man attains to perfection the corporeal life in two ways. First, in regard to his own person. Second, in regard to the whole community of the society in which he lives. For man is by nature a social animal. So here he's making his first division saying some of the sacraments are made for us as individuals, and some of them are made for us as pertaining to a polity or a group of people. And he's going to talk about the first half of the division. And with regard to himself,

Starting point is 00:21:55 man is perfected in the life of the body in two ways. First, directly, that is by acquiring some vital perfection. Second, indirectly, that is by the removal of hindrances to life, such as ailments or the like. And you can see where this is going. So the sacraments of initiation basically are the ones that are the direct acquiring of some vital perfection. And then the sacraments of healing are the ones that remove hindrances to life. And then he goes through and he sets up this analogy where he says, okay, in our organic life, we are born, we come to perfection, or we come to term, you know, we kind of come to the fullness of bodily life, and then we need to be nourished. And he says so too in the spiritual life, because in baptism, we are reborn. In confirmation, we come to the fullness of spiritual life, and then in the Eucharist, we're nourished. And then he talks about removing hindrances,

Starting point is 00:22:42 and here you have, so penance is sacramental healing. And then the anointing of the sick, or what he calls extreme unction, it removes the defects at the end of life. So a lot of us think about it in terms of like last rites. It's just what you do to a person when they're about to die. But we don't often appreciate the fact that it's giving perfection. So it's giving sacramental grace to prepare you for the final struggle, but also to fill up what is lacking in your Christian formation. It supplies you with everything else you need in the sacramental order. It helps you to conform your sufferings to Christ.

Starting point is 00:23:12 So that way they cease to be vain and empty, but you can really unite them to the Lord. So there's a lot going on, I suppose. I can, nevermind, dot, dot, dot. No, this is good. Good. Sometimes you're on a roll and you're blowing people's minds. You just kind of throw the car, you throw the wheel and go offate suffering and we don't care about old people. We don't think that they really serve a use except to weigh down conversation and make it very difficult for us to talk with them on the phone. You know, it's like, you know, talk to your grandmother. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'd rather die. It's like, no. Yeah, something something is happening here.

Starting point is 00:23:59 And this person is being made holy by the sacrament. being made holy by the sacrament. So yes, so suffering can actually be wed to the Lord Jesus because he inhabited human suffering in peculiar fashion throughout the course of his life, and as a result of which it can be wed to him, just as all aspects of a human life can be wed to him who has foreseen them and for suffered them. A quick line from James here, because this anointing of the sick is pretty clearly spelled out for those who aren't aware. It comesned, they will be forgiven. Isn't that, that's pretty great. It is pretty great. And that's actually, that's the text in, so there are different forms of the rite of anointing that you have in the little pastoral care of the sick book. There's a longer form, and then there's a shortened form in hospitals

Starting point is 00:24:57 and institutions. And for that one, you, it's a sign of the cross, basically, and then you read that text, and then you lay hands, and then you anoint them, and then it's a sign of the cross basically. And then you read that text and then you lay hands and then you anoint them. And then you say a closing prayer. I think you say the, our father, and then you say a closing prayer. So it's super short, but that text is of such importance in kind of hammering home the purpose of the sacrament that you read it, you know, in full with, with, you know, the person there in front of you on the bed. So yeah, there's also a big, there's a, there's a text that comes up, I think, in Mark six that a lot of people will marshal for this as well. So, yeah. So you've got your the things that vital perfection.

Starting point is 00:25:30 So you got the three sacraments of initiation and then remove hindrances. Then you've got the two sacraments of healing. And then he kind of rounds out the scoring by talking about those which are in regard to the whole community. which are in regard to the whole community. So he talks about orders as governing, and then he talks about marriage as kind of like filling out the ranks of the church. I think those descriptions might make people feel initially like a little uncomfortable, because we don't think about orders so much in terms of governing as we do in terms of sacramental distribution. And then I think a lot of married persons would be a little bit upset to hear St. Thomas say that your purpose is just to make more people. So maybe we can read those two. So first,

Starting point is 00:26:16 by receiving power to rule the community and to exercise public acts, and corresponding to this in the spiritual life, there is the sacrament of order, according to the saying of Hebrews 7.27, that priests offer sacrifice not for themselves only, but also for the people. So fear not. And then secondly, in regard to natural propagation, this is accomplished by matrimony both in the corporal and in the spiritual life, since it is not only a sacrament, but also a function of nature. What does he mean by and the spiritual life? What does that mean? What does he mean by and the spiritual life? What does that mean? So I think he's so matrimony has the peculiar honor of being both a natural and a supernatural institution.

