My Friend the Friar
A podcast where we learn about our faith and share what it takes to live a Catholic Christian life through conversations and contemplations with my friend the friar, a Discalced Carmelite Priest.
My Friend the Friar
Sanctity and Justification Compilation (Season 3 Episode 40)
A compilation of previous episodes exploring sanctity, holiness, justification, and righteousness.
Theology of Sanctity (Season 1 Episode 4)
Catholic and Protestant Views on Justification (Season 2 Episode 21)
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Welcome to the podcast and thanks for joining me and my friend the friar, fr Stephen Sanchez, a discalced Carmelite priest. Fr Stephen and I are always talking about the interconnectedness of so many of the topics that we discuss, and so while Fr Stephen and I are working to record new content in between his travels, I wanted to try something and connect two of those topics by creating a sort of podcast compilation episode. So to keep the introduction to this episode short, the two episodes I'm connecting here are the Theology of Sanctity, which is Season 1, episode 4, and Catholic and Protestant Views on Justification, which is Season 2, episode 21. My thought here is that the Catholic, and thus the historical Christian, understanding of justification is deeply rooted in the Church's theology of sanctity. So if you want to understand justification and righteousness, then you have to understand sanctity and holiness and how we get there in this life and the next. If I'm wrong, fr Stephen will just smite me with his holy chancla sandal and all that fun stuff, or this will just become the foundation for a much-needed lesson for me. Oh, and one last thing I've always wanted to find a way to allow for this podcast to support the Carmelite Friars. They've set up a way for people to make online donations. You can do a one-time donation or a recurring monthly donation, so please consider supporting them financially if you can, and if you're unable to support them financially, then please support them with your purse, if you're interested. The link will be down in the show notes. Anyway, this episode will be long, so please take your time with it and enjoy.
Speaker 1:Today we're talking about sainthood, sanctity, holiness. Am I forgetting anything else? Do you have a favorite saint son? You know, I've been thinking about this ever since we started discussing this episode and I don't think I do. My patron saint or my yeah, is it your patron saint when you get confirmed? Your confirmation saint? So mine's Peter, and I don't know why I ever picked the guy, but I'm glad I did now because he. I heard someone the other day talking about the apostles saying that you're only as strong as your weakest link, and so Jesus made sure to start with the weakest, and I don't know. I kind of liked that, because he was always opening his mouth just to put his foot in it, kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yes, he was a bit rash.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what about you? Do you have a favorite?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I've grown to appreciate my patron saint, st Stephen. There's lots of St Stephens, but my patron saint is Stephen the Martyr, the first martyr of the faith, the deacon yeah, the Greek-speaking deacons that were ordained, and so his witness has always been something to me that's always challenging to me. So, you know, one of the things about having saints is that we're supposed to imitate their virtues. So I always look at that and, yeah, stephen continues to challenge me on a daily basis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because how far are you willing to go right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean in the imitation of Christ, to forgive those who are killing you. I mean he does that, he asks for their forgiveness while they're stoning him. And yeah, that's a big challenge to me. That's like continual reminder. I have a long ways to go.
Speaker 1:Yes, don't we all? But there's a lot of saints, there's so many saints, and my wife is quite enamored with the saints and she's always looking for a book, a good book. She's on this quest for like the best saint book, for a book, a good book. She's on this quest for like the best saint book and she, you know you never find one that's quite good enough. You find one that's got a lot of details, but then it doesn't say what you're the patron saint of or something like that.
Speaker 2:So there's it's hard to find a complete compilation, a complete.
Speaker 1:she's looking for a complete book yeah, but yeah, it's just, it's amazing some of their stories. She was telling me about some saint, obviously, but he was a priest and he was saying mass and he caught a whiff of somebody cooking meat in the distance or something like that, and it distracted him cooking meat in the distance or something like that, and it distracted him and I guess he felt so guilty from being distracted during the celebration of the Mass that from that moment on he just swore off meat for the rest of his life. He's like I'm not going to give in to something that distracts me from the Lord.
Speaker 1:I was like wow, that is a big commitment, especially since last time we talked I was talking about cooking meat for everybody, so maybe maybe whoever that guy is, I need to study him more. I'll be interested to know who that was yeah, she'll, and of course she'll know, because her memory is like a steel trap. She remembers everything. So why does the Catholic Church have saints? What is the deal with not just capital S saints, but lowercase s?
Speaker 2:saint and everything Lowercase s.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the things that the council fathers of the Second Vatican Council wanted to remind us of is that we're all called to sanctity, we're all called to life of holiness, that the call to sanctity is a universal call. There are no grades of sanctity, right? So everybody's called to live a holy life. So it's not like, oh, it's for somebody else, not me. No, if you're baptized, then, yes, you're called to sanctity. And so within the church, the title of saint capital S is given to a member of Christ, and the members of Christ are small s saints. We have that in the scriptures as well, when greetings to the saints in the church of Corinth or wherever right. So this member of Christ is recognized by the greater church as worthy of honor, and it's to honor their imitation of Christ or a virtue that they exemplified.
Speaker 2:In our day and time, when someone is raised to the altars, it means that an individual member has been presented as a model of Christian life and has exemplified heroic virtue in their life. Heroic virtue means that the practice of virtue in their life was extraordinary and constant, right. So after the person is presented to the church usually the local diocese is where the process begins. There is an investigation into their lives to see if it truly was exemplary. And then there are stages to this process. The first one if they pass the first stage, they are declared a servant of God.
Speaker 2:And as the process continues and they continue to move forward in the process, then they're designated as venerable or worthy of veneration, right Worthy of asking for their help or their intercession. And then, after venerable, then they come into the category of being blessed. And then finally, after blessed, then when they're approved and there's miracles attributed to their intercession, then they're finally proclaimed saints. So there are a number of miracles that are required, that have to be attributed to the intercession of this particular candidate for sainthood as well. I'm remembering right now one of our friars had to actually give a deposition to a tribunal because he was a witness to a little girl whose liver was poisoned through Tylenol.
Speaker 1:Because Tylenol can poison your liver if you overdose.
Speaker 2:And it was through the intercession of Teresa Benedicta, also known as Edith Stein, this cast carmelite cloistered nun. It was through her intercession that this little girl's liver was miraculously restored, and he had to give a deposition on that. And, of course, the doctors have to give a deposition into all the medical records and everything. All things have to happen, and so it's not a matter of just calling somebody a saint. They have to have lived a virtuous life and also that, through their intercession, that they're capable of interceding in a uh, in a miraculous way.
Speaker 1:Uh, for those of us that are in the church in space and time, yeah, and the church is not, and I think, especially the more modern aspects of the church and, I would assume, probably moving forward in time too, the church seems to not be in a big rush to validate miracles and you know all sorts of things. So much science, I guess, out there, everyone's like prove it, prove it, prove it right. But the process is, it's not a fast process. I remember when Pope John Paul II passed away, it's almost like people were just calling out immediately right, oh, make him a saint, make him a saint, make him a saint. Well, it doesn't work that way. No, it's not by popular acclamation, yeah.
Speaker 2:And there is an investigation and it is something that is very seriously undertaken. The investigation and all the you have theologians and philosophers and medical people involved and all sorts of people, and you have people that will speak against the person again, so that you know, is this really a miracle, or is this something that can be explained naturally?
Speaker 2:Or there's all these different things that are involved? A miracle or is this something that can be explained naturally? Or there's all these different things that are involved in it? And it takes a while too, because, again, the church in her wisdom knows that it take. It takes time to investigate these things thoroughly. And it's not just out of again, uh, popular acclamation or or because someone is trending at the moment, doesn't necessarily make them someone who should be raised to the altars as someone to be imitated in their virtue.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Do you know how does this happen every year? Is there a time of year or a celebration or a feast or a holy day that coincides with the naming of saints publicly by the church?
Speaker 2:by the church? No, usually it is associated with the person's near the person's anniversary of death. It's usually associated because you know they're passing on from space and time into the greater reality, the greater life, and it is considered the transitioning from a spatial, temporal existence into that existence in Christ, who is outside of space and time, and so it's usually around the date of death. In fact, when they talk about St Francis, the Franciscans talk about the transitus, the transition transitioning from earthly life into eternal life, so it's usually around the date of their death.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of interesting because as we were thinking about this episode, this all developed over time this kind of thought of transitioning from life to death and what that means. So how did the church get to this point, starting all the way back from the Old Testament?
Speaker 2:Yes, it's something that we have to remember, and it's hard, because the church has been the community in space and time, has been here for over 2,000 years.
Speaker 2:And so, as the church grows, it is an organic entity, right, it's not just a bureaucracy, it is a living, breathing entity, it is the bride of Christ and it develops and it grows like any organic creature does. So the theology of sanctity grew and developed over time with the community. So the word saint comes from the Latin sanctus, which signifies holy or holiness, and in our sacred scriptures it is God who is the holy one, it is God who is the Holy One, it is God who is the all-holy, and we have in the Apocalypse, in the book of Revelation, we have the angels proclaim God to be holy, holy, holy. So the essence of holiness itself. And it is because God is, as the angels say, thrice holy and it is also because we are made in the image and likeness of God that he invites us, his people, to share in his sanctity, his holiness and his divine life. So it's important to remember that revelation takes time. It's part of the culture and it's how the person is capable, or the cultures are capable, of understanding this.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I interrupted you. No, that's okay. The word sanctus, or to sanctify, to make holy, is it helpful when thinking about the saints? How do I say this? So I've always considered the word holy because it can seem a little intimidating to live a holy life, to think of yourself as trying to be a holy person. It just seems kind of maybe out of reach sometimes. But when you for me, it became helpful to think of it more as set apart, right, Like consecrated, like something if you have something blessed.
Speaker 1:It's made holy, but it's. It's still what it is.
Speaker 2:It's just reserved, maybe, for something specific or it's set apart, I don't know how to say it. Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't eliminate the earthly element or the human element. Uh, sanctity doesn't element, sanctity doesn't eradicate our human nature, and so it is this again. And, as I said before, it's if you take into consideration, it's all a process and a growth. Every person is growing right. I always tell people it's about making better choices. Yeah, can you make better choices? Are you informed enough to make better choices? And that's how sanctity develops in our lives. It's not about religiosity or what I call performance spirituality. It's not about performing things and doing things and a list of tasks to execute and accomplish it's conversion. It is a process of dying to the old self and making better choices and making choices that are coherent with the gospel that we profess. And again, we understand that differently. As the church continues to grow in space and time, our understanding of that deepens and widens and is more again, more organic. It's taking into account the entire person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, have you ever heard of Father Larry Richards?
Speaker 2:Yes, I have heard of him. Yes, the name is familiar. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I listened to one of his talks and he said you can become a saint or you can go to hell, and he says it so off the cuff, but ultimately it's true, right, if you get to heaven, you're a saint. It's a choice that we make, yeah, yeah. So then, what was this like way back at the beginning? Right, because you're saying it evolves over time.
Speaker 2:It evolves back at the beginning. Right, because you're saying it evolves over time, it evolves and so, going back to our roots, you know the Judaic, christian roots, judaism. In the Old Testament, the idea of the just is very present, and so for the members of the first covenant in the Old Testament, holiness and sanctity is seen as being just. We see that Abram is called just because of his faith in the God of the covenant. Right, because God calls him and he moves in faith. And because of his faith he is called just, or justified, or righteous. Later on, as again as this people develops and grows in their relationship with this God, later on, justice, or being justice, linked to the observance of the Sinai covenant, and justice or holiness then became linked to a set of behaviors or actions, which also then led to the idea of ritual purity, to be able to be justice, to be able to participate in the liturgy. So there was a ritual purity. You had to be careful about not coming into contact with Gentiles, because Gentiles were unbelievers and thereby would render you impure, and so you had to keep yourself free from defilement so as to be able to participate in the worship of God. And in the New Testament we've got the example of the Pharisees. So, over time, what happened is then this idea of justice and holiness gets a little bit skewed, and it's not about having faith in God, the Father, as Abram did, but it becomes skewed in the idea of ritual purity and purity of religiosity, skewed from God's original desire for his people to live a covenantal life of mercy and forgiveness.
Speaker 2:He raises up the prophets that teach that ritual purity is meant to be a sign and a symbol of the pure conscience of the believer, and that's something that we should all strive to live. In other words, my religious or the purity of religiosity, or the purity to be able to be ritually pure, is supposed to be just the symbol of, we would say, our soul. Right? Am I free from all those things that would render me a bad example? Render me a bad example, and that's what we have in the Old Testament. The spirituality of the Old Testament is you know, be careful. Take care of the alien, remember your aliens yourselves. You know, be careful of the foreigner. Care for the foreigner. You're a foreigner yourself. Take care of the widow and the orphan. All those things is a matter of being aware and considerate of others, just as God is considerate of their need.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast and we just finished up Exodus and Leviticus.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, we just got all of the how to worship that one could possibly ever want. But it is very interesting how the description of worship, I think, is so important because, like you're saying, he's calling them into this mindfulness, right, like even you were slaves. So if they own slaves, do it like this, because you're not going to lord it over them, you're not going to abuse them, you're not going to whatever, because you were slaves. Right, you understand what it was like, like you're saying, to be lost and wanderers. Now I'm going to give you a home. And the same thing the prescription of worship seems to teach them. It's, it's supposed to teach them how to live, almost right, like how do I?
Speaker 1:exist. What is that mindfulness that I'm called to in every aspect of it's talking about trading or purchasing property or how I interact with the stranger?
Speaker 2:How I?
Speaker 1:interact with the poor right, and yeah, and he is. So it is really interesting because it's classic human right. We get something really nice and there's lots of love and logic and wisdom behind this, and then we screw it up right and just let's take it, mess it up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, it's easier to focus on tasks instead of, you know, a real conversion of heart. So whenever I talk or I preach on the covenant, the Sinai covenant, it's like, yeah, you have the Ten Commandments, but the Ten Commandments are not the covenant. The covenant is you belong to me, I am your God and you are my people. That's the covenant. The covenant is you belong to me, I am your God and you are my people. That's the covenant. The Ten Commandments are manifestations or signs of that covenant. And people forget that and they talk about the Ten Commandments like yes, yes, yes, yes, but a covenantal life is not about the Ten Commandments. A covenantal life is Life is not about the Ten Commandments. A covenantal life is do I recognize that I belong to God? And there's something here too, something cultural in terms of the East.
Speaker 1:So have you ever seen Lawrence of Arabia?
Speaker 2:Oh, not any time recently, but yeah, okay. So you know how he saves this guy from dying right, and so all of a sudden, he owes him his life.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's a very Oriental, that's a very Eastern idea, and this is part of the idea of Israel being redeemed from death. Slavery is that. Well, god has redeemed them from death, so now they owe him their lives, and so in their lives it's not like a tyrannical owning, but like okay. So if your life is mine now, I'm telling you you have to be like me.
Speaker 2:You have to be compassionate and merciful and understanding and, again, care for the widow and the orphan and the alien and the foreigner. And that's a lot harder than just going like you shall not kill, you shall not do this. The conversion is a lot harder than just the 10. The conversion is a lot harder than just the 10. And sometimes I went out, oh, and I want to be a jerk and I can't be a jerk.
Speaker 2:Sometimes they talk about the Ten Commandments. I go which ones? I mean there's the Deuteronomy and there's Leviticus, so which one are you talking about? And they go like, like so yeah, and and again.
Speaker 1:And it's funny too, because I think this is why, reading reading jesus in the new testament, if you're actually paying attention, uh, if you're actually reading, uh, it's very, it's very powerful, it's very interesting, right so he calls. So he's the kind of guy who's like you know. It says you know, don't kill, thou shalt not kill.