Starting point is 00:26:56 So matrimony is the only one that precedes, you know, Christ's institution. So before I mean, there were like ritual washings before Christ came along. There were offerings of bread, kind of cereal offerings or grain offerings in the Old Testament. There were ritual anointings, but there wasn't anything quite like baptism, confirmation, the sacrament of the Eucharist. These things didn't pre-exist Christ. So Christ institutes all these sacraments. But in the case of marriage, he institutes the sacrament of marriage, but it presumes or he inherits the natural institution of marriage. So clearly what's happening here isn't just matrimony is for making children, it's for making saints. So it's clear that he intends that because if it were just for making children, then Christ wouldn't have had to have tinkered with a natural institution. He could have just said like, marriage, you're doing great. I've

Starting point is 00:27:39 got six sacraments, that's plenty. Six, seven, whatever, it rounds up. But he raises it to the dignity of a sacrament. So now there's the understanding, and you hear this spelled out in Ephesians 5, that married love has the ability or it has the capacity to image Christ's love for the church. So, you know, be subordinate to each other out of love for Christ, Ephesians 5, 21, and then the text that follows about mutual subordination. And specifically, you know, we talk about the two ends of marriage, so the mutual support of the spouses and then the procreation and education of children. So it's not just in the natural order. You're not just generating them in the natural order. You're also generating them in the supernatural order because you bring them to the font, for one, but also procreation and

Starting point is 00:28:23 education. So education in life, education in faith, you need to bring them to term not only in the bodily order, but bring them to term in the spiritual order, so that way they fill out the ranks of saints in heaven. Help us understand, I know there are different ways of expressing this in the Eastern Church and the Western Church regarding the ministers of the sacrament of matrimony, but in the West, how is that understood? the ministers of the sacrament of matrimony. But in the West, how is that understood? Sure, yeah. In the West, the man and the woman are the ministers of the sacrament, and they have to do so in a validly conferred rite of the Church, so with a minister of the Church and two witnesses present. So that's to say that a priest or a deacon need be present. Actually, in certain

Starting point is 00:29:05 circumstances, it can be a lay person, depending on whether it's in kind of case of dire need or you're in mission country or the person's been delegated accordingly. And then two witnesses, so that way one doesn't abuse this with kind of secret weddings that confuse people. But yes, it's the man and the woman who make the vows, and it's the man and the woman who minister the sacrament. So when you think about it, okay, what is the sacrament? Sacrament is a sign of a sacred thing making men holy, says St. Augustine. St. Thomas picks up that definition, I think, early in the treatise on sacraments. So what is it that a man and a woman are doing?

Starting point is 00:29:42 Well, they're performing a sign with regard to each other. So there's a gesture. It's a kind of modest gesture in the sacrament of matrimony. And as much as you join your hands, it says the matrimonial right, which a lot of times it says join your right hands, actually. So it can look like let's make a deal, you know, like let's shake hands here. So oftentimes, whatever. Who cares? You try to make it less like we're making a deal and more like we like each other.

Starting point is 00:30:05 And then you say words and you can use the kind of Hollywood words or the more quintessentially Catholic words. But both are fine. Both are accepted. I'm not lampooning the Hollywood words. I'm just saying we're more accustomed to hearing them in movies than we are accustomed to hearing them at church. And that the combination of gesture and word, the form and the matter of the sacrament, are the sacramental sign. So you are a sign to the other person, and the other person is a sign to you, and that sign actually communicates a thing, the thing being the grace conferred, so that your married love is now capable of mediating the love of God. So no longer is it just like, you know, I look in your eyes and I am undone, but I look in your eyes, you know, this is kind of saccharine, but I look in

Starting point is 00:30:51 your eyes and I see that Christ has appointed you as the means whereby to make me holy and that I have the deep and abiding conviction that he has appointed me as the means whereby to make you holy. And that's not just to say that we're instruments or means, right? We're human beings, we're real people, but that we also have, yeah, the added grace to be ministers unto each other. Yeah. So two things I want to clear up for people then. So when someone says, oh, father, so-and-so married us, I know that's fine if people want to talk colloquially, but at least in the understanding you just put forth, that wouldn't be technically correct. Yeah, he witnessed to the marriage. But of course you are, right? You ratify the marriage in sexual intercourse, that is to say the marriage could possibly be dissolved, but you are married at the exchange

Starting point is 00:31:53 of those vows, correct? Yep. So there's a distinction drawn between a marriage that is ratum tantum, so only sacramentally conferred, only ratified. And then ratum et consummatum, so both ratified and consummated by sexual intercourse. And they're both marriages. They're both indissoluble. But the bond becomes strengthened, I suppose, by consummation. And certainly if you were married without the intention of ever consummating it, then that might pose an obstacle to the validity of the marriage, right? So when you approach the sacrament of marriage, you do so with the understanding that it's faithful, that it's fruitful, and that it's permanent. And if there are significant obstacles to any of those