Speaker 1:But if you even looked at the guy and you're upset, guilty, right, so he's calling us to understand the heart of the law, more so than the law which obviously he's calling us into relationship and allowing us to have that relationship with God.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I'm glad you brought that up, because in the New Testament we see then that, as God had raised the prophets, in the Old Testament we see that Jesus as definitive prophet. He reemphasizes this whole idea of righteousness and holiness and that justice is founded upon compassion, mercy and forgiveness of God the Father. Well, it is revealed that there is God the Father as well. So this is what the covenant is really about. It's making present this experience of mercy that Israel had received. You have to integrate it and make it coherent and share it and be merciful. One of the vocations or the vocation of Israel is that it's supposed to be the light of the nations. So by the way that they live their covenantal life, they should attract others, get focused on again ritual purity, right, and it's about us, and it's about we're the chosen ones, and it's about God being in Israel and only for Israel. And so this is why Jesus comes and sort of reminds them of this universal call to holiness that God has always uttered to us right, invited us into.
Speaker 1:You know there's a trap here. I was thinking that that star wars fish guy thing that says it's a trap, uh, but you can't. You can't blame the, the pharisees, um, because, like they had, if you've read the old testament, it's nothing but the jew, jewish people messing everything up all the time right. And so they get to a point where these people and Paul is maybe a really good example right, there was a reason he was killing Christians, because he was like no, you have to do this the right way. Look at our entire history, look at all the times we've done it wrong, like all you got to do is follow directions right. And then, obviously, then he realizes that there's more to it than that we've done it wrong, like all you got to do is follow directions right. And then, obviously, then he he realizes that there's more to it than that and through his conversion, no, no, and you're right in saying that there's.
Speaker 2:There's absolutely no malice or or evil intent on the on the part of the pharisees and that whole religious culture. Uh, it's easy. It's easy for whole people to take something for granted over over time. Look at, you know, look at ourselves, I mean, as catholics, over time there are things that we just kind of sort of take for granted and we kind of drift away. And it's not that we intentionally forget something, it's that like, well, over time, you know again the, the truism that familiarity breeds contempt is that you don't really value something that is there all the time. And for myself, and I guess for yourself too, as cradle Catholics, sometimes, to see others enter into the church with such fire and zeal and stuff, I go like wow okay, so good for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're so excited um anybody who I've ever met who goes through, like rcia or whatever they're. Just they're so excited for these, these opportunities, these moments for their life, for everything. And there's so many people that just kind of well, you know, culturally christ, christian, culturally Catholic. And it's very weird, because you do. I feel like I see lots of people who are either laissez faire, like Christian it's just their culture or they're the Pharisees and the scribes.
Speaker 1:They're the Pharisees and the scribes and they just condemn everything and overlook the nuance that I think is necessary to you know, as you're talking earlier, just how Israel is supposed to be this light through how they live.
Speaker 1:And we as Christians you know you don't put the basket over the lamp, right, you're supposed to. Your life should draw people to Christ and you should have those moments where people are like why are you doing this? Well, because I love you. And why not right? Like not because I'm supposed to, not because I'm commanded to, but because you deserve it, whether you like it or not, and I'm blessed to have this opportunity to be that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a key element that you've just touched on, and that is it's not about being duty-bound. Yeah, we are duty-bound, but if you only exercise your Christianity or Catholicity from duty, it's going to be lifeless, it's mechanical, and then you worry about the perfection of execution and then you get caught up in perfectionism and sometimes even scruples. But if you really understand that this is a process again of making better choices, that because God the Father loves me and I believe that God the Father loves me in the person of His Son, jesus Christ, and has blessed me with the gift of the Holy Spirit, if I believe those doctrinal truths and I integrate them and they become part of a coherent life, then my reaching out to others is not out of duty. It's a natural consequence of allowing the Father's love in Christ and the Spirit to change me, to transform me. And this is something again I want to say something about.
Speaker 2:This is that our understanding, or I should say the Catholic understanding, of holiness is not a personal holiness. It's not holiness that is, you know that is. It's John's holiness or Stephen's holiness. It is a holiness of Christ who dwells in us. It is the manifestation of the holiness of God. We have all been blessed, through the grace of baptism, to have everything that we need for sanctity. It's this gift that we've been blessed with and it's a matter of understanding that our Christianity, our Catholicity, our education in this school of charity is about actuating that gift. What am I doing to actuate that gift of love?
Speaker 2:And it's there, and for some people it stays dormant for many, many years until they have an awakening or they have an encounter. And others it's a matter of like. Again God moves them in a particular way and they cooperate with that movement and they begin to discover that gift, the blessedness of the Father's love. They really, really believe and they understand in the heart, the marrow of their bones, that they are beloved children of the Father. And then they begin to live that way that the love of the Father then casts out that servile fear of performance and perfectionism.
Speaker 2:So again, it's something that we all have and we're all called to, and it's not a holiness that is personal. We all have and we're all called to, and it's not a holiness that is personal. It is a manifestation of the holiness of Christ in each one of us in an individual way and in a unique way, because your history and my history are different, and so the way it's going to manifest itself is going to be according to your history and your particular way of manifesting that holiness that is Christ's and is given to us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's really interesting.
Speaker 2:I didn't mean to preach, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:No, it's good and it's so interesting as you're talking. It makes me realize, equally, how all of this goes back to the saints and our understanding, because I have a personal maturity and understanding that grows, and so do you, but so does the church, because we're this strange mystical body where we are the same church kind of thing and the same way that you know, I've heard, when we pray, it's because we are responding to God's invitation to pray with him, to be with him, and there's a maturity that goes with that. And equally, if you're anything like me, there's a maturity that develops where you start to recognize resistances in your life and you're like I don't want to pray, why?
Speaker 2:don't, I want to pray.
Speaker 1:Why don't I want to do this? Why don't I want to help the person, right? Oh, maybe I should because I'm duty bound. Nope, that's not the right way. So why? Let me figure out and really dig in. Why and where can I grow? Where can I convert? Because conversion, I really believe, is lifelong. If you're doing it right, it should be lifelong in my opinion. It is so. As we are maturing, as we're growing, the church is doing the same things because 2,000 years ago, its understanding of sanctity or sainthood, or holiness, or justification or righteousness, that begins to change, right, and that takes us back to holiness and sanctity meaning more so now we look at a saint as somebody who has died, so somebody who's with God. So how did we get to that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that, yeah, um. Well, before I comment on that, I want to say that sometimes, um, we have to rely on, on duty and responsibility until it becomes something natural to us, right? So obedience sometimes, yeah, we have to, and sometimes that's where the discipline comes, and eventually discipline becomes something that becomes love, if we continue to understand what it is that God is calling us to.
Speaker 1:And again going back to jump in. Sorry, it's very much like the Old Testament prescription of worship right and how they goofed it up because you don't want to just focus on the what. It's really important that we learn the why.
Speaker 2:Exactly exactly, focus on the what it's really important, that we learn, the why, exactly, exactly. So a little bit about the saints that have gone before us. Again, we all belong to this huge community. There's those that are enjoying God now and those of us that are in space and time and those that are being purified in the doorstep or the threshold to being with the Lord. So it goes back to kind of the theology of the just and the development of the idea of the soul as well, and the development of the idea of the soul as well. And again going back to this whole idea that we are an organic developing body, a believing community, and because everything in the church is connected to and as a result of some previously accepted truth the originating truth being that Jesus Christ is true God and true man the theology of the saints is connected with the theology of the just, as we said earlier in the Old Testament.
Speaker 2:So in the Old Testament the idea of being just comes from a foundation of a legal justice. So to be declared just was almost the same thing as saying someone was found innocent, but this legal innocence. Again, because it was a religious community, the Israelite Israel, because it is a religious population, a religious community. This idea of legal innocence was seen as proof of the interior innocence that somehow God had named them. It is through God's intervention that they were called and named to be just so. Again, there's this whole idea of the threat of the theology of justification, and that can be a whole other topic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just thinking that's a whole podcast, because the whole justification.
Speaker 2:That's several, I think. Faith alone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot to dig in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how we understand justification, how we understand divine revelation, all those things.
Speaker 2:There's a Catholic perspective to that.
Speaker 2:So, leaving that aside, the whole idea of justification, leaving that aside for now, if we follow the thread of innocent or just members who live rightly, then what happens is, as they're living rightly, what happens then when this person who is faithful to the covenant is living a covenantal life, what happens to them when they suffer, when they're being persecuted? This whole idea of how is it that the just suffer? And if I'm living rightly and I'm living the covenant, why is it that suffering is present in my life, right? It that suffering is present in my life? Right? And it's a matter, then, of the justice, seen to be as someone who lives rightly, who lives this covenantal life in spite of, we would say today, in spite of the brokenness of the world right, in spite of the persecution that they suffered, in spite of tragedies, that they suffer right. And so that became part of this development of the idea of innocence and justice and sanctity. Again, we automatically presume the idea or belief in the permanence of the person, because we're very influenced by Greek culture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it wasn't always that way right?
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, no. It was something that was slow to develop and in the Old Testament it began to be something that began to develop and began to be part of the consideration right in the light of Revelation and God's intervention through the sacred authors, the inspired authors of the scriptures, through the sacred authors, the inspired authors of the scriptures, and at first they had believed that the person would live on in the memory of God.
Speaker 2:Not necessarily a soul, but that God would remember them right. And then the rest, the unjust or those that were not holy. They lived on in the memory of their descendants. This is another reason why it was so important to have descendants, so that their memory would continue on in their descendants, that's how they lived on in their descendants.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's always easiest to interject. Sorry, I'm really enjoying interrupting you today, the difference between the Pharisees and the Sadducees is when I heard that the Pharisees believed in life after death and the. Sadducees didn't, and that's why they were sad, you see.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, exactly. That's a good way to remember. And again, if you remember your Bible stories and the New Testament stories, that was the big fight between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. When Paul says that he was inspired by an angel, all of a sudden all hell broke loose because the Pharisees and the Sadducees started fighting about how do we know that an angel didn't speak to him? Because the Pharisees and the Sadducees started fighting about how do we know that an angel didn't speak to him? Again, going back to the Old Testament and the just, we have examples of innocent people suffering. You have the example of Job, who is tried and God allows Satan to try him and he's a just man. You have the example of Susanna, who was blackmailed by two old men.
Speaker 1:Were they judges. They were politically important, yeah.
Speaker 2:They're judges, the judges of Israel, and so, yeah, they were lusting after Susanna and so she wouldn't give in to them. So they accused her of something else, and it's sort of like Old Testament revenge, you know, given to them so they accused her of something else.
Speaker 1:It's sort of like Old Testament revenge, yeah, or it's like CSI Israel. Is that Daniel who spoke?
Speaker 2:up.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly yeah, Daniel's one that speaks up against her persecution, yes, and then again you have the person or the entity of Israel suffering persecution for its belief in the one true God. So, as all this is happening, right, then you have the Greek idea of the soul or the nos, the mind right emerged and developed, and this began to be considered in the reflections, in the writings of the sacred scriptures. So then, this leads to the development of the belief in the resurrection of the just, which led also to the development of the idea of a netherworld. So, if the just continue to exist afterwards, where do they exist? So, this idea of a netherworld where the just await the final day, the day of the Lord, and this netherworld is what was named Sheol, and because this is a place where the just wait for the coming of the day of the Lord, there's also the idea of the resurrection of the unjust. And so where do they go?
Speaker 2:And so the unjust, this idea of suffering for their lack of justice, they developed the idea of Gehenna, their lack of justice, they developed the idea of Gehenna. Now, gehenna was actually a physical place outside of Jerusalem where they burned all the trash, and so where all the trash was burned, then that became sort of like this continual burning. So then they began to use that as the symbol of the fire or the suffering that would await the unjust, the perpetual suffering of the unjust for not living their covenantal life. So, with this idea of Sheol, going back to this idea of development of the soul, at first, as I said, you know, you lived on in the memory of God, or you lived on in the memory of your descendants and then this idea of the soul and the permanence of the person, and then the soul, and so okay, so, but for them it was a very shadowy existence, part of like I guess the Greeks and the Romans would call Hades. It's a very shadowy existence, it's not a real, not the entire person, right, the shadow of themselves, right.
Speaker 2:And later on, as the scriptures develop and Revelation begins to make itself known to the sacred writers, we have this idea of the permanence of the soul. We have a glimpse of that in the book of Maccabees. The permanence of the soul we have a glimpse of that in the book of Maccabees. So where Judas Maccabees, there is a battle and all these people in his army were killed. And the ones that were killed, they were found to have an amulet, which was again a defilement.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you shouldn't do that, don't need lucky charms kind of thing, right, exactly Because it's sort of idolatry and defilement, right. And so what he does is he gathers together, offerings money, and he sends the money to Jerusalem to offer up prayers for the dead. You're like, okay. So that infers, then, that there is a life after death, that there is some permanence of the person, right?
Speaker 1:It's also in Maccabees.
Speaker 2:Go ahead, so also in Maccabees. You also have the example that is given to us of the mother and her seven sons, who are persecuted for not offering incense right.
Speaker 2:And so she speaks to them and tells them in their language. You know that to be faithful to God, and they all, all seven, including the mother they're all willing to die because they know that their life is held in the hand of God and that God is faithful and they will continue to live and at the resurrection of the just since they're dying for God that they will have a new life.
Speaker 1:Are both Maccabees books absent from the Protestant Bible? Yes, they don't have.
Speaker 2:Maccabees, and they don't have Susanna either. They got rid of everything that was not in Hebrew, which is interesting, because when Jesus quotes scripture, he quotes the Greek translation the Septuagint.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that they defer to Christ using the Septuagint translation. And so they said okay, we're not going to use the Septuagint translation anymore. Yeah, let's not use that anymore. And so that was one of the reasons. And then, later on, uh, for other reasons, uh, luther decided to get rid of him and other people decided to get rid of him. Uh, because, for first, some reason or another, and we'll talk about that some other time.
Speaker 2:Yeah like the canon, yeah, the canon of scripture, um, and so again, going back to this whole idea of the innocent suffering, so we have Jesus in the New Testament.
Speaker 2:Jesus is the ultimate innocent person who suffers and he's condemned to die. So he dies as an innocent and he dies just as a just man. But then how is it this just innocent man is condemned to death and this capital execution, and so he is seen then as the ultimate witness to the absolute truth of God, above all things. And so this is where we get into the whole idea of martyrdom, because martyrdom is to be a martyr, is to be a witness. To be a martyr is to be a witness. And so, again, it comes from the culturally Greek world of the time of Jesus that this is a word that was used in court as well, to witness or to testify. So Jesus is considered the king of martyrs. And so then, now we come to this whole idea of sanctity and saints, and for us as Catholics, catholic Christians, the majority of the saints in the first couple hundred years were all martyrs, because they were all dying for the faith so, yeah, I think that's, and that's probably honestly that's a good segue for a whole other set.
Speaker 1:that's, and that's probably honestly that's a good segue for a whole another set of conversations, something that also might be interesting to talk about is very specifically the difference between the Christian concept of soul and the Greek concept. Because, they're not the same, but it's really easy for us to think of. Just oh, my soul is just this disembodied kind of I don't know. My thought goes out to heaven or something like that, or my consciousness or something. Yeah, it's way more complicated than that.
Speaker 2:Than that yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So let me see if I can track this all together. Make sure I was following all this because it's a lot to think about. It is so we have justification being somebody who's just, righteous, blameless, obedient, perhaps following, like we have Abraham. He was just, he was willing to do what was asked for him, kind of thing. Eventually, we kind of end up with this ledger mentality like rights or wrongs If it's, if it's striking the book against you, you're not, you know being morally just or righteous. If you're clean or blameless, then you know, then you might get, you might be remembered by God. And then, as the Greek cultures creep in, we start doing a lot more thinking. I guess those Greeks, they're always thinking. And so then we start you know where do we go if we die? And if we're just, do we go one place, and if we're not just, do we go a different place. And we end up with right kind of the precursors heaven and hell and shale yes, yes, yes, instead of just a afterlife.