Starting point is 00:32:34 things, like if the husband knows that he is incontinent, or if the woman doesn't want to have children or if both of them are engaging in or like engaging in extra relational affairs leading up to the day of the wedding, then they really don't intend the goods of marriage. And so they're not really getting married. And that's the type of thing that a declaration of nullity would make known, right? So you assume that it's a marriage, but if you come to discover in the proceedings that there was never really the intention of a real marriage, then that's why you declare it null. So that's the point of an annulment. So a basic understanding, a basic intention to do what you're saying is required, sort of like in baptism, for example. So we don't, I don't mean to be offensive to our Mormon friends, but we do not consider our Mormon friends to be Christian, even though they have the same words of baptism. You know, there are certain evangelicals who may be Unitarians who either

Starting point is 00:33:38 baptize with a different formula. Mormons use the same formula as us, but by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they mean such radically different things that the baptism isn't valid. And so I suppose analogously here, if you mean something by what you say that's radically different, then it's just for people at home, I think it's important to realize that when we say a marriage is null, or are you getting an annulment, that this isn't a Catholic divorce, this is just saying there wasn't a marriage to begin with. Yeah, because when you approach the sacraments, you have to do so, like you said,

Starting point is 00:34:13 with right faith. And so, for instance, if you have a school play in ninth grade, and it involves a baptism scene, and one of the baptism scene and you know one of the students is baptizing another one of the students let's say that other student is hindu it's not like he becomes catholic because the guy baptizing him doesn't doesn't intend to baptize him and the guy receiving the baptism doesn't intend to receive baptism that's right yeah that's a good analogy yeah and so so similarly too if you say uh i promise to be faithful to you and good times in bed and sickness and health till death do us part, or some variation on the vow theme, but you don't actually intend that, then it's effectively like you're play-acting. You're not actually filling the sacrament with its content.

Starting point is 00:34:57 I want to play with that analogy for a moment here, just to kind of tease out some things we believe about baptism. tease out some things we believe about baptism. If a child in ninth grade baptizes a fellow ninth grade child, and even though it is part of the play, intends to do what the church does when she baptizes, the only reason that child would not be baptized is because of his will. But if it was a ninth-grade play in which there was a baby, the child could intend to do what the Church does, though it's perceived as a mere fiction, but it would in fact do what the Church intends. That is to say, the baby would be baptized. Am I right? I think you are right. So it would be an abuse of the sacrament of baptism. So like St. Thomas has an article, for instance, where he says, should you baptize kids against the wish of their parents? And he says, no, because they have a natural authority over

Starting point is 00:35:58 them. And you presume that the parents are going to raise them in whatever faith the parents practice. So it would be like pearls before swine if you gave them a sacrament, but with no chance of them ever being raised up according to the grace of that sacrament. But he says, if the child is in danger of death, go for it, because such is the urgency of salvation that, yeah, that you should absolutely avail yourself or avail the child of the sacrament. So this is a good thing for ER nurses. And mind you, you know, you kind of have to be sensitive to the ethics committee of your hospital and the wishes of parents.

Starting point is 00:36:28 But if babies are in danger of death, we should baptize them. Yeah. So we could say then that technically speaking, lay people can administer the sacraments of baptism and marriage, but that's it. And correct? In certain instances, they can also administer the baptism. Yeah, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly right. Hold on, wait, enumeration?

Starting point is 00:36:51 I said marriage. Technically speaking, since they do that with each other, they can administer the sacrament of marriage and baptism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's it, I think. And I think the reason Aquinas, or I've read it maybe somewhere else, the reason for baptism is that this is, in a sense, a matter of life and death. So this is so essential that in a case of an emergency, we want to make that clear. We don't want people just in this, in their neighborhood pool, going around baptizing a bunch of people just in case or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's because it's the gate of the sacraments, and it's because it's the gate of eternal life. So he has—I think he has a whole article on why the sacrament of baptism is necessary for salvation, and he asks a similar question with respect to the other sacraments. But it's—he's using necessary in different ways.

Starting point is 00:37:40 He's using it analogically to say this is necessary, necessary. Others are necessary, but this is necessary, necessary. Others are necessary, but this is necessary, necessary. Because of the text that you cited, John 3, 5, apart from this, you know, you don't have life, you know, you have to be spiritually regenerated in order to exist in the spiritual order, in order to be a child of God, in order not to be an enemy of the Lord, in order to inherit eternal life and to be a co-heir with Christ and all that comes with it. You know, it's interesting regarding our Lord and baptizing. Sometimes people will say, well, our Lord never baptized anyone. They're referring to John 4, 2 that says, you know, it wasn't actually Jesus who was baptizing, but only His disciples.

Starting point is 00:38:17 What's interesting is different fathers interpret that passage differently. Some think it means Jesus never baptized anybody, it was only his disciples who baptized, and others, if my memory serves, interpret it to mean Jesus didn't baptize anyone, but only his disciples. Oh, fascinating. I don't know what Aquinas thinks, but either way, it's no problem. Aquinas doesn't, I mean, Christ doesn't need to baptize his disciples in order to then invest them with the power to then baptize, but I thought that was interesting. Yeah, that is, I mean, it's a fascinating text, and it's unclear exactly, you know, at the outset, why the Lord himself gets baptized, except because of this institution. But I think it draws our attention to a really beautiful point about what the sacraments make present. So on the one hand, we think about the sacraments as instruments

Starting point is 00:39:07 of grace, but we don't just use them as instruments of grace. We also use them as privileged places of encounter with the Lord's mysteries, right? So Christ isn't just teaching us, nor is Christ just giving us grace, kind of irrespective of His humanity and ours. But the mysteries of his life, of his incarnate life, have an infinite, a quasi-infinite power, and he applies them to us through the sacraments in such a way that they touch us deeply in our humanity. So like St. John Damascene, when he talks about the Lord's life, he talks about his deeds as theandric, from the word theos meaning God and andros meaning man. So all of his deeds and sufferings have this God-man quality to them. So they show us, one, how much God loves us. They show us how

Starting point is 00:39:51 very worthy we are of receiving God's love. And they also show us what we're intended to enjoy. We're intended to enjoy a kind of God-man-like status, not in the way that Christ does, but as adopted sons and daughters of God. And so divinization is being part of the whole logic of the sacraments. And so when Christ, you know, when Christ administers the sacraments, when he institutes the sacraments, he's bringing to bear on those sacraments the mysteries of his life. So he's filling them up with a kind of God-man power. And then he deploys them, as it were, as means whereby to give us just that grace. So the sacraments are a meeting place with the Lord Jesus Christ and a meeting place with his mysteries. And so at baptism, you're made presence of the Lord Jesus in the Jordan River as he is baptized

Starting point is 00:40:36 by John, as the waters are made capable of cleansing us. You're made—I mean, I love the imagery that St. Paul uses with respect to baptism, that it's a kind of death, right? He talks about it. I want to say in Colossians and in Romans that at baptism you're buried with Christ. Because we think about it, you know, oftentimes some of the sacraments can get watered down by our CCD approach, like kind of like approach to things. Like we just make construction paper projects, and we're like, baptism, you know? It's like you cut out like dark blue water, and then you cut out light blue water, and then then you cut out like a little bit of green and then you make this thing and put it on the wall and like baptism. But it's like, whoa, no, this is terrible and good because the Lord is kind of putting us to death with him in the waters.

Starting point is 00:41:18 We're being buried with him. I think the word used there is we're co-buried. We're constipated with him. That's whatever. So but but yes, and there's a're consipultus with him. That's whatever. But yes, and there's a real potency. There's a real kind of God-man-like power that's made available and that's applied because we descend with him into the waters. We gasp out an old life. We come forth from the waters and we drink in the life of the new man as he speaks about it in Ephesians.

Starting point is 00:41:42 of the new man as he speaks about it in Ephesians. And we see a type of this as the Israelites are saved through the Red Sea and then sojourn to the Promised Land, being sustained by manna. Peter himself says that baptism saves us in a similar way to how Noah and those who were saved with him were saved through water. Yes, it's fascinating stuff. I think one thing I'd like to point out about baptism too, and it says this in the catechism, is that while God has bound salvation to the sacraments, and it says baptism specifically, God himself is not bound by them. Do you want to say something to that?

Starting point is 00:42:20 Sure. So the baptism, I mean, like,'s see. Baptism is the ordinary means whereby eternal life has begun in us. But it's not to say that the Lord can't begin eternal life in us by alternate means. And that's true of all the sacraments. So penance is the ordinary means whereby we are kind of reconstituted as – in the state of grace and as members of the body of Christ. I mean, we don't lose that. And the Eucharist is the ordinary means by which we are nourished in the Christian life. You can see how the logic extends through all the sacraments. But the Lord is not bound to give us grace just through these things. He can give us grace in whatsoever way he pleases. I think a cool way to focus in on this is St. Thomas talks about in the treatise

Starting point is 00:43:03 on baptism different ways in which to be baptized. And so Thomas talks about in the treatise on baptism, different ways in which to be baptized. And so he talks about baptism of water. And then he talks about baptism, what we would call like baptism of desire and then baptism of blood. So the classic example for baptism of desire is think about a catechumen who is an RCIA and taken all the steps. They go through the rite of welcome. They go through the rite of welcome. They go through the rite of election. They are rip-roaring and ready to go at the end of Lent. They're on their way to the Easter vigil, and they just get t-boned at an intersection and killed tragically. Does that person go to heaven? Does that person go to hell? Hard to say. Who's to say?