Speaker 1:Now there's consequential afterlifes. Yes, yes, man, it's good stuff, it's so, it's so fun to dig into all this? Because it will, just because the tang's off in so many different directions, right.
Speaker 2:And that's the thing about the faith is that everything is connected to something else. And so, again we talked the other day you start following one thread. You have to cross all these other threads. You're like, oh yeah, there's this thread and and oh, there's this, but we can't go there right now. We've got to keep following this thread Because it's all interconnected, it's all part of again, part of one organic being right and I said I think we talked the other day is that we can talk about our nervous system, we can talk about our circulatory system and there's different systems, but it's all part of one body and so it's sort of the same thing. When we talk about different parts of the church, you have to remember that it's part of a whole, even though we're concentrating on one particular aspect. So we're looking at the fifth metatarsal today of the church, but you have to remember it's connected to the body.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's developing. It didn't just develop, it's developing, developing yes.
Speaker 2:Until we come to full maturity.
Speaker 1:yes, it's very, very interesting. All this also makes me kind of think about maybe future episodes with heaven and hell, angels and devils, or Satan. Right, because we have these angelic beings that do they live in heaven, do they live in hell? It seems kind of popular right now for Satan to be more of a thought than an actuality, a reality. Yeah, so that's maybe another rabbit trail for us one of these days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, there's the in the not too far past in the church. One of the topics was the four last things, and the four last things are death. So after death, then there's a second last thing, which is judgment, and then after judgment there's the two other two last things, which is heaven and hell. So the four last things with death, judgment, heaven and hell, so those are things to to consider, right. So, uh, yeah, and of course, angels and demons and fallenness and all those things are part of that, right. So, yeah, there's a lot to dive into. I think it'll be fun, I think it's going to be fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, thanks for chatting with me today. I really appreciate it. It was fun. You're very welcome. Yeah, thank you for the questions.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Thank you for the questions and to anyone listening If you like what you hear, please consider subscribing Wherever you found us. If you find us on YouTube, subscribe for us and ring the little bell or click the bell icon, whatever it is that you do on YouTube, and we really look forward to Kind of chatting with you again later.
Speaker 2:And sharing our faith, god bless.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me and my friend the friar, Father Stephen Sanchez, a discalced Carmelite priest. Good morning, Father. Wait. No, Good afternoon, it's the afternoon Okay.
Speaker 2:John.
Speaker 1:Hey, it's close, it's like 12.30. It, it's close, it's close enough.
Speaker 2:As you didn't say good evening, that's okay. Yeah, good evening, good evening. So tell me about that podcast or that thing that you you saw about justification you were mentioning something about that what? Tell me a little bit, oh yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I saw this. It's a I don't know. I say it's short, seven-minute interview with John MacArthur, who I'm going to go ahead and just guess. He's some kind of evangelical, protestant Christian, I know the name. I haven't done a lot of research on him or anything like that, but I recognized his name and the title of it of the video was how can we know that we are really saved and I guarantee like yeah.
Speaker 1:So I was like, okay, I'll bite, you know, I'll watch it. This, this will be fun. And um, it was really interesting because the vast majority of what he had to say I felt was not terribly different from Catholic theology. I could articulate the difference. We would say that the gift of grace, right, that it's given to us freely from Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, right, that redemptive grace, we can't lose the offering of that right, it is freely given to us and it's always there for us. Yes, and I think his theology would say that, instead of it always being available to us, it is instead that if we I'm assuming if we're baptized Christians, right, we accept, we have accepted that gift through our baptism. And now, no matter what I do well, I was going to say, no matter what I do, I can't lose it Right, so kind of the once saved, always saved.
Speaker 1:However, the interviewer, some young guy, he kind of pushed back. He's like, well then, how do I know, right, that I've really accepted it and that it's really, I'm really justified, right, I'm really saved? And John MacArthur starts talking about there are things that seemed very much like gifts of the Holy Spirit. Right, like you would be humble, you would be loving, you'd be patient, right Kind of your life. You would have this inner conversion, a manifestation of virtues have this inner conversion A manifestation of virtues, yeah, and those would persist through challenges, right.
Speaker 1:And he kind of cites some. He's been, you know, he's had some rough things happen in his life, right, but his faith endured, and that again is kind of that fruitfulness of accepting God's grace, his being saved, saved right. These are manifestations because he is saved, right. So I think those are the kind of the two things where it's like he thinks, once you accept it, you can't lose it, but you maybe it's the kind of thing where you had to have really truly accepted it for for it to have really be a faith that lasts, which, again, that's kind of like the toil of Catholic theology. It's always there for me but I have to persist and I have to try and I have to. It's not like I'm earning it, it's just I can't turn away from it, kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Right, I'm earning it. It's just I can't turn away from it, kind of thing, right?
Speaker 1:Well, I think one of the things we have to remember is within Protestant theology there's a lot of schools, which means there's a lot of different ways of thinking.
Speaker 2:There's no, because there is no authority. Right, they don't have an authority. There is no unified theological expounding or philosophical expounding, and if this person is an evangelical, even less because they have less of a history of that right. So it depends what school of justification he belongs to you right? So, again, for us, when we as Catholics speak of justification, we're talking about what we understand to be our salvation, our redemption, justification. These are all the words that are used interchangeably within our tradition. And basically, when we speak of redemption, justification, salvation, we're speaking about the effect of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2:That it is through his life, death and resurrection that redemption is offered to humanity. Right Reconciles us to the Father.
Speaker 1:Yeah, real quick, go ahead, because I don't want to speak falsely against poor maybe I shouldn't even say poor to good old John MacArthur. I looked him up real quick while we're talking he's American Baptist, so doesn't say North, south, east or West, or whatever.
Speaker 2:Whatever, but he's, he's baptist, okay so, and again, he must be of a more moderate moderate or liberal if there is such a thing as a liberal baptist, a more moderate baptist, because baptists come from from Calvinist theology or understanding of justification, which goes back to predestination and irresistible grace, and I mean there's lots of things there. So let's first look at the Catholics' understanding and then we can explore a little bit how it's different from some of the mainline Protestant ideas. Right, and so for us, when we're talking about justification, salvation, redemption, what we're saying is that there's been some sort of conversion, there's a changeover in a person from a state of injustice or sin to a state of justice, righteousness or grace, right? So first let's go back to our Scripture and get a scriptural foundation as to what it is that we're trying to discuss here, or the idea, the concept that we're trying to enunciate here.
Speaker 2:To enunciate here, so, the verb that is used in the Old Testament for this question, this idea is tzedak, and tzedak means to be just, that is, to have that moral quality of justice, of righteousness, right. But tzedak also has a juridical sense. Like everything, there's a secular, a worldly sense that becomes religious or spiritual, and in the juridical sense it is to be found not guilty. Okay, but the understanding is in Saddaq is that the person is declared innocent before a tribunal, but that the declaration of innocence is more of um a person that has vindicated like I'm accused and then they find me innocent because I am innocent.
Speaker 1:That's what sadak means, right yeah, so not, not so much like we can't. We can't prove it, so we're letting you go. It's exactly.
Speaker 2:We have found the truth of it, which is the truth of it is that you are not guilty of what you're accused of yeah, yeah, Right, that's what tzedak means, right.
Speaker 2:So that's where we get beginning to that beginning theological spiritual Septuagint. In the Greek translation, the word that is used for tzedak, or justice, means there's a little variation in the meaning there it means that the innocent is declared acquitted and the guilty is condemned. So there is something there about to give. Justice is not about finding you innocent. Justice is not about finding you innocent, but it means justice is the innocent is acquitted and the guilty is condemned.
Speaker 1:That's what the Greek meaning is right, kind of like the saying justice is served, yes, so it's not just that you're innocent If someone's guilty at the same time, like they're punished or they get you know whatever's their due, right, right, bertha joined us. I don't know if she'll be quiet, but she's laying down now.
Speaker 2:Good afternoon, bertha. She wants to put in her two cents on justice, yeah, okay. So now an important for us in the Judeo. Well, I should say, in the Christian understanding of the Old Testament, our way of interpreting the Old Testament, a key text, an important text is found in Isaiah, isaiah 53, verse 11, where Isaiah speaks Through his suffering, my servant shall justify many and their guilt he will bear.
Speaker 2:So, in this context then, the servant, he's talking about the servant, and we understand it to be Jesus, the definitive Jesus. Yeah, yeah, it is the servant, right. So that's who we understand that scripture to mean, to prophesy, right. But if you look at the text, through his suffering, my servant shall justify many and their guilt he will bear. He also acts as the judge. So it is the judge who is declaring the innocence of the accused, but it is the judge who is taking upon himself the suffering of the accused to actually make the accused innocent. And this is a big difference between some Protestant theologians or theologies or ideas of justification, versus Catholic. We, as Catholics, believe that a person is truly transformed, is truly made just or righteous, the remission of sin, protestant theologies the person is still guilty and corrupt, but God chooses not to declare him corrupt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like the king who forgives're guilty, but since I'm the judge, I'm not going to declare you guilty, but you're still guilty, but I'm not pursuing justice. I'm not pursuing justice in your case, right, and that's very important, because in Catholic theology there is a real transformation of the person. And, as I spoke earlier about Calvin, for Calvin, the sinner is still a sinner. You're still corrupt in your nature. You are corrupt to your very essence is corrupted. For us, there's a difference between corruption and fallen. Right that we're wounded by sin. For Calvin, it's corruption. And so I think Luther, for a while, held on to that idea too, but I'm not sure if he changed his mind later or not. But the idea is the only reason that God can stand. My presence is because I am covered in the blood of Jesus.
Speaker 2:I go like that's not Like he's tolerating you Exactly, and that's not what we believe, right.
Speaker 1:So when are we made just if there's that transformation under Catholic?
Speaker 2:theology.
Speaker 1:There is Is that a loaded question? Yes, it is a loaded question, John.
Speaker 2:Oh no, We'll get to that in a minute, okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay okay, we'll get to that in a minute. So this is important in distinguishing a Catholic understanding of justification from some of the tradition who do not believe in the real transformation, the real remission of sin right, the real remission of sin right. And, as I said I mentioned earlier, there is the difference of what's called imputation or to name something right, to accuse something. So the fact is, for us the justice is a real justice. I am truly made innocent. That's the transformation, that is the not just the conversion of my turning to God or turning to Jesus, but that turning for us, as Catholics we'd say, makes us a real creature, a different creature, through the grace of baptism. And that's where it begins, right Through baptism, right.
Speaker 1:But anyway, would this be? The same potential without going too far in the weeds or kind of getting off track. Same thing like when we go to confession we are forgiven of our sins.
Speaker 2:Right Whereas.
Speaker 1:Protestants who don't have confession they like I guess their sins are forgiven, but for us it's like I don't know how to say it Like if it was in a ledger it'd be scratched out, like it's not there anymore. Right, correct? It's not like the sins is like whatever. Now you might go do the same sin again, but at that moment when you're forgiven, the slate's wiped clean, right, Correct? You are a new, completely clean creature.
Speaker 2:Correct, and in some Protestant theologies it is still there, but God chooses not to press charges. Okay, so that's a big difference, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Okay so that's a big difference, right? Okay. So now, when we're talking about justice and righteousness and about you said earlier, you asked earlier about when am I made? Just right, that's okay. Yeah. So let's look a little bit when Jesus talks about this and when Jesus talks about this.
Speaker 2:So Jesus stressed the difference between the justice of the Pharisees and the justice that he calls us as his disciples to live. And this is you find this especially in Matthew's gospel, chapters five through seven, the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount discourse, which is, you know, a long section. There are those chapters five, six and seven. So in Matthew, in chapter five, verse 20, jesus says tells his disciples unless your justice exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, okay. So here justice doesn't mean crossing the line from sinful to holy. It's an implication of a way of life. There's an implication here of a right way of living, a holiness, a covenantal life. So there's not a precise moment when one crosses from guilty to innocent, from sinful to holy. There's something else that is implied in this statement, so, okay. So that's why that loaded question is like we're going to have to go back to the episode on sin that we talked about not too long ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah, because that's interesting, because in that verse it makes me think exactly of a way of life, because the scribes and the Pharisees, right, and the Sadducees, they weren't bad guys, they were living out the faith the way they understood it, correct. And so what he's telling, unless you are I kind of read the word holy into that as well unless you're living a way that is holy or trying to be more covenantial in how you're doing things than they are, then yada, yada, yada right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and which was a big challenge to the disciples of Jesus during his earthly life, because for them, the scribes and the Pharisees were the righteous, they were the holy people. I mean, the Pharisees were usually affluent and they had plenty of leisure time to actually do all the things that needed to be done in terms of right, living right. And the scribes? Well, not only did they know how to read and write, but they knew the law backwards and forwards. So they were thought to be like, wow, that must be super holy. And when Jesus says that your justice has to surpass or exceed that of the scribes, and the Pharisees are going like what, what does that mean? And then he goes on later on in in Matthew. He goes on to give what's known as the antitheses. You know where Jesus says you have heard it said. But I say to you like about? You have heard it said that thou shall not murder. But I say to you, like about, you have already said that thou shall not murder. But I say unto you do not put a stumbling block on your brother, do not grow angry with your brother, do not call your brother foolish or useless. Right, the real justice, the real righteousness, the real covenantal life, the right relationship with God comes from the interior of the person. It comes from their inside right. It's an understanding of the self, an understanding of the other as God's children.
Speaker 2:And then he goes on to address some of the foundational spiritual practices, again almsgiving when you give alms, prayer when you pray, and fasting when you fast. And again, these are, president, not merely as actions to be accomplished, but he's trying to make his disciples understand that it's a realization or a manifestation of the deeper self, of the spirit of the person. It doesn't matter if you give alms or don't give alms. What matters is is it a manifestation? I mean, I should say you should give alms, but it doesn't matter if you give from your surplus or if you give from your own poverty. What matters is do you understand the why of it? Do you understand the that this is a realization of who you are? It, the action, is flowing from who you are as a person, not necessarily from a task list you're trying to accomplish or to finish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that seems to line up with kind of what John MacArthur was saying, right, that you'll know that you're really saved, because these things will kind, of like you just said, flow from your being saved, right.
Speaker 2:Right, goodness, and all these kinds of things will happen. Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly, yeah, that we are saved, that we are made just in Jesus Christ, because he is God's Word made flesh. He is the innocent and just victim who has died to sin for us so that we can have the option, we can have the freedom to respond to that invitation to live lives of holiness right. He has redeemed us by his passion, death and resurrection. He's taken upon himself the punishment for being unjust, right, the injustice then he takes upon himself and nails it on the cross, and that's what we would call like objective salvation or objective redemption. Now, the work of the individual, because then we'll talk about this in a little bit the free will is that. Do I accept the invitation and make it?
Speaker 1:mine Right.
Speaker 2:The New Encyclopedia, the New Catholic Encyclopedia, says that Christ brought to fallen men forgiveness of sins and restored the life of grace which anticipates the glory of heaven, which then is the completion of man's redemption. So our redemption is not complete until we are in glory, right, until we're in heaven, right. So justification is the application to individual persons or subjective redemption of Christ's redemption. So accordingly, then, if there is a justification, then by implication that there is a fall, there is a need for justification. You don't justify somebody that doesn't need justification. So then that also implies that there is a universal reign of sin and that also implies that there is an inability on our part to be able to redeem ourselves or make ourselves righteous, or just on our own.