Starting point is 00:43:40 Well, St. Thomas says there's operative in this person's life, a kind of baptism of desire. Well, St. Thomas says there's operative in this person's life a kind of baptism of desire. So they are making the steps to avail themselves of baptism. They are proceeding towards it, and they have a desire, which itself is efficacious, and it's a desire for the efficacious means. So it's not just to say like, oh, we pity them because bummer. You know, they really missed out, so we'll just give them a kind of get out of jail quick card and send them on their way to heaven. It's actually that the grace of God is already operative in their life. And so we can see how the grace of baptism is being released antecedent to their reception of it. Because one, you know, God, you know, inclined them to the preaching of whomever, and he led them to sign up for the RCAA course, and he's kindling faith in their heart. And we see here the presence of charity already operative. So

Starting point is 00:44:29 he's giving them grace in anticipation of the sacrament, which imparts its full excellence or ardor. So this person already enjoys the effects of baptism before they're receiving it. Now, mind you, they don't have their sacramental character, right? They don't have everything that's given to us by the sacrament of baptism, but we can hope for their salvation in light of a grace given in anticipation. Two other biblical examples I could think of would be in Acts chapter 10, Cornelius and his household, I believe. The Holy Spirit comes upon them, and then Peter says, well, let's then baptize them. And then another example would be the thief on the cross.

Starting point is 00:45:05 Presumably, this person hadn't been baptized, and yet Christ says that he'll be with him in paradise. And so we see an example of the baptism of desire there, or something like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the baptism of blood is... So the logic that St. Thomas uses in explaining this is really beautiful, because he says, all right, what's the point of baptism? Baptism conforms us to the Lord Jesus Christ. So you can think specifically of the character that imparts, which is a sharing in his priesthood. So Christ offers spiritual sacrifice.

Starting point is 00:45:36 And when we are baptized, we are made recipients of the effects of that spiritual sacrifice. And we are made like the Lord Jesus. So our life from baptism onward assumes a kind of cruciform shape. Well, he says, if that's the point of the sacraments, then isn't it efficacious to, you know, in the case of somebody who is not yet baptized, but who suffers and dies for love of the Lord, don't we already see that operative in their life? The answer, he says, is yes, and so we can hope for their salvation, too, by kind of baptism of blood. So their Christ conformity exceeds ours, because while ours is sacramental, it's present in sign, theirs is present in reality, so they're already enjoying

Starting point is 00:46:16 the thing that we hope to enjoy at the end of the age. And so there we also see grace released extra-sacramentally, which is to say outside of the normal dispensation of the sacraments. But this brings up a kind of bigger question of how the church's sacraments are effective outside of the visible bounds of the church. Because there's a cool text in Lumen Gentium where it says that the church – so the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church. That's like Lumen Gentium 8. But then later in the teens, maybe like 16, 17, 18, it talks about how there are elements of grace and salvation outside of the visible bounds of the church.

Starting point is 00:46:52 And so he talks about the Orthodox. The authors talk about the Orthodox. They talk about Protestants. They talk about the Jews. They talk about Muslims. So Orthodox have all of the faith. They have the sacraments. Protestants have the sacrament of baptism. They have the sacrament of marriage. They also have faith have all of the faith, the sacraments. Protestants have the sacrament of baptism.

Starting point is 00:47:06 They have the sacrament of marriage. They also have faith, elements of the faith, you know, much of the faith, you know, like to believe in the Trinity, to believe in the incarnate Lord. So you have these things present. It's that the Jews have the covenant, the Muslims have belief in the one God. And so we see how there are elements of grace and salvation. So the Lord is giving grace through these true things, though the fullness of truth may not be present in its entirety and

Starting point is 00:47:31 in integrity. So there again, you see a good kind of analogy for how the Lord can operate outside of the sacraments. So he operates through faith, he operates through the sacraments that are present, right? But he also operates through the covenantal love that he has not abrogated with the Jews, things along those lines, which is just to say that we're not trivializing the importance of the sacraments because they are the ordinary means of our salvation. But we can also see how the grace operative in the sacraments is present and at work outside of kind of the visible bounds of sacramental communion. Great. One of the things I love about going to a Byzantine church, and the Eastern Orthodox do this as well, is you get the sacraments of initiation in one

Starting point is 00:48:13 event, baptism, what we call chrismation, confirmation, and Eucharist. And my understanding is that this predates the way that the West now distributes them. I might be wrong about that, but I thought that was the case. And I loved when my son Peter was a baby, being able to carry him up and have the priest say, servant of the Lord, Peter, receive the body and blood and spoon feed him, the body of Christ. And I know that there are different kind of ways of explaining why we do what we do, and both are legitimate. So in the West, you'll say, well, it's important that you understand what it is you're receiving before you accept it. Whereas in the East, you would say, well,