Speaker 1:Now, yeah, and that's kind of again going back to our sin episode, like, if y'all haven't listened to it, go back and listen to it, because that's the concupiscence, right, we're just our tendency towards sin, Pete, right because of the fall Pete. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yep, right. And so for us, for the Catholic Church. It is through Christ's apostolic church that Christ continues his redemptive mission. Through his church, through the apostles and the apostolic church, through the sacramental mystery of Christ, right, through baptism, through the sacrament of penance, through the healing sacraments right, these are ways in which my sinfulness or going back to missing the mark, right, my sinfulness is truly erased, is truly done away with.
Speaker 2:It's not just well, I'm covered in the blood of Jesus, and so God, the father, is not going to punish me. He's going to put up with me because is I'm in the process of—I have been saved. I'm in the process of being saved and I hope to be saved, because it is contingent upon my free will to continuously accept the grace that Christ is offering me. Right, and this is where the free will is very important. I need to continuously accept this.
Speaker 2:And, again, as you said, concupiscence plays a large part in this, because as I grow in my understanding of what it means to be son or daughter of God, I am going to understand that responsibility and I will continue to make better choices and deeper choices or deeper commitments to that truth. But as my understanding of that grows, so does my understanding of my commitment to that, and so does my understanding of sin right, my understanding of my commitment to that, and so does my understanding of sin right. So it's no longer a matter of mortal sin, it's a matter of, like, a lack of charity. I should be more charitable, because this is what God, the Father, expects from me, because this is what has been manifested and exemplified for me in the life of Jesus Christ. And so again, life of Jesus Christ. And so again, it's hard to talk about a hard line that you cross. There is redemption, there is remission of sin through baptism and the other sacraments of healing, but justification is a continual process of growing deeper into the life that Jesus Christ has won for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it makes me think a lot.
Speaker 1:I had this conversation, you know, once upon a time with one of the guys I work with about if you can lose your salvation, kind of thing, and it seems like if the answer is no, you can't, it seems to be.
Speaker 1:We talked a lot about nuance in our episode on sin. It seems to be a very un-nuanced approach to it, because whenever I think the average person, and even a well-educated person, is confronted with scenarios, certain scenarios, then it seems like now they start questioning it as well. So, if I believe, once saved, always saved, right, and I really truly accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I don't know, on retreat when I was 18 or something like that, and then as I grow up, I get involvedbing gas stations and I shot a guy, and you know I, whatever, you just keep on going, right, like I'm doing all these things. We talked about how you have to have that formed conscience and all that as well, right? So everything is into the depth of your understanding, right? So when you confront someone with all these scenarios, like you really truly believe Jesus died for you to be able to come back with, well, how formed is the person's conscience, right? Did they understand what?
Speaker 1:they were doing wrong. Did they have any other options? Right, like they don't know how to come back to that? Because that approach, I think that nuance is part of reality in my opinion. Yes, you have to understand. Life is real.
Speaker 2:The Church says it as well. Again in the New Catholic Encyclopedia it says Man's justification remains imperfect even after redemption and justification right in this world. Imperfect even after redemption and justification right in this world. Man's justification remains imperfect and, in a way, precarious. That means I can lose it Because of my free will. I can choose to turn my back on God whenever I choose to it is always perfectible or capable of growth in grace.
Speaker 2:In other words, there's always room to grow. There's always room for a greater sanctification, a greater sanctity right. So justification, remission of the sin and becoming a child of God is only the beginning. You now have to live it out. Its fulfillment is not for this world, but it's in the next world, when I will be fully and completely redeemed, when the Lord comes in glory and we have, you know, the final judgment, right? Well, let's still have to make an episode on that, don't we? The four last things, so and so this is part of the whole Pete.
Speaker 1:Does that come back to Jared, what Pete? So does that come back to? Either we are made justified or we are given justification. Is that where this still all hinges?
Speaker 2:For us or am?
Speaker 1:I still kind of missing it a little bit.
Speaker 2:No, no, no For us.
Speaker 1:Because it is close, Like it's a little bit hard to grasp.
Speaker 2:Again, that's where the difference in theology understanding is between Catholic theology and some forms of Protestantism. For us, we are truly made just, we are just. We are made just, we are just. We are made just. For some Protestant theologies, you're not made just, you are named. God calls you just even though you're not, which I don't understand how that works, because then that means that God's a liar and God doesn't lie. So I don't understand it. I don't understand that theology.
Speaker 2:So anyway that's part of that theology right, that understanding of it, and so, and I think the way Calvin kind of sort of worked his way around it was that well, you're corrupt and you always will be corrupt, but the only reason that you're able to be in heaven is because you are covered in the blood of Jesus, and that's why you're there heaven is because you are covered in the blood of Jesus, and that's why you're there.
Speaker 1:You know what this kind of connects to in my brain too, is the thought of sacramental theology that the sacraments are efficacious, right that they do something? Yes, right, they're not symbolic. So being, if you are named just and it's symbolic because you are still corrupt, you're still guilty, but I'm naming you like you're symbolically justified, versus I am making you justified, you are redeemed.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah. And so as this theology develops right, at first you know the early church fathers, they didn't have a whole lot to worry about. It was like, okay, I'm baptized, and they had the whole understanding of the Old Testament and biblical justice and righteousness right. So they had this whole understanding and, for them, justification, redemption, salvation hinged upon the sacrament of baptism and penance, and so you know, okay.
Speaker 2:So the assumption or the presumption is that you're now given your life to Christ and you're going to live your life in Christ and so, okay, let's go on. So the grace that is given to us by the Holy Spirit not only redeems us and makes us just makes us truly God's children, but also the grace of the Holy Spirit, of truly God's children, but also the grace of the Holy Spirit, helps us to avoid sin. Again, free will plays into this. Right. I need to cooperate with that and I need to catechize myself and I need to make better choices and all that.
Speaker 2:So it is through this habitual practice of virtue, then by growing in the life of Christ, then that means that concupiscence or the natural tendency to fallenness becomes less and less of a deal in my life. Right, because if I become habituated in virtue, then sin becomes less and less of an option. It's still very probable, it's still very possible, but it becomes less and less a probability the more I give myself to the life of the Spirit. Right To cooperate in that new life. And the first real challenge to the theology of justification, or to the church as well, was when Pelagius there's the Pelagian heresy that came about, which St Augustine fought against, and Pelagius stated he overstated the case, like most heresies are always overstated things. So he said that because God made man good right, and so since we're a good thing, he says well, we don't really need the grace of Christ to be good, and we don't need the grace of Christ to do the right thing.
Speaker 2:And so immediately the church goes like oh, wait a minute. By implication, what you're saying is that there is no original sin, there is no concupiscence. And if there is no original sin, no concupiscence, then why would Jesus redeem you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's the point? What's the?
Speaker 2:point. So again, st Augustine fought against the Pelagian and semi-Pelagianism and in St Augustine's concept of justification it sort of sets the whole stage for in the West, in the Latin Fathers, much because in the East, the Greek fathers, they didn't want to call the state of fallenness original sin, because they don't want to attribute sin if your free will is not involved in it, like I'm not choosing this. So this is the consequence of the fallen state. But they recognize that there's a fallenness in the human person but they don't call it original sin.
Speaker 1:I think if I remember correctly— so they're just trying to keep it separated sin from fallenness, right sin from fallenness, right.
Speaker 2:So if I remember correctly, I had a Russian Orthodox priest as my Eastern spirituality teacher and if I remember correctly, they call it speaking about the will. They call it a nomic nomic, I think, nomic will and what it means is concupiscence. It means that your will is wounded or fractured, and because your will is wounded or fractured, there's a difficulty in making the right choice. But they don't attribute it to sinfulness. It's not because I'm sinful, it's because I'm wounded. They're focusing more on the wound than the idea of original sin. Right, and their focus is responding to god's invitation to share in his divinity. So that's the east right, but in the west, since we tend to be anal, retentive, we needed to kind of make things more difficult than they have to be so what happens then?