Starting point is 00:49:03 I don't expect my child to understand nutrition before I feed him. It's just good that I feed him. Do you see – do you have a preference? Do I have a preference? Inasmuch as I'm a priest in the Western Rite, I suppose I have a kind of patriotic preference for the West. I think that, yeah, there's something to be said for inheriting without comprehension, because there's so much of our life, like you said, I don't have to understand nutrition before I eat. There's so much of our life that we are just given. So our names, our mother tongue,

Starting point is 00:49:36 our family, the polity in which we live, all these things, you know, you don't choose any of them. So to choose isn't necessarily a decisive factor of human flourishing. You know, when you get to the age of reason, then human acts are so constituted by the fact that they're willed, you know, that they issue from the interior of the person. But there's so much of our life that's not willed, and we'd be mad to think that we could will all of it. And so I think that, you know, in the West, we retain that with the practice of infant baptism, you know, for which there is ample kind of evidence already there in the Scriptures. You know, we talked about Cornelius and his whole household. I think it's safe to assume that some of his household were... What's interesting, too, is there was a debate in the very early church

Starting point is 00:50:18 about whether a family should wait until the eighth day for a child to be baptized, and the church said no. But of course, the reason they said the eighth day for a child to be baptized, and the church said no. But of course, the reason they said the eighth day is because in the Old Testament, in order to be a ceremonial, at least recognized as a Jew, a boy had to be circumcised on that day. So that's really interesting evidence too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think for a lot of Christian life, it was common that the child be baptized for three days, kind of once the child was out of peril and the mother was out of peril, the child would just be baptized. Like, that's how we date Shakespeare's birth, because we know the day that he was baptized from the parish register,

Starting point is 00:50:52 and we just anti-date it by three days, because it was common in 16th century England to do just that. So, yes. I was going to say, what do you think about, like, as far as if the—obviously, baptism first, but it seems like the Church in many dioceses is reverting back to a more kind of ancient idea where confirmation precedes communion. Do you have any thoughts about that? Yeah. So my thoughts about it are—so what is specifically at work in the Sacrament of Confirmation? I think it's super important to drill down as to the theology of the sacrament so we can understand when it ought to be administered, because a confirmation is communicated to impart to the Christian the perfect age, so perfect age and perfect maturity.

Starting point is 00:51:39 So I think it's come to be envisioned in the last however many years more along the lines of like a rite of passage, right? So, you know, if you're Jewish, you have a bar or bat mitzvah when you're 12, 13, 14. If you're Catholic, you know, you have confirmation when you're 12, 13, 14, maybe as late as 16, 17. For us, it's the kind of thing, you know, you pass over from being but, you know, a child to being a man or a woman, and that it's like, also there is your choice to be so, and your kind of contribution to the Christian community. And so I think some of those elements— All of that is cute. I just don't know if any of that's traditional. Yeah, so the traditional idea is that the sacrament actually makes you a mature Christian.

Starting point is 00:52:18 Right. So it imparts to you the supernatural capacity to witness in a new way, right? So you think about what's the vocation of a layperson. The vocation of a layperson is not to be a lector and an extraordinary minister of holy communion and to haunt the back of church. You know, it's good to pray, right? It's good to contribute to the Eucharistic assembly. It's good. These things are good, but that's not the whole point. The point of a layperson is to be holy in the world, is to sanctify by one's baptismal grace this present evil age. And the sacrament of confirmation gives you a further character and it gives you a further supernatural sensibility to do just that and to do so courageously.

Starting point is 00:52:56 So it's the grace itself operative in your life, which imparts to you the very ability to do the thing that you formerly could not. parts to you the very ability to do the thing that you formerly could not. Okay, so just to press back on that a little bit, and not even from an intellectual standpoint, but just from an experiential one, I think a lot of people say, okay, baptism, okay, cool, I get it. Eucharist, sure, yeah, I get that one. Anointing of the sick, marriage, priest, holy orders, I'm missing one. I know I'm talking about confirmation, but anyway, I feel like the others are kind of understandable. I really do think for a lot of people, confirmation is the most mystifying. And in part, I think it's because people reflect on their own experience as an awkward 15 year old and they get confirmed and apparently they're going to get something and their experience is absolutely no different to the day before. And they're kind of like, well, then this is probably fake

Starting point is 00:53:48 or this has really done nothing. I was just as capable of evangelizing the day prior than I am now, especially if I was into my faith. Do you see where I'm going with that? Yeah, I think that's true of a lot of the sacraments. Good point. I don't think that any of the sacraments really feel great. That's a good point.

Starting point is 00:54:10 I mean, well, like, so on your wedding day, you know, there are a lot of the feels. You got a lot of the feels going on, which is cool. But that's not necessarily like sacramental feels. You hope it is, right? But it doesn't necessarily mean that it is. So, too, the day of my ordination, I was completely overwhelmed for like the first 45 minutes of the Mass. But I don't know that that was grace being conferred.