Speaker 2:hyper defined stuff oh yeah, we dissect everything to the the in the. Then, after Augustine, then there's the rise of scholasticism. Then right, and the scholastics tend to be much more academic and they're much more conceptual. Right the abstract, they deal with the abstract. And so then the approach for the scholastics was, and so the question of justification was okay.
Speaker 2:So if your sin is remitted, between the remission of sin and when you accept grace, how does that work between sin and grace, since sin and grace cannot to them, it cannot be in the same person. They both speak their opposites to each other. How can two opposites be in the same agent, right? So that's their problem, right? So how and why does the habitual state of sin make room for the state of grace? That was their question. So again, this will lead us back to the whole previous discussion that we had on the understanding of sin and the question of fundamental option or choice of the person to be good or not.
Speaker 2:But the Catholic Church, after the Protestant Revolution, the Church reacted very strongly to the Protestant stance on justification, and the Church declares three main points, and these are the three main points that are still part of our theology, and that is redemption, justification, sanctification implies the real, true remission of sins, right, not just the lack of imputation. It's not just that God chooses not to press charges. So there's a real remission of sins and not just their non-imputation for punishment. And even though there is in the person, concupiscence after baptism, that the sin is still remitted, it is absolved through the grace of baptism, through the grace of sacraments, the healing sacraments. Absolved through the grace of baptism, through the grace of sacraments, the healing sacraments. So also, then, justification means that there's an interior renewal, or I become a creature, a new creature, I become God's child for real through the infusion of grace, and that the gift of that filial relationship is the gift of the Holy Spirit. So, okay, we are truly transformed into God's children.
Speaker 2:And the third thing is free will. It supposes that the free acceptance of this grace and these gifts, it has to be in free cooperation of the human agent and faith, hope and love and repentance. I'm like, yes, I've messed up, yes, I need to change, yes, I need to be more virtuous, I need to be more patient, whatever right. And those are the three main areas then of that. So when we talk about Protestant justification, it's really difficult because there are so many ways of approaching it. There's so many ways of approaching justification that it makes it very difficult. There is one interesting thing, though, that I want to mention.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:There is—so we talked a little bit about Augustine. There's another approach, st Irenaeus, and it's called Irenaean theodicy. Irenaeus believed that we were not made in a perfect state, so for him original justice is not a perfect state. Like when we talk about paradise right, everything is wonderful and beautiful and it's nothing but butterflies and rainbows. Right.
Speaker 2:For Irenaeus it was like no, yes, there is original justice, but the human person was not made perfectly. They were in a state of justice, but you shouldn't understand justice as perfection. And so for Irenaeus it meant that we live in a way of having to choose, to be made in the image and likeness of God, to choose right. And he says for him the importance goes back to free will. If I am in a perfect state and I see God perfectly, it would be impossible for me to sin, because I would.
Speaker 2:Naturally, in original justice if you understand it as perfection I would naturally continuously choose God. But because we were made in original justice, but imperfectly, to allow our free will to grow and so that we may become freely God's children and choose to freely be in his likeness, I have to be able to make moral choices. And that is where the freedom comes. And that is where the Irenaean question comes in, which I find very fascinating. I wish I could find some more books on that, find an explanation or an exposition of that, because I find that very fascinating. In that I'd go like, wow, so I wonder if you could even apply that to the angels too.
Speaker 2:So the angels were in a state I was just thinking that were you like okay, yeah, that's so funny so then, okay, so then that means that the angels were again growing in their knowledge of god and they had to choose, and some choose, chose to be faithful to God in the moral question and others chose not to. And so we're like that is a very fascinating question because it is fallenness, but I think our understanding of original justice and the Garden of Eden and that God made us perfectly. I think that's what the question is. The question is God made us, but God made us free agents, and to make us free agents and allow us to mature and to grow, grow, he made the world in such a way that we had to have situations in which there was a moral question that I had to resolve.
Speaker 1:I'm like, wow, that is fascinating, yeah yeah, it's like making us perfectly imperfect, right? So?
Speaker 2:yes, so that way, so that I can come to perfection out, yeah, yeah that's a really man.
Speaker 1:That's interesting, okay. Well, let's write that down for something that we'll forget that we said.
Speaker 1:Write that down Like we should explore that. I think that's something that's. I just got a book called the. I think it's called the Father's no Best and I think it's by Jimmy Akin and it's just all about the church father. So I just got it and it's just all about the Church Father, so I just got it. I haven't had a chance to open it or start it, but maybe I'm sure Irenaeus is in there, so we'll see if it says anything about it. That'd be a fun episode.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I wonder too where you were ending, how, after the Protestant rebellion, how, like after the Protestant rebellion, how the Church kind of came back with you know, okay, okay, you guys are saying all this stuff. So X, y, z, we're going to say something in response to.
Speaker 2:Which is what?
Speaker 1:the Church did almost all the time. It's every time they say something it's in response to some kind of heresy, right, right, correct. But I wonder how many of the different Protestant theologies? It was like someone was just looking for a way to literally protest the Catholic teachings, like everything that had been understood, to everything that had been understood. So it's like because Calvinism is very predetermined, like free will, I think is a big problem in Calvinist theology, right? So they're like, okay, okay, okay, so we're going to take out free will, you know. So it's like we're just going to try and think of something so we can, like take a stance opposing the Catholic Church, which I think is a really like sorry guys, I think that's a really bad way to do things, because then you have to try to reverse, engineer a bunch of stuff instead of accepting what was given by the apostles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think probably most evangelicals and most Pentecostal lines of Protestantism, Pentecostal lines of Protestantism they're much more open to the work of the Holy Spirit and much more open to these possibilities, right, and so I think there's a greater possibility of us being reconciled to Pentecostals and Evangelicals than us being reconciled to Calvinists and stuff like that. There's such a huge difference in understanding of justification in those areas there and free will and irresistible grace, and it just gets complicated Like what, Like what do you mean? What?
Speaker 1:are you saying so? Like God loves you and you can't hide from it? It's like you're going to accept it.
Speaker 2:You know, the whole idea of predestination too is a bit kind of unnerving.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is all kind of strange stuff, and that also kind of makes me think, too, that I would say there are probably especially by today's day and age, there's probably very few like true Protestants left. I think there's a lot of non-Catholic Christians out there, because everything's kind of gone a little willy-nilly, and then there's this small subset of like purist Protestants who are like anti-Catholic. You know Right, yeah, I don't know. That's really interesting. So what's the big takeaway then?
Speaker 2:Let's like wrap this back up in a nice little pretty bow for us, for Catholic theology on justification when it comes to justification, okay, for us, justification means that in Jesus Christ, through my baptism into Jesus Christ, into the death of Jesus Christ, as Paul would say, that we're baptized in his death and that in his death I die to sin so that I can rise with Christ. That means that in my baptism I am justified. Whether I'm a baby or whether I'm an adult, I am justified in that baptism. Once I am justified, I am made God's child, god's son or God's daughter, and the Holy Spirit accompanies me and dwells in me. And it's up to me then, as a child, I need to be catechized.
Speaker 2:As an adult, I need to also be catechized in terms of how do I respond to this gift, how do I live this, how do I incarnate this gift right? So, one, there is a remission of sin. My sin is obliterated, it's not there anymore, it's erased, it's gone. The remission of sin. Two, the reality is that I am made God's child. Three is that it is necessary for me to freely accept and cooperate with His grace, because God respects the free gift, the sovereign gift of free will that he has given me. So, so justification then, for us as Catholics, again, is when somebody asks you are you saved, you say I have been saved, I am being saved and I hope to be saved. That's the answer that a Catholic gives.
Speaker 1:Boom, mic drop. I love it. Well, thanks for taking the time to help me puzzle all this out.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. You're very welcome.
Speaker 1:All right, well, we'll go ahead and wrap this up, and everybody who's? Listening. Thanks for joining us, Thank you and God bless. God bless.