Starting point is 00:54:31 I was actually most, I think, most relaxed at the prayer of ordination and the laying out of hands. It was just, you know, you're in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and then they start playing Lauda Jerusalem, and then you're processing through a big old church, and you're like, wow, I'm going to die. My face started convulsing, and I was breathing as deeply as I could, so I wouldn't ugly cry the entire time. Yeah, but I don't know if that was grace being conferred. I think that was me just kind of being overwhelmed by a big moment in my life.

Starting point is 00:55:00 So I think we have to distinguish between the feels and then the experience of sacramental grace. So I just don't think that we experience sacramental grace in a consolating or consoling way. That's a made up word. That's a really excellent point, Father. Yeah. And sometimes it's like one of the obstacles to our faith or one of the reasons people might leave the faith is precisely because they equate that emotional sensation with God's action in them. Yeah, so I think we can kind of check in down the road and evaluate whether or not the grace of God is at work in our life by what St. Thomas calls evidential signs. So, all right, you got a sacrament. How is it playing

Starting point is 00:55:40 out? We'll check in in six months. Okay, am I able to show up for prayer? Do I enjoy prayer a little bit more? Does my prayer issue in service of the Christian community? Am I more charitable? Am I more patient? Am I more meek? Am I more clement? Am I, you know, like kind of more excited at the prospect of Marian devotion?

Starting point is 00:56:00 You can think about it in terms of those things. And that's not to say if the answer to some of those questions is no, then you're headed for perdition. But like the grace of God can only really be gauged by these kind of evidential signs, by kind of moral certainty. And so we shouldn't check in too much, too often, or kind of too urgently at the outset to say like, has something changed? It's like, nah, well, I mean, it's imperceptibly so, but we believe that it's changed. The grace of God is invisible. So how is it going to, you know, how are we going to register that it's operative in our life? I think it's, you know, you just use the logic of 1 John or the logic of James. If I say that I love God, but do not love my brother, I'm a liar. But the contrapositive, if I do love my brother, then perhaps it's the case that I do love God. So yes. So I think that with respect to the

Starting point is 00:56:51 sacrament of confirmation, you're not going to feel a whole lot except the laying on of hand and the anointing with oil. As someone says, you know, peace be with you and with your spirit, or yeah, be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Peace be with you and with your spirit. You're like, usually that comes first. This is crazy. I remember having that thought as a sixth grader. But what you're actually being given is a grace that perfects baptism, not to say that there's anything lacking to baptism, but it makes, it mobilizes baptism in a new way. So in addition to the character of baptism, whereby you are a participant or kind of a sharer in the priesthood of Christ as a recipient of the sacraments, now that character has been kind of mobilized more. So you are more like kind of outward facing in your Christianity, and the

Starting point is 00:57:30 grace of your baptism is better disposed to, you know, changing the things about the culture that are said and to encouraging others in their Christian faith, testifying, evangelizing, witnessing. Yeah, you may be good at it beforehand, but you can rely upon the sacrament of confirmation to increase your range and deepen the intensity of your witness as you go forward. Now, one of the sacraments we haven't touched upon, and the one that I forgot as I was listing them, of course, is the sacrament of confession. But I think we did that on purpose because we want to save an upcoming episode solely to that. So maybe we'll just leave that as a bit of a teaser and wrap up here. But before we do wrap up, Father, tell us about your work,

Starting point is 00:58:11 where people can learn more about the Thomistic Institute and God's planning and so forth. Sure, yeah. So Thomistic Institute here in Washington, D.C., and on the campuses of a variety of secular universities in the United States and in Canada and UK and in Ireland. So we have lectures, conferences, retreats. You can check that all out on ThomisticInstitute.org. The big program this year is Aquinas 101. So simple video lessons to learn St. Thomas, his vocabulary, and to walk you through the Summa Theologiae. And yeah, Godsplaining is a podcast of the friars of our province. It's 30-minute episodes each week, all things Catholic. So just chatting through faith, life, culture, arts, literature, whatever it might be, in such a way as to kind of invite a contemplative gaze upon the mysteries of life and the mysteries of faith. So check that out.

Starting point is 00:59:01 And I think that's about it. Cool. check that out and i think that i think that's about it cool and let me do a final plug if there's anyone out there who wants to support pints with aquinas get a cool beer stein autograph books stickers sent to your door post show wrap-up videos and all sorts of other things go to patreon.com slash matt frad if you can give a dollar a month five bucks a month anything like that if you have the means it would be really appreciated all All right, Father Pine, God bless, and I'll chat with you next time. All right, everybody, thank you for listening to that episode. As I said, be sure to go check out Matt Walsh's episode just released yesterday on YouTube. We'll be putting up the audio next week for you, but I wanted to share with you an email I got recently. My assistant sent it over to me. The subject line said, thank you for ruining my

Starting point is 00:59:45 life in the best possible way. Now we get quite a bit of these emails. I'd say a couple, you know, on average, maybe a couple of weeks. And I don't often share them. Whenever I do share them, I always ask permission of the person. So we made sure we asked permission and I won't share this person's name. She said, hi, Melanie. I would like to let Matt and your team know how much your work has meant to me, but I'm not sure how to do it other than here. Sorry if I have sent this in the wrong direction. My husband and I are about to enter the church at the Easter Vigil, praise God. We're coming from an Anglican background and my husband was actually supposed to get ordained as an Anglican priest this December. Face palm emoji. In February

Starting point is 01:00:26 2009, he was ordained a deacon after what seemed like a bajillion years of study and a master's. Can I just pause and say how much I like this woman? Let's continue. And while he's been on like a 10-year journey to the Catholic Church during the deaconing last February, I was still all in for Anglicanism and very happy to be so. I seriously was not dissatisfied or searching for anything more. I had already begun listening to pints at that point on my husband's sneaky recommendation that it would be a good podcast for me to learn more about church history. Wow, I want to apologize that your husband thinks that this is the best thing to point you to to

Starting point is 01:01:05 learn about church history, but let's continue. She says, and because of that, had also started listening to the Thomistic Institute podcast and was enjoying it for the philosophy, but the thought of becoming Catholic had never crossed my mind. But soon I couldn't ignore it any longer. It was a kind of slippery slope. I had never heard Catholics explain Catholicism. Eye roll, right? It was particularly an episode on the Theotokos. I think it was just Matt on his own, and then one with Brant Petrie on the Marian dogmas that made me sit up and go, oh, expletive. That makes complete sense. Sense. Damn it. I really was like, groan. I don't want to have to become Catholic.

Starting point is 01:01:48 Please, no. But the more I read and listened, I just couldn't deny the authority of the church any longer. I seriously didn't know anything about Peter and the primacy of Rome. When I read the passage about Jesus giving Peter the keys, I used to literally be like, hmm, weird. Moving on. Peter the Keys, I used to literally be like, hmm, weird. Moving on. Thanks to the rabbit hole Pints pushed me down, where I met Scott Hahn, Steve Ray, Peter Kreeft, Brant Petra, Father Gregory Pine, et cetera, et cetera. I found myself feeling absolutely assured that the Catholic church was

Starting point is 01:02:16 the OG, old gangster? What does she mean by OG? The true church established by Christ. Maybe, oh God? I don't know. I started praying the rosary. My husband, you can just kick Max out if he's going to jump on all of your stuff. Let's see here. I started praying the rosary. My husband just loved the rosary at that point. And soon, my heart caught up with my head. I was totally in. The interviews with Abigail, Rene Favale, and Gregory were very influential for me. I ended up buying Abigail's book. Whoa, that's awesome.

Starting point is 01:02:48 If you guys don't remember, I interviewed Abigail on what is now called Pints of Aquinas, but what used to be called The Matt Fradd Show. It's on YouTube. Go check it out. It was an incredible interview, and I'm actually really disappointed it hasn't got more views because that woman is brilliant. She says, God used Pints and friends to help me catch up with my husband on his journey. We never once had an argument or discussion in which he tried to persuade me of

Starting point is 01:03:09 literally anything. Can you imagine what marital carnage there would have been if I hadn't been able to understand why he felt he couldn't continue towards his ordination after years of education and preparation and that he was going to become Catholic and have no job and give our Baptist parents aneurysms. Instead, we found ourselves totally on the same page and finding the decision oddly very easy. So weird. So from the Lord. Anyway, this is all to say, thank you guys for everything you do. The quality of the guests you have on is really amazing. God is obviously working through your wall. I feel like you must get

Starting point is 01:03:46 a lot of these emails but just in case you don't, I wanted to send you some of our story. God bless you guys. So, big thank you to the lady

Starting point is 01:03:55 who listens to the show. I don't want to say her name because as I said, I keep it a secret but if you're listening, you made my day. That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing that

Starting point is 01:04:02 and a big thanks to all of our patrons who make stories like that possible. i know that sounds like a veiled uh pitch for patreon and it is uh but it's also true like i can't actually reach nearly the amount of people i want to reach without y'all so if you're a patron pat yourself on the back tell yourself you're a good person um and yeah that was awesome was awesome. Thanks so much. All right. God bless. Next week we'll be playing the audio of the Matt Walsh interview, unless you can't wait, in which case go over to YouTube right now.

Starting point is 01:04:32 God bless. Too many grains of salt and juice Lest we be frauds or worse, accused Hollow me to deepen you Whose wolves am I feeding myself to? Who's gonna survive?

Pints With Aquinas - 197: Why The 7 Sacraments? W/ Fr. Gregory Pine

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